Eric Bischoff On How A Potential WWE Sale Could Change Wrestling, WWE Going Private

Former WCW President Eric Bischoff recently took to his “83 Weeks” podcast to talk about several professional wrestling topics.

Bischoff discussed the potential sale of WWE, how it would impact the professional wrestling industry, and if WWE could go private again.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

If WWE could go private:

“I don’t know. That’s a level of fundraising money raising that’s so far out of my scope of even comprehension. I just don’t know who has the kind of money to play that game, but I think in aggregate if you put together three, four, five people especially if you’ve got somebody.. I mean what is Vince’s net worth? Three, four billion, but would he throw some of his own money into the kitty? Yeah… I’m not suggesting he has to come up with all of it himself.

But, if he throws in a half a billion or a billion so he’s got skin in the game if he has access to that cash it’s liquid and he’s got Saudi partners who are willing to come in with three or four and you’ve got endeavor that may want to come in there’s no way of knowing. There’s just no way of knowing. I do believe and I said this on Strictly Business hours before the press release came out, or the news came out, that during a company-wide meeting Frank Riddick, who I believe is their controller whatever his title is Vice President control or whatever.

He’s the money guy came out and said that one of the options is to take the company private. I think hours before that on Strictly Business I leaned into that one because that’s what I think. I say that because especially under the circumstances it’s the fact that WWE is a publicly held company that really forced Vince into retirement. You have to protect the stock and I can see Vince based on what I’ve heard about him a little bit when I’ve come to came to know about him he’s a fighter. I mean, we all know that. I could see Vince going ‘nuh uh, I’m taking this back’ and putting together a team of people that would put the money together and take it back private. I could see it.”

If one potential buyer is a threat to wrestling as we know it:

“Everybody has their opinion and you (Conrad) and I talked about this a little bit last night. I can see why a lot of people inside of WWE, particularly those that have stock options in their portfolio, WWE stock options, but I can see a lot of people being very nervous because it’s the unknown and you know, nobody likes the unknown.

Nobody knows how this is going to play itself out. So, everybody’s kind of hanging on by a thread waiting to see which direction it’s going to go and I get that. That’s an uncomfortable feeling. My impression is that whoever buys it is probably not going to come in and start making any kind of wholesale changes when it comes to the management of the company for the first year and a half or two years. I lived through that, by the way.”

How a merger feels from the inside:

“I remember when the AOL Time Warner merger happened or the acquisition happened of Turner Broadcasting somebody that was really that had been through this type of thing before somebody a lot smarter than me and more experienced not smarter, but just had been through it before I never had said to me ‘Eric, don’t worry about it. You’re not going to see or hear a thing for the first year maybe two.’

I didn’t understand it. I didn’t question it I just kind of took it at face value, but I never didn’t really understand why. But, having been through it, it was true. You know initially when that all went down a lot of people were expecting ‘oh my gosh Monday morning we’re a new company now things are going to change’ and it didn’t. It was business as usual for about six or eight months. Then you started seeing a few changes and then over another six or eight months you started seeing more changes and then before you knew it there was a culture war.

It was the AOL Time Warner corporate culture basically consuming the entrepreneurial culture of Turner Broadcasting and I started seeing guys who would typically show up wearing a sport coat, nice pair of jeans, loafers showing up to work. Executives showing up and you know before I knew it they’re all wearing dark blue suits, white shirts, red ties and wingtip shoes because that was the culture of AOL Time Warner. But, it takes time and I think the same thing is true here.”