Eric Bischoff: TNA Live Audience Was Only “A Little Bit Better Than Cardboard Cutouts”

Former President of WCW and Executive Director of WWE SmackDown Eric Bischoff recently commented on the ’empty arena’ tapings that AEW and WWE are producing.

Eric Bischoff has begun discussing TNA shows on his 83 Weeks podcast, where he and Hulk Hogan would spend some time during the start of last decade. At the time, TNA would air at Orlando Studios in Florida at a soundstage.

With the current climate of professional wrestling and the coronavirus pandemic, both AEW and WWE have had to combat the lack of ‘atmosphere’ that a building without fans creates. WWE especially have had to film at the smaller ‘soundstage’ setting that the Performance Center in (ironically) Orlando that gives the shows a much smaller feel.

“This is where I want to draw an analogy between what we’re seeing today in WWE and AEW. And, to a degree? The challenge that TNA had” Bischoff would begin. “I think one thing that we can all agree on right now? Is that wrestling doesn’t work without an audience.”

Eric Bischoff would compare the smaller stages that AEW and WWE are having to work in, with WWE utilizing the Performance Center in Florida. “Nobody has to be a rocket scientist to come up with that observation. But one of my concerns with TNA and one of the reasons I wasn’t excited about doing it? Is because it was in a soundstage.”

Bischoff would claim that having a tiny soundstage with fans who were entering for free was a huge detriment to the TNA product. “Now, while a soundstage arguably is a live audience is just a little bit better than having cardboard cutouts in the seats with piped in fake noise? It’s not a real audience. The audience, for the most part, didn’t really understand, weren’t really engaged.”

‘Easy E’ would also talk about how the company did have some die hard fans who would attend, but for the most part the causal audience that entered the ‘IMPACT Zone’ would often not be enough to add to the product.