Eric Bischoff Slams Media Scrums In Wrestling
WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff has explained why he hates the idea of a media scrum in wrestling following the fallout from AEW All Out.
The media scrum following All Out sparked all sorts of controversy thanks to the comments of CM Punk. Punk laid bare his frustrations with the likes of The Young Bucks and Hangman Adam Page leading to a physical altercation that has caused many suspensions in the company.
The Bucks and Kenny Omega have been stripped of the AEW Trios Championship and Punk has vacated the AEW World Championship – although that was likely to happen anyway due to an injury he suffered in his bout with Jon Moxley.
Speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, former WCW President Eric Bischoff lambasted the idea of media scrums in pro wrestling for several reasons, including what he feels is the lack of people willing to ask tough questions:
“I think they’re f*cking stupid. It serves absolutely no purpose. You know, first of all, I hate the word Scrum. It’s right up there with taint. Now it’s like it’s one of those words, it just makes you go ooh. But when you think about it, you know, professional wrestling, as we all know, is a scripted form of entertainment. Can you imagine the producers of insert the name of a scripted show here and having a press conference at the end of every episode talking about the production of that episode.”
“I mean, it’s stupid, it’s stupid. You can’t really serve the audience, you can’t honestly address the real issues. First of all, you attract people that are afraid to ask hard questions. You know, for example, has anybody asked Tony Khan yet, ‘Tony, you keep talking about, for example, a week or two ago will gross $100 million? Great. What’s your profit margin? What’s your EBIT? What is that? It doesn’t matter how much money you gross, how much money you make?’ Right? Little questions like that.”
“So what you get is you get a bunch of fanboys for the most part, that are very friendly to your organisation. Not all of them by the way, there’s some, you know, DeAngelo brothers, you know, I’ve become a fan of Wade Keller over the years because he’s playing his sh*t straight. Don’t get me wrong, there are some legitimate guys covering wrestling for the various websites and news sites, I use them.”
“I have respect for the people, some of the people that do them. But there’s some of them there that I don’t, Dave Meltzer, for example, has got his lips permanently attached to Tony Khan’s ass so he’s not going to ask the kind of questions that people really want to hear. He’s going to ask setup questions. He’s going to ask questions that set Tony or whoever is up there with him, set them up to advance whatever crap they want to advance. Nobody’s asking any real hard questions there, because they don’t want to get blackballed. They don’t want to be the wrestling internet news reporter that’s not allowed to come to the meeting.”
“[…] So I think the whole idea is a bad idea. We’re seeing evidence of it of last two that I’ve seen anyway. Just fold it up. Put it away. Don’t ever bring it out of the closet again. It’s a f*cking worthless effort and it makes you look like a joke. That’s how I feel.”
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