Eric Bischoff Explains Why Hulk Hogan Didn’t Try To Become Booker In WCW in 1999, Responds to Claim That He Did Whatever Hogan Told Him To Do

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff addressed reports by Wade Keller in 1999 that Hulk Hogan did not pursue the booker position in WCW at the time, and left it to Kevin Nash, because he knew the wrestlers didn’t like him and because he didn’t want to deal with the criticism that came with the job. Hogan has, of course, been subject to lots of rumors that he wielded a lot of power backstage and Bischoff also addressed reports that he more or less did whatever Hogan told him to do.

On the report that Hogan didn’t want to be booker in WCW because the wrestlers didn’t like him: “No, it’s wrong. First of all, anybody that really knows Hulk Hogan, clearly Wade Keller didn’t talk to Hulk Hogan about this, he’s making sh*t up, at the time, just for the same reasons Dave Meltzer did, to make himself sound to his readers that he has inside information or inside knowledge into something that he knows absolutely nothing about. Here’s the truth. And anybody who has ever worked with Hulk Hogan will tell you this. He has no interest in doing anything that requires more of his time than showing up and doing what he loves to do which is work in the ring. Are you kidding me? ‘Hey Hulk, I’m going to give you, here’s the book, we’re going to make you head writer, head booker, whatever you want to call it. Come on in to Atlanta, we’re going to do TV Monday, and then fly right back to Atlanta, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we’re going to work on booking, and then you get to go home Friday, and then I’ll see you Monday again and we’re going to start this process all over.’ Anybody that has worked with Hulk Hogan over the last 30 years would f*cking laugh at that. As I’m laughing inside about those comments that Wade Keller made. I like Wade Keller. I respect Wade Keller now. We’re all different people. We’ve all grown. Well, with the exception of Dave Meltzer. We’ve all grown. We’ve all become smarter, wiser, more sophisticated and somewhat professional in our approach to things. Wade Keller is no different. I read Wade Keller now. I have a lot of respect for what I read in Keller’s articles and online. That being said, during this time, he was clearly just pulling this out of his ass to make himself sound like he knew something he didn’t.”

On if he did whatever Hulk Hogan told him to do: “The only thing that Bischoff has ever done was what Hulk Hogan wanted him to do, that’s basically the premise, right? Well, I can tell you Hulk Hogan hated the cruiserweight division. He f*cking hated it. Did that stop me from doing it? No. Hulk Hogan hated the fact that I was bringing in, not only for the cruiserweight division, but bringing in a lot of the Hispanic wrestlers, the Japanese wrestlers, not because he didn’t appreciate them and not because he didn’t respect them, because he believed the audience doesn’t know them, and they don’t know their characters, so why are we giving so much of our television time to it. Did that stop me from doing it? No. When I challenged, let’s go back even further, when I started giving away finishes to the WWF early on with Nitro, Hulk Hogan hated it. Did it stop me from doing it, at any point? Absolutely not. So there are so many flaws in that premise in reality that it’s hard to take those types of comments as anything other than WCW was trending down, there was a lot of anxiety amongst WCW fans, casual and otherwise, the battle between WCW and WWF or WWE, whatever the hell it was at the time, had really peaked, and now WWE was taking over, and there was a, it had a bandwagon effect. Guys like Wade Keller and Dave Meltzer and others who were writing these dirt sheets at the time, whose income, and their ability to pay their bills, was dependent solely on their ability to cater to their audience.”

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