Eric Bischoff Talks WCW’s Messy Finishes – “I Preferred To Go Off The Show With Action”

Former General Manager of Monday Night Raw, Eric Bischoff, has delved into the often messy finishes booked to end Monday Nitro on a weekly basis.

Despite topping Monday Night Raw in the ratings and coming close to putting the World Wrestling Federation out of business during professional wrestling’s Attitude Era, WCW did have a major flaw in the way they would book finishes to some of their larger bouts.

Instead of having a definitive winner or a talent pinning another star clean in the middle of the ring, matches would regularly end in countouts, disqualifications or run-ins which in turn would lead to multi-man brawls as the popular wrestling show went off air. This led to some citing that the company were drastically short on creative or that the bigger stars of the company just weren’t willing to make new stars, taking the easy way out of doing jobs.

Now, Eric Bischoff, the man responsible for a large majority of such finishes has taken to his 83 Weeks Podcast to discuss the booking strategy at the time, citing wanting to leave the audience on a cliff-hanger so they would return the following week:

“The idea I think with Nitros were to leave them hot, leave them wondering what was going to happen next week, leave it kind of open ended. I preferred to go off the show with action as opposed to going off the air with dialogue or announcers. I liked leaving the shows hot and it was often best to do that in a pull-apart or schmozz in the middle of the ring. A cliff-hanger if you will.”

That wasn’t always the case, however. There are examples of Nitro ending in the traditional manner, such as the night Bill Goldberg pinned Hulk Hogan to capture the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It was only after the episode had gone off the air that the NWO struck, forcing the new champion’s former NFL colleagues to come to his aid.

Credit for the interview: 83 Weeks

h/t for the transcription: WrestleZone