"That pissed me the f**k off" - WWE Hall of Famer on how AEW President Tony Khan disrespected him
WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff has commented on his recent tensions with AEW President Tony Khan.
Bischoff has been critical of AEW programming and Tony Khan's comments regarding WCW over the past few months. Khan has spoken a number of times about avoiding the mistakes WCW made that eventually led to their demise.
The WWE Hall of Famer has scoffed at those comments repeatedly, citing WCW's brief ratings win over WWF in the Attitude Era. Bischoff talked about this on his new “Strictly Business” podcast on AdFreeShows.com at WrestleCon. He had the following to say:
“What really bothered me was when Tony Khan said, ‘Well, if Ted Turner knew as much about booking as I do WCW would have never failed.’ That pissed me the f**k off. That was so disrespectful. And I gave an honest response to an honest question. And that honest response kind of created an opportunity for Tony to feel his need to respond, which I understand. I don’t hold him against it for that. But that’s where it kind of escalated. But it doesn’t have anything to do with my feelings about AEW.” (h/t: WrestlingNews.co)
Eric Bischoff:“What really bothered me was when Tony Khan said, ‘Well, if Ted Turner knew as much about booking as I do WCW would have never failed.’ That pissed me the f**k off"
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Eric Bischoff believes WCW and AEW cannot be compared
Seeing a lot of “ROH isn’t WCW” sentiment. You’re missing the big picture. The ROH library gives Tony Khan a great foundation for a streaming platform. Combined with the AEW library (and potentially AEW live events) and there is likely a licensing deal to be had.
Eric Bischoff claimed that WCW was a highly profitable company with huge ratings and pay-per-view buys hence should not be compared to All Elite Wrestling.
“What changed in the discourse between Tony Khan and I was that Tony felt whenever he felt it necessary to come out and say that, you know, Dynamite is where WCW was in 1996. Well, come on, is there anybody here that buys that? You know, WCW was beating the WWE at that time. WCW was an extremely profitable company at that time. WCW was promoting massive pay per views at that time. Many of them not just one or two or three or four a year. You can’t compare WCW to AEW but he felt like, yeah, he’s got to try to get himself over. So he threw that out there, which was fine. That part didn’t really bother me.”
Tony Khan has undoubtedly assembled an impressive roster, bolstered by the recent additions of Samoa Joe, William Regal and Toni Storm. Whether he can emulate WCW and overtake WWE in terms of ratings remains to be seen.