Eric Bischoff had some criticism for the CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe match for the “REAL” AEW World Championship at AEW ALL IN 2023 this past Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London, England.
The former WCW Executive Vice President spoke about it, as well as his thoughts on HOOK’s FTW Championship win at the record-breaking premium live event on his latest 83 Weeks podcast.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the show where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On All In win for HOOK: “Exposure I don’t think really matters too much. The experience of going out there and performing in that big of a crowd with that big of a crowd I think, can provide a tremendous amount of valuable experience and confidence. Invaluable in that respect. But in terms of, you know, the exposure and all that, it’s yeah, yeah, maybe it doesn’t hurt, right? Don’t take any points away from it, but it’s not going to make any real difference except for just the added value of the experience and the confidence that comes with it.”
On CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe opening the show: “Look, it was a solid match. No negatives, right? I’m going to be honest. I’m going to be as honest as I can possibly be because, obviously, I have some biases, and I have a certain perspective based on what I like. And it’s all subjective. It’s just my opinion. So I will try to keep things as positive as possible. I thought the match was slow-paced. It didn’t have a lot of energy. I thought Punk started looking gassed after about two minutes in, and I don’t think he was. I think he was selling like he had run a marathon up to two hours before he decided to wrestle Joe And it’s just the pace of it I thought was surprisingly slow. Now, I will admit part of that is because I think my expectations were a little out of whack. I’ve never really seen Punk Joe’s history, and I understand they’ve had some really, really good matches in the past. I’m a huge fan of Samoa, Joe as a human being and as a character. So I was really, you know, I was excited and I wanted to, I wanted to put it over, and I and I and I am. It was solid. It was good. It just caught me a little bit. I thought starting a show with something was a little awkward. This slows the pace. I was also not surprised but disappointed to see that much blood early on in the show when I expected this thing was going to be a, you know, hemoglobin fest. And it certainly was. And I think starting off the show with that much blood when you know that much more is coming at some point it doesn’t matter anymore.”
On criticism of the match: “I notice, you know, obviously I just said slow pace that, you know, the blood I’ve already covered the match seemed to have one gear. There was like one speed from the minute the bell went off to the minute the match was over. There was like one gear. And I guess that’s the part that left me a little bit surprised and slightly disappointed. But again, that’s perhaps because my expectations were so high. But yeah, those, those are my notes for that match, yeah. CM Punk’s had it not been for that, I probably would have been more excited about it.”
Check out the complete episode of the show via the YouTube player embedded below, or at Apple.com. H/T to WrestlingHeadlines.com for transcribing the above quotes.
