Eric Bischoff on WCW's Legacy

Aside from WWE, the biggest American wrestling promotion in the last thirty years was WCW. While it’s been gone over sixteen years now, the promotion still leaves a lasting impression on wrestling today. Eric Bischoff ran the company over its most lucrative run, making him a very unique voice on the subject.

Bischoff was recently a guest on “Main Event Radio” where he discussed a variety of topics, including WCW’s legacy lasting so many years after it closed. He sees several things today that wouldn’t be around without WCW having paved the way for them. Here are his comments with transcription courtesy of Wrestlinginc.com:

“People are finally figuring it out that at the end of the day that WCW created some of the best talent in the history of the world. It was a great run. WCW had its moment and that’s what it was; it was a moment. And we created some great stories and changed the industry to a large degree. The fact that we are watching a live Monday Night Raw every week is due to Nitro.

“The fact that we are watching 205 Live and the cruiserweight division is because of what we did. There are so many things that we changed in the industry that we still enjoy today. Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, myself, and even Bill Goldberg for crying out loud main eventing Wrestlemania. That is WCW’s legacy. We are still here today. The nWo is still selling merchandise 20 years later. That’s our legacy.”

You can listen to the full interview here.

Opinion: I don’t think you can say WCW created all those wrestlers but they certainly did showcase them, which is often more important. How many people would have known about Rey Mysterio or Chris Jericho or Eddie Guerrero without WCW? Sure they were in ECW in the first place but that’s not exactly the same level of distribution. I know WCW gets a lot of flack but they certainly did a lot of great things for wrestling fans.