Dave Meltzer Assesses Potential Of WWE Return For AEW's Chris Jericho

Chris Jericho has been a staple of the AEW roster since the company formed six years ago, and after losing his ROH World Championship to Bandido at Dynasty, he seems to be taking a break from wrestling. However, 2025 will be an interesting year for the former AEW World Champion as the fresh contract he signed back in 2022 to stay with the company expires in December, and following recent comments stating that he would be open to returning to WWE one day, Dave Meltzer has revealed what he thinks Jericho should do in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

To put it simply, unless the money offered by AEW is far greater than what WWE could offer him, or if he has some personal loyalty to AEW due to being there from the beginning, Meltzer believes that Jericho should go back to WWE. He sees Jericho fighting a fight that he can't win with the fans who have already expressed how much they don't want to see him, which is the same thing that they did to Cody Rhodes, and to a lesser extent CM Punk and The Young Bucks, with the former two achieving more success in WWE than ever before. What's more, he would get huge reactions from the fans as Meltzer believes that there's nothing WWE fans like seeing more than an AEW jumping to their side of the battle.

Meltzer thinks that Tony Khan has a personal loyalty to Jericho as he was in AEW at the beginning, and given the money he can offer, the creative freedom on TV, and leniency towards allowing people to pursue outside projects, AEW will have more than a fighting chance of keeping Jericho. With that said, WWE's schedule is a lot lighter with no live events, and he would likely be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame immediately, so there is every chance Jericho could weigh up his options at the end of this year.