On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff revisited the moment Hulk Hogan first teased a fourth and fifth member of the nWo on Nitro, and drew a distinction between the criticism he accepts and the criticism he doesn’t. You can check out his comments below:
On whether there was ever a target number:
“It evolved week to week. Nothing about the growth of the nWo was planned, because nobody had any idea what was going to happen with it. We hoped, but we didn’t know anything. It became clear, like within a week or two, that holy smokes, we’ve got lightning in a bottle here. How do we grow it?”
On the criticism he rejects:
“I know a lot of my critics, and basically morons who don’t really understand how to build an audience and how to build a brand, were critical of growing it too soon. Let me just say — growing it too soon wasn’t an issue. Growing it too big ultimately was. But in this case, growing it too soon was not.”
On why Sean Waltman fit:
“There was a lot of thought given to Sean Waltman. One of it was just opportunistic. Sean Waltman lived two doors down from me in North Minneapolis on Vincent Avenue for a minute. I had not worked with him at the time, but I had known of Sean Waltman going way back to my days in AWA, and certainly became a fan of his as the 1-2-3 Kid, because I loved the style that he brought to the table. It was very unique at that time. He used a lot of karate kicks, martial arts, whatever you want to call it, and he did his kicks very well. They didn’t look like TV kicks. They were real techniques, executed really, really well.”
On what the group was missing:
“Because he was smaller, he could fly. Hogan wasn’t going to fly. Nash isn’t going to fly. You need somebody on the other side of the equation that’s going to fly and bump and sell. And Sean Waltman was perfect for that. He could be as overselling for somebody as he was going over somebody. So he was an important part of the equation. I just thought, visually and dynamically in terms of what matches could look like, that Sean was a really opportunistic piece of the puzzle.”
