Eric Bischoff thinks AEW hiring former WWE creative team member Jennifer Pepperman is one of the most “exciting things” he’s heard out of AEW in the last three years.
During the latest installment of his “Strictly Business” podcast, Bischoff spoke about this, as well as how he recalled her once standing up to Vince McMahon behind-the-scenes in WWE.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on this topic with his thoughts.
On his brief period working with Jen Pepperman in WWE and how she once even stood up to Vince McMahon: “Well I worked, I shouldn’t say I worked — I didn’t work closely with Jennifer when I was in WWE back in 2019. She was not a part of my team, although that didn’t really mean much because nobody really knew who was on which writing staff, there was so much discussion and transition. But I got to know Jennifer and really, really liked her. I respect her work, she’s got a tremendous background. She understands storytelling, she’s tough. She’s a very sweet person, easy to get along with, she’s got a great personality and she’s very outgoing. But, she’s also tough. She’s not gonna be intimidated. I’ve watched her interact with Vince, and Vince can be very, very intimidating. I watched her stand up to Vince, I watched her react to pressure that a lot of creative people that I’ve worked with in the past would’ve probably taken pretty hard. She digs in and does the work.”
On how the hire for AEW is one of “the most exciting things he’s heard out of AEW in the last three years”: “This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard out of AEW in the last three years, maybe longer. It indicates a couple things to me. One is, Tony recognizes he has a problem. You can’t fix a problem or come up with a solution if you don’t recognize what’s wrong with it first and the fact that Tony is bringing in [people] at a high level, suggests to me — and part of this is wishful thinking on my part but I do hope I’m right — that Tony is recognizing that his creative, his fantasy wrestling matches and dream match nonsense and creating wrestling that appeals to the internet, it’s not working. I’ve been banging on that drum for over two years now, I’ve gotten a lot of hate from it. The fact that Tony recognizes that he has a problem, recognizes that he needs to bring somebody in, as I’ve been saying for years now, you need somebody that understands a disciplined storytelling structure. Not only a beginning, middle, and end, but understanding the plot points along that arc that need to happen, it’s almost like a checklist. They need to happen over the course of an arc in order to have any chance of building or retaining an audience, and that’s what Tony has had a hard time doing, building and retaining an audience. He’s gone from a premiere of 1.4M viewers down to averaging around 800 thousand, that’s a problem, especially when the overall audience for wrestling is growing because of WWE and their success. So I think the fact that Tony recognizes, hopefully, and brought somebody in who absolutely has the tools and the experience, and I believe the personality — Jen brings all of that to the table.”
Check out the complete episode of the Strictly Business podcast with Eric Bischoff at Spotify.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
