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Earlier this week, The Young Bucks gave an interview to Sports Illustrated. It was done to promote the release of the 200th episode of their seminal YouTube series Being The Elite, and that was the main focus of Matt & Nick Jackson’s chat with Justin Barrasso.
BTE has featured a lot of people over the years, and directly led to the creation of AEW. So the topic of Chris Jericho naturally came up. And when it did, Nick said this:
“I always call him our Hulk Hogan.”
Which is an interesting way to think of Le Champeon’s role for All Elite. His presence does put Dynamite on a different level, just like Hogan did for WCW back in the 90s.
But Jackson wasn’t done, and the rest of what he and his older brother said about Jericho makes it clear he’s not the Hulkster:
Nick: He’s done it all, and there is something about that. Even though he has been in the business for 30 years or so, he still wants to give back and get characters over. You never see that.
Matt: Most wrestlers want to be over, and they don’t care about anybody else, The prevailing attitude in this business is often, ‘I want you to do good, just not as good as me.’ Jericho wants everyone to be elevated. We made the right call. Look at how he made Darby Allin. Those matches with Jungle Boy and Scorpio Sky were really important, too.
And Jericho watches all our matches, too. People don’t realize he’s the guy that pulls us aside and says, ‘This was great, but you could do this better.’ We don’t have enough of those guys in the business.
Hogan is a lot of things, and I’m really not looking to re-litigate his reputation or legacy here. But you won’t be able to find quotes where other wrestlers talk about him the way The Bucks talk about Jericho in this interview.
Which is why he kind of is AEW’s version of Hulk Hogan, but at the same time really isn’t,
Check out Matt & Nick’s entire conversation with SI, where they talk about a whole lot more than just Fozzy’s lead singer, here.