A wise man (whose name isn’t Paul Heyman) once said, “Controversy creates cash.” That man was Eric Bischoff who used that maxim as the title for his biography chronicling his wrestling career.
He spent most of that career leading the charge against Vince McMahon and the WWE/-F as the President and creative head of their competitor World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
With Ted Turner’s deep pockets behind them, they had the most success of any company that took the fight to VKM, so Bischoff knows a thing or two about going head-to-head with the biggest wrestling promotion.
He’s also well aware of their inner workings, having worked for his old foe as well, and he doesn’t see any other company come close to the well-oiled WWE machine or as serious competition – especially not AEW.
On his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff has routinely criticized All Elite Wrestling for its talent, booking, production, and logic shortcomings. He’s also not a fan of their angles that increasingly involve founder Tony Khan.
Closing out a recent episode of Dynamite, Khan was attacked and piledriven by his executive vice presidents Matt and Nick Jackson (the tag team of The Young Bucks) and the former Jungle Boy-turned-Scapegoat Jack Perry (son of Luke Perry), effectively pitting them against their boss.
Weeks before, they aired backstage footage of ex-employee CM Punk choking Perry in an argument and walking off. Punk’s departure followed the incident, which happened last summer so the timing was late on AEW’s part.
Showing the tape also looked like a desperate ploy for ratings, and Bischoff is not impressed with any of it or the comparisons of Khan’s work with his EVPs to himself and the nWo when they changed the landscape of wrestling forever.
“If they had set this whole scene up as a parody last night, I probably would have been all about it. I would have enjoyed it. At least, it would have been entertaining,” Bischoff said. He added a Saturday Night Live sketch of the same scene would look exactly like it.
“If Lorne Michaels and the team at Saturday Night Live was going to produce a wrestling skit of the beginning of the nWo, this would have been what they produced. It was so f-king bad, it was parody. It was comedy,” he declared.
“And the really sad part is they are taking this s–t seriously. They meant that to be a serious angle. It was so f–ing horrible,” Bischoff continued.
“This was, without a doubt, the worst, most horribly produced professional wrestling show for primetime on a major cable outlet in the last – maybe forever – years.”
Overall, he considers the entire episode of Dynamite “the s–ts.” “I would refer to it as ‘indie-riffic,’ but that would be an insult to every indie promoter around the world.” He has an even lower opinion of the Punk/Perry footage, though he understands why they decided to air it.
“Showing that footage makes sense, I’ll give you that. I mean, in the sense that okay, there was at least a reason that we can understand to do it. I get that, and I agree,” he said.
He continued, “It doesn’t change the fact that it was a f–ing horrible idea to show the footage. Yes, there was a reason for it. The reason for it is to lay out this f–ing horrible angle that’s not going to get anybody over.”
Bischoff doesn’t foresee anybody getting over in AEW; his view is quite the opposite. And that view is AEW will bury more careers than it helps.
“Everybody that’s come in from WWE that were established stars, and what’s happened to their careers. They’re making a lot of money, and I’m happy for them, but that’s where it ends. It’s a f–ing career killer,” he says.
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