In the latest episode of Broken Skull Sessions, which is now available on the WWE Network, Chris Jericho discussed his current company AEW:
“I never thought that I would really work anywhere outside of WWE in the states, for example, after being there for 19 years or so. When AEW was about to start and Tony Khan had this idea. Now, you’ve been around longer than I have but you hear this all the time, ‘oh, there’s going to be a new promotion, there’s a guy whose got money,’ whatever, you hear it all the time. So, when I started talking to him, I started realizing that there was something different here about this opportunity to start a new company.”
“What you need for that, is you need 3 things: finances and passion, that’s one. You need a television contract, and you need talent. You need about 4-6 guys you can build a territory around. Talking to Tony, he had the finances, he had the passion. Then when we started sniffing around, we realized there was a group of guys whose contracts were all coming up at the same time. Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, Young Bucks, Chris Jericho, Hangman Page, guess what? There’s your six guys right there, you can start a company on that. 6 legit guys you can build around and Jericho’s got the name value. These other guys, Cody to an extent, but nobody had really heard of the Young Bucks in the mainstream, or Kenny, or Hangman. So, when you see these guys, you’re like ‘where have these guys been?’ All 3 of those factors all came together in a perfect storm to where we’re like we have a chance to really do something here. The contract with TNT was big because I think at first we were thinking maybe Showtime, or HBO, or Netflix, all these different ideas. But you have to have network TV to get off the ground and TNT provided that.”
Jericho also commented on his WWE departure and why the Wrestlemania 33 match with Kevin Owens being 2nd on the card was a factor in him leaving.
Chris Jericho: “We’re not in competition. Obviously by proxy, we’ve been throw into that. But we’re about doing things differently, doing things a different way to draw a fanbase to create the choices we had during the Monday Night Wars.” #BrokenSkullSessions pic.twitter.com/9AaKiuJUSK
— frank | SashaMania SZN (@TheNextBlGThing) April 11, 2021
The original plan for WrestleMania 33 was Jericho vs Owens for the Universal Title where Jericho wins then Brock Lesnar vs Chris Jericho for the Universal Title with Lesnar winning. Plans changed. Jericho was really bothered by the second match placement. #BrokenSkullSessions pic.twitter.com/JwUUmKQc6m
— frank | SashaMania SZN (@TheNextBlGThing) April 11, 2021
