Chris Jericho: “I still have some career left in me”

The professional future of Chris Jericho has been a hot topic of conversation in recent months. Several media outlets have reported that WWE is looking to bring back the wrestler, to whom they would have promised a lucrative deal and a retirement storyline that could see him hang up his boots. However, despite his prolonged absence from the television programming of All Elite Wrestling, the former world champion seems to still be connected to it, at least for the time being.

Meanwhile, time continues to move forward for everyone, including Jericho himself, who has already accepted that his retirement is very close. However, he believes he can still compete for a little while longer. He reiterated this during an interview with GamesHub.

"What worries me about the guys working today is here I am at 55, 35 years in, with still some career left to go. I don’t know if it’s a year, two years, four years — I’m not sure. But I don’t know how many of the guys working now will have the option to go 35 years. Hopefully all of them. But you can already see what serious injuries do — a bad neck surgery changes everything. The longevity may be harder to sustain when there’s so much emphasis on the physical at the expense of charisma and character," he said.

"I remember the first time I ever got hurt. I thought I was invincible. I was in León, Mexico, did a dive over the top rope, and the guy who was supposed to catch me — a guy called Masaka — he just stepped aside. I landed on old-school bolted-down arena chairs. I messed up my arm and I thought, oh, I could actually get hurt doing this. And if a guy doesn’t want to catch you, that’s even worse. After that I started getting smart about which moves were worth the risk. The guys who figure that out early are the ones who get the longevity," he added.

Chris Jericho is one of the most veteran wrestlers in All Elite Wrestling and one of the key figures who were present and active in the early days of the company. In fact, Jericho was the inaugural AEW World Champion, which helped promote the new brand internationally.

Over these six years, "The Nine" has been part of numerous stories and rivalries as his accolades and character repertoire continued to grow. His last match took place on April 6 at AEW Dynasty, where he lost the ROH World Championship to Bandido. Since then, he has been absent from the company's television programming, with many expecting his next appearance to take place in a WWE ring.