Kemo
07-25-2018, 09:32 PM
In a recent edition of Eric Bischoff’s podcast with Conrad Thompson, 83 Weeks, the former WCW President explained the decision behind breaking up The Hollywood Blondes in WCW. Bischoff admitted that it was more of a financial decision than a booking one, as Steve Austin and Brian Pillman were pulling in too much on their own:
“What had happened with Brian [Pillman] and Steve [Austin] wasn’t so much of a booking decision about them being together as a tag team as it was a financial decision,” Bischoff said. “I could tell you this for sure — later on, when I did have creative control over wrestling operations around 1994-1995 I was not a big fan of tag team wrestling. Not because I didn’t enjoy watching it as a fan, but from an economic point of view.
“If you look at a tag team, and each one of them is breaking close to $200,000 a year and they are in the ring with those of equal value, now you have a million dollars worth of talent for a seven or eight-minute segment, so from an economic point of view to have two high profile guys in a tag team match and you start looking at the economics of it, you look at it like, wait a minute, I can have two separate stories here at two separate segments to fill my content requirements with for the same amount of money that I am spending on one.”
Bischoff also explained that The Hollywood Blondes would’ve needed opponents on their level, but that would’ve been too costly to maintain:
“To have equal value or status with guys like Steve Austin and Brian Pillman at the time, you had to have other high-dollar guys with to tell stories with. Being limited in what you can do in singles matches and your storytelling for all of the content that you had to fill and put a real premium price tag on the talent that was involved in a six or seven-minute match, or one match for a pay per view.
“So it just didn’t make economic sense, which was the reason, from what I can remember early on was that if we can’t afford it we can’t afford it. Let’s get a two for one here. If we have two great guys with lots of talent it made a lot more sense from a business point of view for them to be singles then for them to be a tag team.”
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“What had happened with Brian [Pillman] and Steve [Austin] wasn’t so much of a booking decision about them being together as a tag team as it was a financial decision,” Bischoff said. “I could tell you this for sure — later on, when I did have creative control over wrestling operations around 1994-1995 I was not a big fan of tag team wrestling. Not because I didn’t enjoy watching it as a fan, but from an economic point of view.
“If you look at a tag team, and each one of them is breaking close to $200,000 a year and they are in the ring with those of equal value, now you have a million dollars worth of talent for a seven or eight-minute segment, so from an economic point of view to have two high profile guys in a tag team match and you start looking at the economics of it, you look at it like, wait a minute, I can have two separate stories here at two separate segments to fill my content requirements with for the same amount of money that I am spending on one.”
Bischoff also explained that The Hollywood Blondes would’ve needed opponents on their level, but that would’ve been too costly to maintain:
“To have equal value or status with guys like Steve Austin and Brian Pillman at the time, you had to have other high-dollar guys with to tell stories with. Being limited in what you can do in singles matches and your storytelling for all of the content that you had to fill and put a real premium price tag on the talent that was involved in a six or seven-minute match, or one match for a pay per view.
“So it just didn’t make economic sense, which was the reason, from what I can remember early on was that if we can’t afford it we can’t afford it. Let’s get a two for one here. If we have two great guys with lots of talent it made a lot more sense from a business point of view for them to be singles then for them to be a tag team.”
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