Eric Bischoff Weighs In On WrestleMania’s Lack Of Buzz, WWE’s Changes Post-Vince McMahon

Eric Bischoff recently shared his thoughts on the discourse around WrestleMania’s apparent lack of buzz, WWE’s changes since Vince McMahon left and more. Bischoff spoke with CanadaCasino.ca for a new interview and the site sent along some highlights, which you can check out below:

On WWE holding WrestleMania in Las Vegas: ““It’s probably because of ticket sales and reported ticket sales. Las Vegas over Easter is typically not the greatest time to have a live event or city to have it in, so perhaps that’s part of the issue. I’m certainly not making excuses. I don’t know what the ticket sales are. I took my family to Vegas on Easter in about 1997. Do you know why I took my family to Vegas for Easter in 1997? Because there was nobody in Vegas on Easter in December of 1997, and we had the whole freaking town to ourselves. It was dead. There were no lines for anything. The casinos were maybe 20 percent full. You could get into any restaurant without a reservation. It was awesome. You could go to shows and buy tickets and sit in the front row to do anything you wanted, because there was nobody there.

“So when I heard that Wrestlemania was in Vegas over Easter weekend, I thought, ‘that’s an odd one’, but they’re gonna make their money outside of ticket sales. So long story short, I think the [lack of] buzz has more to do with ticket sales and Vegas and timing than it has to do with interest in WWE.”

On WWE’s changes post-Vince McMahon: “I can’t speak to anything other than what I see and maybe my perspective is a little different than the average viewer. But just from a purely business point of view, the fact that we’re seeing sponsorship logos in the ring. We’re seeing an increase in the international distribution. I think the move to Netflix was a huge move, a major change in the industry, taking your number one program off television and putting it on a streaming platform. That’s a seismic shift in the industry.

“All of these things in aggregate to me suggest that all the people running WWE right now have a much bigger, more currently appropriate view of the brand and the opportunities that come with it. I think Vince was stuck in the mud a little bit. As progressive as Vince was, and he was, and he did things nobody thought possible, so I’m not taking anything away from what Vince did, but I think, like anybody he reaches a certain level of success, and over a period of 20 or 30 years finds comfort in the way they approach the business, because they have created such a phenomenal success. My favorite term – I didn’t coin it but I’m going to claim it: Comfort is a thief. The minute you get comfortable, that comfort is stealing opportunities for growth. We’re all guilty of it, and I think Vince, too, got guilty. He was a multibillionaire who had complete control of that organization. Nobody questioned him and he got too comfortable with that.”

On Triple H making WWE more diverse: “Triple H overall has a much more sober, unemotional perspective on talent [which results in] diversity. And I don’t mean necessarily diversity in the sense that it’s overused and abused in today’s culture. But I mean diversity of styles, diversity of look and characteristics. I always used to say, before I went to work for WWE in 2019, when I was hired essentially to be the director of Smackdown. There was a sameness to everything in WWE. If WWE was a cookie factory they might advertise 25 different flavors of cookies, and there might be 25 different colors, or 25 different names, but they all tasted the same. That’s what WWE was to me on television. I think we’re seeing a much different WWE today in terms of the character diversity, storyline diversity.”

On Bret Hart saying that talent is now pushed in WWE more based on talent: “I think what Bret’s sharing is his impression from afar, much like the rest of us. I understand why he says that (guys are being pushed because they’re talented and not because they’re Vince’s favourite), I don’t disagree with it. I don’t know for sure that it’s true, because I’m not there. But I think it’s a safe bet when you look at the way Triple H is approaching the business and the decisions that we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

“Let’s just take CM Punk as an example. Would that have happened if Vince McMahon was still there? Nope. And why is that? Because Vince had a personal stake in the decisions that he made. Not saying that Triple H does not, we’re all humans and to some degree we’re all going to have a personal bias, but I think with Triple H, he recognizes it and distinguishes between how he feels about somebody and how he feels about the opportunity to do business with somebody.

On John Cena referencing Vince McMahon on Raw: “It’s authentic storytelling. It’s bringing current reality and weaving it into a fictional storyline. That’s nothing new, that’s been going on forever. This one, I think, hits a little harder because of the controversy surrounding Vince’s name, and the relationship between Vince and John Cena. Even after the Vince McMahon controversy hit the fan, John Cena came out and I’ll give him credit, he was very honest, he talked about Vince like a father figure, and talked about all the things that Vince did for him.

“People hear one side of the Vince story, the dark side. There’s a lot of it. I’m not just talking about the recent controversy, but just his approach to dealing with issues and people. He was tough. He did not suffer fools at all. And he was intense, and he was passionate, so those characteristics in anybody tend to make you a little off putting in general to the average person. But Vince had a good side, too. Vince did some pretty amazing things for people that no one’s ever heard about. He didn’t publicize, and he didn’t want to be publicized. Things that I know about from the receiving party and I won’t even talk about it because I still have respect for Vince in a certain way.It’s complicated, but to answer your question, I think it’s a good thing (referencing Vince on Raw). It’s contemporary. It’s real. It adds to the authenticity of the story, and it ties to a pre-existing relationship. But I hope they don’t take it much farther, because I think that’ll be counterproductive, and I doubt that they will.”