Eric Bischoff looks forward to his MLW appearance.
Paul Walter Hauser recently appeared on Eric Bischoff's podcast Wise Choices, and he called MLW CEO Court Bauer during the show to ask if he'd be interested in bringing in Bischoff. Bauer invited Bischoff to come to MLW One Shot in New York on December 5th and said that he could call the shots. MLW later confirmed that Bischoff would be given total creative control for the event.
Speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff commented on how the appearance came together.
“[Paul Walter Hauser] basically said, ‘I’d love to see you come in and take over MLW for one night, but really do it, not wrestling do it, like come in and from top to bottom, produce or executive produce the show and have fun with it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, whatever, it’s a cool idea, and I appreciate you thinking of it, that’s a lot of fun. But I think Court [Bauer] might have a problem with that.’ He called Court, Paul called Court right then, put him on speaker, blindsided him with it, and said, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’ So still gotta work out some schedule issues I have, but I’m gonna figure it out because I want to do it just because it sounds fun,'" Bischoff said.
Bischoff was then asked whether he would be the Executive Producer for the MLW show, and he noted that one could call it that. He emphasized that MLW was Bauer's baby, and he would not upend what the company was doing creatively. However, he said that he would produce the show the way that he wanted to.
“I guess yeah, you could call it that. Let’s make it clear, it’s Court’s baby. But when I talked to him on the phone, he said, ‘I really want it to be your show. Do it the way you would do it if it was your show.’ Obviously there’s probably things going on there creatively, so I’m not gonna come in there and just turn everything upside down. But to be able to kind of frame whatever’s going on storyline-wise and produce it the way I would like to see it produced, you hear me talking about format, you hear me talk about threading stories through shows, you hear me talking about A stories, B stories, C stories, and how I treat each one of them differently, and how they’re nuanced. Now I get a chance to do it. I think it’s kinda fun, and it’s even more fun the way it all came about," Bischoff said.
Bischoff went on to explain that he would be applying his own presentation to MLW's storylines. He stated that his goal was to deliver a different presentation and have the fans enjoy it. Bischoff said that he would make it as different as possible while staying in the boundaries.
"It’s not gonna be a hostile takeover kind of thing. We’ve talked about it a little bit, I know which direction we’re going. But to me, it’s taking whatever stories they have and applying my own presentation to it, whether it’s format or anything else, or threading the main event through the show and how you do it, maybe shooting interviews a little differently than we’re normally used to seeing. Just little things like that. But those are fun little things to play with, and hopefully at the end of it, people go, ‘Okay, well, that was different than what we normally see.’ If I can make people think, ‘Wow, that was really different and I kinda liked it,’ that’s a home run for me. So we’re gonna try to be as different as we can, but still stay within the guardrails," Bischoff said.
Bischoff also noted it was time for him to walk the walk, as he had been talking the talk on the podcast for years.
The Rock previously said that Eric Bischoff belongs on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling executives. Check out his comments here.
Fightful will have coverage of MLW One Shot as it airs on December 5th.
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