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For the better part of a year, fans of AEW have been borderline demanding to see Tony Khan publish a picture of Mercedes Mone on social media over top of the “IsAllElite” graphic.
From commenting on social media posts by the AEW booker begging to see the CEO in one of his rings to discussing all of the different angles that Mone could work for the five-year-old company, no free agent has been deemed more of a must-sign than the former Sasha Banks, as she's has been labeled a potential savior for the women's division.
If you fall into this camp, you are anything but alone, but one person who firmly doesn't agree is WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff, who noted in his 83 Weeks podcast that he thinks the promotion's woman's division and maybe the promotion period is simply too far gone for anyone performer to make a meaningful difference.
“Nothing. How many times have we seen big names come from WWE to AEW and people speculating how it's going to impact the business and what's going to happen? And nothing happens. It doesn't matter who you bring in there,” Eric Bischoff said via WrestleZone.
“I made the comment; I'm going to make it again. AEW is quickly becoming TNA. And I got nearly a million views on that comment, and out of the probably half-million responses, everybody buried my comment and me along with it. But this is a perfect example of what I meant. We've seen so many big names come into AEW. Pick one. Let's put CM Punk off to the side. Pick any other one, and the net-net impact on the growth of the business, other than selling t-shirts, has been zip. Nada.”
Jeez, comparing AEW to TNA? Well wait, it gets even better or worse, depending on your opinion, as Bischoff had plenty more to say on the subject.
“I think I said to her, word for word, one day I said, ‘Dixie, it doesn't matter if you brought The Undertaker and you dropped him from the ceiling as a surprise into the middle of the TNA ring, and then John Cena — and this is when they were both at the top of WWE years ago — you have John Cena run to the TNA ring and you shoot an angle… it won't matter!'” Bischoff noted. “It just doesn't because the brand, and the perception of it, the scale of it, is so small that it won't get over. And that's the problem that I think AEW has. They don't know how to use those big names that grows their business. It just grows their budget, but it doesn't grow their business. Not yet it hasn't.”
Jeez, comparing AEW to TNA is one thing, but suggesting that the promotion is so far gone that even adding one – or two – of the top performers in the business couldn't help save it? Goodness, Bischoff has some serious hater energy at this point.
Rob Van Dam believes Mercedes Mone can be an asset to AEW.
While Eric Bischoff isn't sold on Mercedes Mone making an impact on AEW as a focal point of the women's division, one performer who has an incredibly different opinion is “The Whole F'N Show” himself, Rob Van Dam, who thinks the “CEO” can become a top star in AEW.
“I think she's awesome,” Rob Van Dam said on his 1 Of a Kind podcast via 411 Mania. “And I mean, super nice when I talk to her and stuff. But I was a fan of hers when I just watched her work. She was one of the frontline women that, in my mind, helped change the whole the whole playing field from women wrestling being something that it was okay to not be the best. And then it changed to where it's where it could compete with the men's on whatever you judge a match by, you know what I mean? So it's like, I'm a fan of that, as I've said, you know.”
RVD then went on to celebrate Mone for changing the industry forever, as he credits her alongside her Four Horsewoman cohorts for helping to change the sport forever.
“I'm happy that it's come as far as it has. And Sasha is one of the wrestlers that I think of that was on that forefront when I saw it changing into like, ‘Holy crap, there's these girls are having a really good match, and they're all really talented and they look like they like they know what they're doing,'” RVD noted.
“And you know, it used to not be so much that way. Like it used to be — when someone said, ‘You hit like a girl,' that's because girls you know kind of hit funny. And it used to be that girls kind of did everything a little funny or a little different when it came to wrestling. And that was just accepted, and they threw that out the window during uh the Sasha Banks era.”
Could Mercedes Mone usher in a new woman's revolution in AEW? Or would her addition truly play no impact on AEW's business or perception, as Bischoff predicted? If she actually shows up in AEW, fans will get to find out.
