Eric Bischoff recently discussed his brief run with WWE during his 83 Weeks podcast. Here are the highlights:
Did Vince himself deliver the news that Eric’s WWE tenure was ending?:
“Yes, I did have a very good conversation with Vince McMahon.”
If Vince is paying attention to AEW:
“Vince asked me actually, a couple of days after the first episode aired, what I thought. I was pretty honest with him. I thought the action was good. But I thought what made that show really stand out to me was just how engaged the audience is.”
Comparing AEW to NXT:
The audience, to me, made their show so much better than the NXT show. Not that there’s anything wrong with the NXT show. The action in the ring was great. The characters are great. There are a lot of great things about it. But when you put a live event inside of a small, confined studio kind of like TNA, I don’t care how great the action is in the ring. It just doesn’t have that big event feel to it.”
Whether Eric has talked to AEW about working for them:
“I have not spoken with anybody from AEW. Not one conversation. The last conversation I had with anybody that’s currently in AEW was probably Cody Rhodes, and that was about two years ago…It was right after he left WWE and I called him, just to congratulate him and let him know how much I respected his decision.”
Why he was planning to only work at WWE for a few years:
“My wife and I have a beautiful home in Wyoming. We want to travel. There’s a lot of things that we still want to be able to do, and working eighty hours a week at WWE would put a little bit of a dent in those plans.”
Does Eric want to continue working in the wrestling business?:
“Of course. You know, I always will. Thats what I’ve done for the largest part of my adult life, and I still have a passion for it. I think this latest experiment probably proved to me more than anything that it has to be the right opportunity. Not just right for whoever I would work with, but right for me as well.”
