Chris Jericho Recalls Meeting With TNA Prior To 2007 WWE Return To Try Make Vince McMahon Offer Him More Money

Chris Jericho recalls meeting with TNA prior to his 2007 WWE return in order to make Vince McMahon offer more money for the deal.

In 2007, Jericho would make a blockbuster WWE return, immediately kickstarting a program with the WWE Champion at the time, Randy Orton. However, he did consider other options at the time, even if it was partially to force a higher offer out of WWE.

While speaking during a Dark Side Of The Ring Q and A in New York, Chris Jericho was asked if he ever had conversations about potentially signing with TNA, with Jericho recalling a story of how he played up TNA interest to garner a higher offer on a WWE deal from Vince McMahon.

“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?”

Elsewhere in the same Q and A, Jeff Jarrett recalled the process of developing TNA’s video game. You can read more about that here.

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