AEW's Tony Khan Fires Back at Eric Bischoff Over His 'Shut Up and Wrestle' Comments

AEW president Tony Khan has made numerous comments over the past week leading up to and following AEW Rampage's ratings victory over Friday Night SmackDown in the 30 minutes the two shows ran head-to-head last week. Khan's behavior wound up catching the attention of Eric Bischoff, who responded on his 83 Weeks podcast with, "If Tony were to call me and ask for any advice, here's what it would be shut up and wrestle, dude. Just put out the best product you can and you've proven you can. Focus on that. Now this is weird coming from me, right? The guy who challenged Vince McMahon. The guy who did all the — gave away their finishes. So people listening to this are going, Yeah, but that's hypocritical... what the hell?' But here's the difference. I was actually competing with him. I was going head-to-head. Real head-to-head. Like, my show started the same time his show started each and every week."

Khan appeared on Busted Open Radio on Wednesday and responded to Bischoff, calling his comments "laughable."

"I was amused by Eric's comments, and I like Eric when we're together, but this is the ultimate example I think of glass houses in some ways knowing how Eric conducted himself when he was the President of WCW," Khan said (h/t Cageside Seats). "And really, he did ask for the head-to-head competition, and I think he said publicly I should be going for that, but I don't decide when the shows are on. This time slot, we had looked at a couple of different slots, and this was one they thought would do well and I was pretty supportive of.

"I was surprised the competition was going to be commercial-free, but I thought it was more impressive given that I was forced to take a couple of breaks. And since the numbers came in on Monday, I haven't said much. Because I think those numbers speak for themselves. I'm just really proud that we won that head-to-head. We didn't make the choice to go head-to-head for 30 minutes against the competition, especially when they decided to do 30 minutes commercial-free, and they lost," he added. "So for Eric Bischoff, of all people, the guy who got lowered down on a motorcycle from the ceiling, the guy who challenged Vince McMahon to fight him, to say that somebody should be quiet is laughable."