If The Undertaker decided to leave WWE for WCW in the middle of the Monday Night Wars, it could have been a blow that Vince McMahon never recovered from. But according to Eric Bischoff, he never really wanted The Deadman.
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During a recent episode of his podcast 83 Weeks, Bischoff explained that even though ‘Taker is an all-time great, he may have been limited in WCW. Legally, The Undertaker would have to have changed his character in WCW, which means that Bischoff would have automatically started off with a lesser version of Mark Calaway.
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t have been the Undertaker and that’s the biggest challenge right there,” Bischoff explained. “Because you’re spending so much money for a character that you can’t have. So knowing that he wouldn’t have been anything close to the Undertaker as a character, how could we have used him? I was never a big fan of really big guys. We had Kevin, we had Paul, and it’s really hard creatively – we’ve touched on this before – booking guys that are that big. Because it’s hard in a believable way to get sympathy on them. It’s hard for them in a believable way to sell, unless you take a chainsaw to them or a bazooka. It’s hard for them to be a good heel because it doesn’t make any sense for a guy that big to be a chicken s—t. It’s not believable.”
Bischoff knew that adding The Undertaker would be complicated. On top of giving Calaway a new character, he’d have to find the right role for him, and that wasn’t going to be easy. But Bischoff did play “what if” and said that if he did have ‘Taker he would have likely used him to combat the NWO.
“I know I wouldn’t have been excited about hiring him,” Bischoff said. “Not because he’s not a super talented guy, but if you would have looked at our roster back then, where would he have fit? He was in WCW before, so, let’s have fun with this – we’ll use our imagination. Let’s assume, hypothetically, the whole nWo/WCW storyline as I had it in my head would have played out the way I wanted it. nWo would have officially taken over Monday Nitro. Top to bottom, it would have been nWo’s show. WCW would have been over on Thunder had it played out the way that I hoped for it. Because WCW and Mark Callous had previously had a relationship, I would have probably tried to play off that. I would probably would try to bring Undertaker/Mark Callous in on the WCW side of the equation to kinda be a counter to Kevin Nash, so to speak. So that might have worked, but other than something like that, I don’t know. It would have been tough,” he said.
[H/T Wrestling Inc.]
