Chris Jericho is currently involved in a feud with an honest to God MMA gym. He spoke to SI‘s Justin Barrasso to promote his beef with Dan Lambert’s American Top Team, and the trios match with Jake Hager & Sammy Guevara against Ethan Page, Scorpio Sky & former UFC Heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos he’s got coming up tonight (Oct. 15) on AEW Rampage.
In the course of that, the subject of an honest to God scrap Jericho got into with another former UFC Heavyweight champ came up.
At 2016’s SummerSlam, Brock Lesnar bloodied up Randy Orton en route to a TKO victory in the main event. There was immediately speculation about Lesnar shooting on Orton, including among the boys in the back. It turns out the whole thing was planned, but kept a closely guarded secret - even from veterans like Jericho. Le Champeon was a leader of the WWE locker room at the time, and confronted Brock about what he thought was a breach of wrestler ethics. Things got physical, Vince McMahon & Triple H reportedly separated Jericho & Lesnar, and The Viper defused things by assuring Chris the scene in the ring was worked out in advance (but not before the scene got a little sexy).
Getting ready to possibly handle another flying knee from ATT’s resident bad m*****f***** Jorge Masvidal, Jericho reflected on his run-in with The Beast:
“When you get into that moment, it is what it is. You either go for it, or you put your tail between your legs and hide, and I’ve never been that type of guy. I’m more of the type to die with boots on. So I’ve had my issues and shoots with MMA guys before, like that one with Brock Lesnar, and I survived by the skin of my teeth.”
Something tells me we won’t see the 50 year old Jericho get into shoots with Lambert’s crew tonight. But as we learned at Grand Slam last month, barely surviving Brock didn’t cause him to shy away from bumping with cagefighters. He told Barrasso what he expects from Dos Santos:
“... when you watch Junior dos Santos, you’re not going to see him do a leapfrog or a dropkick. He’s going to look like a UFC champion in the ring. I’m not expecting him to go out there and be Lawrence Taylor at WrestleMania. I want him to go out there and beat the crap out of us.”
Jericho’s ready for Masvidal, too:
“... if Masvidal tries to hit me again with that knee, we’ll see what happens.”
Indeed we will. Join us tonight and we can follow along with Jericho’s latest dust-up with mixed martial artists together.