Chris Jericho responds to criticism of dedicating his Wrestle Kingdom match to Chris Benoit

In reporting on the controversy surrounding Chris Jericho posting an illustration of Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero to his Instagram and dedicating his Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome match against Kenny Omega to the memory of his “Fallen Brothers”, I stated that I didn’t think Jericho would respond to criticism of honoring Benoit. How we should talk about the wrestling great who murdered his wife and son before killing himself in 2007 remains an incendiary topic, and I figured Y2J would let that post be his final word on the subject before heading into Wrestle Kingdom 12.

But in a follow-up video on his live feed, Jericho finished a message promoting the Omega match with a response to critics of the earlier post:

“I get a couple smartass remarks here for an Instagram post that I put up of this great fan art that somebody drew of me with kind of the spirits of Eddie and Benoit behind me and I said I dedicate the match to those guys.

Yeah, I know, what Chris did. I think about it every single day. I was involved more than any one of you were. So trust me, I understand the horrible, horrible events that took place. I’ll never forgive it, I’ll never understand it - but I have my reasons for doing what I’m doing, so don’t anybody tell me, don’t anybody make smartass remarks about what I say and what I do...

Nobody tells me what to do, I have my reasons, and I think about the loss of Nancy Benoit and Daniel Benoit every single day. So that’s enough of that, I’ll never talk about it again.”

Seeing as he’s not talking about it any further, we may never learn what his reasons were for bringing discussion of the Benoit tragedy into the excitement for his New Japan match. But his statement is confirmation Jericho did put thought into posting that image, and probably that he knew the dedication would spark debate.