Vince McMahon doesn't see AEW the way he saw WCW.
Though AEW and NXT were in direct competition on Wednesday nights before NXT moved to Tuesdays and AEW continues to trend up in the ratings, Vince isn't worried about them the way he was worried about WCW during the Monday Night Wars.
When asked about AEW making positive gains and signing previously released WWE talent during the second-quarter financials call, Vince replied, "It's certainly not a situation where it's rising tides because Ted Turner was coming after us with all of Time Warner assets as well. It was a different situation. AEW is where they are. I don't really know what their plans are, all I know is what our plans are. I don't consider them competition in the way that I considered WCW back in the day. Not even near close to that. I'm not so sure what their investments are as far as their talent is concerned. Perhaps, we can give them some more."
Vince grunted at the end of his comment and it's unclear if Vince was saying "perhaps we could give [AEW] more (talent)" or if he was passing things off to Nick Khan as if to say, "perhaps we could give [the investors] more (insight)."
I could also be construed as Vince saying "I'm not so sure what their investments are as far as their talent is concerned. Perhaps, we can give them some more."
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) July 29, 2021
Vince's volume is notoriously low on these calls, so it's really hard to add proper context even hearing it first-hand
Khan picked up where Vince left off and added, "The way we look at these situations, it's sort of like a horserace where the horse has blinders on. We're looking straight ahead and in our lane and making sure we stay in front of the pack. At the same time, everything is our competition. Someone had a line a couple of weeks ago that we chuckled about, 'sleep is our competition.' If it was up to us, people would be up 24 hours a day watching content from different content providers, hopefully, including ours. We don't look at any organization particularly as competition, yet we see everything as competitive in terms of what we're trying to do in terms of eyeballs."
AEW has recently added Andrade and Malakai Black, both of whom were released by WWE earlier this year. They are also reportedly bringing in CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, two of the top names in WWE over the last decade.
WWE continues to focus on its own financial growth, reporting a revenue of $265.6 Million. You can view the highlights from the financial report by clicking here.
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