10 who deserve to be in the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2019

Eric Bischoff

Go ahead and say what you will, but there’s no denying that Eric Bischoff changed the course of professional wrestling and is a big part of why it’s as successful as it is today. Did he make some mistakes in WCW? Of course he did, and he’s the first to admit that. But without him, there’s no nWo. And just on that note, who else would have had the guts to turn Hulk Hogan into a heel? A heel that just happened to be one of the best the industry has ever seen.

Without Eric Bischoff pushing for prime time programming, we never would have gotten Monday Nitro and the Monday Night War that came along with it. Without that show, Vince McMahon may have never taken a chance and changed his own programming to keep up. Without that, we don’t get the Attitude Era and everything that came out of it.

You have to give Bischoff credit for so many things, one of which is simply making a name for himself. After failing to get a job in WWE after Vince made him interview a broom, he went to WCW and started as a C-show announcer. He was essentially Sean Mooney in a lesser company. But he continued to do his job and work hard and soon found himself coming up with ideas for WCW, ideas that landed him the executive producer job, and he changed the landscape of WCW, making it real competition for Vince and WWE. Nitro beat RAW for 84 consecutive weeks in the ratings, and there was a real danger that WWE could go out of business.

That obviously didn’t happen and WWE won the war, but that didn’t mean Bischoff was going away. In one of the most shocking moves in history, Vince brought Bischoff into WWE to be the GM of RAW, and he did an outstanding job with that character and even let himself get thrown into a garbage truck when he got “fired” in 2005.

He returned to WWE a few times, a notable time coming at last year’s WWE Hall of Fame ceremony when he inducted Diamond Dallas Page. Who do you think would be the one to induct Bischoff when and if he gets in?