Chris Jericho is very proud of what he did for Action Andretti.
At Winter Is Coming 2022 The Ocho took on Andretti in singles action, a match that was framed as a squash before the unknown high-flier shocked the world and defeated Jericho in a huge upset. The moment catapulted Andretti into a star and he is now regularly featured on programming.
Jericho spoke about how this journey came together during an interview on the In The Kliq podcast, where he remembers the first time he saw Andretti compete. Check out the full story in the highlights below.
How he first noticed Andretti and thought he had potential:
We were in Washington and he was doing a dark match against QT Marshall and he did a great job in the match as a wrestler. I thought, well he’s a really good worker, we’ve got a lot of good workers though. Let me see him do a promo. So I had Sonjay Dutt, who’s one of our backstage guys, I had Dutt take him to the back and do some promos and I kinda hid around the corner and listened to them and they were really good. Then, I revealed myself and said ‘Hey, that was good. Do a promo on Sammy Guevara.’ With me standing there and no hesitation, he did a really good off the cuff promo on Sammy. I went right back to Tony Khan and said ‘We can do something with this guy, but I have an idea. Let’s sign him, but don’t put him on TV, don’t put him on Dark, don’t do anything with him until the time is right.’ So this poor kid gets signed and for three months he’s at home and he’s like ‘Hey dude, I’m signed but like..’ I said just be cool, just be cool, trust me.
How the story of him losing to Andretti came together, and their feud essentially being over:
A week before Dallas, I said ‘Okay, we’ll see you this week.’ Then he came into my dressing room and I said ‘I’m working with you tonight.’ He goes ‘Oh my god, this is great.’ Then I say ‘and you’re going over.’ This kid, he was cool, but you could see his face is like are you f*cking kidding me? Here’s the story. We’re gonna treat this like a squash match. I’m just gonna beat you up. It’s gonna be like a squash match you’ve saw 1000 times before until I hit you with a Codebreaker, and then you’re gonna kick out and that’s where the fun is gonna start. It was a great moment, it’s the biggest upset in pro wrestling history. It’s one of the greatest moments in Dynamite history, but how do you follow it up? I had an idea, we’ll start with Starks but Andretti will still be involved and we’ll have him involved with Sammy [Guevara] and Danny [Garcia] and now he’s a guy. He’s a guy on the show. After Revolution, our story is probably gonna be done for now, Action Andretti and Jericho. By the way, I never got the win back. I don’t need to. I never need to beat Action Andretti ever, nor will I ever. I will never beat Action Andretti, I’m telling you that right now. Now he has to go out on his own, but we had a great three month story. It was a great start for this kid. Now the dust is gonna settle, it’s kinda up to him.
Chris Jericho recently stated in a separate interview that he never sees himself returning to WWE and hopes to finish his career with AEW. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)