Eric Bischoff Recalls Master P and the No Limit Soldiers Confronting Him Backstage At Great American Bash 1999 Over Prank

On the latest 83 Weeks Podcast, Eric Bischoff recalled an incident at the 1999 Great American Bash in Baltimore when rap star Master P was working for WCW. He said that it was common for wrestlers to sometimes get celebrities or unexperienced wrestlers with less experience in the wrestling business worked up over something that wasn’t true, as a prank or “rib” for entertainment, and said this happened with Master P who went into Bischoff’s office (along with his No Limit Soldiers) before his match at the show and confronted Bischoff. He noted that one of the No Limit Soldiers even insinuated that he had a gun.

On wrestlers sometimes stirring up celebrities backstage: “As so often happens when civilians, meaning those people who aren’t really part of the wrestling business or definitely aren’t part of the industry, but are celebrities and have some stroke and have some credibility, step into the wrestling business, then you have kind of like a piranha like atmosphere where you’ve got a lot of talent that, either they want the rub or in the case of certain people who are not gonna get named here on this podcast because they are no longer with us to defend themselves, certain people as a rib would get those individuals stirred up, just for their own entertainment.”

On Master P and his No Limit Soldiers getting stirred up backstage and confronting him: “And a lot of that went on here, so much so that at one point here in Baltimore, Master P and a group of his No Limit Soldiers, and I get along with them great, we had no problem doing business together, negotiations went fine, all the creative discussions up to this afternoon went fine, everybody was excited about it, light hearted about it, no issues, right? Then about three hours before the show, I’m in my dressing room in the Baltimore arena, anybody that’s ever been backstage here knows what I’m talking about, you’re in a tiny little office because it’s an old venue, and I’m in an office about the size of an average sized bathroom in a 3000 square foot house. So I’m in this little tiny office. And all of a sudden, somebody is pounding on my door. I’m like ‘Who the f*ck is pounding on my door?’ Ya know, usually people just walk in. So I open up the door and there is Master P and six or eight of his No Limit Soldiers, and I can tell by looking at them that they weren’t happy. So I say, ‘Come on in, what’s up?’ And I’m paraphrasing this whole conversation, I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation. But it was essentially, ‘We need to talk.’ ‘What do we need to talk about? We’ve already talked through this stuff, we’ve already laid out the finish, we’ve already done all this stuff, what is it that you need to talk about?’ And clearly, somebody had got a hold of Master P and spun him up, and who knows how, I’m not going to pretend I know how, or what was said and done to get him spun up. But clearly someone communicated to him that he was being taken advantage of, or not positioned in the right way, or any number of other things that would take somebody that doesn’t have any real experience in our industry, and make them feel like they are being taken advantage of, right? And by the way, same thing happened to a lot of wrestlers who broke into the business without having to spend a whole lot of time in it, that all of a sudden found themselves in the upper echelon of a card, that didn’t really have a clear understanding of what the business was all about because they just didn’t have the experience, and all of a sudden you get three, four, five people in their ear, it wasn’t easy to manipulate them and taken advantage of them, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes because others had an agenda. In this case, because I know the people involved, I’m pretty sure it was strictly for entertainment purposes only.

On one of Master P’s guys threatening him: “Regardless of that, P walks in to my office with a bunch of his guys. I’m in there by myself. I’m trying to figure out what they’re so hot about, and as I’m trying to figure that out, they’re probably thinking I’m trying to play stupid or deny it or avoid having to talk to them, they’re getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Finally one of the guys that P was in there with, says ‘We’re going to resolve this one way or the other MFer,’ reaches inside his jacket, puts his hand in there, he didn’t pull out a gun, didn’t have to, message was loud and clear. I thought, ‘Oh, this is great, this is perfect, this is where Kevin Nash powerbombed me off the stage, and this is where I’m going to take a bullet to the grill for something that somebody, ya know, stirred the pot about that makes absolutely no sense.’ So I remember that moment of it, and it dissipated, I took care of it, it went away, nobody got shot, and the show went on.”

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