Eric Bischoff: Only Hardcore Wrestling Fans Will Understand Why Eddie Kingston Confronted CM Punk On AEW Rampage
Punk & Kingston got into it on AEW Rampage
Nov 3, 2021
Eric Bischoff says All Elite Wrestling need to 'tell stories' and not just focus on entertaining the hardcore wrestling fan community, highlighting the recent confrontation between CM Punk and Eddie Kingston.
Punk and Kingston had a brief altercation backstage at AEW Rampage last week in a segment that excited fans about a match between the duo, but Bischoff believes only hardcore wrestling fans understand why Kingston reacted in such an aggressive way to Punk.
The former WCW boss feels such a segment, while entertaining to committed wrestling fans, would not have attracted the general viewer.
Talking about the segment on his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff said: "I asked you (Conrad Thompson). I said, good promo. Ok, we lit the fuse, but I wasn’t clear why we were lighting that fuse. Why did Eddie react the way he reacted?
"What I said to you was, ‘Look, all of the really hardcore fans, the audience that AEW already has, probably knows the backstory just like you did because you had to explain it to me. But if the other 98 million people that are floating around out there looking for something to watch on TV, or whatever the number is, don’t know that, and they just happen to pop in because they wanted to see what all the noise was about who use to watch wrestling 5,10,15,20,25 years ago, and, ‘Man I heard about this big thing, what is going on, I want to see what it’s all about.’ If AEW doesn’t do a great job of telling that story to the uninformed as opposed to just assuming that those that know, know, probably will not live up to their potential.
"My advice is to tell stories. Don’t just put on matches for the sake of matches. Do not just entertain the hardcore community or the internet wrestling community. They’re an important part of the community, no doubt about it, but they’re not the only part. You have to tell stories that appeal to the masses, not to the few if you want to be popular with the masses."
H/T WrestlingNews.co
