8 Sharpest Hustlers In Wrestling
4. Eric Bischoff
Vince McMahon's opposite number at WCW during the early stages of the Monday Night Wars, Eric Bischoff was - and is - considered to be the epitome of the used car salesman style of pro-wrestling hustler.
Like Vince Russo, Bischoff has the gift of the gab, and used that fast-talking ability to talk all manner of people into his sales pitches over his early years in the industry. It's how he got the job at the head of WCW over far more experienced people, like Jim Ross. Bischoff positioned himself as a company man with new, radical ideas that could really get WCW somewhere. And he wasn't wrong.
Bischoff was, for at least a short period, a genuine innovator. For example, the model of pro-wrestling television that WWE still uses today for both RAW and Smackdown is Eric Bischoff's structure for Monday Nitro. Young, charismatic, with TV star looks and a revolting, sh*t-eating grin, Bischoffs promo skills were fantastic, and he was smart enough to cast himself, the boss, as an on-screen villain a full year before Vince McMahon did likewise in the WWF. What made him a great heel was also his downfall: he was impossibly arrogant, knew it, and didn't care. That lack of basic people skills had many of his employees at WCW despising him, and when he was finally removed from his position, burned out after too long dealing with the Turner office politics, he didn't have anyone standing with him to back him up, and didn't care enough any longer to fight back.
In 2002, with WCW dead and buried, Bischoff arrived in the WWE as the new general manager of RAW, a TV character which showcased his extraordinary heelishness without the necessity for a backstage creative position. Hed hold the role until the end of 2005, producing some of the best work of his career.