Eric Bischoff Explains The Original Plan To Split The NWO And WCW Into Separate Brands

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about the NWO and revealed that the faction’s growth was tied to a plan to split WCW and the NWO into two competing brands across Nitro and Thunder, and explained how the AOL Time Warner merger undercut it. You can check out some highlights below:

On the idea:

“It still would have been big, but long term, business-wise, I think finishing with Hogan and Sting — ending the NWO story there, whatever date that would have been, I still think 1998 — and then using that as a springboard to launch into something new, not just another faction of the NWO, but using that outcome to set the stage for another epic confrontation between two individuals or two groups.”

On things changing:

“Somewhere along the line, I got a phone call from Harvey Schiller, who said he’d just gotten off the phone with Ted Turner, and Ted wanted Thursday night TBS to have its own show, just like TNT did. So I was told I had to come up with another two-hour program in prime time at the same level as Nitro. At the time, it’s like, what do I do? Oh, I know — I’ll give the NWO the Nitro show, I’ll give WCW the Thursday-night show, and we’ll have our own intercompany rivalries, no different than Raw and SmackDown. It’s the brand-extension idea, really. The crossover, the drafts, all that nonsense makes a little internet chatter, but there’s no real money in it. That was the original plan, which was partially the reason the NWO started to get bigger without it making a ton of sense, because we were building up to whenever Thunder debuted — it must have been ’98 somewhere in there — partially so we could eventually do the split.”

On where things went wrong:

“Things started getting ugly during the merger. Ted says, ‘Eric, go do this.’ I say, ‘We don’t have it in the budget.’ My boss says, ‘Doesn’t matter, find a way.’ Okay, that’s my job, go find a way. I found a way to produce the show, but the biggest challenge was that I had to bring in new talent — I had to bring in Bret Hart — otherwise I’d be looting my talent pool, filling four hours of prime-time wrestling with the same basically eight guys who drive things. So I started hiring more talent at the same time Turner corporate was slashing my budgets — pre-approved budgets, budgets that had been approved a year in advance — even though I was creating more revenue than I was projected to. They kept cutting production budgets, travel budgets, advertising, marketing — all being crushed because they were trying to manage their EBITDA, their earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization, which was a big formula during the merger for executives who owned stock options to cash out big. So my company was being gutted while I was being asked to produce a new prime-time show with the same level of production as TNT. It was a crossroads of bad traffic.”

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