Eric Bischoff was interviewed by
Brian Thompson of the Neck Breaker Podcast. Here are some highlights.
If people in the wrestling industry
read dirt sheets:
“Oh, sure. I mean, anyone that says they don’t is probably lying to themselves
or intentionally lying to somebody else. I for one read them and I read them
for entertainment because it amazes me how small minded or uneducated a lot of
these supposed wrestling experts, or people that put themselves out as experts,
are and how far off the mark they are about so many of the things that they
write and the positions they take. I also read them because a lot of times,
things leak from inside of the office and you need to be aware of what’s out
there in the universe when there are certain things you don’t want out there.
Whether it’s a story line or a talent issue, or a direction that you’re going.
So, I monitor it simply to make sure the things I deem [secret] need to stay
inside and part of story, part of character and part of talent development do
so. And when they don’t we’re pretty hard to find out why not and the reason
for that leak. But ya, it happens. I’m sure for some people more than others,
but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check them on a regular basis.”
Where would WCW be if it were still
around in 2013:
“It’s impossible to answer with any credibility because there’s just no way of
knowing. Had we had the television, had we had the financial backing, the way
we did by the way. It wasn’t a question as to whether or not we were going to
get the financial backing. We had it. That wasn’t the reason why we didn’t
acquire WCW. The reason we didn’t acquire WCW is an incoming, rotating door,
new head of Turner at that time, took prime time television literally out of
the deal that we had already negotiated. Once that happened there was no way to
make any sense of it. It was really just a video library and some ring mats.
There’s no way of knowing. I can tell you what I would have liked to happen,
but who knows what would have happened.”
If there’s anything TNA is doing
better than WWE:
“That’s hard. I have a lot of respect for the folks over at WWE and I have a
ton of respect for what they’ve accomplished within the industry. So for me to
take an adverse position on anything they’re doing, quite frankly I’d be
thrilled with just about any of their mistakes at this point. [laughter] When I
look at the television product, and again you have to look at what we do and
what they do within context, meaning they’re on probably the number two or
three network that averages more than likely 3 million viewers all week long in
prime time. We’re on a smaller network. They’ve got a budget of probably, and
I’m guessing, I don’t know this, but they’ve got a budget of probably 6, 7
maybe even 800,000 an episode to work with. We have a fraction of a fraction of
that. They’re a 30 plus year old company that’s been around for a long long
time. It’s got a lot of brand affinity and history and relationship with
generations of wrestling fans around the country and around the world. TNA has
been around they say ten years, but probably really seven or eight as a viable
company. So you can’t really compare. It’s not apples to apples.
“That being said, when I look at the
way we tell our stories, I, along with my partner Jason Hervey, have a very
successful television production company, one of the more successful ones in
Hollywood and we have since 2003. We produce shows for every major cable
network and a few of the bigger networks like NBC. We have a fairly good
knowledge of television and how it works and the audience and what the networks
are looking for. One of the advantages I think TNA has with BHE [his company],
myself and Jason, is that we’re able to bring things that work in other
formats, particularly in reality, and integrate them into a wrestling format.
The wrestling format has pretty much been the same for the last 15 years and
prior to that it was the same for 30 years. Now we’re changing things. We’re
adding more reality. If you look at the Aces and Eights story, that story from
conception to what you saw last night is over a year old and while along the
way we’ve had to bob an weave a little bit, make some changes due to circumstances,
some of them out of our control, whether they be injuries, talent contract
issues or whatever, for the most part we’ve been able to keep that story very
on the rails, very episodic.
“If you saw the show last night
[with Bully Ray's explanation about joining Aces & Eights], for the first
time ever, we’re taking the audience back and showing them what they missed.
Not that they may not have tuned in, but they may not have realized how that
story was unfolding before their eyes. It’s a little bit like putting on a
magic show and then taking people backstage and showing them just a little bit
of the magic. We didn’t show them all the magic. We didn’t get into all of the
nuance and detail because there’s some of it that we’re still going to reveal;
we didn’t lay everything out there last night. But that’s never been done
before. We’re essentially telling or teaching the viewers how to watch our show
because what we’re doing and the way we’re telling our stories is different
than what we used to do and it’s certainly different than what WWE does. As in
any program, it doesn’t matter what it is, you have to train the viewer or
guide the viewer along the way to help them really understand where those
changes are and how to watch the show. Hopefully now viewers will start
watching for little nuance within a story. They’ll start looking for the bobs
and the weaves and looking for the depth of the story that was actually
created, as opposed to grading a dropkick or talking about a hurricanrana.
“It’s time that the wrestling
product evolves and becomes much more episodic as well as more character
driven, but in a real way. Not just pay lip service to it, because everybody
pays lip service to it. We’ve done it. We’re building long term arcs and we
take those long term arcs and create weekly bibles. And we take those weekly
bibles and they’re the basis and the outline of every format. We plan our shows
six months in advance. I don’t care what anybody says, that doesn’t happen
anywhere else. It’s certainly not happening in the WWE and anybody that says it
is is lying through their teeth. We know enough people there on the creative
side of things to know how that process works and it’s not what we’re doing.
Now, they’re having tremendous success doing not what we’re doing [laughter] so
more power to them, but you’re asking me what we’re doing differently and I
think the way we tell our stories, the way we’re trying to help our audience
along to how to appreciate and watch those stories, as well as providing great wrestling
action. I think that’s what we’re doing differently.”
If he has any TNA goals: “My goal isn’t as much personal
achievement in TNA because quite frankly my role is such that I’m not
positioned to achieve much on a personal basis or a professional basis,
individually within TNA. I’m a support mechanism. I oversee to a large degree
creative, along with Bruce Pritchard. I enjoy the hell out of working with the
staff that we have. We’re looking forward to bringing in some more people. I
really like teaching them the thing’s I’ve learned, not only from the wrestling
business, but the way to present television, the way to present story, the way
to present character that’s new and different than the way we’ve always done it
in wrestling. I get a big kick out of that. It’s very rewarding for me to work
with those guys and watch them grow.”
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