Jimmy Hart Says Ric Flair Told Eric Bischoff That In Order To “Turn WCW Around” They Needed Hulk Hogan
Jimmy Hart goes over a number of topics.
“The Mouth Of The South” Jimmy Hart has managed a handful of Hall Of Famers during his time as an on-screen manager in the WWE, WCW, Memphis Wrestling and in TNA. Hart has been involved in the wrestling business since the 70’s and is still involved in some aspects. In 1993 after managing the likes of The Honky Tonk Man, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, ‘The Glamour Girls’ who were the last WWF Women’s Tag Team Champions, and managing multi-time WWF World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan, Jimmy Hart along with Hogan departed from the WWF and soon went to WCW.
When Jimmy Hart guest appeared on ‘Wrestling Inside The Ropes’ with James Stewart and Mike Riley, he went over how he and Hogan were already on their way out of the WWF and while they were filming the ‘Thunder In Paradise’ show, they came in contact with WCW President Eric Bischoff and former 8-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair. Hart stated that Flair relayed to Eric that if they were going to turn WCW around then signing Hulk Hogan was the way to do it.
“Well it really didn’t happen that way.” Hart continued, “What happened, we had left WWE, well WWF back then, to go do a TV show called Thunder In Paradise – while we were at Disney shooting the show, Eric Bischoff and Ric Flair came by and Ric Flair said, ‘Look Eric, if we wanna turn WCW around we’ve gotta get Hulk in there’, and so what happened now they called Ted Turner – Ted Turner said, ‘I’d love to have him’ so we [had] kind of already left to do the Thunder In Paradise TV show so it really wasn’t a big major plan or anything – it just kind of fell into place, so we went to WCW and we did that for like six years but it was a great run with Hulk, me and Hulk of course and the n.W.o. turned out to be a goldmine, and so it had just turned out to be really great. We had a good run down there and of course now, we’re back in the saddle again with the WWE so it’s awesome.” Hart shared.
The conversation between the two parties went from pillar to post and eventually ended up on the topic of the current WWE product. Jimmy Hart spoke about how he still does work for the WWE every now and then and listed off some of his favorite talents that are currently contracted to the company.
“Well you know in my Beach Bar in Daytona every Monday night we watch RAW, SmackDown on Tuesday nights of course and we have all the pay-per-views there, but some of the talent they’ve got there now is just phenomenal, they’re awesome man.” He said. “I love watching AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, just all the guys are just tremendous so every now and then when I go out and do autographs for them [WWE] still, and I do WrestleMania every year – this past year we were in New Orleans and I did the Hall Of Fame inductions for Hillbilly Jim of course and it’s just great to see everybody again.”
On a related note, Jimmy Hart’s good friend and business partner Hulk Hogan, along with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall’s ‘nWo 2 Sweet Tour’ commences on October 27th and WWE has been promoting that show over the past few weeks.
If you are going to use the quotes above, please credit ‘Wrestling Inside The Ropes’ with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
