During the latest edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff commented on what led to him firing Steve Austin from WCW, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On how he wanted Austin to come in to a WCW Saturday Night taping to film a promo: “My goal, knowing that Steve was injured and was gonna be back eventually, was to keep his character alive, not let it just disappear like he’d fell off the face of the earth. So we were producing a show, WCW Saturday Night, Center Stage, and I thought, ‘Well, I know he can’t wrestle but let’s get at least a minute and a half, two minutes, backstage promo, update, whatever, on Steve Austin, just to keep him visible.”
On asking Tony Schiavone to call Austin: “I told, I think it was Tony Schiavone, to give Steve a call, it was early enough in the afternoon, he could have made it, Steve lived outside of Atlanta, but plenty of time, he could have driven in, shot the promo, and been back home by seven o’clock, eight o’clock that night, should have been no big deal, right? So I asked Tony to give Steve a call.”
On Tony’s call to Austin and Austin allegedly being dishonest about being home: “Tony called Steve, and Steve’s wife answered the phone, his wife at the time answered the phone, I think it was Lady Blossom or whatever she was, whatever her real name was, Jenny, she answered the phone, and Tony said, ‘Hey, Tony Schiavone here, I need to talk to Steve,’ and I’m paraphrasing, I wasn’t listening to the conversation. The way it was reported back to me from Tony was that, Steve’s wife said, ‘Hey Steve, Tony Schiavone’s on the phone, he wants to talk to you!’ And Tony could hear Steve yelling back to his wife, ‘Tell them sons of bitches I’m not here!’ Well, that’s pretty bullshit, right? That’s bullshit. He was there, he just didn’t want to have a conversation. He didn’t want to hear anything what I had to say. Or maybe he was in pain, I don’t know. But nonetheless, Tony comes back to me, and says, rather sheepishly, but still being honest, ‘Uh, yeah, I called Steve’s house and spoke to his wife, I hate to say this, but I could hear Steve in the background telling his wife to tell me that he wasn’t there.’”
On how Austin’s dishonesty triggered him and led to the decision to fire him: “There’s certain things that just fucking trigger me, and dishonesty is one of them. To me, in that moment, in that time, that was very dishonest. Now had Steve picked up the phone, and said to Tony, ‘Tell him to go fuck himself, I’m not in the mood to come in,’ or I’m in pain, or whatever, I could have lived with that, that’s the truth, that’s a fact. But the slight of hand for Steve to tell his wife to tell Tony that he wasn’t home, that fell into another category for me, and I become irrational sometimes, once I feel like somebody is being dishonest, or not being transparent, or overly manipulative. I can deal with it most of the time, but there are certain times when I feel like, if I can’t trust you, I don’t have to like you, I don’t have to agree with you, we don’t have to hang out, as long as I can trust you. Even if I can trust that you’re going to be consistently dishonest, I’m generally OK with that, because now I’m making a decision based on that. But if all of a sudden, out of nowhere, somebody that I trust, believe, and I thought that was pretty much honest with me, I find out that they’re not, then shit starts getting irrational on my half, and that was why I made the decision I made.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)