It was genuinely stolen. If it was a storyline, it would have been gone a whole lot longer and we would have found out Rikishi did it for The Rock.
There are 3 possibilities here, and I'm on break so I'll be kind enough to LIST them here:
1. AEW got in contact with the police ahead of time and worked something out with them. It's not the first time it's happened in wrestling for sake of a story. And it's not exactly like the police needed to do all that much if this was the case.
2. Jericho and the "management" of AEW are true dumbasses and decided to do this publicity stunt (and yes, that's all this is) without prior consent of the authorities, and figured they'd do enough on their part to make it seem legit to the police.
3. Jericho is genuinely a fucking dumbass for losing the title.
In any case, the whole thing is dumb, but I suppose it served its purpose in the end. Eyes on the company, sympathy for the company, yet another stupid meme of Jericho, heel heat for Jericho...
Then someone needs to write the story of someone loving me. :emoji_slight_frown:
You're more over being in the chase than you are with the strap. It sucks, trust me I know. Sorry brother. On the bright side, you get to be a cool sympathetic babyface and drink beer :austin2: