On Monday, September 14, 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 latest installment of Part 3 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 latest question and answer from Part 3. Tune in Wednesday for the next series of questions from Part 3.

Wade Keller: The Goldberg phenomena happened and really caught fire after Raw had taken over in the ratings. I think people when we look back, we sometimes see a different picture or a memory tells us something different, but Goldberg got hot at least from a head-to-head East Coast ratings standpoint, Raw had taken the lead and was pretty consistent in winning it by then. My bias is coming through a little bit here, but I think as hot as Goldberg was, it seems like he was the one who had to carry a lot at a time when he was extremely limited on the microphone, extremely limited in the ring to the point where he had a rep for hurting guys, and that he was going to have to get to that next stage eventually where he had full-fledged pay-per-view main events, otherwise he'd have to destroy everybody else in the promotion - it seemed like that was part of what left WCW a little flat-footed was he got so hot, but it was almost unfortunate that somebody with his limitations had the type of expectations heaped on him by fans as kind of "WCW's Steve Austin" when he just wasn't going to be able to deliver at that level when that time logically in the storyline and booking occurred.

When looking back at how hot Goldberg was, do you look at that almost as a bigger negative wrapped around a positive, or a big positive wrapped around a negative in that he was one of the only fresh guys, but you were so limited in what you could do with him? Did that turn out to be kind of a negative as WCW was struggling to refind its way.

Eric Bischoff: In retrospect, of course. We knew when Goldberg - I'll assume your comment on the timing of his kind of rise and where WWE and WCW were at in terms of ratings because I don't remember -

Keller: I had to look it up, too. I'm with you.

Bischoff: You pay attention to those things and I don't, so I'll take your word for it. Assuming that is the case, look, when we found Goldberg, whenever that was, '95, '96, whatever it was, '97 and we ran him through training, we knew he was going to have a powerful character. Nobody can deny that. Bill Goldberg is a powerful character and persona. But, it takes a while to become a wrestler. We knew that there were only certain people we could put him in the ring with. His lack of experience - not ability, but experience - was the reason we came up with him in the record winning streak. I don't know who's idea it was; it probably wasn't my idea, it was somebody else's; I'll let them fighting over taking credit for it. But that creatively was born out of necessity; it wasn't born out of a choice. We had a powerful character. We needed to introduce the powerful character. And this new powerful character was very inexperienced and still learning the business. Now, in retrospect, 20/20 hindsight, you know, could we, should we, would we have done anything different? Yeah, maybe. Hard to put those glasses on right now and look back ten years and throw myself into that exact situation and figure out what I should have done differently, if I would have done anything differently. It's all timing. It's all just timing, and for whatever reason Goldberg's ascension worked. It worked! It was a hell of a character. If wouldn't have worked, Vince McMahon wouldn't have spent the money to bring him in. Vince McMahon saw the same thing in him that I saw in him and tried to position him the same way, so it's not that we were the only ones who didn't see the flaw in the formula here.

MORE TO COME ...

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