WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took on an episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including why he would have talents from the cruiserweight division face top stars from the nWo.
Bischoff said, “It’s the nature of it. You know, it’s, ‘What did you do for me yesterday? I don’t give a f**k what you did for me last month, what did you do for me today?’ And building the NWO, and topping previous records, and increasing revenues, and selling more merchandise, and getting more opportunities was all — that was the list of s**t that I had to do every day. But let’s play ‘What if?’ again, just for a second. Had the NWO for whatever reason missed the mark. Hogan decided, ‘I’m done. I turned heel, it didn’t work. I’m off to go make a movie or whatever, or just retire.’ By that time, the cruiserweights were really starting to get over. I mean, there was enough steam behind these guys that it would have been a lot easier to tell a story with them. Because their performances and their characters were now over because of the product presentation, and whatever booking went into it. They would have been hot enough in that scenario to take a run with. They were the hottest thing on the show, with the exception of the NWO. So, if the NWO wasn’t there, by default what are you going to do next, or instead? You’re going to do the next best thing, which would have been the cruiserweight division. Those guys possibly could have had those opportunities.”
On whether anyone rejected competing in a cruiserweight match:
“No no, that never happened. Now, I can imagine some people were thinking about something like that, but nobody ever did. Not to me. Now, maybe to Kevin Sullivan, maybe to one of the agents, but not to me.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
