WWE staff ‘begged’ Vince McMahon not to fight rival Eric Bischoff on major WCW show

Eric Bischoff joins Vince McMahon on WWE Raw

Vince McMahon wanted to fight Eric Bischoff live on pay-per-view but there was no way he would have been allowed to turn up.

The WWE boss and his WCW rival almost came to blows at the latter’s Slamboree event in 1998 when Bischoff challenged his counterpart to a match in the middle of the ring, which turned into a count-on victory when McMahon didn’t show up.

Speaking on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, Gerald Brisco was asked whether or not Vince was ever going to go, and he said: ‘No, no, no. He wanted to go and it always sounded like he wanted to go and was gonna go, but there was nobody who was gonna let him go.’

Of course, WCW themselves didn’t know whether or not he would turn up, but Bischoff was making sure he was ready for any eventuality after laying down the bold challenge.

‘My thinking was, look, if he shows up – whether he kicks my ass or it goes the other way, I don’t really care because it’s huge,’ he laughed as he joined Brisco and John ‘Bradshaw’ Layfield on their podcast.

‘I had a dressing room for him, nameplate on the door. I instructed our head of security and everybody else on the security team – “They show up, escort them to the room like any other celebrity, provide them with every courtesy that we would anybody else that was a celebrity, take care of them.” ‘

He left almost everything else up to change, although he did give The Big Show – now working for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) under his real name Paul Wight – some pointers in the unlikely event Vince did show up and the fight went down.

‘The only other direction I gave was to Big Show because, you know, there were some people that actually thought that Vince might show up,’ he admitted. ‘Big Show came up to me and he goes, “Hey boss, what happens if he shows up?”

‘I said, “If he shows up, he shows up! We’ll figure it out!” He goes, “What happens if, you know, it doesn’t go your way?” “Unless it looks like there’s imminent death involved and I’m on the receiving end of it, use your judgement – but other than that, just let it go.” ‘

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Bischoff – who jokingly described himself as a ‘d**k’ as he reflected on the stunt – has now weighed in on whether he actually thought he could have beaten Vince if the fight had gone ahead.

‘I didn’t care whether I could or not, frankly. I wasn’t intimidated by him – because I didn’t know him,’ he admitted with a smile. ‘Now, had I known Vince then the way I do now, then maybe I’d approach things a little differently, because he is kind of a crazy b*****d!’

And just to drive home how close this was to happening, JBL previously told Bischoff on WWE’s Legends With JBL special: ‘I was just talking so some guys here who told me that in a meeting he was talking about going and they were begging him not to go… Vince was set, at one point, on showing up.’

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