Eric Bischoff gives his thoughts on AEW bringing back its ranking system.
The Hall of Famer spoke about the AEW ranking system, which is dictated by wins and losses, during the latest edition of his 83 Weeks podcast. Bischoff states that it can be effective, but that good creative is sometimes hard to come by when you have to accompany it with good math.
It can be effective. It can also see you painting yourself into a corner that you’ll never get out of. That’s probably why it didn’t work out the first time because you’ve got to really do a great job of merging creative and math because those two things generally don’t go together. Usually good creative is kind of void of good math. Good math isn’t very creative, but it can be done.
Staying on subject, Bischoff says that using the ranking system is a big risk, but is one of the things that separates AEW from WWE, which is why he liked it back in 2019 when it was first introduced.
It’s a big risk because if it’s not going well, if there’s a flaw in your system, your audience is going to see it and they’re going to let you know and they’re going to lose faith so fast. I liked the idea of doing it. I think it’s one of the things that I was excited about back in 2019 when I heard that this was going to be one of the things, this was going to be the unique selling proposition for those of you who have spent, I don’t know, 45 minutes in a marketing 101 class in junior college. That was the one thing that to me made AEW potentially feel different than WWE, but they abandoned it pretty quickly.
He continues…
One of the dots that created the pattern that I began to see early on is you make a promise to your audience when you launch a brand, your branding statement, your mission statement, call whatever the f**k you want. ‘We are going to be different because we’re doing this’ then you get everybody to rally behind you, and then you don’t do this. You do the same thing they’re doing. It’s a big dent. It’s a big dent on the side of that brand new shiny AEW car. Big dent. You kicked the door in yourself. Let’s see. It can be done, but it’s really fu**ing hard. Really hard.
Elsewhere on 83 Weeks, Bischoff spoke about the new storyline with the Young Bucks and why he thinks it is pretty lame. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by Wrestling News)