During last Saturday's AEW Dynamite, Eddie Kingston took a series of shots at WWE when the show had gone off the air. As is so often the case, a fan in attendance recorded those, and Kingston could be heard saying that, unlike the competition, AEW loves pro wrestling, listens to its fans, and respects its legends (an argument could be made that he's not wrong).
Now, WWE Hall of Famer Bully Ray has shared his take on those comments and isn't happy.
"I love Eddie Kingston to death," he started. "If we were having promo wars and I was the captain of the team, and somebody says, ‘You get to pick one person to do the promo for you,’ I’d most likely pick Eddie – because of his believability, tone, inflection and everything about him."
"But in this case, Eddie needs to shut the f**k up and stay in his lane. And his lane is an AEW guy speaking about AEW, and flying the flag for AEW. Then, I’m completely onboard. Tell me how great AEW is, fly the flag for your company, show me that you wear your heart on your sleeve."
Ray, who isn't employed by WWE, said he can understand why the likes of Cody Rhodes and Chris Jericho would want to take a shot at the company seeing as they worked there, but added: "You were indie guy for the majority of his career until this company [AEW] took a chance on you. You’ve learned to love it and everything about it. Don’t take the easy way out and knock the WWE."
"If you go back and listen to the fans, they really didn’t pop that hard when he took a jab at WWE," Ray said. "You didn’t get the reaction you were looking for. People were most likely thinking, ‘alright, Eddie, stay away from that...there’s no reason to go there.'"
Each of these companies taking shots at the other does feel old at this stage, especially when they seem to attract very different fanbases. Ray makes a lot of compelling points here, though we'll be sure to let you know if Kingston decides to respond to these comments...