Eric Bischoff in the most recent episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, he talked about what changes he would have made to WCW if he had been the one to buy it in 2000. This is what he said.
Changes to the announce team he would have made:
“Tony Schiavone. I have always liked and respected Tony. There were never any thoughts of firing Tony, but we did want-we knew that we needed to hit the refresh button in every way possible. We knew that we wanted to rebrand WCW and get as far away as how people had perceived WCW to be as possible as far as we could, which included the announcers. That would have included the look of the show and the location of the show and where we were going to produce the show. It would have included a lot of things including the announce team. It was going to be Joey Styles and Don Callis.”
Fixing creative issues:
”We didn’t really focus on future creative. We talked about what talent we did keep and wanted to keep but there was so much work to do on rebranding, repositioning the company that creative was really the last thing we needed to think about. The intention really when we were going to acquire the company was going to shut it down for a period of 3-6 months thinking that absence makes the heart grow fonder. We needed to build some anticipation. We had to make people anxious to see what the new, rebranded WCW was going to look like. You couldn’t do that by taking it off of television for a couple of weeks and then coming back. You had to be gone a long enough period of time to really build up anticipation and to market it properly. We were focused more on where we wanted to produce the show. How could we help reduce the cost of producing the show? What talent were we able to afford? Who did we want to keep? Rebuilding relationships with sponsors. That was where I really was focused on, not on what we were going to do with a certain talent.”
Things definitely would have been far different had he bought WCW then. It might not have ended the way it originally did.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @BodySlamDotNet and on Instagram @BodySlamDotNet
Also check us out on Facebook and give us a like and share by clicking HERE.
h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.
