WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including how All Elite Wrestling used AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland on an episode of Dynamite.
Bischoff said, “Let’s go back to Swerve Strickland. Wins the championship; wins the title. Celebration! Everybody’s excited for him — including me, by the way. And what do they do? They s**t all over him in the opening segment by putting them into a match that doesn’t f**king matter with a guy that doesn’t matter….”
“Swerve Strickland shouldn’t have had a f**king match. We should still be in celebration mode. We should be in the mood of getting him over. Just because you put the title on him and you give him, you know, that 15 minutes of spotlight and shine on a pay-per-view that probably 150,000 people watched. That’s not getting him over.”
On Mercedes Moné’s performance on the April 24th Dynamite:
“You give me a f***ing iPhone and a flashlight, and I will produce an interview with Swerve Strickland — and I’ve never talked to the man, much less know what he’s capable of delivering. But I swear to god, you give me a f***ing iPhone and a flashlight and I’ll produce a that would have blown Mercedes out of the out of the building. She was f***ing horrible. Horrible.”
On how Moné should not cut promos in AEW:
“You’re pointing to Jen Pepperman, I’m going to defend her. And you pointed out that, ‘Boy, this feels like a WWE video.’ Well, she’s a WWE f***ing talent, Mercedes. So yeah, imagine that. Of course it is. And by the way, if AEW could get within the same zip code of the quality of WWE promos? And by the way, I am not a huge fan of a lot of the promos and a lot of the backstage interviews, and all that s**t. I am not a fan of it; I think at best it’s adequate, even in WWE. So for all of you who don’t think I ever want to criticize WWE? I consistently point out that the interviews and the promos — not 100% of the time, but too often — are just a waste of time. They’re not horrible, but they don’t accomplish anything, and it’s a little bit of a death by a 1,000 cuts when you keep seeing talent on camera who are put into positions where they just can’t possibly excel. Either because of the nature of the shot or the interview or the writing in some cases, or just because it’s filler material and everybody knows it, they tune out of it consciously or subconsciously. That’s usually the mark that’s kind of like the standard mark. And then every once in a while you get some stuff — usually it happens out in the ring in front of people where it should — where you get that highly charged emotional kind of roller coaster promo. WWE is phenomenal at that. But a lot of the stuff they do is adequate at best, and I don’t even know why they do it. It’s a waste of f***ing time.”
“But if AEW could rise — I mean, work their asses off and do everything that they could to achieve the adequate level of promo ability in WWE, they’d be light years ahead of where they are now. And that’s got nothing to do with writing talent. There’s so many talent out there, like Mercedes. And I don’t dislike Mercedes, she’s a phenomenal wrestler, she’s a phenomenal performer in the ring. She’s had an incredible run. She’s hugely successful, and I respect the hell out of her for what she’s accomplished. That doesn’t mean she’s capable of holding a mic for more than 30 seconds. She’s just not. She wasn’t in WWE, but guess what? They knew that, and they worked around that. Because you can, if you’re smart, if you know what you’re doing. And rather, AEW hands her a microphone, says, ‘Go out and cut a promo for four minutes or three minutes or whatever.’ And every time she opens her mouth, her stock value decreases by about 10%. She’d be much better off never saying anything and just smiling and doing a little f***ing dance, and coming out with funny hair and doing all that s**t. That got her over.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
