Eric Bischoff feels that TNA Wrestling, at its peak, was more impactful than NXT currently is.
Eric Bischoff was one of the top people in TNA Wrestling over the last decade. He came into the promotion with Hulk Hogan in January of 2010 and would soon help formulate storylines that such as the Aces & Eights storyline that would seem Bully Ray become TNA World Heavyweight Champion.
Speaking on his After 83 Weeks post-show, Bischoff would shed some light on how well TNA Wrestling was actually doing about 7 years ago and the differences between TNA back then and NXT today.
“I don't think NXT is as good as TNA was when TNA was at its peak. Now 'at its peak' is subjective, right? Some people liked TNA when it first started because it was new. I get that. There's value in that. There's a valuation you can apply to that fact,” Bischoff said. “A lot of people liked it because it did feel different in the very beginning. Some people liked that smaller presentation. More than anything, everybody loves a competitor. Right, because you get your hopes up and you start getting interested in some new, fresh characters that you hadn't seen before.”
He continued, “But if you go back and look at TNA in terms of its peak across the boards, not for a moment in time, but for an extended period of time across the boards in terms of television ratings, pay-per-view buys and house show attendance. And that's going to be that period of time that I was describing earlier, right around the Aces and Eights peak storyline period with Brooke [Hogan] and Bully [Ray] and all of that when they were putting 2500, 3500, 5000 people in a venue. Yes, they did, and they actually paid for it. I don't know that NXT is doing anything better than TNA was when TNA was at its peak. I would be pretty sure, if I was a betting man, that I would bet that there are a lot more resources being pumped into NXT than there ever were being pumped into TNA.”
Most recently, Eric Bischoff was the Executive Director of the WWE SmackDown brand before being replaced by Bruce Prichard, who currently oversees both Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.
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