Eric Bischoff Recalls Coining The WCW Nitro Name
On the latest episode of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff talked about WCW Bash at the Beach 1995 during which he revealed how the ‘Nitro’ name came into being.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how they came up with the Nitro name: “There might have been chatter, you know [about naming the show Head to Head] at that level about, ‘Hey, what if the — oh, a cool name would be this.’ But it never got to myself or Brad Siegel or anybody in the marketing or promotional department. It was almost instantly — and Brad Siegel, you know, I love working with Brad. Brad was very cool during this time. Brad was pretty sold on the idea of Nitro, because again the Nitro action block was already a thing on TNT. I think it was on Tuesday nights, TNT Nitro on Tuesday nights. And it was like Chuck Norris films and Steven Seagal films and you know, all that kind of testosterone action-packed Sylvester Stallone stuff. That was the Nitro block, if you will. And I think that block started at eight Eastern and went to 11.
“And I think because Brad felt like Nitro, because of the nature of what professional wrestling is and how it was gonna be positioned on the network, we were going after the same audience as those who are watching the TNT Nitro Block on Tuesday nights. So that Brad’s idea to call it Nitro right out of the gate. It’s not like we sat around, tried to come up with a name for a week or two. It was almost instantly gonna be called Nitro. Brad explained why he wanted to call it Nitro. I didn’t feel so strongly about the name Nitro. I dug it because one, it was Monday night Nitro. But Nitro was the brand, and that’s a nice strong, powerful, easy-to-visualize kind of action branding. But that was a Brad Siegel decision, and I was happy he made that decsiion it because it was good one.”
On learning from Larry Zbyszko: “Larry’s one of the best. I learned so much — you know, I didn’t realize how much I learned from Larry until we started doing this show. And I was asked questions about doing play-by-play, and my learning how to become a, an interviewer and a stick man. And the more I’m asked about that question, the more I find myself, in an effort to be honest about it, going back to the people who really — it’s not like we sat down on a class, and he said, ‘Okay, Eric, get up your pen and paper can take notes. Because here’s how you do this.’ It was a gradual process, but the things that I’ve held onto that I think actually helped me to become an adequate play-by-play announcer. And that later on, really helped me when it came to the creative side of what I wanted to do with WCW, all started with Larry Zybosko and Verne Gagne. And to a degree Greg Gagne. The influence that they had on me, and I didn’t know they had it at the time but it kept manifesting throughout my career. So hats off to Larry. And of Verne and Larry and Greg, I would put Verne as number one. Greg number three.”
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