On Wednesday’s episode of AEW Dynamite, Action Andretti shocked the wrestling world by defeating Chris Jericho in a surprise victory.
Andretti was able to win by rolling up Jericho. After the match, Jericho stared in disbelief as Andretti celebrated at ringside. Andretti had previously wrestled on independent shows and at AEW Dark tapings prior to his biggest win to date.
Dave Meltzer discussed how the match came to be on the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, noting that Jericho thought Action would be a star and planned to put him over months ago.
“The story behind this is that Action Andretti….had a match on one of the streaming shows (Dark episode that aired on October 7) against QT Marshall, and Chris Jericho was watching the match, and decided at that moment, ‘That this guy’s gonna be a star.’ He decided that he was going to make him a star. This was way back. He had all this stuff to do, the Claudio feud, these other matches…This match on this date. This was not something where it was decided yesterday. This was weeks and weeks and weeks ago. The date was decided on the day of the Action Andretti and QT match.”
Andretti’s victory has been compared to the 1-2-3 Kid’s victory over Razor Ramon on WWE Raw. Fightful previously reported that Andretti had a contract with AEW since October, but it is unclear whether it was full-time or part-time.
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
