Chris Jericho will face Kenny Omega for the IWGP United States Championship match at Wrestle Kingdom 12 in a turn of events that nobody saw coming, and a recent report indicates that the WWE themselves didn’t know this was happening either.
New Japan Pro Wrestling has been the best professional wrestling organization in the world in 2017 in terms of excitement, momentum, and match quality. The WWE remains the biggest promotion (for good reason), but they have been feeling threatened by outside forces, such as NJPW and the Bullet Club.
Over the weekend, Chris Jericho appeared on NJPW’s Power Struggle to challenge Kenny Omega for his IWGP United States Championship. The match will go down at Wrestle Kingdom 12 as part of a stacked card that includes a highly-anticipated IWGP Heavyweight Championship match between Kazuchika Okada and Tetsuya Naito.
But right now, all the conversation is focused on Jericho’s shocking announcement and match with NJPW, which nobody foresaw coming. According to a source close to WrestleZone.com’s Nick Hausman, the WWE did not know about Jericho’s plan to challenge Omega either.
This is extremely interesting, because Jericho’s contract with WWE expired earlier this year, allowing him to take a match like this one with NJPW. Jericho did work with WWE after his contract expired on a handshake basis, appearing on SmackDown Live to continue his storyline with Kevin Owens with the WWE’s United States Title.
Most people assumed that Jericho’s back-and-forth banter with Omega over Twitter was about setting up a potential match or confrontation on the Ayatollah of Rock’n’Rolla’s cruise. Instead, Jericho, who has a close relationship with the WWE and chairman Vince McMahon, will have a match with Omega at NJPW’s most important show of the year.
Now, there may even be a “bit” of tension between Jericho and WWE over recent events. WWE didn’t allow Jericho to bring on NXT talent to his cruise, which includes a tournament filled with Ring of Honor talent like Marty Scurll and the Young Bucks. Jericho isn’t obligated to listen to WWE when it comes to taking dates with other promotions, because he, again, isn’t under contract with the WWE anymore.
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Ex-WWE writer Andrew Goldstein posited that Vince McMahon and Jericho had planned Y2J’s challenge to Omega as a way of introducing the Bullet Club leader to WWE, but that doesn’t appear to be the case based on this report from WrestleZone.