Eric Bischoff Recalls Dealing With Scott Hall and Jerry Sags’ 1997 Altercation Over Chair Shot, Sags Worrying He Would Be Fired

– On the latest 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff went into more detail about the infamous incident where Jerry Sags shot on Scott Hall in the ring over a chair shot to the back of his head. Bischoff previously discussed the incident, which saw Sags lose it and legit battered Hall after Hall threw a chair and hit Sags in the head with it. Sags had been dealing with a neck injury and had asked that his head specifically not be gone after.

After the match, the Nasty Boys and Hall and Nash got into it backstage and Nash allegedly said, “We’ll see who has the stroke in this company.” Sags was concerned that he was going to get fired over the incident. Sags was released from his contract soon after that and retired for a few years due to the injury.

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

On Sags being concerned he would get fired because of Hall and Nash’s influence: “Well, you know I can’t confirm or deny any of the conversations between the parties because I wasn’t in the room when it happened, or at the arena when it happened. I heard about it subsequently, probably the next day. I think if Jerry was concerned about his job, he should have been more concerned about it from the perspective of, did he take it too far and did he do something inappropriate as a result of something that happened in the ring, not whether or not these guys had stroke with me. That wouldn’t have played. If you want to kind of throw yourself into a ‘What if?’ scenario, the Nasty Boys probably felt like they had a fair amount of stroke as well because of the relationship with Hulk Hogan. So I don’t think who has the most stroke was the prevailing issue at the time.”

On his reaction to the situation: “I think they were two guys that were really f**king hot. Add Kevin Nash to the equation, now you’ve got three. Three guys, well now four that are pretty familiar with each other, meaning the Nasty Boys, Scott and Kevin. So I can see how that whole thing escalated. And like I said, I heard about it the next day, it was an issue because there was physical injuries to Scott Hall that resulted from it. It wasn’t incidental damage, it was intentional damage, and that kind of escalates it. Obviously, it’s one thing if somebody gets hurt in a match, and it wasn’t intentional, versus, ‘Okay motherf**ker. You hit me in the back of the head with a chair and I asked you not to, now I’m gonna knock your teeth out.’ That takes it to a whole different level of concern. And we addressed it. It was a he said/she said type situation because we weren’t there.”

On Scott Hall’s attitude at that time: “I could see in my mind how it happened. Because by this time, you’re talking about January now of ’97. The good corporate citizen Scott Hall had kind of evolved into a degree back to some of the issues that he had in WWF when he came over. Once he got familiar, once he felt like he was comfortable in the situation in WCW, certainly when Scott came in, once the nWo angle happened, once they had a certain amount of stroke just because of who they were and where they were on the hierarchy at that time, the Scott Hall with the baggage, that Scott Hall started showing up much more frequently.”

On Sags: “I liked the Nasty Boys, still do. Jerry Sags, I have a ton of respect for. But Jerry Sages is also not the kind of guy you wanna f**k with in or out of the ring. He wouldn’t take any s**t. He’d forgive you if you hit him with something stiff, because for God’s sake both him and Brian Kobbs made a career out of that. And they understand it when it’s incidental, or when you’re just trying to lay things in so it looks great. But either one of them, if they feel like you’re trying to take advantage of them, or you disrespect them or you just don’t give a s**t, that changes the dynamic of their reactions. And certainly [with] Jerry Sags. So I understood how it happened.”

On how they handled the incident: “We talked it through, tried to weigh all the options. Again, who was more guilty in a court of law, at least the court of law that existed in my office. Kind of hard to pin it on any one person, so we dealt with it the best way we could.”

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