AEW’s Chris Jericho: ‘I will never beat Action Andretti’

Chris Jericho says his number one mission since AEW began is to help create new stars. 

The inaugural AEW World Champion wrestles Ricky Starks Sunday at Revolution. The angle between the two has also involved newcomer Action Andretti, who picked up an upset victory over Jericho at Winter is Coming. Jericho recently told the In The Kliq podcast that working with talent like Starks and Andretti is all part of his plan to help create new stars for the company.  

Jericho said:

My number one mission from day one when we started AEW was to do my best to make new stars because, at first I think, the company was on my back. And I knew you’ve only got about a month or two, it can’t always be Chris Jericho. 

Cody Rhodes right out of the gate, he was not the Cody he is now. Mox was still Dean Ambrose. Nobody knew Kenny Omega, nobody knew the Bucks. Darby Allin, Scorpio Sky, Jungle Boy, Ortiz, Santana, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager when he came back, all those guys in the first three months I worked with. We had a short window of time to make as many stars as we could. So, that’s always been my goal and Ricky Starks is another guy, people love him, all he needed was a story, he needed to be on TV featured every week and that’s sort of what we’ve done. 

Jericho would continue to mention his year-long feud with current AEW World Champion, Maxwell Jacob Friedman. 

MJF, I worked with MJF for a year. MJF was not the MJF he is now. Working with me for a year helped him become the MJF to get to the next level. All of that is done by design in my head.

Jericho also responded to detractors online who allege he buries his opponents and talent he works with. He used his match against Peter Avalon this week on Dynamite as an example. 

I have the thickest of skins. I know people hate me, I got yelled at last night for beating a young talent like Peter Avalon. How did I bury the young talent of Peter Avalon? What happened in that match? Watch the match. Two minutes long, Peter beat the crap out of me for a minute and 59 seconds and I hit one move, one move. 

I’ve never buried anybody in my career, ever! Now, sometimes I win, that’s okay, I’m allowed to win, guys. It’s okay. 

Making new stars and putting people over is not wins and losses. You can lose to somebody and bury them at the same time. It happened to me in WCW a lot of different times. 

Later in the show, Jericho detailed the story of seeing Action Andretti wrestle QT Marshall on Dark and being immediately impressed with him. 

We were in Washington and he was doing a dark match on a show called Dark against QT Marshall and he did a great job in the match as a wrestler and I thought, ‘Well, he’s a really good worker, we have a lot of good workers, though, let me see him do a promo.’ 

Jericho continued to say that Sonjay Dutt then took Andretti to work on some promos in the back while Jericho hid around the corner and watched. 

I kind of hid around the corner and listened to him and they were really good and then I revealed myself and said, ‘That was good, now do a promo on Sammy Guevara’ with me standing there. 

With no hesitation, he did a really good off-the-cuff promo on Sammy. I went right back to Tony Khan and said we can do something with this guy but I have an idea, let’s sign him but don’t put him on TV, don’t put him on Dark until the time is right.

AEW Revolution is likely the end for Jericho’s story with Andretti but Jericho says that does not mean he’ll be getting his win back over the 26-year-old. 

After Revolution, our story is probably going to be done for now, Action Andretti and Jericho. By the way, I never got the win back, I don’t need to, I never need to beat Action Andretti ever, nor will I ever. I will never beat Action Andretti, I’m telling you that right now. 

Now, he has to go on his own but we had a great three month story, it’s a great start for this kid. Now, the dust is going to settle, where is he going to end up? That’s kind of up to him but last night, Tony Khan put him in the ladder match, had nothing to do with me. and I was like, ‘That’s really cool.’ Now, Tony’s thinking of him as a guy on our show because getting time on Dynamite is not easy. 

Revolution will be Jericho’s 10th singles match on an AEW pay-per-view. He has a 5-4 record with wins over Kenny Omega, Hangman Page, Cody Rhodes, MJF, and Bryan Danielson. His losses have been to Jon Moxley, Orange Cassidy, MJF, and Eddie Kingston.