Chris Jericho Corrects Reports Of His NJPW Earnings
Chris Jericho has provided some clarity on the amount of money he made in NJPW after some reports came out recently with information that he says is wrong.
During his 30+ year career as a pro wrestler, Chris Jericho has seen it all and done it all with the best wrestlers in the business. After spending nearly 20 years as one of the biggest names in WWE history, Jericho started working for New Japan in late 2017 leading to the Wrestle Kingdom 12 match with Kenny Omega in January 2018. The match drew a big audience for the show with Jericho getting a lot of credit for it.
Since that feud with Omega, Jericho has gone over to NJPW plenty of times although that stopped after COVID-19 became a global pandemic in early 2020.
As one of the biggest stars in AEW since early 2019, Jericho could definitely make more appearances for NJPW in the future.
It was earlier this week when Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer said this about the kind of money that Mercedes Varnado (aka Sasha Banks in WWE) was asking for her appearances in NJPW starting on January 4th at Wrestle Kingdom 17:
“Voices of Wrestling said it’s a per appearance deal at the highest price that Bushiroad [NJPW’s parent company] has ever paid anyone and they said it was more than Chris Jericho. Which, to me, sounds, I don’t know. Chris Jericho ended up being worth $100,000 which is what – Chris Jericho made $100,000 a shot when he was working for New Japan. $100,000 a shot, with Chris Jericho he was actually underpaid because of how much revenue he drove between New Japan World and ticket sales at the different shows and things like that. But I don’t see her driving that revenue but I guess we’ll see.”
As is usually the case when something like that gets said by a well-known wrestling journalist like Meltzer, it ends up spreading all around the wrestling world. Jericho decided to provide some clarity in the late evening of December 15th with this tweet:
“For the record, the money I reportedly made during my run with @njpw1972 from 2018-2020 online currently is completely wrong. I never had a flat per appearance deal, I was paid according to the event. And I made more per event than I did for MOST of my Wrestlemania matches.”
For the record, the money I reportedly made during my run with @njpw1972 from 2018-2020 online currently is completely wrong. I never had a flat per appearance deal, I was paid according to the event. And I made more per event than I did for MOST of my Wrestlemania matches.
— Chris Jericho (@IAmJericho) December 16, 2022
On the December 14th edition of AEW Dynamite, 52-year-old Chris Jericho had a match against a newcomer named Action Andretti. Instead of Jericho picking up an easy win, Andretti put up a fight and eventually won clean with a Standing Shooting Press after about ten minutes. The crowd loved it while Jericho was very angry about it. Considering the circumstances, many people are calling it the biggest upset in AEW history and one of the biggest in all of wrestling history as well.