During the latest edition of his “After 83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff commented on the recent WWE releases, whether AEW will pick them up, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how he feels bad for the talent that got released yesterday: “My heart goes out, my thoughts go out, I should say, to some degree my heart, because some of these people I know, and some I know quite well, and have worked with and am friends with, but many of them I don’t know, but nonetheless, you can’t help but feel bad for them.”
On his advice to the talent that got released: “Anytime you get let go, it’s a little bit of a shock to the system, and you’re kind of dazed and confused and wondering what’s going to happen next, but a lot of that talent, if not all the talent, if they didn’t have a high degree on skill and abilities, they wouldn’t have been there in the first place, at WWE, so things will turn around, it’ll get better. Take the opportunity to reflect a little bit, recharge, and just get ready to return, stronger than ever. Take advantage of the time off to heal up if you’ve been on the road a lot, over the last year or two or ten, think about your career, think about your character, think about some new ways you can modify or evolve that character to make it even more entertaining. Take an acting class online, you don’t even have to take a class in person, learn how to write comedy, learn how to do anything other than things you already know, to help improve your ability to be entertaining when we all come out of this.”
On the possibility of AEW signing up a lot of the released talent: “Theoretically at least, they can go to AEW, but how bloated can that roster get? They don’t do house shows, they don’t tour, they do a PPV once a month or whatever it is. Nobody’s really talking about it as opposed to WCW when guys like Dave Meltzer couldn’t wait to disclose internal information about WCW that was leaked to them by talent, you don’t hear any of that coming out of AEW. I have a pretty good idea what some of the talent is making and it’s astronomical sums of money compared to even what some of them have made at the peak of their careers in WWE or WCW. So there is a substantial talent budget there and it’s a talent budget for a roster that isn’t generating a lot of revenue other than television, and of course, PPV, so how many top talents, how many of those names from WWE, can AEW afford to hire? And if they bring in three, four, five, or maybe they only bring in one, that makes sense, one or two of the bigger names, I’m sure Rowan is a guy, I’d be surprised if they aren’t looking at who got released, super guy by the way, loved working with him in WWE. But there are a handful of talents that I’m sure AEW is thinking about right now, but to think that they will absorb eight or nine or ten people, it’s not realistic.”
On which name from the list of released talent surprised him the most: “I think Rusev was probably the biggest name on the list, biggest active current name talent on the list, that surprised me a little bit. He’s been gone for a long time, he’s still a little bit of a fresh character. I don’t know what the backstory is with him, what the situation is with him, perhaps his contract was coming up anyway.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
