Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is days away from its theatrical premiere, but don’t expect to see WWE head Vince McMahon in the audience. According to the movie’s director and star Kevin Smith, he had been scheduled to appear along with co-star Jason Mewes on the premiere of WWE Smackdown Live on Fox last week, only for the sports entertainment company to cancel their appearance. The two were supposed to promote the upcoming premiere of their movie, but WWE put the kibosh on their appearance after they showed up on the live TV show of a rival wrestling league just two days earlier.
From the point of view of Mewes and Smith, appearing on both live wrestling shows in one week would have been great exposure for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Showing up on the premiere episode of AEW Dynamite also made sense as the league’s world champion Chris Jericho also has a role in the new movie. Appearing alongside Jericho for an interview on The Rich Eisen Show, Kevin Smith revealed how showing up on AEW television made the folks at WWE very unhappy, with company officials telling him he was no longer welcome on Smackdown Live. Here’s how Smith explains it from the interview.
“We were supposed to go do WWE, me and Jay, the very next day, which was [Friday Night Smackdown]. And then the morning after, because we were on the AEW show, [it] trended, like there was a lot of coverage and stuff. And so the next morning, we were told, the WWE was like, ‘You can’t come on anymore,’ and they canceled us. They kicked me and Jay off the show.”
This new war between WWE and AEW is highly reminiscent of the big wrestling boom from the ’90s, when WWE’s Raw and WCW’s Nitro fought for higher ratings every Monday night. Ultimately, WCW would fold when WWE bought out the company, and no wrestling program had bested WWE in the ratings since. That all changed last week with the debut of AEW Dynamite on TNT, which beat WWE NXT in the ratings that night by a wide margin. Worse yet for Vince McMahon and company, AEW did it again this week, stomping NXT in the ratings for the second week in a row. Not bad at all for an upstart organization.
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot will be playing in theaters starting on Oct. 15. With Smith and Mewes reprising the titular characters, the movie will satirize the Hollywood reboot trend by basically remaking Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The two will presumably later return in the upcoming sequel Clerks 3, which was also recently announced by Smith. Jay and Silent Bob might not be welcome on WWE television, but there are still clearly plenty of other places to catch the lovable stoners.
Related: How Kevin Smith Convinced Val Kilmer to Play Bluntman in Jay & Silent Bob Reboot
As for pro wrestling, you can take your pick as to which of many televised shows you want to watch each week. WWE will be offering wrestling shows on USA Network on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. Meanwhile, you can catch the new sheriff in town when AEW Dynamite airs Wednesday nights on TNT, head-to-head against WWE NXT. News of Kevin Smith’s WWE cancellation comes to us from The Rich Eisen Show on YouTube, and you can watch the full clip below.
