Eric Bischoff Reveals How Ted Turner Felt About WWE’s “Billionaire Ted” Skits
Eric Bischoff has cleared up some confusion about former WCW Owner Ted Turner’s true feelings about the “Billionaire Ted” comedy skits that WWE loved to do.
In the mid-1990s when WWE Monday Night Raw went head to head with WCW Monday Nitro, the upstart Nitro show passed Raw in terms of the television ratings battles.
While WWE tried to figure out ways to grow its audience, they also decided to take shots at WCW’s Owner Ted Turner, who was a billionaire who owned multiple television stations like CNN, TNT, and TBS.
There were comedy skits that would air on WWE programming featuring “Billionaire Ted” looking and sounding like a fool. They also featured “The Huckster” mocking WCW’s Hulk Hogan and the “Nacho Man” mocking WCW’s “Macho Man” Randy Savage, both of whom were major WWE stars. The WWE side mocked Hogan & Savage for being older wrestlers while WWE featured its “New Generation” of wrestlers.
Eric Bischoff was a Vice President in WCW who ascended to the role of President, which meant he was the one who interacted and answered to his boss Ted Turner.
Ted Turner Enjoyed “Billionaire Ted” Skits According To Eric Bischoff
There was a “Mr. McMahon” docuseries that premiered earlier this week about the life and times of Vince McMahon running WWE for over 40 years. During the documentary, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff appeared to talk about the infamous Billionaire Ted skits, which led to Bischoff revealing that the former WCW owner Ted Turner didn’t have a problem with them.
“I kept gnawing at [Vince] and hitting him and doing everything I could to get him to react, and he did. They started doing the Billionaire Ted skits. That was the first real sell. I finally got him to react, which means he was off balance.”
“When I first saw them, it’s like, ‘Let’s tape these things. I gotta run them up to Ted.’ We brought them up to Ted and he laughed his ass off. He thought they were funny as hell.”
Eventually, WWE pulled the plug on the Billionaire Ted skits and they would beat WCW by putting on a better show that drew a larger television audience.