After the creation of All Elite Wrestling, a lot of rumors started flying as to who would end up in the new promotion. So far, a number of past WWE superstars — such as Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose), Shawn Spears (Tye Dillinger), and Chris Jericho — have all ended up on AEW’s roster. Now, there are rumors suggesting that one particular Hall of Famer could have been kept by WWE, but Vince McMahon wasn’t willing to match the offer made to him.
Jim Ross is one of the best announcers in the history of professional wrestling. Fans of the wrestling world have heard his voice in New Japan Pro Wrestling, WCW, WWE, and most recently, All Elite Wrestling as he signed with them earlier this year.
For a very long time, Jim Ross had been committed to WWE and worked with them on countless TV shows, pay-per-views, and other projects. He is in the WWE Hall of Fame and will always go down as one of the greatest announcers of all time, but if so, why didn’t Vince McMahon want to keep him around?
Everyone knows that time moves on and things change as people get older. As for Good Ol’ JR, it simply appears as if AEW was willing to offer him more money than Vince was ever planning on paying.
Back in March, Jim Ross’ contract with WWE expired and there had been a chance he would re-sign with the company. That didn’t happen. However, he wasn’t unemployed for very long, as AEW swept right in to bring him onboard.
As with other WWE talents, Vince McMahon has been looking to lock up many of his superstars with big contracts and not allow them to leave. One would think that would be the case with Ross, but it simply wasn’t meant to be.
Ringside News is reporting that Ross actually said he had a conversation with Vince McMahon in which it was revealed that WWE “couldn’t” match the offer made to him by AEW. While that doesn’t seem likely, it is possible that is what Ross was told.
Everyone knows that Vince McMahon has plenty of money, and he could have easily matched the offer made by AEW to Jim Ross. The thing with this situation is that McMahon simply wasn’t willing to put up the amount of money needed to keep Ross in WWE, especially when he was being used so little.
