Eric Bischoff discussed his first meeting with The Ultimate Warrior in 1998 on his podcast, “83 Weeks.” Here are the highlights:
How he was impressed with Warrior’s passion at their first meeting: I was overwhelmed listening to him, and when I say we had a meeting where I spent three hours listening, I’m not kidding, I did very little talking, and can you imagine that? Me doing very little talking? I was on the receiving end of his passion. It was pure passion. Misguided in some cases as it might be, I mean, he wasn’t ever going to make a Warrior movie but you couldn’t tell Warrior that. I doubted that there would be a Warrior animated cartoon product on the Cartoon Network but that’s what Warrior was excited about.
I think one of the reasons that Warrior might have been really excited about the prospect of coming to WCW went way beyond what was obvious as far as him and Hogan and the storyline there. I think Jim was looking at Turner Broadcasting much the way he should have looked at it, as a bigger, broader opportunity and he did. He saw movies, he saw cartoons on the Cartoon Network, he saw all of these things.
And again, I just listened, and as far as my feelings or my impressions, better way to say it, yeah I was overwhelmed, but I really was impressed with Warrior’s passion. Misguided, as I said, it may have been in some cases, maybe unrealistic would be a better way of saying it. I could help, though, being impressed with his enthusiasm and his passion. He was just boiling over.
If WCW ever considered teaming up Warrior and Sting: I think that that conversation did happen, because of the history. Again, Sting and Warrior started in the industry together way back when, so yeah, there was some of that conversation. I don’t think it ever got serious, but certainly that conversation did take place because of the back story.
(H/T 411Mania for the transcriptions)
