Eric Bischoff says he would rather AEW had given Kofi Kingston and Austin Creed a clean break from New Day than a name that trades on it, because audiences respond to originals and not to derivatives.
The pair debuted on the All In: London Buy In as the wild card entrants in the Trios Roulette Royale, teaming with Swerve Strickland and winning the AEW World Trios Championship on their first night. They came out to a licensed hip hop track and are working as New Level.
Bischoff’s first reaction on 83 Weeks was positive.
“Look, those guys bring so much energy to the party. It’s just inevitable, and it’s great to see. I loved it. I’m happy for them. Two great guys, happy that they’ve got an opportunity to continue to do what they love to do, and wish them nothing but the best,” he said. “They brought a ton of fresh energy, a ton of fresh energy, and I was happy to see it.”
A viewer question later in the show asked whether it is smarter to build new branding for a recognisable act or lean on a version of the WWE name, citing New Level along with the Hurt Syndicate and the Undisputed Kingdom. Bischoff said he would go the other way.
“I would rather try something completely different. I know why they’re doing it, and there’s an argument for that. There’s probably some logic to it that we can’t totally dismiss, but it’s like a hangover that won’t go away,” Bischoff said. “I think breaking clean from a previous character and establishing a new character, in this case characters, with New Level, is a smarter long term approach than hanging on to the past, which is what they’re doing. They’re trying to draft off of the equity that the former New Day had in WWE, which I understand. I’m not criticizing it. I completely understand it from a business perspective. I prefer not to have to do that.”
He said the choice comes down to whether a company backs itself to build something from scratch.
“Given a choice, if I think I have the option of creating something really new and unique and powerful, or effective at least, I would opt to do that before I would take the easy way out, the cheap way out, and try to come up with something that’s a derivative,” Bischoff said. “People don’t like derivatives. They like authenticity. They like originals. When you have to be a derivative, it suggests that you don’t know how to become unique.”
Asked whether the AEW roster is too crowded for the team to hold its momentum, Bischoff said that depends entirely on what Tony Khan commits to.
“So much of it has to do with creative, what Tony’s willing to commit to long term or even mid term, short term. If all you’re going to do is pop the guys out there a couple times because they’re the bright new shiny objects that you get to play with, this is the pattern for former WWE stars when they make the transition,” he said. “They show up. It’s a big damn deal. Everybody’s excited, and three months later, they’re in a witness protection program.”
He said the ceiling is high if the booking follows through.
“If we get a chance to see what New Level is all about and they establish it themselves, then I can see it absolutely working, because they bring so much energy to the dance and they’re great inside of the ring. It could be really good,” Bischoff said. “But the pattern that’s been established for the last six or seven years has been, let’s just wait and see what happens.”
Bischoff also drew a comparison to his own side of the business, calling WCW a cheap imitation of WWE in the years before he took over, and saying the company did not have the budget or the expertise to build characters the way WWE’s machine did in the 1980s.
