Eric Bischoff had a major impact on pro wrestling in North America. As one of the key backstage players in WCW during the Monday Night Wars, Bischoff played an integral in WCW’s weekly television and critical storylines and booking directions.
The wrestlers that worked for him knew that his opinion carried a lot of weight. But what some might forget is that Bischoff wasn’t a pushover on the physical side, either.
Although he wasn’t as big or intimidating as some of WCW’s biggest wrestlers, he was still a skilled karateka. In fact, he reached black belt level in the discipline and even used it to win the WCW Hardcore Championship once.
With this knowledge, Bischoff came known as someone wrestlers didn’t want to mess with. But according to Vince Russo on an edition of WrestleBinge, Eric Bischoff’s karate skills made him so dangerous that, when Ric Flair started getting hostile towards Bischoff, he was warned that Bischoff could “freaking kill you.”
Eric Bischoff had dangerous level of knowledge of karate, which made him a threat to Ric Flair
“Everyone knows Eric Bischoff and I aren’t the best of friends. But bro, legitimately, Eric’s a bada**. And you know how I know that? The relationship with Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller and Eric started – Eric brought Garrett in for Karate lessons – and then Eric started talking to The Cat and said, ‘Listen bro, I’m a black belt, you mind if I start training?’
When he came in, Ernest started putting Eric over like, ‘Eric Bischoff will freaking kill you!’ So coming from Ernest, Eric is like, I wonder if Bischoff knew that. Because as a shoot man, Eric would have really hurt him [Flair].”
Ernest Miller was an important factor in this story because he is a three-time Karate World Champion. For him to have described Bischoff in such a manner spoke volumes of how credible Bischoff was in martial arts.
h/t Sportskeeda for the transcription