In an episode of his podcast, “83 Weeks,” WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff discussed various topics. A key highlight of the episode was WWE’s strategy to counter-program AEW’s All In: Texas next month by airing WWE’s Great American Bash and Saturday Night’s Main Event on the same dates.
Bischoff said, “It’s good for business. Competition creates better product, right? Creates cash, forces people to up their game. I proved that more than anybody in the wrestling business, I proved that. And this is AEW opportunity to step up their game. Tony talks — and I’m not bearing, this is not me being negative. Tony likes to talk about being the challenger brand. Now’s the time to be a challenger brand.”
On whether it’s intentional or not:
“Whether it’s intentionally — you know, I think the NBC date, I think that’s a little bit, that’s a stretch. Iit’s not like NBC can just arbitrarily because they hear AEW’s doing something, and Nick Khan or Ari Emanuel calls their contacts over at NBC and says, ‘Hey, I don’t care what you had programmed before. Let’s do a, let’s do a Saturday Night’s Main Event on that night.’ That’s not how television works, folks, especially at the network level, the advertising for those shows are sold in advance. There’s commitments in advance, there’s promotional things. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into it. It’s not like programming a social media channel, let’s put it that way. It’s a very complicated thing, programming a network, and they would have known — they meaning NBC — would likely have known six months ago that this date is the date that they would likely want to pencil in a Saturday Night Main Event. My point in all this — because I’m guessing. I don’t know anything other than how things kind of normally work typically. And it would be a typical for the Saturday Night Main Event to be some kind of counter-programming measure more than it is a coincidence. I think that portion of this is a coincidence. I think the rest of it is fun.”
On AEW scheduling All In months ago:
“All right, that’s a good point. Then I’ll — I agree. It makes it less likely then. I didn’t realize that it was announced a year ago, my bad.”
On Saturday Night’s Main Event being the potential spot for Goldberg’s retirement match:
“It’s pretty cool, and it’ll do very well. Good for Bill. Good for Saturday Night’s Main Event, because that’s going to be a hell of a show. Should get a pretty big number. I read the other day that this last Saturday Night’s Main Event did really well, one of the better ratings they’ve had since they started, if I remember the story correctly. This will probably be bigger than that. So that’s cool.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
