Eric Bischoff thinks the recent edits to WWE’s Netflix replays are a business decision driven by international markets, and he has little patience for fans complaining about WWE taking its biggest events overseas.
Both subjects came up on the latest episode of 83 Weeks. Co-host Conrad Thompson pointed to the September 14 Raw from Mexico City, where fans flipped off Roman Reigns during his entrance for the main event against Penta. The gestures were visible on the live broadcast, but the Netflix replay cut to a high overhead angle just before the fans came into frame and held it for more than thirty seconds. Fightful was first to point out the change.
It was not an isolated edit. The same replay replaced crowd chants aimed at Liv Morgan and Dominik Mysterio with added booing, and blood from an attack on The Usos was removed from the August 31 replay, after which Triple H posted the unedited segment himself.
Bischoff stressed he has no inside knowledge, but said the regulatory picture overseas is the most logical explanation.
“I’m on the outside looking in, just like everybody else,” Bischoff said. “There are difficulties with local regulations and restrictions regarding television in various markets, and it’s all over the map. One place you can get away with just about anything on TV, and another place you’ve got to be careful. Maybe it’s a regulatory issue, and they’re having to censor to a certain degree in order to maintain regulatory standards.”
He explained how differently cultures treat content with a story from his time as a high school exchange student with a farming family in Germany, where on one of his first nights he saw a prime time commercial with full nudity.
“For the Germans, full frontal nudity is fine in prime time. You see it all the time. It’s no big deal,” Bischoff said. “But anything that’s violent or represents violence, we treat porn the way they treat violence, and vice versa.”
He said advertiser pressure seems unlikely to be the reason, since the replays stream on a subscription service with limited in-show advertising. When Thompson suggested WWE may be making the product more palatable for markets like China, Bischoff agreed.
“I think it is strategic, because nothing else makes sense,” Bischoff said. “It’s not a creative decision. It’s not a moral decision. It’s a business decision.”
Who is actually making the edits is not settled. Coverage has attributed them variously to Netflix and to WWE, and Triple H posted the uncut Usos footage on his own social media after the August edit. Bischoff’s theory is his read from outside, as he said himself.
Thompson then asked whether WWE should keep prioritising international markets, given the crowds it has been drawing abroad. Bischoff said the answer is to follow the demand.
“You go where the demand is, and if the crowds are hotter, they’re bigger, they sell out faster, you focus on that market,” Bischoff said. “If you’re comparing international events to domestic events, you go where the business goes.”
He was dismissive of fans who have objected to the Royal Rumble leaving the United States, describing them as a fringe of the online audience who will always find something to complain about, and saying the same mindset exists among both WWE and AEW fans.
“They’re always going to find something to bitch and whine about,” Bischoff said.
The calendar is worth setting out. The 2026 Royal Rumble took place in Riyadh on January 31, the first in the event’s history held outside North America. The 2027 Rumble has since been announced for State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, in February, while WrestleMania 43 is headed to Riyadh, the first WrestleMania outside North America. The complaint Bischoff is addressing is about the direction overall rather than next year’s Rumble specifically.
He acknowledged some fans have a legitimate reason to be disappointed, but said it will not affect the numbers.
“Are there some people that would have liked to go, that had the money to go and actually would have gone, that are disappointed? Sure. But are they going to not watch? No,” Bischoff said.
Bischoff said the energy of a crowd is one of the biggest factors in a successful show, pointing to Hacksaw Jim Duggan as an act the audience carried for years, and said international crowds give that response more readily because a WWE show is a rarer event for them.
“You don’t have to work quite as hard to get a great response,” Bischoff said. “So I think go where the audience is. Go where you get the best show. That would be my approach.”
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3qq0QQEhIgSviAKf5zweok?si=z1Y5C5s8Tei2esaFsZYvVQ
