"I don't consider them competition" - When Vince McMahon dismissed AEW, 'offered' to give Tony Khan some WWE stars
Vince McMahon once expressed his thoughts on AEW and also whether he considers them a competition on the same level as WCW back then.
Vince McMahon is perhaps the man responsible for what pro wrestling is in today's day and age. It's hard to deny that the landscape of the sport wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't for Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Furthermore, WWE's Executive Chairman has overcome many challenges in taking his company to where it is currently.
As a matter of fact, the same can be said about Vince standing tall at the end of "Monday Night Wars" back in the 1990s. When WCW emerged as a legitimate threat to his promotion, he fired on all cylinders to eventually put the competition out of business.
Moreover, in 2021 the WWE Chairman was once asked whether AEW posed the same threat to his company as WCW back in the day during the WWE Q2 Earnings Call, and Vince absolutely denied it while also seemingly offering some of his talents to Tony Khan's promotion:
"Well, it certainly is not a situation where 'rising tides' because that was when Ted Turner was coming after us with all of Time Warner's assets as well, that was a different situation. AEW is where they are. I don't really know what their plans are, all I know is what our plans are. I don't consider them competition in the way that I would consider WCW back in the day, not anywhere near close to that. And I'm not so sure what their investments are as far as their talent is concerned, but perhaps we can give them some more." H/T WrestlingINC
Chris Jericho responded to Vince McMahon's views on AEW
After Vince McMahon's seemingly dismissive remarks about AEW not being a competition, Chris Jericho fired back at his former boss by claiming that the Jacksonville-based promotion is not worried about WWE while talking on Inside The Ropes:
“Well, what else is he going to say? You know, and to respond to that, we don’t see WWE as competition. And he was smart to say that," Jericho on Vince's comments. "We’re not worried about what WWE is and we haven’t been since day one. We weren’t worried about what NXT did. The whole time with the NXT vs. AEW war, which ended in a total abysmal failure for NXT, we never once had a TV screen watching what they were doing when we were doing it. We didn’t know what segments they were in. We didn’t know any of that. Now, the WWE way is you’re watching what the competition is doing when they were on, we didn’t do that." (H/T Inside The Ropes)
Well, it's hard to tell whether there is an actual competition between the two major wrestling promotions currently.
Let us know in the comments below how you feel about the comments by Vince McMahon.