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What’s the story?
During a recent interview with Busted Open Radio on SiriusXM, WWE legend Chris Jericho spoke about his ability to draw money in the wake of his successful match against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12.
In case you didn’t know...
For a long time now Jericho has been a numbers guy, who takes great pride in some of his accomplishments both in wrestling and music. One of the big expectations for his recent bout against Kenny Omega at WK12 was that it would help boost ticket sales, and as it turns out, it did.
The heart of the matter
Jericho spoke about his ability to draw during his aforementioned interview, and below is a quote courtesy of Cageside Seats.
“Part of being a top name or a main eventer or a Hall of Famer is you have to draw money. This, to me, was probably the biggest example of Jericho drawing money. WWE and WrestleMania, for example, that’s a brand -- people are going no matter what. I think in this day and age WWE is the biggest draw. But for Wrestle Kingdom that wasn’t the case. I mean, there were certain goals that New Japan had that were blown out of the water with the announcement of Alpha vs. Omega. That was completely on me. I’m a numbers guy, I was calling every day. ‘What’s the updated tickets? What’s the updated tickets?’ We sold 35,000 paid. Last year they did 26,000. They were hoping for 28,000 with 30,000 maybe, maybe, maybe. In my mind it was like ‘why aren’t you hoping for 50,000?’ But then we did 35,000 so that’s an extra 7 grand from their projections and almost an extra 10 from what they did last year.
”Then, their kind of pet now, what they’re kind of building the most, is the New Japan subscription service and that went through the roof -- an extra 35-percent subscriptions in the last two days before the show. I’m taking credit for it. I don’t think the subscriptions would have been there. Plus, you had 2,500 foreigners in the Tokyo Dome. That’s 2,500 people who flew from America, England, wherever. Tell me any independent show that draws 2,500 people in your own home country nowadays. It’s pretty rare.
”So all of those things proved that Alpha and Omega was a moneymaking draw. That’s a feather in my cap.”
What’s next?
It seems as if Jericho will be sticking around in New Japan Pro Wrestling for a feud with Tetsuya Naito, but beyond that, it really is anyone’s guess as to what Y2J will do next.
Author’s take
It’s great to see that Jericho is still such a draw after all these years, and it once again proves that he’s one of the greatest of all time in the wrestling business.
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