Eric Bischoff thinks TNA fans need to pump the brakes before acting like Road Dogg can walk in and magically fix everything.
While speaking on his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff talked about Road Dogg potentially helping TNA creatively and said fans should not expect some instant miracle. In Bischoff’s view, the smarter play is not making huge promises or trying to hit a home run every week. It is about small, steady improvements that actually last.
“But if Road Dog gets in there and just makes incremental changes, and this is one of the things that I used to say about TNA, TNA a year and a half ago when I first started seeing some of the moves that Carlos was making… I was excited about some of the decisions he was making because it said to me from a distance, he’s making incremental improvements. He’s not taking a swing trying to knock it out of the park every time.”
Bischoff said wrestling has a bad habit of hyping up big changes and then failing to deliver at the level fans were sold on. He admitted he has been guilty of that too, but said the better someone is at promoting something, the more pressure there is to actually deliver when the time comes.
“Overpromising, underdelivering. We’re all pretty familiar with that, by the way. Guilty, too. Okay? Not throwing stones. Just it is what it is. It’s wrestling. You constantly are overpromoting, which really is another way of saying overpromising. And it’s really the better you are at promoting, the better you damn well be at executing and delivering.”
That is where Bischoff thinks the internet wrestling crowd can become a problem. He said fans often build up expectations so high that the conversation turns toxic when a company does not change overnight. To him, that cycle is not only unfair, it is also pretty silly.
“I hope people manage their expectations. I think that’s one of the things that makes, you know, the internet wrestling community dialogue so toxic from time to time and almost for me it’s silly.”
Bischoff made it clear he respects Road Dogg’s experience, but he does not believe anyone can walk into TNA and flip the whole product instantly. He said Road Dogg would inherit existing talent, ongoing stories, and a creative structure that already existed before him, which means any real rebuild would take serious time.
“That being said, he’s not going to be able to turn that s*** around overnight. He’s got the talent he’s got. He’s walking into stories that pre-existed him. And no matter how much talent he may have or vision anybody, including Road Dog may have for the product going forward, it’s going to take a year or two years to build there.”
Bischoff’s warning is pretty simple: fans may get excited about Road Dogg’s possible involvement, but if they expect TNA to look completely different right away, they are probably setting themselves up to complain. He said that when those unrealistic expectations are not met, people will likely turn negative again and move on.
“Everybody’s going to be expecting so much and when he’s not able to deliver like nobody else could deliver, then everybody’s going to get nasty about it again and lose interest and that’s unfortunate.”
So, Bischoff is not saying Road Dogg cannot help TNA. He is saying fans need to stop acting like one creative hire can instantly rebuild a wrestling company. If anything changes, Bischoff believes it will likely come through smaller fixes, better structure, and patience instead of one giant overnight transformation.
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