Last Tuesday night, WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite went head-to-head in a ratings battle. TBS moved Dynamite from its usual Wednesday timeslot due to the MLB Playoffs, and NXT emerged as the victor.
WWE brought in top stars like Cody Rhodes, John Cena, Asuka, LA Knight, and The Undertaker for NXT, which garnered 921,000 live viewers and a 0.30 rating in the key 18-49 demographic. AEW Dynamite only managed to attract 609,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating in the key demo.
When asked about the ratings battle, Chris Jericho shared his thoughts with 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.”
Jericho also revealed that he tried to convince AEW President Tony Khan to bring in Mike Tyson, Snoop Dogg, and Shaq as a response, but Khan didn’t want to go down that path. He said,
“I told Tony, ‘Well, if you want to fire back, bring in Shaq and Snoop Dogg and those types of guys, Mike Tyson. But Tony didn’t do that. We relied on our show and our guys and our girls, and that’s the way it’s always been for us.”
“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. 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.”
