Eric Bischoff On What Metric He Paid Attention To After Vince McMahon Retired

Eric Bischoff had a specific metric he was keeping an eye on for WWE when Vince McMahon retired, and he recently explained why it made him respect McMahon more. Bischoff spoke with Steve Fall for Ten Count and talked about how he kept his eye on the stock, and how the transition process gave him further respect for the now-exited chairman. You can check out some highlights below:

On what he paid attention to when Vince retired: “My interest in wrestling isn’t in what’s going on inside of the ring necessarily, directly. It’s what’s going on behind the scenes, what’s happening to elevate the industry, in any way shape or form. How is the business of the wrestling business being grown, if it is or isn’t? That kind of stuff interests me. So what I’ve noticed, obviously because you know, the stock market was the first thing that I kept my eye on when I heard about Vince retiring. I didn’t go, ‘Wow, what’s going to happen to creative? Oh my gosh, what’s Triple H gonna do when he takes over? Oh, who’s going to get the title? That’s what wrestling fans do, and I’m not knocking that by the way.

“My first thought was, I’m watching the stock. Because for years, every time somebody in the financial markets talked about WWE and the stock, as successful as it was, the one thing that everybody talked about was Vince McMahon and his age. What happens when Vince McMahon retires? What’s going to happen with the stock? That’s the first thing I started paying attention to. And then I started looking at the ratings. And then I started looking at some of the creative, i.e. the White Rabbit story. I’m thinking, ‘Okay that’s different. Nobody’s done that, that’s going to grow the business or at least create interest that didn’t otherwise exist. Those are the things that I look for, and what I’ve seen so far on those kind of data points is a tremendous amount of growth in interest.”

On his respect for Vince: “Those are some cool things, and I think for me I looked — you know, I said I respected Vince McMahon. And I respect him more now, today, from a business perspective — I want to make that clear, from a business perspective, I respect him more now than I ever have. Because what Vince did was build an infrastructure around him that not only allowed WWE to become a seamless — or the transition between Vince and Stephanie and Triple H, it’s not only seamless; the business continues to grow. And there’s not a lot of executives that have been at the top, the chairman, in this case, that have been able to walk away while being successful, wildly successful in defying the stock market. Walk away and the stock actually go up. That is a credit to building that infrastructure and putting the right people in place to manage that business.”

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