A few weeks ago the one and only Chris Jericho made his surprise return to WWE SmackDown Live, and he challenged for the US Title in a triple threat match that featured Kevin Owens and AJ Styles.
A few days earlier AJ Styles defended his US Title against Kevin Owens at Battleground, and the finish was awkward to say the least. It was speculated that Owens and Styles legitimately botched the finish of the match, and during a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio Chris Jericho confirmed that was the case.
However, Jericho noted that his return wasn’t a last minute thing, and he had told WWE officials he would be available to do something on the show well in advance of when it aired.
“What happened with that was very simple, I stopped in the WWE in May, I had a bunch of stuff going on, whatever. I get a text from one of the guys in the company that they’re doing the second season of Southpaw Regional Wrestling, I’m like ‘I’m in.’ Then I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m gonna fly in, it’s a whole day, maybe I’ll see if I can get a payoff.’ So I let them know that I’m gonna be there, then they forget. I get nothing for like three weeks. So, then I text back again like ‘Listen, I’m gonna be there on Tuesday, if you want me to do something I’ll be there.’ And the idea was for me to work with AJ on Tuesday, and do nothing with Kevin. Then the match happened on Sunday and they legitimately screwed it up. It happens sometimes. The finish didn’t work.”
Even though the original plan called for Chris Jericho to work with AJ Styles for his one night return, Jericho explained that the triple threat match was booked because WWE needed to get the title back on Styles.
“I was just gonna be there to play Clint Bobski, and they’re like, ‘well put me on the show.’ And then that’s why they did the triple threat because they had to get the belt back on AJ, cause of the screwup on the weekend.”
Jericho noted that at one point he didn’t even think he was going to be used, but things ended up working out, “It’s like you know, the classic Vince line of take a negative and turn it into a positive, and that’s what we did.”
