Eric Bischoff On How He Would Have Ended the nWo Storyline, Behind The Scenes Challenges

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff covered the downfall of the nWo, which was first created in 1996 with Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan, while discussing how he would’ve ended the NWO storyline and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On the other challenges going on in WCW: “In 1998, the most successful financial year we had — in the middle of that, I was getting my budgets cut that were approved the year before, that affected our plans going forward. And that’s just one example. So now you’ve got the WWE, you’ve got a brand new front there because now they’re engaging in a type of creative warfare that we had never seen and didn’t expect, and they came on strong. That took a significant chunk of our audience. That was one battle. The other battle was Turner. The internal battles going on within Turner — not just with WCW, but with a lot of divisions within Turner as a result of the merger that we’ve talked about to death. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Read Guy Evan’s book. But that was a new front.

“That’s the reason why one of the reasons why creative got diluted. Execution got diluted. ‘Oh, let’s throw a brand new primetime television show we had to produce that nobody else wanted to pay for.’ So I just said, ‘F**king, I’ll do it. Ted wants it. I’ll pay for it.’ How stupid of a decision was that? I understand why I made it. If you’re gonna go to battle and you want, and you want somebody that you know will enjoy being in the trenches and embracing the fight? I’m your guy. I’m that guy. And when Ted said, ‘I want it,’ and everybody else said, ‘I can’t do it,’ I said, ‘I will!’ That was a mistake on my part. So it was; it was the pressure of Thunder. It was the internal pressure probably most of all that really affected me, creative and everybody else in WCW. Not just talent. That’s the context that I would hope that people that really want to understand what happened to WCW at least take a look at to try to understand the context.”

On the proper ending of the group: “The proper end would’ve been the original concept of having to do a second show in giving nWo its own branded show, and giving WCW its own branded show. And having that conflict between the two quote-unquote ‘wrestling organizations,’ much like SmackDown and Raw tried to do, right? They haven’t really been successful with it. They’ve tried it for years to try to create that inter-company rivalry, and try to make it feel like two separate brands, and not letting talent cross over. All of those things.

“And by the way, WWE hasn’t been; they’ve successfully had two different shows. Don’t misunderstand me here, folks, do not misunderstand me. WWE have been incredibly successful in building two different brands, but not the way they started doing it. Right? It’s different now. And I think that if the original idea that was born out of, ‘Okay, Ted wants a second show.’ Had we been able to execute that properly, that would’ve been the right thing to do. The idea of just ending the nWo ’cause it’s a storyline, I don’t think; it would not have been a good business decision. Using the success of the nWo, expanding upon it, and creating a sense of a real rivalry between the two brands would’ve been the ideal way to end it. Not end it, but continue it.”

On when he felt the group lost steam: “While creatively, I would say that the nWo started feeling less exciting for me as a creator or producer — both, I guess in this case. For me, it would’ve been early-mid ’98. Because that’s when the energy started to dissipate internally. That’s when the collaborations, everything — so much of the success of the nWo wasn’t because of me or Kevin Sullivan, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sting, or anybody else. It was the result from everybody working together and collaborating, and having fun in the process. That stopped around the second quarter of ’98, and began to be more work and less fun. Because now we’re managing personalities and chemistry. Once you start managing personalities and chemistry, you’re putting a lot of time and energy into something, that isn’t productive or positive. It isn’t fun. No creative energy comes out of managing personality issues. That’s like putting out a fire. Putting out fires isn’t fun. And that’s when that started happening.

“Now, the opposite side of that coin is, the money was coming in more than it ever had. So it wasn’t like we could look at our financials and go, ‘Hmm, if we analyze the financials over the last 60 days, it suggests that this idea is not working.’ It was the opposite of that. Despite the Hogan-Sting finish that everybody thought was the downfall of WCW, ’98 was the most successful year we had, after that finish that everybody hated. And I’m not trying to justify the finish, by the way. I hated it too in retrospect, or even in the middle of it. But from a financial perspective, we were stronger than we ever were. So there was like two different inputs. One was, “How much fun is this?’ That’s the wrong way to say it. ‘How productive is our creative? How positive is our creativity? How effective is the collaborative nature of our creative?’ We were losing steam way before anybody else thought we were. But at the same time, we were making more money than ever. So that was kinda like the dual messaging that created a little bit of a conflict for me, quite honestly.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.