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 first installment of Part 3(b) 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 first question and answer from Part 3(b). Tune in Wednesday for the next series of questions from Part 3(b).

Wade Keller: From a creative standpoint, I think you've acknowledged in different contexts that it went off the rails. I know you're not able to sit here and tell me the year and the date, but there were problems with Kevin Nash's run as booker preceding Russo and Ferrara coming in, and you being sent home, repositioned, re-signing, when you were removed from your position and no longer day-to-day running WCW, how much of the blame do you take for letting the inmates run the asylum, so to speak, to let the booking decisions that were made that really hurt the profitability and characters occur. There has been a book written about the unmistakable blunders that are occasionally subjective but mostly objectively self-destructive.

Eric Bischoff: Again, I think for us to have a meaningful conversation about this, we'd have to go back and look at what time specifically are we looking at, what is the creative blunder you're referencing for me to be able to discuss the how and the why and the when. Ironically, Friday was [September] 10th. Friday, [September] 10th, 1999 was the day Harvey Schiller called me into his office and said, "Eric, you just need to go home." I still had two-and-a-half years on my deal. They couldn't fire me, really, and by the way, I don't think Harvey wanted to fire me. I think Harvey saw what was going on internally and he was just as much caught in the crossfire of the politics of AOL/Time-Warner as I was. His suggestion was to go home, sit this one out for a little while, ships gonna change, believe me. So it was Friday, September 10, 1999 that I literally jumped into my airplane and flew out to Wyoming and I spent the next three weeks fly fishing by myself.

Up until that time - and mind you, going back to what we talked about earlier, from July of '98 is when the pressure and the real internal changes within Turner began to occur, and they started a year previous to me just basically committing career-suicide, which is what I did, because I didn't know. I had no idea, just like Ted Turner had no idea what was going on internally, he had no idea that he was standing on a carpet that was about to get pulled out from underneath him, and certainly neither did I. But my approach to the changes that were being forced upon me that I was resisting every way I possibly could was the same thing that I had done previously; when I needed to, I'd get loud, I'd get vocal, I'd get aggressive, and there would be a meeting, and I would lay out my case, and whoever was opposing me would lay out their case, and 99 times out of 100 I would win. And that was kind of what I had been doing from July of '98 up until probably July or August of '99. By July or August of '99 I was ready to quit. I had had it. I had told Bill Busch two nights before that I just can't do this anymore, I'm going to turn in my resignation. Well, Bill Busch immediately called Vickie Miller, who was head of finance at Turner at the time and cried wolf and laid everything out because he wanted to feather his own nest. Vickie Miller called Harvey Schiller and said, "You gotta pull the plug on Eric, we need to make a chance." They knew I was going. So any of the things that occurred creatively during that period of time happened during duress to an extent. Were some of them stupid? Sure they were, just like Katie Vick was stupid. A lot of times you come up with ideas that you think are good ideas at the time that just suck, they just suck. We certainly did, just like we see things now on WWE that are lame, they suck, it's stupid. But at that time we were doing the best we can with what we could and the resources we had. A lot of my energy and focus was geared toward trying to regain control of a company that a year previously we had begun to lose control over internally. I was fighting a battle that couldn't be won, not knowing that of course. I wish I had the experience then that I had now. It would have possibly been a different outcome. It is what it is.

MORE TO COME...

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