Eric Bischoff did his weekly interview with Christy Olson on After 83 Weeks. He talked about a number of hot subjects including Arn Anderson’s firing, Bruce Prichard being hired by WWE, and Honky Tonk Man going into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Check out highlights below:
On Bruce Prichard being hired by WWE:
Bruce was more successful over the last two years than he ever was financially during his career in WWE. He’s been doing really, really well. But there was something missing in his life. I think that something missing was his relationship with the entire team, but especially Vince McMahon. They were together for a long time. So I think that even though Bruce was doing so well financially with his podcast and with his live shows, I think he’s going to be a much happier person back home where he really probably needs to be.
Why Arn Anderson is irreplaceable:
It’s not even knowledge as much because wrestling is more art than science–it’s instinct. That’s what they’re going to miss the most. When Arn is fully engaged and is feeling good about what he’s doing and the team he’s working with, he’s got a great instinct. He understands the psychology and he feels what works and what doesn’t. You can’t replace that. You can find a lot of people that know a lot of wrestling holds and have seen a million matches and have an opinion on 10 million different things, but it’s hard to replace that instinct.
What WWE should do with Roman Reigns:
Are they going to go with what seems natural right now, because of the way the crowd did react, because of the inherent underdog? I mean if you talk about an underdog story there’s nothing more badass than cancer on the face of this this earth. For a guy to come out of that, especially a guy like Roman Reigns, the way he went out and all the passion and the emotion that went with him when he went off and said, ‘Look, I’ve got to take care of this.’ They’ve got an abundance of great stuff there, just rawmaterials, right? Now what they do with those raw materials, we’ll find out. … If they decide to go another way with that it could be highly, highly controversial, and you would have people probably losing their minds over it on social media.
On Honky Tonk Man going into the WWE Hall of Fame:
You know I want to say some smart ass thing and keep it all going. But when it comes to this kind of thing I am happy for him. I’m not friends with Honky, but despite what you hear and what you see and how much fun I have busting his chops and how much fun he’s had over the last 20 years busting mine, at the end of the day I’m happy. … That’s been the largest part of his adult life and it’s been obviously his identity. I mean he still wears the gimmick and shows up at a lot of these events, and to have a moment like this and to kind of get that acknowledgment from your peers that you were important to the industry, it’s got to make any human being feel good. He’s still a jackass. But I’m glad he’s going to be a happy jackass.
View the full episode of After 83 Weeks below:
