Eric Bischoff

Picture this: It’s the NBA Finals, and one of the star players of the Denver Nuggets or Miami Heat decides to pick up a side gig. Imagine one of those players, say Michael Porter Jr. or Bam Adebayo, flies to another city following a game so he can go work at his other job. Can you imagine the outrage? The media coverage? The Twitter firestorm? If you grew up watching basketball in the 1990s like Ariel Helwani did, of course you can. Because Dennis Rodman, the erratic Hall of Famer, did this exact thing in 1998 when he appeared live on WCW Nitro just after playing in Game 3 of the Finals! And the guy who orchestrated this deal, Eric Bischoff, joins Ariel on today’s episode to talk about how he convinced larger-than-life basketball heroes Rodman and Karl Malone to enter the world of pro wrestling and a whole lot more, like: What Dennis Rodman is actually like off camera (5:41) How Rodman helped take Bischoff’s wrestling promotion, WCW, to a new level in the late ‘90s (16:30) Partying with Rodman and Hulk Hogan … and how one late night out gave Bischoff a visual he’s never quite forgotten (23:02) Bischoff’s close relationship with the late Muhammad Ali and what he learned from the boxing legend (35:09) Plus, Bischoff goes around the horn on a number of pro wrestling topics (37:51)! He and Ariel get into Endeavor’s purchase of WWE, if the upstart AEW has what it takes to topple the behemoth WWE, Tony Khan’s fitness for leadership, MJF’s free agency, and much more. Eric Bischoff is a titan of the professional wrestling industry. He is the former Executive Vice President of World Championship Wrestling, the pro wrestling organization that competed head on with Vince McMahon’s WWE, most notably in the ‘90s. After leaving WCW, Bischoff joined WWE’s creative team. Now a proud resident of Wyoming, the 68-year-old WWE Hall of Famer lives a much quieter life than when he was one of the biggest names in the business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices