Former WWE writer Vince Russo recently spoke about Chris Jericho’s absence from AEW TV. The star has not appeared on television for several months.
Y2J last competed at AEW Dynasty back in April 2025. There were rumors about the 55-year-old star returning to WWE ahead of the Royal Rumble, but several reports confirmed that AEW had frozen his contract and he was still with the company.
On a recent episode of The Coach & Bro Show, Russo noted that Tony Khan relied too heavily on better wrestlers, which explained why Jericho was left off TV for so long. Russo admitted that at this age, Jericho could not compete with some of the younger, faster members on the roster and needed to rely on his character work, which put him out of favor with Khan. The veteran writer shared that as long as there weren’t good characters on TV, casual fans would not tune in to watch the show.
“If your strong suit is character, Tony Khan is gonna take a better wrestler over character every single day of the week. That may explain why Jericho was not on a lot. Let’s face it, at this point in Chris Jericho’s career, he’s gotta rely on character. Britt Baker was becoming a great character. Toni Storm is the greatest character on the roster. But that’s not, that’s not the type of wrestling that Tony prefers. So he is going to take a better worker over a refined character every day of the week. And as long as he does that, coach, you’re gonna continue to shut out to casual viewers.”
Chris Jericho has been busy
Despite his time away from wrestling, Chris Jericho has managed to keep himself busy with other projects. He was recently on tour in the UK with his band Fozzy.
The former AEW World Champion recently took to Instagram to promote his appearance on the hit American drama series Tracker. Y2J noted that he would appear as the character of Virgil Dean on season 3, episode 13 of the show.
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Edited by Prityush Haldar
