Eric Bischoff covered Goldberg’s 1999 run in WCW on a recent installment of his 83 Weeks podcast on AdFreeShows.com.
During it, he was asked if he could change one thing about Goldberg’s stint in the company.
“I think Bill should have been handled much more carefully,” Bischoff said. “I think much more care should have gone into it. Not that taking the belt of Bill in 1998, I wouldn’t have changed that. I would have possibly changed how we did it so that we would have something to fall back on storyline wise with Bill later on to build up to, and that didn’t happen. It was kind of like, we’ve gotten as much mileage as we’re going to get out of Bill Goldberg.
There’s a reason why we took the belt off Bill. It wasn’t because we were making money hand over fist with him and he was continuing to grow the audience which is really important when you work for a television company. Growing your audience, it’s what television networks expect you to do. We were running on a runway with Bill in ‘98. Does anybody think if we were making money hand over fist and were continuing to beat WWE in the ratings the way we had for the previous couple of years or year and half, whatever it was, that we would have taken the belt off Bill? We were losing steam on Bill and it was time for a change. It was necessary to make a change, but I do think we could have done a much better job particularly in light of his lack of comfort based on his lack of experience. That should have been contemplated much more carefully.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription