During the Ad-Free Supershow media scrum, Eric Bischoff spoke about not wanting to work in a full-time environment in the wrestling industry again, but is open to making more sporadic appearances (for WWE or AEW) in the future.
You can check out Bischoff’s comments below:
On the changing media landscape and how it applies to wrestling: “The product has evolved and changed to suit the culture. Our culture expects news. They want to know what’s going on all over the world in two and a half to three minutes. They just want the headlines. They don’t want the story, right? That’s just what we’ve become. We get information on an SMS. Most of our dialogues is digital. We’re processing information so much faster and entertainment products, wrestling in particular, has to adapt to that. It has to adapt to that by telling the stories faster, you know? You go back to the mid 80s, even into the early 90s, WWE had four Pay-Per-Views. WCW had four Pay-Per-Views. You had an entire quarter. You had three months to build up the stories and the characters and experiment and build and create anticipation Now you’ve got three weeks. So week one is the beginning of the story, act one. Act two is week two. Act three is week three. Payoff is at the Pay-Per-View. That’s a really short story and short stories don’t resonate the way longer, bigger stories do.”
On pro wrestling vs. sports entertainment: “If I’m doing an interview for WWE on any one of their networks, or something that’s associated with them, it’s sports entertainment. Out of respect. But in my normal course of conversation, it’s professional wrestling, because that’s what I grew up with. Never felt the need to change the name of it for reasons. So personal conversations, on 83 Weeks, my podcast, it’s always professional wrestling unless I’m talking about WWE and then, out of respect, it’s sports entertainment.”
On if he’d work full time in wrestling again: “No. No I wouldn’t. Look, I’m a realist. As much as I enjoy performing and getting out there to make an appearance, that ship has sailed. That’s why we’re here. I’m grateful for it. I’m happy to get up every morning and look at rear view mirror and think about the things that I’ve been able to do, but I’m fortunate to not feel so connected to it that I have to have that back in my life.”
