Former WWE and AEW Champion, Chris Jericho was interviewed this week on Busted Open Radio following his 30th anniversary celebration on AEW Dynamite.
During the interview, he spoke about his decision to sign with AEW and the Wednesday Night War with WWE NXT.
Chris Jericho explained why he wrote down and kept track of every match he had.
“I’ll tell you why I started doing it. At my first day at the Hart Brothers Pro Wrestling Camp, Keith Hart was there. It was the only day we ever saw him after he collected our money and split. He said do you have any questions? I asked how many matches you had and he was really annoyed. He said, nobody keeps track of that stuff. Why would you even ask that? I thought that was really weird because if I want to know how many games Wayne Gretzky has played in, I could go to the library and find a record book and look up Wayne Gretzky. I said I’m going to keep a list of every match I ever have by hook or by crook, whether I have one or whether I have 2,722 which is what I have after tonight. I will keep a list and I did.”
Jericho told of the effects of him going to AEW.
“It’s hard to say this without sounding egotistical. I’m not saying this from a place of ego. I’m talking from a place of fact. It really did change the business. When I signed with AEW, it was the equivalent of when Bobby Hull signed with the WHA in 1972. He was the biggest star in the NHL and when he left to go to this new upstart league, everybody in the NHL got a raise including my dad, Ted Irvine, and a big one because they didn’t want to lose any other players. That’s what happened with me. The day I signed with AEW, everybody in the WWE got a raise. Finally, the guys were making money, but still not what they should get in some cases, but still more than they got a whole lot more than what they were getting. I think if those guys think about it, they all owe me a steak dinner because they are all making double what they were making all because Vince didn’t want them to go to AEW. He didn’t give a sh*t about their talent level or what they were doing or who they were. It became a real war at that point more than there has ever been. But all this could have been avoided by Vince if you think about it, but he was the one that kind of allowed me to go and now look where we are a year later. We are kicking their ass and if there wasn’t NXT on a Wednesday, and it’s only there to stop our momentum. They don’t care about their own show. They care only about stopping our momentum. We would be getting close to RAW ratings on certain nights.”
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