Notes from an Eric Bischoff interview on the Main Event radio show. As usual, he placed the blame on a lot of things on THE SUITS AT TIME WARNER. Hey, if that helps you sleep at night, more power to you.
He said he actually thought Vince McMahon was going to show up when he challenged him to a match at Slamboree 98. That was one of the many peaks of insanity in WCW. Bischoff challenged him to a fight on PPV, did some training montages, and then ultimately went on TV and said nobody should buy the PPV for that match because clearly Vince wasn't going to show up. This ended up in court, with Jerry McDevitt arguing that everyone knew if you said a guy wasn't going to show up at a pro-wrestling event that meant he WAS.
The fact that Eric and apparently Hulk Hogan both thought Vince was going to take them up on this offer just boggles my mind. He said he knew WCW was in trouble in August of 1998 due to the effects of the Time Warner/AOL merger. We knew in about March of 1998, and it wasn't because of any merger, it was because WCW was making every mistake under the sun. Also, the fact that plans for the merger weren't even announced until early 2000 I guess shouldn't be taken into account when listening to Bischoff's claims. He said the merger was an utter disaster (well, it was) and affected all sorts of things, including CNN, and people needed to take that into consideration. Eric needs to take into consideration that WCW went from grossing over $200 million to losing $60 million in a couple of years, and that's why they got axed.
Nobody will ever convince me that if WCW was making $225 million or more in 2001 that Time Warner would have axed them, no matter how much Jamie Kellner hated wrestling. He said CNN was never able to recover from the merger either. Well, last time I checked, which was this morning, CNN still exists, because they aren't losing $60 million per year.
He went on a rant about Dave Meltzer and Wade Keller, saying they were full of shit, didn't know what they were writing about, didn't understand the business, were tabloid news, got information second, third or fourth-hand, and have too much influence over the general wrestling fan. He said if they were good wrestling journalists they would go to the shows they wrote about and talk to people first-hand. That's the most laughable thing I've ever heard.
First off, I don't think anyone needed to attend Thunder live to know that it sucked.
Second, at least in the case of WWE, no one is allowed to talk to anyone on the record, though guys talk first-hand to reporters all the time.
Third, WCW wrestlers talked first-hand to both Dave and I regularly on Eyada, including one famous incident where Billy Kidman basically talked about how much WCW sucked on a Wrestling Observer Live that was aired while he was there in the building about to work.
And fourth, and best of all, Dave Meltzer has already stated on the record that during the peak of the Monday Night Wars he was talking to Bischoff several times per week, which sure sounds like first-person discussions to me. Also, shouldn't Eric fly out to San Jose or Minneapolis and help Dave and Wade put a newsletter together before he comments on how they do their work? Wouldn't he be reporting this information second or third-hand?
Regarding criticisms of not pushing guys, he said everyone cried about Jericho but then in WWE Jericho got the belt for "five minutes", it was a failure, and then he was back to mid-card status. "He got to say he was the champion of the world and unify the titles or whatever he was talking about for a few weeks but then it was over." Actually, it was three months, and he was never given a chance to be anything other than a foil for HUN-TOR, Stephanie, and Stephanie's fucking dog.
From f4wonline.com 
Linear Mode
