Eric Bischoff thinks living the gimmick is method acting under a different name, that Ric Flair has been at it so long that Richard Fliehr is gone, and that MJF is one of the very few wrestlers doing it now.
Bischoff set out the argument on 83 Weeks, naming the wrestlers he thinks did it properly.
“In sports entertainment, it’s living your gimmick 24/7, brother. Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, so-called Steve Austin. I throw Steve Austin in that category, much like Ric Flair, because there’s very little difference between their real personalities and their TV characters, except that on TV they turn up the volume a little bit.”
On Flair, he was specific and framed it as a compliment.
“Ric Flair, he’s Ric Flair in the ring. He’s Ric Flair out of the ring, 24/7. I’m not sure he knows who Richard Fliehr even was at this point. Not is. Was. That’s how deep Ric Flair is into being Ric Flair, and I say that with respect. That’s not a flaw.”
Hulk Hogan is the example he watched up close, and he described the switch happening in a car.
“He and I would be sitting in his house having a beer, working out, or sitting on a deck watching boats go by, and decide to go into town to grab some sushi or something. And he’s Hulk, he’s Terry Bollea. We’re just shooting the breeze. He’s a different guy.”
“We get into the car, and by the time we get into wherever we’re going, and now the public is there, he’s Hulk Hogan. That’s the commitment, and it just became who Hulk was. Like it has become who Ric Flair is.”
He said the Austin character was a version of the man rather than a departure from him.
“The character of Stone Cold Steve Austin is really just Steve Williams with the volume turned up and accentuated. Those are the guys, Undertaker, that live the gimmick. They’re method actors in the world of entertainment acting.”
The phrase itself is what he objects to.
“It’s interesting how the world of entertainment refers to and respects method acting, but in wrestling it’s living your gimmick, brother. You’re a mark for yourself. You hear that a lot. So I respect people that live the gimmick, because what they’re really doing is committing to the character.”
He said almost nobody does it, and that the difference separates the top of the business from everybody else.
“To 90 percent of the talent out there, your character is what you wear to the ring, or your music, or your ring entrance in general. Once you get into the ring, there’s not a lot that distinguishes you from anybody else, unless you’ve got really cool finishes or a move set.”
“But when you take that to the next level, and you become your character, that’s when things get real. Ironically, the money gets real. The success gets real, because you’ve transcended what everybody else does, which is going out and portraying what you think a wrestler should be, which is 95 percent of the people that do it for a living, even people that do it well and make a lot of money. Very few of them really get into the character.”
He also raised the risk in it, referring to Heath Ledger’s preparation for The Dark Knight.
“Heath Ledger, evidently, I don’t want to butcher this story, but there’s some speculation that Heath Ledger went into such a profound method acting experience that it screwed him up.”
Ledger died in January 2008, six months before the film was released. The extent to which the role affected him has been the subject of speculation ever sinc,e without being established.
The wrestler he pointed to as doing it now is MJF, and he prefaced that by acknowledging how it would be received.
“I’m going to be careful how I say this because otherwise I’ll get accused of hating on people. But MJF is a really good topic. I’m glad you brought MJF up. Perfect example of a guy who lives his character, who’s a method actor. I don’t know if he knows it or not, if he thinks about it in that context, but in terms of immersing himself in that character.”
His argument from there is about the difference between an audience booing. It dislikes somebody and an audience booing because it knows it is supposed to.
“MJF lives it, and ironically he’s probably got more real, honest heel heat, not Pavlov’s dog heat. Pavlov’s dog heat is when the audience understands that their role is to boo the guy that’s supposedly been designated as the bad guy in this match. That’s most of the heels that are out there. People that call themselves heels.”
He has made the same point about WWE before.
“This has been something I’ve talked about with WWE for years. They still don’t have real heat. They’ve got Pavlov’s dog heat, and they get a lot of it. They can manipulate it. They can create it for television. It sounds good. It looks good. Financially, it’s working, but it’s not that next-level heat. It’s different.”
“It’s money, just not as much as it can be.”
He was complimentary about MJF while noting he is early in his career.
“He’s a very divisive character. I think he’s great, and I think he’s a very intelligent young man. He’s very gifted. He’s still got some things to learn. He’s got a long way to go. Once he gets a little bit of seasoning, and the maturity that only reps in time can bring, I think he’s got a very bright future because he’s committed to the character. He lives it.”
The rest of the answer was aimed at everybody else, and he would not name any of them.
“How many people, I’m not going to name names here because I don’t want the heat, but so many wrestlers portray, pretend to be a wrestler on TV for a living, but then they completely expose who they really are on social media.”
He also said elsewhere in the episode that an informed audience is not the obstacle people treat it as.
“I think this is where people really screw up nowadays, is acknowledging that the audience is smart. We all know there’s hardly anybody out there that thinks this stuff is real. Bless their hearts.”
MJF has held the AEW World Championship twice and has been with the company since its first show in 2019. He is 29 and is currently in a story with the Hurt Syndicate.
