On a recent edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff discussed the WCW Road Wild pay-per-view events, collaborating with Dennis Rodman, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On rumors of Dennis Rodman not being happy with his pay and WCW not thrilled with his in-ring performances: “I’ve never heard that narrative before. There was never any heat between Dennis Rodman and me or anybody in WCW. There was an accounting issue that needed clarification. It got clarified, there was never any heat, this was not a make-good. Nobody was disappointed at any of his previous performances. I can’t imagine where this narrative started from — yes, I can, but it’s typical, just mindless dribble.”
On using ICP in WCW: “I loved working with those guys, which is really kind of odd if you think about it. I mean, if you look at them, their performances, their brands, who they are, who their audience is and then you saw a picture of me? You’d be like, ‘What two things don’t go together? Oh, those two things don’t go together.’ But I actually enjoyed working with them. They were just bizarre enough to be entertaining and interesting to me. The way that they connected and cultivated — to this day, by the way — a very, very loyal audience. Is their audience is as big as KISS? No. Are they as loyal, if there’s a way to measure that? I would say probably more. So yeah. So I find them really interesting. How it came together — again, I’m not 100% clear, but I’d bet on Kevin Sullivan on that.”
On whether he would’ve done anything differently with the Road Wild PPV at Sturgis: “No. I mean, I perhaps would have moved it indoors just because of the unpredictable nature of the weather. It gets really, really crazy, and — like Sturgis is going on right now. Which by the way, if there was a Thunder on the road on our way to Sturgis, I would have been there. I forgot that we were on our way to Sturgis. The weather — you know how it is in Florida, like in the summertime and it’s sunshining all day long. But the heat’s building up, and immunity is building up. And then around five o’clock, you could pretty much depend on a thunderstorm for about an hour. And then it clears out, and it gets nice, right? Typically, Central Florida, at least. Sturgis is a lot like that, only instead of heavy downpours of rain, you get hail the size of your fist. And it goes for about an hour and a half, and you get 40, 60, 70, mile an hour winds. And then it blows through, and it gets nice and sunny and cool and wonderful out. We almost got killed by weather one time for sure, early on in Sturgis. Like I was afraid lights were going to come down it got so bad. We had like, 60, 70 mile-an-hour winds. We had people watching the weather patterns on airline weather radar systems so that we could prepare and move people out if we had to, it got that bad.
‘So I think I probably would have avoided that stress and moved it indoors. But the Sturgis idea, the concept was a good then, and a good one now. You’re exposing your product to to an audience — more importantly, to advertisers that might not otherwise pay any attention to you. And you can have a — just like Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship did. Go back and look at the video, folks. If you want to see something exciting, go back and look at what Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship did in Sturgis just last weekend. It can really, really work. But more importantly, it positions you in front of advertisers and advertising agencies that might not otherwise take a look at you or take you seriously. So the idea was good. I would have probably begun to execute it differently.”
