Eric Bischoff: ‘Had There Been No nWo, I Don’t Think WWE Would Exist Today’

Eric Bischoff has made a bold claim about the impact of the nWo on wrestling history.

The former WCW President was recently interviewed by Robert Breedlove on his What Is Money podcast. Bischoff went through his whole journey in pro wrestling during the show.

While detailing WCW’s rise to prominence under him, Eric mentioned that he knew the company could not compete with WWE in their own game. So Bischoff chose to focus on things they could do differently. This included going live and leaning towards a more reality-based programming which resulted in the introduction of nWo.

The former SmackDown Executive Director discussed how this gave WCW the upper hand for a long time. This continued until Vince McMahon decided to adapt to the circumstances and deliver his infamous promo, ushering in the Attitude Era:

“In ’97 Vince McMahon came out and said ‘Okay we’re no longer going to insult our intelligence. We’re going to bring more reality-based storylines to our audience’ and basically copy the formula that I used to beat him for 83 weeks in a row.

They did a phenomenal job. They actually did it bigger and better than I did. They had more latitude. They were able to do things that I couldn’t do because of the network programming executives I had to answer to. They turned that business around.”

Eric Bischoff then made a bold claim about the influence of nWo in pro wrestling. He reasoned that had nWo and the WCW programming not forced McMahon’s hand, WWE would have ceased to exist:

“Had there been no…and this is the part that’ll be controversial, but it’s true. Had there been no nWo I don’t think WWE would exist today.

Because when Vince McMahon changed his model. When he replicated what we were doing but did it bigger and better his business exploded. Within two years he took his company public based on the success of that transformation and recently sold a year ago for 9 billion dollars.”

Of course, we can never really know what would have been the result had Vince McMahon decided to double down on their version of pro wrestling instead of adapting to the change. The only thing that is certain is that his promo was the official start of an era that changed the business forever and its effect will continue to be felt in wrestling for a long time to come.