On a recent edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff weighed in on Mercedes Mone potentially signing with AEW after talks with WWE fell apart over money.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On AEW bringing in former WWE stars: “How many times have we seen big names come from WWE to AEW and people speculating about how it’s going to impact the business and what’s going to happen, and nothing happens? It doesn’t matter who you bring in there. And I made the comment, I’m going to make it again: AEW is quickly becoming TNA. And I got nearly a million views on that comment, and out of the probably half million responses, everybody buried my comment and me along with it.”
On proof that it hasn’t worked in the past: “But this is a perfect example of what I meant. We’ve seen so many big names come into AEW. Pick one; let’s put CM Punk off to the side. Pick any other one, and the net impact on the growth of the business, other than selling t-shirts has been zip. Nada. The television audience continues to deteriorate while WWE continues to grow. You look at their ticket sales outside of anomalies or outliers, I should say, like the UK, and they’re not doing nearly as well as they were in the past there. Have you looked at their Dynamite shows just — you know, check out WrestleTix on social media and you can see their ticket sales. And you know, they’re playing in 10,000 [to] 15,000 seat venues, but they’re scaling them down to 4,000. And a week before the event, they haven’t sold out yet. So it doesn’t matter.”
On telling Dixie Carter about this when he was in TNA Wrestling: “And I used to tell Dixie all the time when she’d want to bring in big names. I know I get busted for that. It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, but look at all the WWE guys you brought into TNA.’ I didn’t bring them in. I didn’t even bring myself in. I didn’t even really want the job. Dixie Carter had brought in Mick Foley and Sting and Kurt Angle and Christian Cage and so many others before I ever got there, with the idea that you’re bringing in these big WWE names, it’s going to move the needle.
“And I would always tell Dixie — and she hated me for this. I think word for word, I said to her one day ‘Dixie, it doesn’t matter if you brought Undertaker and you dropped him from the ceiling as a surprise into the middle of the TNA ring and then John Cena.’ This is when they were both, you know, obviously at the top in WWE years ago. ‘Then you have John Cena run to the TNA ring, and you shoot an angle. It won’t matter. It just doesn’t because of the brand, the perception of it, and the scale of it is so small that it won’t get over.’ And that’s the problem that I think AEW has: they don’t know how to use those big names in a way that grows their business. It grows their budget, but it doesn’t grow their business. And if anybody can prove to me that they are not outliers, show me what’s happened when big names have come in, television ratings to buyrates. Show me a pattern. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, but I won’t be because I watched that stuff. I look at it, and it interests me.”
