Chris Jericho likens the growth of AEW to Fozzy’s rise in popularity.
Jericho has been with AEW from the start. As the company’s first world champion, he was watched the promotion rise up and become a genuine competitor to WWE, the leading promotion in the wrestling world for the last 20 years.
During a roundtable interview including Skewed and Reviewed Gareth Von Kallenbach at San Diego Comic-Con, Jericho was asked whether it was surreal to see so many fans with AEW shirts walking around the convention. In response, “The Wizard” explained that he knows how popular the company has become. He compared AEW’s growth to that of Metallica and his band, Fozzy, noting that in both cases, the fanbases started relatively small and branched out.
“It’s not surreal because I expect it. Because I know how popular we are, you know what I mean? I think we’ve done a really good job of kind of infiltrating the right way. The right way is having a grassroots loyal [fanbase]. It’s the way that Metallica or Iron Maiden became huge. They weren’t huge at the start, but they had a fanbase. Even with Fozzy, with our band, our fanbase at the beginning was very exclusive and very ardent and very much supportive of everything that we did.
“Then as you start getting radio play and getting hit singles, so then who is this band? Well there’s Iron Maiden shirts everywhere, there’s Fozzy shirts everywhere because the people that have been fans from the start are diehards, and then that permeates throughout the music world. Same thing with AEW. Our fanbase was diehard from the beginning, and now it permeates throughout the wrestling world. This is pop culture personified here. Doesn’t surprise me at all. That’s why we’re here in the first place.”
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