Eric Bischoff On nWo, WCW, John Cena & Hulk Hogan Comparisons - Part One | WrestleTalk Interviews

hi guys louie dango here from brussels TOCOM and rest of interviews and today i've got a very special guest with me many of you would have known him from his time with WCW his time as war general manager and his time working for TMA I've got Eric Bischoff with me today so how you doing I'm doing really well thank you I lived in a very remote part of the northwestern Wyoming near a very famous national park called Yellowstone National Park so I live in a very kind of isolated area out in the mountains so life hasn't really changed all that much for me but I know that it has for most people who live in bigger but more populated areas and I'm I'm very sympathetic towards what everybody's going through I think it's a difficult time for everyone at the moment and especially I mean watching wrestling is or brings it home when you see that no fans there but every aspect of life has changed drastically since this whole thing started I guess you're one of the lucky ones that has a escape the majority of the trouble everyone's been going through yes one of the advantages of living in a remote isolated area the state that I live in Wyoming is only has about 500,000 people in the entire state well so there's only about six people per square mile where I live so like I said it just it hasn't been that big of a deal here but I've traveled recently to to other cities bigger cities and obviously there's a much more profound effect did you say you're 19 years old I am 19 years old yes do you know I have shoes that I wore last night that are older than you I find it staggering when people know my age and sort of as you did that halfway through an interview though so let's go you're 19 I could be your father I won't go there far but well I mean it it's a pleasure to talk to you and I'm gonna make myself look incredibly young again but a lot of me learning about you your career has been me watching retrospective me I mean you're at the height of your career with WCW before I was even born see it's been great to look back on it now and and learn about that kind of stuff but I think it couldn't have been anything like watching it live watching the Monday night what was that like to be involved oh it's hard to describe you know as so much of it was new to me because I was relatively not relatively it was very new as a as a manager as a guy that was running a company I didn't really have any corporate experience before taking the job I in many ways was not really qualified for the job that I that I took on so there was a lot of you know kind of learning on the job that then I experienced and you know there's a pheromone frustration that comes along with that but there's also it's almost like being on an adventure every day it's like in your own adventure movie because every day presenting new opportunities and new challenges and you know you're in a creative business so that in and of itself in a creative environment you know you're constantly you know thinking about or try to execute new ideas fresh ideas new strategies fresh strategies so it it really was almost like being in my own adventure movie I mean you you were on screen you sort of revolutionized and really sort of with this figurehead of a heel manager authority figure in a way but I read somewhere you initially when you're with AWA has to be talked into being an on-screen figure in front of the camera is is that correct it's partially correct you know when I worked for the AWA prior to becoming an on-camera character I was in the office I was in the the back end of the business so to speak and in sales and marketing so I had never aspired to be on camera I had no experience on camera I just happened to be the only guy in the building that day that has suit it didn't you know have a horse space and they needed an announcer and and Kevin got me I said hey grab this microphone here's what you're going to do and go do it like everything else you know in my career I wasn't wasn't ready for it didn't necessarily aspire to do it but the opportunity presented itself and I did the best I could and eventually became kind of a regular thing for me and you spoke a little bit slightly earlier about not being qualified for some of the roles that you did or not being fully prepared but do you think that's important and the best way to learn things at that is actually through practice and through being thrown in the deep end and having to figure out on the job well I think there's certain advantages to that clearly you know if I if I owned a big corporation and a big company a big media franchise I would want to hire and look for people who had established track records and spiria sand and relationships that come along with it I really didn't have any of those but you know the the situation at the time in WCW back in 93 or whatever it was was such that you know WCW didn't have a lot of options and there weren't a lot of people you know that's the other thing about you know the unique business of the wrestling business there are not a lot of people you know in the country or around the world that have any kind of extensive experience in the wrestling industry there are people or there were people back then who had far more experience at a better track with it than I in certain aspects of the business but in terms of totality in in overall understanding of the business both from a television perspective from a consumer perspective from an advertising and marketing excuse me from an advertising and sponsorship perspective from a marketing perspective I probably had a better all-around background than just about anybody else that would have been available but I was still void of a lot of the very important types of experience in track records and relationships that I had to learn so I I think I probably have reasonably good foundation but still lacked a lot of other more sophisticated types of experience but you know it it was situational you know it was amount went to time and Debbie see that we had to make a decision to put somebody in the role that they eventually put me into and I think looking back now even though I lacked a lot of experience I had enough of a foundation and more importantly the desire to learn and the confidence in myself to stumble and fall get back up and try something else um we're gonna get onto that but do you think sort of as you said you had very different skills to a lot of the other people who probably would have been going for the same sort of roles as you I know it was I believe Tony Shivani Jim Ross and yourself for going to for that big WCW role do you think you're more business knowledge perhaps being slightly removed not removed from the wrestling business but not a the sort of big wrestling figure is what helped you in debt that land the role that you were perhaps more rounded than other people well yeah I probably did have a little bit more experience than many people although Tony Shivani arguably had as much more experience than I did in in many respects not all but many Jim Ross certainly had a great resume in some respects but Jim was unfortunately for Jim he was identified very closely with Bill Watts and the Watts was a toxic kind of impact on WCW and it was one of the reasons why WCW made a decision that they weren't going to hire anybody that was considered a wrestling person meaning they didn't want to bring in a former professional wrestler that you know eventually became a promoter who you know was going to apply for this job they wanted somebody with with a television background and vision because Turner you know at its core was a television company not a wrestling company and they had tried wrestling people they had been through and they'd try some non wrestling people you know for excuse me Jim herd is an example of someone who really wasn't a wrestling person but he was a business person he just didn't have any background in entertainment and television and specifically wrestling kip Frye was an attorney who oversaw WCW for a brief period of time he was an entertainment attorney and probably a decent lawyer good one but he certainly didn't have any understanding of the television product or storytelling or characters or all the other elements of the business of the wrestling business that are equally important I think that I had enough wrestling experience so that the people that made the decision to put me in the position they did understood that I had a pretty good grasp of the business in general but I wasn't so entrenched in that wrestling kind of mentality that I couldn't think beyond the box and couldn't think beyond what was most obvious to most wrestling people and I think as you said that sort of being able to think beyond that because you're not caught in the wrestling bubble is incredibly important but let's sort of take it back a little bit to the beginning of your WCW days and when we talked about obviously fans who might not have watch at the time or don't know a lot about it I personally believe WWE is the way it is now and has been the way it has for a long time because of the Monday Night Wars because of the impact of WCW and how Vince McMahon was forced to change what he was doing so your impact although you might not be involved in wrestling now to the same capacity you were can definitely still be seen in my view so I think it's incredibly important we talked about your your time at WC that yeah well thank you for saying that and I think you know without something like I'm going to you know twist my arm or break my arm try to Pat myself on the back you know I think if one is objective and you know you you really do you're rich and now enough time has gone by you'd have to actually do some research but if you go back and you look at the WWF product prior to nitro it was a stale format that was working okay but it was a very formulaic and stale format the characters in the stories were all geared towards children and teens and preteens I guess a good way to describe it is sort of like it is now well it's going back that yeah it has it's kind of reverted back to its core values going back to the 80s and early 90s and and part of that is driven I think by advertising because advertisers are successful as the Monday Night war era was and as successful as both raw and nitro became targeting 18 to 39 year old men the manner in which we were able to achieve that was pretty edgy content in it particularly in the case of the WWF they really turned up the volume on the sexuality in the innuendo and a lot of other things that were not necessarily advertiser friendly and television is a medium that survives only on advertising so if you have advertisers that are are uncomfortable with the product regardless of how successful it may be in terms of drawing an audience but if the advertising community as a whole is uncomfortable associating their product or service with that particular program it doesn't matter how many people are watching you're going to have a difficult time selling it and I think the advertising community pretty much has dictated to the business of the wrestling business today at WWE for sure that they tone that down they tone the content down and soften the edges around the edges so that it's not quite as controversial and and not nearly as Oh edgy I guess for lack of a better way of saying it and to make it more family-friendly well the good news is you'll sell more advertising the bad news is you'll lose a good part of your audience and I think that's what we've seen today you know there if you go back to the go back to early 2000 zero late 99 early 2000s WWF WWE whatever it was at that time you know they were probably drawing you know in a Monday Night Raw three four or five million people now they're down to even preak ovid about 2.3 million people it's about half the audience maybe a little less than half the audience it is no longer watching the show but from a financial point of view it really doesn't hurt so much because they've increased their advertising and the value of that advertising within their own show so that yeah they may be seeing less viewers but they're making more money in advertising and sponsorships so I was gonna say as someone who has worked with networks with as you said earlier Turner is it a wrestling company it's a network that hosts as one of its show's wrestling what would a network prefer more viewers or less viewers because the content is less edgy but more advertising well again it goes the answer lies in my previous explanation a television network goal is to make as much money as you possibly can yeah right so the answer to the question is where you're gonna make the most money by having more viewers and getting less revenue and generating less revenue because of the nature your content or having less viewers and generating more money because of the nature your content anytime you have a question that says do I want less money or do I want more money the answer is pretty obvious so do you think perhaps fans or critics online who don't appreciate that side of it who just look at the ratings and see Wow WWE's doing considerably worse than it was 20 years ago because the ratings are down do you think they don't understand your job or the job of people similar to you in liaison and weighing up the differences between more viewers but less energy content and more revenue from advertising well it's not a criticism but it's just a reality you know the average viewer doesn't have any idea how a television even works more or less how the television business works so it's easy as a fan to especially if you're a fan that reads a lot of the you know online dirt sheets or whatever you want to call them new sites I hate to call them new sites but they're basically opinion besides more than anything nowadays if you read that and you believe what you read then you're operating with a very very small vault of knowledge and you look at WWE oh my gosh it sounds good as it used to be the business isn't as good as it used to be the ratings are done if you don't understand number one why are the ratings down number two what is the financial impact of those ratings being down and why why is it happening so you have to have a kind of a 360-degree view of the business of the television business and a pretty good understanding of what makes wrestling such a unique challenge within the world of television to really be able to analyze a situation whether it's you know it is is the really doing worse or are they actually doing better you know another aspect of analyzing that is you know and we keep talking about WWE because for the most part through the well enough for the most part they are the most established brand of professional wrestling in the world if you look at their revenues over the last five or ten years and the return to the investors who you know is the public's a publicly held company you know the dividends that they're paying if you look at you know even now their stock is down like everybody else is momentarily if you look at the trajectory of the WWE stock price which reflects the return on investment to investors wrestling has never ever been healthier in my lifetime and I'm 65 years old so in one respect wrestling even today is probably much healthier than it was from a financial point of view than it ever has been but you know is is is it as obvious to the average viewer no it's not because the average viewer doesn't really understand the full scope of the business of the wrestling business they only understand what they read and the people that write what they read have no crew have no clue about the business of the wrestling business so for people that don't know you were hired as executive producer I believe by WCW in 1993 and then pretty much very quickly you or so later promoted to executive vice president so for those that don't understand the lingo don't know the behind-the-scenes of wrestling what did your job entail on a day to day basis well that's a big question and it would take one time but when I was hired as executive producer my responsibilities were for the most part confined it to the actual physical production of the show from you know shooting it picking locations how it was lit who was hired on the production staff the post-production process all of the things that go into manufacturing if you will a television show I didn't have anything to do with creative I didn't have anything to do with live events I didn't have anything to do with hiring and firing of talent or negotiating talent contracts as the executive producer later on I became the executive vice president and I had a little bit more influence or involvement in talent in live events and in in other aspects of the business it wasn't until I became president of the company where I actually oversaw all of the business units within WCW from creative to television production to the live event site of the business to licensing and Merchandising the pay-per-view and marketing side of the business just about every element of the business reported either directly or indirectly up to me and that was not until probably about 94 and you seem like you had an incredible amount of responsibility was there any point working with all of those jobs to do and everything that people reporting to you and things of that nature that you thought perhaps you were not in over your head but it was just a lot of responsibility on someone who didn't have that great amount of spirit in wrestling as a whole well I did have a lot of experience in rusk as a hawk as I said I don't want to offend you there but no one said oh no no I am it would be hard for you to offend me you haven't been around long enough and haven't gotten good enough at it yet to come close to offending but just to be clear you know I have enough experience and all of the other aspects of the business of the wrestling business for example live events I understood that part of the wrestling business probably better than the most even though I hadn't spent a lot of time doing it I had done enough of it and had enough experience in it to be able to be effective in that role but it wasn't like when I was president of the company that I was on a day-to-day basis you know eight or ten or twelve hour a day dealing with all of all of the issues in market all of the issues in live events or all of the issues in talent there were directors and they were vice presidents and there were other people who were really responsible to those day-to-day activities who then had to report to be weekly depending on the situation every other day or so and in terms of their progress and they were accountable to me but it doesn't mean that I actually ran on a day to day business each and every one of those business units he spoke a little bit before about having more involvement with talent and one of the big sort of accomplishments I'm sure you'll say was being able to bring in a Hulk Hogan I believe I've read that you were very integral in the process along with Ric Flair of helping Hogan come into the company correct yeah I'm not sure where the question was there but yes I was you know along with Ric so sort of how did Hogan moving to WCW what did the process look like how was it the negotiations with him and what was it like to work with him perhaps during that that only stage with WCW okay well it'll bit to unpack there so there's you know in terms of that's okay in terms of the process I was producing well one of the WCW shows called WCW worldwide which is a syndicated show or was a syndicated show at the disney-mgm studios in Orlando Florida coincidentally Hulk Hogan had left WWF and was on the same television productions lot shooting a show called Thunder in paradise I didn't know Hulk Hogan but I knew he was there and because Ric Flair didn't know Hulk Hogan I reached out to Ric to help me kind of make the introduction help kind of get over that initial awkwardness of the first conversation or two and and even beyond that you know Ric was instrumental once Hogan decided he was interested in coming to WCW then it became the challenge became how do we do it you know how do we create the right environment for Hall to make such a big move but yet at the same time give Hogan some assurances because we were knew it we were a new upstart company that didn't have a great track record and honk was jumping into a more or less a I don't want to say a sinking ship but one that was barely treading water and it was a big move for Hulk so I had to really depend on Ric to give me help give me the credibility from the wrestling perspective that this could possibly work so it was it was a long process a couple months probably before we were actually able to get to the point where we could put terms on paper and and really start the negotiation with host attorneys and so forth and that was you know that was a challenge anytime we were working with attorneys it can become a challenge sometimes they make it harder than it needs to be and and that was to a degree that a case with with Hulk's attorney Henry Holmes but we got through it and it ended up being a good deal at the end and Hulk coming in later followed by Kevin Nash and Scott Hall obviously NWO changed wrestling and really you saw the rise of WCW just how instrumental if you can put into words was the formation of NWO in WCW thrice all right you know we have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight now and I think at the time I guess I didn't really have any idea how successful mwo would eventually go on to become if you would have told me back in 1996 when the idea was forming in my head that in the year 2020 people would still be wearing NWO shirts to WWE events my head would have exploded so there's no way I could have you say yeah I mean old factions now have little bits of NWO we talked about undisputed era in NXT that cool sort of vibe bullet club in New Japan it's not just the fans there are aspects of it within rest that is still prominent rule to see if there is and again I you know there's no way I could have not into a crystal ball and and I wasn't smart enough to see you know 25 years into the future so I knew it was a good storyline I knew that it would probably work I knew that it would probably be an important way to utilize Hulk Hogan clearly that was the case but I had no idea how much of an impact it was going to make and and the fact that that the impact would exist you know 20-some odd years later and obviously was the Hulk Hogan he'll turn something that people didn't think they see and fast forward 20 years to John Cena we've got that very similar big figure mr. se mister works well with the kids but people have been crying out for that he'll turn how much of people crying out for that is because they've seen Hulk Hogan's he'll turn and the success that had and they perhaps want to emulate that with John Cena I think that's a really good observation on your part and I think there's probably people out there that feel that way either consciously or subconsciously you know they're looking at a character like John Cena and whether they consciously make all men you know if he did what Hulk Kobe did we might experience that same level of excitement and enthusiasm that we experienced back in 96 I think probably there's some of that how much of it I don't know I think the larger part of that kind of feeling or thinking has nothing to do with hoping to relive an NWO type moment as it does of looking at John Cena and going okay well we've loved this character since 2002 it's been 18 years please give us something new we love John Cena but we'd like to see a new evolution of that character and it happens in in movie franchises it happens in television series characters evolve and they change there's really two types of characters in in entertainment and literature that matter you either have flat characters which don't change they may be successful by the way when I say they're flat not doesn't necessarily reflect my thinking that they're they're not good characters but they're characters that never change take you know the James Bond movies James Bond was pretty much always the same character right you may have new toys and he may have cooler cars but the character was pretty much the same every time you saw him the environment that challenges the hurdles the you know the the the characters and the types of characters that Judge James Bond would have to you know overcome and deal with you know might change but the antagonist if you will to James Bond's protagonist but you tuned into a James Bond movie because you pretty much knew what that character was going to be and even though other people played that character they pretty much played the same character so that's an example of a flat character that had a long life and a very successful life whereas a round character is the one that evolves and changes over the periods of time and you kind of get sucked into that characters journey because you're what you're along for the ride you're watching that character evolve and change and I think John Cena has been a flat type character not that in a in a negative way but he's been that same character for so long that people are hoping or people at least they weren't when John was active hoping that perhaps he would embrace a little bit of a little bit of a rounded edge to him so we'd see a little bit different character in John Cena just because they want something different and obviously you gave the comparison to the James Bond films and although I completely agree obviously there are some differences says that James Bond films we see once every couple of years wrestling is every week sometimes more than once a week with the amount of shows that divinity puts on so how important do you think it is for shows like WWE to have those round evolving characters so they don't become stained well I think it's important for two reasons one is you're right the sheer volume just the amount of content that's out there if it doesn't evolve and change over time you're going to lose audience interest and I think there's a fair amount of evidence for that to support that stage so no I I do think that's important but I also think it's important because stories are more interesting when you're watching especially a character that you see every week when you see that same character every week but you start to watch that that character evolve a little bit or change a little bit and and you and you saw your anticipate excuse me you're anticipating some of those changes and and where is this character going to go and how this character going to react you know next week because you're starting sometimes those changes are subtle sometimes they're more overt but I think it's important from a storytelling perspective as much as it is from a character individual character perspective I completely agree definitely it's it makes some more interesting stories when you've got characters with multi-layers and sort of different intentions it definitely makes for a compelling story so when you were involved in the creative process in your role as president and you were thinking about stories what mindset did you take in terms of the process of writing a story was it I'm gonna pick the people I want to be - for example have a program and work the story from there or was it more here's a story I'd like to tell let me find the people that work for that story you know when I first started working in creative I avoided getting involved with creative because I had zero experience at it I didn't have any confidence in myself as a result of having never done it and I attempted at least to surround myself with people who did have more experience and reasonable success you know back in 93 and 94 moderate success barely moderate success doing that it wasn't until 95 really until 96 when the pressure was on me because of the launch of nitro and having a show on time time going head to head with WWF it wasn't until then that I was more or less forced to kind of dive in with both feet and learn the process so the evolution of my approach to creative change rapidly during that period of time and to this day evolves I'm a much different person from a creative strategy point of view today than I was last year or I was the year before that and certainly much different than I was you know 20 years ago but it's it was a process it's it's trial and error you know more often than not to try to answer your question because there's no simple answer to it more often than not I would have an idea an outline of a story in my head sometimes sometimes on paper the end of you I was a perfect example the idea for the NWO started evolving in my head and it wasn't a crystal-clear idea it was a it was a feeling and a sense of an idea it was like the bait it's like if you had an idea to redesign a car or to design a car you know you start out with a pencil and piece of paper and you sketch some ideas down and then maybe a couple days later you'd refine those ideas and maybe not touch it for a while go back a month later tweak it a little bit more and all the time during that process new ideas new thoughts new approaches new new concepts would would occur to you and you would apply those and that's kind of what happened with me with the NWO idea and I think that was symbolic in a way of the way I my process I would have general ideas but at the same time - your first choice as I started to get those ideas in my head I would look around the room the roster and try to cast it you know who would be best to play a role of this idea who would who would who would be the good baby face for this who would be the good heel for this based on my ability to get to know them and what their strengths were because wrestlers aren't actors for the most part I know rock is you know going on to become an actor and John Cena has going on to become an actor and a Batista but initially when they came into WWF or WWE they weren't actors there were wrestlers and they they were halfway decent of wrestling in some cases better than that but they really weren't good actors they became decent actors and they learned enough about performing in front of a live crowd to figure out how to become an actor eventually the three individuals that I talked about but for the most part talent aren't really actors not even close so as a producer rather than saying okay I've got this great storyline and I need somebody to play this role well that's how you produce a movie or television show right because you'd have a whole roomful of actors to choose from that have the training and the experience to become the character that you envision in your head and wrestling you don't have that so you have an idea for a character and then you look around the room and say okay who has some of the characteristics of the fictional character that I want to plug in that spot because of if a talent has of an individual talent has certain characteristics in there just a real personality off screen and you can you can isolate those characteristics and turn up the volume on them so that they more easily fit into that territory that you've designed in your head or on a piece of paper you have a shot at being pretty successful and that's what happened with the mwl I had a very vague outline in my head of what and I didn't even know was gonna call it the NWO and I had the idea and a very vague outline in my head but when Scott Hall came along and Kevin Nash came along all of a sudden in a very unpredictable way because that happened very quickly I realized that I've got two great characters here that really fit two of the most important roles that I have in the story that I've been bouncing around my skull for the last two years so it came together fairly quickly out of a very vague idea because I was able to look around the room and take two people that were brand new to the roster and plugged them into that idea and helped make it work so when he was speaking about the vague idea you had for the NWA were there any sort of ideas that you liked with to the faction that didn't come to pass for whatever reason that might be that you think would have benefited the group no not at all you know the and really when I say big I mean vague the the premise of the NWO story I wasn't even really the premise the catalyst the need that I identified for the idea which went on to become the NWO was a more reality based story I knew I needed something that was more reality based going back to what the WWF was before Nitro and before the mwl you know the WWF was a very animated type of show the formula the presentation was on gear and targeted towards kids teens and preteens because that's where their money was I knew I couldn't be better at the WWF at that but I could be better than them at targeting 18 to 39 year old males so I knew that and this comes from I guess my sales and marketing background and learning about television advertising and you know the business of the wrestling business I knew that if I wanted to appeal to 18 to 39 year old males well I couldn't do it with you know and over-the-top goofy kind of mad dentist or a garbage man or joint a clown or any of those silly type of characters I don't mean silly because that sounds like I'm knocking them but characters that were designed to appeal to children if I wanted to appeal to a 21 year old I had to have a different kind of character and a story had to be based more in reality it had to be more plausible it had to be the type of story and presentation and a lot of the viewer consciously or subconsciously to go wow this could be true or it's it's it's a genuine enough story that I believe it's a possibility and therefore I'll allow myself to get sucked into it and invest in it so the vague idea I had for the NWO was really a question started with a question how do I make my show more reality based how do I present a product that's going to appeal to an 18 to 39 year old more then it's going to appeal to a six to twelve year old and a lot of the NWO was definitely the origins of it was the anti-establishment going against WCW and then the NWO turned into this huge thing so for something that hadn't really ever been done before in wrestling the anti-establishment we're gonna fight against the company it's definitely been done sort of afterward after the fact that definitely not beforehand so what made you think of taking that bold risk and trying something that might not have worked and what made you think that it definitely would well I didn't think that it definitely would I hoped it would but I wasn't a hundred percent confident that it would it just seemed to me that it was a story that most people could relate to and again if you go back and you look at the Promised One Scott and Kevin became available and then the idea began to crystallize more clearly in my head you know what was the available through line to that story that I could build upon what was the original premise to that story that I could build upon why he had Scott Hall and Kevin Nash both had previously worked in WCW both of them left WCW because they didn't feel like they were given the respect or the opportunity that they deserved I think most people can relate to that no matter what job you're in you probably feel like you deserve more money more opportunity more recognition more Pat's on the back whatever it is definitely 21 year olds I'm sure you you said you're appealing to that sort of age where you probably always feel you do deserve more than then you've got exactly what it is probably true throughout most people's lives to varying degrees but certainly with it with a younger audience so I took a fact Scott Hall Kevin Nash previous WCW left went to the WWF because they felt that they were disrespected and didn't get the opportunities they deserve they went on to become big stars now they were coming back to subol ucw to get revenge for the on the company and the people in it that didn't give them the opportunity they were there to prove a point that's a very book well it was believable 50% or 75% of that premise was actually true now they weren't coming back to get revenge but everything leading up to that point was absolutely true and the audience knew it the good percentage of them knew that and those that didn't know it we could tell them that story and they would find out that it was true and when you have a storyline in a premise at least in professional wrestling that starts off with the fact that it's at least 50 or 75 percent true that's a great story to build on you know kind of skipping forward a little bit one of the reasons I had so much fun with the Stone Cold Steve Austin Eric Bischoff's story at WWE because it was the same thing you know the wrestling audience knew through the narrative in over the years that I fired Steve Austin by FedEx he went on to go to WWE and become a huge mega star that's going to eventually be on the Mount Rushmore of professional wrestling and I fired him and I didn't even give him enough respect to fire him in person I sent him a FedEx I sent him a letter and said you're fired that was the Nariman I wasn't exactly true but whatever that was the narrative that was out there so to have a storyline built upon that premise which was almost true almost 100% true made that story he wouldn't be hard to screw it up actually and it was so much fun and this same was true with the NWO there was enough of a believable premise that you could add the layers of fiction to it that were necessary to make it really resonate with the audience so you mentioned obviously how Kevin Nash and Scott who were because if there should be WCW and sort of not been the opportunities they deserve what made Hogan good for being part of the group because he didn't share those similarities with Hall and Nash in the sense of his history with the company and being sort of mystery to venom he was the biggest star in wrestling I think it worked it worked for a lot of reasons but I think there are two primary reasons why it worked one was it was such a shock you know when it's like finding out that Santa Claus was actually you know evil right it was such a shock nobody expected it it it it created an emotional response and people as a result of that but I think one of the reasons it works so well for Hulk and one of the reasons he was able to adapt to that character and to it lesser degree one of the reasons it worked with the audience is because although the audience still had a reverence for Hulk Hogan because of who he was and what he had done in the 80s and early 90s and WWF they still have a certain reverence towards him but even the audience knew that the red and yellow eat your vitamins say your prayers Hulk Hogan that character must like the John Cena character we were talking about a little bit earlier that character had been flat for so long that when we took a big round edge to it yet just shocked people and in a good way even though they booed and they throw stuff and they were no little kids crying and all of that at the end of the day the audience knew they needed to see a change in order to continue to love that character as much as they loved him in the red and yellow and they revered him because he was the ultimate icon at the time and all of that kind of thing they still felt a need to see something different from that character in order to reimburse him and that's exactly what happened and was it always supposed to be Hogan Holden National were there other sort of iterations of the movie that were throwing about before it came to us no originally it was going to be sting because Hulk Hogan was off doing a movie and Hulk and made it clear to me almost a year previous that yeah he had no interest in turning heel and uh and there were a lot of reasons for that valid ones and at that point he also you know he knew at that time that while the red and yellow Kogan wasn't working as well as it had worked you know in in the years previous it was still working well enough that he didn't want to take a risk with it but I think once Hulk saw the way the NWO story was unfolding you know first Scott came out and Kevin came out shortly thereafter then we created the mystery about who's gonna be the third man originally that third man was gonna be sting and sting who was gonna turn heel and be that third guy but when Hulk Oban saw what was going on and reached out to me and we met and talked about it Hulk saw the opportunity now to become a heel but with a lot less risk because the the table was set you know the story was right there and it was a lot easier for Hulk to make that transition because he could see the story unfolding as opposed to you know me sitting at a table you know over a beer or two trying to explain it to him he was literally sitting in a trailer blocking it on video but wow this is pretty damn good I want to get in on this so it was a process but originally it was going to be stating that Hulk and with the benefit of hindsight do you think that that was integral to the group the fact it was Hulk and do you think we would be perhaps sitting here having an entirely different conversation if it did turn out to be staying instead of Hulk you know what never knows for sure you know that's the the the reason I try to avoid hypothetical questions but we'll never know for sure I think this thing would have been very effective in that role would it have the same impact as Hulk Hogan turning heel as much as I love love Steve Borden the individual and love the character staying in fairness I don't think it would have had the mass interest in appeal as Hulk omen turning heel did because sting just wasn't as well-known as Saul Goodman he didn't have the equity you know with the audience and with the mainstream media that Hulk Hogan had so I think it would have been hard for for stings character to have the same kind of impact that the Hulk Hogan character did and but before we get on to learn more about oh is it yourself there's been rumors going around sting possibly making a return to wrestling with aw do you believe in those rumors and do you think we will see him return you

Channel: Wrestling Daily

Views: 3,474

Rating: 4.9731545 out of 5

Keywords: wrestletalk, wrestletalktv, eric bischoff, eric bischoff interview, eric bischoff wcw, eric bischoff wcw interview, eric bischoff shoot, eric bischoff shoot interview, bischoff, bischoff interview, bischoff shoot interview, bischoff wcw, bischoff wwe, eric bischoff wwe, eric bischoff wwf, eric bischoff nitro, eric bischoff raw, eric bischoff nwo, eric bischoff hulk hogan, eric bischoff hogan

Id: jWgH1YY5XZ4

Length: 48min 4sec (2884 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020