On the latest “83 Weeks” podcast, WWE Hall of Fame Eric Bischoff covered The Great American Bash 2000. This was during the time when WCW was doing a storyline between the veterans (Millionaires) and younger talent (New Blood).
Eric Bischoff talked about the Hulk Hogan – Billy Kidman storyline in 2000 that many have criticized because of the belief that Kidman did not get put over the right way.
“I’ve never hidden the fact or shied away from the fact that I’m friends with Hulk,” Bischoff said. “I was friends with him then and I’m still friends with him, so I don’t want this to sound like I’m just defending Hulk Hogan, but I’m going to because Hulk wanted this thing to work too. Hulk had a good deal with WCW. Hulk wanted it to work, but was smart enough to recognize that things were falling apart.”
“Like me, to a degree, when I agreed to work with Russo, he went into this with the best intentions but also recognized that he had to change too. He had to be willing to do things that his character otherwise would never have done, and Hulk didn’t want to work with Kidman. Hulk thought it was a ridiculous idea from the get go, but also recognized that there was this, part of it was, you know, managing the roster and trying to manage morale. Part of this was, okay, if 60% of our roster, or 30% of our roster, a large enough percentage of our roster, believes that they’re never going to get an opportunity here, then as a leader, as the most significant talent on the roster, or one of them at least, Hulk felt responsible to try to make things work and the Kidman idea was his attempt. It wasn’t his idea, by the way, but Hulk agreed to do it because he wanted to kind of break the perception and improve the morale to the degree that he could.”
“He didn’t want to work with Billy Kidman. He didn’t think that there was a story, and nothing to do with Billy. Billy is a phenomenal talent. He certainly was back then. It just wasn’t believable. There was no story there that made it believable. There was not enough story there to make people go, you know, I don’t get it. Hulk Hogan, 275 pounds, 24 inch pythons, all the stuff that we’ve learned and identify with in terms of Hulk Hogan’s character, now he’s going to get in a ring with a guy that probably at the time weighed a buck 90 and was relatively new. It just wasn’t believable, but it was Hulk’s attempt to try to break through the perception within the audience and certainly within the locker room, that if you’re in the middle of the card that there’s no chance you’re ever gonna wrestle in a main event, and that’s what this was.”
On turning Goldberg heel in 2000:
“We were desperate. I was very much involved in convincing Bill Goldberg to do this. I wasn’t by myself, but I did support it. I remember talking to Bill about it. Bill at that time, he wasn’t against doing it, he just was not comfortable doing it because he didn’t feel it. Bill Goldberg only knew at this point, a two and a half year career from when he started, but he had been in a business for a whole less than 36 months, so he didn’t have a sense of when something was right in terms of timing, or wrong.”
“Because he was insecure about it, it took a little nurturing to get him on board. I remember talking to Bill that night. I had a motorhome there that I was using as an office and brought Bill into the motorhome and sat down and talked to him. Obviously not putting up a fight, wasn’t resisting doing it, but he clearly was not comfortable doing it.”
“I think one of the reasons, again, was that we needed believable heels. We needed credible, believable, badass heels. I don’t think it was a bad decision. I think the timing sucked, the execution might not have been the best, but I think the idea at that point of turning Goldberg had we not seen a plethora of turns that made absolutely no sense, I think Bill Goldberg turning heel would have made more sense because it certainly did on paper. It’s what we needed to go forward.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit AdFreeShows.com with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
