Eric Bischoff compared the AEW World Championship main event between Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega to a Nasty Boys match, and said the matches across All In: London were the weakest part of a show he otherwise thought looked excellent.
Bischoff gave his reaction on a live 83 Weeks episode recorded with Conrad Thompson shortly after the Wembley Stadium show went off the air. Ospreay beat Omega in 34 minutes to win the title in front of a home crowd, finishing with the Hidden Blade in a bloody match with both men accompanied by cornermen at ringside.
Thompson asked Bischoff about the shift from the technical style of Omega’s New Japan work with Kazuchika Okada to the more violent approach at Wembley.
“I didn’t like the match at all, and I know people are going to say Bischoff’s such a hater,” Bischoff said. “Look, for those who like the AEW style of wrestling, it was fine. You got what you wanted. You got what you paid for, and it met or exceeded your expectations, and I’m happy for you. For me personally, subjectively, based on what I enjoy out of professional wrestling, it was like watching a Nasty Boys match. It was a hardcore, slow-paced match. And yes, it was bloody, and there were great spots.”
He extended the criticism to most of the card.
“The matches were okay, but there was nothing special. There was a lot of garbage in there. There was a lot of stuff that you could see through. Timing was off in a number of matches, and a number of them just looked sloppy,” Bischoff said. “For someone who likes a match to tell a story, a real story, not a spot story, that’s what most of this was tonight.”
Asked to expand on the Nasty Boys line, Bischoff pointed at the lack of structure.
“It was like a hardcore, anything goes, no rules, bring a weapon. I didn’t see a kitchen sink in there, but for the most part it was anything goes. You had a referee that might as well not have been there. So there’s no structure. It’s just two guys getting into the ring and exchanging high spots until one of them starts bleeding,” he said. “Two minutes into that match, they looked like they were 58 minutes into a 60-minute Broadway.”
He said his issue was with the challenger’s half of it.
“I didn’t expect Kenny to go out and be Kenny Omega from 2017. He’s been honest about that. I like that,” Bischoff said. “But I expected so much more out of Ospreay than just getting his ass kicked for 18 minutes and then making a comeback.”
Bischoff was more positive on the presentation. He called the spectacle the thing that stood out most, said the production values were good and the entrances were largely very strong, with one complaint about a piece of staging in the middle of the set blocking the graphics on the ramp. He said the show did not match a WrestleMania-level production but came close.
His other in-ring complaint was the Continental Championship match, where Jon Moxley retained by submission with an ankle lock and won the first Continental Challenge Cup, beating Nigel McGuinness in his home country after McGuinness had gone through the tournament on an injured foot. What killed it for Bischoff was the standing elbow exchange.
“When I see Moxley, he does this all the time, and every time I see it, it bores me just a little bit more. When they stand there and exchange elbows,” Bischoff said. “Look, I get it. They’re recreating that scene where Don Frye, whoever he was in the ring with, Takayama, right? That was a classic.”
The exchange he is referring to is Don Frye against Yoshihiro Takayama at PRIDE 21 in June 2002, which Bischoff placed around 2001 on the show.
“Of course, sports entertainment being what sports entertainment is, we try to adopt some things that we see that work, and now we’re doing them in the ring all the fricking time, and everybody does it, and everybody looks like a clown when they do it, because you can see through that s***,” he said. “It’s not believable. It’s not dynamic. It’s not fun to look at.”
Thompson argued Bischoff was at a disadvantage because he had watched without following the tournament, and walked him through the McGuinness story: a former Ring of Honor champion whose in-ring career was cut short by medical issues, who became a commentator, then entered the tournament and reached the final hurt. Bischoff accepted the point.
“Without reading the first 10 chapters, the last chapter might not make any sense, and that’s a very, very good point, and that is the perspective from which I watched that match,” he said. “I too am a Nigel fan, worked with Nigel in TNA. And I love his work on commentary. I think he’s one of the best, actually. But for the most part, I’ve yet to see a Jon Moxley match that I’ve really enjoyed watching.”
The segment Bischoff did like came with a caveat attached. Steven Borden appeared alongside his father during the Falls Count Anywhere TNT Championship match, where Darby Allin beat Kevin Knight. Sting made a run-in against Brian Cage and Mark Davis, and he and Borden set up a ladder in the ring and climbed opposite sides. Sting gave his son some words of encouragement at the top and climbed back down, and Borden dived off. Allin won the title.
“I did. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for Steve. I enjoyed it for his son,” Bischoff said. “Sting, I got to be careful what I say here, because Sting was very supportive of my son Garrett when Garrett broke into the business, and I don’t want to sound like I’m unsupportive, but my concern, and I say this as a friend, my concern is that they’re pushing Sting’s son a little too early.”
He said the issue is ring time.
“He’s not ready for the positions that he’s being put into. He barely knows his way around the ring, and now he’s doing high spots like he did,” Bischoff said. “Because if he’s not ready, you’ll end up in the same position as an Eric Watts, for example, of getting the push, getting the visibility, getting the highlights or the spot, but not really having the experience. And that’s all it is, is reps.”
Watts is the son of Bill Watts and was pushed on WCW television in the early 1990s while his father was running the company. Thompson noted that Borden has been working dark matches and training with Dustin Rhodes in Texas, and characterised the Wembley appearance as a cameo rather than a match. Bischoff’s son Garrett wrestled for TNA in the early 2010s during a period when Bischoff was working there.
Thompson pushed back on the take, arguing Bischoff was watching in a vacuum without the weekly context. Bischoff acknowledged he had not watched much AEW in around four months.
