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Chris Jericho Praises Bray Wyatt’s Smackdown Promo

By John Canton • Published 16th October 2022
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Chris Jericho has given his opinion on a recent Bray Wyatt promo that aired on WWE Smackdown with the ROH World Champion praising his former opponent.

AEW’s Chris Jericho is the current Ring of Honor World Champion. It’s the eighth World Title that Jericho has held in his 32-year wrestling career including six World Titles in WWE (that counts holding the WCW World Title once), he was the first AEW World Champion in 2019 and he recently beat Claudio Castagnoli to win the ROH World Title. Jericho calls himself “The Ocho” – the number in Spanish – to signify all of his World Title wins.

During Jericho’s WWE career that started in 1999 and lasted nearly 20 years, one of the rising stars that Jericho faced was Bray Wyatt, including a match the two men had at SummerSlam 2014. Wyatt won that match cleanly in what was one of Wyatt’s biggest wins early in his WWE career.

Wyatt returned to WWE at Extreme Rules at the end of the show with the crowd giving him a huge ovation. On the October 14th episode of Smackdown, Wyatt did a promo thanking the fans for supporting him. Here’s a summary of what he said from our TJRWrestling Smackdown review.

“Bray Wyatt stood alone in the ring with a microphone and some blue light on him. The fans chanted “welcome back” to Wyatt. Bray looked emotional, almost like he had tears in his eyes due to the emotion of the moment. Bray said he was incredibly grateful, he was nervous and he is just him being him for the first time. Bray said that this is genuine him. Wyatt said that this past year in his life, he lost a lot of things, he lost his career, he lost his self-confidence and he lost two people who were very close to him. One of them was Brodie Lee (Luke Harper) for sure. Wyatt said that he thought what he did was meaningless and none of this mattered to anyone, but he said he was wrong. Wyatt said when he was done feeling for himself, he said he would see people asking when he would come home. Wyatt talked about how he would see people that came to him and say to him that they were in a time of need, they felt weak, they felt vulnerable and in this weakened state, they found Bray’s words and they would thank Bray for saving their life. Bray said he didn’t think about stuff like that as the fans chanted “thank you Bray” for him. Bray said he can look us in the eyes saying we were there when he was weak, vulnerable and down while saying that “you” (the fans) saved his life. Wyatt said that you are the reason…and the lights went out.”

After the lights went out, a masked figure that could possibly be named “Uncle Howdy” issued a warning saying that you have no idea who you’re dealing with, but you will. There was also some maniacal laughter involved. That was the end of Smackdown.

While responding to a fan on Twitter, Jericho reacted to the Wyatt promo saying he loved it while offering a thumbs up gesture as well.

Jericho will be defending his ROH World Title against Dalton Castle on a special edition of AEW Dynamite this Tuesday, October 18th in Cincinnati.