During a recent appearance on “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff discussed their new promotion, Real American Freestyle Wrestling (RAFW).
The promotion will feature Olympic-style freestyle wrestling with a mainstream presentation.
Hogan mentioned that the main investor is Left Lane Capital, which also invests in other sports entities like Shaun White’s Snow League and League One Volleyball. He said,
“Eric [Bischoff] is [funding us]. No, just kidding, we’re [being funded] by Left Lane Capital, and they – basically – are in the live sports. So, they were really excited when we stepped up to the line with this idea, and they’re the horsepower behind us.”
Bischoff noted that amateur wrestling has struggled as a sustainable promotion in the past. However, he believes that RAFW is currently in a strong position due to adequate funding and their experience in execution. He said,
“The reason most good ideas don’t succeed is because they’re either not well-funded – we don’t have that issue – or they have a challenge in execution – I don’t think we’ve got a problem there either.”
Bischoff continued, “You know, it’s a little bit like getting the opportunity to take over WCW. Although WCW was around before I got there. But I had the unique opportunity to try and turn that company around and did, which is almost the same thing of what we’re doing here. For me, it amounts to the opportunity to build something, and to do something that no one else has ever done. I was never really any good, on my best day I was pretty average. But I loved it, and I got to know the people in it, and really respect them for being the individuals they are, and just how tough, how physically demanding and tough these athletes are. So when Hulk gave me a call…it was like ‘Wait a minute. You mean you want to know if I’m interested in an opportunity to help build a new sport…to build a new opportunity and create a new professional sports league, something that’s never been done before in this category? Oh hell yeah, count me in. And I couldn’t be more grateful.’”
