Eric Bischoff Gives His Opinion On What Both WWE And AEW Are Doing Wrong
Eric Bischoff is someone who has always been highly engaged with the production value of a wrestling show. One of the reasons why he catapulted WCW's Nitro above WWE's Raw in ratings was because he put more of an emphasis on his show's presentation. WCW used to run shows like WCW Saturday Night in small studios, but he took Nitro on the road which enhanced the product for fans.
He also cited TNA's low-budget production as to why it could never truly compete with WWE, and now, Bischoff is again talking about WWE's production. He was asked about AEW's product and Bischoff took the question back to WWE's production quality in an interview on Everything Is...
"I'm pretty impressed with [AEW], yeah, for different reasons. I said this a long time ago before I ever went back to work for WWE and I'm gonna say it again right now – WWE is so good at live event production. Nobody does it better than WWE," said Bischoff. "The problem is, they do it too well. When I watch WWE, if I drop in on a Monday Night Raw, it doesn't feel live to me. It's shot so well, it's so clean, the production values are so high, there are no mistakes, there are no flaws minor or otherwise. It's just so perfect that it doesn't feel live.
"What I like about AEW is that it feels live to me. They don't stress the production values above all else. It's the action in the ring. I love the way they do some of their interviews, not all. The stories feel a little more real and organic to me."
Since being fired from WWE in October 2019, Bischoff has made two recent appearances in AEW as a town hall moderator. The most recent of those was just last month, but Bischoff said what he doesn't like about AEW – or WWE for that matter – may prevent him from ever returning to either place.
"I will say this– this is gonna not go over well, and it may be certain that I never got a phone call from AEW again or WWE because I'm gonna criticize them both for the same thing. Neither one of them are growing the audience," stated Bischoff.
"Neither one of them are doing anything new that hasn't been done before. At least not doing anything big enough or new enough that they're not growing the audience. AEW is hanging onto the same 7-800,000 viewers. Every once in a while, they'll get a little more than that. Every once in a while, they'll get a little less than that. But they're hanging on to that same – let's call it 800,000 viewer average – that they had last year at this time, before COVID.
"WWE is barely hanging onto their audience; their audience is deteriorating. Neither group is doing anything to revolutionize or grow the business."