In recent weeks, there has been a lot of speculation about Mercedes Mone signing with WWE or AEW. Mone was in talks with WWE last month, but they were reportedly unable to reach an agreement. Her expected destination is AEW, and she could appear on Dynamite as early as this week.
During a “Ask Eric Anything” episode of “83 Weeks” on AdFreeShows.com, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff was asked what signing Mercedes Mone would mean for AEW.
“Nothing. I mean, how many times have we seen big names come from from WWE to AEW and people speculating about how it’s going to impact the business and what’s gonna happen and nothing happens? It doesn’t matter who you bring in there. I made the comment and I’m gonna make it again. AEW is quickly becoming TNA. I got nearly a million views on that comment and out of the probably half million responses, everybody, you know, buried my comment and me along with it, but this is a perfect example of what I meant. We’ve seen so many big names come into AEW. Pick one. Let’s put CM Punk off to the side. Pick any other one and the net impact on the growth of the business other than selling T-shirts has been zip. Nada. The television audience continues to deteriorate while WWE’s continues to grow. You look at their ticket sales, outside of anomalies or outliers I should say like, UK, and they’re not doing nearly as well as they were in the past. Look at their Dynamite shows. Check out WrestleTix on social media and you can see their ticket sales. They’re playing in 10,000 or 15,000 seat venues, but they’re scaling them down to 4,000 and a week before the event, they haven’t sold out yet. So it doesn’t matter.”
“I used to tell Dixie all the time. She’d want to bring in big names. I know I get busted for that. ‘Oh, yeah, but look at all the WWE guys you brought into TNA.’ I didn’t bring them in. I didn’t even bring me in. I didn’t even really want the job. Dixie Carter had brought in Mick Foley and Sting and Kurt Angle, and so many others before I ever got there with the idea that you bringing in these big WWE names, it’s going to move the needle and I would always tell Dixie, and she hated me for this, I think she didn’t hate me, but she would get frustrated because I think word for word I said to her one day, ‘Dixie, it doesn’t matter if you brought Undertaker and you dropped him from the ceiling as a surprise into the middle of the TNA ring and then John Cena.’ This is when they were both, you know, obviously at the top of WWE years ago, ‘and then you have John Cena run to the TNA ring and you shoot an angle, it won’t matter. It just doesn’t because the brand, the perception of it, the scale of it, is so small that it won’t get over’, and that’s the problem that I think AEW has is they don’t know how to use those big names in a way that grows their business. It just grows their budget, but it doesn’t grow their business. Not yet it hasn’t, and if anybody can prove to me, not outliers, but show me what’s happened when big names have come in, to television ratings, to buy rates, show me a pattern and I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, but I won’t be because I watch that stuff. I look at it. It interests me.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
