Eric Bischoff Explains Why Crow Sting Connected With Fans

Eric Bischoff says the Crow version of Sting connected with fans because of the loner, lone-wolf nature of the character. On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Bischoff and Conrad Thompson looked back at the October 21, 1996 episode of Nitro, where Sting showed up in white face paint and a black trench coat to confront the NWO’s imposter Sting before walking away from the group’s offer to join them. Bischoff said the character still resonates with generations of fans and compared it to quiet, dangerous movie heroes like John Wick. You can check out his comments below:

On the Impact Of Crow Sting:

“It certainly had an impact, didn’t it? Not only obviously on Sting’s career; he’s been able to make a very good living over the last 30 years with that character, and God bless him for it. It puts a smile on my face every time I see it. It’s just one more thing that’s still out there in the universe that, indirectly, I had a little bit to do with. And it’s fun to see that stuff manifest out there from time to time. But that character, even you setting it up, allows me to kind of relive that moment in a way that I hadn’t thought about in 30 years, right? It was so cool ending a show that way, going right into a pay-per-view six days later.

“I’m not trying to put us over, me and the entire team, but what a cutting-edge, innovative way. It was really quite simple. It wasn’t like anybody reinvented the wheel, but we took a creative device like a cliffhanger and wove it in, and did it as well as we did with Sting. His character, his ability to be that character and believe it himself so that the audience actually bought into it? That’s acting, and he did a great job with that. Everything just worked together, and I think even to this day it still resonates with generations of wrestling fans now. It’s pretty damn cool.”

On Why the Character Resonated With Fans:

“The psychology of stories is fascinating. Story can mean different things to different people, or you see different things in a story that come to your mind first and help you define in your mind what a story is. For me, it’s the psychology behind the emotion you’re trying to create in order to get the audience to connect. Which is no different, I think, than what someone like Ric Flair would probably explain in his own terms in terms of psychology in the ring: knowing and being able to anticipate what you need to do when you need to do it in order to maximize an emotional response. It’s just math. But in cases like Ric or Hulk or Undertaker, that art becomes your instinct. It’s now part of you, and that’s what gets you to that level.

“I think the same is true with a lot of different characters, and I think Sting was right. Steve Borden was right in describing why he thinks a lot of people connect with it. People who don’t feel like they’re part of the cool kids, if you’re talking about young kids, or maybe you don’t get invited to the golf outings where you work. There’s a million reasons why all of us at one point in our lives felt like outcasts, or felt like we just didn’t fit in, right? And a character like that can connect with people like that. So I think you do attract that audience, someone who feels like they need to identify with that particular aspect of your character.”

On the Lone Wolf Appeal of Crow Sting:

“However, if you go back and you look at John Wick or Denzel Washington in Man on Fire, he plays this quiet, brooding loner, but ultimately a very scary character. So many characters in feature films and television that we now hold up as heroes — kind of superheroes — have that dark, lone-wolf aspect to their characters. And probably always have in different ways. It’s always been something that as men in particular, you’d kind of like to be that guy. You’d kind of like to be the guy that can walk into a bar and doesn’t necessarily need to have a lot of friends around him. Maybe he doesn’t even want to be around a lot of friends; maybe he just wants to go up to the bar and have a beer. But as you’re watching this character go into the bar to have a beer, he doesn’t want to be messed with. Of course, you can imagine what the next scene starts to look like.

“And this Sting character doesn’t cut a promo before he kicks your ass. He doesn’t do what everybody else always does in wrestling; he does the opposite. He doesn’t say a word, but you know he’s going to kick your ass. You can see it. You can feel it. You can actually smell it, because he does it that well. That’s a character that is so different that people love to watch it. There are a lot of different reasons in that one, but I think the aspirational part of the character I just described, ‘I wish I could be that. I aspire to be that person,’ was also a big part of it.”

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