Chris Jericho On Why He Chose AEW Over WWE

Chris Jericho re-signed with AEW earlier this year after months and months of speculation over his future, with it believed at one time that a move back to WWE was an inevitability. After making his AEW return, his reasoning for choosing one company over the other was a discussed topic. Jericho has now been asked this question directly. 

Speaking with Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, Jericho was asked straight up about his decision to choose AEW over WWE. 

“When it was time to kind of start thinking about coming back, obviously you weigh your options. And there is a lot of factors, but the bottom line is this, and this was the one that really clinched it for me, was I’ve got skin in the game in AEW. I helped start AEW, and in a lot of ways, if there was no Chris Jericho, there might not have been an AEW. And there certainly wasn’t one before me. There was a WWE before Chris Jericho. There was a New Japan before. There was a CMLL before. And there’ll be an AEW after I leave, obviously. And I can’t wait to see how much bigger the company gets over the next 10 years. But when it came down to it, it was like, I like working for Tony - we had to work some things out, which we did. It wasn’t hard to do.”

Reports soon after Jericho’s return to AEW suggested that a big part of his decision to remain with the company was due to the expectation that a WWE return would require him to send outside projects. Since his return, he has been going mostly by the ring name “Jericho”, an idea which is believed to have come from the man himself.