"The last person anyone would expect to say that"- AEW boss Tony Khan fires back at Eric Bischoff over his comments
Tony Khan recently fired back at Eric Bischoff after Bischoff criticized the AEW boss for celebrating Rampage's head-to-head victory over SmackDown in the key demographic and for fanning the flames of conflict with WWE .
Eric Bischoff, a WWE Hall of Famer, stated on his podcast that Tony Khan should have AEW go head-to-head against WWE if he wants to talk about competition. The former WCW executive producer went on to say that until that happens, Tony Khan should "shut up."
The Jaguars boss, on Busted Open Radio, fired back at Eric Bischoff by pointing out that Bischoff should be the last person to talk about being quiet. (h/t: Fightful)
"Eric Bischoff is probably the last person anyone would expect to say that they think the President of a wrestling company should be quiet. When it comes to head-to-head competition, we were in a head-to-head competition this past week, it was only 30 minutes and I didn't ask for it. We were in our time slot and somebody came into our time slot aggressively, and it wasn't the first time they made a pretty aggressive move like that. We've generally responded pretty well and have been very successful. This is the first time on a Friday we've gone head-to-head like that and I thought it was pretty aggressive what they came in with, they loaded it up with the biggest stars they have," Tony Khan said.
"When Eric says ‘focus on the wrestling,’ I am focused on the wrestling and pushing these people and not running them out of the company like WCW did."
Tony Khan says on Busted Open Radio in response to Eric Bischoff's "shut up and wrestle" clip.
DAYUM TK! 😮
#AEW #WWE https://t.co/8EScFRTf0t
Tony Khan said that he had to make a choice about the AEW Rampage card
"I AM focused on the wrestling."
@TonyKhan discusses @AEW winning key demos in head-to-head competition last week 👀
@davidlagreca1 #AEW #AEWDynamite #AEWRampage https://t.co/WN90ubypbf
The card for AEW Rampage featured three matches and opened with CM Punk vs Matt Sydal. The rest of the card had Ruby Soho vs The Bunny as well as Men of the Year and Junior Dos Santos vs the Inner Circle.
Tony Khan chose to stick to his card for Rampage instead of altering it in response to WWE loading up the final half hour with huge stars like Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks and Brock Lesnar.
"I had to make that choice; do I change up the card we have, which has some big stars like CM Punk, who is one of the biggest names in wrestling, against Matt Sydal, who is a great high-flyer and technical wrestler and very respected, but not the biggest box office name in all of wrestling. That's a great match for the fans. I had to think if I should change that to a crazy box office match and go head-to-head, but I didn't, I stuck with the matches we had because I believe in our wrestlers, even if it wasn't necessarily the three most stacked matches. The irony is, this week's AEW Rampage also came in very stacked, whether there was going to be competitive or not. I generally try to make it a strong card and that card was announced before I had any idea we were going head-to-head," Tony Khan said.
AEW Rampage bettered Smackdown in some of the key demo ratings during the head-to-head, and Tony Khan has been buoyant over this victory over the last few weeks. Regardless of what goes on in AEW vs WWE, the real winners are the fans as they got to witness three hours of great wrestling.