CM Punk has had enough of Eric Bischoff discussing AEW. The former WCW executive producer has made a number of comments in the past about how AEW doesn’t target casual fans, a group that Punk has previously argued in interviews doesn’t truly exist. Bischoff responded to that comment in a recent episode of 83 Weeks.
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“The casual fan is still out there. If you build it, honest to god as corny as it sounds, if you build it, your audience will show up. They will, that lapsed fan is another term I’ve heard in a lot of research that I did. ‘I used to watch wrestling but I don’t watch that s— anymore.’ Sometimes it’s just life, your job, your kids, whatever. If anybody’s going to try to convince me that you can’t find that audience again, they shouldn’t be in the wrestling business,” Bischoff said (h/t 411Mania). “All due respect to CM Punk, CM Punk never spent five minutes in the television business. He knows a lot about what’s going on in the wrestling ring, he knows a lot about building a character, more than I ever will in terms of executing it. But to make the casual statement that ‘I think the lapsed fan is gone and I don’t think they’re ever going to come back,’ what the f**k are you doing in the television business then dude? It makes no sense to me, I don’t believe it’s true.”
Bischoff then shared a separate clip from the episode where he debated with Conrad Thompson about AEW only being concerned with a small fraction of wrestling fandom. Punk responded with, “Wrestling Twitter needs to stop amplifying all the old head bad faith bad take carny dips—s. They had their moment in the sun. Let them die in the dark with their ego podcasts. Quote me.”
Does Bischoff have a point? Or is Punk correct in saying that he’s arguing in bad faith against the young promotion? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!
Punk is scheduled to face Adam “Hangman” Page for the AEW World Championship at the Double or Nothing pay-per-view on May 29 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. He’s been with the promotion since last August and has feuded with the likes of Darby Allin, Eddie Kingston and MJF with accumulating an overall record of 17-1.
