Eric Bischoff has provided more information on his newest project with Hulk Hogan.
The WWE Hall of Famers caught the attention of wrestling fans when they first put out a teaser video on social media that they had a new project that would shake up the industry. The announcement, which was filmed in black and white and paid homage to their nWo days, also teased a third man who would be introduced down the road.
Although many suspected that the announcement would lead to a new podcast, Hogan and Bischoff’s announcement was much more surprising as they had joined forces with Izzy Martinez to launch Real American Freestyle wrestling.
Speaking with Tom Campbell of Cultaholic, Bischoff spoke about the viral nWo announcement video, noting that Hogan was the one who made the pitch:
“That was Hulk’s idea. I was brought into the project several months ago as the idea was first developing before we found funding and everything else. I am a partner, Hulk is obviously a partner in Real American Freestyle, and an individual by the name of Chad Bronstein,”
“I jumped on board and one of the first things we talked about is, ‘Hey, how do we get people’s attention and we let them know that we’re actually doing this?’ At that point Hulk said, ‘Hmm, let’s do a third man video.’ Because we wanted to introduce, which is essentially our head coach Izzy Martinez, who has all the credibility in the world in the amateur wrestling universe. He trained some of the top MMA fighters in UFC, he’s trained Olympic medallists in amateur wrestling. He’s really, really an incredible guy, but nobody knows him,” he continued.
“So it was Hulk’s idea to let’s do a tease kind of going back to Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, who’s our third man. So we shot that video and put it out there. I personally on my Twitter platform have 2.7 million views. In totality, across all platforms, we’re up over like 10.5 million views. So Hulk was right, his instinct was right. It got a lot of attention. We revealed Izzy as the third man, and it’s created a tremendous amount of awareness. So it was a good idea.”
Hulk Hogan Has High Hopes For New Promotion
Looking to make the amateur wrestling promotion mainstream, Hogan, Bischoff and Martinez have undergone an extensive media tour to promote RAF and have also teased PPV and a media rights deal are in the pipeline. In a previous interview, Hulk Hogan claimed that his new promotion could be bigger than WWE and UFC.