Eric Bischoff Opens Up About Controversial Fake Death Angle

There was a bizarre story last week coming out of Dave Penzer’s Sitting Ringside podcast with Buff Bagwell. The former WCW star outlined Eric Bischoff’s proposed plans for a fake death angle involving Bagwell during the desperate latter stages of the Monday Night Wars.

Bagwell claimed that the storyline would see him ‘die’ in a plane crash, which WCW would report as legitimate to media outlets and the other wrestlers on the roster. Bagwell would then return in a big swerve, presumably causing ratings to skyrocket and WCW to be saved.

Not likely.

Oh, did I forget to include the part when Buff Bagwell returned to haunt the WCW roster as a ghost, hanging from wires as he flew around the building causing mayhem and mischief?

Bagwell says the angle reached such an advance stage of discussion that he had already told his family about it to ensure they were not upset when the news broke.

Eric Bischoff has since responded to Bagwell’s claims on his own After 83 Weeks podcast and has denied there was ever an angle planned involving Bagwell’s death . . .

. . . However, he has not denied there was an angle involving a fake death. Oh no. According to Bischoff, the plane crash aspect of the story is entirely true, the key difference being that it was Bischoff himself who would have perished in the fiery blaze.

“I had my own airplane as a pilot and everyone knew I flew around a lot. So, when I orchestrated that death by airplane, it was my death. It wasn’t Bagwell’s. Now he may have a story where he thought maybe he was going to be one of the guys on the plane or something like that. But in order for that story to have worked it would’ve had to have been plausible. And the audience knew that I flew my own plane.”

Bischoff then outlined how the plane would have crashed near Mexico because it would have taken longer for the truth to come out from there, giving him time to show up as a surprise at Halloween Havoc while everyone still thought he was a goner.

Blimey.

“My original plan was for me to crash in Mexico, because I knew it would take at least four or five days to get any news out of Mexico, so I was going to fake my crash in Mexico and then I was going to show up at Halloween Havoc. And perhaps I shared it with Bagwell after the fact, because by the way, my wife didn’t know.

It wasn’t until the last minute when I told Harvey Schiller, because I was technically an officer of Turner Broadcasting and it was a publicly held company, so I had to kind of divulge it. Much to my chagrin, which I wouldn’t have. Harvey shut it down. But I can tell you definitively if Bagwell was going to be on the plane it was an incidental effect, not the major storyline.”

All we can say to that is god bless Harvey Schiller.

 

Thanks to Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions

• death
• Buff Bagwell
• eric bischoff
• WCW

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