Professional wresting was at its apex during the famed "Monday Night Wars" between WWE's "Monday Night Raw" and WCW's "Monday Nitro" from September 1995 until March 2001, when WWE acquired WCW. That arguably ended the hottest time period in the history of sports entertainment.
The man who led the charge for World Championship Wrestling for the majority of its run was Eric Bischoff. From 1994 until September 1999, Bischoff was WCW's Executive Vice President, later becoming the President of the Ted Turner-owned company. There, he signed the likes of Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage and "Rowdy Rowdy" Piper away from the WWE to help give the company the much-needed notoriety needed to help them become the dominant force of the pro-wrestling landscape. That vision reached a full fruition when Hogan turned heel in July 1996 for the first time since the birth of "Hulkamania." He formed the NWO with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash and for 83 weeks, WCW beat WWE in the ratings.
That reign of "83 Weeks" would later become the name of Bischoff's new podcast, which has regularly come in as the No. 1 or 2 wrestling podcast since debuting four months ago.
"I’m very happy with our success, but I’m more concerned about the long run," Bischoff told Sporting News ahead of his appearance at this weekend's Starrcast convention, in which he will be doing a "Monday Night Wars" debate on Thursday, "A Death of WCW Panel" on Saturday and a series of meet and greets. "It’s one thing to have a hot podcast for three, four months or up to a year. The challenge for me now being an entrepreneur is looking forward. What are we going to do to keep topping ourselves? What do we do when people get tired of what happened in 1996, 1997, 1998 or 1999? At some point, there’s got to be something else that we deliver to the audience if we want to have legs for the long run."
In the aftermath of WCW, Bischoff went on to WWE from July 2002 - November 2005 and served as the Raw General Manager. He also had a stay in Impact Wrestling from 2010-2014. Bischoff went the podcast route a couple times, but those endeavors didn't wind up working out until about a year ago when he met popular podcast wrestling host Conrad Thompson. Thompson's "Something to Wrestle About" with former WWE executive Bruce Prichard and "What Happened When" with former WWE and WCW announcer Tony Schiavone stand as the top wrestling podcast and one of the most downloaded sports podcasts, respectively. Thompson was interested in doing a podcast about the "Monday Night Wars," but with a WCW spin to it. That's where Bischoff came into play.
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Bischoff wasn't sure an audience would listen to old stories about what happened during that time frame since it had been done ad nauseam. But Thompson convinced him it would be different. So, Bischoff agreed to do it and the podcast named for how long his company beat Vince McMahon in the ratings debuted on Apr. 30, with a new episode airing late Sunday nights/early Monday mornings.
"I was hesitant (doing the podcast)," Bischoff admitted to SN. "I wanted to do the podcast because I knew from a chemistry perspective that we would deliver. I knew the potential was really there just because of our personalities. Conrad is a very strong personality and a very smart guy. I can be a very strong personality and can be very confrontational. When you put two people like that, sparks are going to fly, bombs are going to go off and things are going to happen. I was looking forward to that."
He added: "What I was a little bit concerned about was the broader aspect of the 'Monday Night Wars' has been done to death. People have been talking about it since it happened. Books have even been done about it. All that narrative has been out there for almost 20 years. It got to the point when me and Conrad were talking about doing this ... 'Do people really want to hear about this one more time?' (Laughs) I’ve probably done a 1,000 interviews about the 'Monday Night Wars' and how 'Nitro' was made. But Conrad convinced me that the audience was still there for it, if it was presented in a different way that would be entertaining and the audience would be there. Credit to Conrad because he was absolutely right."
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"83 Weeks" has done very well in the four months it has been airing. Regularly, it's the first or second wrestling podcast in the world with over 100,000 downloads a week and the top podcast on Westwood One, according to Bischoff. While he is enjoying the momentum the podcast has garnered in a short amount of time, the 63-year-old is now looking towards its sustainability.
