Eric Bischoff Fired WCW Star After An “Incredible Match”
A former WCW star has recalled a time when he was fired by Eric Bischoff due to what the wrestlers did during the match.
It is rare for a wrestler to get fired after they had what they believe was an incredible match, but that’s what happened to the Blacktop Bully. You may remember him from his real name Barrow Darsow, who was a part of WWE’s Demolition team as Smash.
At World Championship Wrestling’s (WCW) Uncensored pay-per-view event in March 1995, The Blackpot Bully wrestled Dustin Rhodes in a King of the Road Match. They had the match on a moving truck while cameras followed them down the road.
The King of the Road Match was unique where the object of the match was to climb to the top of the trailer’s cage and sound a horn positioned there. The Blackpot Bully won the match, which saw both guys bleed. That was against company policy at the time.
Barry Darsow was interviewed by The Wrestling Perspective recently as he explained how the King of the Road Match happened.
“The Blacktop Bully was one of my favorite gimmicks. You had Dustin Rhodes on the other day. What a great guy; Dustin is one of the best workers in this business, too, by the way. When I had that truck match [King of the Road] with him in WCW, we had so much fun in that match, and we both got fired. It was incredible.”
“We drove 60 miles around Atlanta, [we] had helicopters with cameras and trucks with cameras. We were wrestling, we were having a great time, and we ended up bleeding like crazy everywhere. The office told us to get blood, so we ended up hitting the barbed wire. We did everything there, and we were bleeding from head to toe, and they ended up cutting out a bunch of that match too.”
After the match, Barry Darsow received a call from WCW President Eric Bischoff. Darsow was punished due to what happened during the match.
“We were in a field when the match was done, and I looked at Dustin. I gave him a big hug. I said, ‘Dustin, that was the freaking best match. That was the funnest. What a match.’ We hugged each other. I ended up driving back to Charlotte. He went to wherever his home was.”
“The next day I got a call from Eric Bischoff, and Eric said, ‘Barry, what a match, and he said I got good news and bad news for you.’ I said, ‘well, what is the good news?’ He said it’s one of the better matches I’ve ever seen. I said, well, what’s the bad news? He goes, you’re fired. I said, fired; it was one of the best matches ever. He says you weren’t supposed to have any blood on TV. It was an uncensored match.”
Darsow would go on to say that Bischoff promised him that he would get hired back by WCW and Bischoff kept his word.
“Mike Graham, our agent, said we had to be bleeding from head to toe, which we were, and we’re going to get fired over that? So, Eric says, yeah, but please, Barry, don’t give me a stink. I’ll hire you back. I promise. So I said, all right, and I called up Dustin. I said, Dustin, did you get fired too? So he answered, yeah, I got fired, and then Mike Graham called, and he got fired. So we all got fired.”
“That was the one thing I said to Eric. I hope you fire everybody involved. He said, no, it’s just you three. So anyway, we got fired for having one of the best matches. He hired me back after that, about a year later. So he was good with his word.”
While Darsow would get rehired by WCW about a year later, Dustin would go on to have the best run of his WWE career as Goldust. Dustin did return to WCW many years later as well.