Eric Bischoff On Why He Broke Up the Steiner Brothers, Not Being a Supporter of Tag Team Wrestling

– During the latest 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff discussed his decision to break up the Steiner Brothers in WCW and by extension, why he isn’t big on tag team wrestling. The two split up in a storyline on WCW in early 1998, with Scott turning heel on Rick and joining the nWo. It was the first time the brothers had been full-on split up as a team and led to Scott Steiner’s breakout as a solo star, and Bischoff said that it was done in part because of the storytelling value, but also because tag team wrestling is less beneficial to companies from a cost point of view and WCW didn’t have the tag teams to support consistent on-air programs with the team.

Highlights from the discussion, and the full podcast, are below:

On not being a fan of tag team wrestling: “I got a lot of criticism for this and probably do this day in some circles. But I’ve never been — when I say a ‘fan,’ I’m not talking about as a viewing fan, but on the inside of the business. I’ve never been a big supporter of tag team wrestling. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy watching it as a fan, it’s not because I don’t think there’s a lot of great storytelling. It’s not for any other reason, other than economics. And if you think of it, break it down and you just think about it in terms of television or PPV. In a television environment, you’ve got one match. You’ve got somewhere between six and 15 minutes on average to fill in a segment, right? And instead of having overhead or costs in terms of talent fees, airfare, whatever else goes along with that. Whatever line item is associated with talent. Catering, the food that they eat, whatever. Instead of having costs associated with that six to 15 minute segment, for two people, you’ve now got those cost associated with four people. And oh, by the way, if you’re going to do tag team wrestling on a regular basis, you’ve got to have more than two tag teams. Which means now, you’ve gotta maintain the cost for six, eight tag teams, ideally I guess? Have to sit down and look at a grid to figure it out over a twelve month period, but now you’ve got double the cost, because you’ve got to maintain those tag teams in a storyline which means now you’ve gotta put them on television. You’ve got to built these respective tag teams, so that eventually at some point, one or more of them will come together in a television story leading to a PPV, and going on the road and touring and that type of thing. It just doubles your cost from a talent perspective.”

On the tag team situation in WCW: “Again, I want to make it really, really freaking clear. It’s not that I never respected or enjoyed tag team wrestling as a viewer and as a fan. But when you’re running the business of the wrestling business, you’re doubling your talent cost. And that was an issue for me. #1, we didn’t have a lot of great tag teams. There wasn’t like a roster full of great tag teams where you could mix and match, and keep your stories fresh, and do things that didn’t feel redundant through the entire year. Again, we’re producing 52 weeks of television. In some cases, five hours of it in prime time every single week. In addition to what we were doing on WCW Saturday Night and WCW Main Event on TBS and things like that. So you’ve got a lot of cost there, and not a lot of talent pool to do it with.”

On why the the decision to break up the Steiners was made: “Point being, splitting them up was almost a matter of necessity. Even if it wasn’t from a purely cost point of view, from a storytelling point of view. Where are you going with two top guys like the Steiner Brothers when you don’t have a deep talent roster of tag teams for them to tell stories with? So my point, and I’m spending a lot of time talking about it but I want to be sure that I’m clear. It was an economic decision more than it was anything else. And I think by 1996, 1997, it was clear that there was much better storytelling opportunities for these guys as singles than there were as a tag team. That’s #1. #2, and as you were reading to me the set-up [of the split]. That was about a three-week story that you just laid out where we kind of teased that Scott was all of a sudden becoming selfish. Instead of being a great tag team partner with his brother, which heretofore he had always been, right? That’s what made them the Steiner Brothers, is they had the timing and the teamwork of a Rolex together in the ring. All of a sudden now, from Scott’s character point of view, ‘It was all about me. I want to win this match, I want all the attention, I want all the time in the ring.’ That’s a very basic storytelling device, but that’s what that was. And we teased it, and then we turned up the volume on it. We swerved it a little here with Rick getting accidentally tagged in and finally getting into the ring. And that was just enough to create a tipping point for Scott’s character to go ‘Screw it’ and turn on his brother. That was some pretty good storytelling. It was only three weeks, but I think as you described it, it’s easy for me to visualize and I think it was a solid story.”

On the aftermath: “Scott would obviously go on to become a pretty big part of the nWo. Rick was able to hold his own. Rick was the traditional WCW guy for a long time. That was, much like Sting and until Luger turned and joined the nWo, a lot of the fans recognized Rick Steiner as red, white and true-blue WCW.”

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