Chris Jericho Has High Praise For His AEW Match Against Bandido

At 51 years old, Chris Jericho's recently acclaimed match with Bandido has the veteran AEW star buzzing. On the latest episode of Jericho's "Talk Is Jericho" podcast, the current ROH World Champion found himself reflecting on his 32-year pro wrestling career after having what he called "one of my favorite matches of my career" against Bandido on "AEW Dynamite" last week. "To still be delivering at such a high level 32 years later, I'm very, very blessed and very fortunate," Jericho said. "I love that match with Bandido, it was just as exciting as my first match against Lance [Storm] was 32 years ago."

Jericho said that AEW owner Tony Khan personally asked him to defend his ROH title against Bandido, and that he was "all for" it. "I thought that was a pretty marquee, name-value match," Jericho said. "But I had never seen any of his work. I knew that he was kind of hot on the scene and was a guy that had a kind of critical acclaim." So, Jericho watched some of Bandido's matches on YouTube, including one against Will Oespray at WrestleCon 19 and a couple bouts with current AEW star Rush. "I just wrote down some ideas," Jericho said. "My goal was to put this guy over and get this kid a contract, as Booker T used to say, but more importantly to make him look like a main event star."

And it apparently worked. AEW executives were ecstatic with Bandido's showing in the match, with one video showing Khan enthusiastically hugging the wrestler. Khan then reportedly offered the former ROH World Champion an AEW contract afterwards. Jericho lamented AEW's ratings weren't as high as he hoped, noting the show occurred during Hurricane Ian. But, he said, "we've now started to build Bandido and hopefully he comes to work with us more often and this will all be the start of his ascension."