Former WCW / Impact Wrestling executive and on-air WWE performer Eric Bischoff recently appeared on The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast for an in-depth interview on the “State of Wrestling.” Below are some of the highlights.
On he and Hulk Hogan’s run in Impact Wrestling compared to WCW: “We didn’t try to do it again in TNA. The only reason TNA hired me was because they had no choice. Dixie Carter wanted Hulk Hogan, that was obvious; but Hulk Hogan didn’t trust anybody in TNA. When I say trust, I don’t mean to be devious or malicious or anything like that, but he didn’t trust their judgement or their ability, nor did he trust Vince Russo in any way, shape or form. Terry [Hogan] made it clear that if he was going to go to TNA I had to be there to kind of oversee whatever creative was involved with Hulk Hogan. That was my only job; I didn’t go to company meetings; I wasn’t part of any financial discussions, but role was really to oversee creative as it related to the Hulk Hogan character.”
On missing the amount of influence he had when he ran WCW while in Impact Wrestling: “Over time, that changed; my role kind of evolved and some of that was natural, some of it was because some things were happening internally, and I had a little more influence on the creative side of things, but neither Hulk nor I had any amount of control over strategy, tactics, anything to do with financial, anything to do with that company. We weren’t invited, nor asked for, that company was ran by Janice, Bob and Dixie Carter so we had nothing to do with it. When I ran WCW, I obviously had a lot of control over the business, but when I was in TNA, I had no control over anything other than creative.”
On which superstar he would have built WCW around had he purchased the company instead of WWE in 2001: “I think Bill Goldberg was really the guy that we would have built the company around. Certainly, we would have maintained some of the big-time talent like Hulk Hogan, and others but I think everybody recognized that Bill Goldberg was going to be, at that point, the guy in WCW.”
Check out the complete episode of The Sam Roberts Podcast featuring the “State of Wrestling” interview with Eric Bischoff at YouTube.com.
