Eric Bischoff On Why Bret Hart’s Run Didn’t Go Well
Eric Bischoff has opened up about why Bret Hart’s WCW run didn’t go so well while the former WCW boss is pointing the finger at himself too.
When Bret “Hitman” Hart signed with WCW in 1997, it came after he left WWE as a five-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion that was screwed out of the championship at Survivor Series 1997.
Anybody that has followed Bret Hart and Eric Bischoff in the 25+ years since Bret showed up in WCW knows that Bret has been very critical of Bischoff and others that were part of WCW. However, Bischoff was the WCW President that had the final say on a lot of the things that Bret did when he got there in 1997 as well as what happened over the next few years.
It wasn’t all bad for Bret Hart in WCW since he was a two-time WCW World Champion that had some great matches with the likes of Sting, Booker T, Ric Flair and others. However, there are many people that believe that Bret wasn’t used to his fullest especially when he first arrived.
At the time of Bret Hart’s arrival in WCW, Eric Bischoff was the figurehead of the New World Order as a heel boss. Bischoff even wrestled at Starrcade 1997, the first WCW pay-per-view that Bret appeared on, while Bret was only a special referee on that show.
On a recent episode of Eric Bischoff’s 83 Weeks podcast, Easy E blamed himself partly for why Bret’s run in WCW didn’t go well.
“It was a combination of a lot of things, the least of which is I didn’t have a great plan. I’m going to put myself at the head of the list of things that went wrong, and not kind of blame anybody else. Because that was my job, that was my responsibility. But I think that there were other things going on that affected it and made it worse frankly. I’m not going to blame anybody, you know.”
“It was just bad timing, lack of a good plan, lack of a great plan, and just a lot of other things that were taking place in Bret’s life that just made it worse. It just is what it is.”
Despite not using Bret Hart to his fullest, Eric Bischoff is in the WWE Hall of Fame while Bret was inducted twice – as a singles wrestler and as part of the Hart Foundation tag team with Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart.