Chris Jericho On Cutting His First Unscripted Promo in 20 Years At Fight For the Fallen, Jon Moxley Podcast

– Following last night’s AEW Fight For the Fallen, Chris Jericho discussed his promo that he cut at the show as well as Jon Moxley’s appearance on his podcast.

On his match with Hangman Page at All Out: “Well I told you, I am kind of stressed, if you heard what I said tonight. Because watching that battle royal at Double or Nothing and seeing all the guys involved, the one guy that I did not want to win was Hangman. Because he is as good of a new talent that I’ve seen in a long time, and it is gonna be not easy to beat him — of course, I’m gonna beat him, you know that. But it’s one of those things where I have to be very careful with what I do. And that’s why you saw — you see what happened to his eye tonight? Cut open, bleeding, big black eye? That’s not show business, that’s the real deal and that’s the message that I’m sending him to let him know this is not gonna be easy. Because if I don’t beat Adam Page, it could be the beginning of the end of Chris Jericho’s illustrious career.”

On Jon Moxley’s podcast interview with him: “Mox was really, excited is maybe a possible word for it. But he was really thinking about that for a couple of months. Because I mentioned it to him, and he was like, ‘I want to do this. When I leave, I want to do this.’ And he told me, he thought about it for weeks, about what he was going to say. I think it really kind of exposed and opened up a lot of Pandora’s boxes about what it’s like in the WWE. And to me, this is not a burial of the WWE. When you work there, it’s how it is. If you work in a factory and the factor says you have to put this box in this conveyer belt every day and that’s how you make your money, then you do it. If you don’t like it you go somewhere else. That system is very confining when it comes to a lot of creativity.”

On his promo: “Tonight — I said this to Dean Malenko — is the first time in 20 years that I’ve ever done a promo with no script, no approval of what I say, and really with no idea of what I’m going to say. Just knowing that I have a point and some directions that I may or may not want to go. When Hangman got busted open that changed the entire design of the promo and it was very liberating. ‘How good are you, Chris Jericho? Can you go out there live without a net, with no pre-prepred, memorized script, and captivate an audience?’ And I think it worked out very well. And of course I can do it, but we’d never, ever get that chance to do that in WWE. So it’s the other side of the coin. If you want creative freedom, we can give you that in AEW. I think that’s one of the reasons why there’s such a buzz about the company, is that fans can feel that.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.