Exclusive Interview: The Side of Eric Bischoff He Doesn’t Care If You See
We’d been talking for more than an hour already when Eric Bischoff nudged me with his foot under the table that we were sitting at.
“You see that guy over there in the cowboy hat?” Eric asked me, looking over my shoulder. “Everybody around here knows him as Rooster.”
I looked over at the older gentleman Eric directed me towards. He was, like Eric said, clad in a cowboy hat. Nothing too unusual there – we were in Cody, Wyoming after all. The man had on a buttoned up shirt, a pair of baggy jeans with a typical Wyoming belt buckle, and a pair of surprisingly stylish eyeglasses. But the biggest thing he wore was a gigantic smile; one that somehow grew even bigger when he saw Eric. Rooster was chatting amiably enough with a couple a few tables over, and when he saw Eric and I staring at him, he smiled and tipped his hat in our direction. Eric nodded back at him, and then smiled at me, with that trademark gleam in his eye; one typically reserved for the time he challenged Vince McMahon to a fight on live pay per view, or when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
“Let me tell you a story about Rooster,” he said.
So, he did. But first.
Let me tell you a story about Eric Bischoff…
He’s been called an innovator and an instigator.
A creator and a copycat.
A Hall of Famer.
A Hater.
A legend and a liar.
An ATM.
An asshole.
Eric Bischoff has been called all of these things and more throughout his near 40-year career in professional wrestling. Maybe he’s all of them. Probably he’s some of them. Definitely, he’s at least a few of them. As a television character, whether he was serving as a “third string announcer” for World Championship Wrestling, or as the president of that same company, Eric Bischoff came to be known by many names, with many titles. When he joined the bad guy supergroup, the nWo, and became one of, if not the first “heel authority figures” in pro wrestling, he had as much “heat,” if not more, than most of his wrestlers.
And there’s a reason for that. Some people have a very punchable face. Eric Bischoff, many would argue, has a very punchable personality. He did off-screen, by some accounts, and he certainly did on-screen. Whether that was due to his perceived arrogance, his propensity for controversy, his lack of sugar-coating or, yes, the fact that he looked like a Ken doll – Eric Bischoff rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
But he also changed the industry of professional wrestling forever.
Bischoff grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He didn’t live on 8 Mile Road, like a certain prolific rapper, but he wasn’t far off.
“I was born in ‘55 and the neighborhood that I grew up in – I don’t wanna give the wrong impression; it wasn’t the ghetto, but it was on the lower end of the socioeconomic level in Detroit at the time,” Bischoff said. “But it was nice. It was a nice childhood and all that. And television was still a relatively new thing back then, especially for the people in my neighborhood. I remember distinctly the first person on the block to get a color television and it was like – oh my gosh – they were the bells of the ball.”
It was those early days in Detroit that cemented Bischoff’s love, and interest, in television; not just the content of the shows, but how they were put together. How they were made. Like everybody in the ‘50s, he loved Lucy, sure. But more so, what really interested him was how Lucy, or Lassie, or Howdy Doody, or The Adventures of Superman were shot, edited, and put together…how they were produced, in other words.
“We’d all go over to my neighbor’s house to watch television on Saturday afternoons,” he remembered. “We’d watch cartoons in color, you know? And I was always, always fascinated with television. I could never figure it out. It was magic. And, at that time, we had one television in the house; a little black and white thing that was sitting on the coffee table. And at night, my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad, and myself – we’d all gather around the television. It became the central focus; it was the one time during the week when we were all together. So television has always been kind of a big part of my life.”
Bischoff was fascinated by the world of television and everything that went into it. He enjoyed the entertainment aspect of it, of course. But he was more fascinated by the people behind the scenes who put it all together; the ones who made the “magic.” And he wanted to be one of those people.
It took him a long time, and countless “real jobs,” but he eventually made it. After owning a landscaping company, working for a frozen food distributor, and taking several other sales jobs – unremarkable yet pivotal to the journey he was preparing to embark on – Eric Bischoff entered the world of professional wrestling and, really, he’s never left. It’s been more than 30 years and just when he thinks he’s out, pro wrestling pulls him right back in. Bischoff has been married for decades but pro wrestling, despite how many times she’s hurt him, will always be his mistress.
“I think, as far as my career goes, if I had to pick one thing that I’m really the most proud of, I think it’s honest and fair to say that I changed the industry for the better,” Bischoff reflected. “I innovated a lot of things that, at the time, wrestling fans and the people who wrote about wrestling and talked about wrestling, thought I was crazy for doing. And a lot of those things, a lot of those innovations, are things that we still see today.”
Critics are quick to roll their eyes or spend 280 characters writing about how Bischoff is an arrogant prick who only had “one good idea,” but those critics are blinded by their hatred of somebody they don’t even know. Everything people know about Eric Bischoff is simply what he wants them to know. And even those of us who have spent the last 30 years watching Bischoff’s evolution from “Ken-Doll-Wannabe” to “Evil Boss” to “Manipulative GM” to “Hulk Hogan’s Leverage” to “Podcast Host” have to admit that we only know about the Eric Bischoff Character. We don’t know about the character of Eric Bischoff, or what he’s actually like as a human being. We only know what he allows us to know and, in truth, that’s actually very little. There’s more to the man than what meets the eye (or, for listeners of his 83 Weeks podcast, the ear), but whether he was playing a character or whether it was actually him, Eric Bischoff did change professional wrestling for the better, whether critics want to admit it or not.
“I’m proud of what I’ve done in professional wrestling,” Bischoff reiterated. “I’m proud because I think it was an honest contribution. I’m not proud of it because I did that; I’m proud because it made the industry stronger. It made it better. And I’m very proud of my involvement in that. I didn’t do it single-handedly, but I was a catalyst for it.”
After working for Verne Gagne’s AWA organization, Bischoff began working for World Championship Wrestling as an announcer, but he quickly rose through the ranks; becoming, first, the executive producer of that company and, finally, becoming the President of WCW. It was a hard, oftentimes thankless job (in the words of Don Draper, “that’s what the money’s for”). When things were going well, it was because of the wrestlers. But when things were going badly – and those who remember WCW from 1999-2001 remember it going very, very badly – it was he who shouldered much of the blame, warranted or not.
Still, what Bischoff contributed to WCW cannot be overlooked, nor understated. Though he certainly didn’t do any of these things by himself, he was a major component in the creation of the New World Order, the evolution of Sting from surfer to sulker, the rise of Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page, a spotlight being shown on Cruiserweight wrestlers, and more. In addition to the characters and stories he helped create in WCW, Bischoff believes his biggest contributions were in the formatting of shows and pay-per-views; how the matches were arranged and how the segments were put together.
How they were produced, in other words.
Before Bischoff, wrestling shows were typically an hour long. Raw is War, WCW’s biggest television competition, was a one-hour, taped show more often than not. When Bischoff was tasked with creating WCW Monday Nitro by Ted Turner, himself, he took it from one hour, to two hours, and finally to three hours in an effort to secure as many ad dollars as possible. He also bumped up the number of pay-per-view events from four to, eventually, 12 – a show every month. Even more than that, Bischoff made WCW Monday Nitro, and the WCW pay-per-views, must-see. Typically, before Nitro, primetime wrestling shows featured squash match after squash match, with the occasional mid-card title matchup thrown in just to keep the diehards happy. That was an average episode of Raw from 1993-1996. WCW Monday Nitro, on the other hand, was unpredictable and unprecedented – something Bischoff ensured even on the very first episode, with the debut of former WWF (at the time) wrestler, Lex Luger. For the next three years, WCW Monday Nitro was the show to watch. It featured big time matchups, title changes, surprises, and several other elements that make up Bischoff’s SARSA (Story, Anticipation, Reality, Surprise, Action) formula; a formula that served him well throughout the ‘90s and made him a household name, right alongside the wrestlers he booked. For years, wherever Hulk Hogan – the preeminent wrestler of the ‘80s and ‘90s – was, Bischoff was not far behind.
Even still, even with the money he’s made for others, and the money he’s made for himself, and the stories he’s crafted and the wrestlers he helped become legends – none of that is what he is most proud of in his life. Not even close.
“I have two amazing kids,” Bischoff beamed. “Two absolutely amazing kids. They’re much better people than I was when I was at their age. And I’m pretty proud of that, even though it was mostly my wife’s doing. But I’m proud that I got to participate.”
That’s when I turned my recorder off, and thanked Eric for the opportunity to speak with him. We had spoken for an hour or so, and I wanted to be mindful and respectful of his time.
“Oh, that was fast,” Eric remarked. “You drove all the way here for 40 minutes? You drove a long way, so if there’s anything else you want to talk about, let’s talk about it. As long as I’m home by dinner, I’m good.”
That surprised me. Typically, wrestlers or performers want to get out of interviews as quickly as possible. They have gyms to go to, or other appearances or they want to take just a few minutes for themselves. I assumed that Bischoff, especially, wouldn’t be inclined to speak very long to a wrestling journalist. While I wasn’t a “dirt sheet writer,” I was close enough, and oftentimes guilty by association. So I was surprised, and delighted, by Bischoff’s comments.
He knew I had driven a couple hundred miles, from my home in Casper, Wyoming to his in Cody, Wyoming. He also knew, thanks to a mutual friend, that speaking with him had been a bucket list item for me for 15 years. And I guess, because of that, he wanted to make it worth it. Time is the most precious thing any of us have, and Eric was willing to give me more of his. And it meant a lot. That was the first time in the conversation that I think I really saw the character of Eric Bischoff. But it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
I smiled, thanked him, ordered us another round of drinks, and hit ‘Record’ again.
Bischoff’s children have found success in their own chosen fields, as has his wife of several years, Loree; affectionately referred to on the 83 Weeks podcast as “Mrs. B.”
Bischoff met the future Mrs. B when the two were both models. Bischoff says that he was pulled off the street one day by somebody who told him that he should be a model. Of course, in typical Bischoff-fashion, even back then, his first question was “How much money is in that?” At the time, Bischoff revealed, models could make around $75 an hour or more. So, naturally, he was in. And while the money was good, the real reward of that phase of his career was that he met the love of his life.
Bischoff met Loree on a job when they were both working in Minneapolis. But they were soon recruited by an agent who booked them for jobs in the Windy City.
“We barely knew each other, but we jumped in my pickup and we moved to Chicago together,” Bischoff reflected. “We lived in a small, ratty studio apartment right in Downtown Chicago, right in the heart of it all. Right off the Russian Division. And we had a blast. She was modeling during the day and was a cocktail waitress at night. I was modeling too, but I didn’t do as well as she did. I was getting some work as a model and was working as a bouncer and a bartender. And we both did that for a while and we had a blast.”
It was the type of existence that was only appealing to two kids in love, who had a couple bucks in their pockets and their whole lives ahead of them. They had the world at their feet and, for a little while, love was all they needed.
It could have been a big city happily-ever-after, but nobody ever talks about what happens after happily-ever-after. Love doesn’t pay the bills, and Loree was pregnant.
“We moved back to in-the-middle-of-nowhere- Mninnesota and I got a sales manager job for an agricultural manufacturing company,” Bischoff said. “Actually, she got pregnant right before we left Chicago, we just didn’t know it. And then I found out soon thereafter and we both decided, ‘Okay, this is what’s supposed to happen.’ And we had a brief discussion about how we should move forward, and if we should move forward together.”
Bischoff said that Loree was determined that she was going to have the baby. She just didn’t know if he would take responsibility. It was okay if he didn’t, Loree said. She was going to have the baby with or without his help.
“We went to brunch, in a Perkins restaurant actually,” Bischoff said. “And she said, ‘Well, what do you want to do? I’m going to have this baby.’ And I said, ‘I’m glad you said that.’ And then we got married. Garret was born in April and we got married in August so that he could come to the wedding. We wanted him to be in the wedding. So we got married and we’ve been together ever since. We’ve been together for 40 years.”
Eric and Loree (and Garret and, later, daughter Montanna) got the happily-ever-after, afterall, and little did any of them know the wild rollercoaster ride that they were about to embark on.
There have been books written (including two by Bischoff), articles typed, documentaries produced, and podcasts recorded that detail Eric Bischoff’s rise in the world of professional wrestling. Most wrestling fans know almost all there is to know about Bischoff starting his career in Verne Gagne’s AWA. They know about the tryout in the WWF where Vince McMahon made Bischoff interview a broom. They know about him being the “third-string-announcer” in World Championship Wrestling until surprisingly, miraculously, he was hired to be the company’s Executive Producer, beating out “wrestling guys” like Tony Schiavone and Jim Ross.
Fans watched as Bischoff grew into the role and eventually became the President of WCW, all the while serving as the “Evil Boss” of WCW, alongside “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and the rest of the nWo.
They also watched Bischoff get fired, then re-hired, when things weren’t going as well for WCW. But for a while, things were going very, very well. World Championship Wrestling, with Eric Bischoff in charge (as he’s quick to tell you), went from losing millions of dollars every year to earning multi-millions of dollars, and that’s something he’s proud of as well. He should be. Critics will scoff, haters will hate, twitter users will type out strongly-worded, 280-character messages but still ask for his autograph if they ever see him at the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport. The fact is, just like WWE wouldn’t be as good as it is today if it weren’t for the creation of All Elite Wrestling, the WWF, back then, wouldn’t have been nearly as good as it was without the creation of World Championship Wrestling.
Still, when things are good, things are very good. And when things are bad? Well, when things are bad, you hire Vince Russo. And then they get worse. At least according to Eric.
When Eric was let go the first time, it stung a bit. But, it was also something of a relief. He had been burning the candle at both ends for the better part of five years. Truth be told, he was tired. So when Harvey Schiller called Eric a few days before WCW’s next pay per view and told him to go home, he did just that.
“I remember September 12, 1999,” Eric reflected. “I came out here and I went up to North Fork, just outside of Yellowstone. And I found a nice little quiet place. And it was a magical moment. It was a perfect day. I’m not a fly fisherman, but I’d cast and the minute my fly hit the water, boom! Fish!”
Eric spent the next two weeks fishing, and thinking, and reminiscing. He’s never really been one to focus too much on the past, but wrestling had been a major part of his life for the last decade. He wasn’t worried about money. He wasn’t worried about legacy. He wasn’t even worried about what he would do tomorrow. For a few precious moments, the only thing Eric was worried about was catching his next fish.
“When I was let go, the good news was, I had two-and-a-half years left of my contract and I was making a sizable amount of money,” Eric revealed. “So I wasn’t under any financial pressure. I just wanted to get away for a little while and decide what I wanted to do. I said I was done. I was ready to walk away from it all. I’d been ready to walk away from it all.”
Eric said that, prior to being let go, he had considered leaving the company two or three other times. Wrestling just wasn’t fun anymore. And if he wasn’t having fun, what was the point?
“At that point in my life, I was like, ‘That’s fine, man,’” he said. “The money’s not an issue. I’m still young enough. I’ve got a fair amount of equity in the entertainment business that I can leverage. I’ll just go be an independent television producer. And then, about three months later, somebody from Turner Broadcasting called me back and said, ‘Okay, I think maybe we messed up. What would it take for you to come back?’”
The good news was, that answer was a simple one: more money.
“I didn’t really want to come back,” Eric revealed. “I mean, I wasn’t, like, excited about it. It was more of a transactional opportunity. In a way, I must have felt a little vindicated, but that wasn’t my first thought. My first thought was, ‘This is going to be very good for me, financially.’”
According to Eric, he was under contract when Turner Broadcasting let him go. He was told to go home, but he wasn’t actually released from his contract. And when he was let go, there was a provision in his contract called ‘Pay or Play.’ That meant that, even though the company let him go, they still had to pay him until the end of his term. The problem (for Turner) was that when somebody triggers the ‘Pay or Play,’ they can’t untrigger it. Which meant they had to craft a new contract for Eric. A very lucrative one.
“If there was any vindictiveness in me, it was the pain that I inflicted upon them in that second contract,” Eric laughed. “My negotiation was, ‘Pay me 100 cents on the dollar of my current contract, and then we will write a new contract. And in the new contract, I’m not an employee, I’m a consultant. I’m an independent contractor.’ Because I no longer wanted to be an employee of Turner Broadcasting. That was during the AOL Time Warner merger, which has gone down in business books as the worst merger in merger history. I think it’s still number one. And I just didn’t want anything to do with being in that environment ever again.”
It was actually the Time Warner merger that would serve as the ultimate downfall of World Championship Wrestling. But that part came a little later.
At first, there was still hope that Eric could do this time what he did last time, which was turn the ship around. Unfortunately, said ship was the Titanic and it was headed directly towards an iceberg called American Online. And it was on fire. And Vince Russo was the captain.
Still, Eric tried.
“I said, ‘I’ll come and I’ll consult; I’ll work with creative,’” Eric reflected. “‘I’ll bring most of myself, but I’m not gonna manage anybody and I don’t want to answer to anybody either. And I want a commitment for a two-movie deal.’ I wanted to produce two movies. And they agreed. So I couldn’t not go back. But to be very honest with you, and myself, I wasn’t passionate about it. It really was a business deal. And when I got there, when I came back, it was more of a mess than it was when I left. I was gone, like, four months later.”
That business deal did not last very long. The Titanic was sinking. Everybody was screaming. The wrestlers were apathetic and bored. The creative team had given up. Vince Russo was in the corner, crying. Judy Bagwell was clinging to a pole somewhere, holding on for dear life. The company was going down and, really, the only thing left to do was abandon ship.
Or sell it.
“Right about the time we parted company, and it was amicable because the president of the network at that time, Brad Siegel, was stuck in the mess,” Eric said. “And I understood what he was doing there. So there was no animosity or hard feelings. I always got along with Brad and considered him a friend. But it was what it was. And I said ‘Look, if I were you, I would sell this company while it still has some value before it goes completely underwater. And Brad laughed at me. He said, ‘Eric, you know this company never sells anything. We only buy. We don’t sell anything.’”
That was typical. Monstrous companies like Turner Broadcasting are usually the ones to take in other companies. They acquire. They don’t sell. They tried to merge and it completely destroyed them. But they absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt DO. NOT. SELL.
“About a month later, Brad called me back and he said, ‘So do you think you know anybody that might want to buy WCW?” Eric laughed.
Eric, once again, was being called on to try and “save” WCW, but this time was different. WCW didn’t need to be saved. It needed to be euthanized and rebuilt in somebody else’s image.. And that’s exactly what happened. Eric was able to find some people who would invest in the purchase of World Championship Wrestling. Fusient Media Ventures, who made their name and their number by selling classic sports footage to ESPN, wanted to back Eric. They wanted to partner with him. Fusient put in about $5 million of their own money, and they raised $62 million. And it would have been a joint venture between Fusient and Bischoff.
“I was going to own a piece of the company, and I was excited about that,” Bischoff said. “Cause that would have been my legacy, you know? Not just for me, but for my family. And so we were literally weeks away from closing the deal and a guy by the name of Jamie Kellner came in from Warner and he killed the deal.”
Kellner was never a big professional wrestling fan. He never believed in WCW. He thought it was beneath what he wanted TNT and TBS to be. Kellner had no problem with the sale of WCW, but he wasn’t going to keep the company on Turner networks. And if WCW didn’t have a television deal, it didn’t have anything.
So the deal was killed. And while it was disappointing to Bischoff (probably more so than he lets on), he wasn’t heartbroken. He was ready for a change. He wanted to get out of the wrestling business altogether and go make independent television with his friend and business partner, Jason Hervey.
And that’s just what they did. Throughout his post-WCW career, Bischoff and Hervey produced a number of reality television programs, including Scott Baio is 45…and Single, Scott Baio is 46…and Pregnant, Confessions of a Teen Idol, Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling, Hardcore Pawn: Chicago, and more. The shows found various degrees of success but they proved that Bischoff knew what he was doing.
Still, if wrestling came calling, Bischoff would at least pick up the phone.
That’s what happened in 2002 when World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the WWF) called and made a proposition: what if Eric Bischoff, Vince McMahon’s hated rival, came to work for McMahon’s own company. It was a surreal request but both Bischoff and McMahon knew that it would make money and get people talking.
From 2002 to 2006, Bischoff served as the General Manager of WWE’s Raw brand. During that time, he feuded and shared the screen with the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, John Cena, Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, Linda McMahon (you get the picture), and more. One of WWE Smackdown’s most famous (or infamous) moments is also one of Bischoff’s proudest moments. It was a fake wedding ceremony in which two male wrestlers, Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo, were set to get married. This was in 2002 when gay marriage wasn’t as widely-accepted as it is today. The angle got a lot of press and Bischoff was right in the center of it. Literally and metaphorically.
During the ceremony, Bischoff played the role of the elder, possibly-confused, definitely-alcoholic preacher who was to marry Billy and Chuck. But right at the perfect moment, Bischoff tore his mask off and called on his own tag team – Three Minute Warning – to attack both Billy and Chuck, as well as the Smackdown General Manager (and Vince McMahon’s daughter), Stephanie.
No, it wasn’t as big of a deal as the New World Order. No, it didn’t sell as many pay per views as Sting in the rafters stalking Hulk Hogan. But that didn’t matter to Bischoff. It was fun. And at that point in his career, fun was all he cared about. Well, and money. Definitely money.
During those four years with WWE, he got a lot of both and he generally looks back at that point of his career with a certain amount of fondness.
After his WWE career came to a close, he returned to the side of his friend, Hulk Hogan, in the alternative wrestling company, Total Nonstop Action (or, TNA because…well…Vince Russo. Again.). His memories of that period aren’t as warm and fuzzy, but he did make a lot of money again and, most importantly, he was able to work with his son, Garrett, who had his own pro wrestling aspirations. And if you ask any man of a certain age what is most important to them, many of them will say that spending time with their children is the number one thing. Most people don’t get their head split open by their steel chair-wielding son while spending time with them, but still.
Bischoff would return to WWE one more time in 2019, this time in a role behind the scenes, as the Executive Director of the Raw brand. Paul Heyman, the former owner of ECW and a wrestling mastermind in his own right, served as the Smackdown Executive Director.
Neither man lasted more than a few months.
Still, Bischoff holds no ill-will. Even if accepting that job did mean taking his wife and his dog and moving from their home in the secluded Wyoming mountains to a corporate apartment in Stamford, Connecticut. For Bischoff and his bride, it was an adventure; one in a life that was full of them.
His latest adventure has found him partnering with “The Pod-Father,” Conrad Thompson, with a podcast called 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff. As part of Thompson’s Ad Free Shows network, every week Bischoff talks about the past, present, and future of wrestling. It’s a chance for him to keep one foot in the world of wrestling while he pursues other passions. On any given episode, he’ll reflect on what WCW was like in 1998, whether or not Steve Austin actually hated him, or what AEW could be doing differently in order to become more successful. It’s as authentic as Bischoff has been in terms of professional wrestling, but he still plays somewhat of a “character,” one that will often spark outrage with his alleged anti-AEW sentiments. The thing is, though, more often than not, Bischoff’s criticisms are valid. He’d be the first to admit that sometimes his message gets lost in the delivery, but despite what the internet thinks, Bischoff is not praying for the company’s downfall. Quite the opposite, actually.
“If you’re a restaurant, you’re going to go out of business if you open the door of your restaurant and 1.4 million people come in to eat and then half of them say, ‘Nah, I’m not coming back,’” Bischoff said. “Clearly, you didn’t achieve what you were hoping to achieve. That’s what happened with AEW Dynamite. My opinion, for whatever it’s worth, is that the reason they’re not growing their audience the way [WCW] did is because they’re not focusing on story. They’re focusing on really cool moves in the ring, excessive blood that, I guess in their mind, hopefully makes up for lack of story.
“There’s no story,” has been a fair, if not redundant criticism of All Elite Wrestling since its inception. There have been extraordinary exceptions, like the CM Punk and MJF feud, the Adam Page and Kenny Omega/Elite saga or, most recently, the bitter rivalry between Adam Page and Swerve Strickland. But Bischoff believes it’s fair to say that AEW is not telling stories the way other professional wrestling companies have. And the proof of that is, in fact, in the numbers.
“They have no concept of storytelling,” Bischoff said. “Wrestling has always been episodic television. They don’t have the episodic part of episodic television down. They think they do, but they don’t. According to the audience, they don’t. And that’s my biggest criticism, because they have the talent. They just need to learn how to write stories.”
Bischoff’s own story has been an incredible one. From the highest of highs (WCW in 1997), to the lowest of lows (that time he teamed up with Matt Hardy to fight Generation Me in TNA), and everything in between, Bischoff says that he has very few regrets. His life, and all of those ups and downs, have led to a somewhat peaceful existence, on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming. He doesn’t need much to be happy, to be grateful. All he needs is his bride, his kids (and their kids), a couple friends, a cold beer, a barbecue, his dog, and a pretty view. He has all of those things, every single day. And for those things, for his career, for his life…he is grateful.
“I knew how to be grateful,” Bischoff said. “But what I had to focus on was the discipline of being grateful, of being in a state of gratitude every single day. Because it’s too easy to just wake up and attack your day; feed your horses, go to work, take care of the kids, go to school, whatever. Whatever it is you’re doing, you just jump right into your day. And so I’ve learned to get up every morning, usually well before my wife. I’ll get up, usually when it’s still dark, and I spend about an hour by myself, connecting with God. And really, more than anything, my way of connecting is to be grateful. But it’s a practice. It’s a discipline. It’s like martial arts, or practicing your golf swing. It’s like anything else that you want to be really good at. You have to focus on it, and discipline yourself, to do it every single day. Or at least I have to.”
Right now, Eric Bischoff has a lot to be grateful for. He has had a career inside of professional wrestling that maybe only one or two other people could ever compare to. He’s made a lot of money. He’s shared space, and made friends with, people like Muhammad Ali, Dennis Rodman, Karl Malone, Jay Leno, and more. He’s been Hulk Hogan’s right-hand-man but, even more importantly, he’s been Hulk Hogan’s best friend (which was probably not always an easy thing to be). He’s fallen in love and had children – both of whom have found their own success inside and outside of pro wrestling. He’s ridden his motorcycle up and down the interstate, on the way to sold-out wrestling shows, all over the country. He’s made memories for himself. He’s created memories for millions of other people. And he’s done it all with that cocky, cagey, Ken Doll-like smile across his face.
Eric Bischoff changed professional wrestling for the better. That’s not an opinion; it’s an objective fact. He challenged Vince McMahon and the WWF and, for a while, he won. But his real success didn’t come from the 83 Weeks and change that WCW Monday Nitro defeated WWF Raw in the weekly ratings. His success isn’t based on the money that he’s made, for himself or for others. Eric Bischoff’s success, the proof of that success, can be seen in the way professional wrestling operates today. Every week, when there’s a three-hour episode of Raw, it’s because Nitro did it first. Any time there’s a major championship title change on a random Monday (or Wednesday) night, it’s because WCW did it first. Bischoff’s success, his story, his legacy can be seen, and felt, in so many different aspects of the professional wrestling business. And it will be for a long, long time. And for that legacy – for his career, for the memories, for everything he has accomplished – he is grateful.
“You see that guy over there in the cowboy hat?” Eric asked me, looking over my shoulder. “Everybody around here knows him as Rooster. Let me tell you a story about Rooster.”
I had asked Eric what I thought would be my final question; the last one before I would once again thank him for his time and then begin the drive back home.
“Were the highs of WCW worth the lows?” I asked.
Before opening his mouth, Eric took a minute to think, and then he smiled. That’s when he nudged me under the table and told me a story. But the story wasn’t about Rooster, at least in my mind. It was about Eric Bischoff, himself.
“10 or 12 years ago, I met Rooster through another guy and we became friends,” Bischoff said. “We’d go out and horseback ride together every once in a while. And one night, about 10 years ago, he got a DUI. He’s a local cowboy, and he got a DUI, which happened to be his second I think, at the time. And he ended up in jail. I found out about it on Christmas Eve. He was sitting in jail on Christmas Eve. So I went and bailed him out, and brought him home. And he spent Christmas with us.”
That part of the story, in and of itself, was enough to eternally earn my respect for Eric Bischoff, as a human being. But there was more.
“And I have a guest house on my property that nobody was using at the time,” he continued. “He didn’t have anywhere to go or any money to go there with. So I just let him move in. I said, ‘You can just stay here for a minute, until you figure your shit out.’ And he just moved out about two years ago.
“He’s the nicest guy in the world. He’s had a tough life, but he’s a good guy. And yeah, he just ended up living with us for about 10 years. Never charged him a nickel for rent. Probably cooked dinner for him three nights a week. And now he’s doing alright. He’s working at the restaurant here at the Irma [Hotel.] He’s got his own place. He doesn’t drink much anymore, either. He never checked into anything, he just woke up one day and said ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m not 25 anymore.’”
Eric laughed, and then took a drink. “I’ve never told that story to anybody. I mean, I only told you that story because he happened to be standing over there. Otherwise I wouldn’t have thought of it. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that, had it not been for the highs of WCW. So how could I not be grateful for that?”
Eric Bischoff (and his wife, Loree) posted bail for an acquaintance on Christmas Eve, brought him to their home to spend Christmas with them, and then let him live in their house, rent-free, for 10 years. That is the type of person Eric Bischoff is. That is the character of Eric Bischoff. And it’s a side of him that nobody but, maybe, his family and closest friends have ever seen.
I asked him (and Rooster) if it was okay to share that story, and they both said yes.
Then, I asked Eric Bischoff one last question: What do you think wrestling fans think about you?
He took another moment to think about it. And then, that trademark smile one more time.
“This isn’t going to sound the way I want it to sound,” Eric laughed. “But I don’t care. I’m really comfortable with my life. I know I’m a decent person who’s trying to become a better person. So what other people think about me is really not that relevant to me anymore.”
Follow Nick on Twitter/X at @WesternRebel and on BlueSky at @westernrebel.bsky.social.
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