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 CM Punk missing a WrestleMania match due to injury:
“I’m glad you brought up Punk and Drew and Seth. Sitting through that, I actually felt bad. I empathized with Punk because he can’t wrestle, right? He can’t really do anything physical on the ring. Right? Obviously, the audience wanted to see him. They wanted him to be a real part of the show. But that’s a tough spot to be in. It’s a tough spot to be in when you can’t do anything, and everybody knows you can’t do it.”
On the Punk, Rollins, and McIntyre promo from Raw:
“So I thought — and as I’m listening to this, I listened to it closely. I’m thinking, ‘Man, they’re spending a lot of time just to make a point that CM Punk is going to be on commentary? Like, who the f**k cares, really?’ I mean, if you’re a big CM Punk fan, of course you’re gonna be happy. But it’s not like he’s going to go out there and do anything other than run his mouth. I don’t know what the timeline is for him to get back in the ring or not. I’m guessing it’s [months]. Yeah, so it’s not going to be like a week after WrestleMania, he’s going to be in a match or he’s going to be in a program. That’s not it.”
“But I’m sitting through that segment, and I’m thinking ‘This is — you’re spending way too much time on this.’ And there were some awkward moments and reactions because it was — my feeling was, if it was scripted it was loosely scripted. I could be wrong. But it had enough peaks and valleys in terms of its quality… It wasn’t as fluid as scripted promos tend to be, therefore it felt real. And I loved that. But I thought, ‘Man, this is going on too long.’ And then came the finish of the segment. And Seth, side kick, boom. And now, all of a sudden, however long that segment was. It might have been six minutes or eight minutes. All of a sudden, it all made sense. It worked. Because they finished it, they’ve finished it perfectly. And you delivered on it.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
