On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff looked back at the stacked August 1996 Nitro card and answered the criticism WCW faced at the time for putting pay-per-view calibre matches on free television. You can check out his comments below:
On the card:
“You see, only the last third of the card was really that loaded. Last half, maybe.”
On the distinction he draws:
“Yes and no. We had four pay-per-view potential matches on free TV, meaning we had the star power. But those appearances advanced the story, they didn’t culminate it. There was a reason for those matches. We could put those matches on TV because we were able to tell stories, and we came up with finishes that lent themselves to that. At least in the main event case, we always attempted to leave with a cliffhanger, and we were successful at it. While we were knocking it out of the park every Monday — we lost sight of that towards the end, amongst other things. But that was one of the controversial things about Nitro.”
On the critics at the time:
“That’s where your buddy Dave Meltzer and others of his ilk said this will never last. You can’t put pay-per-view quality matches on TV. The pay-per-view business will die, it’s the only place WCW makes any money. Again, opinions from people that don’t have any idea of how things really work or could work. That was one of the biggest criticisms, but I think it was also one of the smartest things that we did, because it proved that this is a television-driven business, not a live event mentality-driven business.”
On the format change:
“Nitro completely turned the format, the recipe, the ingredients of professional wrestling completely upside down, inverted it in many respects. And it was that inversion, disruption if you want to call it that, because that’s the buzzword — but it was that inversion of the formula and recreation of the formula that catapulted the Attitude Era. It catapulted the Monday Night War era. Other than the initial expansion in the ’80s of WWE nationally, it catapulted the industry to a level of growth over a period of time that probably will never be seen again.”
On why he thinks WWE owes it:
“I think it’s largely responsible for the reason that WWE, to the extent that it exists today, exists. Because that format back in 1996 forced WWE to change the way they did television and follow our format.”
On the “heel referee” idea and who came up with it:
“I don’t remember, but I would feel comfortable betting a significant sum of money that it was Kevin Sullivan. Now it could have been Terry Taylor, but I would bet on Kevin Sullivan. I wasn’t close to Nick. I’d see him at TV and he was busy — he had a lot to remember and go over, listening to guys lay out their matches and change it 45 times in an afternoon. His plate was pretty full whenever he showed up at television, and I was a little busy myself. But Nick was close to Kevin, I believe. That’s where it started, I’m sure, and I’d be shocked if it wasn’t Kevin. That was the catalyst, really.”