Tony Khan Points To ROH Star In Response To Eric Bischoff Criticism

Tony Khan is punching back –- again –- at ongoing criticism from former WCW executive Eric Bischoff about AEW's booking and use of wrestlers outside its own roster. In recent months, Bischoff has knocked Khan for his inexperience and said he books wrestling "like a 14-year-old." But during a recent interview on the "Battleground Podcast," the AEW owner gave a not-so-veiled jab back at Bischoff when asked about former ROH World Television Champion Shane Taylor's recent appearance on "Rampage."

Khan defended the integration of ROH talent on AEW weekly programming and even pointed to WCW as an inspiration. "There are fans who have never seen Shane Taylor before and that's okay, you get introduced to new faces all the time," Khan said, before digging into Bischoff. "When I was a young wrestling fan, that was one of the things I really liked about WCW 'Nitro.' I think it would be very ironic that the same promoter now would tell you you don't want to see these faces or introduce new people that we've never seen before on TV, because they're actually the ones that did that," he said. 

The AEW boss further added, "[There were] all kinds of new faces I'd read in the magazines, all kinds of people I've never seen before, and they would just walk out and wrestle on 'Nitro' like it was perfectly natural and I thought it was the coolest thing. But I guess that's not acceptable anymore, even though it's much, much, much easier to access information on the Internet than it was in 1996." 

Khan purchased ROH earlier this year and has had several wrestlers from the promotion appear in AEW. ROH's final pay-per-view event of the year, Final Battle, happens Saturday night.