Eric Bischoff Calls “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes A Visionary

WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff took to an episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including how the late great Dusty Rhodes was a visionary as he didn’t see wrestling the same way everyone else before him did.

Bischoff said, โ€œEven before we shot our first show, everything I read about [the idea] was negative.โ€โ€œIt was so dark. Everybody predicted the end of the world, and โ€˜Bischoff doesnโ€™t know what heโ€™s doingโ€™ and โ€˜heโ€™s a TV producer, not a wrestling guy.โ€™ That became the narrative and it filtered down to the wrestling roster โ€ฆ but once Bill Shaw came in and supported the idea, Dusty jumped on board. Dusty got very supportive, very quickly.โ€

โ€œDusty was a visionary. He didnโ€™t see wrestling the same way everyone else that came before him โ€ฆ he didnโ€™t see wrestling the way Ole Anderson saw it. Dusty was much more of a visionary, Ole was more in the vein of Bill Watts or Verne Gagne โ€” โ€˜Letโ€™s go back and do it the way we did in the โ€™70s.โ€™ The problem is the television industry had changed so much.โ€

You can check out the complete podcast below.