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 Friday for the next series of questions from Part 3.

Wade Keller: I think he (Vince McMahon) probably hesitated to bring Goldberg in for as long as he did, and I think there were forces hesitant on the roster especially who had worked with him or heard about him, but it was a time when WWE was looking for a spark, and they were willing to take the negative with the positive. My whole question is that as fantastically successful as he was, and nobody would argue that his winning streak and his being a new face for WCW and on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, he was fantastic for chapter one and two of an ongoing story, but he was the only guy who after a few years of having some momentum was in a position to be a top-top guy. And so do you remember at that time or looking back at it now, do you wish you had done more as you were emerging and in the midst of that year and a half of phenomenal success where you had found a way somehow to get more people into the pipeline who would be ready to keep the product fresh come '99?

Eric Bischoff: That question requires an obvious answer. Just like Vince right now wishes he could find more top talent to plug into his pipeline, when was the last real legitimate star - other than C.M. Punk, whom in my opinion is phenomenal after watching the guy, the only new character I can literally watch for any length of time - in the last three years, four years, who is it? When you have a machine like WCW had at the time and WWE currently has, it's great to say we need to create new stars. You can't just process them like doughnuts. It takes a long time. The wrestling audience doesn't accept a wrestling character for a long time. It takes ten years.

Steve Austin was "Stunning" Steve Austin and whatever the hell he was in his previous incarnations. He had been around the business for 15 years before he got over, 12 years before the audience went, "Yeah, that's the one we like." You can't just crank them out because you want to. Of course, I'd love to, I wish we could have figured out and gotten so much more out of Goldberg if we had just done this differently or that differently and timing would have been different, but I would have won the lottery too if I would have just known when to go into that 7-Eleven and buy it. You can't really go back in time like that. You don't have the luxury when you're doing it to have all of the perspective that you can gain ten years down the road. You're in the trenches, you're fighting the fight, you're doing what you need to do, you're feeding the machine that needs to be fed at the time. Sure, looking back there are a million things I'd have liked to have done differently, but you don't have the luxury when you're in there doing it.

MORE TO COME...

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