• WCW Legend Explains The 2 Risks AEW Is Taking By Doing Deathmatches
On a recent episode of his weekly ’83 Weeks’ podcast, Old School WCW Legend Eric Bischoff talked about the recent ‘No Rules’ match between Chris Jericho and Hardcore Indy veteran Nick Gage, which was basically a Deathmatch, Gage’s favorite match stipulation on the independent scene.
Here’s what the 2021 WWE Hall of Famer had to say:
“These bloody hardcore matches, you do have two risks that are out there. The first risk is that you turn off your audience, I made reference that for every one person that may enjoy this bloody hardcore type of match, you run the risk of alienating two or three others that don’t.
I’m also the guy who has been saying, just because I don’t like hardcore matches and generally I do not like hardcore matches unless motherf**kers, it’s a logical part of a storyline, then I’m all in.
But random hardcore matches for the sake of random hardcore matches, particularly when they get as gory as the AEW episode I saw when Moxley and whoever his opponent was were digging at each other with a fork.
Okay, if you’re going to go that far in your presentation of a hardcore match to satisfy whatever percentage of your audience that really digs that stuff, you’re taking two calculated risks. You could turn off your audience and I will say a lot of people agreed with me by the way. You’ve got to service your audience, wrestling has to be a buffet. There has to be enough of everything for everybody to keep an entire audience happy so I get hardcore matches and why they’re important because there’s a portion of that audience that digs it. But, you could go too far with it.
Then enter the second risk: you turn off advertisers or sponsors. The story breaks that Domino’s was upset and I understand why they would be, I would be if I was a Domino’s shareholder. I would be a little hot, I would question what the f**k is my advertising agency doing? How did this happen? Because it’s not good folks, take it from the guy that wrote the book ‘Controversy Creates Cash’, there is some controversy that really works in your benefit. And particularly in the state of affairs that we find ourselves in today, there is a lot of controversy that can kick your a$$ and not be a benefit.
I think if it happens again and again then I think there’s a much bigger risk of it having an adverse effect on AEW’s business in the long term. Let’s fast forward, I don’t know when AEW’s contract is up with Turner, but let’s just for the sake of argument say it’s two years from now, at the end of that two years if AT&T has made the decision that this is not the kind of content we’re comfortable with, much like I faced with AOL – Time Warner.
When they looked at wrestling, it wasn’t from the financial perspective that everybody thinks, and said ‘Well, we just don’t want that product in our catalog because we’re selling something else and this doesn’t fit with what we’re selling’.”
All Elite Wrestling cashed in on Nick Gage’s recent popularity, after he was featured as the topic of a season 3 episode of Dark Side of the Ring.
WATCH: Rhea Ripley’s Revealing Photoshoot:
• ON THIS DAY IN WWF HISTORY (August 7, 1995) – WWF Monday Night RAW
On this day in 1995, the World Wrestling Federation aired another episode of their weekly TV show ‘WWF Monday Night RAW’.
It was taped at the Louisville Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky and featured matches, interviews & storyline segments on the road to the ‘WWF SummerSlam 1995’ PPV.
Here’s the match-card:
1. Owen Hart & Yokozuna vs. Savio Vega & Razor Ramon
2. Fatu vs. Tony Devito
3. Kama vs. Troy Haste
4. Diesel vs. Mo
