For many of the people that listened to the WWE earning conference call on Thursday, one of the most interesting things to hear was Vince McMahon publicly talk about All Elite Wrestling for the first time.
McMahon referenced AEW as a gory product and said that WWE has graduated from having blood and guts on their programming and added that he hoped that TNT would not put up with that. McMahon may not have heard what Tony Khan has said about AEW’s plans on TNT because he said that fans would not see the so-called “blood and guts” on TNT and some of the extreme stuff will be held off for pay-per-view events.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that he heard from people in the advertising world and they described Vince’s comments as a dirty trick meant to give advertisers the impression that AEW is the old wrestling that advertisers would stay away from. For years, WWE has been trying to clean up their shows to attract bigger advertisers. That is why their shows are rated PG.
Meltzer said the following on Wrestling Observer Radio: “At the stock conference on Thursday, Vince was trying to categorize them as blood and guts wrestling…” Meltzer continued, “The belief in the advertising community is that Vince was trying to bury them with that they are doing that wrestling that you’re not supposed to advertise on.”
“Some people say that’s a dirty trick but that’s Vince. You’re in a war with Vince, that’s what Vince is gonna do. People in the advertising community that talked to me [said] ‘what a dirty trick.’ But it’s a wrestling war [but] yea in the real world, that’s a pretty low trick but it’s a wrestling war and both sides are gonna have to figure out. That’s how Vince is gonna react. Some people think it was telling that he even brought it up in that realm but he was kind of asked about it too.”
Here’s what Stephanie McMahon said about AEW a few weeks ago (see the video below):
