Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega broke the internet wide open when Y2J showed appeared after Omega’s match against Beretta at New Japan’s Power Struggle. Kenny Omega had just successfully defended his IWGP North American Heavyweight Championship and Beretta and asked for someone to challenge him.
Although Jericho didn’t appear live in Japan when he showed up on the screen and ripped up a picture of The Cleaner it certainly sent the message loud and clear. A match was set for NJPW’s biggest show of the year at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4th between Alpha and Omega.
The Ayatollah Of Rock n Rolla recently opened up on his podcast Talk Is Jericho in the opening moments about the deal he was able to strike with New Japan to face Kenny Omega.
“Needless to say, it’s something that I’ve been working on for a couple of months. I’m very excited about this. It’s the first match that I’ve had outside of the WWE since 1999 and the timing couldn’t be better. I mean, Kenny Omega is the best performer in professional wrestling today, the most critically acclaimed, the most buzz, and I came off the greatest run of my career back in 2016, 2017, so I think you really do have best in the world versus best in the world type of situation. But I’ve been saying that I’m the alpha of pro wrestling, by far the greatest of all time, the best in the world, so it is the Alpha versus Omega January 4th at the Tokyo Dome. If you’re not going to be in Japan, you can watch it on New Japan World, which is their live streaming service and we are working on other ways for you to see it as well.”
He was obviously very proud of himself for being able to keep such a great secret for so long. After all, big surprises like this are very hard to come by in pro wrestling anymore. But this one worked like a charm and it seems nobody does a surprise like Jericho.
“It [has] definitely caused the whole [pro] wrestling world on its head. It’s the biggest talk of the wrestling world, and, once again, Chris Jericho right in the middle of it. That’s what I do, baby! The last couple of months, I’ve been working on it. Keeping it a secret from all of you was actually so surprised and happy that it ended up staying a secret. Nobody knew until the match was announced at the end of Kenny’s match in Osaka [Japan] the other day, which was in the middle of the night for everybody.”
Thanks to Talk Is Jericho and Wrestling Inc for the transcription
