On the latest episode of the 83 Weeks Podcast, Eric Bischoff spoke about the thing he’s most proud of during his time in the wrestling business.
The former WCW President talked about Vince McMahon’s heel persona and how he was originally the one who created the evil boss in WCW. Bischoff mentioned how he felt that WWE copied a lot of WCW’s stories and how enjoyed forcing Vince to change his mindset.
“Revisionist history, b——t dirt sheet narrative, biased coverage, all kinds of reasons but it really doesn’t matter,” Bischoff said. “It used to bug me a little bit but I’m over it. It’s just another example of the things that WCW did first and did better that eventually, the WWE had to follow our pattern. Somebody asked me very recently what am I most proud of in regard to my career? That’s a hard question, but at the core of it, I would say it’s because I forced WWE and Vince McMahon to change the way that they did business.
“Anybody that knows Vince McMahon or worked for Vince McMahon knows that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Not only did I get Vince McMahon to sell and to react when everybody told me for so long ‘Vince will never sell anything, Vince will never acknowledge the competition, it’s not the way Vince McMahon does business.’ Well, it wasn’t the way Vince McMahon did business until I forced him to change and I’m proud of that because it made WWE a better place, a stronger company, a more successful product and the audience benefited as a result. That’s why you saw Vince McMahon become the evil boss that I had done a year sooner, that’s why you saw DX in the Attitude Era that was nothing more than a derivative of the nWo. Forced him to go live every week, all of those things were things that I did and I was almost solely, in many respects, responsible for.
“It’s not because on a personal level I was proud that I forced Vince McMahon to react to me, I’m proud because I forced him to react to me and it improved the industry. That’s what I’m proud of, it made it a better product, it made wrestling during the Monday Night War era, probably still today the most talked about thing in the wrestling industry on an ongoing basis. All of that was because Nitro changed the industry and forced the WWE to change their approach. The industry is a better place as a result of it and I’m very proud of that.”
Eric Bischoff continued to speak about ROH and the news that the company will be going on a hiatus in early 2022. The former WCW Boss named PCO as one star he’d like to see make a move into another company following his time in Ring of Honor.
“It will be interesting to see where he lands if he lands anywhere after what’s gone on with Ring of Honor,” Bischoff said. “He had a lot of heat, at least from what I could see on social media, he was very active and still had a lot of heat.”
The first ROH star to make a jump to another company was Jay Lethal this past weekend at AEW Full Gear. Bischoff spoke about what he thinks could happen now that all these talents have been released.
“It will be interesting to see in the next six months to a year, now that COVID-19 restrictions apparently seem to be lifting and we’re seeing more and more live events, with all this talent that’s been released from WWE and now ROH, it will be interesting to see what happens on the independent circuit,” Bischoff said. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we didn’t see a pretty massive revival of the independent scene and I hope that’s the case.
“Give everybody a place to work to hone their craft, improve their skills and you just never know what comes out of it. Look what happened with AEW, almost came out of nowhere and became a big thing. I think a lot of that had to do with the popularity of the independent scene so let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
