Eric Bischoff Thinks AEW Booking Caters To Dirt Sheets

Eric Bischoff doesn’t believe AEW’s audience will grow if Tony Khan keeps catering to dirt sheets. Serving as a guest on the MackMania Podcast, Bischoff expressed his belief that Khan is too focused on the IWC (h/t Wrestling Inc).

On AEW not having a clear vision: “AEW, the company as a whole is going to have to define, at some point, the vision. What makes AEW different than WWE? You can talk about it, you can kind of create a narrative about it. But when you look at the show, when you look at AEW and you look at WWE. If you’re not in the weeds and in the dirt sheets, living on the internet spending half a day on Reddit, how would you describe the difference between those two shows? I think that’s really hard to do right now.”

Eric Bischoff on Tony Khan catering to dirt sheets: “On a personal level, I think Tony has got his head plugged into the dirt sheet wrestling community far too much. When you produce a show, especially like wrestling, you need to know who your audience is, and you need to know who you want to be your audience. You have to grow your business. You can’t just keep serving the same hardcore, dirt sheet wrestling fan psychology, and mentality, and expect to grow your business.

“You want to get up to 1.5 and be really competitive with RAW, or SmackDown? Guess what, you’re going to have to take that million, give or take, viewers that you have every week, and grow that by 50%, or 75%, or 100% in order to be truly competitive. I don’t see that happening, because I think Tony is dirt sheet booker of the year, two years in a row.”