MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren says he’s “bemused” by Connecticut’s plan to build small-scale casinos to head off the threat of MGM’s new Massachusetts resort.

Murren made the comments during Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony in Springfield, MA, where MGM’s $800m casino expects to open in 2017. This has the operators of Connecticut’s two tribal casinos – Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods – putting aside their differences to fend off a common enemy. The tribes have proposed building three new casinos, particularly a new small-scale facility along Interstate 91 on the state’s northern border, close to Springfield.

Murren told the Hartford Courant that he’d “love to go toe-to-toe with Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.” Murren said MGM’s “brand-new, luxury resort” on three city blocks in downtown Springfield was more than enough to compete with some “box of slots” on the highway.

Mohegan Tribal Council chairman Kevin ‘Red Eagle’ Brown has since hotly disputed this characterization, saying the tribes’ new casino would be a “first-rate gaming facility” and most definitely not a slot parlor. “That’s one of the myths we’re trying to take out.”