Eric Bischoff On Why He Respects Vince McMahon Professionally More Now Than Ever
WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff has explained why he has never respected Vince McMahon in a business sense more than he does now.
Eric Bischoff was the man who led WCW in a ratings war against Vince McMahon’s WWE in the late nineties. The professional rivalry grew so big to the point that Bischoff publicly challenged McMahon to show up and fight him on a WCW pay-per-view, an offer McMahon, publicly at least, ignored.
McMahon retired in July 2022 from his role as WWE Chairman amid allegations of sexual misconduct and hush money payments made to former female employees of the company.
Speaking on Steve Fall’s Ten Count, Eric Bischoff explained that despite the two men’s history his professional respect for Vince McMahon has never been higher due to the smooth transition of McMahon’s departure and the resilience of WWE because of the structure he put in place:
“Those are some cool things, and I think for me I looked — you know, I said I respected Vince McMahon. And I respect him more now, today, from a business perspective — I want to make that clear, from a business perspective, I respect him more now than I ever have. Because what Vince did was build an infrastructure around him that not only allowed WWE to become a seamless — or the transition between Vince and Stephanie and Triple H, it’s not only seamless; the business continues to grow.”
“And there’s not a lot of executives that have been at the top, the chairman, in this case, that have been able to walk away while being successful, wildly successful in defying the stock market. Walk away and the stock actually go up. That is a credit to building that infrastructure and putting the right people in place to manage that business.”