Eric Bischoff Early Stories Access -- WCW in Canada, AEW, WWE, more

Note: we ask that these not be aggregated until the interview's full release on Friday. This is a collection of stories from the upcoming interview

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Eric Bischoff talks about bringing WCW to Canada.

Throughout the company's thirteen year existence, World Championship Wrestling only visited Canada on a handful of occasions. Meanwhile in today's wrestling world, companies like WWE and AEW seemingly make a priority to visit the country multiple times per year.

In a new exclusive interview with Fightful, Bischoff noted that bringing WCW to Canada was really expensive and difficult to pull off.

"What was it like? It was freaking expensive. Doing business in Canada is really, really difficult. I think it’s great. I’m not being negative. But they have very strict immigration process and some of our talent had DUI’s—driving under the influence—and things like that on their record. They just couldn’t get into the country. So not only do you have talent that has some of that in their background, you’ve got production staff and people like that that had a hard time getting into the country. You had to deal with the Athletic Commission. It’s just very difficult. Canada makes it very difficult for producers other than Canadians producers to produce television in Canada. I  understand it and I think it’s great, but when we want to do business in Canada, we have to pay the price."

WWE is set to host a premium live event in Canada in 2023, as the company currently plans to host the Elimination Chamber event in February 2023. This will mark the first time that WWE has held a premium live event in the country since August 2019, when they hosted SummerSlam from the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.

Elsewhere in the interview, Eric Bischoff gave his opinion on WWE catering. To learn more, click here.

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Eric Bischoff makes a claim about WWE's catering.

Many wrestling promotions around the world will host catering for their talents during their events. There have been plenty of wrestlers that have publicly criticized catering from some companies, while other wrestlers have commonly praised catering from other promotions. Regardless, catering is, weirdly enough, one of the most popular talking points in the wrestling community.

In a new interview with Fightful, Eric Bischoff revealed that he thinks that WWE has good catering.

"I’m in catering. I’ve already eaten. That whole thing about catering is just nonsense. The rumor is that when I was in WWE, all I ever did was sit in catering. But I will admit WWE did have good catering. However, the catering here, I ain’t shitting you guys, the catering here is pretty good. The barbecue chicken is the bomb. It is the bomb, and that pasta? C’mon now. The vegetables taste more like vegetables than any vegetables I’ve had in a long time. The catering is excellent."

Elsewhere in the interview, Bischoff was asked why he does regularly does independent wrestling events. 'ATM Eric' went on to explain why, noting that he still likes to make an impact on people's life.

"I’ve got a book coming out called Grateful and I talk about that very question in the book. I’ll be honest with you, there was a point in time doing events like this was just not something I was interested in doing. But I did a few and in the process of doing a few shows several years ago, I had people coming up and telling me stories about how wrestling was the thing that brought them together with their parents—their mom, their dad, their brother, their sisters or uncles, whatever—and when you hear stories about how much of an impact wrestling has had on people’s lives and you hear it over and over and over again, it changed the way I looked at going to events. I don’t want to sound like I’m putting myself over, but when you have a chance to meet people and have a big impact on their life, and make them feel better, sometimes better about themselves or just feel important, that’s a blessing. So now I just look at it in a different way and I enjoy doing it."

Bischoff also reflected on his age and how it's a blessing to keep doing what he's doing at his age.

"Think about that, too. I’m 67 years old. I’ll be 68 next spring. I still get to go out a couple times a month and do what I’m doing. Again, not to sound overly spiritually, but that’s a hell of a blessing. Like you said, how many people get to do that? Lot of the guys I grew up with and
went to high school and college with, they’re sitting around watching football and thinking about the good old days. Here I am in Niagara meeting wrestling fans, having a blast. I’m good with it."

When not appearing at events, Bischoff is a part of the 83 Weeks podcast that airs weekly.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bischoff gave his honest thoughts on Tony Khan. To learn more, click here.

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Eric Bischoff talks about Tony Khan and his handling of the situation between CM Punk and The Elite.

Since founding All Elite Wrestling in 2019, Tony Khan has had plenty of critics within the confines of the wrestling business. Although he has appeared on AEW programming in the past, Eric Bischoff is frequently a critic of Khan and how he runs All Elite Wrestling.

Recently, Tony Khan fired back at Bischoff for comments he made about having matches for the sake of having matches. In a new interview with Fightful, Bischoff responded to Khan.

"I think what Tony says is funny. Because he reminds me of a fifteen year old kid that’s got too much money and doesn’t know what to do with it and he’s running around, bouncing off walls trying to make some sense out of stuff. Look, I never said that every match on every show needs to have a story. But your top three or four should and I encouraged Tony, who has an employee by the name of Kevin Sullivan, who was formerly a director in TNA. Not the booker. Two different Kevin Sullivans. Kevin Sullivan, the producer and the director, works for Tony, and Kevin Sullivan has a show bible that I created for Spike TV, Viacom while I was there."

Bischoff continued on and provided some clarification regarding his criticisms of the product.

"I would encourage Tony to look at that because it really illustrates to someone who’s never done it before how you make sure you’re A story, your B story, your C story, your D story all have structure and all carry out over the course of three or four months. Then your stories underneath that, your opening matches, your mid-card matches where you’re introducing your talent or trying to establish talent that has yet to be established. They don’t necessarily need to have a back story. You can just bring people out and just showcase them. That’s fine as long as you have legitimate story and well structured story for your top four matches. That’s what I’ve said all along. But Tony has a tendency to ricochet off walls and say stupid shit because he doesn’t really understand much about the industry really. He’s a wrestling fan with a lot of money. It’s a $100,000,000 vanity project. Good for him. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be Tony Khan. Who wouldn’t want to have a $100,000,000 or $1,000,0000,000 to go play in whatever sandbox you want to play in. Then, of course, you’re not going to want to be criticized by people who have done it before. But that’s just human nature, I guess."

Bischoff was also asked in the interview if AEW can potentially make money off of CM Punk and The Elite's real life tension. Bischoff noted that he was hesitant to give a solid answer on the question, but ultimately circled back to criticizing Khan's handling of the situation.

"I don’t know if you can make money off of it because now—and I don’t know a lot about it, so I’m hesitant to comment on it just because there’s so much I don’t know—from what we all know, because I don’t know more than you all do watching from the outside, there’s a lack of leadership. When you’ve got that much turmoil amongst that many different people and it’s manifest to your audience, and you got talent that you’re paying millions and millions and millions of dollars to, and they’re coming out and showing their ass in a national media scrum and calling out the owner of the company and calling out other people in the company, to me, that’s a reflection on leadership or lack thereof. How would I handle it? I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have put myself in that position to begin with. If you remember, you may not have paid any attention, but I made a comment one day months before all that went down, I said, ‘CM Punk’s gonna be the biggest financial flop in the wrestling business.’ It stirred up all kinds of stuff. Tony Khan’s hair caught on fire. He’s babbling like a fucking idiot. He was so upset about it. Three months later, here we are. So I wouldn’t have put myself in that position."

Bischoff recently commented on the notion that he is a hypocrite for criticizing Khan and his booking of the AEW product. To see his full comments from an October edition of 83 Weeks, click here.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bischoff commented on how the business has changed over the years. To learn more, click here.