Eric Bischoff Says His New SmackDown Live Role is a Bigger Opportunity Than Running WCW

Eric Bischoff appeared on the 83 Weeks podcast for the first time since WWE announced that he had been rehired to work as the executive director for SmackDown Live on Monday. After spending about 90 minutes discussing the 1998 edition of Bash at the Beach, Bischoff finally addressed the elephant in the room.

He started off by thanking his fans and colleagues for the response to the news saying he was, “overwhelmed with the support and positive response that I got on social media after WWE made the announcement.” As for his new roll, Bischoff said he felt that working on the creative team for the Blue Brand felt like a bigger opportunity than when he was executive producer, and eventually president, of WCW during the Monday Night Wars.

“The magnitude of this opportunity and the challenge and the commitment that goes along with it is not lost on me. There’s been a couple of times over the last few days where I’ve been driving around in my truck or taking my dog for a hike and going, ‘Wow!’

“It’s not maybe, this is the biggest opportunity I’ve ever had in this industry. Granted when Bill Shaw made me president of WCW, obviously that was a very, very big moment. But I was learning on the job there. I had nothing to lose there. I was taking a company in WCW that had never turned a dollar of profit, that was such a distant number two to WWF at that time that we weren’t even really number two, a company that was fraught with a bad history and all kinds of internal issues. So I had nothing to lose. In this situation, this is an entirely different ballgame here.”

Bischoff went on to discuss his excitement in returning to the WWE, adding that he and his wife plan on moving to Stamford, Connecticut (the home of WWE’s headquarters) in the coming weeks.

WWE described Bischoff’s responsibilities (as well as Paul Heyman’s for Raw) in a press release as, “oversee the creative development of WWE’s flagship programming and ensure integration across all platforms and lines of business,” the press release read. “The creation of these roles further establishes WWE’s ability to continuously reinvent its global brand while providing two distinct creative processes for its flagship shows.”