10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About WCW
7. Eric Bischoff Was Mr. McMahon Before Vince McMahon
The emergence of Mr. McMahon in the Montreal Screwjob's aftermath and the character's growth through his hugely important Steve Austin feud was pivotal to WWE turning the corner in the Monday Night Wars and ultimately emerging victorious. It's a classic wrestling character, comfortably the most effective authority figure persona in wrestling history, and its significance can't be overstated.
So successful was Mr. McMahon that it doomed generations of wrestling fans into thinking that evil boss figures were an essential norm. Only through Constable Corbin's near-universal rejection 20 years later did the trope start unravelling for WWE's less-discerning viewers.
But the thing about Mr. McMahon is that WWE didn't do the heel authority figure first. Indeed, Eric Bischoff's run as a dastardly, power-mad preceded Vince's character's emergence by over a year, with Easy E revealed as the nWo's hidden hand in late 1996. It wasn't until the aftermath of Survivor Series 1997 that Vince began finding his footing in a similar role.
They were different characters, Vince and Eric, and McMahon became the more iconic of the two, though his reinvention was no innovation.