Chris Jericho Reveals Axed ROH Opponents For AEW Dynamite Matches

The master of reinvention has taken a detour to the honorable ring. Chris Jericho captured the Ring of Honor World Title at AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam earlier this fall and has embarked on a crusade against the promotion since. Jericho promised to destroy everything about ROH, as he launched attacks on veteran roster members like ring announcer Bobby Cruise and commentator Ian Riccaboni.  Inside the ring, Jericho defended the ROH Championship against former titleholders such as Bandido, Bryan Danielson, Tomohiro Ishii, Dalton Castle, and more.

Speaking on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Jericho revealed that he had a number of names that he wanted to match up with, but scheduling conflicts did not allow it.

“I wanted to do another match with an outside guy. We had a couple of ideas, one was PCO, once again, but he wasn’t available,” Jericho revealed (h/t Fightful). “The other idea we had was Chris Hero, but he wasn’t available either, couldn’t do the gig. Same thing with Dragon Lee, another idea that Tony had, but he couldn’t make it. I was like, ‘Does anybody want to wrestle me?’ We were thinking that maybe we could use Christopher Daniels. I suggested Samoa Joe or Jay Lethal, but they’re in different programs.”

PCO has recently been involved with Impact Wrestling, while Hero has not wrestled since July 2020. Dragon Lee has wrestled on AEW programming once before, teaming with Andrade El Idolo and Rush in a trios bout against The Elite. Daniels, Joe, and Lethal are all under AEW contract but as Jericho mentioned, were all tied up in their own storylines.

One of Jericho’s opponents ending up being a returning Colt Cabana, as the former ROH Tag Champion wrestled Jericho in his first televised AEW match in nearly a year. There had been speculation that Cabana was being kept off of AEW TV due to tensions with CM Punk, as the two former friends had a falling out in the late 2010s.

“We wanted to bring Colt back on the show, reintroduce him,” Jericho said. “He had a pretty rough year as well. Former Ring of Honor champion, and I always enjoyed his work. A very solid worker and it was fun to have him back. That’s the reason why he came back, solely, we just wanted to have him on the show and reintroduce him. He hadn’t been on TV for awhile.”

Jericho puts his ROH World Title on the line against Claudio Castagnoli this Saturday at ROH Final Battle.