Professional wrestling legend and top AEW Star Chris Jericho recently appeared on an episode of AEW’s Unrestricted podcast, where he spoke about topics such as how his match against Kenny Omega at NJPW’s WrestleKingdom 12 did big business for the promotion’s streaming service NJPW World as well as ticket sales in the Tokyo Dome and how that convinced Tony Khan to launch AEW.

Chris Jericho said:

“I think it was the fact that there was so much of a buzz, but the cold hard fact of the business that it did, because New Japan World, which is New Japan’s streaming service, I believe subscriptions went up like 300 percent, if not more, when that match was announced.” “I know in the arena, in the [Tokyo] Dome, it sold an extra 15,000 tickets, which out of 50,000 tickets, think about that. That’s 30 percent of the tickets sold just from that match. So, I think a combination of the tickets and the business of the streaming is where Tony really thought, ‘I could do this.’”

Chris Jericho also spoke about how due to the demo numbers they were doing Warner decided to give AEW a huge TV deal.

Chris Jericho said:

“The demos that we were getting were so big, that’s when the network decided to sign us, rip up the [ad revenue] share, and sign us to a four-year, $160 million deal.”

You can check out Chris Jericho’s full comments at this link. H/T to Wrestling Inc. for transcribing the above quotes.