Eric Bischoff is the Chief Media Officer for Real American Freestyle, and despite only being in business for less than a year, RAF has been a success. While the promotion is grounded in presenting Freestyle Wrestling, Bischoff's roots are in the sports entertainment world, having served as the Senior Vice President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW), as well as working for both WWE and TNA Wrestling. It's these roots that have influenced the overall presentation of RAF, and during a recent interview with Low Kick MMA, Bischoff explained how RAF has bridges the gap between sports entertainment and legitimate combat sports."The most obvious thing is the format of the show itself. The format is like the recipe: what are all the ingredients that go into the show, when do you add them, how long do you stir them, how long do you cook them. It is a little bit like making a very complicated cake. A lot of the elements of our format are elements that I used on Nitro, or that you see in WWE or UFC. We are taking a little bit of the best of those formats, really, most of it from WWE. If you look at the UFC, that format is very much like a WWE format. It is not as complicated, there are not as many moving parts, but it is pretty much the same format. You will see that same formula in RAF."Bischoff explained that RAF is going to continue to utilize things like pyrotechnics and creating big entrances for fighters in order to make the event feel more entertaining. His experience in WCW, WWE, and TNA has helped RAF create its own lane in the entertainment and sports industry.
In the history of Mixed Martial Arts, fighters with a background in wrestling have always been successful. Whether it be early heavyweight standouts like Dan Severn and Mark Coleman, or modern greats like Khabib Nurmagomedov and Daniel Cormier, wrestling is an integral part of MMA, and Eric Bischoff knows that all too well, which he believes is part of the reason for RAF's success in the past year."Combat sports in general have grown so fast over the last 30 years. UFC has been around a long time, and the sport itself has been exploding for a long time, but it is really emerging now. For us to see a pathway where we can introduce a combat sport like this is exciting, because freestyle wrestling is the oldest combat sport known to man, and it is a very important part of any MMA athlete's arsenal. If you look at a lot of the big names and legends in MMA, they come from a wrestling background. Wrestling is very much a part of MMA. All we have done is put a spotlight on it, make it more popular, put it in a format that is appealing and entertaining to watch, and boom, you have a brand-new sport. It is not a new sport, but it is a new way to watch the sport."Bischoff rounded off by saying that wrestling, whether it be freestyle or Greco-Roman, is not only very popular around the world, but is one of the oldest sports in the entire world. This point is only emphasized by the long line of high quality grapplers coming out of Dagestan, Russia, with Bischoff also pointing out that Japan and Europe are also hotbeds for wrestlers good enough to compete in both RAF and MMA.
