Eric Bischoff On Being Disappointed By Christian Cage’s AEW Debut, AEW’s Issues With Managing Fan Expectations

In a recent edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff discussed Christian’s AEW debut at Revolution, the Jon Moxley vs. Kenny Omega match, and much more. You can read Eric Bischoff’s comments below.

Eric Bischoff on being disappointed by Christian’s debut at AEW Revolution: “I was disappointed for Christian in particular. This is where the art of being a promoter comes in. It’s an art, and this is where instinct comes in. Creating an expectation or creating anticipation, therein lies the art in promotion. Making people want to see, making people want to feel. That’s the art part and the biggest part of being successful in anything in entertainment. Managing anticipation or expectation is the most important thing you can do when you’re planning for a big moment. You want to get people excited about it but you have to manage that.

“If you fail to manage the velocity of all that enthusiasm and you under-deliver this much based on unrealistic expectations, by the way, that you have created – you have created those unrealistic expectations and when you aren’t able to fulfill them, it’s a letdown. It’s a reality. It doesn’t matter what business you are in. Had Christian just shown up in an impactful way without any advertisement, without any promotion, without any expectation or anticipation, guess what would’ve happened? He would’ve been the hottest topic of conversation for the next two months. The audience would’ve looked at Christian from an entirely different perspective or angle. ‘Holy shit!’ Because they would’ve been getting something they didn’t expect or anticipate.”

On the Revolution main event: “The same thing kind of happened with the main event match. I went out of my way, and I wanted to watch that match because from a producer’s perspective, you built this thing up, and holy shit you’ve got everybody’s attention including mine. They did a great job of raising the expectation and the anticipation, and they did a poor job of execution. I respect Tony Khan. I like Tony – Moxley and Omega, phenomenal match, match-wise. But it’s like putting a bunch of great actors in a 120-minute movie and 118 minutes of it were fantastic and the last two minutes suck. Guess what people are going to talk about walking out the door? They’re going to talk about the suckage. They’re not gonna talk about the great performances 20 minutes into the movie. It’s unfortunate but learning how to manage expectations and control them – make them work for you not against you. You can’t just throw shit out there and say everybody is going to get excited. Yeah, they’re going to get excited, but you need to think about the other side of that.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.