Eric Bischoff: AEW's Stacked Roster Is Not Drawing Viewers
AEW keeps adding new talent
Dec 16, 2021
Eric Bischoff believes All Elite Wrestling's policy of continuing to add new signees to the roster is not working as the viewership numbers are still the same from 12 months ago.
AEW continues to add new faces to their roster, amid reports that Brody King has signed with the promotion and Kyle O'Reilly could be heading to join his former Undisputed Era teammates Adam Cole and Bobby Fish - two still relatively new names in the company.
During a recent episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff was asked about the possibility of Johnny Gargano joining AEW. The former WCW boss wants to see Gargano back employed in wrestling but, on the other hand, isn't sure that AEW needs to keep adding more talent to their already bulging roster.
Bischoff said: "For his sake, I hope that happens. You want people in this industry to stay employed and prosper and to be successful at whatever levels they are able to achieve.
"But what are you going to do with all that talent? ‘Let’s build the biggest roster in the history of wrestling?’ Is that the goal? Is that the end game? To be able to brag about how deep your talent roster is? If it is, I guess AEW is on its way to achieving that goal, but what do you do with that talent?
"You look at the shows and let’s be honest about it — I’m not being critical, I like AEW and I want AEW to prosper. But let’s be honest about where AEW is, they drew 872,000 viewers this past Wednesday night. That’s what they were doing a year ago. I’ve done shows with AEW that have done more than they did last Wednesday, and the talent roster is stacked with great talent, phenomenal talent but where’s the audience for it? It’s not working.
"872,000 viewers on their A show? That’s not exciting. The numbers are the numbers, and this is a number AEW was doing a year ago, two years ago. It’s weird, and now you’re going to stack even more talent on top of it? What are you going to do with them?"
H/T Wrestling Inc.