During the WWE's second-quarter 2021 financials call, Vince McMahon was asked about AEW being competition to WWE.
McMahon commented that he didn't see AEW as competition, at least in the same way that he saw WCW as competition in the 90s.
Speaking to Kenny McIntosh of Inside The Ropes, Chris Jericho offered a response to his former boss.
"Well, what else is he going to say? You know, and to respond to that, we don’t see WWE as competition. And he was smart to say that," said Jericho. “We’re not worried about what WWE is and we haven’t been since day one. 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. We didn’t know what segments they were in. We didn’t know any of that. Now, the WWE way is you’re watching what the competition is doing when they were on, we didn’t do that. And it was no disrespect. We just didn’t care. We were too busy worrying about our own company and about our own stories, and about our own show to care what anybody else is doing. And that’s one of the reasons why we did so well is that we were concentrating on AEW, not anything else.”
Though the two sides may not see each other as competition, NXT did run head-to-head against AEW on Wednesday nights from October 2019 to April 2021.
Speaking on the Wednesday Night Wars, Jericho said, "We could not control the fact that NXT was put up against us. We couldn’t control the fact if, you know, there’s a Beatles reunion put up against us, you know, whatever. We can’t control that. All we can control is our own show on the quality of what we’re doing. And we’ve worked very hard to improve the things that need improving and to focus on the things that we’re doing great. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve gone as far as we have and why our demos have crept up to where they are and where our ratings have crept up to where they are.So WWE is not competition for us. 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?"
NXT ended up moving to Tuesday nights after losing 63 of 75 weeks in terms of overall viewership and 74 of 75 weeks in the demographic rating. The 18 to 49 demographic rating for AEW Dynamite has landed them on top of cable for three straight weeks on Wednesdays.
"The WWE is the WWE and they have billions of dollars locked in TV deals and we are 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. It’s the money that you make from it that counts. So we’ll see what happens," said Jericho.
Jericho is set to compete in his third labour on Wednesday's Dynamite when he faces Juventud Guerrera.
Fightful will have live coverage of AEW Dynamite beginning at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
