Eric Bischoff has not taken lightly to the All Elite Wrestling’s president Tony Khan’s comments. Khan had recently told the Financial Times that he plans to run the company in a different way than Eric Bischoff ran World Championship Wrestling when he was the president.
This statement didn’t sit too well with Bischoff, who has responded back to Khan on a recent episode of his podcast, 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff.
Back in late February, Bischoff said that he AEW had a long way to go to even reach WCW’s success. Bischoff said that Khan has not been in the wrestling industry for years like him, and he isn’t sure that Khan would be able to change the wrestling industry.
“Call me in a couple of years and let me know how you’ve changed the industry. Call me in a couple of years when your show is one of the top, if not the top original piece of programming on the TNT network,” Bischoff said. “Call me in a couple of years when you’re number two, number three, number four in all of the cable programming for the night in primetime, and then let’s talk about it. But until then, hmm, I’ll just have another cup of coffee and see what happens.”
After this scathing statement, Bischoff just couldn’t let go and talked about the matter again on the next episode of his podcast which aired last week. Bischoff stated that WWE wouldn’t have been the company that it is today if not for the pressure, the influence, and the template that Bischoff thinks WCW created that made the whole industry competitive and took things to the next level.
Bischoff said that Tony is doing what he did, such as using pay-per-view event names similar to WCW’s, a “low budget Nitro,” paying huge amounts of money to stars that they have never been paid before, etc.
Bischoff said, “You’re still seeing the impact of early Nitro across the board including in AEW as much as they try to suggest, as Tony Khan did recently, that we’re gonna do everything different than Eric Bischoff did. Well, guess what m-fer? You’re doing about as much as I did than anyone else in the industry.”
Bischoff continued by explaining that many of WCW Nitro’s innovations are being employed by WWE and AEW to this day.
“I’m not defensive about that. I think it’s just a fact when you look at things objectively. The things we did on Nitro [are what] you’re still seeing today. They’re things that change the nature, the landscape [and] the entire industry, and I think it’s even fairer to say, now that I’m into my third Starbucks, WWE wouldn’t be the company that it is today had it not been for the pressure, the influence and quite frankly the template we created that they were able to follow and take to the next level, so there I’m off my soapbox. Sorry.”
You can listen to a clip of Eric Bischoff talking about Tony Khan and WCW’s influence on AEW/WWE below:
H/T to WrestlingINC for the transcribed quotes
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