Chris Jericho On WWE’s Issue With Building New Stars

Chris Jericho is back on AEW television and in speaking to Freddie Prinze Jr. of the Wrestling with Freddie podcast, Jericho reflected on AEW’s success at building new stars, an area that WWE continues to struggle.

Beginning with a general disclaimer, Jericho noted:

“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.”

In discussing the beginnings of AEW and the subsequent financial benefit to the company to create as many new stars as possible, Jericho said:

“I realized 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 programs. 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.

“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 6, 8, or 10 guys shouldering the load. Four months after our first date, October 2nd, or three months, we went from an ad revshare to a contract I believe $160 million for 4 years because of the demos and ratings we got right out of the gate.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Jericho discussed his band Fozzie and his longevity in the wrestling industry.

Chris Jericho is currently scheduled to appear tonight’s (January 26) Beach Break edition of AEW Dynamite in a match teaming with Inner Circle members Santana and Ortiz to take on Daniel Garcia and 2point0.

Transcription via WrestlingNews.co

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• Beach Break
• chris jericho
• AEW
• wwe

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