In a new interview with GamesHub, AEW star Chris Jericho told an interesting story about his rejected pitch for landing a tag team match with Shawn Michaels at WWE SummerSlam against the Wyatt Family.
Jericho says his pitch failed in part because Vince McMahon was eating a bad cow at the time.
“I had one really great idea for Vince that I still think about. The timing going in was off — when I walked into his office, Triple H was there, which is never ideal because you want to be one on one with Vince.
And then on top of that, he hadn’t eaten yet, and when Vince is eating, he’s not paying attention to anything else. The idea was a storyline involving Bray Wyatt and Shawn Michaels. The premise was that the Wyatt Family would attack me, and the only person I could call who was crazy enough to have my back was Shawn — even after our rivalry. He comes back to confront me, and just as we’re about to go at it, the Wyatt Family attacks us both. Now you don’t know whether Shawn was going to take my offer or not, but he’s involved. It would be Jericho and HBK against the Wyatt Family, with a SummerSlam match in mind. It was a really solid pitch. But Vince just sat there eating his steak, and when I finished he said, ‘Bad cow.’ I said, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Bad cow — the steak is tough.’ I said, what do you think of my pitch? He goes, ‘What else you got?’ The steak killed the whole angle. But that’s the nature of working for Vince — if he doesn’t like it, you’re done. Same with Tony [Khan], to a degree. You have to please your boss.”
Jericho was attacked by the Wyatt Family on Raw in June 2014, which led to a singles match between Y2J and Bray at SummerSlam that year. I assume this is the event that Chris is talking about above, which is over fours years after HBK had his retirement match at WrestleMania 26 in 2010. I have no idea if Shawn was receptive to a comeback match at the time without the huge Saudi payday that he eventually got to return to WWE for a terrible tag match in 2018, but Chris presumably wouldn’t have made this pitch if he didn’t think it had a real chance to be approved by all parties involved.
Do you think Jericho & HBK vs. The Wyatt Family would have ruled if Vince wasn’t eating such a lousy steak when Y2J made his pitch? Let me know your thoughts on Jericho’s story in the comments below, Cagesiders.
