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When Eric Bischoff started building what would eventually become the midcard of WCW during the Monday Night Wars, he would routinely turn to ECW for reliable talents. The likes of Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho all passed through the doors of ECW before making the move to WCW, all of them achieving great success in the process. However, there was one man who was synonymous with ECW that had a brief stop in WCW right around the time “WCW Monday Nitro” began airing on TNT.
That man was none other than the late Sabu, who was one of the most influential wrestlers of his generation, but due to his reputation, former WCW Executive Producer Eric Bischoff stated on his “83 Weeks“ podcast that he simply couldn’t trust the ECW legend. “I didn’t trust Sabu, simple as that,” Bischoff said. “It wasn’t about his work, it wasn’t about his character, he had a reputation. I was well aware of him, I had watched some of his stuff, it was–and by the way, Kevin Sullivan talked me into this one. This was not me going ‘Wow, I can’t wait to get my hands on Sabu,’ it was the complete opposite of that. Like I wasn’t dead set against it, but there was some selling going on, so it was definitely a Kevin call.”
As for why Sabu left WCW so soon after joining the company, Bischoff believes the rumors that Sabu was lowballed when it came to his initial offer and decided to take his talents elsewhere. Sabu would be back in ECW by the end of 1995, where he would stay until 2000 before leaving due to the poor financial state of ECW at that time.
Please credit “83 Weeks” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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