AEW superstar and former world champion Chris Jericho recently spoke to Inside the Ropes about Vince McMahon’s recent comments on an investor call, when the WWE Chairman said he didn’t view AEW as competition towards WWE in the same way WCW was back during the Monday Night Wars. Hear the Demo God’s full thoughts below.
Says he understands why Vince said AEW wasn’t competition:
“Well, what else is he going to say? You know, and to respond to that, we don’t see WWE as competition. And he was smart to say that.”
How AEW was never focused on what NXT was doing during the Wednesday Night War:
“We’re not worried about what WWE is and we haven’t been since day one. We weren’t worried about what NXT did. The whole time with the NXT vs. AEW war, which ended in a total abysmal failure for NXT, we never once had a TV screen watching what they were doing when we were doing it. We didn’t know what segments they were in. We didn’t know any of that. Now, the WWE way is you’re watching what the competition is doing when they were on, we didn’t do that. And it was no disrespect. We just didn’t care. We were too busy worrying about our own company and about our own stories, and about our own show to care what anybody else is doing. And that’s one of the reasons why we did so well is that we were concentrating on AEW, not anything else.”
Says AEW could not control the fact that NXT was put up against them:
“We could not control the fact that NXT was put up against us. We couldn’t control the fact if, you know, there’s a Beatles reunion put up against us, you know, whatever. We can’t control that. All we can control is our own show on the quality of what we’re doing. And we’ve worked very hard to improve the things that need improving and to focus on the things that we’re doing great. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve gone as far as we have and why our demos have crept up to where they are and where our ratings have crept up to where they are.”
Talks AEW’s demo ratings:
“So WWE is not competition for us. We’re competition for ourselves. So for Vince to say that – to me, it’s probably reverse psychology and that he does see us as competition. But deep down inside, what does it really matter? The WWE is the WWE and they have billions of dollars locked in TV deals and we are working towards that. Now when our demo ends up beating theirs and TV deals start coming in for us at the billions, then I truly think there will be a lot of competition because now you’re fighting for money, you’re not just fighting for bragging rights – and bragging rights don’t mean anything. It’s the money that you make from it that counts. So we’ll see what happens.”
