Story Behind Chris Jericho’s “Release The Hounds!” Line From AEW Dynamite Revealed, Trademark Issue

AEW star Chris Jericho held his first “Saturday Night Special” Facebook Live stream for fans this past Saturday night, as seen in the video below.

Jericho revealed that he came up with the idea behind the recent April 1 Dynamite segment with Matt Hardy’s drone, Vanguard1. One of the hot topics of discussion on social media was Jericho’s “Release the hounds!” line that he yelled at Vanguard1 after the drone passed on his offer to join The Inner Circle. You can see the segment above.

Jericho also revealed that AEW President & CEO Tony Khan is the one who came up with the “Release the hounds line!”

While Jericho and Khan likely had another merchandise hit on their hands with the “Hounds!” line, they won’t be able to sell a t-shirt with the saying on it because of trademark issues. Jericho revealed that someone else already owns the trademark for the line.

“Crazy week we’ve had so far,” Jericho said of last week in Norcross, GA. “We did AEW Dynamite on Wednesday in an undisclosed location. I’ll say this – in Georgia, though. And I had this idea to do this thing with Vanguard 1 where he kind of invaded my house, and did the whole thing with ‘Release the hounds!,’ which we’ve already tried t make a t-shirt for but we can’t because some jackass out there owns the ‘Release the hounds!’ trademark on a shirt.

“So, I’m sorry. I know you guys would like a ‘Release the hounds!’ shirt but we can’t make them because it’s trademarked. People will trademark anything these days!”