Chris Jericho Recalls Changing His Opinion Of Top AEW Star With “Stupid” Gimmick
When Chris Jericho started in AEW, he wasn’t interested in working with one particular wrestler, but he ended up changing his mind.
As the first AEW World Champion and arguably the biggest star in the company when it launched in January 2019, Chris Jericho was seen as a leader in AEW right away. Over the last four years, he has feuded with main event performers in the company while also working with rising stars.
In the summer of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic led to wrestling shows taking place in front of little to no fans in attendance, Chris Jericho had a lengthy feud with Orange Cassidy. At the time, Orange wasn’t wrestling that much compared to his more grueling schedule in 2023. It was seen by some as a step down for Jericho, who had lost the AEW World Title earlier this year.
At the AEW All Out 2020 pay-per-view, they had the blowoff match after about three months. It wasn’t a regular match, though. It was a “Mimosa Mayhem Match” that ended when Cassidy threw Jericho into a big tub of mimosa to get the win.
Chris Jericho thought Orange Cassidy’s gimmick was “stupid”
While speaking to Josh Martinez of Superstar Crossover, Chris Jericho that Orange Cassidy’s gimmick of putting his hands in his pockets and being lazy was stupid, but Jericho learned to appreciate it.
“A guy like Orange Cassidy, for example, when I first came to AEW, I was like, ‘This guy sucks. This whole thing is stupid. It’s mocking the business.’ Then I realized, ‘Get your head out of your ass,’ he’s super popular. Why? Let me analyze this for a bit. Then I realized that he’s doing something completely different; no one has ever done it before, and it’s really cool.”
“Then I started realizing you can dress up like him, and he’s really good. Then I started thinking, ‘Well, let’s maybe do something together.’ We worked a 14-week program in the middle of the pandemic in front of nobody. That was amazing. The only thing that sucked was there were no fans to watch it. That’s kind of something where you look at somebody and get a little kernel of what they’re doing great, and then you can expand upon that.”
What Jericho said about Cassidy is absolutely true since Cassidy has said in the past that he doesn’t want to do pro wrestling like it has been done in the past.