Speaking on his podcast 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff has spoken of being surprised that Bully Ray isn’t currently working behind the scenes, or even in front of the camera, for a major wrestling company. But that he could be incredibly valuable to either WWE or AEW.
Over the course of his in-ring career Bully Ray appeared for pretty much every major wrestling company in North America. His stints in ECW and WWE as a member of the Dudley Boyz made him a legend in the business as he won multiple tag team titles and helped pioneer the TLC match alongside the Hardy Boyz and Edge and Christian. He later went on to reinvent himself in TNA (now IMPACT) while also appearing for Ring Of Honour.
Since 2017 Ray has co-hosted Busted Open on Sirius XM, and is currently unattached after his ROH contract expired in April of this year.
Bully Ray has a wealth of experience and know-how from his long and successful career, and Bischoff feels that this coupled with his intelligence would make him valuable to WWE. Although he understands why a role within WWE may not be on the horizon.
“Bully is incredibly smart, incredibly experienced, and he knows how to carry himself… There’s a culture in WWE. I found out the hard way. If you’re going to fit into that culture, you have to shed your skin and bring the skin that’s provided to you by the head of culture in WWE. You just have to. Some people can do that, Adam Pearce is doing a fantastic job. Certain people do, certain people don’t.
“Bully knows what it’s like to be in WWE, especially in that role as a producer and on the creative team. I’m guessing that he just doesn’t want it. I’m not sure if anyone has ever offered it to him, and maybe if they did, he’d make a fool of me. Bully’s a man’s man. He’s very much an individual. He’ll compromise to a point and then he won’t. I’m guessing that’s probably why.”
While he doesn’t think he’d be a perfect fit for WWE, Bischoff goes on to argue that he could be of huge benefit to AEW. Adding;
“As far as AEW goes, I don’t know… There’s not a lot of really experienced, talented people who understand the art of creating emotion, and that’s what Bully was best at. I don’t know why Bully’s not there in AEW because he’s valuable.”
“There’s some really talented people there, and obviously, Chris Jericho is maybe one of the most creative people right now. But wouldn’t you like to have 2, or 3, or 4 people that have Chris Jericho’s kind of experience and feel, but maybe come at it from a couple different perspectives so you have options? I would think somebody like AEW would really benefit from Bully’s experience.”
If there is a gap in experience at AEW, it is a gap that will likely be filled by another man that Eric Bischoff knows well, Sting. The master of Scorpion Deathlock recently debuted with the company on an episode of AEW Dynamite, something Bischoff revealed that he’s very excited about.
You can listen to the full podcast episode here, with a h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.