In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Eric Bischoff talked about Impact Wrestling/TNA missing the opportunity to compete against WWE:
“There’s a lot of resentment towards TNA. Not the people – well, kind of the people – but just because of the missed opportunity. There was a moment in time while I was there that, in my opinion, TNA could have done what Bellator did with Viacom. Viacom was in the mood, they were hungry, and they had learned their lesson with UFC. They no longer wanted to be in the business of building other people’s brands. They wanted to own. It was met with all kinds of ridiculous resistance. That’s my resentment. It wasn’t gonna put money in my pocket, but it was that golden opportunity that comes around so rarely that you hate to see someone f*** it up.
That aside, I had a lot of fun in TNA. Working with my son Garett was the highlight of that. Hulk Hogan was my best friend, so working with Hulk, working with Ric Flair, and working with Sting again. I got to work with Mick Foley in TNA, I got to work with Kurt Angle, I got to work with Jeff Jarrett. I got to work with a lot of really good people – AJ Styles I got to work with. I made a lot of friends there……they had all the elements. What they didn’t have was vision and commitment from management.”
