Eric Bischoff on RAW 25, Monday Night Wars, & Challenging Vince to a Fight

Recent episode of the Busted Open Radio show had both Eric Bischoff and Bruce Prichard as the guests discussing RAW’s 25th anniversary, the Monday Night Wars, and challenging Vince McMahon to a legit fight.

On the topic of RAW’s 25th anniversary show, Prichard stated he is looking forward to having a lot of fun during the night and Bischoff stated he is looking forward to visiting some of his old friends.

Bruce Prichard – “It’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s been 9 years since I’ve been there, and I’m looking forward to see everyone. It’s going to be fun putting on the Brother Love suit again. It’s going to be a blast and I’m probably more excited to just be there and see everyone.”

Eric Bischoff – “To see a bunch of friends I’ve known for many years and have a lot of respect for… To see some great friends, to see some great action and to be a part of the event is… I mean, by any measuring stick you wanna use, name another show you know that’s been on the air 52 weeks a year for 25 years. There is none. Period. End of conversation. To be part of such a successful television juggernaut… it’s fascinating, exciting and I can’t wait to be part of it.”

On the topic of the Monday Night Wars, Prichard stated Bischoff was the exact spark the WWE needed to become competitive again after years of being complacent in the industry.

“We (at WWE) have become complacent, and all of the sudden we not only had someone challenging us, we had someone kicking our ass. We went from the only dog, to the top dog, to the underdog.”

On the topic of making wrestling “cool” again, Bischoff stated it was a mixture of perfect timing and knowing he couldn’t directly compete for the same audience being catered to by the WWE. It lead to WCW targeting a different and older demographic instead which in turn helped wrestling become cool again in the mainstream.

“It was a perfect time. I would love to say I was the architect and I saw the opportunity and that was the plan, but sometimes timing is everything. In that case, timing was everything. The truth is, when we were given Nitro, I knew we couldn’t compete with WWF in terms of content they were creating. I knew we couldn’t create characters that would be more appealing to the audience that the WWF was doing at the time. I knew the WWF has been around for decades. They had a loyal following. I was forced, by default, to go after an 18-35 year old demo, which, in the end, is what made wrestling cool again. I didn’t do it because it was the best thing to do. I did it because it was the only thing to do.”

On the topic of challenging Vince McMahon to an actual fight, Bischoff stated he cared more about the publicity the fight would have generated for Nitro than if he could actually beat Vince. He also mentioned if anyone from WWF ever showed up, he wanted them to be politely treated as guests and had The Giant act as his special enforcer in case anything bad happened.

“I had never met Vince at the time. To me, he was just a big guy who lifted weights. I’ve been around guys like that my whole life, so I wasn’t intimidated by Vince. When I came out and challenged him, right or wrong, I wrestled in high school, I did kick boxing, I had a black belt, I grew up in Detroit and fought on ESPN kickboxing before it was MMA. The idea of getting into a fight, win or lose, didn’t intimidate me. My approach to it was, ‘I got enough skill sets. I’m not going to get knocked out in the first 30 seconds. I thought win-lose or draw, if he comes out and beats my ass, it would be great TV.’ Winning or losing didn’t matter to me. Getting Vince to come to the ring and getting him to do it is what mattered. Hulk Hogan said ‘Brother, you don’t wanna do that. He’s gonna show up and kick your ass’

I told our head of security that if anybody from WWF showed up, escort them to the dressing rooms, accommodate them in any way. The only person that I pulled aside in case anything went wrong was Big Show. I said if it gets ugly, do me a favor and jump in there. It has to get that bad though. Otherwise, let it go.”