Sunday Night’s Main Event Radio’s Donnie DaSilva was joined by one of the most controversial figures in wrestling, a man who came within an inch of putting WWE out of business, and host of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff. Highlights from the conversation are below:
On storytelling in wrestling:
Whether it’s a book, whether it’s a feature film, whether it’s a television show, whether it’s a commercial that you see, you know, someone’s trying to sell a product. They all have a beginning and a middle and an end. Everything has a formula. Good comedy has a formula, you know, I’ve read about it, listened to a lot of interviews from stand up comics who talk about the process of creating their set list and how they create their jokes. There’s a formula to everything and there’s a formula to good professional wrestling storytelling
On Swerve Strickland’s run as AEW champion:
I’m 98% convinced they don’t have a clue what they’re doing and don’t even realize they’re burying him because when his run is over, because it will be, they all are, but when Swerves run is over, he will have accomplished nothing with that opportunity because he wasn’t given the opportunity. He wasn’t given the championship, he was given the prop. If you want to refer to a title as a prop, he was given the prop, but he wasn’t given any story, any build, any reason for the audience to stick with him and cheer for him. They just put him in matches and that’s the easiest way to kill somebody’s career.
On not being interested in Goldberg at first:
I had a couple conversations with him and I really wasn’t that interested in him at the time, because we had so many other top talent. I didn’t feel the need to add another top guy to the list. We had Hogan, Savage Flair, Sting and Luger. I mean, we were doing all right and we didn’t need anybody, but Bill came along and we finally put a deal together and put him into the Power Plant and started to develop him. I immediately started getting calls from people saying “hey, this is a little different. This is not your normal power plant recruit.” So everybody started paying attention to him pretty early on. Then typically what you do with somebody who’s been in training and development for a while is you want to get a look and see how they react in front of people. You don’t want to put them on television because if it doesn’t go well you don’t want to expose a young talent or an inexperienced talent to a national television audience. You want to give them a chance to succeed and not set them up for failure. But at the same time, you need to see how they’re going to react in front of a real crowd.
On constantly shifting plans because of talent injuries and issues:
I don’t worry about things I don’t have control over. It’s just a waste of time and energy. They were independent contractors by design. You can’t tell people how to live their lives. And I had no control over anybody once they left the venue and very little control over them when they were in the venue. But no, I didn’t worry about it. I was aware of it. And it was a constant issue that had to be dealt with. Scott Hall created a lot of issues because at the peak of our success, Scott had challenges which affected other people that were close to Scott, including Kevin Nash because Scott and Kevin were very very close and it became a problem. I think that’s one of the things that makes a producer. That’s what makes wrestling such a challenge. It’s 52 weeks a year, and when things happen, whether somebody goes off the rails because of drugs and alcohol, or somebody gets in a car accident, or Somebody finds religion and decides they want to change their life and they want to go be a Tibetan monk somewhere, you know, the personal issues that people have to go through that affect all of us, we all go through those things. But the constant injuries is another one. Injuries was a much bigger issue than drugs and alcohol. But, you know, you just have to learn to shift on the fly.
On respecting people’s time off:
I was obsessed with winning. Yeah, for sure. Making (WCW) Nitro the number one wrestling show in the world. I was obsessed about our profit margins, but that obsession on my part, manifested much differently. You know, I I respected the fact that people have families or lives. I would never call anybody after seven or eight o’clock at night, because it’s just not, in my opinion, the best way to get the best out of people. I didn’t do any of that.
You can listen to the entire interview with Eric Bischoff by listening to the latest episode of Sunday Night’s Main Event here.
TOP PHOTO: Eric Bischoff at WrestleBash 2 on Sunday, August 20, 2023, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Fairfield Hotel and Suites in Fairfield, New Jersey. Photo by George Tahinos, georgetahinos.smugmug.com
RELATED LINKS
