Chris Jericho Felt Vince McMahon Viewed Him As “A Second Match Guy”

As a guest on the latest episode of The Kurt Angle Show, AEW Superstar Chris Jericho spoke about the transition he made from WWE to AEW and why he decided to leave WWE in 2018 following his feud with Kevin Owens.

In a lengthy explanation, Jericho explained his frustration surrounding the end of his lengthy feud with Owens leading to the second match on WrestleMania 33.

“Yes and I’ll tell you the reason why,” Chris Jericho said, regarding his sour feeling towards WWE after he left. “I was working with Kevin Owens, who is another guy like Shawn [Michaels] and Eddie Kingston where we just had a brief promo in London. I remember thinking this guy’s pretty funny, he has a good sense of humor, he doesn’t look like much because I didn’t really know him but he gets it.

“Then I saw him work and I was like he’s a f*cking great worker too. We did something in London where it was a random pairing and just as I got to the top of the ramp I said ‘I’m the GOAT.’ I used GOAT before anybody else by the way, I put GOAT on the back of my trunks because I heard it in a rap song and Vince asked me what does that mean? I said it means ‘Greatest of all time,’ and he said ‘that’s terrible. Goat?’ I said ‘I know, I wish it was Rhino or Moose or something. It’s a street thing, can I just use it?’ And he said ‘Fine, but don’t ever say greatest of all time, say GOAT and leave it at that.’

“I said ‘I’m the GOAT’ and Kevin just kind of faintly said ‘and I’m the Donkey,’ and he had that french accent, I said that’s f*cking funny that he came up with that like that. We started this amazing angle where we became aligned, this was in August and I remember saying to Vince ‘I think we can take this to Mania’ and he said that was a long time Chris.

“Lone and behold we made it to Mania but it bummed me out because we had a great story and one of the greatest turns of all time in the Festival of Friendship that nobody saw coming and Vince…