Chris Jericho says that he is about to enter his “biggest contract year ever” as a wrestler.
Back in October 2022, news broke that Jericho inked a three-year deal to stay with AEW through to December 2025. The end of that deal is a little over a year away, meaning the inaugural AEW World Champion and “Learning Tree” is likely considering what his next deal as a wrestler could be.
Jericho recently acknowledged that his deal has roughly 14 months to go during an interview with Busted Open Radio.
“I’m about ready to go into my biggest contract year ever,” Jericho told Busted Open Radio. “And that’s one of the things I laugh about when people are like ‘Oh Jericho just has to be on TV.’ I don’t have to do anything, my boss puts me on TV because he pays me money to be there.”
Jericho mentioned how he has felt proud to play a major role in AEW through the years, and spoke about the important rights renewal that the promotion announced last week with Warner Bros. Discovery. He defended AEW’s role in the current media landscape, arguing that wrestling along with other live sports programming is essential for TV’s survival at the moment.
“To know that there’s that much money at stake – like you mentioned 25 years after the year 2000, the Attitude Era – it really does blow my mind,” he explained. “But I’m also very proud of that. This is a great time for the business, to be in it, for the fans, for everything else like I said. Because live sports, and I’ll call wrestling a sport right now, is the last bastion of advertising. Meaning: With all the streaming that’s going on, nobody is watching commercials anymore. There isn’t commercials. The only commercials that we have are [on] NFL, NHL, NBA, AEW, WWE, live sports. And that’s why it’s worth that much money. For people to go ‘Oh, they’re overpaying.’ It’s all they have left to make the money. And when WWE goes to Netflix, suddenly that changes the game as well. It really is an interesting time for the television business, for the wrestling business, for live sports and for advertising.”
