12 Misconceptions About WCW You Probably Believe

There's a common misconception that Eric Bischoff, who was cheekily called “ATM Eric” at the time, created the concept of guaranteed money in wrestling. That’s false. Sure, WCW popularised guarantees by signing stars to beefy salaries in the mid-1990s and beyond, but there had been ironclad contracts before that. It's weird that this is ignored in favour of slamming 'Easy E' with more ATM chat.

In fairness, most of this thinking stems from Vince McMahon and the WWF offering relatively unstable ’10-dates at $150 a pop’ deals to wrestlers back then. Workers generally made far in excess of that, clearly, but nothing was locked in fine print as a guarantee. Even so, despite locking major stars down to giant contracts, Bischoff wasn’t the first to tie wrestlers down to a finite dollar count.

Hulk Hogan has claimed in the past that he was signed to a guaranteed deal with the WWF following his leap from the AWA. Clearly, taking everything Hulk says with a pinch of salt that'd break your plate never mind flavour the food on it is wise, but Hogan is likely telling the truth this time. WCW weren't the originators of guaranteed money for contracted dates - Bischoff didn't reinvent the wheel.

Some of the guaranteed deals he was handing out were on the smaller side too. Lex Luger, for example, was offered just $150,000 per year when jumping from the WWF suddenly in 1995. Eric didn't trust him (or particularly fancy signing him), so he lowballed a figure thinking Lex would knock it back.

So much for that!