On Monday, PWTorch editor Wade Keller interviewed former WCW President Eric Bischoff an exclusive multi-hour "Torch Talk" interview covering a variety of controversial subjects from the Monday Night War period, his days on WWE TV, his 2006 autobiography, and the "Rise & Fall of WCW" DVD.

The following is the fifth of our daily Q&As to be published here at PWTorch.com, which is unprecedented with our VIP-exclusive "Torch Talk" series.

To both READ and LISTEN to the entire interview, you'll want to become a VIP member, which also includes instant access to our newsmaking multi-hour in-depth hard-hitting "Torch Talks" with other top WCW players such as Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, X-Pac, Vince Russo, Ed Ferrara, Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and others (ALL AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK FOR VIP MEMBERS). To subscribe right now and be the first to read the entire Bischoff "Torch Talk" and have VIP-only access to the audio, click here. The first audio segment and transcript installment is now available for VIP members.

We present today's fifth question and answer. Tune in Sunday at noon Torch Time for the sixth question and answer.

Wade Keller: During your WWE run, you were strictly a performer, you were trying to mind your own business and that type of thing, but did you ever find yourself observing something where you felt you could help in terms of a big picture concept or to help spark business or tweak the direction of how things were going? Or were you really withdrawn and you were there to play a role and know your role and stick with it?

Eric Bischoff: That's a good question. I went into the WWE committing to myself because I am a passionate person - once I engage I fully engage, once I disengage, I fully disengage - there's very little in the middle with my personal life and professional life. It took a lot for me because of the unique circumstances and the history, it took a lot for me to go to WWE, it took a lot of soul searching on my behalf. I remember talking to Vince in 2002 or 2003, I don't even remember, I hung up the phone and said: Okay, I can do one of two things here. I can either let my ego take over and say I'll never work for Vince McMahon or I can look at my career and go, Okay, it didn't really end in WCW the way I wanted it to end. Arguably people would say it was my own fault, and others who have a more intimate understanding of what was really going on would realize a lot of it was, a lot of it wasn't. But in my event, my career in WCW ended on a sour note.

That call with WWE on a personal level gave me the opportunity to make two choices - either choose my ego and let that WCW as a period at the end of the sentence remain, or I could embrace the opportunity and go out and have fun and end my career, to a degree, not erasing anything, there's much of my career that I'm very proud of in WCW despite the revisionist history associated with it, but this was a way for me to go: You know what, I started out as a performer. If I'm going to end my career in wrestling, which I was prepared to do, it's been a long time, and I had other things going on that I was equally or more excited about, but if I'm going to end my career in this industry, why not end it on a positive note by doing something I know I'm reasonably good at on a big platform and doing it in a very positive way. And the only way I could achieve that, knowing myself, was to say, "Okay, do not think about what is going on creatively. Do not challenge it." This was in my own mind. "Don't challenge it, don't question it, don't commit emotionally to it. Because once I do that, then it's hard to extract myself from it. So I literally went in there thinking to myself, look, I'm a talent, I'm having a ball, I get to perform, I love performing, I'm making a great deal of money, I still get to do all of the other things I get to do, and I get to end my career more or less the way I want to and not the way somebody else wanted it to.

Keller: How many times did you just have a conversation with Vince McMahon that went beyond the immediacy of your character and what was going to happen on TV. Were there ever kind of talks that drew you into other areas?

MORE LATER THIS WEEKEND...

CLICK HERE FOR THE MOST RECENT BISCHOFF Q&A SNIPPET

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