WWE Hall Of Famer Eric Bischoff has discussed his recent remarks about AEW and Tony Khan and says he thinks the AEW President is more than a little upset with him.
Eric Bischoff has been vocal in recent weeks about his thoughts on the direction of All Elite Wrestling and some of their recent marquee signings. The former WCW President has also taken issue with comments made by Tony Khan where Khan suggested that if former WCW owner and media mogul Ted Turner knew “1%” about wrestling that Khan does then WCW would still be in business.
At the time Bischoff responded to Khan’s comments on his 83 Weeks podcast, saying:
“That is a completely uninformed, therefore ignorant comment to make. Ignorant because I don’t think Tony knows whether or not Ted Turner grew up a wrestling fan or not, I don’t either by the way. If you know anything at all about Ted Turner, if you’ve read anything that’s been written in Ted’s own words, Ted believed in wrestling above all else other than perhaps the Braves.”
Now in an interview with CBS Sports, Eric Bischoff calls his relationship with Khan “friendly” but says Khan hasn’t returned his call following the public comments:
“We were friendly and cordial. Mutual respect there. All that good stuff. It wasn’t until recently, I was asked a question and I responded and it caused, I’m guessing, hard feelings from Tony. I tried to call Tony and he didn’t call me back. Someone told me, who Tony was complaining to, about how upset he was about the things that I said. He said, ‘Hey, why don’t you give Tony a call?’ I said, ‘Sure! I’m not mad at Tony.'”
“I don’t carry grudges. It doesn’t change the way I feel about Tony, I just had to express my opinion and react to something Tony actually said that involved me and I took as being disrespectful of my accomplishments and even more disrespectful, and quite frankly, ignorant, with relation to the comment he made about Ted Turner. That’s what I reacted to. But I wasn’t angry with Tony. When my friend said to give him a call, I thought, ‘alright, I’ll give him a call.’ I left a message and I haven’t heard back so, evidently, he’s a little p*ssed off. But that’s OK.”
Eric Bischoff had appeared on a few occasions on AEW television following his departure as Executive Director of SmackDown in October 2019. Bischoff has not appeared for the company since he was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame in April 2021.