WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff recently spoke with Shakiel Mahjouri of SHAK Wrestling and said he’s extremely enthusiastic and somewhat prescient about the new WWE direction with Executive Vice President of Talent Relations & Head of Creative Triple H in charge.
“I’m extremely enthusiastic and somewhat prescient at the same time because while I was hoping that those things would happen, they have happened, right? To a noticeable degree over a relatively short period of time…,” he said. “But Paul has already made it clear publicly that he’s going to let talent have a little more freedom and be less rigid in the stick to the script, word for word, comma by comma approach that has been pretty much the norm for the last 10, 15 years. That in itself is kind of exciting because you’re going to have talent that are going to bumble. They’re going to stumble, they’re going to trip over a word…
“Guess what? That feels gritty. That feels a little more real. That’s live TV. I’m looking at some of the episodic elements of the most recent formats where a story starts out early on in the show and then threads itself through. It’s sort of a three-act structure, which I’ve been begging for the last seven years. We’re seeing a three-act structure within a three-hour show. Imagine that. Episodic storytelling. It’s that kind of discipline to detail in story and format — because you can’t have a good story if you don’t have a good format and vice versa — That kind of commitment to discipline and format and structures, I think going to create a lot better television and it’s already happening.”
Bischoff also talked about the possible impact that WWE’s new direction could have on AEW. He said he doesn’t think AEW President Tony Khan has a creative instinct in his body, but he believes Khan can learn moving forward.
“If Tony Khan is smart — and I know he’s very, very smart, a lot smarter than I am in a lot of ways, no question about that — I don’t necessarily think that he’s got a creative instinct in his body,” Bischoff said. “I think what he’s doing is reliving a childhood memory of ECW and the independent scene and super matches. He’s booking, in my opinion, like a 14-year-old would who has a lot of toys and a lot of things that he can play with. But I’m not seeing a story. We see what the wrestling audience, or the AEW audience in particular, calls a story. But it’s not. It’s an excuse for having a super match or a dream match.
“If Tony Khan is really smart in his goal is really to compete, then he’s going to look at what’s working in WWE from a storytelling perspective, in a format perspective. He’s going to wake up one day and realize that being a dirt sheet booker and catering to the Internet wrestling community is a wonderful thing because your name is on the Internet all the time, but it’s not going to grow beyond the point that it currently exists because you’re only serving a small segment of the audience and you’re not reaching out to the broader base audience and the more mainstream audience. Not everybody lives, eats, sleeps and breathes wrestling as the Internet wrestling audience does. There’s a more, I don’t want to say passive, but less committed viewing audience out there. That’s really important.”
For those who missed it, you can click here for Bischoff’s earlier comments on how AEW is nowhere near competition to WWE.
Stay tuned to WrestlingHeadlines.com for more. Below is SHAK’s full interview with Bischoff:
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