Chris Jericho Pitched This Interesting Match Idea For SummerSlam

Chris Jericho

Chris Jericho has been one of the biggest wrestling stars across the globe in 2018 and has done so by working for both of the biggest wrestling organizations in the world.

Jericho started the year working a match of the year candidate contest against Kenny Omega at New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom 12 event and kicked off a program with Tetsuya Naito at NJPW New Year Dash!! the next day.

He later returned to WWE for Raw 25 and the Greatest Royal Rumble. This WWE return was short-lived, however, as Jericho returned to New Japan and won the IWGP Intercontinental Championship from Naito at Dominion 6.9 in June.

If Jericho would have got his way, though, he would have had a big match at this Sunday’s SummerSlam event. The caveat? He would have walked into the match carrying New Japan’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship.

On his podcast, Jericho talked about an idea he pitched to WWE officials, likely in mid-June, which would have seen him return to work against Seth Rollins at SummerSlam in an Intercontinental Champion vs. Intercontinental Champion Match. This would have effectively been an NJPW vs. WWE story. The timing of his pitch was before Rollins lost the Intercontinental Championship to Dolph Ziggler (June 18) but after Jericho won the IWPG Intercontinental Championship (June 9), so it had to be sometime in the middle of June.

“I placed a call to a certain head of a certain wrestling company, let’s just leave it at that. I said, ‘I’ve got something for ya. It’s boffo box office. It’s big time,” Jericho recalled on this week’s edition of Talk Is Jericho.

He continued, “I said, ‘What do you think about first-time ever Intercontinental Champion vs. Intercontinental Champion, Jericho vs. Rollins? What’s the finish? Doesn’t matter.'”

Jericho would have shown up unannounced the Raw before SummerSlam to attack Rollins. That would be the set-up for the match. Then at SummerSlam, Jericho would get attacked by whoever Rollins was set to feud with next to cause a disqualification. This would lead to a staredown between the attacking WWE Superstar and Rollins as Jericho was left laying in the ring.

“I pitched it, got a decent response and never heard a word again,” Jericho said.