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 Saturday for the next series of questions from Part 3.

Wade Keller: You had a couple things that were working really well (in WCW) where the next chapter everyone tuned in to see what it would be like. That's Sting in the rafters and Goldberg's winning streak. Those two things obviously come to mind. Were you more concerned philosophically about ending it too soon when maybe you had three or six or nine more months where you could do almost nothing other than just kind of tweak it and keep it rolling, or were you more concerned that it would go too long? Looking back, how did your mindset work week to week because there was a lot of repetition on Nitro for a while, but it was repetition where the people who tuned in every week wanted to see the next chapter, but the ratings were so high it was hard to justify moving to that next stage. Did you struggle with that week to week during the hot run?

Eric Bischoff: Of course you do, of course you do. There is a certain amount of "If it's not broke, don't fix it" that goes into it. There's a certain amount of okay, "We can only ride this horse so long before it breaks a leg and we're going to have to shoot it." You have to balance that. You kind of have to watch it on a weekly basis and you have to have a feel for it. You brought up Sting in the rafters. That thing went on for almost a year, I think. I don't know that we could have drug it out any longer. I think we dragged that thing out just about perfect, actually. I don't think we overdid it, I don't think we pulled the trigger prematurely. I think that was a classic that had never been seen before to my knowledge. I'm sure somebody who reads your stuff could prove me wrong, but in recent history nobody had ever built a story the way we had built that story before. It was compelling. I think if we would have tried to drag it out another three months or six months, people would have gagged on it.

Keller: Some already were. It's one of those things where at what point do you pull the trigger and then what is that next chapter. The Hogan-Sting and the follow up from it and the way everything was handled with Bret Hart coming in was one of the turning points from a creative standpoint that people point at.

Bischoff: But that was a whole different set of circumstances, but I think when I look back at the things we did really well and that were different - if you read my stuff, I often speak about the necessity that you're either going to be better than the competition, less than the competition, or different than the competition. Oftentimes if you focus on trying to be better, you're going to fall short, especially when you got the position I was in in 1994, 1995, 1996 - WWF was the incumbent, they had been around forever, the audience hands-down, they're number one. So for me to try to be better than number one, I'm always going to fall short. But my focus was to be different than number one, I was different than number one in every way that I could fit on a piece of paper. But by becoming different, the audience decided at least when they voted with their remote control that we were better, they preferred us. The other option is to be less, and throw in the towel and not even compete. I chose to be different. And I think one of the things that we did differently than the WWF that set the tone for the business and established our high water mark was the third guy. We didn't jump the gun and over-promote them. That was, like, the talk of the wrestling town for a long time. It was a phenomenal storyline. Part of it was timing and coincidence. Part of it was the confluence of the right talent at the right time, the right pay-per-view, all of those things fit together and it worked great. The other one that you pointed out was the Sting thing, the Goldberg wrestling streak. We really played some stuff out, but I don't know how we could have done it differently given at the time were in the trenches and feeding the machine that needed to be fed.

MORE TO COME SATURDAY ON THE DEATH OF WCW ...

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