Chris Jericho hasn’t been on AEW TV since April, and now there’s speculation that the inaugural AEW world champ could be headed back to WWE once his contract with AEW expires at the end of the year.
“I know from a WWE standpoint that there is lots of talk there about Jericho, you know, people speculating Royal Rumble. Nobody has officially said anything, nor will anyone officially say anything,” Wrestling Observer Newsletter editor Dave Meltzer said on Tuesday.
The heat on this particular bit of juicy rumordom ratcheted up when the Wrestle Ops Twitter account noted that Jericho “liked” a post from a dirt sheet speculating about his interest in a WWE return.
This being pro wrestling, could be a work – a la R Truth being “released” from WWE, possibly what’s going on right now with Karrion Kross and WWE.
Jericho announced in April that he was taking a break, a week after dropping the Ring of Honor world title to Bandido at “Supercard of Honor.”
It felt like the right time for him to go away for a while so that we could miss him, to borrow from the wrestling vernacular.
Photos that emerged on the interwebs a few weeks ago showed Jericho appearing to be 15-20 pounds leaner, and you have to think that he’s working on a new character – “The Learning Tree” never did resonate, and he let that one linger too long, the combination there leading to the go-home heat that you saw for him before he went into witness protection.
The rumors flying around now, that Jericho himself is lending credence to, could be a prelude to a surprise return for Jericho after “Forbidden Door.”
Or, could be that Jericho has told Tony Khan that he’s bolting at the end of the year, and Khan has decided to put Jericho in the cooler until his time is up.
I can confidently say it’s likely one or the other.
(How’s that for a Meltzeresque hedge?)
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