During a recent episode of the Strictly Business podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff spoke about Tony Khan allowing many of his All Elite Wrestling stars to work independent shows in between their AEW dates.
Eric stated that if he was Khan, he wouldn’t allow them to appear for other promotions, regardless if it’s on TV or on untelevised indy shows.
Here’s what Bischoff had to say:
“I wouldn’t do it. Where’s the benefit other than to the talent and to the indy promoter? The benefit? Where’s the risk? I guess you could probably, if you dig deep enough and hard enough and you wanted to justify your position badly, you could come up with a benefit. Maybe because you’re supporting the indy scene and building some loyalty and following within the independent audience, and that’s not a bad argument.
It’s just that the value of that argument is minimal, in my opinion. What’s the risk? Well, the risk is somebody gets hurt on the indy scene and takes them off your roster. I think that’s probably happened in the past. I just don’t see a scenario where the benefits outweigh the risks. As an average golfer, would you get any benefit from taking lessons from somebody who’s less proficient in golf than you?
Here’s your answer. What are you going to learn on the indy scene? How are you going to improve on the indy scene? All you’re going to do is learn a bad golf swing, and it becomes twice as difficult to unlearn a bad golf swing and unlearn bad habits than it takes to learn good ones or to learn good golf swings.”
Eric Bischoff started as an announcer and interviewer for Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association (AWA) from 1986 until 1991 before he joined Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling in ’91 to do the same, but eventually became the Senior Vice President, who was in charge of WCW during the famous Monday Night Wars of the 90s.
After WCW was sold to Vince McMahon, Eric was brought to WWE as the General Manager of the Monday Night RAW brand, a position he held from July 2002 to December 2005.
Some of the younger fans will also remember him as an on-screen character for Dixie Carter’s Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) between 2010 and 2012.
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