Chris Jericho Didn’t Get Orange Cassidy When He First Arrived In AEW

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Chris Jericho spoke about why he wanted to work with Orange Cassidy and how he didn’t get Cassidy’s act when he first arrived in AEW. Here are highlights:

On why he wanted to work with Orange Cassidy: “When I first came to AEW, I was not a fan of Orange Cassidy. I just didn’t get it. When I actually spent some time with him, watching his matches and seeing how he connected with the audience, I realized that he’s over. That’s the secret of wrestling: getting over. He’s over because he’s doing something no one’s ever done before. That’s when I pulled my head out of my a– and realized what he’s doing is great. People really respond to him because he’s the type of character we’ve never seen before, so I knew I wanted to do something with him. This is a guy that hasn’t been in a main-event program before. I thought, let’s put him in one and see a side of Orange Cassidy, a violent side, that we’ve never seen before. Let’s see the Orange Cassidy that cuts a great promo and see how he does in an extended program. I believe we started this the week after Stadium Stampede, so it’s close to 14 weeks for this program. Any time you can do three and a half months in a program with somebody, that shows how special and how good the story is. It was something I had a hunch about, and I was right. We created some really good TV, and this is going to be a great pay-per-view blow-off match for this program.”

On if Brock Lesnar is a good fit for AEW: “I don’t know if Brock fits the whole AEW idea or attitude. That’s a Tony Khan decision and a Brock decision. Do I think Brock does this every few years just to up his price with Vince? Of course he does. He’s a genius when it comes to that. But hey, if he showed up in AEW, I’d be happy to go up against him and do the match we were supposed to do in April of 2018 in WWE that Vince then changed. We’ve never had a match on TV or pay-per-view, ever. If it came about, I’d be happy to go up and smack him in his fat face.”

On who else he wants to work with: “Those are great picks, and I worked with them in very short stories, but the reason was to start planting those seeds that these are top guys. And I wasn’t downplaying Jericho vs. Cody, because there is still a long way we can go with that. We could have done another match and spent another eight weeks together. Same with Kenny. We’ve had two matches, and there is a big rubber match in there somewhere. Hangman Page, there are a lot of places we can go with that. MJF-Jericho is very interesting to me, whether as a heel or babyface. There are a lot of different places to go. And AEW is smart. Look at when Matt Hardy came in. You don’t program Matt Hardy–Jericho right away. It’s Matt vs. Sammy, Jericho vs. Cassidy. I like that. It doesn’t mean Matt and I can’t intersect, and we have, but there are a lot of different areas we can go. That’s exciting for me. Sonny Kiss. Jack Evans. I love those matchups. And the tag team, Sammy and Jericho—Le Sex Gods—we can do more there. I like tagging with [Jake] Hager, that’s a good combination, too. There are a lot of great places to go, and there is no rush. I’m not going anywhere, and I think most of these guys are locked in for four years, so it may be a year down the line before Jericho–Jungle Boy takes place, but it will take place.”