AEW star Chris Jericho recently sat down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss a range of topics, including the ongoing competition between AEW and WWE. As one of AEW’s founding stars and a veteran of the wrestling industry, Jericho shared his perspective on how the two companies coexist in today’s wrestling landscape:
“So in the early 70s, Bobby Hall, who was the number one player in the NHL, left to go to the WHA which was an upstart league that paid him $1 million to join their league, which was a phenomenal amount at the time. What happened was all of the players in the NHL got a huge raise to stay because they didn’t want to lose anybody else to the WHA. I know this because my dad was one of them. Ted Irvine went from 35 grand a year to 100 grand a year just because of Bobby Hall and the WHA. So ipso facto, Chris Jericho is the Bobby Hall of wrestling. Because the moment I left to go to AEW, suddenly the entire salary structure changed.
For years working in WWE Vince’s magic number was a million dollars a year. Nobody gets more than that, guaranteed. You might make more if you’re working on top and with the pay-per-view bonuses and all that sort, merch and everything like that, but the number on the paper that was the max was a million dollars a year. Now, opening match guys are getting a million dollars a year, and top guys are getting 30, $40 million a year. Not all of them, but a few, 15 million, 20 million. So I don’t think that ever would have happened had there not been AEW to scare the WWE cognizant into paying people more. So that’s good for all of us. It’s good for the guys and once again with all this money that’s being made from the television companies, the companies can afford it. So it’s just good for everyone, good for the fans to have an alternative. And if you’re running a race and someone’s right behind you, breathing down your neck, you run faster. If you’re ahead by 10 lengths, you run slower. That’s just the way it goes. So it’s always good to have high-level competition.”
