Eric Bischoff: Tony Khan Being Disrespectful To Ted Turner Made Me Lose Respect For Him

Eric Bischoff and Tony Khan have traded words on social media and interviews with Bischoff offering his thoughts on the AEW product, and Khan defending his company.

According to Bischoff in an interview with Action, it was a 2021 tweet that cause him to lose respect for Khan.

“Tony likes to compare himself to me and to WCW, but he hasn’t gotten to the part yet where he’s actually changed the industry or defeated his competition in head-to-head ratings. Tony likes to draw a lot of parallels to himself or WCW or Eric Bischoff, but they’re really not appropriate. And the real reason I’ve been vocal about Tony and AEW, and Tony knows this, I’ve talked about this, is Tony came out on national television and was very disrespectful, in my opinion, to Ted Turner. The guy whose name is still on the door at Turner Broadcasting, where Tony airs his show. And Tony made some ridiculous comment to the effect of, ‘if Ted Turner knew 1% about professional wrestling as I do, WCW would still be around’.

“It was such a profoundly stupid thing to say that it made me lose respect for Tony. It also indicated to me that Tony doesn’t really understand the business he’s in. Tony has the benefit of having a couple billion dollars behind him. He doesn’t really need to worry about performance from a revenue perspective, because he’s not really accountable to anybody. He’s spending his own money. And he’s got a lot of it to spend. He makes no bones about it. This is his hobby. Some people play golf. Some people have wrestling companies. But to be disrespectful to someone like Ted Turner while you’ve got a show on his network, to me, just told me everything I needed to know about Tony.”

In response to an article regarding WWE’s thoughts on Tony’s spending habit, Tony tweeted in 2021, “I’ve never met Ted Turner. It’s very possible Ted Turner is smarter than me, but he didn’t know 1% of what I know about professional wrestling or WCW would still be on TNT/TBS. @AEW is here to stay, watch #AEWRampage LIVE tonight on TNT or WatchTNT app on your phone or any device”

Elsewhere during the interview, Bischoff explained why he’s critical of AEW. You can find his full comments here.