Eric Bischoff is elated about Jen Pepperman signing with AEW.
Just hours before Dynamite on Wednesday, February 21, AEW sent out a press release and revealed that Pepperman was being hired as the company's Vice President of Content Development. This news came just days after Pepperman left WWE.
Many people both in and out of the company have reacted positively to this hire, including Eric Bischoff, who has been often been critical of the company and their creative practices.
On the latest episode of Strictly Business, Bischoff first spoke about his experience working alongside Pepperman in WWE.
“Well I worked, I shouldn’t say I worked — I didn’t work closely with Jennifer when I was in WWE back in 2019. She was not a part of my team, although that didn’t really mean much because nobody really knew who was on which writing staff, there was so much discussion and transition. But I got to know Jennifer and really, really liked her. I respect her work, she’s got a tremendous background. She understands storytelling, she’s tough. She’s a very sweet person, easy to get along with, she’s got a great personality and she’s very outgoing. But, she’s also tough. She’s not gonna be intimidated. I’ve watched her interact with Vince, and Vince can be very, very intimidating. I watched her stand up to Vince, I watched her react to pressure that a lot of creative people that I’ve worked with in the past would’ve probably taken pretty hard. She digs in and does the work."
Bischoff then went on to note that the hire is the most exciting thing he's seen the company do in a long time.
"This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard out of AEW in the last three years, maybe longer. It indicates a couple things to me. One is, Tony recognizes he has a problem. You can’t fix a problem or come up with a solution if you don’t recognize what’s wrong with it first and the fact that Tony is bringing in [people] at a high level, suggests to me — and part of this is wishful thinking on my part but I do hope I’m right — that Tony is recognizing that his creative, his fantasy wrestling matches and dream match nonsense and creating wrestling that appeals to the internet, it’s not working. I’ve been banging on that drum for over two years now, I’ve gotten a lot of hate from it. The fact that Tony recognizes that he has a problem, recognizes that he needs to bring somebody in, as I’ve been saying for years now, you need somebody that understands a disciplined storytelling structure. Not only a beginning, middle, and end, but understanding the plot points along that arc that need to happen, it’s almost like a checklist. They need to happen over the course of an arc in order to have any chance of building or retaining an audience, and that’s what Tony has had a hard time doing, building and retaining an audience. He’s gone from a premiere of 1.4M viewers down to averaging around 800 thousand, that’s a problem, especially when the overall audience for wrestling is growing because of WWE and their success. So I think the fact that Tony recognizes, hopefully, and brought somebody in who absolutely has the tools and the experience, and I believe the personality — Jen brings all of that to the table."
Bischoff also went on to say that Khan should allow Pepperman to do what she is capable of doing and that he should give her plenty of time to get a feel for all of the talent.
"Now the question I have, this is not being negative, this is just being honest, having been in situations similar to AEW. If Tony allows Jennifer to do what she’s capable of doing and gives her the time, because it’s not going to happen overnight. I think Jennifer’s impact on the product, the storytelling, the discipline, the structure, is something that people will start to recognize over the next month or two — but it’s gonna take six months for Jennifer to really get a feel for the talent. Some of the talent, she’s obviously worked with them in the past. But she’s gonna have to get a feel for the talent, understand where they’re all at in terms of their current stories and, this is the hard part, to really understand the strengths and limitations that some talent have. Some talents are really, really good at certain things but not so good at others. Learning how to manage that to take advantage of the strengths and camouflage some of the weaknesses, that just takes time, you can’t rush it. If Tony gives her the runway, gives her control to the maximum instinct possible and stays out of it, stays out of her process other than to learn, because Tony needs to learn what a great story is and how it’s constructed and how to manage it over a period of time. If Tony works with her [by letting her] mentor [him], I think this could be one of the best things that’s happened in AEW — I think this is absolutely necessary, I think it can be one of the things that can have a significant impact on AEW far beyond any talent.”
Fans can see some of the reactions to Pepperman's hiring by clicking here.
Furthermore, check out the lineup for the February 23 episode of AEW Rampage by clicking here.
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