Before Double or Nothing, Chris Jericho will team up with The Young Bucks in trios action.
AEW has announced that Jericho, Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson will face off against Ricochet, Andrade El Idolo & Mark Davis on this Wednesday’s Dynamite/Collision special. It will serve as a preview for the Stadium Stampede match at Double or Nothing.
That Stadium Stampede bout is a 14-man match where Jericho, The Young Bucks, Jack Perry, Kenny Omega, Bobby Lashley & Shelton Benjamin are on one side. Their opponents — with representatives from The Demand, Don Callis Family, and The Dogs — are Ricochet, Andrade, Davis, The Gates of Agony, Clark Connors & David Finlay.
Serving as the final build to Double or Nothing, Dynamite and Collision are airing live as a combined special this Wednesday night. The show is being held at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, Maine and will run from 8-11 p.m. Eastern time on TBS and HBO Max.
Here is the updated lineup:
AEW Dynamite/Collision (Wednesday, May 20) —
AEW World title: Darby Allin defends against Speedball Mike Bailey
AEW Continental title eliminator: Jon Moxley vs. Kyle O’Reilly
Anything goes: Mark Briscoe vs. Tommaso Ciampa
AEW Tag Team titles: FTR defend against Orange Cassidy & Roderick Strong
Divine Dominion 5-minute Women’s Tag Team titles eliminator
Triangle of Madness & Athena vs. Thunder Rosa, Mina Shirakawa, and the Brawling Birds
Katsuyori Shibata vs. Will Ospreay
Chris Jericho & The Young Bucks vs. Ricochet, Andrade El Idolo & Mark Davis
Chris Jericho took inspiration from some of his favorite bands when coming up with the idea for his recent AEW name change.
Since returning to AEW at the start of April, Jericho has mostly just been going by “Jericho,” dropping his first name from his wrestling moniker. He told Ringer Wrestling that the idea came from self-titled or overly basic album names. When fans hear the name “Jericho,” he feels like it brings back all of the memories they’ve experienced throughout his career.
“I like the idea of what I’m doing now with ‘Jericho.’ And by not using that first name a lot, it created this whole intrigue online like, ‘What’s he doing? What’s the idea? What’s the reason?’ And honestly, it’s like a self-titled album,” Jericho said. “That’s where I kind of got the idea from.
“I could create a dozen other nicknames, but how many more do I need? Everyone knows who Jericho is. And when you hear that name, then you can go remember whatever memories you have on your own. So it really is like Metallica, ‘The Black Album.’ It doesn’t need to be called anything. You know who Metallica is, you know what’s going on. The Beatles, ‘The White Album,’ same thing. That’s kind of what the idea is for the ‘Jericho’ era. And I like it. I like what’s been going on and going with the flow and seeing what’s working and what’s not.”
When asked if he has a favorite period of his career, Jericho said he feels like it’s always best to name the current era. He returned to AEW last month after persistent rumors that he could be heading back to WWE. Jericho would not directly address that speculation in this interview with The Ringer but said he enjoyed how fans interpreted rumors as fact. Because of the tribalism that exists in wrestling, there would have been a portion of fans happy and a portion of fans unhappy with whatever happened.
“I never said the rumors became fact, I said that the rumors became fact to the fans. But I’ll leave that for another day,” Jericho said. “I like the idea of the intrigue.”
This Sunday’s AEW Double or Nothing pay-per-view in New York City will see Jericho compete in a Stadium Stampede match. It’s Jericho, Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, The Young Bucks, Jack Perry & Kenny Omega vs. Ricochet, The Gates of Agony, Mark Davis, Andrade El Idolo, Clark Connors & David Finlay.
While the first women’s WrestleMania main event is all but official at this point, WWE still has a huge decision to make about who will be in it.
In a sense, WWE is playing with house money. Both options that they have are good ones. Whether the main event is Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch for the Raw Women’s Championship or a triple threat between Rousey, Lynch, and Charlotte Flair for the title, it will be the most heated match on the card and fully deserving of its place in the spotlight on WWE’s most important day of the year.
I have no idea how this issue got done. I had surgery on my left little finger which was broken in three places on 1/30, and it seemingly went well.
NJPW – New Beginnings: The two nights together did 10,957 paid with one sellout up from 10,002 last year. Tanahashi & Okada as The Dream Team vs. Jay White & Bad Luck Fale did the same as Tanahashi vs. Suzuki did last year for the IC title but paid was much higher this year for Naito vs. Taichi in Taichi’s hometown than for Kenny Omega vs. Jay White for the U.S, title last year, although both were sellouts.
At Smackdown on Tuesday, several talents with contracts coming due were asked to sign new long-term deals after Dean Ambrose told the promotion he wasn’t going to sign a new contract.
Ian Riccaboni signed a new contract with ROH to continue as their play-by-play announcer.
UFC held a press conference today. The big heat seemed to be between Tyron Woodley and Kamaru Usman, building up their Welterweight Title fight at UFC 235 on March 2nd. Jon Jones is facing Anthony Smith on that show.
Conor McGregor will not be fighting Donald Cerrone in April. Khabib still claims he is not fighting for a year.
Jose Aldo defeated Renato Moicano, 44 seconds into the 2nd round. First round was very close. But it was the “old Aldo”, just destroyed him. Aldo is still talking about retiring at the end of this year.
Filthy Tom Lawlor is the new MLW champion defeating Low Ki at their super fight one hour Bein Sports TV special from the 2300 (ECW) Arena in Philadelphia.
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MONDAY NEWS UPDATE
WWE
WWE Raw tonight will be held at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The key segment will have Becky Lynch coming back to Raw following another invite from the McMahon family based on her actions from last week. Dana Brooke vs. Natalya was also hinted at last week, but was never made official.
PWInsider is reporting that Luke Harper is slated to be at this week’s SmackDown tapings in Toledo, Ohio.
Monty Brown, who is best known for his run in Impact Wrestling and a brief run on ECW as Marcus Cor Von, resurfaced at a WWE house show in Saginaw over the weekend.
They announced today in a press release that they have been voted Best Sporting Event in the SSE Live awards, which are awards held for those who performed at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland.
Eva Marie, who was recently voted off Celebrity Big Brother, expressed an interest in returning to the WWE.
Riddick Moss talks about the achilles tendon injury that kept him out of action for seven months.
Pro Wrestling
A match between the Lucha Bros and the AAA team of Taurus and Laredo Kid is set for MLW Intimidation Games on March 2nd, which will air live on beIn SPORTS.
Daniel Cormier is pushing back his retirement date, which was originally set to be on his 40th birthday on 3/20 due to injuries. He mentioned that he would like to face Brock Lesnar or Stipe Miocic when he comes back, mentioning a spring or summer return.
Ryan Bader’s coach Jair Lourenco insists that Bader could beat Cormier in a battle of heavyweight champions. “I believe that a five-round fight would be a great scenario for us,” Lourenco said. “Bader does great in five-round fights, but they both have heavy hands. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a war, but I believe Bader has a great chance of finishing him inside five rounds.”
Luis Pena will fight Steven Peterson at Ultimate Fight Night Nashville on 3/23.
Happy birthday to Ken Shamrock, who turns 55 today.
Ed in San Antonio presents the WRESTLEMANIAWeekend Events (more to be added):
Sunday, April 6th, at 12:00 pm: Lunch (all you can eat) at Churrascaria Plataforma ($90 per person), located at 316 W. 49th street in Manhattan. Purchase tickets here~!
Luxury Bus to MetLife Stadium for Wrestlemania: We will depart from the Hilton Midtown (site of Wrestlecon) located at 1335 Avenue of the Americas. Departure time is 4:00 pm and will return from MetLife approximately 30 mins after the event. Times are subject to change, and cost $67.00 per person for the round trip. Purchase tickets here~!
Jericho was in San Antonio last night, the site of Raw. It’s also being reported he is backstage at the show. Jericho had said that he wasn’t coming back on Twitter, but he does stuff like that every year, whether he does or doesn’t. A key is that there are no touring dates for Fozzy listed going forward.
Jericho’s wrestling schedule is usually built around his touring dates and if he’s got nothing scheduled for months, unless there is another entertainment gig, it would be expected he’d return in some fashion. His last few returns have been specifically for house shows only, but if he’s backstage, that would mean a return as a regular television character, perhaps coming off his walking off on Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose when he was a mystery partner at the Night of Champions show on 9/20 in Houston with them against The Wyatt Family.
