Just last week, we learned that Eric Bischoff has already been fired from the position of Executive Director of Smackdown, which he was given only a few months ago. This week, he used the platform of his 83 Weeks podcast with Conrad Thompson to offer his take on what happened. He’s clearly not interested in attacking Vince McMahon or anyone else at the company, and was as positive as he could be about the whole thing.
Here are his own words, as transcribed by Wrestling Inc:
I was really grateful for the opportunity to work for WWE and it was an opportunity. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to work out and it clearly didn’t work out the way Vince McMahon wanted it to work out but it happens. I’m not taking any of it personally; professionally, I’m taking a hard look at it and thinking it through. But more than anything, I am grateful for the opportunity. Part of the reason that I am is because I had a chance to work with a great team of people — the writing staff on SmackDown in particular, as well as some of the writers on RAW. They are a very talented and unbelievably hard-working and dedicated group of people. Just to have the opportunity to work with people like that in of itself was worth the experiment.
He also made it clear that he never expected this job to last all that long, although he clearly didn’t expect his tenure to be quite as short as it was:
I didn’t come here thinking that I would be working for the WWE for 5 or 10 years. I looked it as a relatively short term opportunity, meaning 2 to 3 years. I didn’t think it was going to be quite this short term but sometimes that happens. WWE is a great company with a very defined culture and process, and I necessarily didn’t fit into it and that is just the way it is. I’m not sad, I’m not disappointed, or angry — I’m not any of those things. I am just looking forward to the next opportunity wherever and whenever that may be, and digging the idea of packing up the truck and heading back into Wyoming, so all in all, I’m very positive. I have nothing but great things to say about the people at WWE and the company as a whole. It is an amazing company. I’ve said this even before I went back there, from the production team and everybody I came into contact with is not only incredibly talented but hardworking and extremely dedicated to the work that they do, so I was grateful and am grateful to have been part of the opportunity to have been a part of it even for a short time.
Finally, Bischoff made a point of saying that there’s no bad blood between him and Bruce Prichard, who replaced him in the job:
Bruce Prichard is probably the reason why I got the opportunity in the first place. I can tell you that Bruce had nothing to do with – this was the decision that Vince McMahon made based on whatever went through his mind. And I am 1,000% sure that anything Bruce Prichard said had nothing to do with that. Bruce is one of my closest friends and is going to remain as one of my closest friends. Anybody that suggests otherwise should look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why they feel they have to do what they have to do as they spread these rumors that I am going to call straight-up, dirt sheet bullshit.
Honestly, it seems like the whole thing worked out pretty well for Bischoff. He obviously made a some money, got to current WWE a little better, and now he can go back to the life of podcasts and Starrcasts he was living before.
