Chris Jericho discussed the formation of the Jericho Appreciation Society faction in AEW during his Talk is Jericho podcast.
“I thought, ‘this [Kingston bringing up Santana & Ortiz] is interesting, we can have some dissension here.’ Then, the fateful moment where Daniel Bryan is going to align with Moxley and he goes, ‘We can bring in Moriarty, we can bring in Wheeler Yuta, Daniel Garcia.’ I was like, ‘is this a thing? If it is, we’ve built up these three guys who have beat up Eddie Kingston and Chris Jericho and now they’re going to break it apart? These guys have to stay together. They have to stay together with me! It’s perfect.’ It hit me like, ‘Holy shit.’ Eddie Kingston, Santana, Ortiz have history, they do their thing, I start a new faction with you three and Jake because Jake and I have always been together since day one and I need a killer. ‘This could really work.’ That’s the original idea I pitched to Tony and said, ‘What do you think about this? I know it’s weird”
“The original idea for this whole plan, the name of it was going to be The Citadel. I thought The Citadel was great. I said it to Tony and there was no pop for it whatsoever. I was like, ‘The Citadel sucks. I need something better.’ I was looking at the Art Appreciation Society or something like that, some weird email of ‘if you like this, maybe you should check out the Art Appreciation Society in downtown Detroit.’ Then, The Jericho Appreciation Society was just cheesy enough. It’s pretentious.”
(quotes courtesy of Fightful.com)
