Eric Bischoff Recalls Firing Barry Darsow Over Blading Incident, Who Was Really To Blame

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and his guest, Barry Darsow, reflected on the infamous 1995 incident that led to Darsow and Dustin Rhodes being fired from WCW. Darsow, who played The Blacktop Bully, confirmed the story of how Bischoff fired him. You can check out some highlights below:

Darsow On the Firing:

“The next morning, the phone rings, and it was Eric on the phone. And Eric says to me, ‘Barry, I got good news and I got bad news for you.’ I said, ‘Well Eric, what the heck? Give me the good news?’ He says, ‘You had one hell of a match last night.’ And I said, ‘What’s the bad news?’ He says, ‘You’re fired.’

“I said, ‘Fired for what?’ He says, ‘Well, you guys bled in that match.’ The office did not want that, and you guys did that. And I tried to explain to him, ‘Well, that’s what Mike Graham had us do.’ Ad my whole career, whatever the boss wanted me to do I did. So anyways, Eric said to me, ‘Please don’t give me any grief about this or anything. I promise I’ll hire you back.’ He says, ‘If you can just do this and leave on good terms and everything. I’ll hire you back later on.’ I said, ‘Eric, if that’s what you got to do. I said, I’m with you. Alright.’ So it ended up being later on he did hire me back. Did exactly what he said he was going to do. So that was how I seen it.

Bischoff On His Regret Over the Situation:

“I was excited to bring you back for a lot of reasons. But what I could have done differently, because I always — you know, when I go back, we have heard these stories. And I kind of think about both sides of the issue, right? And I always think about, ‘Okay, now that I know a lot more than I knew back then in terms of how to handle situations.’ Because I was learning on the job, quite honestly. [I was] faced with situations I’d never been involved with before, never seen anybody else be faced with. It was just — every day was something new. And this was one particular hot button that came from Corporate.

“And one of the great things about WCW is for a long time, till about ’98, Corporate didn’t want anything to do with wrestling, so they left me alone. They didn’t even want to really know I existed. They didn’t want us in the CNN tower. So there was very little interference from Corporate. But the one issue was bleeding. And it was primarily because every time we did it, Vince McMahon would go on some mail-in campaign. And not only bombard Ted Turner and other Turner executives, senior executives, like executive committee level executives. But also Congressmen and Senators. So it turned into this big thing. So when Corporate calls me and says, ‘Eric, no more blood,’ I didn’t get a chance to defend it or argue it or find a way to mitigate it. I just had to do exactly what you did.”

On Mike Graham Being At Fault:

“And then when Mike Graham — who really deserves the blame for this, because Mike knew better. I should have fired Mike. I regret the fact that I didn’t, because it was unfair that I didn’t. He should have been in the same conversation that you and Dustin ended up in. That was my mistake in terms of — [Bischoff is told he did fire Graham]. Oh, then I handled it like a pro.”

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