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TORCH TALK DAILY with Eric Bischoff: Goldberg vs. Hogan title match on Nitro - "At the time, it seemed to be the right thing to do"
Nov 4, 2009 - 1:00:40 PM
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 four of the exclusive five-hour "Torch Talk" with former WCW President Eric Bischoff. This fourth part of the series picks up in the midst of a discussion about Bischoff's oft-criticized decision to put the first-ever Hulk Hogan vs. Goldberg match on free Nitro with just four day's notice. Part 4(a) of our daily Q&As will 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 4(a). Tune in tomorrow for the next series of Q&A's from part 4.
Wade Keller Why not make that decision three weeks earlier and build it up (Goldberg vs. Hogan) so that you drew a rating that would never be matched? I know your philosophy - and I think there's a lot of merit, for whatever my opinions were, to not telling people what's going to happen until they tune because then you have to tune in every week for fear of missing the biggest thing ever. And I get that. But Hogan-Goldberg, to me, was an outlier. That was something that you put three weeks of energy into. You don't take a phone call from Hogan on a Wednesday, announce it on Thunder on a Thursday, and run it on a Monday because Hogan - critics will say, and I'm one of them, because he's a master at self-preservation and a master at self-promotion, and it's good and bad for the promotion he works for - but in this case I think he wanted to be in front of a crowd of 30 or 40 thousand people, in front of all of the corporate suits on short notice, so he could take credit for what was clearly already on pace to be a huge ticket sales day.
Eric Bischoff: I think the ticket sales were already done.
Keller: I think they had a 20,000 advance when Hogan-Goldberg was announced and it ended up 35,000 paid, roughly speaking.
Bischoff: So assuming you may be right to a certain degree, you may be right a little bit, you may be right a lot; it's one of those things that I'd have to go back and call Hulk and say, "Hey, what in the hell were you thinking?" At the time, it seemed to be the right thing to do. At the time we were neck-in-neck, we were head-to-head, we see-sawed back and forth. At the time it fed into my kind of promotional formula and I gravitated toward spontaneous combustion, as I used to call it, creatively. It fit. It seemed like the right thing to do. Could we have gotten a bigger rating and gotten some kind of a record that everybody would have forgotten by now and wouldn't have changed the course of history? Sure. Who cares? It wouldn't have mattered.
Keller: I think there comes a point where if you stipulate to the fact that you could have done everything right and never made one mistake that WCW would have gone out of business, I still think as a lifelong fan and lifelong observer, somebody who enjoys following the industry and trends and ups and downs, it's still worth isolating some specifics and try to understand the decisions that were made and take a lesson from that or look at it differently. You were in the middle of it. So I love to get your perspective and kind of pin you down to the point so we learn something about the mindset that went into some of the decisions that are ridiculed or questioned or, in other ways, to just understand why a decision was made that people admire. That's what I'm trying to do when I bring up that specific situation because, I can tell you, if I ask people what do you want me to ask Bischoff about, that would be a top five question on most people's lists. "What were they thinking when they gave Hogan vs. Goldberg away!?"
Bischoff: Believe me, it's understandable, but again...
