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.