Eric Bischoff Reveals What Surprised Him The Most About Vince McMahon When They Met

– During the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff spoke about what surprised him the most about Vince McMahon and how McMahon inspires such intense loyalty in the people who work for him. You can check out some highlights of Eric Bischoff discussing the subject and the audio for this week’s show below.

Bischoff on Vince McMahon being different around his kids: “I did see some of that interaction, but very little of it. I actually saw it the first night that I came in. I remember I came out and made my big reveal and all of that. Backstage, Shane was there. Linda was there. Stephanie was there, and after the show, everybody kind of got together because I think everybody recognized it was kind of a unique moment to have me there in that role. And I read people pretty quickly. I’m not saying accurately. Sometimes I misread people. In fact, frequently, but I like to believe I’m a pretty good read. And when I saw Vince with his family, I said, ‘OK. That’s a different guy than I thought’, but you only get a glimpse of that. You only see a little bit of that. Not a lot of it.”

Bischoff on what he saw about Vince McMahon that surprised him: “I think what I saw that surprised me. There’s a couple things. Here’s the first: The absolute loyalty of the people backstage. And I’m sure in the office it’s much the same way, but I was never in the office. I don’t know. But when I saw — it’s the difference between hiring a bunch of subcontractors to come and work on your house and hiring family members to come and work on your house. You know, the people that were backstage that I experience — Bruce [Prichard], obviously, being one of the first — but everybody else, there was a loyalty to the brand and to the company that was way different than what I was used to. WCW — I want to make really clear, we had Craig Leathers, Annette Yothers, Tony Schiavone, Neal Pruitt, Davy Crockett. There were a bunch of people, and many more than I named just now that were really, really loyal. Davy Crockett I think being one of the most, but they represented a very small part of the pool of people that it took to get that show up on the air. The rest of ’em were freelancers. And they were good, and they were professional. I’m not busting their balls, but there’s a big difference between people who are longtime employees of the company who believe in it, who have stuck with it, they fought through the s*** that I put ’em through. They almost went out of business. They came out on top. There’s a loyalty there, and there’s an intensity of that loyalty that you can’t really quantify that easily, but it’s there. And that was something that I noticed right away, just the intensity of the loyalty and to the company and the people that they worked for.”

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