On this week's family-friendly edition of the Stone Cold Steve Austin Podcast, the Rattlesnake interviewed former WCW/NWO, WWE and TNA personality, producer and storyline villain Eric Bischoff.
In the interview, Bischoff talked about Ted Turner nearly "pulling the plug" on WCW before Easy E became the company's executive producer in 1993. Said Bischoff,
"What I saw from my perspective was that Turner Corporate was tired of (wrestling politics) ... They tried the Jim Herd experiment. That didn't work. They tried a couple of other variations of Jim Herd. They tried Kip Frey. That was a disaster. They tried all these different variations of management and leadership and I knew that Turner Corp. - I don't remember who told me - but I had gotten word that they were considering pulling the plug ... I said, 'If they pull the plug, I'm going back to Minneapolis.'"
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Bischoff then added the following comments, which showed how he got into a position of power in WCW and prevented Ted Turner from giving up on wrestling at that time:
"So, I threw my name in the hat ... I had heard they were looking for an executive producer - they tried the Bill Watts thing - and they wanted to get away from wrestling people. They wanted someone to run the company who understood the entertainment business, but wasn't so entrenched in wrestling that they were sucked into the politics of it."
The rest of the interview covers Bischoff's rise to power in WCW, his passion and belief in making the company successful, and his desire to broaden the scope of WCW to expand it into the mainstream while moving it away from its "regional" feel.
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CB's Analysis: While Ted Turner did eventually pull the plug on WCW in 2001, Eric Bischoff certainly salvaged the company in the early 1990s and gave WWE a real run for its money during the Monday Night Wars. Ultimately, Vince McMahon won that war, but Bischoff won quite a few battles while heading WCW.
(Credit: PWTorch)
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