What does Eric Bischoff think of CM Punk missing the first WrestleMania to take place since his shocking return to WWE after a decade away from the company?
Let's find out!
On the latest episode of his "83 Weeks" podcast, the WWE Hall of Fame legend and former WCW Executive Vice President spoke about the topic, as well as the explosive segment with Punk, Drew McIntyre and Seth "Freakin'" Rollins from this week's episode of WWE Monday Night Raw.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the show where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
CM Punk missing a WrestleMania match due to injury: “I’m glad you brought up Punk and Drew and Seth. Sitting through that, I actually felt bad. I empathized with Punk because he can’t wrestle, right? He can’t really do anything physical on the ring. Right? Obviously, the audience wanted to see him. They wanted him to be a real part of the show. But that’s a tough spot to be in. It’s a tough spot to be in when you can’t do anything, and everybody knows you can’t do it.”
On the Punk, Rollins, and McIntyre promo from Raw: "So I thought — and as I’m listening to this, I listened to it closely. I’m thinking, ‘Man, they’re spending a lot of time just to make a point that CM Punk is going to be on commentary? Like, who the f**k cares, really?’ I mean, if you’re a big CM Punk fan, of course you’re gonna be happy. But it’s not like he’s going to go out there and do anything other than run his mouth. I don’t know what the timeline is for him to get back in the ring or not. I’m guessing it’s [months]. Yeah, so it’s not going to be like a week after WrestleMania, he’s going to be in a match or he’s going to be in a program. That’s not it. But I’m sitting through that segment, and I’m thinking ‘This is — you’re spending way too much time on this.’ And there were some awkward moments and reactions because it was — my feeling was, if it was scripted it was loosely scripted. I could be wrong. But it had enough peaks and valleys in terms of its quality… It wasn’t as fluid as scripted promos tend to be, therefore it felt real. And I loved that. But I thought, ‘Man, this is going on too long.’ And then came the finish of the segment. And Seth, side kick, boom. And now, all of a sudden, however long that segment was. It might have been six minutes or eight minutes. All of a sudden, it all made sense. It worked. Because they finished it, they’ve finished it perfectly. And you delivered on it.”
Check out the complete episode of the 83 Weeks podcast featuring Eric Bischoff via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes.
