Eric Bischoff gave his thoughts on various topics on the latest episode of his 83 Weeks Podcast.
During it, Bischoff talked about using NBA legend Dennis Rodman in WCW. Rodman competed in three pay-per-view WCW events: Bash at the Beach 1997 (against DDP & The Giant with Hogan), Bash at the Beach 1998 (against Karl Malone of the NBA and DDP), and Road Wild 1999 (against Randy Savage).
“Absolutely not. Dave (Meltzer) has a tendency to project, it’s one of my biggest issues with him is his own personal take on things. Kind of overshadows any of the information and facts involved. Were we disappointed in the buyrate? Absolutely freaking not. I think what Dave tries historically what he’s trying to do is project the way he would look at a buy-rate and how he would react without any real understanding of how those of us in WCW that he didn’t know our expectations. “
“He had no idea what our strategy is going forward he had no idea how we valued or didn’t value things. He only looked at it from ‘oh they brought in Dennis Rodman at $750,000’, which, by the way, is wrong typically wrong.”
Bischoff argued that WCW got a lot of value from using him.
“No, man I thought the way we used Dennis, I thought the press that we got out of Dennis, the awareness that was created for WCW and Nitro. Because of Dennis, I think I could have cared less what the buy-rate was to be honest it didn’t matter. It’s not like every time we put on a pay-per-view we were like we had a gun to our head and we had to do a certain revenue you know reach a certain revenue threshold wasn’t the case.”
“I wouldn’t have changed one thing with regard to how we used Dennis. It wasn’t $750,000 it was a million. It was worth three times that much to WCW as a brand. That’s the part that people that have never really been in the business can’t understand. It’s not that they’re not smart or they’re not intelligent or they’re not capable of learning things.”
“It’s just they’ve never been in that situation, so it’s not apparent to them how someone like Dennis Rodman could have such a powerful impact on Nitro and WCW as a brand regardless of whatever the buy-rate was. Buy-rates are not the end-all be-all.”
Quotes via
411 Mania