What would Mercedes Moné do for AEW? Eric Bischoff says nothing.
Bischoff took part in an AMA session on his 83 Weeks podcast, and one fan asked what he thinks Mercedes Moné will do for AEW overall.
“Nothing,” Bischoff replied. “How many times have we seen big names come from WWE to AEW and people speculating how it’s going to impact the business and what’s going to happen? And nothing happens. It doesn’t matter who you bring in there.
“I made the comment; I’m going to make it again. AEW is quickly becoming TNA,” Bischoff noted. “And I got nearly a million views on that comment, and out of the probably half-million responses, everybody buried my comment and me along with it. But this is a perfect example of what I meant. We’ve seen so many big names come into AEW. Pick one. Let’s put CM Punk off to the side. Pick any other one, and the net-net impact on the growth of the business, other than selling t-shirts, has been zip. Nada.”
Bischoff pointed to AEW’s ticket sales as proof of this, noting how the company is running 10,000-seat arenas but scaling it to half that size. He said he used to tell Dixie Carter the same thing in TNA, albeit with different examples of star power.
Perception is key
Bischoff noted how people would criticize him for bringing big names into TNA during his tenure, but he says he didn’t bring talent in and didn’t really want the job.
“I think I said to her, word for word, one day I said, ‘Dixie, it doesn’t matter if you brought The Undertaker and you dropped him from the ceiling as a surprise into the middle of the TNA ring, and then John Cena — and this is when they were both at the top of WWE years ago — you have John Cena run to the TNA ring and you shoot an angle… it won’t matter!’ It just doesn’t,” Eric Bischoff explained, “because the brand, and the perception of it, the scale of it, is so small that it won’t get over. And that’s the problem that I think AEW has. They don’t know how to use those big names that grows their business. It just grows their budget, but it doesn’t grow their business. Not yet it hasn’t.”
Bischoff said there might be outliers, but he’d be happy to be proven wrong otherwise.
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