Eric Bischoff responds to Tony Khan calling him hypocritical over AEW criticisms

  • Ian Carey
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Eric Bischoff has responded to Tony Khan calling him “contradictory & hypocritical” regarding his criticisms of AEW. 

Bischoff has been critical of AEW for frequently having “cold matches” with no build on its programming. Khan recently fired back on Bischoff’s criticism by stating that during Bischoff’s time running WCW, the company often had matches with no storyline behind them on its programming as well. 

“Frankly, the person that has been the most incendiary, contradictory, and hypocritical on this entire point is Eric Bischoff,” Khan said on Busted Open last week. 

Bischoff responded to Khan’s comments on an episode of his 83 Weeks released on Monday. 

“There were certainly random matches that didn’t have any story in WCW, I’m not denying that but I’m also going to point out, I don’t think I ever said in any of my commentary about AEW, that I believe every match should have a story,” Bischoff said. 

“When you are introducing new talent or when you have talent that you haven’t really matched up storyline-wise with an opponent yet but you want to expose that talent, you want the audience to become familiar with that talent, you want to establish that talent, sure, put people in matches that don’t really have story. But use that time, in non-storyline matches, to give us some real backstory and information about said talent.” 

“My issue and my comments about AEW and the creative behind it is really a bunch of top matches that don’t have sufficient story or structure or at least a compelling one.”

“Your top matches, your A, B, C, and D storylines, that’s different. I’ve seen a lot of matches, a lot of storylines – what AEW considers a storyline- that I feel are just nothing more than excuses for a match. They are not well-crafted stories.” 

“I believe in today’s competitive environment with television being what it is, that if you want to – pay attention, Tony – build and grow your audience, you are going to have to do it with well-crafted, compelling, well-structured storylines and I don’t see it. I see excuses for matches, and that’s not a storyline.”