On a recent edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff weighed in on whether WWE should continue having a men’s and women’s Elimination Chamber match.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On WWE Elimination Chamber: “I love the direction it’s going [the WrestleMania card], and some of the matchups that we have here. Particularly after watching Elimination Chamber, I watched it in Detroit in my hotel room at whatever time that was, six o’clock in the morning or 4:30. Whatever it was, I was up doing it. And I very much enjoyed the show. I guess I expected a little bit more, maybe because there’s been so much buzz and chatter and Rock showing up, ‘Finish the story’ this, the drama. It just felt like there was something bigger that was going to happen at Elimination Chamber. But I don’t think the fact that — I think the show was a great show. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There weren’t really probably only 15 minutes in total throughout the whole show where I got a little bored with what I was watching. It was an entertaining show, but just didn’t have that big moment that I guess I was expecting for some reason.”
On whether the time of day in the time difference between Australia and America perhaps affected that at all: “I’m just guessing, I don’t think it would be that. If I had to guess, I would guess if there was a conflict and scheduling. I mean, just going to — you know, you and I both are going to be heading to Australia pretty soon. And it’s by the time you get there and recover, you’re talking about a two-and-a-half day trip. Maybe a little longer if you’ve got to get there, recuperate a little bit, let your body catch up to the timezone, and be ready to get into the ring or perform at whatever level. So I would imagine there just might have been a scheduling conflict that didn’t make that possible. Rock’s got a lot going on recently.”
On whether WWE should continue with having a women’s and men’s Elimination Chamber match: “I don’t like it. I don’t know if switching it up is the answer necessarily. But I do feel like is that it overexposes the idea of the Chamber, and the Chamber loses its personality. The Chamber has a character in the show. It’s just like the audience’s character. In this case, the gimmick is a character, the cage is character. That was another thing I noticed too is, that Elimination Chamber used to be — now, again, I’m not a wrestler. But what I was told by people who want to go in there and work is that it was brutal physically. This Chamber, when I watched the other day, it just didn’t have that sense of danger to it. And there’s something about that pale blue ring apron and the white ring ropes, it just makes it feel awful sanitized to me. I don’t know, it just didn’t feel dangerous.
“I know that it is; I’m not suggesting it’s not. It didn’t feel dangerous, it didn’t feel like a character to me. And I think that’s part of it. They used to make a big deal out of the Chamber. It’s like the way they used to build cage matches back in the day. Taking a head of cabbage back and forth to kind of communicate how dangerous it is and what the stakes were. I didn’t get the feeling that the Elimination Chamber provided any stakes, it was a sort an unusual match. Some of it I really liked, I liked the pods. It was kind of goofy in a way to see Logan Paul in there drawing little pictures. That was goofy but entertaining. And that’s what this is, this is entertainment, folks. It’s not a sporting event. It is entertainment, and there are different ways of entertaining different people. So I get it. I love the lighting it, I love the fact that they have lights inside those pods so you can get a good look at the talent that was in there.”
