Add as a preferred source on Google Chris Jericho once again defended AEW as fan perception shifts around wrestling’s two biggest companies.
During a recent interview with Shakiel Mahjouri on SHAK Wrestling, the former AEW World Champion was asked about the opening in front of AEW amid criticism of WWE’s ad load and show quality.
Jericho said AEW has never built its plans around WWE.
“I think it’s the same as always in that we’ve never worried about WWE. Ever. We’ve only worried about our own show, our own product, the quality of what we’re doing. And it’s not a perceived upswing [for AEW]. You can see in the numbers, the tickets sold, the ratings. And I think all of that is just because no matter what’s going on around us, we keep our noses to the grindstone and worry about what we’re doing. And what kind of matches and quality and variety. We’ve never been a WWE-lite. We’ve been AEW since day one and that’s never changed. Sometimes you like it and sometimes you don’t, but we’ve never changed it.”
The numbers help frame that comment. The July 29, 2026 episode of Dynamite drew 676,000 viewers on TBS, and the July average was up 18% over the same month in 2025. Those figures do not include the HBO Max audience, which still isn’t broken out on a weekly basis, making a true comparison difficult.
As for ticket sales, All In on August 30, 2026 has already sold 36,565 tickets at Wembley Stadium, with 27 days still to go before the show.
The comments also come just a few months after Jericho signed a new multi-year deal with AEW.