Chris Jericho opened up in an interview with SportsKeeda about why he didn’t think that Randy Orton was actually going to end up in AEW after all.
This comes after Orton had teased on social media that he could be leaving WWE for the rival promotion. That speculation came to a close when he signed a new deal with WWE.
According to Jericho, he never thought that Orton would leave and it all comes down to money unless Orton was dead set on leaving.
“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 would sidetrack away from Orton to talk about how there are some guys who do want to leave WWE. He brought up how AEW is trying to avoid becoming old-school TNA where practically every notable WWE star to be release would come to the promotion. He brought up how Jon Moxley did make the move 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.”
The reason for that is due to the guys working for WWE now got huge raises instead of going to the independent circle to make 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.”
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Jericho stated that it doesn’t mean that talent will be getting millions and millions of dollars to come because that’s not what AEW is doing. He thinks AEW has assembled an awesome roster with at least ten to twelve potential main eventers.
Jericho knows that AEW will have to build all those guys up first to build up all the mid-card guys and so on to create stars.
“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.”
