Eric Bischoff

One of the reasons wrestling works is because it allows people to suspend their disbelief. They may know it's not real, but if it's done well enough, they get sucked into it emotionally. And that's why they watch.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of WCW had to deal with was being a member of Turner Broadcasting.

People always said during the Monday Night Wars that the only way we were able to compete was due to a large checkbook and deep pockets. That's not very true at all. That is a false narrative designed to shape history. WWE had significant advantages over WCW and vice versa.

I've always believed that the audience and the energy that the audience creates is sometimes just as important as the action inside of the ring.

Bumps often require giving yourself completely to the talent you're in the ring with, and that's what makes wrestling such a performance art that is different from every other.

Shakespeare is still Shakespeare because story rules.

A lot of respect for Ric Flair; he's just a great guy.

It's really gratifying to see, after all these years, and I've been in the business for 30 years, and after all of these years, to see fans wearing nWo shirts and fans of WCW who still remember make me feel good.

You can't just run through a cookie cutter press and crank out a wrestler that looks like Bill Goldberg.

I think most people, most rational people, most people that I would feel comfortable sitting in a room with, understand that wrestling is scripted entertainment. But they don't want you to remind them of that.

The reason we didn't acquire WCW is an incoming, rotating door, new head of Turner at that time, took prime time television literally out of the deal that we had already negotiated. Once that happened, there was no way to make any sense of it. It was really just a video library and some ring mats.

This isn't a competitive sport. Wrestling is not the NFL or the NHL. It's not really sports. It's entertainment. And in order to be entertaining, you have to create emotion. And you can't create emotion by simply having a wrestling match.

When WCW first really began to enjoy the success that we enjoyed, it was because of the story lines that we were putting out in front of people.

Florida was a hotbed of professional wrestling, one of the hottest in the country.

Sports entertainment in general, it's a very competitive business.

The television business, by virtue of what's happened to streaming, it's really turned the traditional television business upside down.

I don't reflect back too much on moments in my career.

I'm not the type of person that lives in the past, quite honestly.

Professional wrestling, the WWE, and being in the Hall of Fame represent such a large part of Hulk's life, as does his connection to the audience.

To many generations of fans, Hulk Hogan really represents the beginning of what became this amazing industry that we have.

There's a way of getting heat that works for you, and there's a way of getting heat that works against you.

Booker T, Diamond Dallas Page, myself, and even Bill Goldberg, for crying out loud, main-eventing Wrestlemania. That is WCW's legacy.

The fact that we are watching a live 'Monday Night Raw' every week is due to 'Nitro.'

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.

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.

I really like Braun Strowman. I would turn the volume down on him just a little bit. I think he is a little bit overly animated, and he doesn't have to be. He is already a larger than life character when he wakes up and has a cup of coffee.

One of the reasons The Bullet Club is what it is, while it may be kind of a wink and a nod to the nWo, it's also young, fresh guys of a new generation.

Hulk will always be a part of sports entertainment/professional wrestling history, and there's nothing that's gonna change that. His relationship with the WWE, whether it's official or unofficial, is something that can't really be erased.

When I ran WCW, I obviously had a lot of control over the business, but when I was in TNA, I had no control over anything other than creative.

Professional wrestling... is no different than a Broadway play except that in a Broadway play, actors are using dialogue to tell a story and establish their characters, while in WWE, they're using a physical dialogue to tell their story and build their characters. That's a very unique art; it really is.

You could cure every disease known to man, and still, someone's going to hate you.

Here are the facts: when Eric Bischoff came to work for WCW as a 'clean up batter' on the announce team working alongside Tony Schiavone, I came with a guaranteed contract.

Bret Hart, you don't really understand the business of the Pro Wrestling business. You only understand the Bret Hart business of the Pro Wrestling business, and they are two different things.

I had zero exposure to creative in WCW up until 1993, 1994. Even then, I was at a distance.

I never got close to the creative in AWA; not only was I not close to it, I wasn't allowed to be in a room close to it when they were talking about creative. That is how tightly held Verne Gagne believed in kayfabing people who he didn't believe needed to be in the process.

You know that Vince Russo... when Russo and I agreed to work together, one of his big ideas was that he wanted Lance Storm to be my son.

Tony Schiavone - I have always liked and respected Tony.

When you hang on a little too long, you disappoint your fans, and deep, deep down inside, you're disappointing yourself, and that's the part that hurts you the most.

I have a lot of respect for the folks over at WWE, and I have a ton of respect for what they've accomplished within the industry.

You're going to have haters no matter what you do.

There's not as many passive wrestling fans as people would think. There are a lot of fans who just can't get enough, and they're almost more interested in what's going on behind the scenes and the business of wrestling then they are, necessarily, of what's going on inside of the ring.

Typically, in a live-action format, when you watch a wrestling show, you've got wrestlers in a ring in front of a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand people, and they're playing to large crowd, so you never really get that intimate, close and personal dialogue with them.

I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn't work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.

I am pretty transparent how I do things.

I didn't mind when Paul Wight came to me and said WWE offered him $1 million a year for ten years. I was like, 'Dude, you need to take that. You need to go now. Lemme give you a ride to the airport.'

DDP was the common guy, the everyman, a blue-collar guy from New Jersey. He represented something that the average person could believe in, in a way that was a little unique.

Diamond Dallas Page didn't have that larger-than-life persona, but he had a different connection with the audience.

Had Fusient been successful in buying WCW, ultimately there would have been no one on that side of the equation, including me, that would have had the commitment to the business that Vince McMahon has had throughout the years.

Take the main event of WrestleMania and put it in front of 75 people, and it will dramatically affect the way everyone watching feels about it.

Clearly there's value in Twitter and Facebook; otherwise, none of us would be involved in it.