Jericho says AEW’s ‘absolutely’ a better company now than a month ago

Chris Jericho already commented on CM Punk’s departure from AEW on his own podcast. You can read his remarks here.

While doing press for the company’s “Grand Slam” event in New York City tomorrow (Sept. 20), Jericho visited Dave LaGreca & the crew at Busted Open Radio and talked about AEW. Jericho put over several stars he believes are the future of the company (Sammy Guevara, MJF, Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, Ricky Starks, Darby Allin). He also discussed how he & other veterans like Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley offer feedback and suggestions to AEW owner, president & head of creative Tony Khan, and how they’re all focused on figuring out the best ways to grow the company.

He indirectly referenced the CM Punk situation when he brought up how his own backstage fight with Goldberg from their WCW days leaked to the public, and argued that social media allowed people to remain focused on the negative rather than moving on as they would have pre-internet. Then, like his boss would, Jericho sought to turn attention to what’s going well for AEW now even while addressing the issues that the company’s had to deal with over the last year or two:

“We know the issues. The issues have been rectified. But the point is, there’s so much positive things going on. And those things are always kind of a little bit downplayed. But it’s the negative that gets focused on. I know what’s going on in the locker room, and we know what areas we need to work on. Negative press is negative press.

“Once again, you still got, out of those 81,000 people [at All In], how many people know what even happened or really care? The hardcore, and the journalists, and the guys who do this care — and we should. But there’s also fans — not just 81,000, how about being #1 on cable [in the Wednesday night ratings] four weeks in a row? The number one show out of all shows, is AEW.

“So to me, that’s a huge positive that also gets kind of lost in the shuffle because somebody’s in a bad mood one day, or whatever it might be. It happens, it’s wrestling. We’re all gypsies tramps and thieves, and there’s gonna be issues from time to time.”

Punk’s name again wasn’t mentioned, but the implication was clear when Bully Ray followed that up by asked Jericho if AEW is a better company now than it was a month ago.

He was clear in his answer, too:

“Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

You can listen to Jericho’s entire conversation with LeGreca & Bully here.