Eric Bischoff On Harlem Heat’s Legacy In WCW, Booker T’s Best Of Seven Series With Chris Benoit

In a recent edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff discussed Harlem Heat’s legacy in WCW, Booker T’s best of seven series with Chris Benoit, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Eric Bischoff on Booker T’s best of seven series with Chris Benoit: “I think the best of seven series…..I think if there’s anything that has probably leveled up, or better said, really established a legacy – you can develop a reputation, but a reputation isn’t a legacy. I think that best of seven that Booker T had with Chris Benoit nailed his legacy. It took Booker T out of the character of he’s a great wrestler, great entertainer, and great performer to being one of the best of the best. That was an amazing series, and if anyone had any doubt about whether Booker T deserved the accolades and respect – and even Stevie Ray, even though he wasn’t in that match.

“It didn’t matter. That credibility carried over to the team. That best of seven series was special. I remember going into that and, ‘Let’s maybe do a best two out of three.’ We did it and were like, ‘Wow, that was really good.’ Can we do three out of five? Let’s try it. Whoa, that was even better than two out of three. Can we go best of seven? Everybody – people in the back, people in the creative part of the business that weren’t involved in the match – they were more excited about it and turned on by it than the audience was. Everybody was shocked at how good that was.”

On Harlem Heat’s legacy in WCW and whether they rank among the best tag teams: “They deserve to be. No question about it. Booker T, Stevie Ray, Harlem Heat, absolutely deserve to be in that conversation. It’s unfortunate sometimes that they’re not. I’m not making excuses for anybody – wrestling fans or otherwise – but I do attribute a lot of that to so much happened in such a short period of time during Harlem Heat’s run in WCW. Good and bad, by the way. Most of it good for Harlem Heat. But sometimes, it was a blur, and it doesn’t stand out as much. There wasn’t as much focus on Harlem Heat and the success they were having and their journey through WCW because there was so much other stuff going on at the same time.

“I don’t think it’s because of any lack of respect or anything else, sometimes I just think timing works really well for you. In many respects, timing was really good for Harlem Heat. A lot of great things happened to them – they made a lot of money, they had a lot of success, they got to work with some great teams, and they were on national platform that had record ratings. Those were all the great things that happened because of timing. Unfortunately, because of all those great things going on at the time, it’s easy to forget sometimes just how far Harlem Heat came from the beginning to the middle to the end in WCW because the beginning and end were about four years in reality. It doesn’t take anything away from what they accomplished, it’s just the context of perception in that case.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.