Vince McMahon was asked about WWE seeing AEW as competition during last week’s Q2 earnings call with investors. This is where he noted that he doesn’t see AEW in the same way that he did with WCW.
AEW’s Chris Jericho spoke with Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes and noted that McMahon was smart to say what he did because what else was he going to say.
“We’re not worried about what WWE is and we haven’t been since day one,” Jericho said. “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.
Jericho stated that he thinks WWE is watching what the competition is doing, but AEW is just focused on what they’re doing and he thinks that’s one of the reasons why AEW has done so well. He noted that AEW couldn’t control the fact that NXT was put up against Dynamite so they can only control what All Elite Wrestling is doing.
“So WWE is not competition for us,” Jericho said. “We’re competition for ourselves. So for Vince to say that – to me, it’s probably reverse psychology and that he does see us as competition. But deep down inside, what does it really matter?”
Jericho stated that while WWE has billions of dollars locked in via TV deals right now, AEW is working towards that.
“Now when our demo ends up beating theirs and TV deals start coming in for us at the billions, then I truly think there will be a lot of competition because now you’re fighting for money, you’re not just fighting for bragging rights – and bragging rights don’t mean anything.”
Jericho ended by stating that it’s the money that a company makes that counts.
