AEW Star Was Shocked About Beating Chris Jericho In WWE
A huge PPV win over Chris Jericho in WWE was a big surprise for a veteran AEW wrestler.
Chris Jericho and Shelton Benjamin are two of the most experienced pro wrestlers in AEW. Jericho has been a wrestler for over 30 years while Benjamin has been wrestling for over 20 years. While Jericho and Benjamin have yet to face off in AEW, they did battle in WWE many times in the past.
A new interactive WWE PPV called Taboo Tuesday debuted in 2004 with the idea being that fans at home would be able to vote on match types, opponents, and other things taking place on the show.
One of the matches at Taboo Tuesday 2004 was Chris Jericho defending the Intercontinental Title against Shelton Benjamin, who won the fan poll to be in the match. Benjamin got 37% of the vote while Batista finished second with 20% of the vote. Jericho has said that he didn’t know who would win either.
At Taboo Tuesday 2004, Benjamin beat Jericho to become the Intercontinental Champion for the first time in a match that went 11 minutes. Jericho shook hands with Benjamin after the match to show him respect as the new champion.
During an appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Benjamin admitted he didn’t think he would be in the match.
“Number one, I 100% was not expecting to be in that match. I know that leading up to it, they gave me a little push and rub and I actually had a little thing I did with Mr. McMahon just to help bring in the votes. But when we got to the building, and I’ve said this over and over, I expected Batista to be working Jericho that night. So I really didn’t put much thought into it.”
As he continued, Benjamin talked about how important it was to win the IC Title.
“Because of what I’d watched in wrestling before, I hadn’t seen a lot of Black Intercontinental champions. I’d seen Black tag team champions. So in my head, that’s all I was thinking about.
By that time, I’d already won the tag team championship twice. So for me, when I won the IC title, I’m officially overachieving my original goals in getting into the business, but it was also a culmination of all the guys who had taught me how to just go in the ring and listen.”
Chris Jericho Defending ROH World Title At Final Battle PPV
The final ROH PPV is called Final Battle on December 20 with Chris Jericho set to defend the ROH World Title against Matt Cardona, who was known as Zack Ryder in WWE for more than a decade.
Matt Cardona is an interesting choice as an ROH World Title challenger since he’s not under contract to AEW or ROH, but he’s getting a shot due to being a big name from outside the company.
H/t WrestlingInc