After watching Eric Bischoff and WCW sell about a billion nWo shirts off the star power of “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash, WWE knew they needed an answer, specifically one who could catch on with the younger crowd who liked easily-recognizable merchandise, sophomoric humor, and an easily replaceable hand gesture that would put “Too Sweet” to shame. Vince McMahon's answer? D-Generation X, or DX for short.

Banding together the remaining members of The Kliq, Paul “Triple H” Levesque and “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels, the group got a shot in the arm in the form of X-Pac, aka Sean Waltman, aka The 1-2-3 Kid, aka Syxx, who jumped from WWE to WCW to join forces with the rest of the nWo in the mid-90s. X-Pac's addition, in the opinion of former WCW booker Eric Bischoff, was the reason why the faction worked, as he helped to provide some legitimacy to a group looking to take some shots at the opposing company, as he noted on his 83 Weeks podcast.

“Waltman was a huge shot in the arm for them. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will disagree with me, and they may be right. I may be wrong. I'll never change my opinion when I tell you that I think Sean Waltman was as important to the turnaround for WWE than just about anything else, including Mike Tyson,” Bischoff noted via Fightful. “Tyson was a bigger shot in the arm. It got mainstream attention and everybody talking about WWE. Tyson was at the top of his game, maybe not as a boxer, he was still better than anybody else, but in terms of a media phenomenon, Tyson was more controversial and hotter than anybody on the planet.

“Waltman, because he was part of the NWO and the NWO was such a dominant part of wrestling at that period, that when Waltman left the NWO, I think that was as an important piece of the puzzle for WWE than anything else. As any other one thing. I'll go even further, and I know this is going to piss some people off, I don't think D-X would have lasted four months at that point. Waltman is the reason D-X worked. Not taking anything away from anybody else, great group of talent that would go on to become huge stars in the business, and obviously Triple H is kind of at the top of his game, but at that time, I think Waltman made that D-X invasion work more than anybody else. More than Triple H, more than anybody else, Waltman made that work. That was a real shot across the bow. If I reacted to anything, I reacted to that.”

Would DX have survived without X-Pac? It's impossible to know, but Bischoff certainly wasn't finished singing his praises on 83 Weeks.

Eric Bischoff believes adding Sean Waltman to DX “defeated” the nWo.

Further examining the topic of the nWo versus DX and how X-Pac fit into either faction, Bischoff noted that, by signing Waltman, it was like WWE defeated WCW's top faction, which was always Vince McMahon's hope.

“It was the like the NWO defecting. It was as close as you could get to Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Sean Waltman saying, ‘We're done, we're going back to the competition.' That's what that was,” Bischoff said. “It was an important part of the NWO leaving WCW to go to WWE. That's why I feel so strongly about Sean and his value and significance in that move, creatively. Not to take anything from Triple H, Shawn Michaels, anybody. Sean Waltman was as much a part of NWO as anybody else, with the exception of maybe Hulk, Scott, and Kevin. Waltman personified the NWO in so many ways. For Sean to leave, because I fired him, for him to leave and cut the promo that he did, was as close as you could get to the NWO defecting, and that's why it worked. Otherwise, it was a goofy skit. A bunch of idiots jumping out of a jeep, dressing up as army guys, knocking on the door, creating this invasion. Cool, fun, I liked it, it was great entertainment, but it wouldn't have had any impact without Sean Waltman. Nobody can convince me otherwise.”

Unfortunately for Bischoff, the defection of X-Pac was sort of his doing, as he did fire the high-flying performer. Still, who would have foreseen just how impactful X-Pac would have been back in WWE, so much so that his ever-present nature created the “X-Pac heat” nickname. Oh well, lessons learned, I guess.