Eric Bischoff has strongly criticized AEW over the circumstances surrounding Steven Borden’s injury at All Out 2026.
Borden was injured following a mid-air collision with Kevin Knight during a tag team match at the pay-per-view, resulting in the bout being stopped. Speaking on his podcast, the former WCW President questioned why someone with Borden’s level of experience was allowed to perform the spot.
“He’s green. Who let him do that spot? Of all of these so-called veterans and guys who should know better that are just collecting a paycheck, why didn’t somebody say, ‘This is not really the right thing for this kid to be doing at this stage of his career’?
He actually shouldn’t even be wrestling on TV yet. He’s a deer in the headlights. I’ve been a deer in the headlights. My son Garrett was a deer in the headlights. You have to learn. You have to gain experience. You have to develop the confidence, not just memorize what you should do in the ring.
And the physical part of it, you need the reps and the confidence so that when you do put yourself into a position where your safety is at risk or your opponent’s safety is at risk, that you’re 100% confident because you’ve done it thousands of times.
This kid shouldn’t even be in a main event on television. Who’s putting him in this position? And I said it a month or six weeks ago: who’s putting him in this position? You’re setting the kid up for failure.
I’m really disappointed, particularly because of the head injury. You only have so many opportunities in life, and you have to protect the opportunity. Steven has such a great opportunity ahead of him, but to go up and do these bullsh*t moves because somebody else did it and you think it looks cool, and the people around you think it looks cool, and you’re just going to be able to go out there and do it in a match.
He’s still nervous. I don’t even know the kid, but I guarantee you before his match, he’s still scared as sh*t because he hasn’t been doing it long enough. This isn’t football. It’s a whole different thing.
And to put a kid out there—whoever let him, whoever approved that, whoever the manager was for that, for Tony Khan to know that that was going to happen and not go, ‘Wait a minute, let’s not expose him too much too soon. Let’s not put him at risk because this is a risky move’—he should have known that. The people around him should have known that.
I just don’t understand how it happens. We’re going to say, ‘Oh, it’s really horrible. It’s bad. We hope he gets better. Hope this never happens again.’ Why did it happen in the first place? Because if you don’t address why it happened in the first place, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen again, because you’re not addressing it.”
Bischoff’s criticism centered on the decision-making surrounding Borden’s involvement in the match, arguing that AEW should be protecting the inexperienced wrestler while he continues developing rather than putting him in situations involving what Bischoff considers unnecessary risk.
