The latest episode of former WCW President Eric Bischoff’s podcast, Bischoff on Wrestling, dropped earlier tonight and features former WWE & ECW commentator Joey Styles as Eric’s guest.
You can find some of Joey’s comments transcribed below.
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On ECW’s view of WCW:
EB: Did you have a perception of WCW as “the enemy” back when you were involved in ECW? Was that perception part of the effort or the architecture of Paul Heyman? Did he use WCW in your opinion? We’re good friends now and enough time has gone by. Heyman and I are cool with it. From your perception at that moment were we like “the Devil”?
JS: Both companies were considered “the Devil.” Especially because nobody knew at the end that WWE was actually an investor in ECW. People talked about raiding the ECW locker room. I’m sorry but if you’re getting paid $500 a night to work for ECW four or six times a month and Eric Bischoff and WCW offers you $500,000, yeah, you’re going to take that offer. I was in a position where I could turn away offers because of my job at News Corp got to be a pretty big deal. I wound up being the VP of sales. I was pretty young. I was 29. It wasn’t my living to be in wrestling. For those people that were I never saw them as sell outs for moving on. Maybe because I was a businessman but absolutely looking at you, WCW and the big companies that were looked at as the enemy was Paul motivating the locker room. The funny part is if you look at ECW everybody that deserved a chance to have a career on the big stage did. In the end you can consider these companies “the enemy” but a lot of people made a lot of money working for those two companies. Including myself.
EB: By the way, I don’t recall ever paying anyone who left ECW to come to WCW five hundred grand. Just for the record.
Eric and Nick start the show off by talking about a few of the major pro wrestling news stories from this past week including:
- The WWE Universe not reacting the way Vince McMahon would have liked during Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar’s segment on RAW
- AJ Styles teasing a match with Shawn Michaels for the Royal Rumble
- Dixie Carter and Billy Corgan’s battle for control on TNA
Eric then welcomes former WWE and ECW commentator Joey Styles to discuss:
- Joey nearly joining Eric and WCW in 2001
- How Joey originally broke in to the wrestling business
- Joey’s first encounter with Paul Heyman
- ECW’s exceptionally loyal fan base
- Whether ECW looked at WCW as “the devil”
- Why ECW was like Napster
- ECW & WCW’s long term influence on the business
- Where Eric first discovered a variety of the cruiserweight for WCW
- Joey’s current work with EVOLVE, CHIKARA & Beyond Wrestling
- What FloSports is attempting to do with independent wrestling
- More…
Eric then wraps the show up by answering fan questions from the #BischoffOnWrestling mailbag and giving his final thoughts for the week.
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This episode of Bischoff on Wrestling is brought you by:
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You can listen to the full archives from Bischoff on Wrestling in the embedded audio player below:
