Eric Bischoff and Bret Hart have each had some negative things to say about the other in the past. There was a time when they two got along, however. Bischoff recently spent some time on his 83 Weeks podcast speaking about what working with Bret was like in WCW.
The conversation about Bret started when Conrad Thompson asked Bischoff if bringing in Jim Neidhart and the British Bulldog to WCW was done to placate him.
“No, Bret didn’t need to be placated,” said Bischoff. “You know, Bret has a lot of negative things to say about me and I respond to those negative things. But I’ve also said and I will continue to say that I have a lot of respect for Bret, in a lot of different ways.”
Bischoff then said that Bret didn’t play politics the way many top talent in wrestling did at the time.
“I will tell you that when it came to the kind of politics of top talent, Bret was not one of those guys. Bret was very straightforward, one of the reasons I really – you know, Bret and I got along really great in the beginning because he was as straightforward as you could get. There were no extra words in the conversation, he was just so perfectly professionally straightforward.”
“He didn’t require to be placated. It may have looked like that from the outside or sounded like that in the dirt sheets or people may have jumped to that conclusion for obvious reasons but it wasn’t the case.”
Bischoff continued to say that Bulldog was brought in because he was a draw for the UK market and not to placate Bret.
The conversation about Bret begins around the 4-minute mark in the below video:
