WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff recently spoke on his podcast, “83 Weeks,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including AEW’s Collision logo looking like WCW’s Nitro logo:
“I think if it’s a short term, the colors and the logo and the direct rip off, that’s what it is, as flattering as it may be, it is what it is. It can work and parts of me would love to see it, but having had some experience in trying to recreate something, you run a very high risk.”
“Here’s the truth from my perspective. It doesn’t mean it’s a fact, it’s just the way I look at things, and I believe it to be true. The fans perception, those fans who watched Nitro and were part of that and it changed their lives, and it brought them back into wrestling, let’s keep in mind in the early 90s because of the steroid trial, and WWE at the time and all the craziness that was going on there, and the fact that WCW couldn’t hit their ass with both hands and a compass, they couldn’t find their ass with both hands and a compass creatively speaking, because that is a big part of the business, the audience for wrestling was leaving. The prevailing opinion, the consensus opinion among television executives that I worked with, ‘92, ‘93, ‘94, was that wrestling was dead. The audience has come and gone. Wrestling is going to be a part of television history. It’s never going to come back to its glory days. That was the consensus of opinion amongst people that were not only in the wrestling business, but in the television business as well.”
“That changed and we created this Monday Night War thing. People will have a feeling about Nitro and a relationship with Nitro and what was, and it’s overblown in their minds in a way. I’m not saying this in the way I want to say it. People who were fans of Nitro and recognize Nitro for what it was and how it changed the industry and during that period of time, put Nitro and the product on a little bit of a pedestal in some regards, and to a large degree, it’s unfair. This is not really true. I mean, there were a lot of things that we did on Nitro that changed the industry. Yes, there’s a lot of things that made it better, made it more interesting, created the Monday Night Wars, yes, but when you bring something back, much like bringing back the Four Horsemen or trying to bring back a character, the audience expectations and they’re kind of fantasy relationship with the original version, makes it almost unattainable.”
“The risk of disappointing the audience if you lean too much into, ‘Okay, at night we’re AEW, but man, we were born in this Nitro, whatever. We’re an extension of it.’ A little bit of it’s okay. Too much of it will backfire big time because there’s no way AEW will be able to deliver on the promise. As unfair as the promise may be, they’ll be unable to deliver on it, not because of all the obvious reasons, but because they just don’t have the creative horsepower or the visions, it’s not even creative, it’s vision and strategy. They don’t have anything new or different. So to lean too much into the Nitro thing could backfire. I think it already has a little, at least what I see on social media.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
