Eric Bischoff Names His Favorite WCW Announce Team

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about his favorite WCW announce team and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On his favorite WCW announce team: “I like what we have here (Mike Tenay and Tony Shivanione and Bobby Heenan). I love Mike Tenay’s touch and perspective. He could bring a perspective and knowledge to the table that Tony and Bobby couldn’t. Because Mike was kind of like the professor, we used to call him Professor Tenay, man. He studied what was going on in Japan and what was going on in Mexico. And as we were bringing more and more Japanese and Mexicans into WCW, Mike did a phenomenal job of giving us context in giving us background and perspective on some of this talent. Because he just knew more about them than anybody else. Tony did a great job keeping — he was the traffic cop. He’s the one who’s keeping the flow going and not getting too much of some information, not enough of others. And he did a phenomenal job. Bobby was Bobby; nobody better. Was a great color guy. I love this one. But we’ve we’ve had other ones. I love Larry Zbyszko’s color commentary.”

On matches having time cut in WCW: “It’s a horrible spot to put the talent… But it happened more often than it should have. And usually, I would say 90% of the time if not more, it happened because of the timing of the show. You’re doing a live show, you’ve got commercial breaks that are scheduled. You’ve got to hit your breaks. That is your commitment to the network, because those breaks are the revenue that supports the show. It comes first, it is a priority. And what would often happen, too often, is that talent in the ring would go along. They didn’t get their s**t in, or they’re not paying close enough attention.

“You’ve got a three-hour show, I don’t even know how many segments there were or matches during a three-hour show. I’m going to take a wild-ass guess and say, I don’t know, 15 as a guess on the show. Well, if four or five of those matches go two minutes long, four minutes long. Sometimes they went way more than that. You’ve got guys in a truck scrambling to retime the show in order to hit your commercial breaks, because you don’t have an editing opportunity. You’re live, and you have to hit those ad breaks. So as you’re retiming the show in the truck, and everybody — you know, the directors doing, everybody, it’s all hands on deck when you have to retime a live show in the middle of it. Ultimately, you talk to the ref and the ring and say, ‘Okay, these guys had eight minutes, they need to go home and four or five,’ because you need to get that time back. And that often screwed up the flow of a match, everything that had been laid out prior to some of the creative. And some guys were good at reacting to an audible that was being called, like cutting a match short. Some weren’t, depending on their level of experience and confidence. So it was an issue, and it happened often. It happened often.”

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