On Tony Khan saying AEW is better than WCW:
“All I hear out of AEW is how much better they are [than WCW], but I’m not seeing it. What did Friday night [AEW Rampage] do [in the ratings] with CM Punk in a match? 593,000 viewers? I’m sorry that’s just not impressive at all.
On top of it, the Dynamite numbers really are not [impressive], they’re over a million, that’s great. TNT is probably happy just like Viacom and Spike TV was thrilled with TNA IMPACT, they were thrilled with it, it was one of the highest rated shows on the network, still doesn’t mean much. I just would hope at some point that Tony embraces the role of being an underdog. That’s kind of the advice I was giving to Cody [on Rhodes to the Top] hoping others would see it.”
On AEW being nowhere near to WWE in terms of revenue:
“They’re the underdog, AEW is at the point now where people want them to succeed but by continually talking about how much better they are than WWE and talking about the competition, first of all, they’re not in competition with WWE. They’re in the same industry but they’re not competition in the real sense.
If you’re going to say you’re competing with WWE, then let’s talk numbers because numbers are objective. Is AEW anywhere near WWE in terms of revenue? No. WWE is going to make more money going over to Saudi Arabia for one weekend than AEW is going to make from Turner for the entire year of programming. So there’s no comparison from a revenue point of view, there’s no comparison in terms of their global viewer footprint. On what basis is there a real competition?
The whole cosplay competition and burying your competition while they are kicking your a$$. What matters is the numbers and when it comes to the numbers, AEW has got a long way to go. They’re not even close to where I was in 1996, not even close in terms of real competition because they’re not really competing.”
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