On the latest episode of his After 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff reacted to Vince McMahon electing himself to the WWE Board of Directors, along with former WWE Co-Presidents and Board members George Barrios and Michelle Wilson.
McMahon is returning to “capitalize on a unique opportunity to maximize long-term value for all WWE shareholders,” reads his statement.
You can check out some highlights from Bischoff’s podcast below:
On predicting that Vince would stay away from WWE: “So this morning on Strictly Business, we talked and what’d we have? Five actual predictions, and we had some fun with the other ones. And one of the predictions was, will Vince McMahon come back to WWE in 2023. And my headline was, ‘It’s much ado about nothing, I think there’s only about a 20% chance that he would come back and an 80% chance that he would enjoy, however he could, retirement.”
“And what’s important about the reasons why I assigned that percentage is, you know, Vince has traditionally always made decisions that shocked people. Bringing Warrior back, bringing me in for the first time. Bringing me in the second time to be Executive Director of one of their most important shows. All of those things were kind of shocking, because I was a competitor in such an obvious way to Vince and did some pretty crappy things. Ultimate Warrior had his issues with Vince, Vince brought him back. Jeff Jarrett held him up for $350,000. Brings him back, right? So Vince would always do what’s ‘best for business.’ And I felt like, that’s probably where Vince will camp out, on ‘what’s best for business.’ And my opinion on the show was, that it’s best for business not to create any chaos while WWE is being positioned possibly for a sale or at the very least beginning to renegotiate their contracts for the best go-around. And forcing Vince’s hand at this point in time would not necessarily be a bad thing, but it would certainly as we’ve seen so far, it created a lot of uncertainty. The markets generally don’t like uncertainty, and what a bad time to pull a move like that going into either a sale or a negotiation if that move causes uncertainty. That’s my point. And that would have been a strictly business — no pun intended, but I love it — position.”
On Vince McMahon being a fighter: “Now the 20% I talked about was basically, Vince is a fighter. And Vince being forced into retirement is incongruent with what many people know is Vince’s nature to fight. And I think Vince feels like that was his company, it was his empire. Obviously he had help, but it’s been his baby since he bought that company from his father. And I thought, ‘You know, that part of Vince is still there, but I think it’s a smaller part.’ Well, I was wrong. [laughs] It was a very well thought-out analysis, and it was completely wrong.”
On if the move has anything to do with the show being run better without him and affecting his legacy: “I understand your question, but I think — now I haven’t read everything that’s come out in the last couple of hours. I’ve seen some of the bigger headlines and a couple other emails and stories. But I think Vince is — his reasoning for coming back and making this move is to aggressively pursue a sale. So in that case, I don’t think that matters. Because if he sells the company, he’s not gonna be running it anymore.”
“And whether things ran better with him or without him is an irrelevant, a moot point. Because whoever buys it isn’t going to have Vince McMahon running it anyway. They’re gonna run it. So no, I think this is Vince’s exit strategy. And whether it’ll run better with him or without him isn’t really a discussion in an exit strategy like that.”
On what can be expected of this fiasco: “Nobody’s gonna know anything until they do. And there’s so many moving pieces, again because it’s so complex, that we’re just gonna have to go along for this ride. And it’s gonna be a fascinating journey, really.”
You can keep up with all your wrestling news right here on eWrestlingNews.com. Or, you can follow us on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
