In the most recent edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about why he didn’t like the segment between The Fiend and Vince McMahon from last Friday’s episode of SmackDown.
Here is what he had to say:
On his initial reaction to WWE ThunderDome on Smackdown: “I was so excited about this. Not necessarily for the show, but what this kind of technology and use of the technology could mean for the industry for the next 10 or 15 years. I was that excited. My impression and this is just my taste, but the first entrance – The Fiend when he came out to confront Vince – it was too busy. There was too much going on. There were too many lasers. Now other people may dig it. If you’re younger and you love playing video games and you find yourself on Twitch and you’re immersed in that world, you may have dug that. For me, as I saw Fiend coming out, the use of the lasers and layered lighting almost made his entrance look insignificant compared to the lighting they used to bring him in. It was too much. It didn’t add to The Fiend’s character. For me, it took away. I probably would’ve looked at that and said ‘I love all of this, I know we have all this potential, I know we can open up with these crazy lights you would probably only see in a Vegas show, but this is a dark, eerie character.’ Let’s not make it as busy and bright. There were little things like that.”
On his biggest issue with the Fiend/Vince segment: “Vince is standing in the ring. I got no expression on Vince’s face whatsoever because the way the red was reading in the ring. Vince’s face was completely washed out. I don’t know if he was crapping his pants. I don’t know if he was laughing. I don’t know if he was scared to death. I don’t know anything. That whole scene, however many minutes that scene lasted, that whole scene was a complete waste of time because you achieved nothing for The Fiend. You didn’t make him scarier, you didn’t make him more imposing, and you didn’t make him more threatening. You didn’t get the sense that the Fiend was thinking of doing something to Vince. You got nothing. You can’t get any expressions out of the Fiend because he’s wearing a freaking mask, so you’re pretty limited from the get-go. But there was so much going on visually to that point that there was no emotion. You couldn’t see anything. How was I supposed to feel? What was I supposed to be thinking as a viewer?”
On what he did like about ThunderDome: “I loved the crowd being around the ring. People being a part of it. The thing I loved the most about it is the audio. Even when you didn’t see the virtual fans on camera, you heard them. You felt them. Subconsciously, you knew they were there. That gave me permission to invest in what I was watching because I wasn’t kicked between the eyes with the fact that there was nobody in the room. You create that energy that the virtual crowd brings to the production. Now I felt like I was watching something reasonably close to what I used to watch.”
On his message for Kevin Dunn: “Kevin Dunn, if you’re listening to this, I know you’re not. But if you read anything or hear me referencing this, man, I know you’ve got those laser lights bro, but it doesn’t mean you have to use them so much.”
H/T to 411 Mania
