There's a difference between creative control and meaningful consultation.
Speaking with WrestleSlam, Eric Bischoff was asked about AEW's creative structure and whether or not having four Executive Vice Presidents could create internal conflict. WCW was cited as an example of where too many people having too much say caused problems. Bischoff quickly clarified the way things worked in WCW and shared that the only person with creative control was Hulk Hogan.
"[Scott] Hall and [Kevin] Nash didn't have creative control," said Bischoff. "To clarify, they did have language in their agreement that gave them 'meaningful consultation.' Meaning they were guaranteed to have a conversation with me and it would have been a meaningful conversation. But meaningful conversation and creative control are two different things. They did not have creative control. Hulk Hogan had creative control and he only used it once. So the creative control issue was not an issue even though people like to talk about it and it's part of the narrative. So I know there are a lot of narratives and a lot of people have reported that there was creative control. None of those people know what the f*ck they're talking about, to be honest with you. So it didn't create an issue in WCW."
Bischoff then continued on to analyze AEW, saying that as long as Tony Khan is calling the shots, he doesn't believe anything unmanageable will present itself. Here is what he said:
"As far as AEW goes, as far as I know, Tony Khan is the one calling the shots. Look, you're always going to have conflict. Not necessarily negative conflict, but people are fighting for attention. They're fighting for TV time. They're fighting for promotion. Competing I should say, not fighting. Any time you have that level of competition, amongst high calibre people, it's going to get challenging from time to time. Whether you give them a title of Executive Vice President or whether they have something in their contract that says meaningful consultation, or yes indeed if a bunch of people had creative control that would obviously create a lot of challenges. But I don't think the challenge people are talking about really exists in AEW today. That's my guess. I'm not behind the scenes so I could be dead wrong. But I know enough of the people involved and the little bit that I know about from AEW from the inside, which is not a lot, but a little bit, Tony Khan is calling those shots. As long as Tony Khan's calling those shots it will be challenging but it will be manageable."
Hall and Nash moved from the WWF to WCW in the summer of 1996, eventually forming the nWo with Hulk Hogan following the Bash at the Beach PPV. Bischoff was recently inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2021.
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