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Jonathan Coachman On His Early WWE Years, Becoming The Rock’s “Guy”, Working w/ Michael Cole, More



The latest episode of former WCW President Eric Bischoff’s podcast Bischoff on Wrestling will be released tomorrow night at 6 pm CST. It will feature Eric’s over hour long interview with his former RAW GM Assistant and current ESPN personality Jonathan Coachman.

WrestleZone has exclusively obtained the following quotes ahead of the episodes release tomorrow featuring Coachman’s memories of his earliest years in WWE.

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JC: Initially Michael Cole was the only on-air announcer other than JR and The King that they had. So Cole was doing EVERYTHING. Back then they were starting to get all of these contracts with other countries. I believe at the time we were on in 140-150 countries. It was brilliant. You sign a million dollar deal with Zimbabwe, they would send WWE a check and we would cut tape from Monday Night RAW and send it to them for $35 via FedEx. That’s a pretty good return on your investment. Then they started cutting deals for shows like, I can’t even remember the names of all of them, but there were tons of one-hour shows that we would tape the matches before Smackdown aired. When I came in Michael Cole was like, “I’ve been here five years by myself here you go…” He handed me the show Livewire. You remember that show? The Saturday morning show on USA. I did that and several shows where I did the play-by-play that we would do in the studio. I came in with my feet on the ground doing all of these shows. Then I would do backstage interviews and I became kind of, for two years, The Rock’s “guy”. The Rock would make fun of me. We would come up with what we thought were entertaining bits where I was always his foil. We’d have fun and then he’d get serious and cut his promo on whatever guy he was wrestling that night. I had a full plate. Whether it was on the road Monday and Tuesday. Then I’d fly home and we were working Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. It was a full week.

Please cite WZ as the source if you use any of the above transcriptions. Thanks!

Related: Booker T & Eric Bischoff Discuss Donald Trump’s Appeal To The Middle Class; Booker’s Political Identity

This past week’s episode of Bischoff on Wrestling starts with Eric talking to Nick and TJ about Ronda Rousey’s loss to Amanda Nunes at UFC 207. How does it affect her draw? Can she be a success in WWE? Should she have another fight?

They then dive in to their Playing In The Dirt segment where Eric takes a look back at headlines from pro wrestling dirt sheets from different points in his career. This week they take a look back at some of the pro wrestling headlines about WCW from October 1996.

Eric then welcomes his guest for the week former WWE/WCW World Heavyweight Champion Booker T! Booker speaks candidly to Eric about:

  • How he lives vicariously through his Reality of Wrestling pro wrestling academy
  • His debut in WCW alongside his brother Stevie Ray as Cane & Cole
  • Working War Games alongside Vader and Sid Justice
  • Feeling like a fly on the wall for many of wrestling’s biggest moments
  • The crowd getting behind the NWO as heels more than Harlem Heat as baby faces
  • How movies and pro wrestling are alike
  • Harlem Heat’s match against The Outsiders from Halloween Havoc 1996
  • What his experience was like jumping from WCW to WWE
  • If he kept the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and US Championships after the last episode of Monday Nitro
  • What motivated him to decide to run for Mayor of Houston
  • Comparisons that are made behind his run for Mayor and Trump’s run for President
  • The differences between how people present themselves in public and in the board room
  • His Best-Of-Seven Series with Chris Benoit from WCW
  • Something that people may not know about him
  • More…

Eric then closes the show by answering some fan questions from the #BischoffOnWrestling mailbag.

You can listen to the full archives from Bischoff on Wrestling in the embedded audio player below:

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