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 companies in the world.
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Jericho started the year working a match of the year candidate contest against Kenny Omega at New Japan Pro Wrestling‘s WrestleKingdom and started a program with Tetsuya Naito at NJPW’s New Year’s Dash the next day.
He later returned to WWE for RAW 25 and Greatest Royal Rumble. That WWE return was short lived, however, as Jericho returned to New Japan and won the IWGP Intercontinental Championship from Naito at Dominion 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 belt.
Jericho talked about an idea he pitched to WWE, likely in mid June, which would have seen him return to the company to work against Seth Rollins at SummerSlam in an Intercontinental Champion vs. Intercontinental Champion bout. This would have effectively been a NJPW vs. WWE story. The timing of his pitch obviously was before Rollins lost the WWE Intercontinental Championship to Dolph Ziggler (June 18) but after Jericho won the IWG 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 his podcast this week.
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.”
According to Jericho’s idea, he would have simply shown up announced the Monday before SummerSlam to attack Rollins. That would be the set-up for the match. In the end, Jericho pitched that he would be attacked by whoever Rollins was set to feud with next, resulting in a staredown between that person 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.
This would have been an incredibly memorable match for SummerSlam and a WWE vs. NJPW story is a dream scenario, even if it involved a guy like Jericho coming over from Japan despite his close association with WWE. Seeing the IWGP Intercontinentnal Championship on WWE television would have been a sight to behold.
