On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff marked 30 years since Hog Wild 1996, where Hollywood Hogan won the WCW World Title and the nWo spray painted the big gold belt — a moment Bischoff says was never planned or approved. You can check out his comments below:
On where the idea came from:
“I’d have to talk to Kevin Nash. Obviously Kevin Sullivan I would love to talk to, if that were possible, maybe down the road. But my guess is that it was an improvisational moment. I don’t think it was a plan. It wasn’t a discussion that I had. I think it was just one of those things in the moment. Probably Kevin is the one that I would guess stirred it up and said, hey, spray the belt, tag it. I could hear him saying it — in my mind I could hear it. I’m guessing it was either a Scott Hall or Kevin Nash idea that got communicated to Hulk, and Hulk said, oh hell yeah, brother, because it’ll be a moment. And it was, and it still is to this day. It was brilliant, but I didn’t come up with it. I didn’t approve it in advance. I was just grateful for it when it happened, because it made sense. It was totally in line with the nWo story, with the characters we were trying to create, with the feeling of anarchy that we were shooting for — all of those things that helped make the nWo what it became. This was a perfect representation of that psychology, if you will.”
On the tagging becoming a signature:
“That’s exactly it. We did the same thing with a production truck, and I think that was spontaneous, because I guarantee you I wouldn’t have approved that — I know I would have had to pay to get it cleaned up. That was a spontaneous thing that just worked. Sometimes the best things in wrestling just happen. You like to think that all the really good stuff is planned out. Most of the time it is. But some of the best stuff happens in the spur of the moment. I think the tagging of the belt and the production truck — after a while it became, okay, this is what we do now. But tagging the belt like this, it was an improv moment that just resonated, and still does.”