Eric Bischoff does not see the business sense in Impact Wrestling's new partnership with AAA.
Bischoff, who spent several years as the Executive Producer of Impact television following stints with WCW and WWE, discussed the alliance as part of the latest episode of his podcast, Bischoff On Wrestling.
“I’m just having such a hard time unpacking the meaning or the relevance of that story,” he said. “First of all, I love Lucha Underground, I watch it and I dig it as a television product. It gets no ratings. It’s making no money. It has no live event market. To my knowledge, they don’t have any licensing or merchandising. It’s just content. It’s very expensive content and it’s cool as hell, don’t get me wrong. It’s cool content but there is no money in it. The fact that the athletes that portray the characters on a show that doesn’t make any money have the privilege of working on another show that doesn’t make any money and they can’t even be the characters that aren’t making money on another network… to me, it just seems kind of irrelevant. It doesn’t matter.”
Impact and AAA announced details of their partnership earlier this week, which will involve the Impact World Title being defended at TripleMania and AAA stars wrestling at the upcoming Impact pay-per-view, Slammiversary, on July 2.
Bischoff appeared to question the entire current structure of Impact, from a moneymaking standpoint.
"They basically give their show away to Pop TV," he noted. "It’s like an infomercial hoping that they are going to find another way to make revenue. They don’t have live events, they don’t have merchandising, and they won’t be making any money from YouTube as of now. So, what the hell difference does it make? Why is this a headline? A bunch of guys from Mexico get the privilege of working for a company that doesn’t pay anybody any money for an opportunity to not make any money? Eh, good for everybody. I’m happy they’re all happy. It’s great headlines. Great perception. If you can make a living off creating cheap headlines that don’t really matter, good for you. At the end of the day, it’s a non-issue issue.”
Bischoff filed a lawsuit against TNA following his departure from the company and, as of the most recent report, that legal matter had yet to be resolved.
