During a recent episode of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff addressed plans he had for WCW if he and his partners were given the opportunity to purchase the company.
Bischoff specifically addressed changes he would have made to commentary.
Excerpts courtesy of Ringside News.
“Tony Schiavone. I have always liked and respected Tony. There were never any thoughts of firing Tony, but we did want-we knew that we needed to hit the refresh button in every way possible. We knew that we wanted to re-brand WCW and get as far away as how people had perceived WCW to be as possible as far as we could, which included the announcers. That would have included the look of the show and the location of the show and where we were going to produce the show. It would have included a lot of things including the announce team. It was going to be Joey Styles and Don Callis.”
Bischoff also revealed they planned to completely shut down the company for a time period of around three to six months before reintroducing it.
“We didn’t really focus on future creative. We talked about what talent we did keep and wanted to keep but there was so much work to do on re-branding, re-positioning the company that creative was really the last thing we needed to think about. The intention really when we were going to acquire the company was going to shut it down for a period of 3-6 months thinking that absence makes the heart grow fonder. We needed to build some anticipation. We had to make people anxious to see what the new, re-branded WCW was going to look like. You couldn’t do that by taking it off of television for a couple of weeks and then coming back. You had to be gone a long enough period of time to really build up anticipation and to market it properly. We were focused more on where we wanted to produce the show. How could we help reduce the cost of producing the show? What talent were we able to afford? Who did we want to keep? Rebuilding relationships with sponsors.”