Chris Jericho made Action Andretti a star in one night.
“The Ocho” recently appeared as a guest on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast for an in-depth interview, during which he revealed when he came up with the concept to put Action Andretti on the map in All Elite Wrestling with one match on AEW television.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on this topic with his thoughts.
On how he had the idea to have the match with Action Andretti back in the fall of 2022: “We did something, just a few weeks ago. I saw this kid back in October. Good looking kid, pretty agile, and I said, ‘Let’s do an interview with him.’ He was a good talker. I said, ‘Let’s hire him, but keep him at home, I have an idea.’ Action Andretti. Two or three weeks ago, I lost my title, and now I’m going to have a tune-up match against some jobber and I’m going to get back on track.”
On how much Andretti got over by beating Jericho in his debut match: “This kid comes out, we have a match, and I’m treating him like a jobber, a squash match. Throwing him around, he gets no offense, people are chanting, ‘Let’s go jobber.’ They’re behind it and laughing along. Hit him with my finisher. One, two, he kicks out. People are like, ‘Oh shit.’ Then the buzz starts going. ‘What’s going to happen now?’ We’ve never seen this guy on TV, ever. Then, we continue forward and suddenly, he gets me again. He hits me with this and that. Boom, boom, boom, hit me with a move. One, two, three. He wins. Crowd goes fucking crazy. He’s running around, slapping hands, people are going nuts. It’s one of the greatest moments we’ve had in AEW history because no one knew this guy, and by the end, we made a new star. It doesn’t hurt me to lose, and we made this guy. It’s about making stars and making people react. No one would’ve guessed he was going to win.”
Check out the complete Chris Jericho interview from Marc Maron’s WTF podcast by visiting Acast.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
