Eric Bischoff is one of the most legendary business minds in the history of Professional Wrestling.
In a new interview with SportBIBLE, Eric talks about his journey through professional wrestling from the AWA and beyond. Below are some highlights.
Eric Bischoff on his relationship with Verne Gagne:
“That’s one of the things that I cherish. When I reflect back on what I think are the most important moments for me personally, I think having the chance to work for Verne is right there at the top of that. I was a fan of Verne Gagne when I was a young teenager growing up in Minnesota. It was a really big deal for me to all of a sudden be sitting in an office working with him. It’s respect but it’s also when you put somebody up on a little bit of a pedestal because of who they are. You’re always more or less in awe of them, they’re a mentor even if that’s not the formal role or relationship. I had a great relationship with Verne, a lot of people didn’t. It was like a lot of people in that position where people are going to think the world of you and others are going to have a different perspective. Verne’s controversial, there’s a lot of talent that had issues with Verne. I never had that. I got along with Verne from day one, we grew to become pretty good friends and did a lot of things outside of wrestling together. So my relationship with him was excellent and one that I’m very grateful for.”
Eric on trying to convince Hulk Hogan to turn heel pre-NWO:
“I had tried to convince Hulk to turn heel about a year earlier and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with that. He thought it was too big of a risk, he had spent 20 years at that point building this brand and this image, building this relationship with the audience. And here I was asking him to completely flush it all down the toilet cos I thought it might work and he was not interested in it. It wasn’t until a year later when Hulk was filming a movie on location that he called me up and said ‘Hey can you get to LA? I’d really like to talk to you’. This is right about the time Scott Hall made his debut, Kevin Nash was already in. We’d started the ‘Who’s the third man?’ part of the storyline. That’s right around the time Hulk called me and said ‘Who’s going to be the third man?’ I did know, but I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to keep it a super-secret so I said, ‘Who do you think it should be?’. He paused just for a minute, took a swig of beer and a puff of his cigar and said, ‘It should be me’. I said ‘So you’re ready to turn heel?’ and he said, ‘I’m your guy’. It really was Hulk’s idea. He saw that rather than just randomly turning heel and doing something out of desperation, because the babyface Hulk Hogan character really wasn’t working the way we’d hoped, just making a change without a real plan is really a bad move. (But) when the story started playing itself out, it looked like it was going to make sense. At that point Hulk was willing to take the risk, fortunately, he did and the rest is history.”
To read the full interview, click here.
