Eric Bischoff Says Ultimate Warrior’s WCW Debut Set The Stage For Really Bad Program
On a recent edition of his podcast, Eric Bischoff spoke about Ultimate Warrior’s WCW debut and the bad program that followed…
On Warrior’s Nitro Debut: “There was a lot of anticipation,” Bischoff said about Warrior’s 20 minute promo getting a high rating. “Look, Warrior had a lot of equity built up with the WWE audience. He was a known commodity. Nobody would have ever expected-with all of the heat between him and Hulk Hogan-nobody would have expected him there. There was this built-in, natural, promotional effort without having to expand any promotional effort on our part. It was automatic. The wrestling audience wanted to see what the hell is going to happen when these two come together because there was so much natural heat and story in the WWF.”
On Things Going Very Bad: “On his first Nitro appearance was when I knew I was in trouble,” Bischoff stated. “Everything else that happened after that was a decree of how bad it was going to be ultimately. When he first showed up and we walked through it and blocked it, everybody had a good idea of what the first promo was going to be. We knew that we had 8-10 minutes. Again, we had flexibility. We worked for the television company that owned us so there was a little room for margin of error when you are on live. But that first promo going back to his first appearance on Nitro, it was scheduled to only be 8-10 minutes, and somewhere along the 20-22 minute mark when Hulk Hogan and I were staring at each other in the middle of the ring and asking what the f**k he is talking about. We were completely lost, and so was the audience, and director, Craig Leathers is screaming in my ears, we were going so far over that even the margin for error that we had built in that the first promo that Warrior had shot went beyond 20 minutes. For a promo, I don’t care who it is, that is a long promo. Everything that happened after that was confirmation that it was going to be really bad.”