AEW superstar Chris Jericho was the latest guest on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions to discuss all things pro-wrestling, including the Demo God’s decision to sign with AEW, and how Tony Khan convinced him a new promotion could do big business. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Says there was something different about what Tony Khan wanted to do with AEW:
“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.”
How they began building an impressive roster including the Elite:
“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?”
Getting the contract with TNT:
“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.”
The full interview can be found on the WWE Network on Peacock. (H/T and transcribed by Sescoops)
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