Eric Bischoff Reveals The Motivation Behind Unmasking Luchadors In WCW
83 Weeks host Eric Bischoff recently participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything Q&A recently. You can see the full Q&A at this link, and highlights below:
Would he change the Finger Poke Of Doom?:
As I said on the podcast, given the exact same circumstances, I likely would have done the exact same thing. With hindsight, it’s easy to second-guess a lot of things without full benefit of knowledge/variables/circumstances and most importantly what the goal really was at the time. I went into that in detail on my podcast a couple of weeks ago and I encourage anyone who wants to know more about that to listen if they haven’t.
The goal in unmasking luchadors in WCW:
The goal in unmasking Rey and Juventud was to further establish their real characters with the audience. And while the strength of the mask in Mexico is obviously very important and even moreso today in the United States than it was back in the late ’90s, but Rey and Guerrera were very good-looking athletes.
As anyone who’s worked with Vince McMahon or WWE will tell you, you sell emotions with your face and expressions during a match. To a certain degree, masked wrestlers are at a certain disadvantage at getting the audience to relate to them by seeing their facial emotions during a match. The goal was to attempt to broaden the appeal for those characters by allowing the audience to feel their emotions at a greater level during matches.
