Eric Bischoff comments on how Tony Khan reminds him of Dixie Carter
Last week, AEW President Tony Khan was interviewed by Josh Martinez of Z100 and said the following in regards to Jade Cargill…
“Jade Cargill, probably the most dominant run, in my opinion, any wrestler in North America has been on on television since Bill Goldberg 25 years ago.”
During his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff had a response to what Khan said…
“When I hear comments like that from Tony, it reminds me very much of Dixie Carter and TNA. Dixie Carter had a habit of making announcements that were going to get great social media reactions, but very rarely could follow them up, ‘We’re going to make an announcement that’s going to change the wrestling world.’ How many times did we hear that coming out of Dixie and TNA and then they didn’t deliver? After a while, the audience begins to lose confidence in people that talk like that. When you make everything such a big deal and it really isn’t, people begin to learn that you’re just not a big deal. I understand what Tony is trying to do. Tony is constantly drawing comparisons to WCW. The one that sticks out that got the biggest reaction out of me is ‘AEW right now is about where WCW was in 1996.’ That was such a stupid, ignorant falsehood. It’s not true.”
“Why make a statement like that when it’s not true and set yourself up for that kind of a comparison? WCW was highly profitable in 1996, dude. You’re not. WCW was outperforming the No. 1 show in WWE at that time, Monday Night RAW, against real competition including the NFL, and we were winning hand over fist. AEW is still only delivering about two-thirds of what Monday Night RAW does, and half, if that, of what SmackDown does. Comparisons like that hurt you in the long run. There’s always going to be a percentage of people, a small percentage of people, that are going to buy into that. They are going to listen, believe everything you say, and they’re going to react positively to whatever you say because they want to be excited. But the largest majority of the audience are going to look at statements like that and go, ‘Well that’s not really true. That’s kind of insulting my intelligence.’ They lose confidence in you.” (quotes courtesy of 411Mania.com)