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I want to talk about the Randy Orton Instagram post where he teased a bunch of Superstars potentially leaving WWE and joining AEW, obviously I know that you can’t say anything about whether they will or not. But would you be happy to have someone like Randy Orton, Elias or Revival in AEW in the future if it were to happen?
Jericho: I can’t say anything about it because I don’t know anything about it, no-one’s calling me to tell me about these things. But I know this - nobody is getting out of WWE, especially Randy Orton, because unless he’s very, very committed to saying ‘I don’t care if you pay me 20 gazillion dollars I’m leaving’ that’s not what he’s doing. I mean, obviously Vince is going to pay millions and millions of dollars to not have Randy Orton go.
And there’s some other guys but we’re not trying to be old-school TNA where anybody that wants to leave WWE comes to AEW, that’s not what we’re looking to do. Obviously there’s Jon Moxley that when they become available [we sign them]. And Moxley was one of those guys who said ‘I’m out of here, I don’t care what you pay me’ and didn’t even look at the offer they gave him. That’s because he was done and ready to go.”
If you’re using AEW to make more money off of Vince, go for it! That’s great too but it’s not like we’re taking everybody that’s going to leave WWE to come to AEW. Because those guys that who are working WWE now, they got huge raises, and if they were on the Indy circuit they wouldn’t be making 500 bucks a night.
The point is that Vince just doesn’t want anybody to leave WWE because it looks like an exodus if they do and makes us look even cooler. We do things our way, we’ve got a great roster of guys and if somebody becomes available that really wants to be with us and we think that they fit our vibe then we’ll take them. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to get millions and millions of dollars to come because once again, that’s not what we’re doing.
I think we’ve assembled an awesome roster with at least ten to twelve potential main eventers and we have to build all those guys up first to build up all the mid-card guys, and then build up all the opening match guys to create stars. That’s what we have to do, quickly, create stars. And once we do that we’ll be even higher up the food chain than we are now.
But if a Randy Orton became available and said ‘I’m leaving I don’t care what’ then I’m sure we’d be really interested in talking to him and we could do great stuff. I’ll tell you what; he’ll probably be more over with us in a month than he has been in the last ten years with WWE.
Well that’s one of the things, obviously people like Jake Hager. He’s a presence in AEW, he’s something important and he wasn’t necessarily important elsewhere so you are doing really good things with the talent you’ve got. But is there anyone we’ve not seen yet that we should keep our eye on for the future?
Jericho: Well, you’ve seen them all. I think a guy like MJF. Hager’s got a huge upside, he always has, they just didn’t see it in WWE. Like I said, MJF is a guy who’s going to be a huge star with us. Darby Allin is another one to put some focus into.
We have to get to know Hangman Page, we have to get to know Kenny Omega, we have to get to know The Young Bucks more. There’s just a lot of work that we have to do because of the huge fan base and people who haven’t seen them before. That’s okay, because they weren’t on national TV, but now that they are it’s up to us to build them and continue to grow and learn who they are as characters, as people, as performers and that the thing, we’ve done so well in this four weeks so we’ll see what happens four weeks from now and four weeks after that.
Jericho had to catch a plane, so that's where the interview ended. I forgot to ask him if he planned to take it easy in 2020. But I'd expect not. If you'd like to hear Jericho's responses himself, make sure to listen to the full interview here!
