In a pro wrestling first, Eric Bischoff spoke with Tony Khan (in an early exclusive interview for AdFreeShows.com) as All Elite Wrestling readies for Fight For The Fallen this Wednesday.
Conrad Thompson moderated as the two wrestling producers talked shop and the conversation started off with talk of the World Title match between FTW Champion Brian Cage and AEW World Champion Jon Moxley. Bischoff was straightforward with Tony regarding his wrestling watching habits (particularly in the world’s current state) and gave major praise to the athleticism of one Brian Cage.
“I’m gonna be straight with you, Tony and everybody else watching this, I cannot sit and watch two hours of almost anything, but especially wrestling in front of no crowd. I drop in, I read about, I hear about through the grapevine or through social media, certain things that peak my interest and I tune into them, but I don’t sit down and watch two or three hours of anything for that matter, but I did check out Brian Cage and I did read about him and I read about the FTW and the backstory and all that.
“One of the fun things that I enjoy watching the product now, one of the reasons why I like watching the product now is now you’re starting to see guys like Brian Cage. In WCW, when we introduced the cruiserweights and all that, it was always the smaller guys that could do all the high-flying really cool aerial stuff and stuff that made people go, ‘Oh my God, did you see that? I’ve never seen that before and I a lot of the bigger guys were intimidated by that, right?’ So they wouldn’t come out and say it, but you know what they were thinking. It was like, ‘How do I follow that?’ And now you’re seeing bigger guys able to perform some of the moves that 20 years ago only 180 pound guys could do. Now you’re seeing 220, 230, 240 pound guys doing some of the same stuff and making it look great. That’s fun to watch.”
Bischoff then took the discussion down a different route and wanted to make note of how much he appreciated Dynamite’s stand-out production values, something he even took note of while being creative director for WWE SmackDown.
“Even when I was in WWE last year, when you guys debuted I sat and watched both shows side by side, NXT and AEW. Clearly I was working in WWE at the time and I was actually watching in a writers conference room with a bunch of other writers and one of the first things that I noticed was that you’re handling your production so much better. When I watched your show, even under COVID, that was pre-COVID obviously, but even under COVID, the way you’re shooting your show it’s tighter, you’re shots tend to be tighter, you embraced your venue as apposed to camouflage it quite as much.
“And I said this, the next day somebody (if you could imagine) said ‘What did you think?’ I told them what I thought. You’re show feels more like live TV to me because it has that hit – and don’t take this the wrong way please I mean this as a compliment, but your show feels gritty enough to convince me it’s live. You don’t strive to be so perfect that you lose that sense of live energy.”
Tony thanked Eric for the compliment, stating that Bischoff knows the strong work and dedication Keith Mitchell and his team bring to a wrestling television product.
“Nobody has more experience working with Keith probably than you and you know first hand that Keith and his team do great work and I think a lot of the people that work on our show used to work for you both in WCW and then probably even more then in TNA.”
“That’s what I loved about Nitro was that feel so to hear that coming from you means a lot because well, I’ve taken a lot of influence from you.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
To currently hear the entire hour and a half long conversation, check out AdFreeShows.com.
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