When Paul “Triple H” Levesque sat down for a 75-minute interview with Ariel Helwani, one of the biggest names in combat sports journalism, it was bound to produce some talking points. We’ve now reached the point where people in the industry have had time to absorb Levesque’s comments and respond, which is exactly what Chris Jericho has decided to do.
One of the portions of the interview that drew attention around the wrestling industry was Levesque dismissing the idea that NXT and AEW Dynamite were in direct competition when both shows were on against each other on Wednesday nights.
It never was that. Look first of all they beat our developmental system, good for them, right? No it was never that. There was never even a pressure of like you have to beat that.
While fans have gone back and forth on social media about the “our developmental system” part of that quote, Jericho was a lot more direct and blunt in his assessment when talking to Alex McCarthy of Inside the Ropes.
Once again it is just changing the narrative and changing the history, which makes me laugh. Because when it started, it was not developmental, it was a third brand, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and all the other bulls–t that they said, so of course we [AEW] beat the developmental or whatever you want to call it, but who gives a s–t?
It’s such old news, and the show sucks, NXT sucks, it’s not a good show, and they know it. Whether they were punished or not, they probably were punished. That’s probably why Triple H said those things because he is angry that we beat them, and he is probably angry that we exist. But you know, we don’t care about WWE, we care about our show, we care about putting on the best stories that we can put on, we care about building our fanbase and building our ratings.
The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. NXT wasn’t a pure developmental promotion during the time the two shows were on Wednesdays, but it also wasn’t like Dynamite was up against Raw. Nevertheless, Jericho’s retort is fair in the sense that it was definitely competition at the time, and WWE ended up blinking by moving NXT to another night.
In the end, though, most people are just going to focus on the “NXT sucks” part, and that’s understandable. It’s always fun when anyone throws a little gas on the fire of a wrestling rivalry, even if it’s all the way up at the company level.