Exclusive Interview w/ Eric Bischoff

the show. Who would have ever thought when we started this off we'd be making our way up to some of the top guys in the wrestling industry and some of the most influential people that happen to be in the industry.

you as an on screen character. Obviously I've learned up on my wrestling history since then, but I did want to ask you, you know, for people like me, what what And I'm kind of putting you on the spot here with this one, but what are some like moments and matches that really I missed out on seeing live when getting into wrestling that late, Like, what are some of your moments?

as we're recording this. And I know the Hogan turn was so iconic that people are still talking about it to this day. So it's not just me because I happen to be there, but it's it was a big moment. It's gonna be hard for me to top that. But there are a lot of other moments that maybe weren't just big in terms of their impact, but to me personally kind of meant a little bit more. One example would be it was ninety seven, I get the years mixed up. It's been a minute when we had Carl

Malone and Dennis Rodman. They're in the NBA Finals, they're playing for the championship. I've got them both booked on a pay per view shortly thereafter. And I how I say this, I revealed, not revealed. I discussed the option of perhaps creating a little bit of controversy because we

all know it creates cash. And I said, guys, I'm not suggesting you do this, but you know, if per se, you're off the court, so nothing affects the outcome of the game or play, you two kind of get into a little bit, a little pushing and shoven flip each other off for just a minute. It's not going to hurt the game, and it will really help us. So

and they did, and they did. And the reason that that was so cool is because I had to be very careful how I did that, primarily because Turner Broadcasting at the time, TNT Sports had the cable rights for the NBA, So for me as a part of Turner Broadcasting to do something that the league found distasteful, which is really easy to do when you associate any sport with professional wrestling, everybody gets pissed up, or they used to,

not so much anymore. But I had to be really careful because my boss was also the guy who was dealing all the time with who was the head of the league back then, David David Stern. Yeah, David Stern was in you know, CNN all the time, CNN headquarters all the time. I'd see him on a regular basis meeting with Harves Schiller, who is my boss. So I had to be I want I knew what I wanted to get, but I had to be careful how I got there because I didn't want any record of it.

I didn't want to able to see what I told us to do it, so I had to be subtle about it. But they pulled it off and it was great, and uh that was fun. But there's you know, the the the moment in WWE when I was here today, this jious at the Billy and Chuck wedding. That was pretty bad ass. That was as a scene that was probably the most fun thing I've ever done as a moment in the ring, I think wrestling Steve Austin and

No Way Out in Montreal. Review that whole that whole thing with Steve was so much fun, and then to be able to pay it off in front of such an incredible crowd in Montreal. Love, love, love the Montreal fans. They're so passionate and I knew, I knew how that would end up going, and that was so much fun. So there's so many of them, but it's hard to pick one.

the Austin match. I think it was maybe after the Royal Rumbot can't I can't remember when, but you announced that you had a bombshell to drop, and that was when you were inviting Austin to come back to that match was and this might be a little bit of a markie Mark question, So forgive me if I'm asking I know some of the things in wrestling are predetermined, but was like that one of those cases of like it was planned for weeks that Austin was returning, or

was this one of those things where that was like your way of like inviting Austin on live TV back to the show back then?

quite some time. I came in while Steve was gone, and then I'm sure it was Vinc McMahon or somebody close to Vince started having discussions with Steve about getting him back, and in that process of Okay, let's get Steve back into the under the roster and get him back active again, then it became okay, well what do we do? How do we do that? And because Steve and I had so much legitimate backstory. I fired him by FedEx. Right, everybody knew about it. That was a

big deal. Steve made a big deal about it back then went on ECW, you know, mocked me and had a bunch of fun with that. And four years and we're talking about what two thousand and three I think this was, or somewhere in there and two three. So I fired Steve like in ninety four. So in all that time, me firing Steve Aston, particularly because he went on to become Stone called Steve Boston and it's such a mega, mega, mega megastar, which of course, you know,

wrestling fans being rustling fans. No, I can't believe you let him go. Well yeah, right, But anyway, the backstory was there, and I don't know whose idea it was, whether it was Vince's or Bruce Richards or Brian Gowertz's or Steve. I don't know. I never asked because it

doesn't really matter to me. But somebody came up with the idea of hey, since Eric and Steve Hall have all this backstory and Eric is the general manager of raw, let's have Vince McMahon put pressure on Eric because Vince was, you know, creatively speaking and literally my boss, like he gave me the mandate, you get Steve Boston or maybe you're done. So I had to go out and find Steve and invite him back, and I finally got it

back and it was a really cool story. But the coolest part of it is that it was based so much on reality. Right, fifty of that premise for that story actually happened. The other fifty percent was the drama the we created to, you know, make it fun, but it was at least half real. And anytime you've got a wrestling story that is either based on a true story so to speak, or feels like you could be those are the ones that work. Those two, the ones that are based on a true story always work best.

out there too, by the way. Sure you know PW torch Way Keller is doing a really good job. P W insider Dave Sheer and Mike Johnson are really doing a good job. And there are others. So when I say dirt sheets on me to throw everybody under the bus, But there are certain ones that deserve to live there, uh and just let that bus run over them. Just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Dave Melts are being one of them, King of the hill, king of the ship sheets.

pulled off this past weekend. I mean it can you can still surprise people, which and still suspend disbelief because when people talk about what used to be an inside termed cave, babe, it's really about Look, it's no different than magic. Like imagine this, guys, David Blaine, Chriss Angel, whoever, some illusionist magician, call them whatever you want. It's in Las Vegas. People pay three four five, six hundred, eight hundred dollars a ticket to come and see their magic

show in Vegas. Can you imagine if David Blaine or merce Agel somebody came out and said, Okay, guys, before we get to the show, I want to show you how we do all of this magic. I'm going to expose it all to you so when I do it, you understand it and can appreciate it. Okay, here's how we do all the magistrates, and I'm gonna go back behind a curtain, pretend you didn't see any of that. Said back, enjoyed the show you wouldn't they ruin it, or they would have ruined it. So that's what dirt sheets.

The guys that like Dave Meltzer, who pride themselves on making people believe that they know more than they really do, and they get into this predictive kind of modem and they really have no contacts, legitimate, no understanding of the industry, know anything, but they're constantly exposing things or they do stumble across things that are being discussed, which is even worse, by the way, than just making it up because it takes the pleasure away from the people that just want

to tune in and have fun. So it's a problem in some respects because of the proliferation and just the the presence of social media constantly. However, it just forces you to be smarter. It forces you to do differently. It forces you to plan ahead in much more detail, and knowing that, Okay, if we're going to keep the secret, we're going to suspend disbelief so that the audience can enjoy it to the maximum, then we're gonna have to

take out extra steps. That's unfortunate, I guess, but still possible. And we just saw this past Weekend.

Anywhere that you like to listen to all your podcasts, and we know that you have a huge fan base out there when it comes to social media, and you know, when we talk about breaking KFE, we're using mark terms now. Would they like WWE does a press conferences after shows and obviously there's like a lot of content creators back there. There's a lot of people that are just you know, as we've said before, dirt sheet writers, other media outlets,

stuff like that. Would you have explored something like that in w CW after shows? And I guess two fold questions. Would you kind of monitor how you know, when you're when you're sitting there reviewing a show, letting the media ask questions about what just unfolded in front of their eyes.

Would you, as a person that's just kind of in charge of everything, make sure that you know people have smart answers, or would you be fine with them kind of juggling back from television reality because you obviously, you know, have the Rocky such an important part of the TKO board, and that's kind of bleeding over to his on screen character right now. With the Final Boss, you had one of the biggest heel turns possibly since hul Cogan and

the wrestling business. And then you have the Uh you had the press conference afterwards, and he's coming out and he's talking like the member of the TKO board. He's talking about numbers and where the story is going, and you know, behind the stuff, like just peeling the curtain back a little bit. Is that something that you would have a problem with if you were ever to do something like like a postmatch press conference, post pay per view press conference.

social media platforms out there. I'll think of it before we're done, I'm sure. But I was doing that, and I did talk about the business, and I did talk about creative but I did it in a way that left some of the mystery in the air. And I think now I didn't see the Rock press conference, but clearly he knows what he's doing and understatement, and I

think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing for people to understand the real business of the wrestling business and to have the kind of information that you just described Dwayne was sharing with people. And I'll

tell you why. I firmly believe that the more the audience engaged us with the brand at every level, not just as a band watching on television or buying a ticket or buying a plee or pay per view or a shirt, but if you can involve them and make them feel like they're a part of something, engagement that's a big word, right, or that's a broad term for it, but really get them interacting because you're giving them information, credible information that they're not getting from some parasite like

Dave Mouser, but right from the horses mouse to speak that engages them, that makes them feel like they understand more. And if that's hard for people listening to this to understand,

just look what the NFL has done or NBA. There's dozens of hours of sports talk shows talking about the business of the NFL and the numbers and the challenge they're giving you so much what was probably twenty years ago conversation that you would only hear inside of the head office, right, and now it's out there and it's part of the public consumption and public dialogue. And I think the more people understand, the more they know, the more comfortable they are, the more they feel like they're

a part of something. So long winded answer to a very long winded question, because you asked seven.

the Hall Cogan turn. So I know you haven't seen it yet, but you know the implications of seeing at turning heel is massive. So just kind of what are your like overarching thoughts before you really get down to watching that.

and as a pro He's a good guy. And I think because he had such a long career and he never turned heel that I can kind of put myself in his shoes. And if it were me and I had that opportunity, I have to see what it feels like. If I've been a babyface at the highest of levels for twenty years and I never got a chance to taste that heel heat, I'd be somewhat disappointed in myself. I think just from a wow, what a great way to end your career as a performer. Perfect, and I'm

happy for it. Again. I'm gonna be totally honest, the last six weeks of my life has been very busy, and it's involved a lot of travel, so my ability to sit down and watch wrestling has been more difficult than usual, let's put it that way. So I didn't see a lot of the story build up going into the scenaturn, so I don't know how much of it felt random, and I won't know that why I see

it tonight, And I mean spontaneous, not random, spontaneous. Did that whole turn develop all in one event or one scene? If it did, that's interesting. I think one of the reasons that the Hogan turn worked so well, it's because we spent weeks building anticipation for Who's the Third Man? And that belonged build up of anticipation. It's like steam and a pressure cooker starts out low and it's building, and it's building, it's building, and it finally it reaches

such a fever bitch and blows right. That's kind of what happened with the Hogan churn. So we we spent weeks, I mean, the whole the whole build up to that was Who's the third man? Right, and everybody was speculating and nobody knew. Dave Meltzer thought it was Mabel shit shit big vist. Yeah, and then when I called him out, he said, well, Sean Waltlon told me, well, Sean Waltlin

didn't want work in w W at that time. So this does that make I mean anyway, don't get it going on the Meltzer and Parasitic Dirt sheet writers.

view revenues had all increased. But if you go back in time and you realize that, wait a minute, haw Cogan was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You mean, Haul Cogan was every major, you know, late night TV show back when no other restord had ever done that. You know, Hope was so big in ways that had never been done before. Sina was huge, but in ways

that we have seen before. So Hogan turning heel in some respects I think may have had a little bit more impact than John, not because of who's a more important babyface, but because of I mean, you know it. You know the eighties and Haul Cogan's ascension to the megastartum that he achieved was different than the megastartum that John Cena achieved, and I think because of that, the heel turn was probably more shocking. And the more shocking

it is, the better it is. So without even seeing it, I would have to tip my hat to Hoge it now once I go back and watch it if I can, and I will because I want I don't not only want to see the term, I want to see what led up to the term, and I'll be doing that research today. I want to see what they've been doing with John Cena up until that moment that he turned. And if that was story driven, then it's going to

be hard to pick one, but it was. If it was more spontaneous, then I'm gonna probably tip it to Hog.

them I just know. And I think they've taken rustling storytelling to a level it's unequal with any other form of entertainment that I see on television. The drama, the characters, the build up, the setup. They're just doing such a phenomenal job. And you know, you look at a show like one that my wife and I were recently watching that we loved and great characters and great story is.

everything perfect. They're live. And if you look at the quality of the stories, and while in a lot of television and movies they're dependent on the narrative, right, the dialogue is what drives story. Of course, action drive story, and the acting, the performing and the drama of the performer drive story. But in wrestling you don't have that luxury. You don't have a lot of dialogue to tell your story. The dialogue is a physical dialogue that takes place on

the stage. In this case, the stages is the ring. So while me not Feel is sophisticated in some respects as dialogue in a top rated series with great story, the narrative that plays out inside of the ring is equally impressive to me in so many ways. And the little details just like the one that you mentioned I might be on the lookout or or that you noticed,

are the little details of everybody. That's how they suck you into that match those little details, those little nuances, and that is a little nuance something that makes you go, oh, doesn't really do something like that? What's going on here? If the writers and a performer can get you to ask yourself that question while you're watching, or a question similar to that, they've knocked it out of the park.

And that's the kind of thing that WWE is doing consistently, sometimes more than others, sometimes in a way that's more interesting than others. But they're constantly doing it, which is why they're enjoying the success. They're enjoying it. I've been saying it on my podcast for three straight years. It's not about the action. It's about the story, right, and the action should be of equal quality to the story.

And if you've got great story and great action, you might as well be printing money in your base.

He still sounds like Brett Michaels. Even when he's playing at a casino, he's still in the whole.

without looking like hul cog and the character. And he's since i've and I've known him for thirty years, every time every you know, I've gone down to his house and let's just go out and grab some launch yeah sushi or something you know, he's on the whole comedian shirt, and it's like, if there was a ring, he could just make an entrance and go be Hulk Cogan, which he usually does.

see that and hear those, you know, antidotes. One of the things I kind of wanted to talk about because me and Billy haven't been shy on our criticism of AW in the past two and we certainly know that you're popular when it comes to.

do you think he can do? What advice you know, if you were to sit down to tone with Tony right now, what advice would you give him in order to just kind of like improve him on that area.

of the comments from the EW loyalists. I can literally feel little, tiny neuropathways in my brain. There's millions of them, and there's messages being funneled and shifted all through your brain twenty four hours a day. But when I read some of that stuff, I can feel them collapsing. So I try to stay away from it. Look without being critical, because this applies to any any television endeavor. You've got to know your audience and you and let me let

me back up. You have to decide who you want for your audience because without knowing that, without a clearly defined goal and target, the odds of success are minimal or non existent. It's no different than getting in your cars loading up your kids or Billy, you don't have the kids. You are a freaking kid. Come on the hell, am I talking about your nephews or your nieces or something. Neighbors.

It's like throwing you know, three little kids in the back of the car with your wife or your girlfriend and say, let's take the neighborhood kids on a trip. Great, let's pack some lunches, get them all set in the car. Okay, where shall we go? I don't know where you want to go? Oh wow? I mean that's no different than producing a television show and not knowing and clearly defining who you want your target audience to be. That decision about who your target audience should be needs to be

driven by revenue. Where can you make the most money or where can you make enough money to actually survive? Actually, nobody goes into the television industry trying to figure out how much money they need to make to survive, right, So you need to know who your target is. And once you know who the target is, yes, you need

the demographics male female, What are their ages? Demographics? Every dipshit, dirt sheet parasitic wannabe knows that word because they see it in all the trade magazines and it makes them so so smart to people who actually know less than them, which is hard to find. They're out there and they start throwing terms around that are typically used instead of an industry. That makes them sound like they're in that industry. That's Dave Melser's technic and others, not just him. But

demographics is important, so is psychographic. Nobody ever talks about that. The psychographics will be what are the characteristics of the audience that is in the eighteen to forty nine year old demo that are most likely to appreciate your product? Well, now you're zeroing in a little a little more closely. You know what the big target is. You're not really sure where the bullseye is, but you see the big

red target. Well, now we get a little bit closer when we start thinking about psychographics and we do the research and we find out, okay, what do what are some of the This is an example, what are some of the what are some of the fans of w WWEE that are in that a team, that forty nine year old demo? What are examples of the music they like, the food they like, the cars they drive, the favorite products that they consume. And that gets you a little

closer to the bullseye. And all of that information helps you shape your creative. So it needs to be reverse engineered in order to be successful. And I think what a lot of people do. And I'm not going to mention company names here, but what I've seen is not just one of them. I've done it myself. I'll use myself as an example. Early on when I you know, because I didn't really get into creative until about nineteen ninety five, was when I started because I was always

intimidated by it. I didn't think I had enough experience in it, and I wasn't. I didn't have confidence in my own instincts. So I always do I always let somebody else do it right. And then when Ted Turner said, okay, Eric, go do two hours upon time every month, he was like, okay, well, now I can't just palm it off on somebody else. I got to do this stuff. Myself, and then I

kind of forced myself to get more involved. Knowing your story and excuse me, Knowing your target audience, knowing the psychographics associated with it allows you to reverse engineer the characters and the type of story you need to tell. All too often myself early on, and sometimes what I see today it's throwing stuff against the wall and hoping it sticks or worse yet, I know what I like, So I'm going to book for me. I remember when I was a kid, I loved this type of manage.

So I'm going to book that you're booking for you. You're not booking for the target that you should be booking for. You're not creating and writing and positioning your characters for the target. You're writing and creating characters for yourself when you were how do you think that's gonna work? So what I would advise anybody is learn, learn your audience, do your research, figure out what's working with who, and then figure out a way to do a better job.

And sometimes being a better job, it's just being a different job. Meaning you know when I when I was really learning in Nive ninety six ninety seven and by ninety six sinety seven, I started getting more comfortable with my abilities, or in instincts really, because I have still had no real experience, but I had good instincts. I could feel things differently than the average person, and that feeling taught me a lot about storytelling and building anticipation.

But I've talked about this many times in my podcast. When Ted Turner said, here, Eric, two hours, go do this. Go head and ahead with WWE invincment, Man, It's like, what the hell never thought of that before. I didn't want to think about it. It's a crazy idea. But now it's my job. And I said to myself, and I've talked about this in my book. I've talked about it many times on the podcast. I locked myself in

a room my office. I put to my assistant, not taking any calls for at least an hour, don't let anybody in, don't even let them knock on the door. Because I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do. I had no idea. I didn't go into that meeting expecting any of that. But now Ted Turner himself looks me in the eye and says, go do it. It's either going to be the worst day of my career or the best, and I decided

to make it the best. So I sat down with a yellow legal pad and a pencil, and I said, Okay, I can't be better than the ww meeting. They're so good at what they do. I cannot be better than them. I want to be less than them. Already less than them. I don't like being less than them. So if it can't be better and I don't want to be less, I just have to be different. I have to present my product a little differently than they do, dramatically different.

It's not like we're going to have wrestling on ice. I know, wrestling with Disney and ice. Nobody's ever done that before. Okay, that's different, but that's stupid. But when you can, and I describe it as tilting things when you look. When I looked at the WWW product, and I didn't think it through like this back then, but I do now. When I looked at the w w WE product, what did I see? I saw a product that generally, as I discussed before, who's your audience? Their

audience at that time was teens and preteens. Everything they did in television was created, the characters, the stories, the entire presentation was all created or that teen and preteen audience. That's who their audience was. There were older people watching and parents should bring their kids, and it'll be twenty year olds, and there were a lot of other fans, but the core audience was teen and preteen. Why do

I do that? Because all of their licensing and merchandising, which at the time was the only real revenue that they had. The television licensing didn't exist back then. Pay per view revenue was there, but that was only about twenty five or thirty percent of their overall revenues back then. I'm guessing at them, so, but they're licensing, excuse me, their they're licensing. Merchandising and licensing and product lines were huge for them, but they were all targeted towards kids.

So I'm sitting in my office going, okay, I want to be less than them. How do I be different? I went, hum, Well, if they're going after teens and preteens and I could never capture that market from them, why don't I go after eighteen to forty nine year old males? And instead of their cartoony kind of When I say cartoon, it sounds like I'm cutting it up, but need a lot of money doing it. But their characters were very animated, they were very much identifiable with

a team of preteen audience. Well, I'm going to be different. I'm gonna let Scott, Hank, Kevin ask come in using their real names. My stories are going to be read reality because theirs are based their children's stories. They're kiddy stories, they're kitty characters. I'm going to be eighteen to forty nine characters in eighteen to forty nine year old stories.

That was the seismic shift that really propelled the Monday Night Wars, me going, I can't do what they're doing, but I can do this is this is an underserved audience.

And I went after the eighteen to forty nine year olds and I kicked Vince McMahon's ass for over one hundred weeks two years, eighty three of those one hundred and some odd weeks in a row, I bitch slapped creatively speaking all the way up until he got tired of it, and he goes, he said somehow to himself, you know what, I'm going to abandon my teen and

preteen target audience. Can't. I can't do it anymore because this kid's killing me over here using eighteen to forty nine year olds, So I'm going to do what he's doing. Oh yeah, that's called the attitude era. When it happens shortly after that, a year after the president of the company, former announcer turns Heel it's a fan turn Heel came out as the president of Copan came out as the boss. A year after I did it, a year after the

nw wel just absolutely mopped the floor with WWE. Vince Cazer all right, I'm going to do that, and arguably he did it better, did it bigger, which is typical Vince mcmahn. I admire it for it. Yeah, Pal, but you can't. You can't look at the reality and the timeline of the history of wrestling objectively and not recognized that that was the pivot point for WW week. The fact that I forced them to go after an eighteen to forty nine year old audience is the reason they're on Netflix today.

So yeah, eighty three weeks dot com is where it's happening. I've got some new projects coming up. We got a new podcast that's going to start on April eighteenth. I'm breaking the news here to you publicly. You guys are the first ones to hear this office. But it's going to be called Bumps and Stumps. Okay, bumps and stumps, because I'm going to cover the bumps part, which is professional wrestling specifically WWE and all the things that are

going on currently. And my broadcast partner, my podcast partner in this case, is a guy by the name of Barrat Sundracian, who is a He's Indian. He's from India, not a Cowbway Indian, but an Indian Indian, and he's one of the best known cricket journalists in the world. And we discovered over some amazing Indian food about a year and a half ago that the crossover audience for cricket, which is one of the largest sports on the planet. By the way, the crossover for cricket fans and professional

wrestling WW fans in particular is huge. So we're going to do this podcast primarily for India, but also for fans of cricket, and I'm going to talk about what's going on this week in WWE and wrestling in general. And Broad's going to teach us about what's going on in cricket and tell us how to bet, tell us who to bet, on and all kinds of fun stuff,

So that's coming from me. I'm also thinking seriously about because I've been on this carnivore diet for like a year now, and I bund you kind of an evangelist, I guess for it. There you go, not because I have any financial reasons to do it, but because I think it's such a cool thing. So my wife and I are talking about possibly doing that. But all of that you'll find out more about eighty three weeks dot com.

I've always been a huge fan. I certainly thank you for this, and you know we'll have to do it again sometime.

the weird nature of it. We had a we were following a bunch of people, but we didn't have that many followers and we didn't get a lot of interaction. So it'll be posted on all other social media sites. And Eric, we certainly appreciate it, man, and uh, we'll have you on again soon.