It was a big deal to see an icon like Sting make his return to the ring, and when he showed up at AEW fans were thrilled and rather shocked. Those types of surprises just don’t happen very much anymore, and while Sting had been rumored for AEW, he wasn’t spoiled in regards to his debut. That said, evidently, TNT wasn’t a huge fan of the surprise, not because of anything to do with Sting but because of what they perceive as a missed opportunity ratings-wise, and Chris Jericho talked about TNT’s reaction on his podcast (via Fightful).
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On the recent episode of Talk Is Jericho, Jericho said that TNT told AEW to not do that again, as they want to let viewers know ahead of time so they’ll watch the episode rather than save the surprise for pure shock value.
“When Sting was a surprise, [TNT] was like ‘don’t do that again.’ That’s why Paul Wight was announced on social media because TNT said, ‘We don’t want surprises, we want to take advantage of the ratings.’ We had a big surprise, a big announcement, and we used the big announcement to announce the next big surprise. I think that’s one of the reasons too, to spread it out a little,” Jericho said.
Paul Wright was announced ahead of time, and AEW also teased a big signing for the company, which turned out to be Christian Cage. Both of those make sense now when you factor in TNT wanting buzz to get viewers to tune in.
All of this could very well come up during Jericho’s upcoming appearance in the Broken Skull Sessions with Stone Cold Steve Austin, which is set to happen after night 2 of WrestleMania, and it will be the first time Jericho’s been on WWE TV since he departed for AEW.
“Jericho’s one of the most influential wrestlers over the last 30 years and he’s still going strong,” Austin said. “The guy has gotten over in every territory he’s ever been in. Chris has always been able to reinvent himself and do something new and fresh.”
“He’s a worker’s worker and a student of the game. Think about all the holy s— moments he’s had in his matches, or how he can light up a place on the microphone. Chris is one of the biggest personalities in the world, he’s the real deal,” Austin said.
