Top 40 Eric Bischoff Quotes

You’re going to have haters no matter what you do.

I’d like to manage someone, a young talent that maybe doesn’t have the mic skills.

People are finally figuring it out that, at the end of the day, that WCW created some of the best talent in the history of the world. It was a great run.

Social media is an evolving media. It changes every day.

When I came out for the 25th anniversary of Raw, I got a great reaction, and it made me feel very good, but as amazing a moment as that was, I know, after two months, fans would want to move on.

AOL-Time Warner didn’t want a WCW property on their platforms – being TNT or TBS or anything else – in any way, shape, or form, and that was the death nail.

A character like mine, there is only so much you can do from a storyline perspective. You can be that heel authority figure, which I was for a few years in WWE and WCW, and it’s interesting, and it’s fun, but after a while, you’ve kind of done everything you can do creatively.

I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn’t work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.

One of the reasons The Bullet Club is what it is, while it may be kind of a wink and a nod to the nWo, it’s also young, fresh guys of a new generation.

Here are the facts: when Eric Bischoff came to work for WCW as a ‘clean up batter’ on the announce team working alongside Tony Schiavone, I came with a guaranteed contract.

A lot of respect for Ric Flair; he’s just a great guy.

Clearly there’s value in Twitter and Facebook; otherwise, none of us would be involved in it.

When I ran WCW, I obviously had a lot of control over the business, but when I was in TNA, I had no control over anything other than creative.

I’ve always believed that the audience and the energy that the audience creates is sometimes just as important as the action inside of the ring.

I never liked D-X since they invaded WCW.

When WCW first really began to enjoy the success that we enjoyed, it was because of the story lines that we were putting out in front of people.

Professional wrestling… is no different than a Broadway play except that in a Broadway play, actors are using dialogue to tell a story and establish their characters, while in WWE, they’re using a physical dialogue to tell their story and build their characters. That’s a very unique art; it really is.

This isn’t a competitive sport. Wrestling is not the NFL or the NHL. It’s not really sports. It’s entertainment. And in order to be entertaining, you have to create emotion. And you can’t create emotion by simply having a wrestling match.

DDP was the common guy, the everyman, a blue-collar guy from New Jersey. He represented something that the average person could believe in, in a way that was a little unique.

I really like Braun Strowman. I would turn the volume down on him just a little bit. I think he is a little bit overly animated, and he doesn’t have to be. He is already a larger than life character when he wakes up and has a cup of coffee.

Take the main event of WrestleMania and put it in front of 75 people, and it will dramatically affect the way everyone watching feels about it.

You have to make a choice, and you have to commit to a character. You’re either a babyface or a character that the fans relate to, support, love and aspire to be, or you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re a heel: you’re despicable, and they need to learn to love to hate you.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of WCW had to deal with was being a member of Turner Broadcasting.

Bumps often require giving yourself completely to the talent you’re in the ring with, and that’s what makes wrestling such a performance art that is different from every other.

I never got close to the creative in AWA; not only was I not close to it, I wasn’t allowed to be in a room close to it when they were talking about creative. That is how tightly held Verne Gagne believed in kayfabing people who he didn’t believe needed to be in the process.

By the time my attempt to acquire WCW fell apart and Time Warner decided they didn’t want anything remotely associated with wrestling near their networks, once that happened and really cut the cord, it was in my rear view mirror and didn’t care or think about it too much.

You no longer have to have a big record label behind you and have to kowtow to the politics that enabled you to get there. You can be a phenomenal artist and put your stuff out there on YouTube and find yourself becoming a star.

Anybody who comes along and wants to sell a wrestling show, guess who you are not gonna sell it to? You are not going to sell it to FOX and any of its affiliates, and,oh, by the way, you are not going to sell it to NBC Universal or any of its affiliates.

I consider myself an authority on drinking beer.

I don’t regret how I built the Cruiserweight division. Could I have done better? Sure. Absolutely. I’m sure I could have, especially with 20/20 hindsight. I just don’t know of anybody that I talk to that looks back at that division and says, ‘Oh, man, that sucked.’

To many generations of fans, Hulk Hogan really represents the beginning of what became this amazing industry that we have.

I’ve probably done 1,000 interviews about the ‘Monday Night Wars’ and how ‘Nitro’ was made.

I didn’t mind when Paul Wight came to me and said WWE offered him $1 million a year for ten years. I was like, ‘Dude, you need to take that. You need to go now. Lemme give you a ride to the airport.’

One of the reasons wrestling works is because it allows people to suspend their disbelief. They may know it’s not real, but if it’s done well enough, they get sucked into it emotionally. And that’s why they watch.

The television business, by virtue of what’s happened to streaming, it’s really turned the traditional television business upside down.

People always said during the Monday Night Wars that the only way we were able to compete was due to a large checkbook and deep pockets. That’s not very true at all. That is a false narrative designed to shape history. WWE had significant advantages over WCW and vice versa.

I couldn’t pass a senior high school math test right now, but I could probably teach intellectual property and trademark law at Harvard.

Turner Broadcasting went from a very entrepreneurial, risk-taking company where I had a tremendous amount of freedom and autonomy to a corporate, bureaucratic nightmare.

Let me just say this, Dolce Maria Garcia Rivas: You are not ‘sexy,’ you are not a ‘star,’ and you are certainly not a professional wrestler.

Diamond Dallas Page didn’t have that larger-than-life persona, but he had a different connection with the audience.