TNT Threatened To Pull AEW Dynamite If They Smoked On The Show Again

Chris Jericho is a veteran in the pro wrestling world who competed all over the world over the past three decades. He is also proud to be working in AEW and isn’t afraid to show it. Being a veteran in the business, he doesn’t really have much care about what his haters have to say.

TNT is known to accept a lot of violence including blood and guts, pizza cutters, light tubes, parking lot brawls, and much more. However, it seems they draw the line when it comes to smoking.

While speaking to Stephanie Chase, Chris Jericho revealed that a segment on Dynamite in 2019 prior to AEW Full Gear enraged TNT so much that they threatened to pull AEW Dynamite if they ever showed smoking on the show again.

TNT is rolling with it because the ratings are great and the demo is high. Obviously, there’s certain things we’ve been reprimanded for, there are a few things I could tell you. We’re not stupid, if there’s something that goes on that the parent company doesn’t like, we don’t do it anymore. That’s why AEW is as successful as we are because we’re not afraid to take a few chances and we’re not worried about taking chances or getting slapped on the wrist if we do something that we shouldn’t do. We just don’t do it again.

Advertising

Advertising

It hasn’t been that many times. For me, there’s a few times I can recall when they say, ‘don’t do that again.’ One of them was when we beat up Dustin Rhodes in the parking lot and as we left, I lit up a cigar. They did not like that. No smoking allowed on the show. They were super angry about it. No smoking allowed! I was like, “Really, out of all the things, that’s what they are mad at?’ They were very adamant, they didn’t want any smoking on the show and if we did it again, I don’t know if this was used but the way it was told me was, ‘we’ll pull the show if you guys do it again.’ Alright, I don’t need to be smoking. I just did it because It thought it was an asshole thing to do. Apparently, so did they.”

The segment took place on the October 30, 2019 episode of AEW Dynamite when the Inner Circle broke Dustin Rhodes’ arm in the parking lot. This was when Chris Jericho was feuding with Cody Rhodes and at the end of the segment, Jericho was seen smoking a cigar.

Jericho will be partnering up with Jake Hager and will square off against Scorpio Sky & Ethan Page on AEW Rampage Grand Slam this week. We will have to wait and see who will win the match.

h/t to Fightful for the quotes.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!