Eric Bischoff On WCW-ECW Collaboration Talks With Paul Heyman

The ECW/WCW Alliance of the 2001 invasion of WWE might have been a storyline, but according to former WCW President Eric Bischoff, the storyline alliance almost happened in real life.

"Paul and I had several conversations," Bischoff said on "83 Weeks." According to the former "Raw" General Manager, he had known Heyman since 1987, when Heyman helped promote the AWA, which Bischoff worked for at the time, leading to the two maintaining a relationship. 

"I had known Paul a long time and even during that time when there was a lot of ECW talent coming over [to WCW] because Paul was having cashflow issues. Despite the lawsuit threats and all that, Paul and I met." Heyman and Bischoff had rudimentary talks about the two companies working together, but in hindsight, Bischoff knows that it never would've worked out.

"Here's what I didn't know then ... WWE was funding ECW," Bischoff explained. "Vince McMahon had a piece of ECW, which is why Paul would've never really been able to work with us."

Both WCW and ECW closed in 2001, and both ended up being purchased by WWE. Bischoff and Heyman's tenures as General Manager of "Raw" and "SmackDown" overlapped in 2004, and the two even found themselves working in a backstage capacity in 2019, when Heyman was made the executive director of "WWE Raw" while Bischoff was made executive director of "WWE SmackDown." 

Bischoff once explained that while both men were in charge of their respective brands, all creative ideas were still filtered through Vince McMahon.