Tony Khan responds to Eric Bischoff, calls his comments ‘laughable’

After AEW’s Tony Khan did a lot to hype his company around a brief head-to-head battle between with WWE on cable last Friday, former WCW head honcho Eric Bischoff was among those telling TK to be quiet and focus on his product.

During one of his regular appearances on Sirius XM’s Busted Open Radio today (Oct. 20), Khan had a lot to say about those comments, about Bischoff, and about his strategy for Rampage vs. the “Supersized” SmackDown - a strategy which ended up winning the battle for 18 - 49 year olds.

“Well, I really like Eric, and I was kind of surprised by Eric’s comments coming from Eric Bischoff [laughs]. I think Eric Bischoff’s probably the last person anyone would expect to say that they think the President of a wrestling company should be quiet. But then when it comes to head-to-head competition... we were in a head-to-head competition this past week, it was only 30 minutes, and I didn’t ask for it. We were in our time slot and somebody came into our time slot aggressively, and we’ve generally responded pretty well and have been very successful.

“I was amused by Eric’s comments, and I like Eric when we’re together, but this is the ultimate example I think of glass houses in some ways knowing how Eric conducted himself when he was the President of WCW. And really, he did ask for the head-to-head competition, and I think he said publicly I should be going for that, but I don’t decide when the shows are on. This time slot, we had looked at a couple of different slots, and this was one they thought would do well and I was pretty supportive of.

”I was surprised the competition was going to be commercial-free, but I thought it was more impressive given that I was forced to take a couple of breaks. And since the numbers came in on Monday, I haven’t said much. Because I think those numbers speak for themselves. I’m just really proud that we won that head-to-head. We didn’t make the choice to go head-to-head for 30 minutes against the competition, especially when they decided to do 30 minutes commercial-free, and they lost.

“So for Eric Bischoff, of all people, the guy who got lowered down on a motorcycle from the ceiling, the guy who challenged Vince McMahon to fight him, to say that somebody should be quiet is laughable.

“Eric is doing an act. I respect it, but let’s be serious, Eric used to be a wrestling company executive, and now he is commentator. And as a commentator, he’s trying to stir up controversy, but I think it would be pretty naive of anybody to look at this, and not examine that the person talking is Eric Bischoff, who is the most out-spoken wrestling executive of all-time, and somebody who got a lot of heat — but somebody also who, look, if we’re going to be honest, like the things I’m trying to do in terms of balancing these great stars we have like CM Punk, and Chris Jericho, and Bryan Danielson and also have a whole crew of people that are the the young stars, and a lot of them are becoming young established stars on TV too, and whether it’s MJF, Britt Baker, and so many others, Darby Allin, in particular, just stars that I’m committed to, to keeping in AEW and not losing and building around. And you know, when Eric says ‘focus on the wrestling,’ I am focused on the wrestling, and pushing these people, and not running them out of the company like Chris Jericho couldn’t get out of WCW fast enough, and Eddie Guerrero was put in his place, and the wrestlers were told by their boss that there’s only three guys in the company, that when Eric said that [Hulk] Hogan, [Randy] Savage, and [Roddy] Piper were the only three guys that had ever drawn money. Of course, a slap in the face to a few other people in the room, but what does that say to the morale of the young wrestlers who are busting their asses every week. It just doesn’t make sense.

“So I am happy, and grateful to not go off like that every week, and really only when there’s a call for it, and when there’s competition brought to our doorstep and we have to respond. And I think there’s nothing to talk about now because we did what we had to do last weekend, and now we can enjoy it, and also look forward to great cards this weekend.”

Welp, I think that pretty well covers it. Place your bets on when Bischoff will make his next appearance on Dynamite, and let us know what you think about all this in the comments below.