On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about working with NBA legend Dennis Rodman in WCW in the late 1990s.
Rodman was paired with Hulk Hogan in the NWO for the majority of his WCW tenure. You can check out some highlights below:
On Dennis being a wrestling fan:
“Dennis was a wrestling fan. He is a Hulk Hogan fan. And I fact that he just liked Hulk Hogan; I mean, they got along. They were friends, legitimate friends, not just, you know. Friendship as a result of an opportunity. And that was the factor. It wasn’t the money. It was the fact that Dennis, as you pointed out, got a chance to work with Hulk Hogan, and the little kid came out. And Dennis, at that point, you know, the little kid who grew up as a wrestling fan of Texas, came out and wanted to be there with Hulk. Not anybody else. Nothing about it has nothing to do with Dustin. Just everybody else wasn’t Hulk Hogan.”
On who came up with putting Rodman in the NWO:
“Oh, I don’t; I don’t know who was the single individual behind that. I think that pretty much evolved organically. I mean, Dennis was NWO before NWO in many respects. I mean, he was a renegade. You know, he was his own man. He had a lot of issues with the NBA as a result of it, with his teams due to his kind of rebellious attitude that fit into the NWA. So I don’t think it was any one person’s idea. I think it just evolved organically. Certainly, Hulk Hogan was an advocate because Hulk is intelligent as f**k and realized that, with the amount of press and attention that Dennis gets, there’s nothing wrong with getting a little piece of that rub. So it just happened. It wasn’t one person that said, Hey, I got an idea. Let’s put it this way. Let’s put Dennis Rodman in the NWA. Brilliant idea. It wasn’t that. It was organic as hell. Not sure for sure. It also was, you know, I did the ROI on my head. You know you get $1 million. You look at the impact that it had on television ratings, the impact on the advertising community, the impact on the perception of the WCW brand, and all of the above. Made that million dollars look like chump change. Absolutely.”