83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - 83 Weeks 240: Scott Hall: Too Sweet!

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

With Conrad traveling back from Triplemania XXX, Casio is in the co-host chair as him and Eric go 2+ hours, picking back up on Scott Hall's WCW run! Topics include Scott returning from rehab, "overruling" finishes, Barry Bloom, plans to split up Hall & Nash, Sean Waltman's release, Scott's continued issues, Goldberg, and much more! NUTRAFOL - You can grow thicker, healthier hair AND support our show by going to Nutrafol.com/men and entering the promo code 83WEEKS to save $15 off your first month’s subscription – this is their best offer anywhere and it’s only available to US customers for a limited time. Plus FREE shipping on EVERY order. Get $15 OFF at Nutrafol.com/men CHILISLEEP - Head over to sleep.me/83WEEKS to learn more and save 25% off the purchase of any new Dock Pro, Cube, or OOLER Sleep System. This offer is available exclusively for 83 Weeks listeners -- and only for a limited time!  MANSCAPED - Go to Manscaped.com and get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS. Say Trick or Treat to your beautiful new Halloweenie with MANSCAPED™.  WOOOOO WINGS - Wooooo! Wings, a virtual restaurant concept from The Man himself, the Nature Boy Ric Flair. Enjoy the legendary flavors and world championship wings by ordering with your Uber Eats or Postmates app.  Wooo Wings is now open in Nashville, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Florida as well as Huntsville and Tuscaloosa in Alabama, with many more locations across the country.  Try the only chicken wings worthy of carrying the name of the 16x World Heavyweight Champion. SAVE WITH CONRAD - If you have credit card debt or in a 30 year loan? Well, we can help you get out of that pinch and save money at the same time! Head over to SaveWithConrad.com for a quick quote.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my kidda smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kid a smart smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring, sold separately.

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I am Cassio, kid. Eric, pleasure to see you again, my friend. Hey, we've been doing this a lot together. Yeah. It is fun. I'm glad. And I love your intro. Your intro is a little different than Conradice.

You say the same thing, but you start cracking up halfway through it. And it just makes you sound more fun. Like, we're at a party or something. I'm walking through the door to Conradison. And there's Cassio down there by the television, watching Alabama get beat by Tennessee and you see me come walking in and you go hey walk it's Eric Bishop well I don't know who Conrad yells that at but he yells it every time no matter the show he's yelling with the intro so we are here we are rocking and rolling and I

I'm excited this is an incredible incredible show we're doing today we are doing Scott Hall and WCW part two my friend You guys, almost two years ago, Eric, you and Conrad sat down to discuss Scott Hall and WCW. That was your 79th episode back in October of 2019, covered what is the beginning of Scott Hall's career and time in WCW. So be sure to check that out in the archives. If you have not done so, go over to ad-freeshows.com or over on the 83 weeks YouTube. That is, of course, YouTube.com slash 83 weeks. since you've, since then, you've had Scott on the show, episode 168, who's the third man, discussing his time in WCW.

Once again, that is in the archives and on your YouTube page as well. Sadly, Scott has since passed away. Eric, you discussed his death earlier this year on the Cid episode, but now we're going to take a look back at Scott Hall in WCW, part two. And coming up, timing-wise, Scott's birthday. would have been October 20th. Eric, just your thoughts going into this episode. You know, it's ironic that we're recording this today because yesterday, and today, by the way, is, what is it, it's October 16th, Sunday.

Yesterday, there was a crew out from WWE for an A&E special. It's, I think it's an A&E special being done on Scott Hall. And it was really interesting. because we touched on some things that I had never really touched on before, and we'll talk about some of those things here. But it's ironic that Scott Hall has kind of dominated my weekend this weekend so far, as far as interviews. Good timing.

That means it's meant to be a little destiny action for this episode. Let's get into it. We left off, you guys left off after his return from rehab at Slambury and all the controversy that came along with that match with him, six Kevin along with Piper and Flair when Scott returns to the company how is he different at this time he's returned he's back from rehab how was he different you know he was he different maybe that's the yeah I mean yeah yes he was but it was subtle um he he didn't have

as much of a chip on a shoulder. You know, and I don't know how many people that you've been around that had substance abuse issues, but it does change them. You know, I'm a firm believer, especially the SSRIs and, you know, the mood altering, brain altering prescriptions that are out there. I firmly believe it. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert, but I have been around with that stuff a lot.

And I've messed around with it myself, recreationally, whether it be at all or vice. it in or any of those. And I do believe that they chemically alter your brain. You know, it changes the circuits in some way, shape, or form because you see people change dramatically. And I think when Scott, the best way to describe, at least from my memory, the way Scott was when he came out of rehab was, he was broken. I think his confidence was shaken.

he knew he had a serious problem but I don't think he quite knew how to deal with it even though he went to rehab but that was kind of mandatory there weren't a lot of options there because Scott was facing some serious challenges legally I don't think Scott really wanted to go to rehab but you knew he had to go to rehab and when he came out he was kind of walking on eggshells in a way It's the only way I can describe it. He wasn't his usual self.

And sometimes his usual self was a little obnoxious because his sense of humor, especially when he was using, his sense of humor. He's been around it, man. He's been around a guy in the bar that for the first hour or two, he's drinking and he's fun and he's funny. And his sense of humor is kind of witty. But after about two hours, it goes from kind of fun and kind of witty to being obnoxious and mean.

And, you know, that was not unusual for Scott. His sense of humor was dry and he loved to get a reaction out of people and rib them a little bit. But it would go too far occasionally, not all the time. I don't want to make it sound like it was like that all the time. It wasn't. But when he came back, he didn't have that tendency to want to try to engage in humor, whether it was fun and entertaining or obnoxious. He didn't do that.

I think he was trying to be careful. it's interesting you mentioned confidence i think it happens especially in entertainment um that i've seen it from is even comedians i don't want to name names but i've been with very high profile celebrity stand-up comedians uh and them doing their first show quote unquote sober their first time you know doing it without drinking before the show or smoking or whatever the case may be and you see these guys who have had specials many, many specials, and now they're nervous because they don't have that crutch of a drink in their hand or whatever.

Was that the case with him? Maybe, hey, you know, I'm not used to doing this without substances. You know, I don't know if that was in. It might have been, like I said, I'm not an expert. And I, you know, as close as I worked with Scott, you know, we weren't real tight personally. So I never dug in. Right. Maybe I should have, I guess.

but I didn't. I never got personal. It stayed professional with me. So I don't know if it was, you know, lack of confidence in terms of his ability in the ring. I don't think Scott Hall ever had any lack of confidence in terms of his performance. I think Scott Hall had a much bigger issue with his performance as just a human being backstage. I think the demons that Scott carried him around kind of,

and a little bit of self-loathing as a result made it hard for him backstage. Once he got to the ring, Scott was usually pretty fine because that's where he was comfortable. He was in control. He had 100% confidence in the ring. It's when he got out of the ring is when he got himself in the trouble. Let's be honest. Finding the right promotional products can feel overwhelming. But with 4 imprint, it's easy.

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Well, let's talk about it. Scott and Kevin would take on Flair and Piper in Boston on Nitro. one of the largest crowd and gate in WCW history, and there were all sorts of problems with cooperation. When something like this happens, and I know 1997 is a different time, do you check on Scott? Are you making sure he's in okay,

or is there somebody in charge of that? How is that handled? No, I didn't, I didn't engage with Scott while he was in treatment. I wasn't keeping an eye on Scott. that Diana Myers, who was an attorney that worked in the WCW office, even though she reported to the legal division of Turner Broadcasting, she didn't report directly to me, but she was charged with overseeing WCW along with Nick Lambros. I should take that back. Diana Myers didn't oversee legal in WCW. She assisted, she was an attorney, but she assisted under Nick Lambros, who oversaw legal.

in WCW. Diana Myers kind of kept tabs on Scott and then would report to me, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to try to reach out to Scott while he was in treatment.

My understanding, and I had very limited understanding of what treatment was like back then, I've since learned more because I've had more friends go in, but they don't like, they don't like a patient to have a lot of contact outside

immediate family while they're in treatment. So I just left it alone. Did you do anything different in terms of managing him regarding alcohol or drugs when he returns? I didn't. I didn't. And again, was that, or was that anybody that came out of rehab?

You didn't really necessarily treat anybody different. You couldn't. Yeah. Right. No, I didn't treat him any differently. and part of that was like, you know, I don't want to make him feel conspicuous by his problems and single him out and make him feel uncomfortable, any more uncomfortable than one might

otherwise feel coming out of treatment and trying to get back into the system, so to speak. So now I didn't treat him any differently at all. At the Great American Bash, Nash, Nash, and Hall retained the titles over Flair and Piper when Hall pins Piper. Something I've always wanted to know, Eric Winner. is the idea of someone in the NWO replacing one of the outsiders for matches when they couldn't either work or didn't make it. It's almost like a free bird rule. How has that decided or come up with? You know, there wasn't a formula, Cassio. It was, okay, here's our situation,

who is the most appropriate in this particular match? You know, it wasn't like there was a formula or even much of a debate. And it depended on this situation. I don't know, on who the opponents were and what the promotion was like and where the story was going, if in fact there was a plan for the story to continue forward. Was it just easier to replace people in those matches instead of stripping them of titles? At that point, it was. And I'm not a big fan of stripping someone from a title unless it's a storyline. I never, that was a last resort for me.

I would lean into trying to find a creative solution, or in this case, a substitute. Let's move to Road Wilde, 1997. There's a ton of controversy, as reported in the Observer. It says, Road Wild was ruined before it ever started. The setting was strike one, the backstage maneuvering, strike two, and the results of that maneuvering, the lame hastily put together finishes up and down the show were strike three. Booker Terry Taylor had put together a show and subsequent bookings for the next couple of months, built around three title changes on this show. Chris Jericho to regain the Cruiserweight title from Alex Wright, the Steiner's to finally win the tag team titles from Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan to regain the WCW heavyweight title from Lex Lugar.

What exactly happened wasn't clear. The belief is that Hall and Nash went to Bischoff, told him that they thought there had been too many title, changes of late, and it was ruining the credibility of the titles. At least that's where everyone was placing the blame. On the surface, they have a valid point. Bischoff agreed, which may have been the correct thing to do. The problem was, if that's the case, it needed to have been done before all the plans are made, and the fact that it was Hall and Nash, who came to the conclusion at the

same time they were going to drop the titles, does not give the viewpoint something of a conflict of interest. The whole idea beforehand for Hall and Nash to lose those titles was, then to put them into singles programs with the Nash giant program thought to be a potential big moneymaker. Eric, do you remember this particular time where Scott and Kevin active in talking about plans and overruling finishes and giving advice? Cassio, that's just, it's, it's complete bullshit. That's Dave Meltzer bullshit.

And you can always tell Dave, Dave Meltzer bullshit, because it starts out with something so obviously wrong. and, I mean, just complete bullshit. It's the only way I can say it. Booker Terry Taylor wasn't booking WCW Nitro. Well, there's his strike on. He wasn't even booking. He was on the committee. He was a part of the process.

He was a part of the team. But he was not booking Nitro or the pay-per-views in 1997. So when Dave goes on and on and lays out this whole backstage scenario and this guy said people are upset and the report is that this and this is it but he starts out that paragraph or page or whatever it was at the time with something that is so profoundly fucking wrong that it's hard not to just want to pull your hair out now speaking of hair you have to choose between better hair growth and your health there's a holistic solution that you guys know my hair is the only reason i'm doing this

podcast because if it weren't from my head of hair, I would have never gotten an opportunity to get into professional wrestling back in 1987. I would have never, never risen to the to the levels of success that I did. Were it not for my hair, there's not a lot of talents underneath this hair, folks, but there is magnificent hair. And hey, why would you want to choose between healthy hair, healthy body, whole body wellness, right? So you want to get ahead of your thinning hair. Now, believe it or not, my hair is thinning. It's causing me some concern, which is why I'm glad Nutrafol's a sponsor, because you

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You need to do this, folks. Nutrafol is trusted and recommended by more than 3,000 top doctors. Eric, I wish I would have had this. I do too. I'm behind now. I feel bad. But, hey, there's always hope. And you can grow your thicker, healthier hair casso and support our show by going to

Nutrafol. com slash men and entering the promo code 83 weeks to say $15 off your first month's subscription. This is their best offer anywhere, and it's only available to U.S. customers for a limited time. Plus, free shipping on every order. Get $15 off at Nutraful.com slash men, spelled, n-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com slash men promo code 83 weeks. Save the hair. Eric, do you think Kevin and Scott were hesitant?

to go back into working singles matches or did they think there was a lot left to do as a tag team and were you pushing for them to get into these singles programs? I don't, it's not like Scott and Kevin were pushing. I think clearly they preferred it. They preferred wrestling as a tag team. Their chemistry was great. They knew each other obviously very well in the ring. I mean, they were best of friends.

but their chemistry inside of the ring was special. And I just think that they probably felt they were better in a tag team environment that they were in a singles environment, unless there was a major story or title on the line. That would be my guess. And us as fans still loved it. It wasn't like everybody was going, man, we need them broke up. I'm tired of this.

No, I mean, they were still over with everybody. They were still over with everybody. in the NWO. And you're going to think about it. You know, Scott and Kevin really, Scott was the first guy in the NWO. He started the ball rolling. Kevin jumped in shortly thereafter.

And it picked up a lot of steam when Kevin showed up and not to put myself over, but when he picked me up, power bomb me off the stage of Baltimore, that made a freaking statement. And then obviously that's followed up with Hulk Hogan. So, you know, I think fans kind of recognize Scott and Kevin is, you know,

the beginning of the end of the end. NWO, and that's why they never got tired of them as a tag team. One of the reasons why. Okay, so, for the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phone's allowed. Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my kid a smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure.

No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you. That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kidda smart smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home.

Well, okay, back to trivia. Oh, seriously, you in the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe? Visit Kida at KIDDE.com to learn more. ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. If they've listened to 83 weeks, they know you and Connor had discussed the time that six was fired for a short time when he pulled Flares tights down. It's hard not to give Scott and Kevin credit for sticking up to their friend, right?

No, and listen, that's one of those situations that you kind of hate being the boss at that point because you know you have to do something that deep down inside you don't really want to do it you don't really feel it's necessary but you know you got bosses and shit and when your bosses and shit think you need to take action then you have to take action i didn't really want to and i think i may have even told scott or sean don't worry about it i'm going to do what i got to do just take a breath take a little time off we'll see you we'll see you shortly um but No, I was, I was forced into that. And look, I respected Scott and Kevin.

I mean, you know, I was frustrated with Sean because he knew better, you know, we were having issues with higher-ups and Turner about nudity and language. And, you know, we're being asked relatively nicely to clean up our own act and police our own stuff. And I didn't want that to change. I didn't want to keep pushing that envelope and getting that phone call Monday morning from my boss or my boss's boss instead of Turner Broadcasting because we kept doing stupid shit over and over again. So I was I was perturbed, but not not to the point where I wanted to fire him. Did he, you said you approached him that way. Did he understand that?

I mean, I know he wasn't excited about it, but did he see where you go? Yeah, I don't remember his. In fact, I don't even know. if I'm the one to call him and told him, and I know I did talk to him afterwards, but it might have been Nick Lambrose, perhaps that had to make the call and let him know. I'm sure he was pissed. I'm sure he was. But, you know, Sean was a little, you know, Sean has really calmed down.

He's matured a lot. He's cleaned up his act. It doesn't have, you know, any recreational activity challenges anymore. But at the time, he was a little bit of a hot head. He could be a pain in the ass. was under he was under a lot of bad influence you know between scott hall and kevin nash you know it wasn't hard to kind of step out step out of bounds every now and then because that was the nature of how they lived uh at wcc uh you recently discussed fall bra all 97 so everyone

be sure to check that out in the archives of 83 weeks but this is really the launching point of the Scott Hall, Larry Zabisco program. Why Larry Z for Scott? You know, chemistry, first and foremost, Scott had a lot of respect for Larry, and they went back a long time. But I think, you know, respect, chemistry, and I had a lot of confidence in Larry. You know, Larry was, Larry's career was clearly getting into the sunset. provision um you know he was winding down his in ring careers it was great color commentator

and i really enjoyed working with larry and color commentary but um that was that part of his career was winding down the in ring portion of it but he still even though you know larry wasn't an active wrestler in the ring on a week to week basis he was still very very good and i loved his style of wrestling and i was confident that because of the chemistry and the history between the two they could have you know they can have some great matches and some great interaction on the microphone the end of september 97 nash hurts his knee scott has a bad back the scott keeps working singles matches and has his infamous loss over hector garza where he gave him nothing but lost to a schoolboy where do you think that creative came from is that

a kevin sullivan and do you think garza got anything out of it i don't think garza got anything out of it and I think it was just frustration. Just sheer frustration. That sounds to me, you know, I don't remember the details on that one. That sounds to me, though, as you described it as just kind of making a statement, yeah, I'll do the job because you want me to do the job, but I don't really want to do the job. So I'm just going to go through the motions.

That's what that sounds like to me. Meltzer would speculate that the working plan in October for Starcade, is that Hall and Nash will screw up interference to lead to Sting, beating Hulk and the splinter in the NWO will be a big focus in 98 with Hall and Nash on one side and Hulk on another. Was the original plan before Brett Hart became available? Was this the original plan? No, I don't know where that came from.

Really? I honestly don't. You know, and sometimes I think, you know, when I hear these kind of reports from back, in the day as they're read to me. First of all, they're so fucking absurd that sometimes I end up just shutting them down and don't listen to the end because it's just hard for me. But I also think that Dave was probably talking to some people,

perhaps some that were on the booking committee or one in particular on the booking committee. And the only reason I'm not going to drop a name is because I don't know for sure. And I don't want to accuse somebody doing something they didn't do. That's a shitty thing to do. but my guess is, you know, Meltzer probably is talking to some disenfranchised kind of frustrated members of the booking committee that weren't getting their way, you know, and that happens a lot of times, well, they're in WCW, because you get a bunch of people in a room, do they have strong personalities and all have experience and are, you know, they're,

they're alphas, you know, everybody in there is pretty aggressive, how they ended up in the wrestling business in the first place. and then you sit around a room and you you collaborate sometimes you know you've ever heard the saying there's no such thing it's a bad idea that's a lie there are bad ideas and sometimes if you're passionate about an idea and you push it you push it and push it but nobody else sees it you walk out of that room kind of pissed off frustrated it's i guess human it's unprofessional as hell and people that have that tendency don't usually to last very long in a creative environment because nobody wants to work with that for very long.

But too often individuals like that, whether they were part of the booking committee or they're just on a roster when they're not getting the push they want, when they're not getting any attention when they want, when no one's taking the ideas that they're pointing out and pitching. Oh, what do we do? We call Dave Meltzer. We bitch about it. So Dave Meltzer writes about it so that people that are running the company will look at it and go, oh, maybe I should make a change in a way I do things.

that happened. I saw it happen. I saw that type of thing happen when I was in WCW before I got into management when a guy by the name of Jeff Carr. Jeff Carr was a nice, decent guy. He was a good guy. But he was a program director, program director on TBS. And he was a wrestling fan. So you know, program directors are their management, but they're lower level management. And they report out up the food chain. But their job is to kind of just keep tabs and keep track of all the different programs that are on the network and deal with any of the issues that result to the network from those shows, whether it be promotion or trafficking, meaning commercials or whatever. That was Jeff Carr. And like I said, Jeff Carr was a great guy. I like Jeff. But he was a bit of a nerd.

I'm trying to put it clearly, but as nicely as I can't. And Jeff Card never came to any of the wrestling events. Jeff Carr never showed up, to my knowledge, he may have been to one or two, but to my knowledge, Jeff Carr was never present at any of our paper views from the time I started in WCW 91 all the way up until the time I left. Jeff Carr was never in the WCW offices. He was not a part of any of our meetings. He was not a part of our creative. He wasn't a part of any operational facet of WCW. And I say this only to make a point that although Jeff was not part of WCW in any way, shape, or form,

he worked for Turner Broadcasting, but he was a wrestling fan. Like he was the biggest wrestling fan in the world. Like he read the dirt sheets and he could tell you who beat who in 1968 and, you know, what one wrestler like for dinner. I mean, he knew all of it, right? All the trivia. He could tell you everything. And as such, people within Turner Broadcasting, not within WCW.

Keep in mind, when I described this scenario to you, there was Turner Broadcasting and it was WCW, which was a division of Turner Broadcasting. And in TBS, the network was its own operational unit. God, I just got lost. What was I trying to illustrate? Help me out here. What were we talking about? We were talking about guys pitching. Oh, okay.

I know where I was. Okay. Sorry, I got off track. I got a head of my stuff in my brain. But Jeff Carr as a programming director for WTBS, TBS, the network, because he was such a wrestling fan, everybody in TBS knew that Jeff Carr was a wrestling fan. So they would just go to Jeff Carr for opinions. If they had a question about what WCW was doing or there was an issue within WCW content,

the television show itself. Nobody would pick up the phone and call someone in WCW, whether it was Dusty Rhodes when he was in creative or Jim Hurd when he was overseeing things or Bill Watts when he was overseeing things. No, there was never a direct line of communication between TBS, the network, and WCW. It would go from whatever executive inside of TBS had an issue

to Jeff Karp because he was the wrestling expert because he read the dirt sheets. And he knew everything that the dirt sheets thought they do. So oftentimes guys into talent in WCW and sometimes people in management, very rarely, though, would say things to Dave Meltzer privately that they knew would end up in the dirt sheet, that they knew Jeff Carr would be reading with the hopes that somehow Jeff. Carr, because he was TBS, would influence WCW decisions. I don't know if that made any sense to you because it's kind of a weird, tangled

web of manipulation and dishonesty, but that happened. So to summarize it, you would have talent that was frustrated. They knew that at that time, you know, when I got there 91, 92, 93, 94, for that period of time, the people in charge of WTBS, there was one guy that really read the dirt sheets, and that was Jeff Carr, and he had a tremendous amount of influence from time to time whenever there were issues in WCW. And so oftentimes the talent would feed things to Dave that they knew would end up in the dirt sheet, hoping that it would somehow benefit them.

It's probably the reason why I have such an embedded host. to dirt sheets and the people that write them because they don't realize the adverse effect that that can have on the business. These guys all purport to love the business. They just love the business. But yet they report lies as fact. They distort. And it does have an adverse effect of the business at some point.

Okay, so, for the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phones allowed. Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my kidda smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you.

That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kidda smart smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay, back to trivia. Oh, seriously, you and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe?

Visit Kida at kiddde.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring, sold separately. By the way, our crack team found his LinkedIn, and Jeff Carr had that job from 87 to 2018. That's a long run. Wow. That's a long run.

All right, let's talk about Jim Cornett. He is negative towards WCW on the WWF online show, By This, regarding the NWO parody on Arne Anderson. he would have to have this to say regarding the talent. And by the way, going in, I'm going to do my best to read Jim Cornett. This is very difficult to do for me. Is he worse than trying to read Dave Meltzer?

Because honestly, reading Dave Meltzer, when Conrad or you, as you just did start reading this stuff back to me, I start to get fucking vertigo. I really do. It's like I'm going to fall on, I'm sitting in my chair, but I'm going to fall on my face, just listening to this because I get very much.

to go. But go ahead. Let's both. He sets everything up. He ends, of course, uh, getting, uh, talking about the you for a little bit. So here we go. This is Cornette. I'm going to say this right out front. I mean, every word I'm saying and I don't care. Who knows it? It shows how little taste and how little class that that whole promotion has to begin with to do a parody of that interview. But I'm not surprised because of the quality of human beings that are involved. As far as the whole group of them goes, Conan didn't draw money if you dipped him in glue and drug him through Fort Knox. Bagwell.

That's a good. You got to hand him that one. That was a good one. No, he's a word smith. Bagwell, he says, I don't know. Maybe he was just trying to keep his job. But Nash, Hall, and six, I guess he's named after his IQ or the number of brain cells he has left. You know, all the fans think that these guys are so cool and they're so sweet.

They got the easiest jobs in the world. All they got to do is go out there and be themselves, childish, obnoxious, adolescent smart asses with a bad case of arrested emotional development and a fixation on trying to act macho. In my opinion, Kevin Ash is one of the biggest no talents that ever stepped in the ring in this business. He's got six moves, no ability, and his one talent is that he has enough timing to cover up for some of it. He got into this business because of accidental genetics and because he had a multi-million dollar promotion pushing to the moon to make him a star.

Then he leaves that promotion, the WWF, after giving his word that he was staying. So he's a liar, too. He's had one good match in his career, and he had to pull a guy's wooden leg off to do that. He's made his entire living out of being a backstage manipulator. As far as Scott Hall goes, Scott Hall's a good wrestler. Good's about it, but he's the best of the bunch. He had the same multi-million dollar promotional company making him a star after he'd been in the business close to 10 years without putting three asses in a seat.

As a human being, he's about the quality as Nash is in terms of honesty and or integrity, which means if they tell you the sun is going to come up tomorrow, go out and buy a flashlight, you're going to need it. As far as six goes, he had a job because he carries the other guy's bags, and they think he's cute when he gets drunk and throws up on himself. And that's the entire reason he's employed. He has the distinction of being, in case anyone hasn't noticed, the only guy on either side of the wrestling war

to have been released from a valid wrestling contract to go and join the other side, which shows how valuable he is. The only reason the NW. guys are in the position that they are in right now is because Eric Bischoff, even more than being a mark for his own face and voice is a mark for hanging out with studly guys with long hair that smoke cigars and ride Harleys, so maybe some of that can rub off in his little pansy-ass frame. So he throws a billionaire's money around to prove that his Johnson is bigger than the guys who put their own money on the line.

A lot to digest there. Eric, where would you like to start? first of all let me say i love listening to jim cornet franz because he is good at it i mean unlike melzer who is like this fucking giant word salad cornet like when he goes off on a rant is actually pretty funny he says a pretty good shit um but look you know i i don't dislike jim i really don't he's oftentimes i i read and hear things that he says, I think I probably agree with him on the product itself and things like psychology. I probably agree with Jim more than I don't. Now, his opinions about people

and individuals and things that he really knows nothing about, which is the case here, Jim never worked with me. Jim and I were in the same company at WCW for a minute. And subsequent to that, we had a couple of interactions that were very memorable for him. I didn't even remember until he brought him up, to be honest. And Jim has never really accomplished anything in the professional wrestling. Now, business. Now, he was a good talent. Oh, some people may think he was a great talent.

Okay, that's subjective, whatever. Some people may think he was one of the best managers, you know, ever in his era. Okay, I'll give him that too. I don't think so, but other people do it. Like I say, it's subjective. But beyond being in the business and benefiting financially from being in the business. Jim Cornett has never done anything that improved the business. He benefited from it and he attempted to have his own wrestling promotion. It didn't

work out. But listen, the odds of that being successful are pretty slim. So I'm not being critical. That's just a fact. You know, the one time that he had his own promotion, it ran for a while until it didn't. But beyond Smoky Mountain Wrestling and that foray into actually creating a wrestling company, what has Jim Cornett ever contributed to the business, not partaking in in the business? I don't want to hear about the great matches he was in because that's benefiting from the wrestling business, that opportunity and the money that comes with it, the position that he had in WWE at the time that he conducted this interview.

Those are all benefits of being in the industry. But what has he contributed? What is something that we see today that you can trace back to something that Jim Cornett innovated or contributed? The answer is fucking nothing. This is a guy who's still to this day by virtue of his gifted use of the English language and his sense of humor and his personality and his wit and his intelligence because he's a very smart guy.

He's still in the business today and irrelevant in his way today because he benefited from being in the wrestling business. But what does he contribute to the wrestling business? The answer is fucking nothing. And that's why when I hear things like this out of gym between the fact that half the time I laugh at it because it is really entertaining and the other half I realize he's just another bitter, frustrated guy that was in the wrestling business

and at a very high level at one point that never really contributed to any to the business itself, but yet is really quick to criticize those who have. So in short, let me just summarize, Your Honor, I don't give a fuck what Jim Cornett says. I don't hate Jim Cornett, but I'll tell you about somebody I do hate. I hate frigging Steven Singer, yep. Oh, no. I hate that Steven Singer guy. He makes getting the perfect engagement ring for that special someone so easy.

Unlike other jewelers, Stephen doesn't mark his jewelry way up, just to mark it down and make you feel like you're getting a deal. I hate that, man. That's shady as hell. No phony sales, no coupons, no discounts, no pricing games. Just the perfect price, which offers the very best value at the very best value at the very best possible price every single day. That's why other jewelers hate Stephen Singer.

Stephen Singer focuses on what really matters. Love. That's right. I say love. I just have fun saying love. Stephen isn't in the jewelry business. Man, he's in the love business. And Stephen also stands by his jewelry with the best guarantee in the business with his

unbeatable 100. 100% money back guarantee plus fast and free shipping both ways. No other jeweler has a better return policy or better guarantees. And that's why you can trust Steven Singer online at I hate stevensinger.com in his showroom at the corner, or I should have said, or in his showroom at the corner of 8th and walnut in Philly, buy diamonds from a real jeweler you can trust. Stephen Singer Jewelers. And this is my favorite part of doing these Stephen Singer as I hate stevensinger.

Dot com. How was that for a read? That was strong. It was fun too. I was enjoying it for real. So was I. Could you tell? Maybe a little too much.

No, that was a good one. I like it. I like it. Do you also like hanging out with studly guys with long hair that's smoke cigars and round harleys um again you know i don't know i mean look i've been that sounds fun yeah by the way who would say no to that right but it this is something to get that you know cornet and in and in the others that you know tried to live in that narrative and took joy in that narrative um i i've been riding motorcycle since i was 14

I haven't not had a motorcycle since I was, well, if you can call a mini bike a motorcycle since I was eight. And I've riden Harleys all my life. It's certainly not the biggest part of my life. But, yeah, I'll hang out. I get a phone call from some buddies and they happen to have long hair. And if once in a while they smoke a cigar, they want to go for a ride, hell yeah. But I don't seek it out. So, again, it's just jealous, kind of bullshit, high school-like bullshit.

None of it's true. Okay, so, for the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phones allowed. Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my kid a smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right.

A smoke alarm texting you. That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay. Back to trivia.

Oh, seriously. You and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe? Visit Kidda at KIDDE.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. Well, we go from an entertaining word salad to a boring, plain word salad. We're going to go back to the observer, and you can guess where Meltzer would get this next part from, Eric. That's going to be the game.

We get to the end. It's going to like a game show. We get to the end. And you guess who gave him this? All right. The situation with Hall was kind of strange, and there was an argument before Nitro on 922 in West Valley City, Utah, between he and WCW promoter Zane Bresloff about the short and generally unsatisfactory main events

with all the big houses at the arenas of late. Then Hall came down with a bad back, although those close to him say he had been complaining of the back injury over the weekend, and showed up for the weekend shows on crutches. Who said that to him, you think? Zane Bresloff did talk to Dave on a pretty regular basis since Zane was the promoter. Zane would be the person that would be most affected

by an issue in the live event side of things where we weren't producing television. So, I mean, And look, I was aware that Zane and Dave were friends. I didn't have an issue with that. And that sounds like something that Zane might have said, just venting a little bit. I will say as I was listening to that,

and right away, I pretty much just, I would assume it was Zane Bresla. But what's inconsistent about the whole thing is when you hear it, and I listened to it, it made it sound like, you know, oh, Scott's just being lazy, he doesn't want to work a main event, just wants to go home, wants to get to the bar,

let's just cut this short. Scott took a lot of pride in his work. He, and I'm not saying there weren't times when there were issues that resulted out of Scott's behavior in the ring. But Scott would never go out, in my opinion, go out and intentionally have a shitty main event because he took too much pride in his work.

I would lean into, I hate that the fact that I'm saying lean into because everybody's saying it now, and here I am leaning into, leaning into, and I fucking hate it. I'm not going to do it anymore. No more leaning into anything.

Envise it. Lean into it. I'm going to lean into a six-pack and a pizza tonight. I'm watching Sunday night football, but that's the only lean-in I'm going to do from now. but I would believe in my heart of hearts that Scott did have an issue with his back. And it's a little hard to go out there and have a 20-minute barn burner or 30-minute barn-burner main event. If you've got a bad back, anybody that's ever had a bad back knows it could be tough just getting up and down from a chair, more or less going out and performing in a wrestling ring.

And so when I combine the fact that Scott did have back issues, lower back issues, and the fact that he took so much pride in his work, there may have been an issue in those live events that Zane was frustrated with, but I wouldn't just automatically assume it was because of Scott's behavior or unwillingness to work with that local promoter. Do you think Scott would be the kind to overdo it so much to overdo the show so much to show up on crutches when not needed. Seems like a big commitment to the fake story.

If it is a fake story, yeah. I just don't. Yeah. And I just don't. From the October Nitro 10697, Scott Hallpin, Hector Garza in 153 with the edge in a match where he mockingly faked a back injury He has a spoof since everyone figured he was faking his injury the past two weeks anyway.

Now, that I believe. That's what I believe. He didn't give guards to any offense. After the match, he spray-painted Z on the ref, who was made to act like a total scared rabbit. There was some internal heat because Holland Nash didn't do television angles to explain their injuries, as everyone else has done. Where do you think the, quote, internal heat came from?

Terry Taylor? Hard to say on that one. Gary Jester was another one that was famous for talking to Meltzer. That, if I had to put money on that one, I'd put money on Gary Jester. Oh, okay.

Hall and six would drop the tag team titles to the Steiner's, and six will get hurt in this match on Nitro and never wrestle for WCW again. Kind of crazy looking back at that now, isn't it? Yeah, and, you know, he was off for a while. And, you know, I mean, I didn't fire Sean because of back injury, obviously. It was because of a contractual issue and some pretty shitty games. His manager was playing at the time.

where I had negotiated an agreement with Sean. He was operating under that agreement. I was paying him according to that agreement all while we were getting it formalized. And we're talking over a period of probably a month or two, maybe longer, not really sure. There was some feet dragging on probably both sides in terms of finalizing an agreement. That does happen in business. It happens to me still, to this day, when you're dealing with big companies. It takes forever to get final agreements sometimes.

So I'm not blaming any one person for it, but it existed. And then at some point in time, I got a phone call from Sean Walman's manager who said, yeah, Sean wants to renegotiate the deal. We already had renegotiated and I've been paying him under. That's when I fired him. is the practice of letting him wrestle and working under the, quote, new agreement, was that something you did with other wrestlers as well? I may have, you know, I mean, look.

That wasn't completely out of the ordinary. No, it wasn't completely. I mean, again, because of timing, if you agree to a letter of intent, which just basically lays out the deal points, you know what the money is, you know what the dates are, You know what the term is, you know, all the basic ingredients of the agreement and everybody signs that letter of intent. With a letter of intent, even though it's not legally binding, unless it's a binding letter of intent and is noticed as such in the document. But if you sign a letter of intent and it's obvious, I generally trust people enough to live up to the word.

And that's what pissed me off about this situation. And it wasn't even Sean Walman as much as it was as dipship manager. It just pissed me off. It's just not the way to do business. And I took it out on Sean, which was unfortunate, but I did. But no, I would do it because, again, sometimes you sign that letter of intent, everybody parties agree, you know, what are you going to do? Not work somebody, not use somebody for a period of a week or two or three and not know

when they're going to exactly come back to work because you have to wait until you get the final legal document. I didn't believe I had to work that way. I believe if I had a letter intent, I basically trusted the parties involved. And once I start paying that individual under the terms of the letter of intent that they signed, ultimately, if you end up in front of a judge and a judge is looking at the fact that you did agree to the basic terms of the agreement, and the employer, in this case, WCW, was paying you under those new terms, you had, in effect, a meeting of the minds, which is a legal definition of a contract. So even though I would do it, and it's a little risky, and I'm sure there are other people, maybe even today, nobody would do that.

I don't know. I don't think that's a case. I think it still happens today. But legally, if it comes down to it, even with a letter of intent and without a formal contract, as long as I'm operating under the terms of the new agreement, the talent is expected to. Do you remember if that manager had other wrestlers as it's called? Oh, yeah. That's part of the reason it pissed me off as much as it did.

It was Barry Bloom, by the way. I'm not trying to keep his name out of the president. He knows I think he's a piece of shit. I've been pretty vocal about that, the way he conducted business with WCW. And I'm sure there were people in WWE that would agree with me wholeheartedly that have had to work with him. Okay, so for the final trivia question, What is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phone's allowed.

Sir in the orange, phone away, please. Um, my kidda smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you. That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello?

The Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay, back to trivia. How seriously, you and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe? Visit Kidda at kydde.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. At Halloween Havoc 1997, Luger and Hall faced off.

Lex Lugar beat Scott Hall in 13-02 total time with Larry Zubiscoe's referee. This wasn't much of a match. Lugar didn't do a thing, and Hall just did just enough to keep the match going, as it was really just a backdrop to working with Zabisco. Hall did a few moves and got two counts and yelled about the slow counts. The two started arguing, and at one point, Hall charged at Zabisco, who back dropped him over the top rope. Bischoff came out, and Zabisco kicked him off the apron.

They teased the double count out, but both made it in on time, and Lugar kept giving Hall those reverse atomic knee drops that are sold like crotch shots, so actually miss by a lot. As Bischoff distracted Zabisco, six kicked Lugar in the head. That whiffed as well. and Zabisco turned around and very slowly counted three. Zabisco was mad about Hall winning and said he wanted to watch the replay on the video wall. This should set a nice precedent since all referees being confused about finishes on TV shoots should do the same.

Seeing the outside interference, he ordered the match restarted. Six then attacked Zabisco, but Zubisco was on the bottom doing his jiu-jitsu. Of course, that term can't be used, although they, They tried to portray Zabisco's submissions as being learned from Gene LaBelle, which, since he was a pro wrestler in the 1960s, I guess is the name they're allowed to use for shoot moves. It says, trying an arm bar and then clamping on a front guillotine, which six sold as if his neck was re-broken. Hall and Zabisco then argued, Zabiscoe shoved Hall and was picked up in Luger's torture rack for the submission 20 seconds after the restart. Hall and Bischoff then attacked Zabisco after the match as Zabiscoe kicked him in the head and then gave him a stomp worthy of a green valet on an independent show

and stood over him while Hall counted as Bischoff stepped on Zabiscoe's chest three-quarter stars well Eric that reads like a mess and it is a mess if you go back and watch it is this one of those things that just didn't work no it worked it did work it was it was it a you know one of the marquee matches of the year is it a day melcher four star match no it wasn't did it advance the story and set up a feud and get people pissed off yes it did therefore it worked it's that simple all right from nitro go ahead that's that's the sum up though yeah the story continued we got to get to the end of the story somehow, and it proceeded exactly how y'all wanted it to go.

From Notro 11-3-97, Scott Hall came out wearing a tag title. I guess the angle is that Hall and Ash are going to proclaim themselves as the real tag champs since they never lost the titles and bought themselves belts. Hall then lost to Jericho clean and 241 of a good surprise finish and then beat him up after the match. Seems like we just saw that angle with Hector Garza. Larry Zabisco made the save and challenged Hall to a match, but of course, Hall didn't accept.

This has always been back on as a big win for Jericho, but he is really the body who Scott lost to. Was this an attempt to make another one, two, three kid moment? I don't think it was in a, I don't think consciously anybody was going, okay, let's, we got Jericho here. Look what they did with one, two, three kid and what Scott Hall did. I don't think it was con at least I don't think it was a conscious effort certainly not on my part um did Scott hall kind of go back to the well and do something that and suggest doing

something that had worked really well previously it's entirely possible doesn't make it a bad move does it and by the way how did Chris Jericho do I think he did okay pretty good yeah so maybe it was the right thing to do maybe Chris Jericho owes his career to to Scott Hall Who knows? Oh, how about that? Maybe you have, you know, one, two, three kid, the surprise win that he got in WWE, which really put one, two, three kid on the map. And perhaps Scott went back to the well and said, hey, it worked so well with one,

two, three kid. Let's do it again with Chris Jericho. That could have happened. And if it did happen, guess what? It fucking worked. So good on you, Scott. Yeah. And fuck you.

And fuck you, Dave Meltzer. I seem to think whoever the body is, if you get a win over Scott Hall, it's a big win. I mean, whatever the storyline is, it's a big win for you. Well, and especially because, you know, Dave, that's pointed out, it was unexpected. Anytime you do something the audience doesn't expect, they remember it. Yeah, for God's sake. If you keep doing the same shit, they see all the time over and over and over and over again, they don't remember it. So maybe the shock value of that win was precisely what they felt, when I say they, meaning Scott Hall and probably Kevin Sullivan, maybe myself, I'd be able

been involved in that conversation. I don't remember. Fuck, it was 25 years ago. It was quarter of a century ago. Bucker Fathers. How many of you remembered what you did at work 25 years ago? I don't remember yesterday.

I don't either. Well, I do, but barely. What about, do you remember the report about Nation Hall actually having tag belts made up for themselves? Is that part true? I don't know. It could have been.

Okay. It sounds like something they would do. It would be in their character to, to pull a stunt like that. So I'll just suggest that probably happened. At World War III in 1997, Hall does get the victory to earn a future title shot. Is this to set him up as the first opponent for Sting? When was this?

97, World War III. World War III, and that's in September, right? Can't remember. God, it's been a long time. Fuck, man, I can't remember. I wish I could, but I can't. November 23rd, 1997, Palace of Auburn Hills. Give me the setup again, one more time.

Hall gets a victory to earn a future title shot. Was that on purpose to set him up as the first opponent for Sting? I don't think so. Could be? Was it just to get him a title shot, no matter who it was? It's just to advance it, just to advance Scott Hall, just to put a little steam on Scott individually. I don't think we were trying to set up a Sting Hall match at that point,

but I could be wrong. It's also speculated the observer that the rules of the battle royal were changed because some guys didn't want to take a bump over the top rope, and so far they could have, excuse me, so far they could be eliminated just by their feet hitting the floor. why I don't know that it's so hard to it's so hard to comment on some of that reporting because sometimes it just doesn't make a lot of sense and it's usually no aspect of it was true so when i end up saying god i don't remember that it's not that my memory's bad she said it never

fucking happened that way which is why i don't remember it you don't remember guys complaining about going over the top of no i've never heard a complaint about anybody going over the top I've never had one person No, I don't even have to say, I don't even have to qualify it. I have never had one person that was scheduled to be in the battle oil. Come to me and say, Eric, pretty please. I don't really like going over the top rope. So could you change

the rules for me? Never happened. Just touch, please. All right, Scott Hall is not scheduled for a match at Starcade, but he's the current number one, to the WCW title, and also feuding with an announcer, Larry Zabisco, that you'll be wrestling at Starcade. Did Scott have any issues with not wrestling, or was he content not having to bump? Oh, shit.

Was that just how the story played out at that? No, it's how the story played out. And so how the story was intended to play up. But it's the last little bit was he content just not to bump? Scott was a bump a motherfucker, man. he took he took a lot of pride in his work you know and i was doing the interview yesterday for a and e the guy i was that was producing it and i said what do you think scott's legacy will be and you know legacy's a big word right and i said i don't know what it will be i know

what i hope it will be and it will be his body of work because scott was one of the best there is of guys his size in terms of his ability on the mic his ability in the ring he was fluid he was one of the best you know during the peak of his career and had some amazing matches and that to me is what i hope his legacy will be but unfortunately because of the dirt sheets and the people that live in the dirt sheet universe there was this narrative out there that he was lazy and he didn't to work and that's so untrue or that he didn't want to bump go back and watch some of his he was a bumpin son of a bitch and he was a big man you know they forget how big scott hall was because they saw him standing next to kevin nash so often but when you met scott hall when you

stood next to scott hall you were still you were sitting next to a man and you knew it but he would still go out there and bump like crazy so whenever i hear that inference that you know scott just was didn't want to work any more than it was necessary. It didn't want to take a bump. It's just not true. It's funny. As a fan, the first time I saw Scott Hall in person, he is one of those guys where you go, holy shit.

First of all, who is that walking in the door? And then you go, oh, it's Scott Hall. He's huge. It's like you said, though. We had saw him, me as a fan, watching him on TV next to Nash. You know, it's like an NFL player. You forget how big these guys are. because you see them all across the board the same shape and size.

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It's waterproof. Come on. So you can use it in the shower. It's awesome. Now, Gassu, you were there when we did the flare roast, right? Yes. And I decided to open up my little thing talking about. You went full blown.

Full blown. Yeah. I was shaving my balls and my ass and everything, you know, on stage in front of the world on flight TV. It's amazing what will happen with a couple of beers in me. Think about that sentence. But I shaved my balls live on fight TV. I did. And I didn't even get paid for it.

That's amazing. But I talked a little bit about the weed whacker because it's a nose in here, you know, nose hair and ear hair trimmer. And I was so excited about that. And I told him the story because it was true. I went to the barber one time. I was going,

oh, man, it's taking forever to cut my hair until I realized he was spending all this time trimming the hair in my ears. You know, I got home and I'm looking, I go, what the fuck you? And of course, my eyes are bad.

I didn't realize it. I got hair grow into my ears. I looked up my nose and I looked up my nose and it's oh my God. So I use that, man. I use the weed whacker all the time. Sealed to deal with Manscapes liquid formulations, the crop preserver, ball deodorant, and the crop reviver ball toner to make sure your pumpkins stay fresh. Trust me when I say this.

Go ahead. I wish I had before and afters of my pumpkins. I've been using the ball toner. They are, they're toned, baby. That's the only thing toned on this body is the. is the balls thanks to the crop reviver i haven't tried that yet come on man come on yeah yes your balls are thank you eric my wife might too well let's do this man you man you know cassio and i the whole team we love manscape and you could get 20% up plus free shipping with the code

83 weeks at manscape.com. That's 20% off plus free shipping with the code 83 weeks at manscape.com. Say trick or treat or trick or trim to your beautiful new Halloweene with Manscape. I couldn't wait to do this. This is so much fun. I never expected to look across and see Eric Bischoff say Halloween to me today. and I appreciate it. Doesn't it put you in the mood, though?

I'm here for it, buddy. I'm here for it. All right. So does how does Big Booty Judy feel about your tone ball? Are you all good with that? I'm waiting to see when she notices. Okay. I'll give a full report.

It's taking longer and I thought. So they must have been really needed reviving because I've thought they've come back to life a little bit. They look good. To me, they look good. but I see them more than her. I am so sorry to hear that. Before Starcade, it's reported that Hall of Nash had signed four-year contract extensions to lock them up until 2003.

The reality is on January 1st, 1997, Hall signed a four-year deal that would expire on December 31st, 2001. Did Hall or Barry Bloom ever come up with? come up after the contract was signed to renegotiate or was Hall content from a contract point of view? Wow. There are bits and pieces of that that ring a bell, but again, doubt that it's true. We weren't signing people that long.

I mean, we do typically two-year deals, occasionally a three-year deal. I don't know that we've ever, we ever did a four-year deal or four-year extension. That would be really, really unusual. So based on the fact that we never previously, there was no precedent for four-year extensions or four-year contracts for that matter. Three years was the limit. I find that report to be bullshit. Do you, all right, look, do you think January 1st, 97? Do you think Hall signed two, maybe three years, though?

I came in at 96, but I could see a two-year. I could see possibly a three-year discussion at that time. Because I was trying to create some parity because we had an issue. And, you know, we've kind of all been made aware of the issue that AEW had when you had talent that were under contract and you bring some other big names. in, and of course you've got to pay them commensurate with what they had earned in the past in order to attract them. Well, that creates an immediate disparity between, you know, the new talent that's coming in and talent that have been working with you for a year, two, or three, or in WCW cases sometimes longer. So when that started happening, and it did create some issues

in an effort to try to mitigate those issues, I was open to renegotiating some contracts, particularly for people that were generating the money and creating the revenue, much like Tony Kahn apparently has with MJF. It was the right thing to do. It's unfortunate that it all went down the way it went down and as publicly as it did. But even though you've got somebody under contract, when business changes and you're bringing in a lot of new people and there's that pay disparity, it's incumbent upon you to try to mitigate.

mitigated as much as you can. So I would say, yeah, but I would even stretch out. So, yeah, might have very well, may have done a three-year deal, but not a four-year deal. Do you ever remember him having the favored nations clause in his contract? So he wouldn't have to do that? Oh, I know that's been a real source of debate over the years. And I'd love to see a copy of a contract that favored nations was in. is it possible that he had some favored nations language in it,

some limited, limited favors nation language, meaning that, yes, within the context of these definitions, you have a favored nation's agreement, but there was context and there were limits. It's possible. I'll let it go at that. Okay. At Starcade, please go check out the show, by the way, in the archives.

It's one of the all-time greats. Scott would attempt to help you beat Zabisco, but it does not work, and Nitro will not become NWO Nitro. I think you made the right call there, Eric, don't you? Yeah, I did. I did. And, you know, that was a fun match for me. I sucked at it.

I've never, you know, stood very tall when talking about my in-ring prowess as a professional wrestler. I mean, I wrestled in high school. I was a kickboxer. I travel around the country as a black belt competing. I was decent at that. But there's a big difference between working punches and working kicks and ones that are meant to do damage. And I never got good at the wrestling kind.

I sucked at it, actually. But I will say I had a ton of fun. I had fun working with Larry. Larry did his best to get me ready for that match. We worked out together at the power plant. I did fracture my knee about two weeks before my knee cap, my patello, my patello. I fractured on my left leg. So that made it a little bit less fun.

But the experience was amazing. You know, it was the MCI arena. It was a big crowd. NWO was hot as hell. I had a fair amount of heat at the time. So it was really fun. I think that was the first time I ever really stepped foot in the ring, in the context of a match.

Did you break the knee in training or doing something? Yeah, no, training with Larry. Gee. I just cracked it. It was a Patella. Not my, you know, my joint was, well, functionally, I could still, I could still walk and shit. But, yeah, I fractured, crack the patella. Ninety-eight would bring dissension in the NW ranks, but it feels like Scott and Kevin are on opposite sides.

Scott seems to be on the Hogan side. Kevin is on his side. Was there a plan to split these two up? Yes. No. And then yes again. and then maybe and then definitely not that was the nature of that story and evolution of the NWO.

Here's why it's brought up on Nitro on January 12th. There's miscommunication and Nash kicks Scott before Randy Savage interferes and tries to drop an elbow on Nash. And Nash moves and hits Rick Steiner and the outsiders regain the world tag team titles. I know that's a lot to read. one sentence, is that possibly overbooked? I have a beholder, brother, subjective. Here's what I do.

Whenever I hear, well, when people read the day belts or stuff back to me and how bad this was, how bad that was, how bad this was, I go, well, fuck, if it was that bad, how come we were stomping a mud hole in WWE each and every Monday night, making money hand over fist and selling out arenas all over the. the world. Yeah, that's stock, brother. None of this stuff made any sense. It was all bad.

It was fucking horrible. And Dave Meltzer's little fucking world in his apartment surrounded by, you know, 25 years of fucking hoarder clutter. Yeah, it was probably pretty bad. But for me and everybody else at WCW and Turner broadcasting, it was rocking. Was there money on your mind for Hall and Nash to not be on the same page? Was there money? Was there money in your mind?

Potentially. And again, it was, what do we do with this monster we've created? We've created this thing called the NWO. It's turned the entire industry on its head. We've reached levels of success in the wrestling industry across the boards that it had never experienced in the history of televised professional wrestling. 7, 8, 9, 10 million people a week watching either Monday Nightro or Monday Night Raw or a combination of both. But by 98, it was already, you know, NWO was a year and a half old at that point.

It's like, okay, where do we go? What do we do? You know, we've got to figure out a way to continue moving this idea forward creatively. And that was about the time we were looking. in different ways of splitting it up. Wouldn't there have been a ton of money and Hogan and Savage against the outsiders? I don't think so, man.

I think the Hogan and Savage combination had played itself out. I could be wrong about that. Maybe is NWO Hogan and Savage it would be different. But I don't know. I just, it didn't feel like a go-to for me. It felt like, especially random.

Because Randy really had, I mean, both. Obviously, Hulk Hogan completely re-emerged as a powerful character as a result of the NWO. And he reinvented or was reinvented as a character as a result. But I think Randy did too. You know, I think Randy was a different cat as a result of the NWO thing. So maybe it would have been a good move. I don't know. but it wasn't a it wasn't a go-to for me you guys don't ever remember discussing it as a

even a possible i'm sure we did i'm sure look you're on a plane you're on a three-hour plane ride or private jet and there's a case of beer on the plane and you're coming off a live shoot and your adrenaline's pumping and you've got a couple pops in you and you're having a great time and you're banging out all kinds of ideas i'm sure it was discussed at some point but not seriously uh this is a uh a promo from Scott Hall at Leans and reads like Eric Bischoff must have been

involved in this. Scott Hall came out for an interview and said that when Larry Zabisco was AWA champion it was because his father-in-law on the company and that the company then went out of business and then said that Dusty Rose was a better wrestler than Zabisco was.

Well, he was a bigger star. Do you remember that at all? I do remember that. And here's what's funny. It's all true. I guess that's what makes a great interview, right? I mean, I'm listening to that. I'm going, okay, well, what part of this isn't true?

No, it's actually 100% true. Yeah. In January, Louis Piccoli begins acting like Scott is his hero. Where'd the idea come from of Louis being paired with Scott? hard to pin down who was the first person that raised their hand and said, hey, I have an idea. It would have been collaborative. I'm sure Kevin Sullivan had a big hand in that because Kevin was familiar with Luis Piccoli and ECW.

I wasn't. I think I'd ever heard of Louis Spacoli until he came to work for me. And people told me who he was and showed me some video. so I would bet heavily Kevin Sullivan with a lot of input from Scott himself. That'd be my guess. Were you aware of Louis's issues at the time? No. I wasn't aware of Louis at the time.

Much less his issues. I had sold out, Dusty Rhodes. Yes, the American Dream turned and became an NWO member when helped Scott defeat Larry Zabisco. This is just one of those things that you look back on and go, why the hell did we do that, right, Eric? Yeah, I got to take that one on the chin. I need that. I got to take that punch. I deserve that one. Do you remember discussing it? Is there, is there any push back on it or did everybody jump on board? Say, let's give it a try. I think, you know, I'm trying to remember, you know, for the people listening, keep in mind that I've listened to a number of

wrestling theme podcasts, and I've listened to people talk about incidents and situations that they were supposedly involved in. And they go into great detail, painting a story and a picture of what happened when. And I was either involved in some of those or at least a witness to some of them and nothing was further for the truth on several occasions when I've listened and that's why when I say I don't remember or I don't remember well enough to go into details because I don't like to make shit up like everybody else I could make up some great fucking stories that would be entertaining as hell and make me sound like a really smart guy but if I don't honestly remember I won't pretend I do just to be entertaining or sound smart.

My impression at that time was Scott Hall, Scott was really push for Scott loved Dusty. And Dusty thought highly of Scott as well. There was a long, long history. But Scott really had a lot of respect for Dusty. And Scott was very much a proponent of that move of bringing Dusty into the NWO. I think everybody else, including me, by the way, just kind of went along with it. And partly because of our respect for Dusty, we wanted to see Dusty involved in something.

Dusty was phenomenal. Dusty just was over and could get over at the drop of a hat. So if there was anything resembling a reasonable story on the table involving Dusty Rose, there weren't going to be too many people standing up and go, no, that's. sucks. So if it was something that, you know, a guy like Scott was passionate about, and if Dusty was willing to do it, because Dusty wasn't going to put himself in a situation you'd want to be in, I don't think he would. Not with me. He would have at least pulled me aside. It was Dusty and I had a pretty good relationship. Dusty came out hunting with my wife

and I here in Wyoming. We stayed up in the hills outside of the mountains outside of Sherrod in Wyoming, the Big Horn Mountains camped out in the middle of nowhere and hunted for about six days. Dusty was a friend. He wasn't just somebody I worked with. So if Dusty would have had an issue with it, trust me, Dusty would have come to me and say, Hey, Eric, I'm not feeling this. And that would have been just fine with me.

And Dusty knew that. So I think between Scott being excited about it and Dusty wanting to do it, at least being willing to doing and not suggesting that he didn't, we just all kind of went along with it. From the observer, Larry Zubiscoe, Scott Hall via DQ in eight minutes and nine seconds. Hall came out with Luis Piccoli, who was his second flunky, while Zabiscoe then brought out Rhodes.

Rhodes has gained so much weight. He looked like a cross between Mark Madden and the late Adrian Adonis. For an issue that has drawn so much heat for so many months, it was almost eerie the lack of heat once they actually got in the ring. There was nothing wrong with the match, as Zabisco's actually. actual work was solid and visually he looked in better shaped and then when he was a full-time wrestler. But there was nothing good about the match either. There was a period where the match threatened to fall apart before they went to the finish. Hall, who was getting a pretty solid

face reaction by this point, delivered his fallaway slam. He went for the edge, but Zabisco back dropped his way out of it. Hall came back on a few clotheslines that Zabisco didn't sell well. Zabisco never took clotheslines during his career. Zabisco was supposed to kick referee Mickey Jay and actually barely grazed the kick, but Jay sold it since there was no other choice. Hall had him pinned with no ref, but then Zabisco got haul on a front face lock with a body scissors,

and Sipkoli interfered for the DQ. Rhodes ran in, delivered the big elbow on Spikoli, who sold it so well that if they could go back 13 years in the time machine, Dusty would have made him one of the four horsemen. Rhodes went to Elbow Hall, who moved and accidentally clobbered Zubisco. At this point, Rhodes teased going after Hall, but then took off his shirt, revealing an NWO T-shirt, and Rhodes and Spicoli began dropping elbows on Zubisco, while Annette Sir Tony Shivani acted disgusted. As Zabisco was laying there to get sympathy, a huge Larry Sucks chant started again.

again. I mean, Scott is in line for a big WCW title shot in a couple months against Sting. He could have pinned Larry here, right? He could have. I mean, he could have done any number of things, but go back and watch that match and watch the crowd reaction. And that's another thing. Whenever you hear or read these things, the Dave Meltzer, the way he frames them and characterizes them as being so horrible and such bad ideas and stupid booking and whatever.

bullshit that they spews at any given moment. They just go back and you watch the reaction from the crowd because that's the only thing that matters is the opinion of the audience and it's reflected in the reaction at ringside or the reaction of the arena and it's reflected in the television ratings and in both cases the live event reaction as well as the the business side of it in the television ratings we were blowing the doors off it may not have been Dave Mouser's cup of tea or even your cup of tea, Cassio, or even mine or anybody else's.

It doesn't fucking matter. What matters is the audience and the audience dug it. For those keeping track at home, scoring along, he did give it one star. So I'd say he did not, it was not his cup of tea, but like you said, crowd pops, crowd works. He even said, you know, they're chanting Larry sucks. They're into it and reacting. Yep.

And that's all the rest. From thunder. From thunder, Holland Rhodes came out. It was Rhodes first Hill interview, and boy, did he drop the ball to the point Hall actually had to cut him off because he was nowhere babbling about the people in the front office who were mad at him six years ago when he was booking and ripping on Tony Giovanni. And Hall talked about Piper. Is this just letting Dusty go and Hall cutting him off to save the segment? Do you remember this? I don't remember the segment.

I really don't. And even if I did, it's hard to get inside of someone. but he's had 25 years ago to try to analyze what went wrong. Dusty unlikely was a little on, or not, excuse me, likely was a little bit uncomfortable. And more than anything, we probably didn't sit down and lay out the promo that we wanted him to do. You know, and that's, there's an upside to letting guys improv, especially, I mean, who's going to sit down with Dusty and say, okay, Dusty?

Hey, Dusty, Eric over here. Hey, Dusty, come on over here. in my office. I want to see you cut your promo. I want to hear what you're going to do when you get out there. I don't want to happen, dude. Dusty was in that rarefied air. He was that guy that you just hope would be willing to pick up a microphone and cut a promo. You didn't have to worry too much about Dusty. But on this particular occasion, maybe he didn't have enough information or not know enough where he was going. And for whatever reason, he and Scott didn't work their stuff out. I would have assumed that they did. And perhaps they did and something else went

wrong. I don't know. It was a moment. Not everybody's perfect, not even Dusty Rose, although he was pretty close. In February, Hall of Nashville dropped the titles clean to the Steiner's. Uh, it was time, was it not? It was time. And it's also time to talk about my friend Steven Singer again. Come on now. You hate Stephen Singer guy. You hate him. I hate Steven Singer. Kidding aside, Stephen Singer makes getting the perfect engagement ring for that special moment. So easy. Unlike other jewelers, Stephen, doesn't mark up his jewelry just to mark it down and make you feel like you're getting some kind of a good deal. No phony sales, no coupons, no discounts, no pricing games.

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If I read this copy, I go into that mode. I hate seven, sir, reading.com. In late February, Louis Piccoli overdoses and passes away. Unfortunately, do you know who delivered that news to Scott? How did he take it? What do you remember around this incident? Boy, I don't. I don't know.

Obviously, I remember the incident. I remember it. Right. Happened obviously. But who communicated, how it was communicated, who learned of it first. There's no way I would have, I would have known. It wouldn't have been me. I would have found out, I would have found out more than likely from, if I had to bet,

Janie Engel, who was my assistant, possibly Nick Lambrose. but I wasn't close at all to Louis or family or really close to any of his friends. And I can assure you that I heard about it after guys like Scott and Kevin and a handful of others that Louie was close to. It's been said Scott got Louis the job. Do you remember him feeling any guilt or anything like that? No. No.

And look, Louie, I'm not saying anything that has. have been, you know, said publicly before, but Louis, Louis liked his somers. That was his thing. Whenever he had got a chance to go down to Mexico, he would come back with copious amounts of soma. Soma is a muscle relaxer for people that don't, are familiar with it. And the reason guys like Louis, and there was a lot of guys that were into Soma, a lot of

including Scott Hall. The reason the guys liked it is because you do whatever you do to get up, you know, and get fired up for your match in the evening. And then at night when it's time to go to bed and you're wired, someone was a good muscle relaxer mixed with a couple of cocktails that would put you out despite whatever recreational activities you partook in earlier in the evening if you can read between those lines who couldn't right but that was that

was one of the things that i remember uh hearing a lot about was louis and summers and somers were they were horrible i had never heard of them before till probably around 98 and i remember sitting across from i'm not going to name the talent's name it doesn't matter at this point but i was sitting i was having a conversation after the show sitting at the bar we're talking business and it wasn't like everybody's pounding in beers. I mean, you're having a burger with a beer. It's all we were doing. And the guy was sitting across us.

We're in a normal conversation. Like, I wouldn't have imagined he had a cocktail or took a hit of weed or anything before we were sitting there talking. And we're sitting down and two, three minutes into an intelligent conversation. He just faceplants into some mashed potatoes. Somebody shoot him? What the fuck? Did he just get Lee Harveyed? Boom!

Just right in the middle of a syllable. He was like lucid at one moment and unconscious the next. And I, you know, I had to ask, I had to find out what that was all about. And it was, it was all about somers. Wow. That sounds scary. It was scary. And then once I, once I got educated and I knew what so, because, you know,

I had vikes and perks and, hell, I messed around with bikes myself at the time. Because if you mix a bike with a mini thin and a couple beers, it was like, wow. Many thin. What's a many thin? Many thin is like a little, you could buy them over the counter and you still buy them over the counter at every 7-Eleven or fast food place, or not fast food, but convenience store. They're caffeine pills. They're highly concentrated caffeine pills.

but I had never tried someone before. I didn't know anything about it, but I got a real education after that night when the guy was with face-planted into his dinner. And they were a real problem. I think there's a number of guys that have passed away from someone. When you hear about somebody falling asleep drinking and they never wake up,

odds are pretty good. That's so long. Sounds like a scary thing to deal with. It is a scary thing. Were you, just to get perspective, Do you remember at the time, any talk or you personally remember worrying about if Scott would relapse because of a situation like that? Oh, absolutely. And again, I don't, I really want to be careful here because this is such a serious issue.

And I'm very careful about making statements that make it sound like I know more than I do. I've had a lot of personal experience with addiction and abuse because of the nature of, being in the wrestling business for 30 years, I saw a lot of it, dabbled myself. And I say that not for any other reason than to be transparent and honest. But anytime you're working or anytime you know someone, you're close to somebody, whether professionally or personally, that's got a serious addiction problem. And you know they're battling it. You also know that they could fall off that cliff at any given moment.

You don't know when that's going to happen. And Scott had other issues besides his addiction. I'm not going to go into any of that because it's not my business. He's not here to talk about it. But there were other issues that Scott was being treated for as well as addiction that compounded the problem. So, yeah, Scott was trying. He really was. And that's another thing because we've seen video of Scott when he was not at his best.

okay, let's be honest, when he was at his absolute worst. And we've seen that video. But what you didn't see is how hard he tried. And if you saw or you knew how desperately Scott wanted to be clean, but couldn't be and couldn't overcome that demon, if you saw the impact that that had on Scott, you'd be less likely to be critical and you'd be more likely to try to learn why and understand addiction and abuse and other mental health challenges.

And when you combine those things, it's a time bomb. You don't know when it's going to go off. You may not even hear it ticking until it goes off. So, yeah, I was worried about it a lot. So was everybody else. I was worried about it professionally, but also personally. But guys that were very close to Scott, we're very worried about that.

at Super Bowl 1998, Scott Steiner turns on his brother Rick and helps the outsiders regain the WCW tag team titles. Is it weird to see the outsiders being a backdrop to a new member joining the NWO? No, I thought it was kind of cool. That was a big move. For the surprise factor? Yeah, and it was just the right thing to do. Scott Steiner, look, I put a lot of people in the NWO that shouldn't have been in there.

And I admit that. acknowledge it but there were some people that needed to be in the NWO and Scott Sider was one of them when I say needed NWO needed Scott Steiner that was a perfect fit that was great casting great casting as a fan it did not feel for it felt like you said natural like yeah why why is he not going to join NWO it did feel natural and And science tells us that the best way to achieve and maintain consistent deep sleep that's natural is by lowering your core body temperature. Temperature controlled sleep prepares muscle after hard days work and improves cognitive

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I fully, fully recommend Sleep Me. All right. Sting is WCW world champion again after Super Bowl when he showed up with a small tan to beat Hogan again. And now uncensored is going to be Sting versus Hall for the title on Nitro to build to it, Sting and Randy Savage, the first time WCW and NW have teamed together in over 18 months, by the way, will take on Hulk Hogan and Scott Hall. Belzer? What have this to say?

No attention being given to the Sting Hall program has Hall might as well been an invisible next to Hogan as Francine is next to Sonny as Hogan and Savage have become the total focal point of WCWCW. W. Thoughts? Man. That was Dave's opinion. Yeah. That's all that was. It was Dave's opinion.

And he's welcome to his opinion. He didn't state anything there as a fact that that stood out to me. It was just that's his opinion. And I disagree with it. Was Hogan and Savage an important part of WCW? at that time? Yeah, absolutely. Were they the sole focal point?

I think anybody could go back and look at some of the things that were going on underneath matchups that Hogan and Savage were involved in and might find some pretty good shit there that got a lot of focus and attention. So from my point of view, I completely disagree with Dave's opinion. and the fact that there was so much other good stuff going on underneath suggests that Davis, I don't know, full of shit. We've always been told that when Kevin and Scott didn't agree on something, they'd speak up.

Do you remember, did Scott care about playing second fiddle here to Hulk? No. Okay. He would have let you know about it, correct? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there would have been nothing subtle about the, the communication at all. But Scott really admired Hulk.

He looked, he respected Hulk a lot. Let's break this down then because in March, the apparent shit is going to hit the fan according to the observer. The quote, the behind the scenes turmoil exploded over the, the past week between the Hulk Hogan Eric Bischoff Power Base and the Kevin Nash Scott Hall Group that has clearly lost power at his, has been phased down during the same period the company is doing record business. There are a lot of things unsaid that appear to be extremely serious, whether this was just for being caught in the crossfire or for reasons we simply don't know. Six, Sean Waltman was given his written release on three

and his representatives have already approached the WWF about going back. It was weird because even after he was fired later that night on Nitro, he was being plugged for autograph sessions kicking off some first day sales for later this week, as the announcers weren't given the word that he was gone. Nation Hall did get significant interview time separately from Hogan on Nitro. Hall didn't do his survey and made a point of bringing up that he wouldn't be doing it. Nash put on a Hogan t-shirt, but seemed less than thrilled about outwardly being a good soldier for television purposes. The problems that had gotten bad enough that Bischoff noted that both were under contract until the end of 2001,

and basically if they wanted to quit as the subject of them getting released was broached, they couldn't work anywhere else for that length of time, which was a reality check, but also invites people already with a reputation for being disruptive forces from working harder, at living up to that reputation. A lot to digest here. How do you remember broaching the subject of Sean release to Scott and Kevin? I didn't broach you two at all. I just did it.

And they found out afterwards. It was not like I had the check with him first. Hey, what the fuck? What was Scott's reaction? They were hot. They were hot about it. They didn't understand it. They thought it was too much.

And again, they didn't, I say they, I mean, Scott and Kevin, from their perspective as talent, and especially because Sean Waltman was said, they were very, very close, the three of them, they're going to advocate for Sean and Waltman. Yeah. And they didn't want to see him leave, man. They were, Sean Waltman was, was their buddy. The chemistry was great and they didn't want to see it happen.

But they weren't on the receiving end of being swerved or manipulated. or at least an attempt was made to manipulate and renegotiated a contract that was already renegotiated and agreed upon. Just this shit don't fly with me. There's certain things that, I tolerated a lot of stuff. I forgave a lot of stuff.

I tried to have empathy in a lot of situations. But when you fuck with money like that in a deceptive, dishonest, unprofessional way, I just, that's what I'm not. Barry Bloom's name went out a list that it will never come off of because it's like once you and to me it's deceit you know it's it's not being honest and transparent and when it comes to negotiating a deal and a contract and you're not being honest and and operating in good faith that I've got zero respect like none and my reaction is pretty typical you know I react accordingly

Did you feel like them going out there like that was unprofessional? I wasn't happy about it. I had to tolerate it to a certain degree, but I wasn't happy about it. Because that's the other, you know, it was a frustrating situation for me to be in because now you got these guys. I mean, as Dave said in his bullshit, the part that he did, well, that was a bullshit was when he said that this is financially record setting business. We were making money. And this is 98. We're making money.

over fist. We're blowing our budget out of the water in a good way. We're exceeding our forecasts that were made for us the year before dramatically. And a lot of it has to do with Scott and Kevin and Sean Walton. But at the same time, you've got to manage your business. Because if you let one guy get away and his manager get away with one thing, guess what? You're going to have that same situation about a week later. And then a week later, you're going to have two more of them.

You have to draw a line in the way you conduct your business, even when it's going to hurt. And it did hurt. You know, it not only hurt to lose Sean Waltman because he was an important part of the NBA. Oh, I've said it on 83 weeks before. Sean Waltman, Xbox contributed a tremendous amount of character in action. to the NWO that it really needed and should be looked at as one of the reasons why the NWO idea was as successful as it was. And I knew that at the time.

It's not like I undervalued Sean Wulman. I just had to do what I had to do based on the way his manager was conducting business. I had to make an example out of him. I hate to say that, but it's true. Walman and I are tight now. We're really good friends. We talk about it. We laugh about it.

In many ways, Waltman's grateful for it. You know, and he should be because he took that negative situation and turned it into a positive in a big way. Sean Waltman was, in my opinion, the only reason Degeneration X really got off the ground. The fact that Sean Waltman left Nitro and the NWO in particular, and then in a very short period of time was not trying to kick in the back door with this new group, gave that new group all the credibility that it had at that time. Because to be honest with you, you know, the rest of the crew, while they're individually extremely talented, they didn't represent that kind of anarchy attitude that the NWO had that Sean Waltman brought with him with Degeneration X. You can undervalue that. One can undervalue that all they want.

But if you imagine D.X. doing what they did without Sean Waltman to give it that credibility and that whole. crap, I can't believe this is happening. I don't know that it would have been as successful as it was. Perhaps it would. I don't think so. It's my opinion. On a, just on a small note, just for my personal curiosity, do you remember, do you remember anything about the announcers accidentally plugging him for

autograph sessions? I don't, but, you know, shit happens. It's live TV. It's a great thing about a live TV. shit happens. Sometimes when before the shit happens, the right hand forgot to tell the left hand was going to shit.

I'm just the sucker for all that production stuff. So I love to want to know. The original plan was to break up the wolf pack from the NWO in early 1990s, which would put Holla Nash in the top program working against Hogan and Savage, but Hogan nicks the plan, basically not letting them up to his level

saying it wasn't the time to do an internal NWO feud. I can't wait. We wrap this up. And immediately after started the feud, but instead of bringing Savage back up to the top level and leave everyone else clearly in secondary issues, we've got a lot, as I can tell me, reaction. Honestly, Cassio, there's so much diarrhea in that

that I can't even see through it enough to respond to it. It's just from top to bottom nonsense. Did Hulk mix it? No, that's it again. That's what you, I don't know if you've ever played poker, but yes, you know, if you've got to tell that everybody else can figure out, you're not going to last long in poker, right? Right. And if you're a dirt sheet subscriber, like if you're one of the suckers that are stupid and enough to separate your sell from however much money a month, Dave Meltzer charges you to read his Drek, then, hey, if that's what, if you like that, if you're entertained by it, you like to walk around thinking you know shit that isn't true, but you think it is, they have at it.

But Dave Meltzer's tell usually occurs in the first three or four sentences of whatever is about to follow. And because that's his, that's his shot. That's Dave Mouser taking his shot because of his personal animus towards any one individual or company. So when he comes out swinging right away at Hall Cogan, because Hall Cogan exercise is right creatively and refused. That shot is what, it's the minute I heard it, the minute I knew everything else I was going to hear afterwards was bullshit. Dave is not right in his mind. Dave fantasizes or images certain things in his head and somehow between

being able to form that picture in his head and the time he reaches for his keyboard, he believes it's true. He's not right. And this is another example of him, you know, taking that shot at Hulk Hogan just to get his narrative across it and everything else that followed it was just there to support the bullshit that he said in the first two or three sentences. You said, of course, you know, a lot of ideas get thrown around at different times. but do you remember that being the original plan to break up the wolf pack from the

indoor and early look here's the original plan and there may have been kind of separate conversations along the way that were a part of that original plan but the intent was at some point we knew we had to grow the NWO we wanted the NWO to have its own show we wanted WCW to have its own show and in order to accommodate that you've got to figure out okay, what are we going to do with this NWO thing to make it work if we're going to move forward with that plan? And that was the reason why we explored, and in some cases attempted a lot of different ideas internally within the NWO, the Wolfpack. It was an attempt to refresh it and expand it. That's all that it was.

And were there conversations that were a part of that goal? many number of them creatively of course there were but i guaranteeing to you Hulk Hogan never came forward and said no brother i don't want to do that i'm nixen that that never happened holkogen used his creative control clause one time one time he never even hinted about using it at any other point in all the time that i worked with him and Hulk, and he didn't say, hey, remember, brother, I got creative control. That never happened either.

But with regard to Starcade and Hulk Hogan and Sting, there was an issue, I've talked about it before, I'm not going to talk about it again. There was an issue. Hulk felt less confident that he wanted to feel instinct at that moment, and I understood why. So I agreed. But it wasn't a combative situation.

There was nobody throwing down, nobody threatening, nobody calling their attorneys. It was a natural conversation that led to Hulk deciding to change and finish. And I supported that change, not because he had creative control, but because I could understand why Hulk felt the way he felt. At no other time, no other time did Hulk Hogan ever exercise creative control over anything. It's not to say that Hulk didn't have ideas. That's not to say that Hulk Hogan didn't press for an idea that he felt really, really strongly about,

just like anybody else on that roster from the bottom of the card up, some more than others, obviously. But he only used it one time. So when I hear Dave lying, because Dave is a liar, when he, when he, when he, produces information like this and distributes it as fact, and this is what gets me hot, it's not his opinion. He stated a lie as a fact. He's a piece of shit, and he's a garbage writer. He's not a journalist, nothing even close.

He's just a waste of flesh, and he's lying to his readers and to anybody that hears him talk about this stuff. because it's his own personal animus. It's why I have no respect for him, zero respect. I stepped in some shit on my way out here to the bunkhouse that I respect more than I do, Dave Meltzer. Well, this is going to be fun then. In covering uncensored, Meltzer would have this to say, it's been more of the same with World Championship wrestling,

filled with turmoil behind the scenes, and setting records in front of the camera and at the box office. The situation regarding six, if anything, got hotter over the past week with no explanation as to his firing other than Eric Bischoff was trying to send a message to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. Waltman, who had approximately 18 months left on a three-year contract, was given his termination notice in a FedEx letter from WCW Vice President Nick Lambros on 3-9, and immediately his agent Barry Blune opened up negotiations with the World Wrestling Federation. We've kind of hit on that.

Yeah, we have. All right. So he says, were you worried at any point with Waltman's release, you would lose Scott or Kevin? Do you think that's an issue? Nope. Wasn't worried about it all. They were locked up tighter than. You weren't sending a message to them?

And I wasn't, I told you, I explained why I let him go. I wasn't sending, I don't send fucking messages. I don't use smoke signals. I don't drop hints. I don't use a fucking Ouija board. I don't try to cast spells on people. I just tell them right to their fucking face what I'm thinking and why. Whether it's a good situation or bad.

I don't do hints. Hints are for gutless parasites. I just lay it out. Meltzer continues as the week went on. There was no contact between the front office at WCW and Walman. Although Walman had been told by Nash. that Bischoff had agreed to make everything right. Huh.

That's not correct. Nope. Many wrestlers. You know what? You know what? Let me say, though, if I may, as a compromise, I may have suggested that if Sean Walton wanted to come back under the terms of the deal that we had already agreed upon, that I'd let him come back.

But there was no renegotiating. Yeah, you had already led the terms, like you said. You're already working with those terms, so no need to change those terms. Would I have let him come back under the terms of his original agreement? I probably would have, because I like Sean, and he was valuable. I would have done that, but I wouldn't have renegotiated. Many wrestlers, including some who would have been on the opposite side of the fence, as Waltman politically recognized the problem with firing a wrestler with a wife and two children

who is rehabbing a broken neck, suffered in the ring, working for the company for no apparent reason other than his friends were in a political struggle with the boss. And this was being done apparently to send the message to Nash and Hall, the latter of whom is in the midst of giving depositions in the WWF versus WCW lawsuit. I think you've covered that, that that's all a pile of shit. Yep.

Hall of Nash tried to rally the wrestlers together as a power base. The plan got to Bischoff in its early stages of formation. There were a lot of other problems that got deeper. On 3-9, there was a showdown where reportedly Hogan brought up Nash wanting him out of the company, and Nash told him point blank that he wanted his spot, and Hogan told him that he wasn't giving up his spot. Reportedly, there have been some hypothetical talks where indications were given that Hala Nash could receive comparable money in WWF, should they be able to get out of their contract, but the idea of Bischoff releasing them is laughable,

because both at this time would be more valuable to Titan, which is sorely lacking in wrestlers that could challenge Steve Austin for the WWF title, then they were at the peak of their Razor Ramon and Diesel days, but that isn't going to happen. Before we get moved further, let's talk about this. Do you remember this? Did Nash and Scott?

Did they tell them they were coming for Holt, spot, Eric. I doubt it. They're power base together. Yeah. I mean, geez, you know, I, it's just seeing how much Dave Meltzer doesn't cover the nonsense that's going on in AEW right now, at least not, not to, because here he's making stuff up about things that are going on backstage in AEA, or in WCW, whereas the

things that are really going on in AEW. he tries to mitigate it as best he could while still covering it. The narrative is completely different. To suggest that, I mean, I can't even respond to it. It's so stupid. I really can't. It's just ridiculous. You don't remember busting them in their early stages of it.

Oh, I mean, it's not so interesting the way it was laid down. I was like, wow, was it really that much drama gone? I mean, there was drama. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't that well organized. It was just fucking chaos. He was right that it was laughable that you would release him. That's the only thing you got right.

That would be laughable. Yeah, that would be laughable. Hey, are you watching football? Yes. Today, what are you looking forward to? Well, I'm a Coles fan, so you know that's going to be bad news for me. It's not a good season going on. Not a good season.

What are they playing today? I don't know who they've got today. I'm looking for, I'm looking for, I'm looking for, I mean, my favorite team is the Steelers, right? And they're not a great year. And today, they're playing Tampa Bay. Yeah, I heard yesterday Tampa Bay's favored by 10 points. I never bet football, but if I was going to bet football,

I would take the Steelers to cover at home. Okay. I think Tomlin's going to, despite the fact that Mark Madden doesn't think very highly of coach tomlin i'm i'm pulling for him today oh what do we got here oh yeah there's ahead of the all right ahead of tampa bade 1312 come on Pittsburgh they're at the line this is great yeah as we go jackson wheel strubbing indy in the third so perfect perfect for me wow Steve coughman right fingers on the trigger man he's rocking it he's rocking it he's

rocket it. Well, I'm going to watch some, I'm going to watch some football today. Okay. And I'm going to cook me some wings on the rec tech. Come on now. And kick back and just enjoy an afternoon football. But if you don't have any wings in your freezer, or if you don't have a rec tech, you could do the next best thing. Let's continue and see if the drama builds on 316, Eric, that he says, he being Meltzer, Hall and Nash definitely positioned themselves or were positioned as a, from the rest of the NWO crew, with the exception of one interview where Hogan went out of his way to put Nash over.

While the rest dressed in NW. Attire, they came out in swim trunks, Hawaiian shirts, and flip-flops, building up to doing a comedy routine where Nash did a belly flop into a swimming pool to mockingly escape from the giant and kind of make him look like a fool. and Hall took a press slam into the pool from Giant to make a mockery of the whole scene even more when Hall and Nash in the interview were running down Giant. Hall actually said,

Hey, Giant, that's your cue. What do you remember you had to be pissed? It was getting a little loose, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, sounds fun, but we're getting a little loose is a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah, we're, oh, I almost did it after our promised I wouldn't. We were gravitating towards comedy just a little too heavily, wrestling comedy.

And wrestling comedy is different than your comedy, because your comedy is funny. Most wrestling comedy isn't, except for the people that are doing it. They think it's great. You must know people like that. You must have comedian friends that think they're really funny, but really aren't, and nobody really wants to tell them. If you read the comment section of every shows, you're talking about me. but yeah uh there's a lot going on here i mean yeah but you're you're you're also you're trying a lot of

things you've got like you said you've got a live tv show to produce every single week absolutely and trying different shit and by about that period of time things were starting to get a little hairy we're still making money we're ratings were still good at this point that we're talking about now March, April, 98, it would be about another month or two, and then the wheels will start wobbling really bad. But in the meantime, you know, the talent side of it was, there were issues. You know, it's so funny, I was talking about this the other day.

It's like, when Scott came in, man, he was like, he was a choir boy. He was like the perfect employee or independent contractor, but you know what I mean? He was perfect, man. He was a contributor. He wanted to collaborate. He wanted to support, wanted to help. It's easy to get along with, fun to be around backstage. You know, same with Kevin.

It was really easy for about a year, year and a half. But usually what happens is, and I've seen it happen with a lot of talent, is, you know, with Scott and Kevin in their situations, you know, they both, one of the big reasons they left, part of it was money. But the biggest part of it was their schedule. They just, neither one of them wanted to be on the road 300 days a year. It's just too tough on them.

They have families, they're kids, wives. And WCW provided a better situation for them at the same amount of money they were making all in or close to it, maybe a little more than they were making at WWE. Who wouldn't make that jump? And they were both thrilled. They were both so easy to get along with. But you know what happens with talent and money is they get used to that shit really fast? And they get used to the fact that they don't have.

to be on the road 300 days of the year. So the very reasons that they came to WCW in the first place, after they've been in that position for a while, they just kind of took it for granted. It didn't mean as much to them anymore. At least they didn't think it did. And that's when you start to lose them a little bit. That's when talent can become hard.

And I'm talking about Scott and Kevin individually. I'm talking about talent as a whole. Very few talents are mature enough and professional enough that once they sign on the dotted line, want to over-deliver in hopes of improving their situation. Most talent, like most salespeople, take the path of least resistance. And eventually that becomes an issue. And that's about where we were at, both Scott and Kevin in 98.

They both had reasons for being disenfranchised, pissed off, whatever you want to call it. In their minds, they did, not in mine, but in their minds, they did. and that began to filter down into other relationships within the company, other talent, some management, as well as there's just general attitude in the ring. As we move forward on Scott's timeline, he is now set to take on Sting at uncensored for the WCW title. This is from Meltzer. Sting Penn, Scott Hall, and 828 to retain the WCW title. Another match with far less heat than you'd expect. Hall worked much harder than usual and did a very entertaining job,

but it wasn't enough to make up for Sting's stoic personality, dying whenever he's in a match. Hall used a choke slam early to mock the giant. Dusty Rhodes was in Hall's corner and did some interfering, tripping Sting to allow Hall to level him with a vicious clothesline. Hall used his fall away, but Sting didn't take the bump right. Rhodes ran in and dropped the bionic elbow on Sting, but Sting kicked out of the pin.

After a singer spash, Sting decked Rhodes, ref Mark Curtis took a bump Roads through Hall of Foreign Object and he had Sting with it but Sting kicked out of the sure pin Hall went for the edge but Sting got behind him and dropped him with the Scorpion Death Drop for the pin One and a half stars It's really surprising it sounds like a hell of a mess to me

There's a lot going on He did not enjoy it like you said But it's really surprising to see this This is one of the few WCW title match on pay-per-view with Scott actually in it. Was he just not able to get past Kevin and Hulk? What was the reasoning you think? Hard to say, to be honest with you.

I don't even want to speculate. It's just hard to say. I think reading that myself and the notes, I found it surprising. It's one of the only few title matches he had on a pay-per-view. I mean, it just, I guess it screams that he was, he felt like he was in a big match when he was in one, whether the title was on the line or not in the pay-per-view.

The title was never really that important to Scott. It really wasn't. It was business. And Scott was such a smart guy. Scott knew he's not going to make any more money with the title than he was without the title. What was important to Scott is that he was in storylines that mattered that were important and working with talent where he could have great matches. That was Scott's goal generally.

having a title or not having a title was never a conversation and I can recall even having with Scott. It just wasn't that important to him. Well, just a few weeks later, though, from the observer, they say this, almost exactly one year after checking himself into rehab, Scott Hall 38 again, checked himself in this week. He's expected to be out of action until around the 427 nitro taping in Norfolk, Virginia. Unlike last year, where Hall was still pushed on television,

if he were still around and promoted as being in a pay-per-view main event, match that the company knew full well in advance he wasn't going to be able to participate in. This year, his name wasn't mentioned once on television on the 323 Nitro. Eric, what do you remember about this time? Was anything different around this time? It's got to be disappointing. We're one year later, and now when Scott's footing in the company isn't exactly on scotting, solid ground with the Waltman issue looming.

A lot of things are going on right here at this exact moment. Yeah, there were. And I think the reason we didn't try to keep Scott alive on TV is because at that point in time, we knew we didn't know exactly whether or not Scott was going to be able to successfully complete treatment. His issues were pretty apparent at that point. Scott was in bad shape. And we just didn't feel comfortable telegraphing that we were sure that he was going to come back because we weren't.

Kind of, you alluded to it earlier, and I appreciated it about kind of speculating on somebody's mindset, especially when they're battling addiction. But Meltzer would speculate that Louis Piccoli's death spurred this on. Do you were, I know you mentioned earlier you guys were worried about it, but did it ever come up as a, hey, man, this is just too much for me to deal with? No.

That is... That's just Dave being Dave. Yeah. Just making shit up. Just making it up. You would go on off the record with Michael Landsberg and have this to say, in regard to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, neither of whom were stars originally in WCW,

but became superstars in WWF. Bischoff said that the truth was McMahon wanted Hall to play a G.I. Joe character and the character of Razor Ramon, largely taking WCW's Diamond Stud gimmick and adding a Spanish persona to it was all Hall's idea. He said that McMahon should be recognized for giving Nash his break,

but that Nash deserves the credit for what he did once he got the break. You still feel that way, correct? Yeah. From the observer, Scott didn't go into rehab after all, but it was instead, it's supposed to be doing three hours daily of outpatient counseling, although nobody knows.

whether or not he's doing it. I just want to stop right there. Is that a thing? Is that true? Do you remember? I don't remember that. Doesn't mean it's not true. Okay.

He says the situation is this point is that the leverage the top guys have right now is unique on both sides and that there really is limited discipline over the long haul. The companies can have over their stars because every top star knows they can't be fired. because they'll just go work for the other side, probably with a race. Nation Hall have supposedly got an informal word that if they can get out of their contracts, which have 45 months to go, they'll find a $1.5 million per year deal on the other side waiting for them. Are you disappointed? Scott didn't go the whole way through it. You mentioned you weren't sure exactly then.

but did you think you guys kind of lost leverage because, yeah, they could walk across the street and possibly get a raise too. No, no, I wasn't, I wasn't worried about it. I mean, first of all, they were under contract. They were going anywhere. Now, if someone breaches a contract, there were, there was action that we could take to enforce the terms of the contract. I did it with Rick Flair.

You know, when Rick Flair and I had our issue and he didn't want to do, and look, I don't want to relitigate that issue between Rick and I, because it's been litigated to death, and Rick and I have both gotten over it a long time ago. But when you have a talent and you have an issue where you can't reach an agreement under the terms of the contract and one party says one thing and another says the other, that you settle it in the court. neither Scott nor Kevin were going to go anywhere and if the situation would have gotten out of control

and they weren't doing what I needed him to do on television, I would have breached him and it would have been taken care of in court and it would have taken years to get through the court process before they would be able to go anywhere. They wouldn't have gotten a release and they wouldn't have gotten paid either until the court case was settled. And that was more leverage. that was you never wanted to go there because that's that's it and once you pull the pin on that grenade there's going to be collateral damage that you probably can't fix but i always knew

that if that was the case with either scott or kevin or anybody else where while they're under contract they wanted to try to get themselves fired or just not participate or not do what was asked within reason and they were in breach of contract i knew that it would be settled three, four, five years later. They would have had to hire attorneys. They would have had to pay for those attorneys for a long period of time. And at some point, it's not even worth what's left on your agreement. But it wouldn't have been a situation where I would have capitulated necessarily over every whim

because I was afraid I couldn't fire somebody. That was not the case. I might not have fired them, but I would have tied them up in knots. talk about a blast in the past i just love this sentence bischoff did a prodigy chat this yeah i was bob rider bobby bob rider's no longer with us but bob was a good dude prodigy chat what a blast uh here's what they say he was brutally honest when the subject of walman came up i hired sean walman because of hall and nash and i basically terminated Sean Walton because of a combination of Hall and Nash

and Walton's neck injury. Both Scott Hall and Kevin Nash have a track record, both in the WWF and here in WCW, of being fairly disruptive in the locker room. I made it clear to Scott Hall in the very first day he came back that one of the things I was most proud and protective of in WCW was that the locker room and the production team

was a pretty positive environment. Not to say there weren't problems from time to time, but by and large, locker room is in a positive place to be in. I pointed out that to Scott Hall because of his track record in the WWF, and I told him I didn't want to bring that over to WCW. I brought Sean Waltman in more as a gesture to Kevin and Scott in an effort to create a positive environment and to make them as comfortable as possible. I thought they might be a way, I thought that it might be a way to help them achieve that because of what I consider to be negative and disruptive

behavior on their part, it became clear to me that there was nothing I could do to create a positive environment for them. And in light of the fact that Waltman was down with injuries more than he was able to work while with WCW, it no longer made sense to carry one of their friends under contract when it served absolutely no purpose. Had Sean been healthy and able to perform, I probably wouldn't have cut him loose. In light of his neck injury, it was a decision I felt it was time to make. What's your thoughts rehashing that right there? I never discuss, to my knowledge, contractual issues publicly in WCW.

Never confirmed money amounts. I thought I could think of while I was president of WCW. So that was, yeah, that was easier to do to talk about the injury and say it that way than to get into all this Barry Bloom, fuck him, and the whole business part of it. Yep. Does Scott and Kevin bring this up to you? When? Then?

Yes. Yes. No. No, I mean, no, I don't think so. You said you weren't doing, we've talked about it. You weren't doing it to send a message. So there was nothing that you felt needed to get to them through this. It wasn't like you were sending a message now through the chat because like you said,

this was all business. But did you notice them take? his release as any kind of message? No, they were just pissed and I knew they would be pissed. Right. Scott himself would get himself into a situation just a few weeks later at an ECW house show.

This is from the Observer Hall who lives in the area and went to the ECW House Show on 4-11 in Kissimmee, Florida, with Just Incredible, P.J. Walker, a friend from the WWF days. When he got to the back at about 5 p.m. Before the crowd had arrived, word went through the dressing room, and he was confronted by, among others, Shane Douglas, Bam Bam Bigelow, Chris Candido, and Francine.

Douglas, Bigelow and Candido all had heat with him stemming from their days in the WWF. When the clique ruled the company, and for various reasons, all believed they had fallen victim to their power. The situation would last at about 10 minutes was described as tense with potential for problems, but all were sitting down and talking, although Douglas was said to be tense with veins, bulging as he cut a promo on Hall, similar to interviews he's given in so many places about his WWF experience working with Hall as Dean Douglas. Bigelow, who left the WWF with largely other problems with McMahon's catering to the clique, was backing him up and making references to ECW, not needing people with Hall's problems in their dressing room. After about 10 minutes,

Hall called a cab and left, but not before Francine yelled at him to get in line and buy a ticket like the rest of the marks in a humorous situation where Tommy Dreamer, not knowing what was happening, walked by and saw everyone standing down and Hall needing a ride and offered to give him a ride home. By the way, Shane Douglas admitted to apologizing about this when he realized Hall was invited. What do you remember about this story getting back to you? Zero. Like, I don't know if it ever did.

Okay. no feelings on it. I had no fucks to give when I came to anything regarding ECW. So it, it never got to me, honestly. Hall is still off TV going through his problems when DX showed up at Nitro for the infamous skit in Virginia. Did you ever talk to Scott about that and his feelings on it? No. There's some news from the observer at the May 4th, Nitro. Nash said the reason Hall hasn't been on TV

is because Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan are afraid of what he might say in a live interview. That might be true. He finally got one. After Sting went and turned Hill and team with Hogan, Hogan wanted Hall to join his side of the NWO, recognizing he needed a strong partner to make the feud work. And perhaps, since fake storylines turn into real life changes

in friends and lovers, see Kevin and Nancy Sullivan and Stephen Debra McMichael. Maybe it would weaken Nash's attempt at a power base if Hall wasn't always with him. We'll have to see if Hall will agree to the idea, but the betting line is against that one and even Lugar's name has been thrown around as Hogan's potential backup. Dude, what kind of mess are you working with here, Eric? That's Dave Meltzer's mess.

I can't even And actually I want to skip skip ahead to You know November December December And wrap this thing up Because I've been listening to so much Dave Meltzer bullshit

My head is starting to explode I'm literally I can hear the fuse Burning in the back of my head And if I have to sit through another 30 minutes If Dave Meltzer said this And Dave Meltzer said that I don't know what's going to happen It could be an ugly Sunday

You could be reading about shit happening here in Cody Wyoming So I can't see I can't I cannot listen to any more Dave Meltzer said. We're going to skip ahead to, let's talk about Scott coming back until the classic Nitro or Goldberg beat Hogan and he had to beat Hall first. Let's skip ahead to that. Why was this the way to bring him back on television?

Say that again, but I'm sorry. Scott didn't come back after a while until the classic Nitro where Goldberg beat Hogan and he had to beat Hall first. What about this idea was the way to bring him back on television? Do you remember talking about how we're going to get him back on TV or was it just the time? No, I mean, look, he was ready to come back on TV and then it just became a situation where we had to sit down and figure out, okay, what's the best way to do it? How can it have some impact and fit into the ongoing story or at least provide an opportunity

to continue a story? That's all it was. It was, and it would have been a part of day-to-day business. It would have been like this big moment where we all got together and had to hash out how we're going to do this. I know in the minds of summit may seem like that, but when you're writing TV at that point in time, I don't know if thunder was happening at that point in time or not, I can't remember anymore of the timeline. But if you're doing three hours or five hours with a primetime television every single week, not every decision is an earth-shattering decision, although it may seem like it would be to a viewer or a dirt sheet writer.

As he comes back, the next week on Nitro, the big story is the dysfunction between Hogan and Hall, and you're the referee for that match, so let's make sure we get this in. This is from the Observer. Hogan, no contest, Hall, in seven minutes of a match, even worse than the pay-for-you match of the night before. Ungodly bad. And that's on a show that had a Duggan match. Bischoff did the heel ref gimmick, where he favored Hogan throughout Disciple, a attacked Hall. Hogan moves like he's underwater. Page did a run in and gave Bisch off the

diamond cutter. Hogan and Disciple beat up Hall and Page. Nash ran in to help Hall, and they signaled like they were back together again. But when Nash tried to power bomb Hogan, Hall attacked him. I don't think it's because they already saw the angle with Barbarian and Ming that there was no reaction to Hall turning on Nash again. It's because nobody believes it and nobody wants to see it. Hogan leg drop page and Hogan and Hall hugged when it was over. Eric, this is a swerve before Rousseau was even in play in WCW. What do you think of this story and do you think it was executed perfectly? Oh, nothing was a, nothing's ever executed perfectly.

First of all, the disciple was in the match. So that just wipes fucking perfect right off the table. There's nothing, there's nothing perfect about anything. that involves the disciple. We're not getting five stars when disciples in the match. No. We're starting with a handicapped. No.

And look, Hulk Hogan coming down to make the save at Bash at the beach when Randy Savage was laying in the middle of the ring and everybody thought that Hulk Hogan was going to save the day for Randy Savage in WCW. And then he swerved everybody and dropped the big leg. So it's not like, you know, swirves weren't on the list. of, you know, menu items, they were.

And this was a case where we used it, thought it would be entertaining, thought it would be interesting, thought it would advance the story. I don't remember how the crowd reacted, but I'd put a lot of money on the fact that they probably got a good reaction at the end of that match, which was the goal. I was about to say, which like you said, that was the goal every single time. We're going to wrap up here. We're going to get to some fan questions because, look, there's no way to get, like you mentioned, Scott Hall's legacy as a wrestler is a long,

history and one, and we're not going to get it all in two episodes. So I'm sure we will wrap up his WCW career. You and Conrad will wrap that up at some point in time. Eric, before we get to fan questions, why don't we tell these fans how to save with our buddy Conrad Thompson? All right. We'll get to the fan questions and get out here. You ready, brother?

Yep. All right, here we go. Let's get to some fan questions. Eric, Francis Reyes says, was there any talent that we did not know that Scott was batting for to push? No, that's a really good question. But Scott never really went to bat for people, per se,

like, you know, in a very obvious way. I never came to me and pushed somebody that I can recall, but you would see Scott, I would see Scott from time to time. If Scott saw something in somebody, if it was somebody, you know, a lower part of the card or somebody that was just starting out or somebody that was his peer. I mean, look what he did for Sting. Scott Howe created the role character for Sting.

And that character lives today and is making money today. So Scott wouldn't necessarily push for somebody. But he would definitely try to help somebody if he saw something in a particular talent. And I saw that pretty regularly, or I want to say regularly, but I saw it enough that it stands out to me because you didn't see that a lot. You know, wrestlers, you know, it takes a long time to develop that skill, that art form where you get a real feel for the audience and you know what they want and when they want it and how they want it and why they want it. and why they want it. That's psychology, right? And Scott was a master of that,

as well as being a master in the ring. He was one of the best of his era, especially for his size. And it was fantastic on the mic as a character. But he wouldn't necessarily say, hey, he didn't call me up at home or pull me aside and wear a TV and say, hey, you really got to take a look at this guy.

But he would spend time with people that he really believed in. And more often than not, he helped. Josh Haney wants to know whose idea was it for the NW survey, Scott did each week. He said, I love the no-sale when he was booed. Classic stuff. That's all Scott Hall. Okay.

Well, it got over. Again, that was awesome. Chase Terry says this might be silly, but my OCD brain remembers Scott wearing his razor gear under his outsider's gear at one point. as it was clearly visible on TV. Eric, do you ever remember this or care given the lawsuit 96? No,

I would have cared. You don't remember it? I don't. That's an interesting one for somebody listening or watching or the correct. Yeah, I'd like to go back and look at that, you know, because number one,

I'd be surprised that that got by WWE and it didn't get added to the list of evils that we purportedly conducted ourselves in. But, no, I don't remember that. ABC, his name is at Chef ABC07. He tweets at 83 weeks at E. Bischoff.

He said previously that you thought the NW had only about a three-month run until Bash at the beach when Hogan turned. Do you know what you would have done with Hall of Nash if NW was temporary? No. It's a hypothetical. I'm sorry. I wish I could answer. that, but I'm, I can't. Matt, Godfrey, uh, on 83 weeks on ad free show says, uh, why wasn't Scott ever

WCW champion? Because he didn't need to be. Um, this was from Scott's original debut in WCW that you and Conrad never got to. Uh, Eric, as Sadan said, um, in Scott's introductory promo coming from the crowd, he mentioned billionaire Ted, nacho man, and even scheme gene, but not the huckster was this an oversight or did you already know that you wanted hulk to be the third man i'd have to go back and look at the date okay to in order to answer that close to that yeah brad stanton did scott hall ever have any ideas that you didn't think would

work at the time but would work now maybe well that's an open-ended question yeah too tough to answer and I can't remember all the ideas that Scott Hall ran by me. I'm good, but I'm not that good. All right. Well, Eric, I appreciate you. Let me fill in. Conrad appreciate him. Oh, brother.

Thank you so much. I always look forward to doing a show with you. It's fun. Next week, if all goes to recording, Conrad will be back from Mexico. That's a big if. Yeah, that's a big if, right? If he is back, you will be discussing Kevin Sullivan. No, that'll be fun.

There's a lot to talk about there. That'll be fun. You at over at ad-free shows.com, Conrad recently spoke with Bill After for the Insiders series. The WCW World Tider was featured on title chase with renowned belt guy Dave Milliken. Eric, you and myself spoke with Raven discussing your episode on him, which, by the way, I found fascinating. And I was really intrigued by what Raven had to say. Boy, so was I, and I'm grateful to you for setting in and doing that because it was, number one, it was great to clear the air.

Not that I didn't realize there was as much air that needed to be cleaned as there was, which is why I'm even more grateful we did that show. But, you know, Scott sounds like he's, he's on really solid ground, he's happy with his life, and he just sounds like a content individual and a happy one. And it was fun, it was fun to kind of go back and, and see things from our own perspectives and then debate it. And I got to tell you, Cascio, I didn't know going into it, what to expect. I was prepared for either, you know, but it was really, really nice. And I'm going to go see, I'm going to be in Atlanta, November 14th. So Scott and I are going to go out for dinner and really catch up.

So thank you for being a part of that. No, thank you for letting me be a part of. It was fascinating to watch you to interact. Also on ad-free shows, before we get out here, there was a live watch along of AAA's Triple Mania, and even Jeff and Karen Jarrett, sat down to discuss one of their job moments in AAA.

And coming up, there's going to be a Tony Shivani live Q&A, and Jake Roberts watches Halloween Havoc, 1992, and takes your questions if you are a top guy, all over at ad-freeshows.com. Remember, you get all those shows early, and ad-free, including this one, for as low as just $9. Like, subscribe, leave a five-star rating on all platforms. Follow us on Twitter at E. Bischoff.

I'm at the Accio Kid, of course, the show at 83 weeks. And if you're watching and consuming on YouTube, like, subscribe, comment, and be sure you turn on notifications. That's all at YouTube.com slash 83 weeks. Mr. Bischoff, thank you once again. Catchell, you saved the day, brother. Thank you for doing it. And I always love working with you and look forward to doing the next one.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for going. Go Colts. Go Colts. No, it's too late for that.