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 five of the exclusive five-hour "Torch Talk" with former WCW President Eric Bischoff. Part 5 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 latest question and answer from Part 5. Tune in next week for the next series of Q&A's from the Eric Bischoff Torch Talk.

Wade Keller: Back in the times when Flair thought he was disrespected (in WCW), what do you remember being your perception of Ric Flair? I think living through that, obviously you had a core base of fans in WCW who were from the old Ric Flair territory, the region where he was the king of wrestling and Hogan was kind of the enemy. A lot of fans perceived his value differently. Do you think looking back you saw him as the ratings draw and the potential star where he was in the same category as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, or did always maybe underestimate his value on a national basis?

Eric Bischoff: I don't think I weighed value the way people think I weighed value. I think I always looked at Flair as a key top guy, clearly. All you had to do was listen to the audience or look at the ratings. It wasn't Chinese physics figuring it out. But I think the perceived disconnect between the way I looked at Flair and the way I looked at Flair and the way I looked at Hogan had a lot more to do with the fact that Ric Flair had been in WCW a long time and when we brought Hogan in in '94 and '95 - which by the way Ric Flair was instrumental in doing, probably deserves as much credit as anybody for accomplishing - Hogan was new, Hogan was different, Hogan gave us the opportunity to bridge the gap between what has always been and what has never been, which was a different audience. We at WCW had never been successful at bridging that gap in the past, so there were a lot of resources - personal, mine, financial and creative - that were put behind maximizing that opportunity. And I think in the course of that process if you step back and didn't really understand the strategic approach and the long-term approach that I was trying achieve, it could have easily been perceived as, "Oh ho ho ho ha, well, now that Hogan is here, Eric Bischoff doesn't care about any of these other guys including Ric Flair. That wasn't true. What was true is that we were trying to make the most of something that was new that would allow us to take a step forward on a national level that up until that time the company had never been able to do. Under my control or anybody else's control, the company had always been perceived to be a Southeastern promotion, In order for us to be competitive, we had to change that perception. And some of that included putting more resources behind the new guy than the established guys. But that had nothing to do with how I valued ultimately in the long-run the individuals.

MORE TO COME TOMORROW WITH BISCHOFF DETAILING MORE OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH RIC FLAIR IN WCW...

CLICK HERE FOR THE MOST RECENT BISCHOFF Q&A SNIPPET FROM PART 5

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