Eric Bischoff Opens Up On New Role In WWE: "This Is A Whole Different Ballgame"

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Eric Bischoff Opens Up On New Role In WWE: “This Is A Whole Different Ballgame”

Eric Bischoff has finally spoken at length about his new role behind-the-scenes in WWE as the Executive Director of SmackDown Live.

On the latest episode of the 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff discusses his new position as WWE SmackDown Live’s Executive Director for creative development. During the show, he admits that he’s very grateful and excited to begin a new journey in the pro wrestling industry before thanking fans for the overwhelming support he’s received since the news was announced.

Additionally, Bischoff noted that he embraces the fact that this is the biggest opportunity he’s ever had in his career, especially with SmackDown Live moving from the USA Network to FOX in October.

Featured below is an excerpt from the new episode of the 83 Weeks podcast of comments Eric Bischoff made about being named the new SmackDown Live Executive Director, as well as a complete audio archive of the show.

“First of all, I wanna say thank you. I’m overwhelmed with the support, the positive response that I got on social media after WWE made the announcement that I’ll be joining the team and getting involved with SmackDown. The amount of responses I got…I knew it was gonna be a good response, I knew it’d probably be a lot, but I was absolutely overwhelmed by the nature of that response and how positive it was and just the sheer volume of it all. I think people are really excited. I wanna let everybody know, the magnitude of this opportunity, the challenge and commitment that goes along with it, is not lost on me. There’s been a couple times over the last few days where I’ve been driving my truck or taking my dog on a hike and going, ‘Wow, this may be…’ it’s not maybe, this is the biggest opportunity I’ve ever had in this industry, granted, when Bill Shaw made me President of WCW. Obviously, that was a very big moment, but I was learning on the job there. I had nothing to lose there. I was taking a company in WCW that had never turned a dollar a profit, that was just a number two to WWF at that time that we weren’t really even number two. A company that was fraught with bad history and internal issues, so I had nothing to lose, and in this situation, this is an entirely different ballgame here. This is a very sophisticated company. In WWE, there is a great team already in place. They are moving their SmackDown show to FOX network which is obviously gonna have a lot of eyeballs on it in every way. So the magnitude of the opportunity is not lost on me but I said this in a tweet…this is probably the only thing I’m really gonna say beyond this, and I mean this, almost a tear in my eye saying it: I’m honored, I’m humbled and I cannot express, even here, because this is a different kind of excitement for me. I haven’t felt this way, maybe in forever but at least twenty years. This is a whole different ballgame.”

(H/T to Sean Ross Sapp (@SeanRossSapp) of Fightful.com for transcribing the above Eric Bischoff quotes from the “83 Weeks” podcast.)