Eric Bischoff recently appeared as a guest on the Strictly Business podcast for an in-depth interview covering all things WWE and AEW.
During his appearance on the program, the former WCW Executive Vice President and WWE employee/performer spoke about whether the Forbidden Door pay-per-view will grow AEW's casual audience, as well as how he doesn't think AEW's audience will grow much past the spot it's at now.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On whether the Forbidden Door PPV will grow AEW’s casual audience: “I don’t think so. What AEW has been doing and what, at least up until the last episode I watched about two weeks ago, is kind of internet wrestling community-centric. They’re booking for internet wrestling fans more than they’re booking for the casual audience and I would venture to guess, and it’s just a guess, but they’re satisfying an audience that they already have. And they’re doing a phenomenal job of doing that but how many people watch New Japan wrestling? How many people watch the New Japan product on a weekly basis [in the US]?”
On how he doesn’t think AEW’s audience will grow he does think the show will be a great fit for wrestling fans: “How is merging a television property that’s only getting 200,000 viewers a week with AEW, how is that going to increase or attract the casual viewer that AEW doesn’t have? I don’t know, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, I kind of dig the idea from a wrestling fan’s perspective, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan and have a lot of good memories and experiences working with New Japan. I love the Japanese style of wrestling but that doesn’t mean it’s going to grow an audience.”
Check out the complete interview at Supercast.com. H/T to WrestlingInc.com for transcribing the above quotes.
