AEW's Chris Jericho Says His Time With This Defunct Promotion Put Him On The Map

AEW star Chris Jericho became a household name during his time with WCW, and his star power increased a few years later in WWE. However, he acknowledges that the brief time he spent in ECW got him noticed in the pro wrestling world.

Jericho recalled how ECW was the place to go for wrestlers in the '90s if they couldn't get into WWE or ECW, and that he had tried to get his foot in to the promotion for a long time, but ECW booker Paul Heyman snubbed him over phone calls, despite the likes of Mick Foley and Perry Saturn putting in a word for him. Heyman eventually called and asked him to join ECW, which he believes helped get his name out there in pro wrestling.

"So anyways, literally one year after I started calling Paul E  — I think it was around February of '96 — I get a message on my machine [saying] 'Chris Jericho, Paul Heyman [here]. I've been trying to get a hold of you for one whole year.' So that's kind of how it all started," Jericho said on his recent appearance at Horror, Rock & Wrestle Fest 2025. "And then finally, I guess he was just ready to bring me in, and that's where it started. It's funny because a lot of people think I'm like an ECW Original or that I spent a lot of time there, but I actually only wrestled 18 matches — nine weekends, two matches per weekend — so 18 matches total over the course of four or five months. But it was enough to kind of put me on the map. Once again, it was the first time — besides Smoky Mountain Wrestling with Jim Cornette — that I ever really had some real exposure wrestling in the United States. So that was kind of where it all really started taking off after that."

Jericho's run in ECW in 1996 eventually landed him a position in WCW, which he joined a year later, and then later in WWE in 1999.