• “CM Punk, you came in and you sh*t the bed” – Eric Bischoff
During the latest episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, former WCW President Eric Bischoff ripped CM Punk for saying that him arriving in AEW was more significant than Kevin Nash & Scott Hall arriving in WCW in 1996.
Bischoff made a lot of great points and you can read what he said below:
“Great anticipation about CM Punk right? I put it over, I was excited about it. And I’ve never met CM Punk, I’ve never had a conversation with Punk but I’m well aware of the equity and value in that character and the way it was teased and the anticipation that was created, I was so excited about that.
It was the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a real orchestrated controlled build that really created the anticipation that I think is such a big part of what makes wrestling work.
Since that time, they’re right back down to 500,000-600,000 viewers. Tony says ‘Well, they decided they were going to go head to head with us and I was going to put Punk and Sydal,’ and this is not negative to either but what did it do? Not much arguably but what did happen, and this is the art of war part of this, is WWE forced by doing that overlap into AEWs time slot, forced a situation where now CM Punk is opening up the show.
WWE made a move that was the catalyst for Tony Khan to take his highest profile piece of talent, arguably, and put him in that time slot and the show did less than a million viewers. How is that a f**king win? Burning up talent, putting someone into a match with a storyline, with no angle. It was definitely an in-delicious move but you’re burning up resources and you walked away with less than a million viewers?
WWE delivered more viewers, which affects everything. Pay-Per-View, merchandise, ticket sales, all the other metrics you want to identify. WWE delivered more viewers than AEW on a third or fourth tier cable outlet than AEW did with one of their highest profile pieces and new fresh talent and WWE outperformed them.
Now, if you don’t want to acknowledge that and you want to shift everybody on the internet’s focus to a key demo for a 30-minute period of time, hurrah for you. It’s not real, not when it comes to context. My point in this diatribe is that Vince caused you to make a big move that, in my opinion, was less than flattering.
Punk hasn’t delivered. Punk was the guy that came out and his first comments were ‘The addition of this talent was more significant than Scott Hall and Kevin Nash,’ constantly making references to WCW because they want to be the company that WCW was back in the mid-90s. There’s these constant references to WCW.
When Scott Hall and Kevin Nash came in, we took off. Punk, you came in and you sh*t the bed, in terms of ratings. It ain’t there and there’s nothing in reality to suggest otherwise. You just need to be careful about what you say until you’re delivering. That comment that Punk made about these guys being more significant than Hall and Nash in 96 and then two weeks after Punk made his big arrival the ratings dropped by 40-50%.
This is what lit my fuse, I wasn’t going to comment on any of this until Punk came out and said ‘It’s going to take 5 years for the effect of this talent to really show up significantly in the ratings,’ are you f**king kidding me?
Does anybody other than an uninformed wrestling fan who loves CM Punk, is anybody going to believe that nonsense? It’s going to take 5 years? Dude, you’re going to be getting AARP mail, because it happens soon as you start getting close to 50 they start pounding you with this sh*t.
I let that one go but then to come out a couple weeks later, in my opinion he should be embarrassed, and for the ratings to take the dive the way they did after his debut, suggests to me that he ain’t as hot as he’s trying to make people think he is. If he was, the numbers would be much bigger.”
Also Read: SmackDown Replay Drew More Viewers Than Live AEW Dynamite On Saturday Night
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• Old School Wrestling Veteran Celebrates His Birthday
Old School Territory Legend “The Universal Heartthrob” Austin Idol (Real name: Micheal McCord) turns 72 today.
Idol had his biggest success in the CWA Memphis Wrestling Territory, but also spent some time wrestling for Verne Gagne’s AWA American Wrestling Association and for GCW Georgia Championship Wrestling.
He retired from active professional wrestling during the mid-90s, but lately appeared for Billy Corgan’s new and improved ‘National Wrestling Alliance’, where he managed the NWA World Heavyweight Champion Nick Aldis (TNA’s Brutus Magnus).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUSTIN IDOL!
