by Eric Szulczewski

So Eric's Bischoff's back on the wrestling radar screen again, attempting to recover from the abject humiliation inflicted on him by Brad Siegel and Vince McMahon by becoming Vice-President Of Something Or Other at matrats.com. Okay, so matrats.com really isn't wrestling per se, but it kind of is, and, gee, that's good enough for the purposes of this column.

Ah, yes, Eric Bischoff. The man who put the final nail in the coffin of the AWA. The man who lost a grand total of roughly US$150 million while in charge of WCW (and that includes the amount WCW was into the black in 1996 and 1997). The man who couldn't seal the deal between Fusient and Time-Warner before Jamie Kellner brought the hammer down. I think I'll contact HR over at matrats.com. It's obvious they aren't looking over CVs, so my possibility of getting a position there looks decent. Of course, I'll have to move to Calgary, but, hell, I moved to Ohio for a job, and this couldn't be worse than that.

Or maybe they were looking over CVs and laughed at the prospect of bring Bischoff in. Getting Eric Bischoff a job in something even remotely resembling wrestling (and matrats.com does remotely resemble wrestling) would require a bit of clout behind the scenes. There's two people he could have called in on this one, two people who have connections with both Bischoff and matrats.com: Bret Hart and Jason Hervey. So which one greased the skids? My money's on Hervey. Frankly, if I were Bret right now, considering the events that took place between Montreal and Goldberg's foot, I wouldn't help Bischoff if he was in the stall next to me and I heard the words "You got any paper on your side? This one's out." Frankly the second, if I heard that, I'd just tell him to pull out his wallet and start using dollar bills. God knows he's flushed enough of them down various toilets in his career.

(Yes, I know that the website made it abundantly clear that it was Hervey, but someone's got to keep up the Bret Hart shots at this place now that all presence of the existence of a certain former site owner has been purged, and I've got to do something to keep my R-complex occupied until Flex gets back.)

This is Sign Number One that matrats.com is doomed. Some people are actually giving them credit for producing something "different". I'm sorry, but I'm not going to credit them for anything. If I want to watch a bunch of whiny post-teens bitch about how their lives suck, I'll turn on MTV, something I haven't had the impetus to do in about fifteen years. Either that or go over to Delphi and read posts by...no, I won't name the specific people. Some of them are my friends.

(I do, however, love their latest poll over there: "Which station would you prefer to watch matrats.com?" I think the question should read: "Which station would prefer to watch rather than matrats.com?", in which case the answer would be "All of the above".)

There's one great quote in their press release: "Several weeks ago DAG staged a live MatRats showcase with Eric Bischoff and his long time business associate and friend Jason Hervey of Mandalay Sports Entertainment present." They left out the words "...and gay lover" between "friend" and "Jason", judging from the picture up there, in which Bisch and The Wonder Moron were seen making goo-goo eyes at each other. This whole situation has to be so humiliating for them. Mandalay was once the leading candidate to buy WCW, and Bisch was supposed to be their ace in the hole. Even after The Third-Most Important Eric In Wrestling (after Eric Angle and...modesty forbids) switched his allegiance to Fusient, Mandalay still welcomed him back for an eleventh-hour shot at avoiding the whole Vince thing, and now all they can get out of this strategic partnership is to team up on a wrestling federation geared for the teen set, whose current broadcast outlet consists of Real Player and/or QuickTime videos of badly-conducted matches coming from something that greatly resembles the old WCW Saturday Night set at Disney/MGM Studios, with a pair of announcers who sound like they're either on some good crystal meth or are trying to do a bad impersonation of Shinichiro Ohta. I think I'll go over to FuckedCompany and put them in the Dead Pool.

I think I'll forego any further commentary about the content of matrats.com, though. I'm not really qualified to comment on it, considering that my testicles descended in the late 1970s. Maybe the fact that one of their so-called heels tries to get himself over by saying that his father was abusive toward him and he has to turn to snowboarding and wrestling as releases appeals to the youth of today. All I'm thinking is "Hey, my father was abusive to me, but I wasn't lucky enough to have a nearby mountain range and enough money to afford snowboarding gear. I had to be content with causing damage to property and people with baseball bats and tire irons. So how about shutting the fuck up and getting a real job so you can move out and get your own damn place and be away from the asshole and stop being a leech on society?" Immature behavior is a hot button of mine; I find it embarassing to watch it being demonstrated. I don't need an entire wrestling show filled with it. So I'm not the target audience for this.

Instead, I'll just concentrate on ways that Bischoff could fuck this one up. He will; that's a given. The only mystery right now is how he's going to do it. Let's take some hints from his past and see if we can construct methods that could send matrats.com straight into oblivion, where it belongs...

The Team Challenge Series: The Next Generation: Hey, dueling teen gangs worked pretty well for Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story, didn't it? Faces on one side, heels on the other, all fighting for a grand prize of a lifetime supply of Trojans and a manager's position at a nearby Starbucks. Somehow, a Turkey On A Pole match makes perfect sense in this context.

Diamond Dallas Page: Maybe that's why the snowboarder's father is abusive to him, because DDP's the kid's real father. White trash breeds white trash, after all. With Bisch and Hervey around, DDP is bound to follow. If nothing else, DDP can bring them all Kenner's My First Tattoo kits (explaining how tats attract slutty ring rats so they can get laid for the first time in their pathetic lives), and show the kids how to hang around naked in hotel rooms with Saran Wrap around their knees. For further remarks in this vein, head over to The Shooters and consult GH and Joe's Raw Recaps.

The New New World Order: You could always give the kids the motivation that they want to take over matrats.com to take it public and cash in on their founders' stock; that's a very Zeroes rationale right there. As for the aesthetics, black is always trendy; ask Coco Chanel. For an added sense of menace, have them wear black trenchcoats to the ring to give it a real Columbine flavor. If we're lucky, they'll start shooting, and I don't mean on the mic.

Hulk Hogan in "Mister Nanny 2": You know that nothing's going to come of Hogan's noodling with Universal, so off he goes to Calgary to be father/mentor/babysitter to the budding faces, trying to find some way to put a positive capper on his career. The only thing possibly worse would be Scott Steiner showing up to sing a chorus of "Up In The Air, Junior 'Roiders!".

Kevin Nash reprising Coach Nash: It's too natural and logical for Bisch to pass up. Hey, Nash got NBT over, didn't he? Ignore the fact that O'Haire is blessed with ring skills, Palumbo's got the goods, and Sanders is platinum on the mic, it was Nash, Nash, I tell you! His last chance to get in good with Vinny Mac went by the wayside when Michaels displayed his usual jerkish behavior (unless Trip's a lot more powerful than we think backstage), so this may be his only escape after that ridiculously large contract runs out.

I'm sure you can figure out a number of ways he'll screw this thing up by yourselves. If you've got good ideas, please mail them to me at the link provided for that purpose, and I'll follow up.

I actually thought I had Bischoff's next move figured out. There's a place out there that's perfect for him and could use some of the alleged guidance he provides. Unfortunately, matrats.com got to him before Michael Eisner could call to ask Bisch to take over Disney's made-for-TV cartoon division.

So what makes Bisch perfect for that? Let me analyze:

1) Loss of direction: All Disney's been able to do over the last fourteen years is revamp classic characters into new formats, adapt their hit movies into TV format, and steal ideas from other TV shows (Recess is Rugrats without diapers). What makes them different from the rest of the TV industry is as yet unknown, but at least Bischoff could have done it in a different way. Unfortunately, all that would have meant is that Bisch would have let the abymsal Lloyd In Space run for three years before letting it die.

2) Wrestling sensibilities already in the writing: Tony Craig and Roberts Gannaway are doing a great job on the creative end of House of Mouse by attempting high-level continuity with other Disney shows, and then completely blowing the details. The abuse done to the continuity of Quack Pack (with Huey, Dewey, and Louie regaining their Donald-like voices with no explanation after QP gave them human voices) and Goof Troop (including Max on HoM but ignoring everything else that happened on that series in regard to Pete) is wrestling-like in the extreme, where continuity is abused on a daily basis (Austin and Trip, anyone?). Bringing in the man who shaped Starrcade '97 and who gave us "Who Drove The Hummer?" is only natural.

3) Celebrity fetishes: It's a match made in heaven. Bischoff's love for celebrities dovetails perfectly with Disney's. I did an entire column comparing WCW to Disney's made-for-TV material, which I scrapped because it went nowhere. However, I realized in the process of writing it that Disney is neurotic about bringing in mainstream celebrities to do voice jobs as regulars or semi-regulars, especially since 1994 (the same year Bisch got his claws on WCW...hmmmm...). Bisch always had some resistance to bringing in people like Jay Leno and David Arquette. What could happen at a place where it's part of the culture? It was perfectly fine to seemingly give away a guest voice shot on Hercules to anyone who renewed their SAG or AFTRA cards between 1997 and 1999. And miscasting? Hey, don't worry about it. Disney saw nothing wrong with making half the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation into the villains on Gargoyles. George from Seinfeld and the nice kid on SeaQuest? Perfect for semi-regular villains on Aladdin. Bischoff could have had all of the celebrity heel turns he wanted for free, distinctive and easily-identified voices be damned.

4) No fear of spending money: How much does Disney pay Eisner? How much did they piss away on go.com and its subsidiary sites? They also apply the same logic with plowing money into their cartoons. Despite overseas production, these things are lavish for made-for-TV cartoons. In an era where everyone was going minimalist, Disney bucked that trend, even when they tried to rip off Ren and Stimpy (the less said about Shnookums and Meat, the better). Bisch could have spent, spent, spent to his heart's content and could have put out good-looking, totally vacuous material without anyone from Corporate looking over his shoulder and chastising him for doing it.

5) Revenge: Jamie Kellner ruined his dreams with WCW. Jamie Kellner also destroyed Kids' WB and the Warners cartoon studio during his time there. Here would be the chance to do something that Kellner couldn't. Of course, all that would have happened was that Hogan would have come in to do a voice on Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command.

The biggest positive, though, would have come to the Internet wrestling community: we would never have to talk about Bischoff again. That problem would have been put on the shoulders of the animation freaks. They'd be welcome to it. But, instead, we're stuck with Bisch until matrats.com implodes, as it will quite soon. Maybe this is the final shot, though. The last time I'll ever have to write about him. But that's been said too many times about too many people for me to have any hope. So here's to you, Bisch. You may only be a lesser nightmare now, but you're still a nightmare. Let's hope that you stay confined to the virtual space that fate has put you into.