WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff recently spoke with Renee Paquette on her “Oral Sessions” podcast and was asked if there’s anything AEW can learn from WCW.
Bischoff said he doesn’t believe AEW can learn from AEW, but there are things he feels AEW can improve on. He also commented on AEW stacking their roster
“I don’t think there’s anything necessarily to learn,” Bischoff said. “What’s AEW called, their number one show? Dynamite? Kind of like Nitro, right? There are so many things about Dynamite that, I don’t want to say — it’s not a rip-off, but there’s a reflection of a lot of what made Nitro work in the AEW product. There should be things in the AEW product that work in WWE. Go ahead and take that too. There are basically seven original ideas on planet earth. Every other idea that’s out there is a derivative of one of seven. Take whatever is good from whomever, and figure out a way to make it your own and feel like it’s your own and be successful with it. That’s why I didn’t want to say derivative even of WCW, but I think there are elements that made that show work that we do see in the AEW formula, as I would expect it to be.
“I don’t want to say I worry because I have no skin in the game, but man, they’re stacking a lot of talent. And the nature of talent is they want to be talented, they want to perform. And there’s kind of like this math formula that says you have this amount of TV and this amount of talent, and you’ve got to kind of fit this amount of talent into this amount of TV. It’s great to have backup and development talent, and have those backup quarterbacks if you will that are ready to go in case there’s an urgent injury, or a contractual conflict, anything. You’ve got to have a backup. But there’s a lot of talent there that I think a year or a year and a half from now that are going to go, ‘I thought I was going to get an opportunity to be a star.’ And that can create its own kind of challenge that has to be managed.
“I would really like to see a more structured formula because I’m seeing a lot of the same flaws in AEW’s approach to what is referred to as storytelling that isn’t, in terms of its structure and discipline. The bad thing about that is it’s leaving money on the table. You’re running through matches, but you’re not throwing any story up on the wall that’s sticking in a way that’s growing the audience. That’s the hard part. How do you grow the audience? Now how do you satisfy an existing audience? That’s called preaching to the choir. You want to expand the congregation and attract people that are otherwise not attracted to you, and the only way to do that is with great stories and great characters.”
(H/T to WrestlingInc for the quotes)
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