Eric Bischoff On Signing Rick Rude After Montreal Screwjob, Rude Appearing On Raw & Nitro The Same Night

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about signing Rick Rude following the Montreal Screwjob, having Rude appear on a live WCW Monday Night Nitro on the same night as him appearing on a taped episode of WWE Raw, and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On how signing Rick Rude back to WCW came together: “There was no preliminary conversation. It wasn’t about Rick Rude and leverage. I hadn’t spoken to Rick Rude in I don’t know how long until the night all the things went down in Montreal. Here’s what happened. I was at home. I wasn’t even watching the pay-per-view from Montreal. Sunday night, I’m on my couch, I don’t know what I was watching. Just finished dinner, relaxing, thinking about what I’m going to do the next day. My phone rings. It’s like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. Sunday night. Who’s calling me?’ Didn’t recognize the number. Picked up the phone. It was Rick Rude. He preceded that — and this was like minutes after everything went down. Rick Rude called me. When I say pissed, he was that quiet pissed. He wasn’t like, ‘You’re not going to believe what just happened. They just screwed Bret.’ It wasn’t that. It was a much more deliberate but intense Rick Rude. And keep in mind, I had known Rick since a couple of years out of high school. It’s not like we didn’t know each other pretty well. We had a lot of mutual friends before I ever got into wrestling. We had a lot of mutual friends. I knew Rick before I got into the business, so we had a pretty good relationship already, at least the foundation for one. We didn’t hang out together or anything like that, but we had a good relationship.

“And Rick proceeded to tell me what he just saw. And he was livid with Vince McMahon, he was livid with the entire situation. And he just flat out asked me, ‘Have you got any room’? I said, ‘Sure, I’ll make room for you, Rick.’ Now, keep in mind that Rick couldn’t wrestle. Rick was under a Lloyd’s of London policy, which is why you saw him in the ring with the beard, but he didn’t get physical. He couldn’t. I worked with Rick in WCW. As I said, I’ve known Rick for a long time. I’ll find a way to make a guy like Rick Rude work into the system. We had that conversation; it was nothing more than a result of what happened in Montreal, and we cut the deal. We may have cut the deal over the phone. I don’t even recall. I think we cut the deal over the phone, and I just sent him a contract and had my attorneys send him a contract. But yeah, it was quick and easy, but there was no preliminary. It wasn’t planned months in advance.”

On Rick Rude shaving his beard for WCW Nitro: “Yeah, kind of like rubbing their nose in it. Yeah. You know, just remind everybody, ‘Yeah, they’re tape. I’m live.’

On whether that’s one of his proudest moments: “Oh, it’s on the list, but certainly not the greatest. I think — I mean, it’s tough to beat the Lex Luger moment, not only because it was so well executed, nobody found out. Everybody in WWE thought he was still under contract. And I just knew that that was going to be effective. So that, to me, is the highlight of the kind of stunts that I pulled. Rick Rude showing up on our show was definitely right up there, but just not the biggest moment. And the thing with Luger’s is to set the tone. It is subconsciously and probably consciously among some of the audience, just sent the message to everybody that you cannot afford to miss an episode of Nitro because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Yeah, you just don’t know. And you want to be there and experience it live. You don’t want to hear about it the next day and ‘Go, s**t, should have been watching it, damn it.’”

On Vince McMahon being laid back about Rude working for WWE without a deal: “WWE has always been buttoned up tight. And it’s not even so much about, ‘Well, we want to have this guy under contract before we put them on TV because God, we want to own them and control them and make money off them all.’ That’s part of it, and that part of it surprises me as well. But there’s also a legal exposure there. You know, you got somebody out there performing. And he or she gets hurt on your show, and there’s no agreement that covers certain situations and potential legal considerations. You’re kind of exposing yourself legally as a company to have somebody out there with absolutely no contract. That’s bizarre, and even more so because it’s WWE, because they had always, from day one, been buttoned up so tight. I find that pretty interesting.”

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