Chris Jericho recently sat down with AEW referee Aubrey Edwards on an episode of his podcast, Talk Is Jericho. During their conversation, the two discussed the promotion’s use of disqualifications and the need for an established rulebook.
Edwards confessed she liked working with Jericho as he’s “super easy to work with.” She noted how Jericho is always interested in telling a story, making her job that much easier. The two then turned their attention to Jericho’s matchup at AEW Revolution against Jon Moxley.
During that match, Chris Jericho was physically pushing Edwards at points in the match. Turns out he was doing so to hit the right story beats and camera angles. Although he tried to express this to her during the match, Edwards admitted she did not hear him. To fans, however, it appeared as though Jericho was trying to get himself disqualified.
“There has to be that kind of psychology behind it where it’s like, why wouldn’t she DQ him?” Chris Jericho said. “Well, it’s like a title match or a boxing match. It’s like a knee in the in the groin for example, maybe if it was an earlier fight, a prelim fight, there would be a DQ, but in the main event, that people paid millions to see, you got to let these guys fight.”
Chris Jericho added how he loves that aspect about pro wrestling. He argued how they weren’t “bending the rules” but were instead telling a story and “making things fit into what we need because we have the right to do that.”
Edwards would reveal that she has been given permission by AEW President Tony Khan to scribe an official AEW rulebook. Chris Jericho stressed how it’s “important to establish that.”
She explained how when she first accepted the Project Coordinator Job, she “wanted to have our rules written down.” Edwards recalled how Tony Khan had previously expressed his interest in having their rules public to give AEW a sports company dynamic.
“So I started writing everything down and realize there’s all these holes of like what happens if the illegal person hits a legal person. How do we treat that at AEW? It was funny. I had like the rules printed out. We’re talking about it. Hangman comes and goes over, ‘oh, are the refs meeting to talk about the rules? Actually, we are, but we talk about things and figure out how do we want to treat this situation? How do we want to treat this? And I got a thumbs-up from boss man. So hopefully that will come out soon.”
Chris Jericho is scheduled to compete against Orange Cassidy during AEW Fyter Fest, which takes place on July 1 and July 8.