WCW was once seen as WWE’s equal. They even surpassed them in the television ratings for 83 straight weeks. However, their success did not last and the promotion eventually crumbled. In their final days, the company took a lot of questionable calls, one of which was putting their world championship on Scream actor, David Arquette. Interestingly, the man who made that decision has recently compared it to Roman Reigns beating Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 39.
WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW President, Eric Bischoff, believes that Arquette winning the WCW World Championship was not as controversial back then as it is seen today. In fact, while some people backstage disagreed with the decision, there was no heavy backlash.
Eric Bischoff compares David Arquette winning WCW Championship to Roman Reigns beating Cody Rhodes
During a recent episode of his “83 weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff talked about David Arquette winning the WWE Championship. He stated that the promotion was struggling severely at the time and any suggestion to get them out of the dumps was appreciated by everyone.
“It wasn’t that controversial when it went down. You gotta realize, WCW was so far down morale-wise, ratings-wise, revenue-wise, organizationally … so, any attempt to do anything that might work was generally fairly embraced.”
He added that the idea was to get some play in the mainstream press, even if the wrestling press did not react to it kindly. Bischoff also stated that he and Russo came to the decision rather quickly and while some people did not see eye to eye with them on their choice, they all went along in hopes that it would somehow work.
Bischoff then explained the feeling backstage while comparing it to the events in the main event of WrestleMania 39.
“Under the circumstances that we were in, there was not a lot of pushback. Everybody was just hoping that something was going to click. Were there individuals backstage who didn’t agree? Absolutely. The same way, there were individuals backstage at WrestleMania that didn’t agree with what WWE did with Cody Rhodes.”
Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns were separated in the Draft
Since winning the Royal Rumble, Cody Rhodes regularly interacted with Triple H. However, the two never touched each other despite the content of their promos. Their first encounter was at WrestleMania 39. Fans believed that a rematch would take place at Backlash, but that never happened.
Rhodes was immediately put into a feud with Brock Lesnar. The last two Royal Rumble winners duked it out at Backlash, with the American Nightmare coming out on top.
However, even with his victory, Rhodes no longer has the opportunity to aim for a rematch against Reigns.
Both of the WrestleMania main eventers were the top picks of their brands in the WWE draft. Reigns was drafted to SmackDown while Rhodes was selected by RAW, meaning that the two are unlikely to have any interaction any time soon.
Although, it is important to note that several outlets have reported that the former AEW Star will once again win the Rumble and set up a WrestleMania rematch with the Tribal Chief, similar to the John Cena and The Rock storyline.
Click here for more Wrestling News
