Eric Bischoff On Why He’s Excited That AEW Hired Jennifer Pepperman

On the latest episode of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff talked about Jennifer Pepperman, who was a Senior Writer and Producer for WWE, left the company for AEW where she will work as the Vice President of Content Development alongside Head of Creative Tony Khan.You can check out some highlights below:

On working with her in WWE: “Well, I worked — I shouldn’t say I worked, I didn’t work closely with Jennifer when I was in WWE in a minute back in 2019. She was not a part of my team, although that didn’t really mean much because nobody really knew who was on which writing staff, there was so much discussion and transition. But I got to know Jennifer and really, really liked her. I respect her work, she’s got a tremendous background. She understands storytelling. She’s tough, like — she’s a very sweet person. She’s easy to get along with, has a great personality, and is very outgoing. But she’s also tough. She’s not gonna be intimidated. And I watched her interact with Vince, and Vince can be very, very intimidating, right? And I watched her stand up to Vince, I watched her react to pressure that a lot of creative people that I’ve worked with in the past would’ve probably take pretty hard. And she digs in and does the work.”

On it being an exciting hire: “This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard out of AEW in the last three years, maybe longer. Because I think it indicates a couple of things to me. One is that Tony recognizes he has a problem. You can’t fix a problem or come up with a solution if you don’t recognize what’s wrong with it first. And the fact that Tony is bringing in Jen at a high level suggests to me — now, part of this is wishful thinking on my part, but I do hope I’m right — that Tony is recognizing that his creative, his fantasy wrestling matches and dream match nonsense, and creating wrestling that appeals to the internet is not working.

“And I’ve been banging on that drum for over two years now. I’ve gotten a lot of hate from it… the fact that Tony recognizes that he has a problem and that he needs to bring somebody in as I’ve been saying for years now. You need somebody who understands a disciplined storytelling structure. Not only a beginning, middle, and end, but understanding the plot points along that arc that need to happen. It’s almost like a checklist, that need to happen over the course of an arc in order to have any chance of building or retaining an audience. And that’s what Tony has had a hard time doing: building and retaining an audience. He’s gone from a premiere of 1.4 million viewers down to averaging around 800,000. That’s a problem, especially when the overall audience for wrestling is growing because of WWE and their success. So I think the fact that Tony recognizes he has a problem, hopefully, and brought somebody in who absolutely has the tools and the experience, and I believe the personality — Jen brings all of that to the table.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Strictly Business with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.