Eric Bischoff shared a video from his 83 Weeks with his criticism of AEW President Tony Khan:
“Let me first say, I am pulling for AEW to be hugely successful. I am a supporter of AEW, I am grateful that AEW is doing well on TNT. There’s a lot of things I like about AEW but some of Tony Khan’s comments this week are not doing him any favors let’s put it that way. I think it’s cool that Tony responded and AEW responded to the fact that WWE did a half hour overrun to challenge AEW as their show started at 10 o’clock. I like that and think that was great. I would’ve tried to do the same thing so I have no criticism for what Tony is doing but I think some of the things Tony is saying is not a good look. To come out and predict as he did that AEW is going to outperform [WWE]. Keep in mind, for all of you people that are out there who are focused on ratings and demos, nobody is putting anything into context. The wrestling audience wants there to be a legitimate Monday Night War version 2.0 so badly that they all participate in cosplay competition.”
“To come out and predict that AEW was going to defeat SmackDown on FS1 was a bad choice. SmackDown delivered somewhere just under 800,000 viewers, AEW delivered just under 600,000 viewers. Not a good look. It wasn’t slightly, it was to the tune of 30-35%, that’s not insignificant. Even more so, that all happened on FOX Sports 1. [Tony Khan’s] tweet didn’t do AEW any favors. You might have served the internet fan base but you’re not serving your business well because you got your ass kicked on Friday night. Simple as that.”
Chris Jericho referenced Bischoff’s remark to “shut up and wrestle” with the following response to Twitter:
“Not sure what a ‘cosplay competition’ is Eric, but WWE market share has definitely been decreased by AEW. To the point whenever they forced themselves into ‘real head to head competition’ w us (most recently last Fri) they lost. I’m gonna shut the f**k up now & keep wrestling.”
