Eric Bischoff On Reports Scott Steiner Threatened Terry Taylor in WCW, Discusses WCW’s ‘Unprofessional’ Environment Backstage

– During the latest 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff addressed a report that Scott Steiner blew up at Terry Taylor at one point and physically threatened him over being booked to lose to Mike Awesome. Co-host Conrad Thompson cited a report by Dave Meltzer that Steiner threw a temper tantrum over the situation, claiming he was lied to and threatened to beat up Taylor. Taylor reportedly replied that he’d sue Steiner if that were to happen. The report was cited as one of several similar situations that had happened where Steiner blew up at management, went against the script on TV and more.

Bischoff said he was not there for the actual incident but said the story was “not untrue” before discussing management’s role in contributing to the negative and unprofessional backstage environment. Highlights and the full podcast are below:

On Meltzer likely getting the story from Taylor: “Oh gosh. You know I wasn’t there, I didn’t see the incident. So again, I’m gonna have to piece it together based on what I heard second, third, fourth-hand. And I can’t go by anything Meltzer wrote, because he wasn’t there either. I do believe that Terry Taylor and Meltzer probably had conversations on a regular basis, so I would venture to guess — just a guess, not an accusation, but if I had to guess — that Meltzer’s reporting was based on the ongoing conversations that he had with Terry Taylor. Terry was a bit of a stooge.”

On the story itself: “It’s not untrue. I mean, Scott did have a really short fuse. Scott did not handle communication as best as he probably should have. Or as professionally as he probably should have. It’s not a secret. Never was. But I’m gonna defend Scott a little bit here. There was a lot of really bad communication from management, including Terry Taylor. And other agents, not just Terry. I’m not picking on Terry, I like Terry. But it is what it is. And you go back and you talk to some of the talent and some of the other agents, and some of the other people that were actually involved, you’ll find few people that will suggest that agents including Terry were always straightforward, and didn’t often fade the heat [take the blame]. Or weren’t often evasive whenever challenged by talent. And I don’t mean physically challenged. I mean, ‘Why are we doing that? Where’s this storyline going? Am I off this weekend, or am I not off?’ I mean, any number of issues where management, including agents at that time, should have been really direct and forthcoming and honest with talent. And often times [they] weren’t. That created an environment where you would have situations like this. Now add to that environment a guy with historically a pretty short fuse like Scott Steiner, and it’s inevitable that you’re going to have situations like this come up.”

On his responsibility in allowing the environment to be unprofessional: “Should management, including me, by the way, should I have had a more professional environment? Absolutely. There’s no excuse for that. You can’t have any kind of a working environment where you had this kind of volatility and potential for disaster to happen. It’s just not healthy. There’s no way you can defend it or justify it. So yeah, management including me should have been more disciplined about having a more disciplined environment backstage, and not allowing things to get out of hand. Not only from the talent’s point of view, but from management’s point of view. Including agents. Looking back now, people often ask me, ‘Well, what would you have done differently?’ There’s a million things that you would like to go back and do differently, including having agents handle their s**t a lot more responsibly and professionally and honestly with talent would have gone a long way to having a better environment backstage. So long-winded way of saying, it worked both ways. Yes, there were talent who behaved poorly and unprofessionally. And it wasn’t helped by the fact that so were agents [who] handled their s**t pretty unprofessionally at times.”

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