Add as a preferred source on Google Chris Jericho revealed an old backstage story involving TNA, Jeff Jarrett and Vince McMahon before his return to WWE in 2007.
During a Dark Side of the Ring Q&A in New York, Jericho was asked whether he had spoken with TNA before re-signing with WWE.
His answer pointed to a fairly common strategy in pro wrestling. Jericho said the following:
“We met at the Cheesecake Cafe in Tampa, Florida. Sorry, Cheesecake Factory. Now let me give you a little wrestling lesson. So I was talking about going back to WWE had been off for a couple of years. I think this was like 2007, and this was at a time when Vince had the magic number of a salary. He had the magic number. I won’t say what that is. But it’s the highest that you could get no matter who you were. It didn’t matter. Because with Vince at the time, if you headlined, if you were a main event, you would get paid more money, et cetera, et cetera.”
“But the base minimum was this certain number, and he wasn’t coming close to it. I was like, well… Let me see if I can arrange a meeting with Double J and have a conversation with TNA and see what happens. Now, what happened was… So this is a real behind-the-scenes storyline thing. So my cousin was in town at the time, and I said, ‘just go sit over there and just comment on what you see,’ and here’s an email address of someone in the wrestling dirt sheet area that might be interested in Chris Jericho. So I’m not saying I wasn’t entertaining the idea, but two days later, guess who came back with the magic number?”
The “Double J” referenced by Jericho is Jeff Jarrett, TNA’s co-founder and one of the central focuses of the new season of Dark Side of the Ring. The show’s seventh season premieres this Tuesday, July 7, with a three-part story on Jarrett and TNA’s early years.
Jericho returned to WWE on November 19, 2007, on Monday Night Raw after more than two years away from the company. His comeback came after weeks of mysterious videos featuring binary codes, culminating in an interruption of then-WWE Champion Randy Orton.