Controversy Creates Cash - Eric Bischoff

[chaosrage 0]

The hell with Chavo man. He was lucky to have a job then and he is lucky to have a job now. Bischoff took a calculated risk in sticking with the old guys, and obviously it didn't work out. No need to still be bitter about it. I love the fact that he is speaking for Eddie Guerrero and saying that he was treated like shit, when Eddie credits Bischoff with helping turn his life around by helping him out when he had his likely-susbtance related automobile accident on New Years Eve in 1998 I think it was.

 

I'm sure Eddie was thrilled to be wasted and held back for years. Have you read Eddie's book?

 

As the nWo phenomenon got bigger and bigger, Eric Bischoff began hanging around with the main-event clique, most of whom didn't like me or my style of wrestling. Eric had been up front with me right from the start. He made it perfectly clear how he viewed my contribution to the company -- my job was to be the car crash, to be high-flying filler. But it wasn't until the nWo showed up that I truly began to feel like nothing more than cannon fodder.

 

Bischoff stopped acting real to me. Every time we spoke I felt like I was being manipulated and bullshitted, so eventually I decided not to talk to him anymore. I knew he was full of shit, so why waste my time with him?

 

I understood that it wasn't personal, that it was about business. Eric was under a lot of pressure from bosses and he had to make whatever business decisions he saw fit in order to deliver ratings. But it still bothered me. Guys like me and Chris and Rey Mysterio had done the grunt work that helped make the show a hit, and then we were pushed aside. In my mind, it felt like a big fuck you. From that moment on, I started to rebel. Fuck me? No, fuck you.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

See, that sounds to me like Eric Bischoff being the scapegoat for Eddie Guerrero not getting a main event level push. Guerrero went on WOL a couple of years ago and buried Hulk Hogan for holding him back, which I found to be a little easier to agree with.

 

Business is all about opportunity cost. What is the opportunity cost of pushing a relatively unknown and unproven guy who frankly looked low-rent at the time with his gear and mullet and didn't have the size becoming of a typical main eventer? It would have been potentially damaging high cost, big investment WCW main eventers that the Turner brass likely identified with. Honestly, I wouldn't have pushed Eddie Guerrero if I was Bischoff either. That wouldn't make me a terrible person or ungrateful, you've just got to do what you feel is best for business at the time, and then years later when things have panned out criticism like The Death of WCW using their 20/20 hindsight insinuate that Bischoff was stupid for not pushing a guy that became a star a half decade later.

 

Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho should have most certainly been pushed, Eddie Guerrero I'm not so sure about.

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

See, that sounds to me like Eric Bischoff being the scapegoat for Eddie Guerrero not getting a main event level push. Guerrero went on WOL a couple of years ago and buried Hulk Hogan for holding him back, which I found to be a little easier to agree with.

 

Business is all about opportunity cost. What is the opportunity cost of pushing a relatively unknown and unproven guy who frankly looked low-rent at the time with his gear and mullet and didn't have the size becoming of a typical main eventer? It would have been potentially damaging high cost, big investment WCW main eventers that the Turner brass likely identified with. Honestly, I wouldn't have pushed Eddie Guerrero if I was Bischoff either. That wouldn't make me a terrible person or ungrateful, you've just got to do what you feel is best for business at the time, and then years later when things have panned out criticism like The Death of WCW using their 20/20 hindsight insinuate that Bischoff was stupid for not pushing a guy that became a star a half decade later.

 

Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho should have most certainly been pushed, Eddie Guerrero I'm not so sure about.

You...do realize the great majority of main eventers have had very plain looks, right? I mean, Austin wore plain black trunks, black boots, and black knee pads, later braces when he was hot. Hogan was visibly balding and wore plain yellow or white trunks during his prime drawing years. Eddie may not have been built, and the world may have not been ready for his main event push, but to say his look was low rent is silly. I will say that Eddie would've looked odd in the WCW main event scene, among guys like Hogan and Giant and Nash and such, though. And I could be wrong, but he didn't seem to catch fire until the second Lie, Cheat, & Steal run. That could be blamed on WCW not giving him proper time, perhaps, but I don't know when he came up with some of his gimmick ideas. Bischoff not being honest with him sucks, though

[Guest East.Coast.J]

Austin didn't have a plain look. His look was so distinct that it spawned legions of goofballs shaving their heads and growing goatees. Hogan's look was straight up Billy Graham, which was about as atypical as you could get. Guerrero, before he got a makeover in WWE, just didn't look like a main event calibur guy. Of course that is in the eye of the beholder.

 

I wouldn't say that Eddie wouldn't have made it as a WCW main eventer, but WCW had no idea how to create and market a guy like Eddie Guerrero.

 

I definitely wouldn't have given him the push because without the benefit of hindsight, it just doesn't seem like that good of an idea.

 

Now Konnan, Konnan is a guy I really feel sorry for. Konnan was a thousand times more over in WCW than Eddie or Benoit or any of those glass ceiling guys were, and he had a legit chance of breaking out as a real main eventer with some cred in the Hispanic demos and with the fad audience, and a point was made to bury him at every opportunity possible.

[benn 0]

I tend to agree with East.Coast.J.

[Promoter 0]

East.Coast.J is right imo. Eddie in wcw in the persona he was in would not be a wise main event title run idea. A big reason why Eddie and Benoit's push to the top in 2004 worked and was accepted had to due with HHH holding the main event scene down for MONTHS and Brock finally getting into a groove as a heel champion. It didn't hurt either that fans did not want HBK or Angle as champions again. The wwe pulled the plug on their title reigns at the right time.

[Scroby 0]

I was reading the book and I got to the part where Bischoff was talking about how the buissness was changing and Verne Gagne was out of the touch with the changes because he was an old stubborn man who believed that the AWA would be fine if he kept running it the way he did.

 

After reading that, I thought about it and it sounded more and more like Vince McMahon today.

[FroGG_NeaL 0]

I tend to agree with East.Coast.J.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

Reason #239 why Bischoff rules:

 

I sent him an email telling him so much I was enjoying his book thus far, and within a few hours I had a nice, gracious email from Eric telling me how much he appreciated it.

 

What a great man!

[cabbageboy 0]

There's no way Konnan would have been taken seriously as a main eventer in WCW. He was over at one point with his Arriba La Raza shit, but he got stale with it real fast as well. Add to it that he wasn't any good in the ring in WCW.

[chaosrage 0]

See, that sounds to me like Eric Bischoff being the scapegoat for Eddie Guerrero not getting a main event level push.

 

I don't think that's what he expected. I think he just wanted to be treated like he mattered. And you can't tell me he shouldn't have been on a higher level than he was. He was an excellent heel and the crowds all hated him. He definitely deserved to be at least at the TV title or US title level. He was a lot more over than most of the guys feuding over those belts.

 

Here's another interesting page from his book.

 

The next night in Baltimore I was told I was going to drop the cruiserweight belt to Ultimo Dragon. He was about to get a major push in Japan, and they wanted him to come with a bunch of titles.

 

As of that afternoon, our match was scheduled to go thirteen minutes, a pretty good amount of time. A little later it was changed to eight minutes, still a reasonable length to have a good, exciting match that made us both look good. Next we were told, "Okay, you have eleven minutes."

 

"Well," I said. "That's better than eight minutes."

 

Finally Nitro started. I was standing in the gorilla position, getting ready to go out, when Terry Taylor tapped me on the shoulder. "Sorry, Eddie," he said, "you've got a minute and a half."

 

A minute and a half! That got me so hot! It showed me just how littled respect they had for the cruiserweight title. Terry thought I was angry about losing the title, but that wasn't the case. I didn't give a shit about losing the belt -- that's the business. When it's time to give it up, it's time to give it up. What I did care about was that I din't get the opportunity to go out and do it the right way.

 

I just felt manipulated. It wasn't just me -- the entire Cruiserweight Division was taken for granted. As I said, the attitude was, "Just go out there and get it done. We have nWo stuff to get to."

 

It was just that kind of bullshit that made me very unhappy in WCW. It reached the point where I decided that I didn't want to deal with it anymore.

 

Having made up my mind to leave WCW once and for all, I started felling better right away. The next week at Nitro I confronted Bischoff in his backstage office. "Eric, I feel like I was on fire and you guys just turned me off," I said. "I'm really unhappy here and I'd like for you to give me my release."

 

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when he got hot. "You motherfucker," he swore. "How can you be so damn ungrateful? After all I've done for you, you have the nerve to want out?"

 

Eric kept cussing at me, calling me all kinds of names. "Forget it," he said. "I'm not going to give you your release. And if you try and go anywhere else, I'll sue you for everything you've got."

 

I couldn't help being the smartass. "Go ahead!" I said. "I don't have anything!"

 

Man, he was pissed! Eric reached across his desk for his cup of coffee, but he was so angry and gitated that he hit it off the edge. It flew right at me, spilling all over my pants.

 

You'd think that would've snapped him out of his rage, but he just kept getting more and more aggressive. For a minute there, I thought it was going to come to blows. I was fully ready to knock him out. That's how heated it got. Fortunately, Bischoff knew better than to figut me. He just stormed out of there, cussing me as he slammed the door behind him.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

It's hard to speculate as to who would or wouldn't have made it as a WCW main eventer, because the fact was that WCW was so fucking bad at creating new stars and marketing them that who got the big push didn't really mean who achieved the success.

 

I think that Konnan had a great chance of getting over as a real main eventer in WCW. Konnan was half the reason the Wolfpac were so insanely over for a while. Whereas you had Kevin Nash and Lex (fucking) Luger walking around in skin tight black jeans and FUBU jerseys, Konnan was the guy who to me made the group legitimately cool and gave it a little bit of cred. The guy was as over as anyone for a while, he got huge reactions and he had the kind of signature fan-friendly spots in the ring that made him a WWE style main eventer if he was used properly. He could have been as big of a Hispanic draw as Eddie Guerrero if pushed properly as well. If the WWF would have had him in 1998, Konnan would have ended up a main eventer whether it was the companies plan or not. He's just an incredibly smart guy who understands the business as good as anyone I have ever listened to. Even now completely broken down he is the driving force behind the best act in the country.

 

I don't think that's what he expected. I think he just wanted to be treated like he mattered. And you can't tell me he shouldn't have been on a higher level than he was. He was an excellent heel and the crowds all hated him. He definitely deserved to be at least at the TV title or US title level. He was a lot more over than most of the guys feuding over those belts.

 

I definitely agree that he should have been used in a midcard capacity. The LWO thing was a pretty nice push I thought though. Those weird and mildly creepy mini-movies alone must have cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce.

 

It really just comes down to philosophical differences I suppose. What you or Chavo might see as Eric Bischoff not honoring Eddie Guerrero or appreciating him I see as a guy in Eric Bischoff with 300 wrestlers under his watch and a bunch of main eventers under million dollar contracts whining about everything just not having the time or energy to deal with one of dozens of lower card guys with chips on their shoulders. In a sane world, Eddie Guerrero's case would have been handled in a more diplomatic way, but WCW was such an organizational mess that I can completely understand why Bischoff didn't stop the world to pacify Eddie Guerrero when he had a thousand other problems that were frankly much more important and pressing at the time.

[cabbageboy 0]

As far as Konnan goes, let me put it this way. Pushing him to the top would be like pushing the Road Dog in 1998 to the main event. Sure, both guys were over but it was mostly due to a prematch spiel and had little to do with their actual wrestling ability and/or wins and losses.

 

Upon reading that Eddie/Bischoff confrontation, I have mixed feelings on it. Eddie had a point about feeling misused, but Bischoff also did give Eddie his first real national exposure and 6 figure deal. Part of it was probably due to Bischoff being under stress at that point, since the WWF was either right on their heels or had surpassed WCW.

 

Who is the bigger dumbass? Bischoff for misusing Eddie but refusing to release him, or Bill Busch for agreeing and releasing Eddie, Benoit, Saturn, and Malenko?

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

Am I the only one who thinks that if Bischoff and Eddy had come to blows in that story, that Bisch would have easily knocked him out? One guy was a fake fighter and the other has a black belt.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

You know, Bill Busch releasing The Radicals may be a little overrated historically. I mean Saturn and Malenko pretty much proved Bischoff and WCW right by being unable to move up any higher in the card in WWE than WCW, and when you really think about it Malenko and Saturn as individuals were used much better and much more prominantly in WCW.

 

Chris Benoit was given a huge boost in WWE, but really how much has impact did Chris Benoit ever really have on WWE business. He is a great upper card guy who the fans respect, and WCW lost a guy who brought class and athleticism to their product, but if Chris Benoit had stayed in WCW could he have turned the company around? Probably not, he just doesn't have the charisma to carry a company on his back.

 

WCW releasing Eddie Guerrero wasn't a huge mistake at the time either. Guerrero just looked completely out of place on WWE television at first, and he really floundered and wasn't that valuable to the company until years later.

 

I would probably argue that letting Chris Jericho go was more of a mistake than letting all four of the Radicals go. Chris Jericho could have carried WCW if they used him properly. But then again, with a Jimmy Hart written generic guitar-driven theme music and no spectacle to his entrance, I don't know if WCW could have made him the star in years that WWE made him in one night.

 

Comparing Konnan to Road Dogg is just insanity. There is a reason Konnan has been at the helm of two of the biggest boom periods in the history of Mexico. Just the promos he has cut in the last month as a part of LAX have been so real and so intense and so heated that they blow away whatever the crowning moment of The Road Dogg's career was. He may not have been great in the ring, but he was good enough, and that's all that really matters in this country at least.

[RonL21 0]

There's no way Konnan would have been taken seriously as a main eventer in WCW. He was over at one point with his Arriba La Raza shit, but he got stale with it real fast as well. Add to it that he wasn't any good in the ring in WCW.

I like Konnan...But seeing that Damn Music Video on Nitro Every week was just insanity...They would should in each hour and was I was like please spare me....The Disco Inferno parody was classic though....If someone would find those two videos would be damn near God in my book as they're hard to find...

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Eddie being pushed in WCW:

 

Eddie was more than qualified for a run as a strong upper midcard heel with a main even run in due course. He was tremendous in the ring at that point, and far more athletic due to his body not having broken down and not packing quite so much mass on. In-ring wise, he more than fit the bill. As for questioning whether he had the ‘ga ga’ down, all it would have taken is a look at his work in Mexico to show that Eddie had that down pat too. Heck, he showed it on the AAA PPV that WCW themselves promoted and helped run. Eddie had proven on a nightly basis that he was capable of being an excellent heel and working the crowd into a frenzy. His WWE heel persona was heavily influenced by what he learned, and had already shown he could do, in Mexico. If Eric Bischoff, WCW, or anyone in that company had had the foresight or willingness to look outside of their own world, they would have seen that Eddie had already shown that he had the talent, both in-ring and out, to show he deserved a shot at getting a serious heel push in WCW.

 

Comparing Konnan to Road Dogg:

 

Sorry, but Konnan is on another level to Road Dogg when it comes mic work and an ability to connect with the crowd. Konnan, while adept at turning a phrase, does not need, and never has needed, to rely on a catchphrase to get his point across or get over. Road Dogg, while no slouch on the mic, has never shown an ability to display the kind of fire and passion that Konnan has. Sure, he can be funny and amusing, of a sort, but when it comes to really coming across like he truly believes every word he says to generate heat, Konnan is so much better than Road Dogg that it’s not even close. Once again, take a look outside of America and what Konnan has done and continues to do in Mexico, and in TNA to lesser extent, and he shows on a tremendous ability to get his point across, get the crowd going and really make you believe he believes in everything he is saying. Road Dogg, while funny in small doses and quick on the mic, just does not have that ability. To be fair to him, though, very few people do have that ability, but Konnan has it.

 

And it doesn’t matter that he’s not that hot in the ring. What matters is that he can connect with the crowd, get them going, and get them into his match. Being hot in the ring is nice, but if you can’t connect with the crowd, then all you are is a guy doing moves that the crowd has no reason to care about.

 

The Radicalz leaving WCW:

 

This had a lot of long term impact on WCW. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn were the heart of WCW when it came to putting on a strong midcard. Whether the main event delivered or not, and it usually didn’t in WCW, with these four in the ring you at least, more often than not, had a solid to great undercard. While a PPV is typically sold on the strength of the main event, WCW fans were weaned on a strong undercard; WCW always did put more emphasis on the in-ring, which is something a lot of those who would take charge in WCW were unable or unwilling to grasp. And when WCW fans were buying PPV’s with substandard main events, either from a quality or storyline standpoint, they could at least be assured of getting up to four strong matches for their PPV dollars, and at least then you’d have a chance of bringing them back the next month. Without The Radicalz, WCW lost that, and it was the strong undercard that was one of the edges WCW had over the WWF, and losing that really did help drive off a lot of the die-hard WCW fans, who were willing to put up with a dire main event for a strong and entertaining undercard. Again, while the undercard doesn’t usually sell a PPV, when the majority of your PPV buys are from your hardest of the hardcore fans, you have to, at the very least, put a PPV on that will keep those people coming back, and the departure of The Radicalz left WCW unable to even do that.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Am I the only one who thinks that if Bischoff and Eddy had come to blows in that story, that Bisch would have easily knocked him out? One guy was a fake fighter and the other has a black belt.

I dunno. Didn't Eddie wrestle in high school? On top of that, he was raised "in the business", so I'm pretty sure he learned how to use "real" moves.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

Eddie being pushed in WCW:

 

Eddie was more than qualified for a run as a strong upper midcard heel with a main even run in due course. He was tremendous in the ring at that point, and far more athletic due to his body not having broken down and not packing quite so much mass on. In-ring wise, he more than fit the bill. As for questioning whether he had the ‘ga ga’ down, all it would have taken is a look at his work in Mexico to show that Eddie had that down pat too. Heck, he showed it on the AAA PPV that WCW themselves promoted and helped run. Eddie had proven on a nightly basis that he was capable of being an excellent heel and working the crowd into a frenzy. His WWE heel persona was heavily influenced by what he learned, and had already shown he could do, in Mexico. If Eric Bischoff, WCW, or anyone in that company had had the foresight or willingness to look outside of their own world, they would have seen that Eddie had already shown that he had the talent, both in-ring and out, to show he deserved a shot at getting a serious heel push in WCW.

 

I wouldn't argue that Eddie didn't deserve a shot, but there are always going to be a dozen guys qualified for a push at any given point. What happens is that people tend to look back years later once things have panned out and act like the promoter was a bonehead for not pushing a guy who became a star when there just wasn't enough slot to push everyone. If it was 1993 (?) WCW and I was calling the shots, I wouldn't have pushed Cactus Jack to the top at the time knowing what was known then. If it is the late 1990's and I am Eric Bischoff, I am going to make Booker T, Shane Douglas, Chris Kanyon, Raven, Billy Kidman, Rey Mysterio, Disco Inferno, Chris Benoit, Scott Steiner, Chris Jericho, Buff Bagwell, Perry Saturn and Norman Smiley my priority over Eddie Guerrero when handing out pushes in a television driven company. Eddie Guerrero's success in Mexico was all fine and good, but Scott Norton had big success in Japan so these things don't necessarily transfer across cultures all of the time in the eyes of those making decisions. Would Eddie have succeeded in a WCW environment? Who knows, but there were more logical choices when handing out pushes to me than Eddie.

 

I agree entirely with your words on Konnan.

 

This had a lot of long term impact on WCW. Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko and Perry Saturn were the heart of WCW when it came to putting on a strong midcard. Whether the main event delivered or not, and it usually didn’t in WCW, with these four in the ring you at least, more often than not, had a solid to great undercard. While a PPV is typically sold on the strength of the main event, WCW fans were weaned on a strong undercard; WCW always did put more emphasis on the in-ring, which is something a lot of those who would take charge in WCW were unable or unwilling to grasp. And when WCW fans were buying PPV’s with substandard main events, either from a quality or storyline standpoint, they could at least be assured of getting up to four strong matches for their PPV dollars, and at least then you’d have a chance of bringing them back the next month. Without The Radicalz, WCW lost that, and it was the strong undercard that was one of the edges WCW had over the WWF, and losing that really did help drive off a lot of the die-hard WCW fans, who were willing to put up with a dire main event for a strong and entertaining undercard. Again, while the undercard doesn’t usually sell a PPV, when the majority of your PPV buys are from your hardest of the hardcore fans, you have to, at the very least, put a PPV on that will keep those people coming back, and the departure of The Radicalz left WCW unable to even do that.

 

I think you somewhat overstate the importance of the Radicalz to WCW. Yes, they were a solid and crucial part of the midcard. I think that hardcore fans had a strong attachment to Dean Malenko and Chris Benoit as they were Horsemen and came across as old fashioned and hard working in the ring. Eddie Guerrero was completely interchangeable with most of the other higher statured luchadors to me personally at the time and my friends who I watched with. Perry Saturn was also completely interchangeable with Raven, Vampiro etc. WCW never lost their strong core of workers in the middle, because even when Jericho and the Radicalz left, they still always had Juvi and Psicosis and Blitzkrieg and Raven and Billy Kidman and Rey Mysterio and Three Count and Candido and Chavo etc. I think that the hardcore fans started leaving however when WCW stopped choosing to use their strong workers on pay-per-views and instead loaded the cards full of shit that nobody wanted to see.

 

Anyway, there is no right or wrong answer, but it's still an interesting debate.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Eddie Guerrero's success in Mexico was all fine and good, but Scott Norton had big success in Japan so these things don't necessarily transfer across cultures all of the time in the eyes of those making decisions. Would Eddie have succeeded in a WCW environment? Who knows, but there were more logical choices when handing out pushes to me than Eddie.

 

I think it's more than a little unfair to compare Eddie's obvious talents to Norton's obvious lack of talents. Not only that, Norton got over in Japan in large part because he was big and muscular and he had so many great workers to make him look good. In WCW, Norton was just another jacked up stiff and didn't exactly stand out from the crowd. It also didn't help that WCW, as with Eddie, did not or would not do what it would have taken to make the best of him. I will say without a single doubt that had WCW made the best of Eddie, he would have succeeded in WCW and would have been over huge. He got over to a degree on his own; during his feud with Rey in 1997 and when he was teaming with Jericho in 1998, albeit for only a few matches, he was able to get the crowd going with relative ease. Eddie was everything the core WCW fans loved; a tremendous in-ring talent who also had the intangibles like promo skills and charisma.

 

I think that the hardcore fans started leaving however when WCW stopped choosing to use their strong workers on pay-per-views and instead loaded the cards full of shit that nobody wanted to see.

 

The Radicalz leaving gave WCW four less strong workers to choose from, and not only that, four strong workers who could connect with the crowd.

 

Raven was long gone when The Radicalz left, as was Blitzkrieg who went from having a MOTY candidate in April of 1999 to almost disappearing from television in record time and leaving the company before the end of the year.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

The one big advantage that WCW always had over the WWF, even in their darkest days (with the sole exception of a brief period in 1991-1992) was that there roster was better than the WWF's roster, misused as it was. When the Radicalz left, WCW lost that. Now the WWF not only had more logical booking, better production values and better storylines, but they had the better wrestlers and matches as well, and what was left of the audience disappeared. Losing the Radicalz was pretty much the last breath of life going out of the company.

 

In addition to that, there was also the question of who was leaving. Chris Benoit wasn't just anybody, he was their World Champion! And he threw away the belt rather and went to the competition rather than stay with WCW and be champion. The was a huge blow to WCW's image. It is what Vince feared happening in 1997 that led to Montreal.

[Promoter 0]

The Radicalz jumping did create a big surge for the wwe. Don't forget the wwe was getting a bit stagnate where even Russo jumped ship. They help give the wwe something it had missed during the hey day of attitude and that was a solid midcard to go along with the upper card. They added immediately to the midcard with Jericho and Angle. The workrate got better for the wwe when they jumped and was one reason why they stayed ahead of wcw when Russo jumped and tried to make wcw more storyline driven to compare to the wwe. Russo was never good at workate stuff and the wwe took a different philosophy when he jumped to wcw with stuff like ironman matches between Rock and HHH.

[FroGG_NeaL 0]

Konnan could have been elevated to the Main Event when Nash turned on him.

 

That was on of the best turns I've seen, because of Konnan's selling and his promo to Nash.

 

If Big Kev would have worked a prorram with Konnan and put him over, he would have been in the Main Event scene, easy.

 

But Konnan lost most of his ability in the ring around that time. He actually used to be good to really good in the ring.

 

And dude owns the mic if he wants to.

 

As for Eddie, he should have gotten a new look and been put over in hs program with Flair.

 

Hell, Syxx got more out of his fued with Flair then Eddie did. That's fucked.

 

After Sting won the title from Hogan at Starcade, it should have been passed around to a couple of WCW guys before going back to the nWo.

 

Benoit could have had a title program in WCW similar to the one he got in WWE. Eddie might have been able to pull off a title run back then, but I don't know. He should have been at the top of the midcard with long ass runs with the US Title. Benoit, Raven, and DDP was awesome, but if Eddie was thrown in there to Lie, Cheat and Steal his way to some wins would have been ill.

 

And Scott norton is over in Japan because he's a big ass mofucker. They like that, they're Hoss marks.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like Norton to an extent, dude was a good tag wrestler. But that not the reason he's so over in Japan. The fact that he's a big fuckin' gaigan is the reason.

 

And if Eddie and Bischoff had fought, Eddie would have fucked dude's shit up. I know Bischoff is a Black belt and all that, but you can learn anything and still not be able to use it effectively.

[chaosrage 0]

It really just comes down to philosophical differences I suppose. What you or Chavo might see as Eric Bischoff not honoring Eddie Guerrero or appreciating him I see as a guy in Eric Bischoff with 300 wrestlers under his watch and a bunch of main eventers under million dollar contracts whining about everything just not having the time or energy to deal with one of dozens of lower card guys with chips on their shoulders.

 

All someone had to do was watch the show, look at the matches, and listen to the crowd reactions to see that Guerrero, Benoit, and Jericho should have been on a much higher level than they were. They stood out head and shoulders over a majority of those 300 wrestlers in both talent and response from the crowds. I mean, there were very loud "Eddy sucks" chants every week. Did Bischoff not watch his own show?

 

You know, Bill Busch releasing The Radicals may be a little overrated historically.

 

After Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko, and Saturn left, there was seriously like no reason to watch WCW. (Not to mention there was the little problem of Benoit being the world champion) It drove the nail into WCW's coffin. The ratings back me up on that. March 2000 was the first month WCW didn't get at least a 3.0 since the beginning of 1996. At the same time, the radicals helped the WWF reach it's best year in terms of profits.

 

Guerrero just looked completely out of place on WWE television at first, and he really floundered and wasn't that valuable to the company until years later.

 

How did he flounder? He received a push. He had a ton of mic time. He won the intercontinental title. And he was involved in one of the most memorable storylines of the year. The Chyna/Eddie storyline was pure gold. If you don't remember how incredible he was as a heel in 2000, I'll be happy to upload something.

 

If it is the late 1990's and I am Eric Bischoff, I am going to make Booker T, Shane Douglas, Chris Kanyon, Raven, Billy Kidman, Rey Mysterio, Disco Inferno, Chris Benoit, Scott Steiner, Chris Jericho, Buff Bagwell, Perry Saturn and Norman Smiley my priority over Eddie Guerrero when handing out pushes in a television driven company.

 

You would make Buff Bagwell, Billy Kidman, Norman Smiley, and Kanyon a priority for handing out pushes? If you were Eric Bischoff, would you be trying to put WCW out of business before Russo gets there or something?

[Guest East.Coast.J]

I would actually tend to disagree both on the positive impact that The Radicalz had on WWE business and the negative effect that they had on WCW business. WWE's business and WCW's business were really not all that connected at that point as WWE was gaining or trying to keep the fad audience and WCW was gaining no one and driving their loyal old school audience not to Vince, but away from wrestling in general. The Radicalz arriving in the WWF was certainly not the reason that 2000 was such a huge business year for the WWF, and in fact the pay-per-view headlined by Chris Benoit vs. The Rock and with an undercard filled out by Guerrero, Malenko and Saturn was the lowest buyrate of the year if I am not mistaken. The Radicalz would have maybe been important in swinging the momentum like Lex Luger did when he walked into the set of the first Nitro if the momentum wasn't completely in WWE's favor already.

 

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the Radicalz jump. I think it was a big deal, but I don't think it was the enormous landscape changing event that people make it out to be.

 

The downfall in WCW's ratings and their continuously shaky pay-per-view business I think are more cooincidentally related to the Radicalz departure than anything. I am sure some people stopped watching wrestling altogether when the Radicalz left WCW, but that was about the time when the title was ending up back on Sid and the product as a whole was just plummeting into a downward spiral that made some of the terrible stuff from previous months look like 1985 Mid-South.

 

How did he flounder? He received a push. He had a ton of mic time. He won the intercontinental title. And he was involved in one of the most memorable storylines of the year. The Chyna/Eddie storyline was pure gold. If you don't remember how incredible he was as a heel in 2000, I'll be happy to upload something.

 

The Chyna/Eddie stuff to me was just incredibly bad stuff. It was the first time Eddie was really getting a chance to hone his craft as a promo in a major American company and it was a pretty slow learning curve. He just screamed scuzzy midcard heel to me at that point, and I never thought that there was anything there during that period to suggest he would be a marketable main eventer. I don't think he really figured out how to work his character at that level until around the point that he defeated JBL for the Smackdown title, but of course that is purely opinion.

 

You would make Buff Bagwell, Billy Kidman, Norman Smiley, and Kanyon a priority for handing out pushes? If you were Eric Bischoff, would you be trying to put WCW out of business before Russo gets there or something?

 

Knowing what I knew in 1998 and 1999, I would have definitely given Chris Kanyon, Billy Kidman and Buff Bagwell a priority over Eddie Guerrero. Chris Kanyon is a guy who the WWE marketing machine could have made an enormous star out of, and who I would have tried everything I could with. Billy Kidman was a guy everyone thought could be a star at that point and he could have really played a part in turning the perception of WCW's uncoolness around, and Bagwell is a guy like Lex Luger in the 1980's where there is really no way to tell that he isn't going to pan out as a main eventer without trying and failing, because the signs were all there. Norman Smiley was crazy over in WCW at points, and if I was promoting the company I would have ran with it and tried to kind of add the fun aspect to the show that Too Cool and Rikishi did for a while with Smiley in that role. I would have given Eddie a bigger role, but nothing would have inidicated to me at the time that he was worth using a major main event push on.

[bob_barron 0]

Survivor Series 2000 drew the lowest buyrate that year, Fully Loaded did a 1.04 which was about what Judgment Day did.

 

Dean Malenko didn't work Fully Loaded, while Eddie v. Saturn was a match that was put together at the last minute. The other big matches were Triple H v. Jericho and Angle v. Taker

[Guest East.Coast.J]

Survivor Series 2000 drew the lowest buyrate that year, Fully Loaded did a 1.04 which was about what Judgment Day did.

 

Dean Malenko didn't work Fully Loaded, while Eddie v. Saturn was a match that was put together at the last minute. The other big matches were Triple H v. Jericho and Angle v. Taker

 

I stand corrected on Survivor Series. What I should have said was that a pay-per-view headlined by Chris Benoit was the second lowest WWF buyrate of the year. The point I was trying to make wasn't that Benoit wasn't a draw (because they hadn't even built him up yet), but that the Radicalz debut wasn't exactly something that effected business in any kind of major way. Nitpicking at the semantics of my point doesn't really change that either way.

[Hektik 0]

Am I the only one who thinks that if Bischoff and Eddy had come to blows in that story, that Bisch would have easily knocked him out? One guy was a fake fighter and the other has a black belt.

I dunno. Didn't Eddie wrestle in high school? On top of that, he was raised "in the business", so I'm pretty sure he learned how to use "real" moves.

Gory Guerrero was one of the best shooters in Mexico. Eddy was also a good enough wrestler that he was able to get a wrestling scholarship.

[Guest East.Coast.J]

I really don't know how well amateur wrestling would hold up in a standing street fight though.

 

With that said, of course I would still take Eddie Guerrero in a fight over Bischoff.

 

Lord knows what kind of street fighting experience Eddie Guerrero picked up fighting off pissed off Mexicans when he turned heel on the entire country in AAA.

[BUTT 0]

I think Meltzer's obit of Eddie said that Gory made his sons practice like 20 minutes of shoot wrestling before they practiced working.