Professional wrestling legend and future WWE Hall of Famer Chris Jericho who is a former six times WWE world champion and the inaugural AEW World Champion recently claimed that the All Elite Wrestling was completely on his back when the promotion started back in 2019.
As mentioned above the All Elite Wrestling is a professional wrestling promotion which started back in 2019. There were not enough big names in the promotion during that time except the likes of Jon Moxley, Kenny Omega and of course Chris Jericho. Nobody expected this promotion could lead to become the biggest threat of WWE in the near future.
Chris Jericho Claims AEW Was Completely On His Back When It Started
The promotion mostly forecast on bringing in the big names from the independent circuit when it was first introduced to the world of professional wrestling. Slowly they were started to capture all the big names from WWE that the promotion had to release because of their budget cut issues during the covid 19 pandemic.
Right now, AEW is one of the mytiest professional wrestling promotion and it is definitely a huge competition to WWE. With the quality of the shows of WWE getting decreased day by day, there is definitely a possibility of AEW to become the ultimate king in the world of pro wrestling in near future.
Chris Jericho who is a former six times WWE world champion and the inaugural AEW World Champion recently spoke on the Geordie Podcast where he claimed that the All Elite Wrestling was completely on his back when the promotion started back in 2019. He said;
“When we started AEW, it was solely on my back. I really believe that because if you look at the roster, unless you were a hardcore wrestling fan, no one f*cking knew any of those guys. There’s a perfect example, ‘Chris Jericho’s there? Really? Let’s check it out’ and then you see all the other great guys but I knew right out of the gate, I have three-to-six months to make as many stars as I can, because if not, I can’t — as great as I am and as great as I think I am, if I’m the only guy on the show for six months and the only star, it’s gonna die. It is.
“I can’t do it all. I’m not f*cking Michael Jackson or Elvis or somebody like that. So I knew very quickly I had to create stars right out of the gate and that’s why we concentrated on reinventing Cody [Rhodes]. Think about Cody when AEW started, he was not the Cody that he is now. Nobody knew who Kenny Omega was, Darby Allin, Scorpio Sky.
“[Jon] Moxley, he was not the guy that he is now when he came into our company. Jungle Boy, all of those guys I worked with early on in the process to let people know — Young Bucks, Inner Circle. The first night we created The Inner Circle to show here’s some new guys.
“Who’s Sammy Guevara? I didn’t know how Santana, Ortiz was. Jake Hager was not the guy he is now. He was a useless character in WWE. So we built these stars in three months and that’s when we got a television deal for $160 million for four years.
“‘Y2J’, I was pitching to him [Vince McMahon] as the name of my finish and he’s like, ‘No, no, no, no. That’s not the name of your finish. That’s your name’ and I was like, ‘Me!?’ Like, ‘Yeah, you’re Y2J.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ And f*ck man, and people still chant it ‘till this day. I thought of the idea and the term ‘Y2J’. He’s the one who saw the overall picture that’s much more valuable for the name of you to be that.”
H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling