Eric Bischoff Talks John Cena Turning Heel
In a lengthy interview with Alternative Nation, former WCW president and RAW general manager Eric Bischoff discussed a good variety of topics, one of which was the possibility of John Cena turning heel and what similarities there are between a potential Cena heel turn and Hulk Hogan’s heel turn back in the summer of 1996.
For a long time now John Cena has been WWE’s top merchandise seller. That has been the biggest reason WWE has decided against a Cena heel turn in the past and will be a big factor in if they decide to pull the trigger on a heel turn in the future. Bischoff addressed Hogan’s merchandise situation at WCW prior to turning him heel.
“You’ve got to put everything in the proper context, there were no nWo shirts for sale before I turned Hulk Hogan heel. One disadvantage I had when I launched Nitro, compared to WWE, is that they had very sophisticated licensing and merchandise, WCW didn’t have any. This is one of the reasons I had to guarantee contracts, because if I didn’t guarantee how much money somebody was going to make, there was no chance in hell they were going to make enough to live off of it if it was in part based on licensing and merchandising that didn’t exist.”
Bischoff went on to talk about how not having licensing and merchandising at WCW was somewhat of an advantage.
“It is what it is, and was what it was, based on what I inherited, when I inherited it. But it was also an advantage, because I didn’t have to risk the same type of financial impact that for example WWE might be analyzing, ‘Okay, what happens if John Cena merchandise goes away?’ I didn’t have that challenge, because I wasn’t making any anyways. I had nowhere to go but up.”
WWE fans have seemingly been craving a John Cena heel turn for several years now. However, Cena is still selling by far the most merchandise in the company. The day that changes, WWE will likely strongly look into a John Cena heel turn to freshen up the character.
In his two-part interview with Alternative Nation, Eric Bischoff touched on a number of different topics including Vince Russo, Stephanie McMahon, Ted Turner, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and the WWE Network.
As always the former WCW president had a lot of interesting things to say, and it’s definitely worth the time to check out part 1 and part 2 of his interview with Alternative Nation.
