News

Eric Bischoff: AEW ‘Set Themselves Up’ For Recent Low Ratings

By Andrew Powell • Published 2nd October 2022
Eric Bischoff

Eric Bischoff has never been shy with his opinions on professional wrestling, especially when it comes to Tony Khan and his AEW promotion.

Recently, Eric Bischoff was on Twitter to speak about the company’s low ratings as of late, putting the blame on AEW themselves for the slide. Bischoff said that they should have embraced being the underdog, rather than calling out WWE, which in Bischoff’s view, has led to the numbers being a downward spiral.

Throughout their short history, AEW has taken consistent shots at WWE, with talent being the biggest culprit with promos done over the last few years. There was even a recent incident on last Wednesday’s Dynamite, where former WWE Superstar and newly acquired AEW wrestler Paige-turned-Saraya said that she was grateful that she finally has “a boss who listens” to her.

For consecutive weeks, AEW eclipsed over the 1,000,000 figure in ratings, however, the latest episode of Dynamite would take a huge dip, only getting 990,000 viewers. With that being said, the drop could also be related to Hurricane Ian, the devastation that it caused in Florida (a state that is a hot bed for professional wrestling), and the fact that multiple stars weren’t able to be in Philadelphia because of it.

Dominic DeAngelo of Wrestling Inc. took to Twitter to state his confusion about why anybody would cheer for a TV show to struggle in the ratings, saying there’s no benefit from doing it. DeAngelo said everybody loses, from wrestlers, to the company, to also the fans.

That’s when Eric Bischoff showed up to the conversation, responding to DeAngelo’s tweet by saying that AEW “set themselves up” for the failing ratings because of the fashion that they chose to compete against WWE.

Eric Bischoff said that AEW should have baby faced it against WWE, embracing the underdog role instead of taking cheap shots towards sports entertainment’s biggest brand.

“When AEW set itself up as a ‘competitor’ to WWE, they set themselves up for this. Rather than embrace the underdog/baby face role, they took cheap shots from the sidelines without the balls to get in the fight.”

The WWE Hall of Famer has been critical of All Elite Wrestling, especially on the production of their TV programming, on a consistent basis. Tony Khan has responded to Eric Bischoff on a few of those occasions, so we will see if the AEW owner will respond to the NWO founder’s latest comments.