Chris Jericho Talks About A Huge Dream Match That Almost Happened This Year

Chris Jericho just recently ended what might be his best run with WWE. In fact, his run was so good that, according to Jericho, WWE was originally going to have him win the Universal Championship from Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 33.

During a recent interview with Busted Open, Jericho talked about his original WrestleMania 33 plans, and why they ended up being changed.

“I was supposed to finish up after WrestleMania, that Monday afterwards. About, I don’t know, December maybe Vince [McMahon] called me in, he had a big idea. I can probably say this now: the original idea as things change all the time, exclusive for Busted Open, was for me and Kevin Owens to work at WrestleMania, for me to win the title, and then to lose it to Brock [Lesnar] in Sacramento at the next pay-per-view, which was April 30. So when you get presented with that idea it’s like ‘well, sure, of course I’ll stay for that.’ Then, as things go, the Goldberg factor started and things changed his mind. At that point I was already locked in for the extra month, doing another month with Kevin Owens, which was the way to do it anyways. My plan was not to finish up on SmackDown on a Tuesday and go straight into rehearsals on a Wednesday. It was not supposed to be that but sometimes that’s how it works.”

It’s not surprising to hear that WWE wanted to do a Jericho vs. Lesnar match following WrestleMania. If you remember, Lesnar and Jericho had a pretty heated confrontation backstage following this past August’s SummerSlam show, so it’s likely that WWE wanted to capitalize on the presumed real-life heat between the two men.

Jericho never worked with Lesnar during The Beast’s first run with WWE from 2002 to 2004, and he hasn’t had a match with him since he returned to the company in 2012. So, if WWE never changed their original plan, we would’ve seen a “dream match” between Jericho and Lesnar. Of course, Lesnar probably would’ve squashed him in less than 10 minutes and kicked off his Universal Championship reign with a big win over a WWE legend.

While Jericho and Lesnar haven’t had a one-on-one match with each other before, they did do an in-ring segment together back in 2015. Jericho, who was hosting Raw at the time, booked himself in a match with Paul Heyman, and right before the match began, Paul revealed that Lesnar was in the building, which led to Lesnar laying out Jericho.

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Brock Lesnar will hold the WWE Universal Championship until WrestleMania 34, where he’ll likely lose it to Roman Reigns. But, as Jericho pointed out, plans could change, and Lesnar could end up losing the Universal Championship prior to next year’s show in New Orleans, Louisiana.

As for when Jericho will return, well, he’s currently touring with is band Fozzy. Their tour will start to wrap up towards the end of next month. So, we could see Y2J return at some point this summer. As for who he’ll wrestle, there’s always Kevin Owens. Or, maybe he could renew his rivalry with AJ Styles. Perhaps he could try to elevate Baron Corbin, who WWE wants to make into a legit main event star by the end of this year.

It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to see Jericho vs. Lesnar this year, and with the two men now being on different brands, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get to see it anytime soon, or ever. Instead of seeing Jericho vs. Lesnar at Payback, we saw Roman Reigns get defeated in the show’s main event by Braun Strowman.

[Featured Image by WWE]