Eric Bischoff Says AEW Isn’t Even In The Same Universe As WWE

During the most recent episode of the ’83 Weeks’ podcast, Eric Bischoff claimed that AEW is not competition to WWE and you can't compare them.

“My opinion is AEW are not competition. They’re not even close. They are not even in the same universe in many, many respects. You can’t really compare WWE to AEW.

AEW has been around effectively for 2 years, WWE has been around for 30 or 40 years or whatever it’s been.

My point is you can’t really compare them and what AEW is doing now, in my opinion, as is MLW, IMPACT, ROH, is they’re taking advantage of and drafting from the massive audience that WWE has created. 

There’s enough interest in wrestling in general, in large part because of the success of WWE over the decades, that companies like AEW or IMPACT or ROH or MLW can come in.

I think more and more MLW is going to be a part of the conversation more than it has been in a while, but all these companies are taking advantage of an audience but they’re not taking anything away from WWE, they’re just not.

When AEW or any other company starts taking market share, like I did, like WCW did; now you’ve got my attention.

Until then, everybody’s just showing up to the party and taking some free chips. It’s not costing WWE anything.

Maybe you can suggest that one of the reasons Braun Strowman for example was able to negotiate such a big contract was because Vince was afraid he was going to go to AEW, sure, we’ve covered that.

But I think now WWE is at the point where everybody’s going, it’s cool for AEW, it’s good for the business, everybody loves variety, it doesn’t hurt anybody and they’re not taking anything away from WWE.

I’m interested to see what happens when people actually start taking market share, that they’re currently not taking.

That was my goal back then in WCW.”