Eric Bischoff Recalls Outsiders’ Standoff With Armed Cops In nWo Early Days

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff broke down the thinking behind one of the most memorable early nWo moments. The scene saw Soctt Hall and Kevin Nash come down to the ring with baseball bats and have a standoff with Sting, Lex Luger and Scott Steiner, with armed cops in the ring. One shot showed one of the cops put their hand on their holstered gun.

Bischoff recalled that he got in a little bit of trouble for that moment, but that it was the perfect way to end the scene without making the nWo or WCW look weak. You can check out some highlights below:

On the Angle:

“It was exactly what we wanted. We wanted it to feel like an invasion. The reason I love that shot [of the police with his hand on his gun], and it was controversial at the time by the way; that’s why I remember this — is, I had to have a couple of conversations internally with people above my food chain about the fact that the cop reached for his gun and had his hand on his gun.

“It was cool as hell, trust me. It was great. I’m not sure how the cameraman knew that cop was going to put his hand on his gun — somebody must have known, had a conversation, and everybody felt comfortable enough with it.”

On the Bigger Picture:

“But what it really did is it gave Scott and Kevin a way out without looking like chickenshits. ‘You’ve got a bat; I’ve got a gun.’ It was a way out of that scene [where] nobody looked weak. The babyfaces didn’t get their brains beaten out with baseball bats, Outsiders didn’t get shot. ‘Okay, everybody lived? We can do this another day.’

“That’s what we were hoping to achieve. Otherwise, it’s the WCW guys run nWo, or what was going to be because of Scott and Kevin, run them out of the building, right? Overwhelm them — and that’s not where we wanted to go with Scott and Kevin. We certainly didn’t want the WCW guys getting hammered by two guys, baseball bats or not. We wanted tension, we wanted them on a level playing field. ‘What’s going to happen next? Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen next week?’ You couldn’t have done that if somebody had to go down in that scene. Both sides left with their dignity, but we had to use a cop with a gun to get there.”

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