Eric Bischoff On How The Rock's Appearance On SmackDown's Fox Debut Should Have Been Handled

During his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff spoke about how he felt The Rock should have been used when SmackDown had their premiere show on Fox.

"I think putting him at the end of the show could’ve been more interesting possibly depending on what you could’ve done with him. It could’ve held the audience knowing The Rock was gonna be there – the anticipation of seeing The Rock might’ve allowed FOX to see a bigger number at the end. I don’t know how much audience was lost between the time Rock showed up at the beginning of the show and the end of the show. But if it was 5 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent, you might’ve been able to deliver on that number and build even more viewers had Rock been on at the end.

There’s a lot to be said for kicking it off with a bang, making that really big impression on that first premiere episode. Maybe if Rock had made an appearance on the second or third episode, maybe they would’ve saved him for the end. I can see why they put him on at the beginning.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat this, people were scared to death about how long Rock was gonna go. I didn’t work with Rock a lot, but he had the reputation of going ‘OK, seven minutes’ and 17 minutes later he’s still cutting his promo. That’s just devastating to everybody else that’s on that show because you’ve gotta scramble and make that shit work with very little time to figure it out. That wasn’t the case, and it worked out pretty well. But yeah, it would’ve been interesting to see him at the end of the show to see what would’ve happened."