Since becoming increasingly receptive to the advances of the Don Calis Family – which, as of now, is seemingly just Don Callis and Konosuke Takeshita – Chris Jericho and his Jericho Appreciation Society took part in a special meeting in the opening segment of AEW Dynamite where each member of the group was allowed to speak their peace and either stay or leave the faction once and for all.

The results, unsurprisingly, were not particularly kind to Jericho, as one by one, Daniel Garcia, Jake Hager, Tay Melo, Anna Jay, and “Cool Hand” Angelo Parker all opted to leave the faction and rid themselves of “The Ocho” once and for all, leaving just “Daddy Magic” Matt Menard and Sammy Guevara in the ring with the original AEW World Champion.

Afforded his turn to speak, Menard thanked Jericho for helping him to land in the promotion before evoking none other than Kevin Owens – or, as he's known on the indies, Kevin Steen – in a brutal takedown of his former mentor.

“This guy right here was my childhood hero. When I was 15 years old, with my first paycheck from my first job, I bought a Chris Jericho t-shirt. When my wife was eight months pregnant, and I had no job, this guy heard my story, he invited me into his home, he helped bring me into AEW, and you took e under your wing. These last 18 months have been nothing but a dream for me. But it's never sat well with me why guys I came up with, guys like Eddie Kingston, guys like Kevin Steen, why they hate your guys. And now I'm starting to understand why.”

Dang, now that is a brutal verbal takedown if I've ever seen one, as Jericho's falling out with KO is one of the lowest moments – at least in a Kayfabe sense – of his career in WWE. While Guevara's decision to leave the JAS probably cut deeper to “Le Champion,” Menard's words might sting longer.

2.0 reveal how Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho helped them get into AEW.

When 2.0, then known as Ever-Rise, were released from NXT in 2021 due to “budget cuts”during the COVID-19 pandemic, it left Matt Menard and Angelo Parker in a very tough spot. After finally securing well-paying contracts following over a decade spent building up their names on the indies, the duo were thrust into uncertainty once more, a fate made all the more dire due to the former's wife being eight months pregnant.

Fortunately, Menard and Parker did have a few friends in high places, and with a call to Kevin Owens – or Kevin Steen, if you want to go with his shoot/indie name – the duo were able to tell their story on Chris Jericho's podcast, Talk is Jericho, and ultimately parlay that goodwill into a long-term contract with Tony Khan's company.

Discussing this life-changing podcast appearance on another wrestler's show, Swerve City with Swerve Strickland, Menard, and Parker gave big-time credit to KO for helping them to find the biggest success of their respective careers.

“So we first met him when we were doing extra work for WWE at times, but like that's about it,” Matt Menard said via WrestleZone. “Like Kevin would just be like ‘Oh, here’s my buddies,’ but after we got released from WWE, Kevin Owens reached out to him and just said, ‘Hey, can you get my buddies on the podcast? Like they’re good dudes like they just need somebody, they need something.’ And it’s also the first thing we do after getting released, which is always a hot topic, right? Like everyone wants to hear the story. And we’ve never been on it. So it’s cool. And like he just said, ‘All right, I don’t know these people, but I trust you.'”

“So we do that podcast, and like, we just hit it off. We do the podcast, then we sat around and shot the shit for a while,” Angelo Parker added. “And it was just like, oh, we get along, awesome. And it’s funny, because we did that podcast on a Monday. On Tuesday, we’re going to Jacksonville to our to do Dark for AEW. And then Wednesday was the homecoming where we ended up on TV there. But so we finished the podcast, and Chris is like, ‘Alright, what what do you have left on your no-compete clause?’ He goes, ‘I’m gonna see if I can get you guys some work.'”

Would 2.0 have found consistent work if it wasn't for KO and Jericho? Yes, mostly likely so, but they likely wouldn't have landed in AEW, definitely wouldn't have landed their new nickname, and wouldn't be afforded a chance to leave the JAS 18 months after it began. Even if they are on the outs now, 2.0 really should appreciate Jericho.