Eric Bischoff thinks WWE was right to have Brock Lesnar hand off to Oba Femi at SummerSlam, and that the retirement angle which led into it never worked.
Bischoff was speaking on 83 Weeks with Conrad Thompson, and said at the outset that he had not watched night one and was going on Conrad’s account, what he had read, and clips he had seen since.
“Yeah, I didn’t get to see the match, obviously, but based on what you know you’ve described and laid out, and what I read, and some of the stuff that I’ve seen online since. It’s still cumbersome to me the whole retirement thing and leaving the boots in the ring and then unretiring with no explanation from the get-go. This has been a funky story. I’m not even going to call it a story. It’s been a funky situation. It’s not worthy of a story.”
Lesnar left his gloves in the ring after losing to Femi at WrestleMania 42 in April, in what was widely read as a retirement gesture. He returned weeks later, attacked Femi on Raw and beat him at Clash in Italy, setting up Saturday’s Hell in a Cell match.
“Maybe it’s yeah. I guess it does. It did have a beginning. It’s a weird beginning. It’s a really weird beginning, and it did have a middle, and now hopefully it has an end. But it was so clunky in the beginning that it just never clicked for me.”
On the decision itself, he was positive, while stopping short of claiming any knowledge of Femi beyond what is on television.
“Now, looking forward, I think it’s a great move. I think it could have been done so much better without the clunkiness. But I think if now I don’t know Oba Femi, I don’t know what he’s like backstage. I don’t know where his head is at. I don’t know, you know, where he is on the checklist of Paul Levesque’s, you know, attributes to earn a spot, but just based on what I’ve seen, and we can all see, he has a hell of a lot of potential.”
He added a note of caution about how Femi should work at his size.
“And if he has the tools in a toolbox, if he’s developed the skills to really grow this character and be able to go out and do a lot, not a lot, but many different things because of his size, he shouldn’t go out there and try to be a gymnast. You know, shouldn’t look like you know Cirque du Soleil meets you know wrestling or sports entertainment. Get my a\*\* kicked if I’m not careful.”
On Lesnar, his read was that the company has run out of road.
“Yeah, I think it’s exciting. I think Brock’s. It’s time, you know. It’s time, and I think the idea of Brock passing the torch in kind of the traditional way, despite the funkiness of it all, is a cool thing. But it’s time. It’s definitely time. Where else can you go with Brock? You either feed him, like the monster he truly is, as long as you can, or you’ve got to put them out to pasture, and it sounds like they’re putting them out to pasture.”
Femi won in 11:39, finishing with Fall From Grace after kicking out of a tombstone onto the exposed wood beneath the ring. Lesnar came back to the ring afterward, raised Femi’s hand and told the crowd that Femi is the future and he is the past. He has not said he is retiring, and WWE has announced nothing.
Saturday was Lesnar’s tenth SummerSlam main event, a company record, and it took place in the state he is billed from. He turned 49 in July.
