Eric Bischoff Explains How Terry Taylor Was ‘His Own Worst Enemy’

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about his complex professional relationship with veteran wrestler and producer Terry Taylor. You can check out some highlights below:

On his relationship with Taylor: “I really enjoyed being around Terry Taylor. I saw him last — right around January, I think? When I did a WWE thing on LFG or something, whatever it was. And Terry and I had a great conversation, and we’ve had previous really good conversations. So we’ve been on very, very good terms and solid footing for a number of years now. But that wasn’t always the case.

“Terry was like — my relationship with Terry, I should say. Because everybody else’s, I’m sure, was different. But for me as his boss I had so much respect, going back to what we were talking about with The Undertaker. What separates Terry Taylor from a lot of other people in those same roles as an agent, or in this case, as a producer for WWE, are the ones with a phenomenal, proven instinct, and those that are just good at wrestling. Terry was one of those people who had a really good instinct. And the way I really first started noticing it — and this is like a double-edged sword of Terry’s personality back then — is he would just blurt s**t in a creative meeting. And he always did it with a little bit of — it was always kind of funny, sort of? In a stinging, biting kind of way, depending on the context and what we’re talking about. And it was oftentimes a pain in the ass. He’d just rub people wrong. But here’s the pattern that I saw with Terry pretty early on, is those blurts — whatever you call them — that just immediately rolled right off his tongue, immediately making a quick snarky comment. He was right. More often than he was wrong, he was right. The way he presented it sucked, and I’m guilty of this myself, by the way. Perhaps that’s why I recognized it. But his instincts were on the money.”

On Taylor making things hard on himself: “There were other things that Terry made life more difficult for himself in terms of the way he handled business and people and whatever, not my story. But I put up with all that just to get to the good stuff. Did I know he was talking to the dirt sheets? Yes. Could I prove it in a way that I could just put it out on a piece of paper and say, ‘Here’s why I’m firing you, now eat this and go away.’ I probably would have done it. But I didn’t have it, but I knew. So did everybody else. But I put up with it because I learned to rely on people with really good instincts first, experience a close second, everything else doesn’t matter. Terry had the instincts primarily and the experience, so I put up with a lot of shit from Terry that I wouldn’t have put up with from anybody else.”

On Taylor being his worst own enemy: “When I told you early on, when we first started talking about Terry — Terry was his own worst enemy. He knew that. We laugh about it now. But Terry got in his own way more than anybody else tried to get in his way. He created more obstacles for himself than anybody else did. He just didn’t know it at the time.”

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