Tony Khan Calls Out Eric Bischoff Over Perceived WCW Booking Hypocrisy

Despite being a past guest on AEW programming, Eric Bischoff and the founder of the company, Tony Khan, have often disagreed on certain aspects of the shows presentation. For example, on a recent edition of his "83 Weeks Podcast," Bischoff said he was "not that big of a fan of wrestling matches" and requested that more story be built around bouts. In response, Khan appeared on this morning's edition of "Busted Open Radio" and pointed out how the heydays of the now-defunct WCW showcased several random match-ups during events. He sees similarities in how AEW structures their cards each week before showtime.

"There's this perception that every match on every show should have a long storyline built to why it takes place and it just doesn't need to be the case for every single match ... Frankly, the person who I think has been the most incendiary, contradictory and hypocritical on this entire point is Eric Bischoff ... If you watch Nitros, especially the good Nitros from like '95 – '98, a lot of the quality of the show is seeing lucha matches and things that you didn't expect, and there was a certain exquisite randomness to the lineup of the card."

Bischoff has been outspoken before saying that AEW's audience numbers remain stagnant due to a lack of "compelling" stories on television, something that Khan emphasized is not the case. "There were a lot of stories happening in WCW, but probably less than half the matches on Nitro had a story going into them and that was fine, and it was the industry standard show ... To see the person who probably put more cold matches on TV, and did it successfully and did it well, say that it's an abomination to do it, it's pretty contradictory."