EXCLUSIVE: Eric Bischoff is a true wrestling legend, having led WCW to its glory days, and he has now told the Daily Star the reality behind his ‘retirement’ announcement
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Wrestling legend Eric Bischoff has clarified reports that he has “retired” from wrestling. Bischoff, 69, is know to fans of the sports entertainment industry as the man who single-handedly change the industry in the mid-1990s as the creative mind behind World Championship Wrestling.
The author and podcast host managed to go toe-to-toe with WWE during the attitude era, beating the company’s flagship Monday Night Raw show for 83 weeks in a row with his edgy Monday Nitro show.
Since then, he has had several stints working for WWE both on and off screen, as well as a key role in charge of creative for TNA Wrestling alongside Hulk Hogan – as well as making sporadic appearances for All Elite Wrestling in recent years, and WWE’s NXT brand earlier this year.
However, last month it had been claimed that Eric had retired from the business for good. But speaking exclusively to the Daily Star on behalf of CanadaCasino.ca, in an interview available to watch on our YouTube channel in full, he said: “The wrestling media were sloppy as it were. I was asked a question and made a comment and it was taken out of context.
“The context was ‘Eric, do you think you’ll ever be involved full time in the wrestling business? Do I ever want to run a wrestling company, or own a wrestling company, or work full time for any wrestling company?’’
“My answer is absolutely not. That’s never going to happen again. That is in my rear view mirror, as I like to say.
“But that doesn’t mean that I won’t make appearances from time to time. I have been doing these things for the last five years – if there’s an opportunity to do what I refer to as a one off or just simple appearances or something like that, of course, I’ll do that.
“Full time will never happen again. Somehow that got written into a headline that made it seem like I retired from wrestling forever. You could have said that eight years ago. I guess that’s the wrestling media.”
The wide-ranging chat also covered wrestling psychology – or lack thereof in today’s younger generation – and what advice he’d give to those talents trying to make a name for themselves in today’s wrestling industry.
He also claimed that there’s nothing about WWE’s product externally that he would change if he was in charge, because “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but had less complimentary things to say about All Elite Wrestling, as it was like “comparing apples an oranges”.
This, however, brought the author of the best selling “Controversy Creates Cash” book to mention the name of wrestling historian and dirtsheet writer Dave Meltzer.
Meltzer – or Uncle Dave as some wrestling fans call him – is known for giving wrestling matches star ratings which cause chaos online.
This inevitably leads Meltzer to constantly compared WWE to AEW, which Eric is less than keen on.
He said: “Anyone that compares WWE to AEW is comparing apples and oranges. They’re both considered fruit, are both healthy and have similar qualities – but they are two different things and it’s stupid to compare them.
“Dave Meltzer – the dirt sheet writer within the United States – always tries to find a way to compare them.
“It’s almost a weird obsession, close to kinky.”
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