On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff opened up about several exciting topics, including his belief that The Rock will make a return to the ring at WWE WrestleMania 41. Bischoff also discussed the upcoming AEW Grand Slam event in Australia, offering insights into both promotions and what fans can expect in the near future. You can catch some of the most interesting highlights from the conversation below (thanks to 411mania.com):
Eric Bischoff on if he thinks The Rock will wrestle at WrestleMania 41:
“Yes. Well — do I think there’ll be an official match with a bell? Two bells, one to start, one to finish? I don’t know. But I see strong physical involvement and meaningful interaction, whatever that interaction is. Whether it’s physicality, he’s going to throw a monkey wrench into something. I just don’t know what it is.”
Eric Bischoff on if AEW dropping the Grand Slam: Australia name for Collision was due to backlash:
“I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I wonder — look, whether AEW intentionally allowed people to believe that this was going to be a pay-per-view? And you can allow people to believe whatever they want to believe if you don’t want to correct them, or if your marketing and your promotion is intentionally ambiguous and vague. It’s easy to understand why people in Australia, fans, who reacted initially to the ‘Oh my gosh, 50,000-seat stadium show, I gotta be a part of that!’ And they took the leap themselves. ‘Well, this must be a pay-per-view, because who would just do a Collision–‘ which is a C-show for TBS or TNT… It’s easy to understand how fans allowed themselves to believe that this was going to be a big stadium pay-per-view show and that they were going to be a part of something special. Because that’s the way it was projected and presented.
“And now you find out that, ‘Well, it’s not going to be a pay-per-view. I know we never said it would be, but we didn’t say it wouldn’t be, and we understand you just assume that it was because it’s in the stadium and it’s an Australian,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. But to go from that to a smaller arena, and now making it clear — which they should have done in the very beginning — because now people have a pissed off taste in their mouth, right? They’re pissed off because they felt like they were deceived. They weren’t. They deceived themselves. But you know, that’s a little bait and switchy, to be honest. And Dave [Meltzer] was one of the ones that — and rightfully so, I’m not criticizing for this. But the minute there’s any change in a card or a schedule, particularly if it’s at the top, his go to was always, ‘You know, false advertising, very misleading.’ Well, that’s kind of what’s going on here. But now that they’ve come out and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to move to a smaller arena. It’s not going to be a big stadium show. Sorry, folks, we overestimated our own popularity, so we’re going to move to a smaller arena so it doesn’t look like s**t.’”
