Eric Bischoff

Eric Bischoff (born May 27, 1955) is a performer for World Wrestling Entertainment. He is the former president of World Championship Wrestling (WCW).

Bischoff's main duty in WCW was to dictate the overall direction of the promotion. Bischoff's job was to do most of the booking, oversee day to day operations, sign wrestlers, and negotiate contracts. He in essence, mostly had all the same powers of his long time rival Vince McMahon has had in WWE. The main difference between Eric Bischoff and Vince McMahon is that unlike McMahon, whose family controls his promotion, Bischoff could be fired at any time.

He started his career in professional wrestling as an announcer in the 1980s for the American Wrestling Association. When Bischoff first joined the AWA, he duties were to get coffee, run errands, and actually mow Verne Gagne's lawn. As a result of Bischoff's work Gagne promoted him to be an announcer and eventually gave him power of the company before its close.

While the AWA was under Bischoff's control in 1990, he created the infamous Team Challenge Series angle. The Team Challenge series was so poorly received that they had to start filming in a studio without a crowd.

When that group folded in 1991, he joined WCW as an executive and as an announcer. Eric Bischoff made his WCW announcing debut at the 1991 Great American Bash.

After Bill Watts abruptly quit or was fired by the Turner Broadcasting (the owners of WCW at the time) in 1993, Eric Bischoff went to them and asked for the job of Vice President of WCW.

Bischoff wanted to get WCW out of the so-called small, grungy, southern, dimly lit arenas. Instead, Bischoff felt that it would be a great opporunity to co-brand WCW with the Disney/MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida.

Bischoff was responsible for signing away many of the then-WWF's biggest names such as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and many others. At first, Bischoff was mainly just a puppet for the bigger WTBS executives and ran the company by using as little money as they could. When that didn't work out Bischoff went on a spending spree by signing Hulk Hogan in 1994 and much more talent from WWF soon afterwards.

Bischoff's main goal was to turn WCW around and make it profitable for the first time under Turner Broadcasting's ownership. Bischoff tried to solve WCW's initial financial woes by cutting costs as best as possible, becoming more efficient in television production, and producing more pay-per-views (first 7 a year, then 10, and then once a month).

In 1995, Bischoff along with Ted Turner created Monday Nitro. During a meeting with Turner and Scott Sassa, Turner asked Bischoff about how could they possibly compete with WWE. Bischoff, who was caught off guard, told Turner to put WCW on prime time. At the time, the flagship show for WCW was WCW Saturday Night, which aired at 6:05 p.m. on the East Coast. Turner then turned to Scott Sassa and told Sassa to give Bischoff a two hour, prime time slot every Monday on TNT.

Just like Vince McMahon cast himself in the on-camera role of a play-by-play announcer, Eric Bischoff did the same thing in the early days of Nitro. Since Nitro was broadcast live and McMahon's Monday Night RAW was taped, Bischoff jumped on the chance to give away RAW's results. Bischoff didn't care if anybody felt that him giving away the competitions' results was not "ethical." Bischoff claimed that was all about business and that it didn't matter to him since he never intended on going to WWE anyway. Bischoff also insisted on getting a leg up on RAW by starting Nitro at 7:57 p.m. Eastern Time and ending at approximately five minutes after the RAW went off of the the air for the night.

He also was responsible for the groundbreaking WCW vs. nWo Feud, making WCW the most-watched wrestling promotion in North America. Because of this, in 1997, WCW created a title of President of WCW, just for him.

However, due to repetitive storylines and sharp decline of business, Bischoff was removed from power in 1999. One of Bischoff's creative strategies was to use "on the fly" booking. This means that that the matches booked are not decided until the night of the television show. Usually for pay-per-views the finishes are not decided until the night of the show. Bischoff resorted to the "on the fly booking" because WCW's roster was so big at the time it was very easy to use it rather than taking up time to plan out the card. But using "on the fly" booking over and over can arguably begin to grow old. Frequent usage of "on the fly" also creates a problem if you want to establish proper continuity from show to show.

He came back into power April 2000 to try to revitalize business, but it was to no avail. After a few months of working with Vince Russo, Bischoff left because he felt he wasn't given enough power; Russo subsequently took control of all the bookings.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of investors called Fusient Media Ventures motioned to buy WCW, but couldn't get a deal in place.

In 2002, Bischoff, despite years of bad blood, was hired by WWE to be the on-air general manager of RAW, a role he has played to this day with his characteristic brand of smarminess. His executive days may be over, but Bischoff will be around the business for a while.

Eric Bischoff on-screen

Eric Bischoff was the WCW President/announcer until 1996, playing the role of a fan-favorite. He eventually became involved with the nWo, a stable consisting of former (high-profile) WWF performers. Bischoff's on-screen role contrasted with the morals of the nWo, leading the rule-breaking entity to "powerbombing" Bischoff off-stage. Surprisingly, in October, Eric Bischoff joined the nWo, thus giving them considerable power. Since then, Eric Bischoff has remained an arrogant heel authority figure, which he played until December 2004.

At Taboo Tuesday 2004, after his loss and subsequent head-shaving to "nephew" Eugene, Eric Bischoff got angry at Evolution for not watching his back--coincidentally, his character's role helped them several times before. Since then, he has shown hints of turning face.

His new look first featured the short white/grey hair and stubbled beard. (Note: Bischoff looked somewhat like this once before, in WCW, after losing a "Loser gets head shaved" match against David Flair, son of the legendary Ric Flair). Since then, he has kept the grey hair but is now clean-shaven.

Championships/Awards

• Even though Eric is not a wrestler, he won the WCW Hardcore Championship on June 5, 2000 from Terry Funk with help from Funk's enemies. He gave the title to Big Vito and Johnny Stambolli two days later.

• Eric was part of two Pro Wrestling Illustrated Awards for Feud of the Year. In 1996, the feud that won was Bischoff vs. Vince McMahon and the 2002 winner was Bischoff vs. Stephanie McMahon.