Kemo
08-04-2016, 06:05 PM
Former WCW President Eric Bischoff feels his ideas from Monday Nitro still influence what we see on WWE television today.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated this week, Bischoff talked about the impact of what he did on some of WWE’s current ideas. He says WWE only embraced more of a “realty-based” approach to wrestling years after he did it. Bischoff says even though WWE may have done it better, he knows where it came from. Bischoff also took credit for RAW still airing live on Mondays.
“The fact there is a live show on Monday is a direct result of what I established and what I did to overcome them in the ratings,” Bischoff said. “They reluctantly brought in the cruiserweights they brought in the Rey Mysterios, the Chris Jerichos, the Dean Malenkos–that had that style of wrestling even though they didn’t brand them the way I did.”
Bischoff expanded on his point about the cruiserweights, explaining that he hired them to kick off the second hour of Nitro with some excitement. He also noted that he was the first one in wrestling to call them “cruiserweights,” because he thought it sounded cooler than “junior heavyweights” or “light heavyweights.”
“At that time, I had a three hour show from 8pm-11pm. It was easy to kick off the show hot, because we weren’t against the competition at that time, but to sustain a three hour show without a lot of diversity in our presentation was a real challenge. That’s why I wanted my cruiserweights to be live on television at exactly nine o’clock. We formatted our shows so that, at nine o’clock, we were in the heat of hard-hitting, fast-paced cruiserweight action, and it was so different from the WWE that it worked.”
You can read Bischoff’s entire interview here (http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/08/03/al-snow-eric-bischoff-wwe-cruiserweight-classic).
In an interview with Sports Illustrated this week, Bischoff talked about the impact of what he did on some of WWE’s current ideas. He says WWE only embraced more of a “realty-based” approach to wrestling years after he did it. Bischoff says even though WWE may have done it better, he knows where it came from. Bischoff also took credit for RAW still airing live on Mondays.
“The fact there is a live show on Monday is a direct result of what I established and what I did to overcome them in the ratings,” Bischoff said. “They reluctantly brought in the cruiserweights they brought in the Rey Mysterios, the Chris Jerichos, the Dean Malenkos–that had that style of wrestling even though they didn’t brand them the way I did.”
Bischoff expanded on his point about the cruiserweights, explaining that he hired them to kick off the second hour of Nitro with some excitement. He also noted that he was the first one in wrestling to call them “cruiserweights,” because he thought it sounded cooler than “junior heavyweights” or “light heavyweights.”
“At that time, I had a three hour show from 8pm-11pm. It was easy to kick off the show hot, because we weren’t against the competition at that time, but to sustain a three hour show without a lot of diversity in our presentation was a real challenge. That’s why I wanted my cruiserweights to be live on television at exactly nine o’clock. We formatted our shows so that, at nine o’clock, we were in the heat of hard-hitting, fast-paced cruiserweight action, and it was so different from the WWE that it worked.”
You can read Bischoff’s entire interview here (http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/08/03/al-snow-eric-bischoff-wwe-cruiserweight-classic).