Eric Bischoff's Cageside Evaluation

What you loved:

1. WWE's Competition - With Bischoff's help, WCW came amazingly close to taking down it's rival. It's true accomplishment to the heights WCW once reached thanks in part to him.
2. nWo - One of the greatest stables ever in the history or pro wrestling. While it was a mixed bag, many of you loved the group he helped create, at least in the beginning.
3. Heel - A fantastic heel, playing the slime-ball role to perfection. That smile, that stupid sly smile was incredibly annoying. It was always a pleasure watching him get beat down.
4. Mic Work - Great at promos and as an announcer. Could get boos on the regular whenever he spoke.
5. Raw GM - He was GM for 3 years and played the part well. Vince of course got the last laugh when he "fired" and dumped Bischoff in the back of a garbage truck.

My favorite comment comes via beckett929:

"When he took over the Executive Producer role in 1992, within 12 months he skyrocketed the production levels of the WCW product. It looked better, and felt like they had finally caught WWE in production value. Go watch something from 1991 and then a show from 1993 on the WWE Network, and you see the amount of quality Eric added to the broadcasts. Took a company that was losing $10m/yr in 1995, and made it a $300mil dollar company by 1997, without getting any of the TV ad revenue from Nitro and Thunder. He was a pretty decent play-by-play/commentator. Far less annoying than McMahon. Once the nWo started, he was a brilliant heel on the mic (also was in WWE, I thought).
While they were first in ECW, he’s primarily responsible for the Cruiserweights and the "work-rate" guys like Jericho, Beniot, Malenko, Guerrero, Saturn, and the likes to get big time American exposure."

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What you loathed:

1. Crushed Two Companies - Ultimately his runs with WCW and TNA ended quite poorly. TNA is...well TNA now and WCW is no more. Not to put blame solely on Bischoff, he had a big hand in both companies going down. With WCW, a couple things to mention; Souled Out PPV, giving big contracts to wrestlers, creative control to wrestlers, and Jay Leno. Friggin' Leno, I'm still pissed to this day I actually bought that PPV...I didn't even like WCW!
2. Undercard - Many of you felt he just cared about the main-event and the rest was just filler. Which is insane because their mid-card was amazing.
   
3. nWo - This ends up here, because of Bischoff lifting the idea from Japan. Also for how poorly this stable ended. Terrible ending, and way too many people involved in the groups. I mean when Vincent (Virgil) is on the team, things are getting out of control.
4. Spoiled - He would have some of the best ideas in the world, and it's amazing how many would turn to absolute crap. It's almost like Bischoff would just get bored, say "screw it!", and do whatever to end the story. Oh yeah, Starrcade 97.
   
5. Russo - Too much trust was put in that man, for every good idea he had, ten really bad ones would follow.

My favorite comment comes via MrErikJ:

"Bischoff relied too much on buying WWE’s senior/retired talent. Hogan was a smart move for WCW, but they gave him too much influence and placed him too prominently. WCW had much better mid-card talent than any other federation, but their main-eventers were almost all former McMahon talent. His innovations were outweighed by the costs incurred. Bringing Hall & Nash on was a great move, but they ran the nWo story into the ground without ever truly concluding it. He continued to sign expensive outside talent and either stuff them into the main event, or not even utilize them at all (Hart). His mid-card packed the seats, but never got to grow. And, they cost a 1/3 of their outside talent. Goldberg was their ticket to defeating Austin/McMahon, but the opportunity was wasted. Also, Bischoff should have never been in the nWo. Period."

Onto the poll! With 212 votes, Eric Bischoff's average score is 3.1

Thanks, Cagesiders! Tomorrow's pick will be even better than today's evaluation.

Final thought, posted in the The Daily thread today, Cagesider, TJ_UK was nice enough to create a "Khali Club" image with it's current members. For those of you who don't know the Khali Club is reserved for people who get below a 2 in the poll. Thanks TJ_UK!