Eric Bischoff Responds To "Miserable" Bret Hart, Talks Chris Jericho Leaving WCW
Bret Hart recently made some disparaging remarks about Eric Bischoff on the Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast. Bischoff was recently a guest on the same podcast and took the opportunity to respond.
Hart lambasted Bischoff over how he ran WCW, calling him a "loser, maggot." Hart said he had every intention of making a difference in WCW when he signed with the company in 1997, but Bischoff pretty much ran his career into the ground. Bischoff said he didn't hear Hart's comments and explained his own difficulties working with "The Hitman."
"I didn't listen to your show with Bret. I'm generally aware of the kind of things that Bret says because he's been saying them for years, so it's nothing new there," Bischoff said. "I'm sure he didn't break any news. He's just a miserable guy. He's the type of guy–and I said it in one of my responses on Twitter; he has a giant hole in his soul, and he's going to have to fill it with hate for somebody. When he came to work for me he hated Vince McMahon. He hated everybody in the McMahon family; he hated Shawn Michaels; he didn't want to work with Hulk Hogan. He hated Ric Flair, he hated Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, he hated everybody, and I had to listen to that. It was a major effort to get him and Flair on the same page; which wasn't because of Ric, it was because of Bret; he just hated everybody."
Bischoff maintains that he treated Hart well when he was in WCW even though Hart wasn't in his prime condition. He said Hart didn't make much of an effort to ingratiate himself into his new promotion.
"If you just watched him or listened to him over the years, he was able to get into the WWE Hall of Fame so he buried the hatchet with Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels, of course he did, but you know, Bret showed up in WCW, it makes me laugh when he says he didn't like how he was treated because we paid him a lot of money and treated him extremely well," Bischoff said. "Here was a guy that would show up 45 minutes before television started, before a live TV show and he would show up looking like he would sleep in the gutter the last three days; and he had no energy, no real desire to integrate himself and insert himself in the process. He wasn't at all passionate about anything he did from day one."
Bischoff was also asked if he regrets letting Chris Jericho leave the WCW for the WWE. Bischoff said based on Jericho's ambition, he really didn't have a choice.
"I tried really hard to keep Jericho," he said. "I offered Chris a lot of money; I did everything I could to keep Chris, but Chris was determined to leave WCW because he really only used WCW as a stepping stone to get to WWE, and once he used it as a stepping stone to come to WWE, there wasn't anything I could have done realistically, I don't think I could have kept Chris Jericho in WCW."
Bischoff praised Jericho for his longevity within the business and his ability to reinvent himself over the years. While he admits he didn't know Jericho would have such a successful career, Bischoff stands by the way he utilized Jericho because of the immense talent that was already on the WCW roster.
"I'd' be lying if I said that I recognized that type of talent back then, but I didn't," Bischoff said. "I knew he was a great talent and I wanted to keep him, but we had Bill Goldberg, we had Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Sting; we had a pretty deep main event level roster, and I didn't see at the time how I could have broken Chris into that category within the time frame that he wanted to be in it; I just couldn't do it. I hated seeing Chris Jericho go, I really did."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast
Peter Bahi contributed to this article.