Eric Bischoff On Why WWE Never Brought Bill Dundee Into the Company

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff paid tribute to Bill Dundee, who passed away at 82.

Conrad Thompson raised the question of why Vince McMahon never brought Dundee in on the creative side, given that he leaned on both Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler out of Memphis, and Bischoff pointed to the international experience Dundee would have brought into the room. You can check out his comments below:

On Why Dundee Never Worked For WWE As a Talent:

“I don’t know, I think it’s pretty easy to understand why Bill didn’t work in WWE as a talent, right? I don’t think he ever would have gotten by Vince’s kind of perspective of what — at that point in particular, what a wrestler was. But behind the scenes, he was more than qualified.”

On the European Experience Dundee Could Have Offered:

“What makes it I think even more mysterious to me, to your point, is in WWE’s case, back when they were WWF, the UK has always been such a big market for Vince. The entire European market obviously, and it’s a different style of booking over there. It’s a different culture; the psychology is different. What they’re used to and conditioned to believing in is different in nuance from what it is here, and it helps to have that perspective in a room creatively.

“So if we’re going to do a tour, would you want somebody who has experience touring in the markets that you’re going to be in? Because that guy you’re sitting in your room with, or you should be at least, he made his living by reading the room. Now I have an opportunity to hire a guy who was a big star in a foreign territory in which I have zero f**king experience by the way — I have an opportunity to work with this guy. He’s in the business, he’s a credible guy, I know who he is. I know his career, but I’m not going to use him because I can do it myself, or with my existing staff who knows so much about that market because they wrestled there three times in their career or whatever the case was back then. I don’t know. He was a great source of the kind of information that helps creative optimize, because you’ve got feel for the market.”

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