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 various parts of his WCW stint. He discussed his typical schedule running WCW Nitro, storyline planning, and one of the most infamous moments in the company’s history.
Transcription by WrestleZone Senior Editor Tyler Treese.
His WCW schedule on show nights:
It was always a little bit different depending on what city we were in. Most often I would get to the arena by 11 o’clock in the morning or noon, and we would have a production meeting where everyone would get together and walk through the format that we had worked on the week before. Make sure there weren’t any issues, such as injuries, missed flights or contract issues. We’d make sure everyone in production was completely clear in what we want to achieve, then we’d meet with the talent and make sure they knew what we wanted from the matches and see if they had any better ideas or concerns. That would usually take us to three or four o’clock. Throughout the day, we’d be doing interviews, pre-tape scenes, and things that would be rolled into the show later on. We would generally be producing those until about showtime, and then once showtime hit the action would be going on in the ring but we generally had backstage elements that were live in addition to the pre-tape interviews, so that all took place. Once the show wrapped, we were done.
How far in advance they planned storylines:
Generally speaking we would look out four weeks to the pay-per-view and work our way backwards from there. Now, things would happen and change. Somebody may get hurt, we may come up with a better idea for a storyline, there may be contract issues, there’s a lot of things that can happen in between. We might try something that you think was going to work, but then it didn’t work that well, so you go back and readjust. But generally speaking, we’d look out four weeks and work backwards.
Sometimes, depending on the storyline and talent involved, for instance with Sting, we worked 12 months in advance. I’m not gonna lie, we didn’t go “We”re gonna start this today and then 12 months later it’s going to end,” but we went into it knowing it was open-ended. So, we kept it open and as we got deeper into it we realized it could sustain itself easily, so we were in no rush to end that [Crow Sting] storyline.
On the Shockmaster:
The Shockmaster, yeah. Fred Ottman still shows up at comic-cons and autograph signings with the Shockmaster gimmick, and people still remember that moment.
That was a Dusty Rhodes idea. That was not my idea, God bless him. His birthday was just the other day, so we’re not going to let you forget that even on your birthday. Rest in peace, my friend.
Check out the full interview below:
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