'Is this an olive branch? No!' - AEW's Chris Jericho sets the record straight over a recent highly-publicized controversy
AEW star and ROH World Champion Chris Jericho recently addressed his controversial appearance on GCW. Jericho was the first-ever AEW World Champion.
Earlier this month at the GCW Highest in the Room 3 show, Chris Jericho made a surprising appearance to attack Matt Cardona during his match with Effy. He later left Effy lying alongside Cardona to cement his dominance as ROH World Champion.
In a recent chat with Josh Martinez on Z100, Chris Jericho recalled his appearance in GCW. Jericho said that they were going through Matt Cardona's independent dates and revealed that he wanted to create a buzz on the indie scene by attacking The Indy God.
"We were looking at Matt's dates because I really wanted to do something on an independent show because he's the King of the Indies and you want to create buzz for this. I wanted to do something that gets extra focus on it. I was looking at his independent dates and he was in Los Angeles at GCW and I just happened to have a gig at the Whiskey with KUARANTINE [Jericho's KISS cover band].
The ROH World Champion revealed that he was in the same city as the GCW Highest in the Room event and had the idea to attack Matt Cardona at the show.
"It was literally 20 minutes down the road. When you have something happen with that much serendipity, it's fate. We have to do this. That's the basic reason. Everyone thinks, 'Is this an olive branch with GCW?' No. I just happened to be literally in the same city on the same date with this idea of wanting to attack him. We worked it out. KUARANTINE went on later, Matt went on earlier, and we put this together." [H/T:Fightful]
Matt Cardona has appeared in AEW before
After getting released from WWE, Matt Cardona worked hard to become one of the top stars on the independent circuit. In 2020, he appeared in AEW to side with Cody Rhodes during his storyline with The Dark Order. He also appeared in the promotion earlier this year when he answered Adam Copeland's open challenge for the TNT Championship.
ROH World Champion Chris Jericho recently issued a challenge for his title which was answered by Matt Cardona and both stars went on to have a great feud. At the ROH Final Battle PPV event, Chris Jericho successfully retained his ROH World Title against Matt Cardona.
We will have to wait and see if Tony Khan brings back The Indy God for more appearances in AEW.