Eric Bischoff Says Fans Called 911 After nWo Attack During Monday Nitro and Police Arrived on Scene

– During his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff discussed the nWo angle and the early days of WCW Monday Nitro. Apparently, one of the nWo attacks during Nitro was so convincing that fans in the local area actually called 911. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Eric Bischoff on keeping Hall and Nash off the house shows: “If we wanted to keep the premise of the story, which is that these guys are coming to WCW to disrupt it. They are coming to WCW to tear s**t up. They want to make people pay for not making them the stars they should have been when they were originally in WCW before going to WWF. That was the premise of the story, and if the story is going to have any believability and we were going to create anticipation, we have to let the audience know that there is a chance that these guys are going to come and tear s**t up. The minute we would have built it as Scott Hall and Kevin Nash are going to take on Sting and Lex Luger at a house show, there goes your illusion.”

Bischoff on people calling 911 when the nWo invaded WCW and Kevin Nash slammed Rey Mysterio Jr. into a trailer: “It is true. It was something that I didn’t think about. It’s not like I was sleeping at the wheel or was too busy, but I never would have anticipated that you could do something on a wrestling show that was so believable where people sitting at home would call the cops in the local market, but that was exactly what happened … Sure enough, we had Orlando cops showing up on set because people called 911. They thought there was a murder going on backstage because they had never seen anything like it. It was so believable, it just didn’t look like a pro wrestling angle. It was everything. You didn’t see ambulances, or anything remotely close to this scene before. You may have kind of in a way similar but not executed like this or produced as well. The thing that made it was when took off Rey’s mask, because in a real situation, if his skull was cracked they wouldn’t be able to treat it with a mask on. It was the little details that made it believable. There were a lot of little details that made it work, but I think the one big detail was when Chris Benoit, Arn Anderson, I mean, Miss Elizabeth crying. Everybody broke character and they were so into the moment and made it believable. They didn’t have some 22 year old j—off writing a script who has never been laid or been in a fight and is now suddenly in charge of a wrestling show, which is the case nowadays, you know. They knew what the scene was going to be and what the message was and what we were trying to create, but they had to improv it. They relied on their talent and instincts to make it believable. They made it so believable that it allowed them to get into the character. They literally became actors and actresses in this scene, like legitimately good ones across the board.”