Eric Bischoff Berates AEW All In 2023 – ‘Not Sustainable’
On a recent edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed the AEW All In 2023 pay-per-view event from Wembley Stadium, his belief that AEW caters to a smaller audience that’s not sustainable from a business standpoint, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the lack of singles matches on the show: “I was pretty supportive of Tony [Khan] and AEW going into not having a lot of buildup going into the match or the event. And I still am, but I would think the takeaway would have been better had there been more singles matches that had great psychology in the ring. And we didn’t see that. What we saw was a lot of gimmick matches and — a lot of gimmick matches. I mean, every match was almost like, everything but the main event I think was a gimmick match of some kind, and maybe this match [Golden Elite vs. Bullet Club Gold & Takeshita]. It’s just too much, just too indy. It’s too indyriffic. Even though it was in front of 80,000 people it was just too indy riffic for me.”
On the notion that the audience ‘knows what they’re getting’ from AEW PPVs: “Well, they know what they’re getting every week on TV, which is why the audience isn’t growing. They’re catering to a small Internet-based audience. Now, the obvious response to that is, ‘Yeah, but there’s 81,000 people. It was the most attended event.’ Yes, all that is true. But I don’t think that that was necessarily because of anything other than, there was a major curiosity factor. AEW had never been there before, there were a lot of former WWE talent on that card that people hadn’t seen in a long time. People wanted to be a part of this big event at this moment in history. And I said in the weeks leading up to this, I’ve said it many times on Strictly Business. The star of this show will be the 80,000 people in attendance. And that was the fact, that was the star of the show with one or two exceptions. It was the audience in the venue. I don’t know if it’s sustainable.
“And I could be wrong. Just because I like certain styles of matches, there are certain matches on this card that I really, really enjoyed a lot. We haven’t gotten to them yet. They’re all good matches so far. I mean, I didn’t see a match where I thought, ‘That was a lousy match.’ They were all good. They were all solid, with the exception of one or two that went beyond that. But. I don’t know that the ECW homage and the super-hardcore bloodbath spectacle matches [are] sustainable. Maybe it is, and that’s something that we’ll see over time. I’m not one of those guys that believe that ‘You got to go back to doing it the way it was in the ’60s and the ’70s, or the ’80s, or the ’90s or 2000. I understand audiences evolve, tastes evolve. It’s true in music, it’s true in movies, and it’s true in every aspect of entertainment and culture. And I’m not hanging on to the past, but there has to be certain fundamentals when it comes to entertainment and I think wrestling too. That while you can add a lot of athleticism, do a lot of things that never used to be done before, there’s still some kind of fundamentals that you got to stick with. And I saw glimpses of it. Actually, we’ll talk about the main event when the main event comes. But that was an example of an amazing thing. It was a great story, a great match. And I’ll talk about the rest of it in a minute, but I don’t know that it’s sustainable. I think once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.”
On the finishes of All In 2023 reminding him of WCW: “I like the finish [of the Golden Elite vs. Bullet Club Gold & Takeshita]. It was a finish that kind of caught me. And there weren’t many good finishes, I’m going to talk a lot about that throughout this. This show had WCW disease. Meaning a lot of solid action, and in some cases great action. And with the exception of one or two matches, the finishes in just about everything I saw felt like a means to an end, instead of a journey and a great finish to a great movie. It was just kind of, ‘Okay, we got to end this thing somehow. What do you want to do?’ ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Hey, what do you want to do?’ ‘Let’s do that.’ Very little thought was given to the finish, with the exception of one match in particular [the main event]. And we’ll talk about that.”
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