Pro wrestling legend Eric Bischoff helped change the industry in the 1990s, but there was one storyline that didn’t pass the sniff test, much to the former executive producer’s chagrin.
Bischoff told Fox News Digital in a recent interview there was at least one storyline he had pitched to a Turner Sports higher-up that didn’t go over so well.
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Eric Bischoff (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for SiriusXM/File)
The former World Championship Wrestling (WCW) president explained he was a pilot and was certified to fly “high performance complex aircraft” and got this wild idea in 1998.
“I flew all over the country. I love flying, and there was a point in time I was down in Arizona for some reason and flying around, I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be interesting if I faked my own death?’ Meaning, wouldn’t it be interesting if I, you know, let it be known that I was traveling around southern Arizona and checking out some of the sights and somehow wandered off into Mexican airspace and apparently ran out of gas or something and ended up crashing. They couldn’t find the plane or me.
“I wanted to go with that. This was like a month or two before Halloween Havoc, and I was going to make my own death in a plane crash and then appear as a ghost of myself at Halloween Havoc in Las Vegas. I was so excited about it.”
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Eric Bischoff speaks onstage at “The Roast of Ric Flair” at Nashville Fairgrounds on July 29, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
Bischoff said he made a short list of people he would tell that the crash angle was all just a part of a storyline he concocted, including his family members.
He said he knew he needed to tell Turner Sports that he was planning this idea because he was the president of a publicly traded company. So, Bischoff explained he had a meeting with then-Turner Sports executive Harvey Schiller.
Bischoff explained that Schiller rarely, if ever, turned down any of Bischoff’s ideas.
“I went to Harvey and I laid it out to him, and he wasn’t impressed,” Bischoff told Fox News Digital. “He felt I was nuts. But it wouldn’t have worked. It wouldn’t have worked in any other business. But it would have worked in wrestling.
“I had it really well-thought-out. I wish I would have been able to pull that one off, but it just wasn’t in the cards.”
Years later, Bischoff finds himself back in the creative spotlight.
Eric Bischoff was formerly the head of World Championship Wrestling. (Major League Wrestling)
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He will be running Major League Wrestling’s One Show pay-per-view on Dec. 5. He told Fox News Digital he will donate his paycheck to the Tunnels to Tower Foundation.
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Ryan Gaydos is a senior editor for Fox News Digital.
