When Austin suffered a triceps injury while on a tour of Japan, he was fired by WCW Vice President Eric Bischoff. WCW and Bischoff thought that Austin would not be a 'marketable' wrestler. After he was fired, Austin expressed his opinion on being fired by Eric Bischoff over the phone as having taken the coward's way out. Bischoff said that he fired Austin because he refused to do a taping in Atlanta. When he heard that Austin was fired, Paul Heyman who ran Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), contacted him. Heyman hired Austin to perform in-ring interviews because Austin was still not recovered from his injury enough to compete. Austin's time in ECW helped build his future "Stone Cold" persona. He appeared in vignettes which ran down WCW and Bischoff. Some of the more memorable promos that he did involved his then-status as "WCW Monday Nitro" host by introducing "Monday NyQuil". He was also joined by "Bongo", (which were a set of bongo drums that were meant to represent Steve "Mongo" McMichael) in helping to promote the show "where the big boys play with each other"