AEW President Tony Khan called journalist Ariel Helwani a "fraud" and wrote "good luck with the unbiased journalism" following Helwani’s appearance on WWE SmackDown in Montreal. Helwani has been accused of being bias toward WWE due to his links with WWE CEO Nick Khan.

During his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff commented on the situation and blasted Tony Khan:

“I was disappointed to see that. Look, I’ve heard a lot of the same rumors and I’ve heard them from people that are in AEW, to be blunt, and I don’t put any stock in them. I think it’s bad for him, no matter who you are, unless you were sitting down and watch someone, anyone, actually doing something, whether it’s snorting a line of blow or, you know, beating their wife, or whatever, unless you witness it with your own eyes, shut the f**k up. Spreading rumors like that, it’s a bad reflection, you know, and, I don’t listen to that. When I hear those things, I immediately shut down. When it comes to this, I don’t really pay attention to it. If somebody comes to me and we’re in the middle of a conversation, and they throw something like that in about Tony or anybody else, that’s the end of the conversation as far as my participation goes. I won’t be rude about it. I won’t get up and walk away or confront someone, but in terms of actually paying attention or engaging in a further conversation, I change the subject at that point. It’s just bad. Bad. You don’t want to do that to people. I’ve had it done to me. There’s no reason for it.”

“Tony is inviting a lot of this criticism. He acts like a petulant child in the way he responds, and his response to Ariel in the crowd was a petulant child whose feelings were hurt because somebody took his toy away from him. I mean, it’s just so absolutely childish. I think that’s a reflection, at least in my mind, of who Tony Khan is. He’s immature. He is a child with a vanity project. He’s passionate. I’m not taking anything away from that. It’s not like, you know, one eliminates the other, meaning, you know, great, his father’s worth however many billions of dollars. What I heard, I don’t know if it’s true or not, doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t, but I heard that at some point Tony launched this thing with $100 million of money that his dad was going to leave him in the will anyway. So it was Tony’s money, but it just came from his dad. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter if he earned that 100 million dollars coming up with a cure for cancer or whether he inherited it, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter. But when you act the way Tony acts and the way he reacts to things, I think it furthers a negative impression of him, and Tony should have never reacted the way he did to Ariel being out there.”