Chris Jericho Calls Tony Khan A Genius For Running Arthur Ashe Stadium Instead Of MSG

Chris Jericho loves AEW’s newfound home in NYC.

Recently, AEW played host to 20,000 fans in New York City as the promotion christened Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens as a unique top-tier venue for pro wrestling,

Part of the four hours of wrestling, Chris Jericho teamed with Jake Hager to go against Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page. Of course, as with almost every Chris Jericho match in AEW, the New York City crowd loved singing along with Judas,Chris Jericho theme song by his own band, Fozzy.

Speaking on the REINVENTED podcast with Jen Eckhart, Chris Jericho credited Tony Khan for swerving from what many people thought would be the obvious debut in New York City, a show at Madison Square Garden. Jericho would say that it’s smarter to run a stadium like Arthur Ashe Stadium because most who run Madison Square Garden don’t actually turn a profit and are just running in the historic venue because of its legacy.

“It was unbelievable. There was a little bit of genius on Tony Khan’s part because everyone was talking about Madison Square Garden. What people don’t understand is, to play the Garden is very expensive, for one. You don’t really make money at the Garden, you just do it because it’s Madison Square Garden. Everyone was saying, ‘AEW has to go to the Garden, that’s going to be your coming out party in New York.’ Tony was like, ‘What if I don’t want to do the Garden? There must be somewhere else.’ He found this Arthur Ashe Stadium. The moment I went in there, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this place is amazing. It’s better than the Garden.’ The seats go straight up in the air, so all the noise comes right down to the ring.

“People are over top of you and it was really cool to see this place. This atmosphere was off the charts crazy. We don’t need to go to the Garden now because we created a new place for us because there’s never been a wrestling show at Arthur Ashe. We were the debut for that and what an amazing venue and building. We do things outside of the box. ‘Let’s do a show in New York.’ ‘If you want to be big in New York, you have to go to the Garden.’ ‘I disagree, what if we find our own place in New York, make it the AEW homebase in New York, and turn that into the place to be.’ I’ll bet you there will be other wrestling companies in Arthur Ashe. They’re probably already negotiating it now. We did it first and it is ours.”

Grand Slam featured matches from CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, and more. You can check out the viewership information for the Grand Slam events in our resources section.

Should you use any portion of the quotes above, transcription credit should go to Fightful with a H/T linking back to this article.