Chris Jericho on what needs to be toned down in New Japan

In an interview with The Jim Ross Report podcast (via Wrestlezone), Chris Jericho spoke about what needs to be toned down in New Japan Pro Wrestling and who he originally offered his cruise to. Here are highlights:

On what NJPW needs to tone down:

“You can’t abuse the referees constantly. If you notice, that’s one of the reasons why Alpha [Chris Jericho] vs [Kenny] Omega was a No DQ Match. I didn’t want to have to worry about burying the referee in this blood feud fight. Even in the [Tetsuya] Naito match, the finish was I gave him a mule kick to the balls and I gave him a code breaker…..he pushed me into the ref or something along those lines.

The ref turned around so when I gave him the mule kick, the ref doesn’t see it. It’s just a small thing; but, it’s how I was trained. It’s how I learned. You can’t cheat in front of the referee. That just doesn’t work and watching New Japan there’s so much of that and I think that’s one of the reasons why the two matches I’ve had over there have gotten over so well. You’ll never see me ever take the referee for granted like that and abuse the ref and I find that’s the one thing about New Japan that needs to be toned down because there’s just too much of it. Why even have a ref?”

On who he offered his cruise to:

“I did offer this [cruise] to WWE at first. My vision at first was to do it with NXT; but, pretty much knowing that they would probably say no. You know how Vince [McMahon] is. If Vince is gonna do a cruise, he doesn’t need Chris Jericho to do a cruise. He’ll do it himself; but, I wanted to at least do my due diligence and give them the offer and the courtesy, which I did and when it came back that they decided not to go for it, Ring Of Honor came back ten minutes later.”

(Pro Wrestling & MMA World)