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Any career in the entertainment realm rises and falls depending on the project, each becoming their own individual chapter in someone's life. Eric Bischoff's career run has seen him go from the highs of being the only promoter to place WWE into a subservient position (83 Weeks, as you may have heard!) to producing reality television to performing as the WWE Raw General Manager in camera to a short run overseeing WWE's Smackdown brand as Executive Director. There have been victories and losses, financial wealth and bankruptcies, but through it all, the journey has seen Bischoff push forward through it all.
The latest chapter for Bischoff is overseeing Real American Freestyle, the first-ever unscripted "professional wrestling" company as RAF's Chief Media Officer. Back in the saddle of creating content and overseeing production, Bischoff sits once more in a familiar seat, in part because this new journey brings him back, full circle, to the earliest era of his career run, using his connection to amateur wrestling to pitch the late Verne Gagne and his American Wrestling Association in order to promote Ninja Star Wars, a children's toy playset that ended up landing Bischoff his first job in professional wrestling, working for Gagne in the latter days of the AWA.
“Finding your way in, especially back in the eighties and the nineties before there were, sophisticated training centers and pipelines directly into the big companies," Bischoff explained to PWInsider.com, just a few days before this Saturday's Real American Freestyle 04, which will stream live on FOX Nation. "It was really tough to break into the business, but I was able to slide in, so to speak, because of my amateur wrestling background. I leveraged my participation on my high school wrestling team, which Verne Gagne was very familiar with my team and he was very familiar with the coach. Gagne was such a big supporter of amateur wrestling that when I had the idea to try to find a partner for Ninja Star Wars, that, that action game that I came up with [future WCW performer and official] Sonny Onno back in the 80s I called Verne Gagne's office and I leveraged my amateur wrestling background to get the meeting with Verne and got the meeting. I also got a job offer two or three days later, and it was only because of amateur wrestling.”
Now, Bischoff finds himself back in the amateur wrestling ranks, helping to oversee the RAF brand. When asked to compare his current day foray into combat sports to his time overseeing World Championship Wrestling in the 1990s, Bischoff noted it's been an all-out pace for RAF. "I am actually busier than ever. While I don't have an office per se to go to, like I did in the CNN Center because our team is scattered throughout the country and in some cases around the world. So we're constantly working in our own individual silos from home, probably 16, 18 hours a day. For the most part, six or seven days a week. Very busy, but very grateful."
Reflecting on that initial meeting and work with Gagne, Bischoff considers RAF to be a full-circle moment in his professional journey.
“Now, fast forward, oh, I don't know, a couple decades, maybe three or so, and the opportunity to be a part of Real American Freestyle was because of my professional wrestling career. So it's a really big, full circle journey for me in the sense that what started out as a kid, skinny kid in high school, that was a really average on a good day,. Amateur wrestler. Leverage that opportunity and some of those relationships to end up where I am today, which is one of the founders of Real American Freestyle, which is a professional freestyle wrestling league Olympic level or Olympic style I should say. So it's really a cool full circle moment.”
Bischoff noted that the skill set he developed in professional wrestling, particularly directing and producing athletes who aren’t trained actors, translated directly to reality and unscripted television work, which is now feeding into RAF’s presentation on FOX Nation.
"One more thing to your point, those [professional] chapters also are experiences. I gained a lot of experience in the professional wrestling industry that actually I was able to apply quite effectively when I had my own independent production company with Jason Hervey, when we were producing a lot of reality programming. The skills that I developed directing non-actors, so to speak, athletes, but non-actors necessarily....getting the right kind of interview out of them or the right kind of promo out of them really helped when it came time to produce reality television. A lot of the things that I learned production wise are some of the reasons why I am here at Real American Freestyle because I learned how to bring certain elements, not all of them, obviously, from the world of sports entertainment, but the elements that work well for real American freestyle we're integrating. So it's kinda like the summation of all the parts, if you will.”
Building RAF from ground zero has actually been, in Bischoff's view, earlier than getting WCW Monday Nitro off the ground, in terms of building the brand and getting the airplane into the air, so to speak.
"Nitro was actually harder," Bischoff reflected, noting the two situations were dramatically different because WCW had years of negative brand perception baked in. "There are two entirely different efforts. Similar in some respects, but really quite different in the sense that, WCW had been around for seven, eight years prior to the launch of Nitro, whatever it was, five or six years. Prior to the launch of Nitro and during that five or six period of five or six year period of time, while WCW had a very small but loyal fan base, we were generally regarded as a distant number two, which might as well have been number 22, which might as well have been 222, meaning WCW had spent four or five years before I got there, and shortly after. Pretty much branding themselves is a much lesser than product. When I took over WCW and it was time to, to launch Nitro, I realized that I really had to rebrand ourselves in a soft launch a way. We had to change everything about the perception of WCW that we could, in order for people to even give us a chance. It's the difference between starting at the at the start line and starting 20 yards behind the start line. WCW was about 50 yards behind the start line when that race started in September of 1995, meaning the launch of Nitro."
With Real American Freestyle, Bischoff feels the company has a “clean slate” in terms of presentation, yet he and the RAF must still educate the audience about the sport in an entertaining way.
“Most Americans sports fans, they know what freestyle wrestling is, or they know what Olympic wrestling is or collegiate wrestling is, right?, " Bischoff explains. "They don't know the nuances and the differences between folk style, which is high school per se and collegiate and freestyle. There's differences, nuance differences, rule differences in some cases most. Fans recognize the NCAAs when they come around once a year because they see it on ESPN. We saw Wyatt Hendrickson beat Gable Stevenson this last time and wrap himself in the American flag and go out there and shake hands with Donald Trump, the entire you know, country. A good part, portion of sports fan saw that, but beyond the Olympics, which only comes around once every four years and beyond the NCAA Finals, while most people are generally aware of wrestling, they're really not familiar with it. And with real American Freestyle, we've had a clean slate in the sense that yes, people generally know what it is. But we have the first opportunity to really present it in an entertaining way because up until this point, nobody's done that. So what I'm saying in a long-winded way is Nitro was actually harder because we started out in a hole with real American freestyle. We've got a work cut out for us because. I call it edutaining. Edutaining, the audience, meaning they learn about the sport while they're enjoying watching it. That's a pretty tactical dance, and that makes it a challenge, but it also makes it fun.”
When asked to compare his workload producing and overseeing RAF to his producing major WCW events during that promotion's lifespan, Bischoff pointed out, "Running Nitro or WCW Pay-per-view events [were] much, much more difficult in the sense that if it's a three hour pay-per-view or a two hour Nitro, every second of it was scripted and produced. With Real American Freestyle, the matches are listed, but what happens in that match is not scripted, which means someone like me or creative team doesn't have to spend nearly as much time dealing with the creative issues, involving storylines. That aspect doesn't exist. So that part of my day, which was usually about six hours of any given day and production, that part of my day is gone.”
RAF was not without struggles early on, especially since it had been so strongly branded and aligned with WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan, who passed away in July before RAF01 took place. With Hogan set to be the "Commissioner" for the league, Bischoff reflected on the pivots that had to be made in the wake of Hogan's death.
"Initially it was very challenging because, particularly with Fox Nation, our partner, they were very excited about Hulk's participation in this and I'll go out on a limb and suggest that probably one of the reasons they took the meeting and were so excited to get it is because they knew Hulk was going to be attached to it. They knew that Hulk's name were, it was gonna bring eyeballs, it was going to go bring people to the party, to at the very least check out the product, which is.all you can hope for when you have somebody like Hulk Hogan out in front of our brand, so it certainly changed a lot of things for Fox because they had a rollout plan and bigger ideas even than we had. So obviously that, that changed quite a bit.”
Bischoff credited Chad Bronstein, Izzy Martinez, and the larger team for keeping everything on track.
"Chad Bronstein, my partner along with Izzy Martinez and an entire group of people, really a really impressive group of people just did what we had to do, made the adjustments we had to make and Fox obviously felt the same way and they remained committed and even more so now to the product because they're seeing the kind of success that this sports league can bring to television. It's a brand new sports league.”
Bischoff feels the RAF promotion is ahead of where he thought it would be at this stage, particularly in terms of live attendance.
“Honestly, Mike, I'm blown away by where we are now. We are right now where I hoped we would be in two years when we launched this thing. I knew it was gonna be an uphill climb and it was going to take a while because it does for any new brand, any new property, to really, build an audience. It just takes time and repetitions.”
He then offered specific numbers and talked about the audience makeup.
“So in terms of attendance, I think in Chicago we had 5,500 or 6,000 people in the building. Largest percentage of them paid. There were obviously some comps in there. We do a lot of things with youth groups and things like that because there's a strong youth component to what we do. I don't know if you go back and look at Chicago and you just look at the composition of the audience it's a solid 18 to 49, but there's a strong contingent of kids in there. When I say kids, six to 14, 15 years old. That aspect of the show has grown so much. I think in Cleveland we ended up with about 24 to 2,800. Penn State was a bit of a challenge for a lot of reasons. I don't remember what that one was. Probably a little less than that. And then in Chicago, over 5,000 people.”
Bischoff said part of the improvement has come from the team gaining repetitions and tightening production, especially given the reliance on freelance crew.
“So, it's growing in terms of the television product as we tighten up, and again, just get reps under our belt. Make sure everybody's more familiar with what we're doing from a product, from the production side, because we use a lot of freelancers. We've got a solid core group, James Vero, John Norton, our producer, David Sahadi, who you may know, a very well known showrunner. We've got a great core team, but outside of that core team we're reliant on freelancers. Some of those have never produced a show quite like this before, like Real American Freestyle, but they're getting more familiar and we're getting better at tightening up the show and it just flows better.”
He said he’s particularly excited for the next event this Saturday due to new formatting elements designed to build tension and anticipation.
“I think this show coming up Saturday is probably the one I'm most excited about because I'm introducing a few minor elements to help build anticipation because you know how I feel about story, anticipation, reality, surprises, action, all that. And we're gonna start formatting the show beginning Saturday. We're gonna start formatting that show to help build a little more tension and to build a little more anticipation.”
Beyond their live events streaming on FOX Nation, RAF has been in regular discussions with several potential homes for a weekly RAF television series. When asked about the nuances of building weekly television around legitimate competition, where injuries and upsets can instantly change plans, as any MMA fan can attest, Bischoff admits the challenge exists in every sport, but RAF is not scripting story arcs.
“Look, it's always a challenge, whether it's the NFL or badminton or anything else that involves, physical activity that could result in an injury, "Bischoff explains. "Obviously in, in our sport, much like MMA the risks are much higher. It does pose a problem, but our stories are not scripted, meaning we're not laying out a six week story arc with all the elements in the beats that need to go along with the, that arc. We're taking the stories that come out of the real competition, no different than the NFL or Major League Baseball, or the NBA. It's the stories behind scenes that drive interest in the sport.”
Bischoff added that being approved for sports betting is a major driver for audience engagement and narrative.
“It's one of the reasons, I know this would sound crazy, but it's one of the reasons that I was so excited that we got approved for sports betting because as people learn more about the sport, learn how to bet on the sport, the odds start becoming the premise of a lot of stories.
Bischoff pointed to how sports talk radio often frames storylines through odds and betting-driven analysis. “If you listen to Sports Stock Radio on Saturday, for example, infinity Sports Network… 70% of the narrative starts with the odds and when we can get that kind of conversation going about the product, about the athletes analyzing the individual athletes and their strengths.”
He then detailed how a late injury change created a real-time storyline heading into the upcoming event.
“So if someone, for example, this event coming up, we had an amazing match set for our next event, Bo Nickel, our current Real American Freestyle Champion taking on Yoel Romero, but Bo got injured and is not able to compete this Saturday. So Pat Downey decided 'I'm gonna take this shot because if I can get through Yoel Romero, I'm gonna be in a position for a shot at the title.' That's the kind of story that has developed over the last 72-96 hours, but it's a story that will help drive interest. Did Pat Downey bite off more than he should have at this point? Is it gonna stall his momentum or is he gonna leapfrog right to the front of the list?"
Bischoff does note there is a learning curve for athletes stepping onto the RAF mat from a production standpoint.
"We're dealing with athletes who aren't familiar for the most part [with the television process.] They're used to wrestling in a tournament format with, 10 mats on the floor and, 10 matches going on all simultaneously. Here, the spotlight is on them from the minute they come through the backstage area and walk out in front of that crowd. The spotlight is only on them and they're not used to that. So getting them comfortable enough to go out there and let the world know who they are and shell, their personality, takes a little bit of coaxing in sometimes, but we're getting there slowly but surely we're getting there."
RAF, in Bischoff's mind, has a "five out of five” philosophy: story, anticipation, reality, surprises, and action.
"Check out these characters. Listen to the way we tell our stories, see if we're checking the boxes. As far as story and anticipation, reality is real. We're Real American Freestyle. It can't get any more real than this. So that box gets checked automatically. We consistently have some pretty cool surprises, and I think the action is second to none. So for me, Real American Freestyle checks all five out of five.”
For more on this Saturday's RAF04, click here.
Tomorrow, more with Bischoff on RAF, John Cena and more.
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