Eric Bischoff: New Writer Is "Most Exciting" Thing From AEW In Three Years

AEW made a fairly notable addition to their backstage staff in recent weeks, employing former WWE writer Jennifer Pepperman, who now has the role of Vice President of Content Development in the company. Reports over this week have suggested that she will be working closely with Mercedes Mone, whose arrival to AEW is imminent.

Eric Bischoff is someone who has been rather outspoken when it comes to his criticism of AEW, but in a change of tune, he has been outwardly positive about this new arrival when talking on the Strictly Business podcast, even stating that this is the most exciting thing to happen to the company in three years.

“This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard out of AEW in the last three years, maybe longer. It indicates a couple things to me. One is, Tony recognizes he has a problem. You can’t fix a problem or come up with a solution if you don’t recognize what’s wrong with it first and the fact that Tony is bringing in [people] at a high level, suggests to me — and part of this is wishful thinking on my part but I do hope I’m right — that Tony is recognizing that his creative, his fantasy wrestling matches and dream match nonsense and creating wrestling that appeals to the internet, it’s not working. I’ve been banging on that drum for over two years now, I’ve gotten a lot of hate from it. 

“The fact that Tony recognizes that he has a problem, recognizes that he needs to bring somebody in, as I’ve been saying for years now, you need somebody that understands a disciplined storytelling structure. Not only a beginning, middle, and end, but understanding the plot points along that arc that need to happen, it’s almost like a checklist. They need to happen over the course of an arc in order to have any chance of building or retaining an audience, and that’s what Tony has had a hard time doing, building and retaining an audience. He’s gone from a premiere of 1.4M viewers down to averaging around 800 thousand, that’s a problem, especially when the overall audience for wrestling is growing because of WWE and their success. So I think the fact that Tony recognizes, hopefully, and brought somebody in who absolutely has the tools and the experience, and I believe the personality — Jen brings all of that to the table."

Bischoff spoke glowingly about Pepperman and how he respected her work, noting that she was able to stand up to Vince McMahon.

H/T Fightful