When Kenny Omega won the AEW World Championship back in December and arrived in Impact Wrestling alongside Don Callis, many fans believed this was the start of a major crossover between All Elite Wrestling and Impact. But in the months since then, that hasn’t really been the case. Omega has popped up on Impact consistently, Tony Khan and Tony Schiavone appear every week via paid ads, Matt Hardy and Private Party had a brief stint in Nashville and The Good Brothers have been consistently on Dynamite, but it hasn’t become the all-out invasion or promotion war fans thought it could be.
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In an interview with ComicBook this week, Chris Jericho argued why that kind of angle with Impact wouldn’t benefit AEW right now.
“Our roster is jam packed as it is,” Jericho said. “And I think our involvement with Impact has been pretty much what it should be. I’m not saying this in an egotistical way, but AEW is at a completely different level than Impact is. So anything that we’re doing with them benefits them a lot more than it benefits us, in my opinion. And I think the fact that they’ve had Kenny Omega there, they’ve had Private Party there. That’s a bonus for them. Chris Jericho will never go to Nashville and work in an empty studio in front of somebody. There’s just no reason for me to do that. If those guys came over to invade, who are they going to [bring]?”
“If we needed to make it big, we could,” he continued. “But right now, our roster is so jam packed, and we’re doing such a great job of creating our own stars as it is. You could always do an invasion at some point, but I just don’t see why that really benefits AEW right now when we’ve got so much going on and so many of our own guys who are really breaking through to the next level. I want to keep the focus and spotlight on that.”
But Impact isn’t the only company AEW is working with right now. The so-called “Forbidden Door” between the Jacksonville-based promotion and New Japan has opened a bit in the past few months with Jon Moxley and Kenta allowing their rivalry to spill over onto both Dynamite and NJPW Strong. It was announced this week that Mox would defend his IWGP United States Championship against New Japan legend Yuji Nagata.
In the same interview Jericho put his full support behind an invasion storyline between AEW and New Japan.
“There’s a couple of matches there that I would love have,” Jericho said. “[Minoru] Suzuki and Jericho. I think [Will] Ospreay and Jericho. I think Kenny and myself as a tag team against Tana and [Kazuchika] Okada or against [Kota] Ibushi and Okada. That’s a Tokyo Dome main event. So all of those matches are in the pipeline. I love Japan. I’ve been there 60 times since 1991. And when I was there, gosh, a thousand years ago, January 4th, 2020, I guess Tanahashi, I had one of my favorite matches I’ve ever had. So there’s no reason to not go back other than the fact that we literally can’t right now, unless you want to spend two weeks in a hotel room. Which I’m not going to do, and [Jon] Moxley is not going to do, and Kenny’s not going to do.
“So I think when that opens up, that’s the type of invasion angle I think would make some big money,” he continued. “Because New Japan is one of the biggest companies in the world with some legit, legendary mainstream stars. And I just love the concept of AEW invading them in Osaka, Dominion in June, and then doing a Tokyo Dome invasion show, and then coming back to do a Madison Square Garden invasion show in our backyard, or Staples Center, something along those lines. So that’s an invasion that I really could get off on and get behind for sure.”
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