During this morning’s Q2 Earnings Report conference call, WWE CEO Vince McMahon brought up how the company has potential competition on two separate occasions.
While not mentioning AEW by name, McMahon did refer to the company’s product and TNT, the channel where AEW will debut on October 2.
Here are the two instances where McMahon brought AEW up.
On why Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff were hired and the product going edgier:
“We’re gonna be a bit edgier, but still remain in the PG environment. We won’t come anywhere close to going into another level. That will be something we do in terms of the direction of content, more controversy, and better storylines. At the same time, we’re not going to go back to the Attitude Era. We’re not gonna do blood and guts, such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor. We’re not going to go back to that gory crap that we graduated from. It’s a more sophisticated product.”
McMahon was later asked about the loss of talent being an issue and how much longer he will spend money on writers with competition out there:
“As far as competition is concerned the old adage is ‘competition is good for everyone’… I think that’s generally the case. We’re hoping that, to the extent that they are competition, they don’t continue with blood and guts and gory things that they have been doing, which would be bad. I can’t imagine — I can’t speak for TNT — but I can’t imagine they would put up with that.”