WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his Wise Choices podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including his belief that AEW needs to protect TBS Champion Willow Nightingale with her promos.
Bischoff said, “I think Willow did a good job, a decent, an adequate job of sharing her perspective, giving us a little bit of an insight as to how she feels and what her motivation is… Willow just doesn’t have the experience to go out there and carry as much dialogue as she did. If her dialogue had been cut by 70 — 60% at the very least — and she delivered that same message with less narrative, it would have made it much, much more impactful. But because she was just out there filibustering, because I guess talent still believes that the more camera time you get in and the more mic time you get, the better it is. That’s only true if you’re really experienced, and have developed a great skill with narrative holding a mic.”
“And Willow does not have that experience or that skill — yet. I saw indications that perhaps she could at some point. But right now absolutely not, and I think allowing her, whether it was her choice, or whoever the producer was, or whoever her writer was, giving that person that much dialogue knowing — you should know, you should pay attention and be honest — knowing that she’s really not there yet? All that does is expose her for not being as good as she needs to be in the role she’s in. So protect your talent, producers, agents, whatever you want to call them, and writers. And don’t burden them with more dialog than their abilities or would allow them to do well. Less is more.”
On his issues with AEW’s presentation of Mercedes Moné’s character:
“Same with Mercedes. Exact same comment. Now I will note, of the interviews that I’ve seen from Mercedes since she arrived in AEW, this was better than what I’ve seen in the past. I for one — now, this is a commentary about the character, and I said I’m not going to do it too much. Or at all, but I’m going to break my own rule here. That Mercedes character, from what I’ve seen so far, is as one-dimensional as one-dimensional can get. There’s got to be some wacky math formula that will allow you to get to a number that makes this more interesting than it really is. I’m not saying that right, I’m not making my point. But my point is, this was better than what I’ve seen. But how you get to be anything less than one-dimensional without a really cool math formula, I don’t know. But that’s what this is.”
“That character, the way she’s presenting herself — number one, it’s not over. You can pipe in all the ‘CEO,’ you know, as part of the music you want. The audience is not getting with it. Now, there were less than 4,000 people in that arena last night based on what I’ve seen from WrestleTix. A couple of hours before the show, there were less than 4,000 people in that arena. So that makes it tough, there’s just not a lot of energy there. But that crowd was flat. They’re not buying that character, in my opinion. And that is a producer’s note. Because if your characters aren’t working because there’s no depth to those characters, you’ve got a problem. And I’m not buying it, I don’t think anybody else’s either.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
