Former WCW president Eric Bischoff was recently a guest on “Strictly Business” to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Bischoff discussed the state of the professional wrestling industry, offering his thoughts on promotions such as IMPACT Wrestling and All Elite Wrestling (AEW). He first started off by offering his thoughts on IMPACT – and Bischoff didn’t hold back. The former WCW head said he can get more people to watch him cooking a burger on a Saturday afternoon than to watch IMPACT.
He also claimed that IMPACT Wrestling shouldn’t be in the conversation when it comes to discussing licensing and merchandising because they’re “not in the wrestling business.” Bischoff added it had nothing to do with the talent, as he believes IMPACT has great talent, but including IMPACT in the conversation for televised wrestling is “silly.”
When discussing AEW, Eric Bischoff stated that the promotion is currently in a position where their long-term potential is more intriguing than anything else going on currently. He also touched on AEW’s lack of licensing deals and how he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon since the promotion is kind of “flatlining” right now ratings-wise.
“But that doesn’t happen overnight, it didn’t happen overnight in WCW,” Bischoff said. “Providing AEW continues to grow, which arguably they’re not, they’re kind of flatlining at a million viewers a week, but if they can grow that industry in such a way that it gives confidence to manufacturers and distributors to go ahead and invest money in that licensing in hopes to increase sales off their products, that’s when you’ll start to see real growth in AEW.
“It’s not a knock against them, you can’t do that overnight. No one is going to take that risk until you’ve established yourself in the marketplace.”
AEW has certainly been doing as much as possible to stand out to professional wrestling fans. In the past year they’ve made a ton of huge signings; such as CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Adam Cole, and more. Also, on this week’s episode of AEW Dynamite, president Tony Khan announced a joint pay-per-view (PPV) with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) titled “The Forbidden Door.”