Former WWE superstar and current AEW performer Chris Jericho has said the former promotion's dip in ratings is their own fault as there's very little focus placed on creating new stars for the brand.
While WWE has been raking in record profits, TV ratings have suffered drops here and there. Jericho reckons it's down to Vince McMahon keeping the same names relevant over the years.
Jericho relayed his thoughts during an interview with Busted Open Radio and compared AEW's desire to make new wrestlers household names, singling out Darby Allin as one of the stars AEW has made into a main event draw.
“Our goal from the start was to make new stars. Because that’s what wrestling’s all about. It always has been," he explained (H/T WrestleTalk.com). "If you look at last week’s show, where we had Jungle Boy vs. Darby Allin in the main event, we had Shida vs. Tay Conti in a main event. Those are two kinds of fence post matches on our show and they both did a great number.
“We’ve made Darby Allin into a legit main event draw. I mean last night he’s in the main event with Ten for God’s sake and it will probably do a good number. I give us a full Barry Horowitz pat on the back for that because we set out to do it and we did it. It’s not hard to do; pick the right guy and just stick with them. We paired Darby with Sting, so he got that rub. And now Sting is almost, I’m not going to say lackey, but he’s almost Darby’s second at this point. And that’s probably exactly what he should be.
“If you look at what we’ve done with Jericho, MJF, Sammy Guevara, Santana and Ortiz, Wardlow, that’s another aspect. We are building these guys and girls because it just can’t be Jericho vs. Cody, vs. Kenny over and over again. Nor would we want it to be.
“When Vince goes to the investors (during the conference call) and says ‘the Raw ratings are down because we haven’t created any new stars, that’s completely on you guys! We (AEW) knew from the start we had to make stars. A lot of the guys on our show, Bucks, and Kenny included, Hangman Page; I said it on the Broken Skull Sessions, they weren’t known on a national level. On a national network television level. We’ve built them up, and then suddenly all these kinds of the second wave of guys and girls are getting in there.”
A Good Balance
AEW does owe plenty of success to former WWE superstars, such as Jericho himself, but they have brought a number of relatively unknown performers to the fore since they got to television.
As for WWE, their Friday night episode of SmackDown garnered lower viewership than in recent weeks despite boasting a Universal Title match between Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan.
Source: Busted Open Radio (H/T WrestleTalk.com)