5 worst Eric Bischoff ideas

It has now been just over a month since former WCW Executive Vice President Eric Bischoff was announced as the new Executive Director for WWE SmackDown.

While the news of Paul Heyman being announced as Executive Director of WWE RAW got a very positive response, the response to Bischoff has been a little more mixed. This would be because while Bischoff had a mostly successful batch of great ideas in WCW, his creative run with Impact Wrestling garnered a negative response.

And while I do believe that his good outweighs the bad, it is still hard to ignore some of his blunders. Inspired by the success of the nWo, Bischoff has tried to reinvent with new factions to drive ratings up. For every Joseph Parks, we've had 'Last Call' Scott Hall. So, as WWE SmackDown may be set for a bright future, we still take a look at the five worst ideas that came from Eric Bischoff.

#5 Immortal

The original nWo of the 90's spawned great influence for many wrestling companies to use heel factions as a big point of interest for fans. Impact Wrestling has always seemed to have an obsession with this heel lead-dominated faction idea, long before Eric Bischoff arrived. Ever since Impact's birth in 2002, they have always tried boost interest in the product with a top heel faction trying to take over the company, such as Vince Russo's Sports Entertainment X-treme, Planet Jarrett, the Main Event Mafia and Aces & Eights, among others.

And they haven't all been bad either, with some, like the Main Event Mafia and the Aces & Eights even been creative highs for Impact. In fact, the Aces & Eights was solely an Eric Bischoff idea. However, his first time coming up with a faction storyline for the-then TNA was not well received. Back in 2010, while the Ric Flair-lead Fortune faction was receiving a mixed response, Hulk Hogan's friend Abyss turned heel and spoke of a 'They', set to arrive in TNA at Bound For Glory to takeover.

The 'They' Abyss was referring to would be revealed as himself, Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, Jeff Jarrett and Jeff Hardy. They would also be later joined by Kurt Angle, Mr Anderson, Scott Steiner and others, as well as uniting with Fortune. The group ruled over Impact for about a year and a half, and the angle stunk most of the time. They started it off by having the most popular Superstar in the company, Jeff Hardy, turn heel which was not accepted by the fans. It featured predictable heel turns, a dire feud with some ECW originals who were past their sell-by date and booked to be too dominate, making babyfaces look weak.

Due to a mix of dysfunctional babyface turns, releases, injuries and other problems, the group quietly and thankfully disbanded in April 2012.

#4 'Last Call' Scott Hall

Now, this was just in very poor taste. Since Scott Hall had so much leeway in WCW, I'm still very surprised he allowed it to go on as long as it did.

It was always no secret that Scott Hall had battled drug and alcohol addictions for all of his adult life. Hall was arrested several times throughout the '90s for his drunken behaviour and DUI's, so bad to the point that his then-wife asked WCW for help. Instead of help, it was written into storylines, spearheaded by Eric Bischoff. During matches, Hall would slip out of the ring and drink beers.

And when he wasn't wrestling, he would be seen drinking at bars. Finally, in the most bizarre run-in this reporter has ever seen, Eric Bischoff came down to talk some sense into Hall, to which Hall vomited on Bischoff. Kevin Nash then turned on him and Hall vanished from TV for the remainder of the year. Instead of being high and mighty over this, WWE actually had a very similar storyline around the same time, with Road Warrior Hawk, which was eerily similar.

Bischoff has commented on the angle over the years, showing a lot of regret about doing it.

#3 Bret Hart Turns Heel

You could chalk up Bret Hart's run in WCW with just two words: wasted talent.

Other than the rising Stone Cold Steve Austin, there was no one hotter than Bret Hart in 1997. He would then go from being WWE's hottest storyline heel to the most talked-about wrestler in the world following the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series that year. WCW had a major opportunity to capitalize on this and make Bret Hart the most popular Superstar in the history of the business, but instead just messed it up.

Due to a non-compete clause, Hart wasn't able to wrestle for WCW for his first two months. When he was finally able to, he didn't wrestle very much, just a few times on pay-per-view for his first few months. By the time late June rolled around, Hart had only wrestled twice on Nitro. Hart seemingly turned heel in April 1998, aligning himself with the nWo, without officially joining the ranks. Hart pretty much became a lackey for a while and had underwhelming feuds, even with the likes of Ric Flair and Sting.

By the time Hart was put in the WCW World Championship ranks, he was near the end of his career, and it all went wrong from the moment he turned heel. Bischoff has spoken about Hart's heel turn over the years, having a mixed opinion on the decision in different interviews.

#2 WCW Road Wild

WCW held four Road Wild events. Beginning in 1996 under the name Hog Wild, and running through 1999.

The events happened simply because Bischoff loves motorbikes and no other reason. It is incredible that they staged four of these events because each and every Road Wild pay-per-view was a financial blunder. The entire audience for each was a motorcyclist who gained free entry into the event. You take that, production costs, talent costs and bringing in special attractions like Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno to compete, and all you are left with is the pay-per-view buys.

While Road Wild shows most happened during WCW's better years, they still never turned a profit on any of them. Most are also not looked back on very fondly by fans. They've received a mixed to negative reaction from critics, while the biggest annoyance from fans was the motorists revving up their engines every few minutes.

#1 Monday Night Impact

Tail between their legs back to Thursday night

This one was not just an Eric Bischoff idea, but a Hulk Hogan one as well.

After a three and four year absence from being active in the business on a regular basis, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff returned to wrestling full-time in 2010 as they joined TNA Impact Wrestling. At the time, TNA was averaging just over a Million viewers per Impact episode and had a cult-like following, similar to that of NXT over the past few years. Most Impact shows and pay-per-views were also generally well-received by fans and critics at the time of Hogan and Bischoff' arrival.

According to TNA's head of creative at the time, Vince Russo, the decision to go head to head with WWE RAW mostly came from Bischoff, with Hogan's approval. TNA at the time actually had their most talented roster ever, and Hogan didn't have that much controversy under his belt at the time, so still had much fanfare. Unfortunately, I think Bischoff and Hogan believed in Hogan popularity and hype a little too much. I do think Bischoff and Hogan did a lot of things right, but going head to head with RAW was not one of them.

While the January 4, 2010 special featuring their debut against RAW did draw the best Impact rating ever, they were still unopposed by RAW, who essentially slaughtered them. Still, that March, Impact went head to head with RAW for what was supposed to be the beginning of a new Monday Night War. It lasted all of 7 weeks before they moved back to Thursday nights. Despite the roster and generally entertaining Impact episodes, fans just weren't interested.

I think if Bischoff decided to build up to moving to Monday nights after about a year, and took into account the fact that the TNA chequebook wasn't as big as the WCW chequebook, it could have worked out much better.