Last Tuesday, WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite went head-to-head for the first time since 2021 when the latter was forced to move to Tuesday night. WWE made a deliberate effort to load the card up with as much top-tier talent as possible and it paid off for them.
When the ratings came in, NXT - a show which featured appearances from the likes of John Cena, Cody Rhodes, Rhea Ripley, LA Knight, and even The Undertaker - drew 921,000 viewers and a 0.30 rating in the 18-49 demographic. AEW Dynamite, meanwhile, only managed 609,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating.
This has been a hot-button topic over the past week but former WWE Superstar, and current AEW wrestler, Chris Jericho has now chimed in.
Talking to The Messenger, he said, "You know, you can only bring in Cena and Undertaker and Cody and everybody else so much because nobody wants to work on their secondary show all the time. And it was a fun little, 'Hey, F-you AEW.' I didn’t even really worry about it."
"It was just an opportunity to stick it to us with stunt casting," he added before revealing that he pushed AEW President Tony Khan to even the odds by enlisting personalities such as Mike Tyson, Snoop Dogg, and Shaq.
"This would be like a football game where you bring in all of your top stars from years prior and beat the other team 30-26," Jericho explains. "It's like a video game. Let's bring in Tom Brady from five years ago and then play him for one game against Chris Jericho. OK, you guys won, but you only won 30-26."
"So, don't get too far up your own ass because you didn't do that good of a job as far as crushing us. And our show was better than theirs, quite frankly. So, it doesn't bother me. It's competition, man. It's good for the fans, it's good for the companies."
Jericho is clearly trying not to sound overly bothered while, well, being bothered. It's probably for the best that Khan didn't take his advice because John Cena and Cody Rhodes are a much bigger draw to wrestling fans than washed-up celebrities and an attempt to counter-program WWE would have made the loss even more humiliating.
Still, Jericho is right that WWE delivered an episode of NXT which wasn't exactly the norm and that's not sustainable on a weekly basis. Still, the days of AEW nipping at the company's heel appear to be well and truly over.