Chris Jericho on His Involvement With Dark Side of the Ring’s Season Premiere, Its Approach to the Chris Benoit Story

AEW star Chris Jericho spoke with Jeffrey Harris for the 411 Wrestling Interview Podcast and discussed his involvement with Dark Side of the Ring’s season premiere episode looking at Chris Benoit. Jericho serves as the narrator for the full season two, which will look at the stories of Benoit, Owen Hart, Dino Bravo, the Brawl For All tournament and more, but he initially came on board when Chavo Guerrero was getting people to do interviews for the Benoit episode that airs Tuesday night (March 24) on VICE TV.

Speaking with Jeffrey, Jericho talked about whether he had any reservations and why the story could never be told before in the way Dark Side of the Ring presents it. You can check out the highlights below, as well as the full interview:

Jericho on if he had any initial reservations about the project: “No, I didn’t. Because basically, Chavo Guerrero contacted me and kind of got me involved in this. And then once we knew that Chavo was involved, it’s kind of spearheading the whole thing. That’s why I was involved. I knew that if Chavo was doing it that it would be done properly. And his point was, ‘If we don’t do this ourselves, someone else is gonna do it … so we really came together. We got Dean [Malenko] involved, and Vicki [Guerrero] and everybody else. It came together really well, it was done for the right reasons by the right people. And I think it’s a tremendous look into what really happened from the people that were really closest to him and Eddie.”

Chris Jericho on the episode’s approach to the Benoit story: “No, it hasn’t [been told in this way]. It’s never been told in this way because the people that were involved had never kind of come together all at the same time to chat about it, to be involved with everything. So I think that you know, when you get David [Benoit] and Sandra [Toffoloni, Nancy’s sister] and Jericho, and Chavo and Dean Malenko. I mean, those are you people — and Vicki Guerrero — that were closest to Eddie and Chris. So you can’t even attempt to do something like this if you didn’t have those people involved. So that’s another the reason why I wanted to be involved. If those guys were going to have their say, I wanted to be a part of it as well.”

In the full interview, Jericho discusses his involvement with season two of Dark Side of the Ring, the season premiere episode on Chris Benoit, his match with Jon Moxley at AEW Revolution and more.

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0:00: Introduction
0:51: On being brought on for the episode and whether he had any reservations doing it
2:18: On the episode’s different approach to the Benoit story
3:25: On Benoit’s importance to his own career and Benoit matches not being included in WWE retrospectives
5:04: On Chris and Nancy Benoit’s family members participating in the episode and telling their story and bringing them together
9:29: On narrating the rest of season two’s episodes, being a fan of the show’s first season
10:24: On Dark Side of the Ring tapping into wrestling history and shedding a new light on wrestling stories
12:43: On losing the AEW Championship at AEW Revolution to Jon Moxley, Moxley being one of AEW’s early big stars

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