Chris Jericho Praises AEW’s Growth, Mercedes Mone Almost Quit Wrestling After WWE Exit

During a recent appearance on the “Insight” podcast, ROH World Champion Chris Jericho discussed AEW’s growth and the new television rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On AEW’s new TV rights deal contract with WBD signed last year: “$185 Million a year for our new television contract, for a company that’s barely six years old, that doesn’t happen. I can’t think of another company in any genre that was able to get those types of numbers from a contract, so just to see how much we’ve been able to grow it.”

On AEW’s growth: “I’m really proud of how much we’ve grown. We’ve got a lot more growing to do, and a lot more growing pains, that’s the biggest thing.”

Jericho defeated Bandido to retain his ROH World Championship this past Saturday on AEW Collision.

During a recent interview with Katee Sackhoff, Mercedes Mone revealed that she contemplated leaving wrestling altogether following her unceremonious WWE exit.

Mone left WWE in May 2022 after issues with the company’s creative direction at that time.

Mone said, “I did. I did because of how hurt I was by it and how much it drove me into a place of darkness. I couldn’t believe something that brought me so much light in my life, that saved me so many times when I was a kid, brought me so much darkness. I was just like, I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t want to have so much stress where I’m legit killing myself because all of the stress that I’m creating or the sadness that I’m bringing to myself because of this bad mental talk my head. So, just a lot of healing, just a lot of healing and I told myself no, this is still what I freaking love, I love wrestling and I still have the same goal of when I was 10 years old and no one’s going to take that away.”

She continued, “I felt like at this time, maybe they want to see me gone forever, maybe people want to see me disappear. I’m like, I can’t give that to people, I can’t give up on myself and I can’t give up on my dream. I still have so much light and passion for this and such a chase and a drive. My light and my God told me, you’ve got to keep on going. So here’s New Japan, take your bags, go to Japan and go make one of your dreams happen. That happened and then just more dreams kept on coming and coming and then more talks with AEW happened and then the connection just kind of realigned and it was finally perfect until I signed a contract with AEW and it felt so right because I knew I could create so much more new dreams and memories for women’s wrestling.”