On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff spoke about Vince Russo being head of creative at the time he had joined and Hulk Hogan was invited to come along as well but with Vince Russo being apart of the company Hulk nearly didn’t join.
Russo had his issues with both Bischoff and Hogan from back in the days of WCW.
Bischoff had this to say about coming in at the same time Russo was there:
“That was a real big issue. Keep in mind, Hulk’s and my last go-around with Vince Russo did not end well. Neither one of us trusted Vince Russo as a businessperson. We felt like he was a dishonest human being at his core, and creatively neither one of us thought that he had anything under the hood. And that was a big issue. And it was subsequently, because it was a big issue for Hulk, he wasn’t going to come to TNA as long as Vince Russo was the head of Creative. That’s really how I ended up getting shoehorned into this deal. And I often joke about that, you know? I say I got Jimmy Hart-ed into the deal, because I think anybody that’s been watching Hulk over the last 20 or 30 years knows that wherever Hulk goes, so does Jimmy Hart. And there’s a reason for that, by the way, and a legitimate one. But in this case, Hulk didn’t shoehorn me or Jimmy Hart me into that deal at TNA because he just wanted me to travel with him and hang out with him, and help him through airports and things like that, which is kind of Jimmy’s role. He knew that if he was going to go to TNA, he had to have somebody watching his back creatively. And that’s when those discussions about me coming in as it related to Vince Russo started to happen.”
Bischoff also commented on how they made sure Hogan and Russo weren’t around each other:
“We made it clear to Dixie Carter that this deal wasn’t going to get made for any amount of money as long as Vince Russo had creative control over anything that Hulk Hogan touched. And it was subsequently negotiated, that’s where my deal came in. It was subsequently negotiated that I would come in as a part of Hulk Hogan’s deal — not as a part of his deal, I had my own deal. But I would come in with Hulk Hogan.”
Bischoff lastly spoke about how he didn’t want to be involved on air:
“And my role wasn’t — I didn’t want to be on camera. Really I would have preferred in a way that my name not even be associated with TNA, and I know that sounds horrible. And I’m not being snarky … I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a dick, but I had kind of been to the mountain top in WCW with what we accomplished with Nitro and the Monday Night Wars. I subsequently had the opportunity to kind of close my sports entertainment chapter with WWE in a very high-profile, in my opinion successful, role. And I was really, really content with that … But my goal — please, believe me. If you’ve never believed anything else I’ve ever said, believe me. My goal was not to end up on camera or even getting involved in TNA creative. When this deal started becoming real, and I realized it could actually happen, that was when I started checking out TNA on television. And it was like, [groans] ‘I don’t want to be a part of that, at least not visibly. I don’t mind being behind the scenes and helping make sure that Hulk’s creative isn’t the victim of [a] Vince Russo whack attack.’ But it’s not something I aspired to be involved with, I can assure you. I didn’t really — I did it for the money, they paid me a lot of money. It’s not that that was not a consideration. But the largest consideration was to help out Hulk.”
Credit goes to 83 Weeks and H/T to 411Mania for the transcription.
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