The impact the NWO cannot be overstated. But how one of wrestling’s most influential factions came to be is not so evident.
However, the group’s mastermind and former WCW President, Eric Bischoff, has a new podcast dedicated to the NWO era of Ted Turner’s fallen promotion. On a recent episode of 83 Weeks, Bischoff laid out his NWO playbook.
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With the acquisition of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, Bischoff had two stars who were returning to a company that had previously spat them out. Bischoff saw this real-life contention worthy of kayfabe exploration.
“I wanted to do this storyline where the audience didn’t know whether or not the story was real or it was scripted. Scott and Kevin worked with WCW previously. Scott and Kevin both felt that WCW didn’t treat them well, and that they weren’t being treated as stars, etc,” explained Bischoff.
“They went to WWF and became bigger stars, or big stars in WWF. Storyline-wise it became apparent to me that it was a perfect catalyst of these two guys that used to work here and got pissed off, they left, became big stars and then came back to exact revenge. That was the premise of the nWo storyline,” he said.
Now that his characters had clear intentions, Bischoff could build a storyline. But it hinged on tricking fans into believing that Hall and Nash’s takeover was real, or at least felt that way.
“We knew he wasn’t going to wrestle. I knew I was going to bring him in to kind of crash the party at the time,” he said. “I had the beats figured out in my head for the next few weeks and I knew he wasn’t going to wrestle, so I told him to bring his street clothes.”
With the bait on the hook, Bishoff needs to catch a whale, and the Immortal Hulk Hogan was the perfect option. However the world of professional wrestling is prone to leaks, so Bischoff had to keep everything under wraps until it was necessary for the involved parties to know.
“I think at that time, probably a week before is when I started letting the people need to know. I think I let Kevin Nash know. I know I was out in Los Angeles doing something because we met for a beer at Sunset Blvd, at some biker bar. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be Hulk Hogan or Sting. One was a plan A and the other plan B. I tried to let him know how much he should know, and the other part was because I was worried he would leak it out, so probably a week before I let those that needed to know that Hogan was going to be the third member.”
[H/T Wrestling Inc.]
