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View Full Version : Eric Bischoff Reflects On The NWO’s 25th Anniversary



Kemo
07-07-2021, 03:09 PM
:nwo:

Bash at the Beach 96 took place 25 years ago today on July 7th, 1996. Hulk Hogan was revealed as the Outsiders’ 3rd man and the New World Order was born. Eric Bischoff recently spoke to TSN, the station which aired WCW Nitro in Canada, and reflected on the faction’s 25th anniversary.

“I think the NWO, in the storyline, in the presentation of the NWO, presentation of the characters in the NWO really changed the industry probably more than anything since Vince McMahon went from being a regional territory under his father to becoming a worldwide territory and really changed wrestling back in the ‘80s,” Bischoff said to TSN.ca.

“But I think other than Vince McMahon really going national and international with the WWE product, I don’t think anything has had more of an impact on the profession wrestling industry than the NWO and all of the things that came with it.”

Happy 25 years of setting the standard. Most importantly happy 25th to the NWO Nation for being there the entire trip and passing it on to your family and children. One love……NWO 4 Life. Wear your colors and show our numbers.

— Kevin Nash (@RealKevinNash) July 7, 2021

Bischoff would continue to dispel the belief that the NWO angle was taken from the NJPW vs UWFi angle in Japan.

“To this day, I’ve never spent 10 seconds watching any of that,” Bischoff said of the angle. “I was completely unaware of it. It is a narrative that, I think, was created by a bunch of cosplay wrestling journalists, who tried to frame the NWO in that story in a way that suggested it was a derivative of something else and it was not original.”

Bischoff would continue to talk about what went into convincing Hogan to turn heel. The former WCW President would say that he spoke to Hogan about turning heel months before the NWO storyline was even an idea. Hogan was not receptive to the idea.

“I had a conversation with Hulk about eight months prior to Scott Hall and Kevin Nash coming in, where I suggested to Hulk that, perhaps, he might consider turning heel and doing a 100 per-cent overhaul of the character,” Bischoff said. “That was eight months prior, like I said, to Scott Hall even reaching out to me or the idea of the NWO even beginning to form in my head and I was summarily escorted out of his home. He did it very elegantly, I might add. He wasn’t mean or aggressive about it, but nonetheless, he made it clear to me that he had no interest in turning heel.”