Eric Bischoff recently was on the Sarah O’Connell Show. Plenty of interesting subjects were touched on in the lengthy hour-plus interview, and Bischoff opened up about his pre-WCW past. Learn about his martial arts background, his time in the AWA, and the WWF job he didn’t get.
Transcription by WrestleZone Senior Editor Tyler Treese.
His martial arts background:
I started wrestling when I was 12 or 13 years old in junior high school, and then wrestled all through high school. I continued to wrestle after high school on the amateur athletic team, I did freestyle and greco roman wrestling. Did that for a few years and started martial arts. I got my black belt in 1979, and competed on the martial arts circuit for about two to three years. Then I realized I had to do something to make a living, so I got out of martial arts.
His time in the AWA:
Verne [Gagne]’s company was a very small company and they had limited resources. It gave me an opportunity to learn whatever aspect of the business that I was interested in. I started off in sales and syndication, which really just means taking the television show and convincing stations to carry it. Just a sales job. Not much difference between selling frozen food and television, sales is sales.
But because I was so fascinated with production…I grew up as a child in the 50s and 60s, and television was such a big part of our lives. Families would gather around and watch primetime television and watch certain shows on the weekend. It was the centerpiece of our lives, but I didn’t know how it worked. I was fascinated with getting to know how they got those pictures and sounds on the screen into my home. It’s like a microwave oven, everyone has one and uses one, but nobody knows how they work. To me, television was the same way.
Because they were a small company, I was able to learn how to edit, how to operate a camera, how to conduct interviews, setup rings, and how to promote towns. I learned every aspect of the wrestling business that I was interested in.
I never had any plan or goal to get into the wrestling business. I was a fan of it, but it was a world unto itself. I enjoyed watching it, but I never dreamt I would get into the business. It was just coincidence, I love to learn, I loved wrestling, and I was in the right place at the right time. You always need to work hard, but sometimes you need to be lucky too.
If he’s glad he didn’t get his WWF job as an interviewer:
That’s an interesting thought. Very rarely do I think about the past, I don’t dwell on it. Once the moment is gone, it’s gone. So, I try to enjoy the moment as much as I can.
…But every once in a while, I go, “I wonder what would have happened if I would’ve got that job with WWF.” You think of all the things that could have and would have been different. What if I had worked for Vince McMahon and we would have hit it off, and then something bigger would have happened [than WCW]? It’s an interesting hypothetical, but we’ll never know.
Check out the full interview below:
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