On the latest edition of his 83 Weeks podcast WWE Hall of Famer and former president of WCW Eric Bischoff spoke about the 1994 Halloween Havoc main event retirement match between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, and all of the behind the scenes issues that were happening at the time. Hear Bischoff’s full thoughts on the subject below.
Says Ric Flair was wound up pretty tight going into the PPV:
“Ric was wound up pretty tight going into this pay-per-view. Ric can be a very emotional person. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. This was a retirement match for Ric – that was the stipulation. He hated it. Hated it. Really, for me, it was such an overwhelming challenge that I had on a daily basis in the weeks, and even the day of, in dealing with Ric and trying to work things out. He wanted to renegotiate his contract – ‘If I’m gonna be in a retirement match, I’m gonna renegotiate my contract.’ I think Ric at least believed it was possible that somehow he was gonna get dropped after it was over and he’d get written off TV. Ric was very concerned and drew a pretty hard line in the sand about renegotiating. I had to fly in Bill Shaw – he didn’t typically come to pay-per-views. It wasn’t as much fun as it could’ve been.”
Why they decided to do a retirement match:
“There was no concern about popping a rating because Hogan wasn’t going anywhere. He had just signed a two-year contract and there was no pressure there….it really more about how do we keep this Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan storyline going? We saw it in July, and to try to draw it out to December, it seemed like a natural thing to me to take it to the next big pay-per-view as opposed to trying to draw it out over an additional three months and lose that momentum because we had momentum in July. So, let’s build on that.”
How the match nearly didn’t happen because Flair had not re-signed:
“I was negotiating with Ric all the way up to the day of the show. It was brutal. Day of the show, I wasn’t 100 percent sure it was gonna happen when I showed up to the venue because I didn’t have Ric’s name on a piece of paper yet. That didn’t happen until the day of the show, and that’s one of the reasons why Bill Shaw came in.”
Says the finish was way overbooked:
“It was just 10 pounds of stuff in a five-pound bag. It was just too much. The finish was just too much – it’s the only way I can say it. The weird thing is, it actually played better on TV than it did at the live event because you didn’t have the advantage of unique camera angles and timing and shit like that to camouflage the cluster as much. I’m not saying it came off great at all, but it made more sense on television than it did as a live event. Just way overbooked.”
(H/T and transcribed by 411 Mania)