It’s been a busy few days here in the struggling blogosphere, so even though it hit Peacock early yesterday (April 11), I did not get the chance to see the latest version of Broken skull sessions until this morning.
As you may remember, Chris Jericho’s guest is Steve Austin. The announcement that one of All Elite Wrestling’s biggest stars would appear in a WWE Network show surprised many people. This aroused much interest and skepticism about how much Jericho would talk about Tony Khan’s start-up business.
The answer is … quite a bit! Most of the more than two-hour interview is devoted to Jericho’s overall career, and contains many stories that hard-core Jericholics have probably heard for a time or two. Even the repetitions are entertaining, because both men are a good talk, and they have the kind of chemistry you would expect between two old friends.
More on this, but here’s a brief overview of the hook for the hard wrestler show – which came through the Forbidden Door.
- Jericho never expected to work for anyone other than WWE again (something he often said before he left), and he never thought there would be another national company again (sorry Impact) after Vince McMahon Bought WCW. But she returns to New Japan for Wrestle Kingdom 12 kicked off the perfect storm of events: Tony Khan as a passionate wrestler with the money to start a promotion and the contacts to get a television contract, and Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Hangman Page, and himself all available as free agencies Khan can build a company.
- He does not want to say that AEW is competing with WWE, which raises eyebrows somewhat considering his “Demo God” approach to the Wednesday Night War, but his explanation makes sense. It’s a combination of the “we focus only on ourselves” conversation that everyone offers on both sides, and an interest in offering an option to wrestlers and fans who have been absent for most of this century.
- Like Undertaker (and unlike any other guy Jericho and Cody joked about), he does not want to say that he is a locker room leader. But that’s part of his role in AEW, and Jericho says he sometimes feels like Vince because there’s a long line of people waiting to talk to him behind the scenes. Dynamics. This is because he will tell them what they want to hear, but also what they need to hear. Jericho also talks about a speech he gave before the first Double or nothing where he emphasized to everyone how great it was to achieve success.
- Another story told elsewhere, but one that is particularly noteworthy for being discussed in a WWE show: the fact that his feud with Kevin Owens was downgraded to the sub-map of WrestleMania 33 was the driving force for Jericho to join WWE to leave. When he realizes that the second game on the map is where the company sees him, and if he stays, he will do his “List of Jericho” ticket forever. He saw himself as more than that. AEW is the first chance in his long career that he had a chance to be the best man a company has, and he loved it.
- Later, he also tells the story of Raw’s Festival of Friendship segment pre-approved by McMahon, just for another backstage player he won’t name (from this it is deduced that it was Triple H, and Jericho’s said elsewhere that it was Triple H) to want it. everything changed on the day of the show when Vince was not there because they felt it was too comical. Jericho had to contact the chairman by telephone to get the segment on air as planned. He does say that the person he was arguing with later admitted that he was wrong and that the segment was great.
- Owens requested original plans to carry the Universal title WrestleMania 33 where Jericho would beat him for it, and give him a big babyface moment on The Grandest Stage Of Them All. He knew he would leave for music and other work shortly thereafter, so he would quickly hand over the belt to Brock Lesnar. He thinks he and Brock will be a draw, but he understands the decision to go with Goldberg instead. However, Jericho still thinks he and KO earned better than second on the map.
- They return to the AEW talk towards the end while wrestling during the pandemic. Jericho makes every effort to continue, citing Dynamite’s Jacksonville setup and praising the ThunderDome. He mentions Trops Orange Cassidy while explaining how the lack of fans and personal reactions make it difficult to give guys and girlfriends advice on things like how long to sell something.
This is therefore the tea as far as AEW / WWE content in the program is concerned. But like I said, this is a fun program to watch, even if they avoided the material. This is especially true if you have friends who have more casual / obsolete fans. Someone who is not too deep in the wrestling bubble and has not listened to a bunch Praat Is Jericho or The Steve Austin Show podcasts, or being kept up to date with the rubbish about every aspect of Y2J’s career, or watching Raw week in and week out for years, can go up and get lost in fond memories.
This is a sentiment that Jericho offers towards the end:
‘It’s really cool for me because it’s not just [the interview] historically the fact that ‘WWE and AEW, oh wee., awww.’ It’s not about that … It’s about the struggle. We respect it, and we love it, and I do not care what its brand is, I want it to last forever. And I want people, like children … to discover this … but to watch all these things – to do this show, like a career retrospective, because I’m not a man looking back .. to look back and see all these tracks and all these amazing things you showed, it’s really very heartwarming to see them.
‘And thank you for allowing it, and also thank you to WWE and Vince for allowing me to be here, and also to Tony Khan, because he had to give permission too. It goes above and beyond a company. This is about the love of wrestling. And no one in the world likes wrestling more than Stone Cold Steve Austin and Chris Jericho, and the fact that we had to talk about all these wonderful times is very happy about it and proud to be here.
Amen.