Chris Jericho: WWE Have A Problem Building New Stars
Not a problem he had in AEW
Jan 27, 2022
Speaking on Wrestling with Freddie, All Elite Wrestling's Chris Jericho admitted he believes WWE have a problem creating new stars.
"This is not a WWE bash. I worked there for almost 20 years and I loved working for WWE, but one thing they still have an issue with, and you can see it if you watch the show, is building new stars. They really have a problem with that and I don't know why," Jericho said.
Le Champion compared WWE's struggles to his early run as AEW World Champion and how he used his reign to build up new stars like Darby Allin and Jungle Boy.
"Once again, it doesn't matter what they do. From day one in AEW, when we showed up on October 2nd, and even before that when we showed up for the first couple pay-per-views, we had no television deal. Then when we finally got one on TNT, it was an ad-revenue share. What that means for people that don't know is you make the money based on the advertising. If you have 50 advertisers, you get a share. If you have one advertiser, you get a share. It was not a big monster deal," he continued.
"I realised early on kind of being the face of the company and the one guy the national audience knew besides Jim Ross, but the one guy that's in the ring, and they knew Cody maybe but not really. Kenny and The Bucks were more independent or popular in other countries. I needed to make new stars as quickly as I could, Cody being one of them. Kenny Omega being another one.
"You look at my first few programmes. Match three in AEW was against Darby Allin. Jungle Boy was right around that time. Then Jon Moxley who had to be rehabbed when he came from WWE because Mox was not Mox when he first showed up. He was still Dean Ambrose, the goofy guy who wasn't funny, doing all the stupid sh*t they made him do. We had to make him into a star right off that bat," Jericho added.
"All of those guys, if you look at the first six months pre-lockdown in AEW, I worked with all of them. So very quickly, we had six, eight, or 10 guys shouldering the load. Four months after our first date, October 2nd, or three months, we went from an ad rev-share to a contract, I believe $160 million for 4 years because of the demos and ratings we got right out of the gate."
Elsewhere on the podcast, Jericho commented on AEW's TV deal and he believes the promotion are primed for a big raise with their second contract.
H/T to WrestlingNews.co
