WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President Eric Bischoff discussed various topics on his 83 Weeks podcast, including why WWE never brought Bill Dundee into the company.
Bischoff said, “I don’t know, I think it’s pretty easy to understand why Bill didn’t work in WWE as a talent, right? I don’t think he ever would have gotten by Vince’s kind of perspective of what — at that point in particular, what a wrestler was. But behind the scenes, he was more than qualified.”
On the European experience Dundee could have offered:
“What makes it I think even more mysterious to me, to your point, is in WWE’s case, back when they were WWF, the UK has always been such a big market for Vince. The entire European market obviously, and it’s a different style of booking over there. It’s a different culture; the psychology is different. What they’re used to and conditioned to believing in is different in nuance from what it is here, and it helps to have that perspective in a room creatively. So if we’re going to do a tour, would you want somebody who has experience touring in the markets that you’re going to be in? Because that guy you’re sitting in your room with, or you should be at least, he made his living by reading the room. Now I have an opportunity to hire a guy who was a big star in a foreign territory in which I have zero f**king experience by the way — I have an opportunity to work with this guy. He’s in the business, he’s a credible guy, I know who he is. I know his career, but I’m not going to use him because I can do it myself, or with my existing staff who knows so much about that market because they wrestled there three times in their career or whatever the case was back then. I don’t know. He was a great source of the kind of information that helps creative optimize, because you’ve got feel for the market.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
