As chaos reportedly ensued in the locker room following CM Punk’s infamous AEW All Out media scrum last year, Chris Jericho sat calmly in the media room, addressing questions from the press. In retrospect, it appears Jericho informed AEW President Tony Khan of what was transpiring between The Elite and Punk as he took his seat. Leading into the event, there were already rumblings about unease in the locker room, and I asked the multi-time World Champion about a recent backstage meeting he had held with the AEW talent and what advice he was giving them. His answer was fairly concise: keep internal issues internal and try not to talk to the press.
In the twelve months since Jericho has kept fans focused in on his ring work, but the same can’t be said for many involved in the altercation. In an interview with Daily Mail, Jericho reflected on how the rest of the AEW roster reacted to the mayhem that had ensued.
“There was a lot of uncertainty,” he recalled. “We’ve got a lot of young guys and girls on our roster who have never been through stuff like this before, but it’s a part of the business; it happens. We were really getting painted with an unfair brush by the media in a lot of ways, like ‘it’s a dumpster fire in the locker room,’ and that wasn’t the case. And I don’t want people to believe what they’re reading and think that it’s real cos it wasn’t.”
Jericho then reflected on some of his own hostile backstage encounters, conceding that he has been in a few “locker room brawls” of his own. With some more wisdom under his belt, however, he and others on the roster are approaching these issues differently. Specifically, he noted that Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson worked with him to reign in the roster before things escalated further, and, in the end, he feels that the whole AEW crew was made stronger by the experience.
“I think we really came together well, which was great for the locker room and for the fans because the fans, too, want to know that everything is going to continue moving forward,” he stated. “And I think we did a really good job of righting the ship and, most importantly, letting people know that it’s going to be OK. It’s not the end of the world. These things happen, and we deal with them, and we become stronger as a result, which we have.”