Eric Bischoff has opened up about the introduction of the New World Order into the then WWF in 2002 and how he would have booked the invasion of black and white.
Following the much debated WCW/ECW invasion of the World Wrestling Federation in 2001 – after Vince McMahon had purchased both companies – things felt odd on WWF television as the promotion attempted to find a footing following such a long storyline.
The Undertaker turned heel, Vince McMahon opened his famous ‘Kiss My Ass’ club, those Alliance talent that remained were being bedded into the roster despite them being the heels just weeks earlier and Ric Flair had been revealed as the man who purchased Shane and Stephanie’s majority of WCW/ECW thus making him equal partners with Vince McMahon.
The adjustment period wasn’t smooth by any stretch of the imagination, but everything became much more complicated in 2002 when McMahon took to television to reveal that he was going to bring the NWO back as a shot of poison in order to kill the company that he created. If he couldn’t have sole propriety then no one would.
Now Eric Bischoff has sat down on his 83 Weeks Podcast to discuss the angle in which McMahon dropped the bombshell of the NWO and how it could have been booked better:
“I wouldn’t have had Vince McMahon turn around and reveal himself in the chair as the evil genius that was going to bring back the NWO to destroy his own company. That was such a non-starter from a creative perspective. I don’t care how big of a fan of WWE you were at the time, you couldn’t possibly buy that, it was just so nonsensical. If you start out a story with one foot on a banana peel and the other in a bucket of cement, where are you going? That’s how the story started, there’s no way it was going to get better from there’s.”
The original NWO trio of Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall returned to the WWF at No Way Out on February 17, 2002, but their reign would last just one month before the faction split at WrestleMania X8.
Hulk Hogan would go on to become WWE Undisputed Champion as well as Mr. America, while the faction would continue with the induction of new members such as Shawn Michaels, Big Show and for a very limited time, Booker T.
Credit for the interview: 83 Weeks Podcast
h/t for the transcription: Wrestling Inc.