Eric Bischoff says tribalism is human nature, but blamed Tony Khan and guys like Chris Jericho for constantly comparing themselves to WWE and setting unrealistic expectations that turned the fan base overly defensive and toxic when they weren’t met:
“I get frustrated with the way the shows are covered by some people. It’s a little bit like politics, when AEW came out, there was such a rabid fanbase, everyone wanted to see it succeed. There was all this goodwill. They got overly invested in it and became tribal, and by the way a lot of that is because of Tony Khan and a lot of the top talent in AEW, including our good friend Chris Jericho, who came out and started taking shots and saying things like ‘We’re gonna overtake within the next 6 months’ and they were constantly comparing themselves in a way and talking down WWE. That kind of dribbled down into the Internet Wrestling audience and everybody took a position.
Well now that things aren’t going as well as they hoped in the beginning, there are still people that are going to defend no matter what. Reality doesn’t matter, they’re gonna find something to hang onto and defend. Because they’ve staked out their position, they’ve made themselves known to be this ardent AEW supporter or WWE promoter or fan. They’re gonna look at the good things to talk about and criticize the bad things the other side does, it’s just human nature man.”
