Chris Jericho on How New Jack Inspired the Anarchy in the Arena Match at AEW Double or Nothing

– During the post-show media scrum after AEW Double or Nothing 2022, Chris Jericho discussed how late ECW legend New Jack inspired the Anarchy in the Arena match, and how Jon Moxley’s “Wild Thing” entrance music continued playing after the wild brawl started. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Chris Jericho on the “Wild Thing” Music continuing to play after the match started: “We were harkening it back to New Jack, when his music would play throughout his matches, which kind of took away the fact that they were just basically plunder and just garbage going on, but the music added some excitement to it. So we thought, okay, so if we could play the music for the first third of the match, that will kind of sustain it … ’til we get to some of these biggest moments. I think because nobody’s ever done that here in AEW or anywhere since then, it kind of makes it seem different, makes it different.”

Jericho on the moment where he cuts off the music in the match: “I thought, well, this is great and I’ll be the party pooper who hates this song and let’s break the soundboard. So let’s put a soundboard thing up there and break it. And that was my favorite part too, like as soon as we hit the ground, it goes off. I was telling Tony too, like I love wrestling. I still love wrestling for moments like this. Yes, it’s comic, but it’s like the a—–e heel that just hates music, and it’s like, I’m going to smash the soundboard and finally cut it off, and then that enabled us to go to the next stage of the match. So it was kind half of a que, half of a really opening of chaos and then gives me the cool moment of the curmudgeon who hates Rock n’ Roll music, turn it down.”