Last week was a critical week for AEW, as the announcement rang out that the company and Warner Bros. Discovery have made a lucrative multi-year agreementto keep "AEW Dynamite" and "AEW Collision" on their respective homes of TBS and TNT, and added the option to simulcast the weekly programs and pay-per-views on MAX.
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All these increases could mean the company will earn roughly $150 million annually beginning in January. Of course, every reporter's trigger fingers were on their keyboards, ready to break the news. But no one was faster than Dave Meltzer of "The Wrestling Observer." Seemingly knowledgeable on all the financial gains this deal will mean for AEW, some questioned how Meltzer knew the details so well, including Eric Bischoff, who challenged him on the subject recently.
"How would Dave know that this deal is going to make AEW profitable?" Bischoff pondered on "83 Weeks." "The only way Dave Meltzer would know that as a fact, as a journalist, who's reporting a fact, not a speculation ... do you have access to the complete financials? The only way you could possibly make a statement like that with any credibility at all is if you were looking at a [profit and loss statement] ... Either Dave has access to those financials and as a journalist, he won't share it or he's making s*** up."
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Throughout last week's episode, Eric Bischoff remained firing on all cylinders, even examining how Meltzer knew AEW would make "$65 million in profit" in its first year of the deal.
This ties into a rumor that Meltzer's ties to AEW are much closer than it appears, as it was suspected Meltzer owns three percent of AEW, a statement that made its rounds not long after AEW's contract agreement was confirmed. All Bischoff wanted to know and begged Meltzer to do was come forward to either confirm or deny if this was true.
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"I think you owe to, as a journalist ... to confirm or deny that you own three percent ... to the audience, so that it just goes away. Otherwise, there's going to be an open question every time you report something," Bischoff argued.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "83 Weeks" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
