Eric Bischoff – ‘Tony Khan Is In Over His Head With AEW’
On the latest edition of his “Strictly Business” podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed his belief that AEW President Tony Khan is in over his head regarding the way he operates AEW, especially considering the vast amount of drama the promotion has witnessed over the past year.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On whether AEW and Tony Khan have too much programming: “Yes and no. Look, I’m not knocking anybody here, but I don’t think anybody can look at the last six months of AEW and consider it a well-oiled machine. They’re still going through a lot of growing pains, just like I did. Learning on the job, just like I did. You know, catastrophes that happen to you that you are completely out of your control but you have to deal with it, just like I did. I think at this stage of their evolution in terms of management and as a corporate entity? Yes, Yes, I think they’re significantly over their head.”
On the evidence that Tony Khan is in over his head: “And I think the evidence is what we’re reading and hearing about, which is getting much more coverage and traction in social media than the event itself. Whether it’s Wheeler pulling a gun on somebody allegedly, the chaos with who can be at what event and who can show up when someone else is there. That kind of juvenile high school nonsense. All that is a manifestation of a lack of maturity as a company. And I’m not talking about emotional maturity or anything like that. I’m talking about maturity as a company, and I think they’ve taken on a lot. And I don’t think, as evidenced by what we’re reading here or hearing about that, the management structure in AEW is up to speed yet. And dumping more content on it and hiring more talent only exacerbates that.”
On how long until there are widespread sponsors on wrestler’s gear: “That, I don’t know what we’ll ever see. Now on Premium Live Events or PPVs, or whatever they are called, depending on who’s putting them on, possibly. Because there’s no conflict of interest there. But for example, if I’m a performer, I’m in the ring for WWE and have a sponsor willing to pay me personally $100,000 to wear my name, their brand, on my ring gear. Cool. Go to WWE and say, ‘Yeah, we don’t have a problem with that.’ But the network might be because they may have an advertiser they’re doing long-term business with that is in direct competition with them, and they’re not interested in that. So it’s trickier in that respect. I do think possibly, we’ve seen it in UFC. I even think Brock Lesnar even got away with it a couple of times in WWE with a beef jerky company he was working with for a while. But I think across the board, as a regular thing I don’t think you’ll see it on weekly television, just because of that conflict of interest between the production, the production company in this case, WWE or AEW, and the network, who’s got the relationship with advertisers. If Ford is a major sponsor and major advertiser over at Fox, right? I don’t think the executives at Fox want to see Chevy Advertising and promotion within their program will keep them on their program.”
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