Eric Bischoff Says NJPW Talent Didn’t Get a Cut of nWo Merchandise Sales

– Eric Bischoff discussed the business relationship between WCW and NJPW in on his 83 Weeks podcast, and how NJPW talent apparently got cut out of the profits. Highlights are below, per Wrestling Inc:

On originally setting up a licensing deal with NJPW: “I’m going to lay down some s**t with you right now, and this is awesome. This is some inside, baseball s**t here on this very topic. I just became aware of this last month when I was in Japan. Rather than trying to manage a licensing deal in a foreign country, in order to manage a licensing deal there has to be a process in place. It is not impossible and it was something that we were working towards, so some of the things that we did early on that were especially something like this that was so outside the norm we had to figure it out and make it work. Sonny Onoo was in the middle of this. What Sonny Ono did, because he is fluent in Japanese, and was working really closely with New Japan management, so we decided that the best way to handle nWo merchandise was for us to sell the merch directly and ship it to them with a markup. Very simple, not complicated… That way there is no accounting, there is no audits. We would know exactly how much stuff we are shipping, they know what they are getting.”

On NJPW not giving Great Muta and Masahiro Chono a cut from the merchandise sales: “I heard this on my most recent trip to Japan when I was meeting with people who were formally in the office of New Japan, they are the ones who shared all of this with me. They were marking it up, but The Great Muta and Masahiro Chono were not getting a lick of it. They weren’t making a dime. New Japan was keeping all of the money. Now, this is what I just learned, and I don’t want to incriminate people by name or I just interpreted it as 100% accurate. But my understanding is that Masawa Ohtori previously was negotiating those types of deals. He was based in the United States, lived in New York City I believe before I came along or Sonny Onoo came along as the deal breaker in WCW. Ohtori would do the same thing but he would pocket some of the money and stiff some of the talent.”

On Chono and Muta selling their own nWo merchandise: “That is when, not that I understand the talent relationship with New Japan and how they handle licensing and merchandising so I’m not going to speak on it, but that is when I think Chono and Muta, but really driven by Chono, decided to try and come up with their own merchandise so that they can get a cut of it. Chono was a really smart man by the way, his wife was in the clothing business. Chono now owns a store out in Ginza, Japan which is the most expensive real estate per square foot in the world. And now he has a clothing store selling nWo merchandise because he bought the licensing rights from the WWE.”

On the situation causing a move away from nWo merchandise: “The talent thought that Sonny Onoo was pocketing the money, but Sonny wasn’t pocketing any money. The checks that New Japan wrote did not go to Sonny Onoo and then to come to WCW. The invoice went from WCW to New Japan and the check came from New Japan to WCW. There was no middle man involved that was able to pocket any of the money, but it sure sounds like a great conspiracy theory. It got everyone wound up and caused serious issues because of it but that was because people weren’t being transparent within their own company.”