AEW star Chris Jericho has recently discussed the WWE ratings drop, and why he believes it is the company’s own fault.
Chris Jericho made his name in WCW and WWE before signing with AEW. The wrestling veteran prides himself on helping to establish the next generation of stars.
Speaking on Busted Open Radio, Jericho used Darby Allin as an example of a talent that AEW helped elevate. Explaining that you can’t keep having the same top guys face each other forever, Jericho named some performers that he thinks could carry the AEW torch.
On the topic of WWE, Jericho claimed that the company’s low ratings are on them, because they rarely create new stars.
Here are the full quotes:
“Our goal from the start was to make new stars. Because that’s what wrestling’s all about. It always has been. If you look at last week’s show, where we had Jungle Boy vs. Darby Allin in the main event, we had Shida vs. Tay Conti in a main event. Those are two kinds of fence post matches on our show and they both did a great number.
“We’ve made Darby Allin into a legit main event draw. I mean last night he’s in the main event with Ten for God’s sake and it will probably do a good number. I give us a full Barry Horowitz pat on the back for that because we set out to do it and we did it. It’s not hard to do; pick the right guy and just stick with them. We paired Darby with Sting, so he got that rub. And now Sting is almost, I’m not going to say lackey, but he’s almost Darby’s second at this point. And that’s probably exactly what he should be.
“If you look at what we’ve done with Jericho, MJF, Sammy Guevara, Santana and Ortiz, Wardlow, that’s another aspect. We are building these guys and girls because it just can’t be Jericho vs. Cody, vs. Kenny over and over again. Nor would we want it to be.
“When Vince goes to the investors (during the conference call) and says ‘the Raw ratings are down because we haven’t created any new stars, that’s completely on you guys! We (AEW) knew from the start we had to make stars. A lot of the guys on our show, Bucks, and Kenny included, Hangman Page; I said it on the Broken Skull Sessions, they weren’t known on a national level. On a national network television level. We’ve built them up, and then suddenly all these kinds of the second wave of guys and girls are getting in there.”
The most recent episode of SmackDown featured a major Universal Championship match between Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan. Despite this, the viewership for last night’s show was down compared to recent weeks.
AEW star Jon Moxley has now been announced for the next week’s NJPW Strong. This comes before Moxley’s IWGP US Title defence on the May 12 episode of AEW Dynamite.
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