Eric Bischoff covered the March 10, 1997 Spring Break episode of WCW Monday Night Nitro that is most remembered for Dennis Rodman’s appearance during the latest 83 Weeks podcast.
He noted that the deal to bring in Rodman to WCW only took 15 minutes to complete:
“I remember when I got the call. I was at the Airport Marriott in Atlanta for a meeting, and I got to the meeting a little bit early. Just as I was walking in the door, my phone rang, and it was Hulk. He said, ‘Hey, brother, I got somebody that wants to talk to you, but you need to get a hold of him right away’, and he told me it was Dennis Rodman. I didn’t even go in to sit with the people I was meeting. I made them wait. I got a hold of Dwight Manley, who was Dennis’ agent at the time. We had a great conversation with Dwight. We got right to the point, and for the most part, did the deal over the phone in the lobby of the Airport Marriott in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a very easy deal to do. I think a lot of that just had to do with the fact that Dennis really dug Hulk. Dennis is a very unique individual in a lot of ways. He’s not as money motivated as a lot of people would have been. He wasn’t playing one against the other. There was interest from WWF, and he would rather work with WCW, largely because of Hulk. We literally made that deal over the phone. It took about 15 minutes. I was barely late for my meeting.”
Bischoff added, “For the amount of money that I’m paying this guy to come in, I’m getting a multiple of five times worth of media value out of this because every sports talk show in America for a long time is going to be talking about Dennis Rodman teaming up with Hulk Hogan at WCW.”
