Eric Bischoff Making Shock Wrestling Return

Eric Bischoff has made a stunning return to pro wrestling.

On October 31st it was announced that Eric Bischoff would be working on a special event with MLW.

Paul Walter Hauser appeared on the latest episode of Wise Choices with Eric Bischoff, and things quickly took a turn. During the show, Hauser called MLW boss Court Bauer and asked whether he’d be interested in working with Bischoff.

Bauer jumped at the chance and said Bischoff should come to MLW One Shot in New York in December and he can call the shots. The promotion later confirmed that Bischoff will have “total creative control” on the show.

On the latest episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff broke down how his deal with MLW, and what fans can expect from an event under his control.

“[Paul Walter Hauser] basically said, ‘I’d love to see you come in and take over MLW for one night, but really do it, not wrestling do it, like come in and from top to bottom, produce or executive produce the show and have fun with it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, whatever, it’s a cool idea, and I appreciate you thinking of it, that’s a lot of fun. But I think Court [Bauer] might have a problem with that.’

He called Court, Paul called Court right then, put him on speaker, blindsided him with it, and said, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’ So still gotta work out some schedule issues I have, but I’m gonna figure it out because I want to do it just because it sounds fun,'”

Eric Bischoff To Work As Executive Producer

Diving into the specifics of Bischoff’s return, he was asked whether he would be working as an Executive Producer. The former WCW boss explained that while he essentially would be, he was still going to operate under Bauer’s guidance.

“I guess yeah, you could call it that. Let’s make it clear, it’s Court’s baby. But when I talked to him on the phone, he said, ‘I really want it to be your show. Do it the way you would do it if it was your show.’ Obviously there’s probably things going on there creatively, so I’m not gonna come in there and just turn everything upside down.

But to be able to kind of frame whatever’s going on storyline-wise and produce it the way I would like to see it produced, you hear me talking about format, you hear me talk about threading stories through shows, you hear me talking about A stories, B stories, C stories, and how I treat each one of them differently, and how they’re nuanced.

Now I get a chance to do it. I think it’s kinda fun, and it’s even more fun the way it all came about,”

Bischoff went on to explain that he’s going to work to put his own spin onto whatever stories are already being told. He added that when the show is finished he hopes fans feel they’ve watched something a bit different but within the normal boundaries of MLW.

“It’s not gonna be a hostile takeover kind of thing. We’ve talked about it a little bit, I know which direction we’re going.

But to me, it’s taking whatever stories they have and applying my own presentation to it, whether it’s format or anything else, or threading the main event through the show and how you do it, maybe shooting interviews a little differently than we’re normally used to seeing. Just little things like that.

But those are fun little things to play with, and hopefully at the end of it, people go, ‘Okay, well, that was different than what we normally see.’ If I can make people think, ‘Wow, that was really different and I kinda liked it,’ that’s a home run for me. So we’re gonna try to be as different as we can, but still stay within the guardrails,”

Eric Bischoff hasn’t worked in wrestling since leaving WWE in October 2019 after a short spell as Executive Producer of SmackDown. Since then, the WWE Hall of Famer has repeatedly stated he wouldn’t go and work for either WWE or AEW.

MLW One Shot is set to take place on December 5th at the Melrose Ballroom. It will be the third event to be run under the One Shot banner.

H/t to Fightful