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Eric Bischoff: Controversy Creates Cash (WWE) By Eric BischoffJeremy Roberts ( World Wrestling Entertainment )
Release Date: 2006-10-17
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $26.00
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Controversy Creates Cash
Eric Bischoff is a true fan of wrestling. You get an inside look at his life from growing up in Detroit, through his struggles in Minnesota, to his rise to fame and his battles with Vince Mc Mahon and the WWE. He has a genuine passion for wrestling and gives you insight to the politics involved with the business. You even get to learn a few very suprising things about some of your favorite and not so favorite wrestlers.
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 Not what I entirely what I expected...an ok, but a quick read ( stefano21@verizon.net )
Hoping to read a lot about the wrestlers I grew up watching 30+ years ago, what I got - and enjoyed - instead was an overview of the industry. Bischoff was surprisingly humble, to the point of regularly admitting to mistakes on his part.
Mr. Bischoff wrote a seemingly fair, balanced book that frames him as a familyman and overall decent guy. I may not want to watch him on tv anymore, but I'd enjoy a cup of coffee with him.
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Fine read from Eric's point of view !
Interesting to read about the rise and fall of Eric Bischoff..... how he rose through the ranks of the NWA/WCW and the office politics he had to endure during his run in WCW.
I'm sure he deserves credit from taking WCW to greater highs...to the point of nearly bankrupting the WWE back in the late 1990's.
Highly recomended for any wrestling fan who grew up watching wrestling during (AS I LIKE TO REFER TO IT) the golden age wrestling. !
Or for that matter anyone who missed out on the monday night wars and watches wrestling today and thinks it rocks should also consider this book. Cause lets face it wrestling today is simply put very boring !
One thing i didnt like about this book is how Eric denies having done anything wrong which led to the end of WCW and blames the merger between AOL and Time Warner, or giving wrestlers creative control/overpaying them. Or even the office politics that restricted Eric from copying the WWE during the Stone Cold and D-Generation X era.
Buy it ! you'll see what i mean !
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Excellent book .
It is an excellent book that catches your attention from the moment you start until you finish it, is easy to read and gives you a perspective of a really important part of the wrestling business told by someone who was actually there.
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 Passing the Buck for WCW's Downfall
I was very excited to read this book. The Monday Night Wars were a fond memory, and I was immensely interested in Bischoff's take on the rise and fall of WCW. Overall, this book came up short in a number of respects.
First, I REALLY wish Bischoff had written this book before he began his relationship with the WWE. Sadly, like Ric Flair's book (also published by WWE, of course), far too much of this book seemed to be written simply to stroke Vince McMahon's ego, which is especially ironic given that it was promoted on WWE television as if Vince and company would be enraged by its contents. In reality, the worst thing Eric says about WWE is that for a period in 1996-97, they were behind the times. Why Vince would be upset by this is anybody's guess, since WWE has said this numerous times themselves in their own telling of the history of the ratings war with WCW. But then, because of Vince's brilliance and hard work (Eric, like others who clearly want to maintain a good relationship with WWE, points out that Vince is quite possibly the hardest working man alive), WWE caught up to WCW and ultimately passed them. In fact, Eric mentions NUMEROUS times throughout the book what great people all of the McMahons are, how hard they work, how the atmosphere at WWE was so great compared to the Hell that was WCW. The "Easy E" we knew and loved to hate from 1996-99 would NEVER have written it this way. The old adage is true -- the winners do write the history, even when they get the former Executive Vice President of the losers to put his signature at the end.
However, let's get to the real content of the book -- the downfall of WCW. Bischoff tells this story in a way to minimize his own mistakes and place the blame on others to the greatest extent possible. The narrative is straightforward. Bischoff was the creative genius behind WCW's rise to success in 1996 until he was stymied by two mergers (first with Time Warner and then with AOL) and lecherous employees (Sharon Sidello, Gary Juster, among others). Bischoff contends that the merger with Time Warner caused on unbearable obstacles to his ability to produce a successful wrestling program, especially due to the rigid guidelines put in place by TNT's "Standards and Practices." McMahon was able to push the envelope with profanity and partial nudity, while WCW was shackled. Bischoff contends that, unlike Ted Turner, the higher-ups at Time Warner had no appreciation of what the wrestling business involved and ultimately had no use or care for WCW.
In fairness, I write this review as a fan. As far as I know, everything Bischoff writes about his corporate troubles is true. All I can intelligently comment on is what took place on my television screen and what turned me and the people I know off from WCW. It was not that WWE had cursing and fake breasts while WCW didn't. It was that WWE had a quality show with entertaining wrestlers and a solid core storyline (Austin/McMahon) while WCW was rehashing the same core idea from 1996 (the nWo) and was putting on a stale program. WCW made creative and booking blunders of gigantic magnitude that appeared to this fan to be completely unrelated to the troubles Bischoff described. In fact, Bischoff never really explains the reasoning behind his assumption that it was impossible to put on a quality program with decent storylines and great matches, even with the obstacles he had in place.
This book's biggest failing, in my opinion, is that Bischoff tremendously downplays (and, in at least a couple of cases, completely ignores) the creative blunders he and those in charge of WCW's booking made that eroded the quality of the product. A couple of examples: Bischoff devotes maybe a couple of paragraphs to his April 1998 decision to banish Ric Flair from WCW television for months, which tremendously angered the fan base. By the time Flair returned in September, WWF was winning the ratings on a regular basis. Bischoff incredibly makes no mention of the ludicrous decision to split up the nWo into the "Wolfpack" and "nWo Hollywood," which creatively made little sense and probably did more than anything to kill the entire nWo concept. Even more surprising was Bischoff's failure to make any mention of the infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom," a disastrous decision that enough fans, at least, consider to be important that it has its own Wikipedia page. One of the major motivations I had for buying this book was to get Bischoff's reasoning behind these and many other decisions. Bischoff's refusal to give them the attention they deserved was a major disappointment. But that would have required actually taking some responsibility for the downfall of WCW, and it seems that the purpose of this book in large part was for Bischoff to pass that buck to others.
Instead, Bischoff decides to spend pages upon pages maligning those that worked with him, especially Vince Russo. Now let's be clear, russo deserves his share of maligning, but Bischoff took it to a new level, writing some things about Russo that were downright vile. Oddly, Bischoff made a point of stating that Russo REPORTED TO HIM when it came to making creative decisions, but then proceeded to blame Russo for all of the bad decisions made in the spring and summmer of 2000.
All in all, this book was disappointing.
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Addiction
