WWE Rumors: Original ‘WrestleMania’ Plans For Dean Ambrose And Chris Jericho Being Pushed To ‘Payback’

At WrestleMania 32, Chris Jericho ended up picking up the victory over AJ Styles who went on to become the No. 1 contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Title the next night. Dean Ambrose lost a hard-fought street fight battle to Brock Lesnar. Apparently, WWE had much different plans for those two big superstars and it looks like they have simply been pushed back and will now happen at Payback in May.

The Wrestling Observer is reporting that Jericho was supposed to turn heel after his comeback last year and go on to face Ambrose at WrestleMania 32. It’s not entirely certain why the plans were scrapped, but they may not have been totally thrown away.

It all started last year at Night of Champions when Chris Jericho was revealed as the surprise tag team partner for Ambrose and Roman Reigns against The Wyatt Family. Jericho got ahead of himself and took the loss, which had his partners questioning his actions.

After the match, Jericho casually shoulder-checked Ambrose on his way out of the ring and just walked backstage without another word.

From there, it was believed that a feud between Ambrose and Jericho was on the way, but that never materialized. The whole “shoulder-check” thing was just kind of ignored, and nothing happened between them from there.

Since then, Ambrose has gone on to do a little of this and a little of that and was then thrown into the feud with Brock Lesnar. Jericho did this and that as well, but then was put up against AJ Styles in the newcomer’s first big feud since joining WWE at Royal Rumble.

From that point on, they were setting up themselves for their individual WrestleMania 32 matches.

Now, it seems that the original plans are coming back into play. This past Thursday on SmackDown, Dean Ambrose defeated Tyler Breeze as recapped by WWE, and there wasn’t much more that happened after that.

As Ambrose was walking back up to the ramp, which WWE never shows on television, he passed by Chris Jericho who was walking out for the main event tag match. Both gave each other a bit of a dirty look and Jericho just kept on smirking as he made his way down to the ring.

Shortly after that, Jericho and his partner Kevin Owens lost a match to AJ Styles and Cesaro, but that interaction with Ambrose is the important thing.

Styles is moving onto a feud with Roman Reigns. Brock Lesnar is now taking a break from WWE television because he’s been on it since January. Both Jericho and Ambrose are out in storyline limbo and really have nothing to do, so, why not toss them against one another?

It does appear as if that’s the direction WWE is following and those WrestleMania 32 plans for both superstars are being pushed to Payback. One thing that will be interesting is to see is whether WWE brings about any continuity and references the situation at last year’s Night of Champions.

Many now kind of wish that WWE had gone through with their original plans of Ambrose vs. Jericho at the biggest match of the year, but that’s in the past. Now, at least it looks like it’s going to happen anyway.

Right now, WWE has only slightly hinted that there might be a new feud between Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose, but it seems to be on the horizon. The two meeting at Payback would be a great match, and it would bring Ambrose back into the spotlight which he desperately needs. Jericho’s huge win at WrestleMania 32 means a loss in early May won’t hurt him as much.

[Image via WWE]