On a recent edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff critiqued Tony Khan for not presenting AEW as an underdog wrestling promotion, noting that the AEW President fantasies about being Vince McMahon.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Tony Khan refusing to presenting AEW as the underdog promotion: “I don’t know what Tony’s motivation is. I think Tony has fantasized about being Vince McMahon, and reaching that level of success that Vince McMahon did. Probably doesn’t really want to be Vince McMahon right now, but you know what I mean. I don’t know, I mean I back to a couple of years ago, two and a half years ago now when I first came out and said ‘Tony, shut the f**k up and wrestle. Quit talking about your competition. Quit taking shots at someone that you can’t possibly compete with.’ And that was one of the reasons. And I talked about it, I predicted what would happen. Tony came into this industry with so much goodwill. It was free. People wanted Tony to be successful, they wanted AEW to be successful. And within a very short period of time, Tony came out and started taking shots at WWE, and Vince McMahon and the talent. You know, WCW, ‘I’m not gonna make the same mistakes WCW did. If Ted Turner knew half as much about professional wrestling as I did, WCW would still be around.’ He kept saying all that stupid s**t, and I warned him two and a half years ago, ‘Don’t do that. You’re going to lose the goodwill of your audience, and people are going to quit forgiving you for the mistakes that you’re going to make early on.’ Because a new company and wrestling company, especially somebody like Tony — I don’t give a f**k how much wrestling he watched a 14-year-old kid. Running a wrestling company and producing television is not something that you’re going to be good at because you were a wrestling fan. It doesn’t work that way. You’re going to make mistakes. But if you’ve got the goodwill of the audience behind you, they’re going to forgive you for a lot of those mistakes. And they did early on.
“But eventually, you lose that goodwill, and people start calling you on your stupid s**t. And unfortunately AEW and Tony Khan particularly — specifically — has gotten really good and consistent at doing stupid s**t. And now the audience is turning on them. It’s not just me — and again, this is not personal. It’s just such a wasted opportunity, and it could have been avoided so easily had Tony Kahn kind of followed the model of Paul Heyman. Forget about trying to be Eric Bischoff and WCW in the mid-90s or late 90s. Forget about that. Look at Paul Heyman and the success that he created, and the legacy that he’s created by embracing the underdog status. Because then you’ve got people cheering for you. Now you’ve got people throwing rocks at you. Go online… go to anybody out there, any website that’s posting news, and then has a comment section? So much of the comments, so many of the comments now are so negative about AEW, and it’s self-inflicted. It was totally avoidable had Tony followed the Paul Heyman model and embraced the underdog status, things would be a lot different for AEW than they are today.”
On TNA’s status following Scott D’Amore’s departure: “What’s even weirder to me is, because there’s really nothing — I mean, Impact is just there, as we’ve been discussing. It doesn’t make sense, really, from a financial perspective that I can imagine. And if Scott D’Amore wanted to buy it for $10 million, which is significantly more than I think anybody paid for TNA or Impact or whatever it’s called, why would you not just take the money and move on? You’re not really in the business. There’s nobody there [at Anthem] that’s really passionate about it. It’s just — it’s just there. With no real goal, no real upside, no real future, no vision. It’s just there. And if you’ve got a guy like Scott D’Amore that’s passionate about it and believes he can build it, and is willing to come to the table with $10 million, why in the world would you not take that deal? There has to be a motive, there has to be a reason why. And I just can’t put my finger on it. I can’t imagine what the why is.”
In a recent episode of his podcast “83 Weeks,” Eric Bischoff criticized Tony Khan, the president of All Elite Wrestling (AEW), for not presenting the promotion as an underdog in the wrestling industry. Bischoff noted that Khan has fantasies about being Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
Bischoff expressed his confusion about Khan’s motivations and mentioned that two and a half years ago, he advised Khan to focus on wrestling and avoid taking shots at WWE and McMahon. Bischoff warned that such actions would lead to a loss of goodwill from the audience. He emphasized that running a wrestling company and producing television is not something that can be mastered solely based on being a wrestling fan.
According to Bischoff, AEW initially had a lot of goodwill from fans who wanted the promotion to succeed. However, Khan’s consistent mistakes and questionable decisions have caused the audience to turn against AEW. Bischoff believes that Khan could have avoided this situation by following the model of Paul Heyman, who embraced the underdog status during his time in the industry.
Bischoff pointed out that many online comments about AEW have become increasingly negative, which he believes is a result of self-inflicted damage. He suggested that if Khan had embraced the underdog status like Heyman did, the perception of AEW would be different today.
In addition to discussing AEW, Bischoff also commented on the status of Impact Wrestling (formerly known as TNA) following Scott D’Amore’s departure. He found it strange that Anthem, the parent company of Impact Wrestling, did not accept D’Amore’s offer to buy the promotion for $10 million. Bischoff questioned why they would not take the deal if they had no real passion or vision for the company.
Overall, Bischoff’s critique of Tony Khan and AEW revolves around the missed opportunity to present the promotion as an underdog and the consequences of Khan’s actions. He believes that embracing the underdog status could have led to a different outcome for AEW, similar to the success Paul Heyman achieved in his career.