During a recent edition of “Foundation Radio”, Eric Bischoff commented on the potential for an WWE/AEW crossover match, AEW challenging WWE, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On whether cinematic matches could become the norm in wrestling: “The cinematic match doesn’t provide for the immediate emotional charge that a live audience delivers to the product. I think we’ll see more of them, and they’ll become a regular feature a couple of times per year. I think they’ll improve in quality to the point where they will be mini-movies. But I don’t see them replacing two or three hours [of television].”
On a potential WWE and AEW crossover match and how AEW could challenge WWE: “I know that everybody wants to talk about what was the Wednesday Night Wars and comparing AEW to WWE. Here’s what has to happen for that to be viable, the AEW/WWE approach – AEW’s gotta go head-to-head. There’s gotta be a fight. There has to be a battle. Going back to storytelling, what are the stakes? In a case where you’re laying down an AEW vs. WWE match, champion vs. champion – that sounds really cool if you’re a cosplay wrestling journalist and a fan of those people. But it only works if there are stakes. And the only stakes that matter are who turns out the biggest audience. That’s a fight that people will get behind. That’s a fight that people want to be a part of. That’s what happened during the Monday Night Wars. I’ll be honest, I didn’t have that strategy in my head going into it. Ted Turner was the one to say Eric, go do this. I didn’t plan it.
“Why did that work? Because it was real, and because people were invested. They were invested in the characters, they were invested in the fight between the two companies. That actually was more important to them, whether they knew it or not, from a storytelling perspective, the battle between WCW and WWE was a more interesting story than the battle between the two people in the ring. That’s why it worked. So, until AEW gets to the point where they’re delivering a similar-sized audience and start trying to take some real estate – it’s a war. If you want a war, you gotta have a freaking war. You can’t just, you gotta do it. AEW needs to take away some WWE real estate. And when that starts happening, people will believe the war. And then they’ll be invested. But otherwise, it’s just cosplay.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
