Chris Jericho comments on WWE stars using AEW to leverage better deals from Vince McMahon (Exclusive)
A lot has been made of Randy Orton re-signing with WWE despite strongly joking/hinting at a move to AEW. The consensus seems to be that Orton was leveraging AEW against WWE in order to get Vince McMahon and co. to offer him a higher new deal.
This certainly seems to have been the case with other WWE Superstars whose deals were close to being up, but other stars like The Revival, Luke Harper and Mike Bennett have all tried to leave the company since.
This is something that I asked Chris Jericho about during a recent interview, referencing the Randy Orton situation specifically and he had a lot to say on the matter. Here it is.
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?
"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."
Jericho then went on to say that he actually doesn't mind if people use AEW to 'make more money off of Vince'.
"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."
As you can see Jericho certainly seems to think that Vince McMahon is splashing the cash on WWE wrestlers to prevent them from going to AEW.
You can catch the full interview we had with Chris Jericho here, it's definitely not to be missed! However, if you're looking for the full audio interview, we have it on our official YouTube channel!
What do you think about Jericho's comments? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!