At an investors’ call earlier today, Vince McMahon was asked about AEW in comparison to WCW in the 90s.
Vince responded:
“Ted Turner was coming after us, and all of Time Warner’s assets as well. It was a different situation. AEW is where they are. I don’t really know what their plans are, all I know is what our plans are. I don’t consider them competition in the way that I would consider WCW back in the day. Not anywhere near close to that. And I’m not so sure what their investments are as far as their talent is concerned. But perhaps we can give them some more.”
The last sentence is a bit unclear. In the audio, it sort of sounds like McMahon is telling WWE President Nick Khan, “perhaps we can give [the investors] some more [info],” but on social media, some people are taking it as McMahon saying, “perhaps we can give [AEW] some more [talent].” You can listen to the audio below.
Vince McMahon and Nick Khan talk AEW pic.twitter.com/iTpXgzmT7u
— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) July 29, 2021
WWE President Nick Khan continued after McMahon, saying that they consider “everything” as their competition:
“I think the way we always look at these situations, it’s sort of like a horse race where the horse has blinders on. We’re looking straight ahead at our lane and making sure we stay in the front of the pack. At the same time, everything is our competition. Someone had a line a couple of weeks ago that we chuckled about and agreed with: ‘Sleep is our competition.’ If it was up to us, people would be up 24 hours a day watching content from different content providers, hopefully including ours. So we don’t look at any organization particularly as competition, yet we see everything as competitive with what we’re trying to do in terms of eyeballs.
— Young Bucks Bio (@bio_bucks) July 29, 2021