If you remember, there was a lot of speculation surrounding the status of Shane McMahon heading to WrestleMania 34 on April 9th. In the weeks leading up to the ‘Showcase of the Immortals’, it was announced that Shane was suffering from diverticulitis, as well as a hernia (which you can read here). ‘Shane-O-Mac’ was slated to be Daniel Bryan’s partner at the big event to face the team of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. Of course, that all worked out with Bryan and Shane picking up the victory, but today it was revealed who nearly ended up replacing McMahon had he not been able to go.

On the latest edition of the Talk Is Jericho podcast with Bryan as the guest, Chris Jericho commented that he had been in talks with WWE about coming in to be Daniel’s partner:

“A few weeks before WrestleMania, maybe three or four weeks, I get a call from Vince. And he’s talking about Shane and his appendix, or not his appendix, his diverticulitus, and he had an infection in his hand and he had… a staph infection and he had… a hernia. And he goes, ‘Listen, we don’t know if he can do ‘Mania.’

And he had somehow looked, or got someone to look at my schedule, and we had a Fozzy show that day… So he was like ‘I know you’re doing a Fozzy show, and you’re gonna watch WrestleMania with your fans,’ he goes, ‘what would you think about coming to New Orleans if Shane can’t do it?’”

“And it’s funny because we were looking, we were googling airports, and it was in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, like the most out of the way place. We were looking up airports close to Hampton Beach and how long is the charter to get there [New Orleans], and he [Vince] was like ‘Okay, you can make it right on time and we’ll give you a police escort, and you’ll basically have to go right into the ring.’

And I said ‘Listen, I’ve got no problem with that, and I know that Bryan has no problem with it. Kevin and Sami – especially Sami – are gonna have heart attacks calling a WrestleMania match in the ring.’ I mean, obviously we would think of some stuff beforehand, but like, I can do it. I don’t have a problem, so can you. We could do it now. But like, Sami is going to die of a frickin’ aneurysm if we do that!”

Quotes c/o WrestleZone

EA’s Take: Jericho was brought up by some of us at The Chairshot in private conversations, but I quickly squashed the idea (or at least attempted to). Hampton Beach is not far from where I am and Fozzy actually had a show roughly ten minutes from my house the night before, so I knew about the WrestleMania watch party they had planned for the next night in New Hampshire. I’m not saying Jericho is a liar because I do believe that WWE definitely tried, but being as familiar with the area as I am, getting there in time was always going to be the biggest hurdle.

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