83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - 83 Weeks #255: Ask Eric Anything

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric is answering YOUR questions, with special co-host, Shuli Egar! Topics include 1997 vs. 2023 Eric, ECW, buying TNA and WWE, WCW Thunder, and more!  Special thanks to this week's sponsors! Manscaped Beard Hedger-Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at Manscaped.com. CamperMaxx -Specializing in MAXX discounted pricing on Travel Trailers and Fifthwheel RV’s.Visit: campermaxx.com or call 256-320-7033 Athletic Greens- Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1x year supply of immune-support Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/83WEEKS. Mindbloom- Go to Mindbloom.com/83WEEKS, promo code 83WEEKS for $100 off your first six session program today Factor- Head to FACTOR75.com/83WEEKS60 and use code 83WEEKS60 to get 60% off your first box. WoooooWings- 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 coming soon. Try the only chicken wings worthy of carrying the name of the 16x World Heavyweight Champion. FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9 over on AdFreeShows.com. That's less than 15 cents an episode each month! You can also listen to them directly through Apple Podcasts or your other regular podcast apps! AdFreeShows.com also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content including popular series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back, Conversations with Conrad, Mike Chioda's Mailbag and many more! Plus, live, interactive virtual chats with your favorite podcasts hosts and wrestling legends. All that and much more! Sign up today at AdFreeShows.com! Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The recognized symbol of excellence in sports entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome one and all to your favorite show and mine, 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff and before we get started I know you're going what are you doing here I am filling in that's what friends do when one goes down the other one comes up and steps in their place and I am here to take the about a third of the spot of Mr. Conrad Connick and I'd be remiss if I did this alone I can't do this alone because nobody wants to hear for me everybody wants to hear from the man himself you know him you love him Mr. Eric Bischoff.

Eric, how are you, sir? I am doing so well. I love these shows. Surely, I love doing them because they're fun and kind of lighthearted banter back and forth. Obviously, some serious questions, but I can't think of anybody better to do this show with than you because you,

I don't know, man, you just, you don't seem to take life too seriously. Maybe that's part of being a comic. Well, you know, a lot, a lot, not a lot, but a good portion of the comments or feedback that people send is not necessarily positive these days. And it doesn't necessarily come from a place of like, hey, here's some constructive criticism.

It's the day and age of the trolls. And the thing I like about this is it gives the trolls a chance to get involved. Rather, it's people too, unless they're buying. Most of the time, trolls are people too. That's right. That's right. So not too many shows give a voice to the trolls. And this episode, these episodes, you know, I always love it because these people think

they can dance with you and they just don't know they don't know who who you've been on the dance floor with the history you have and there's nothing nothing better than when a new gun slinger comes to town and gets put down on their ass and i do love that i mean i've learned to love trolls i love messing with them you know like on twitter and stuff i have so much fun yeah and i've gotten to that point because it didn't start out that way you know i've been on since 2009 and And initially, you know, if somebody said something negative, it's like, oh, man, I got to, I got to defend myself here, you know, and now it's just like, oh, man, I'm just going to have fun with this to weave and make them twisting a win. But let's get this show on a road, shulie. People have been waiting. I've been late. And hello to all the people watching live. How are you guys doing? Thanks for joining us. I love that there's a live interaction now with fans. And this is the way it should be, man. I mean, it's the one great thing about ad-free shows is how close you are to. these people that you watched all these years and uh and it continues conrad the genius continues

you know what surely what's so cool though i love doing the show i was talking to steve coffman our producer right before we went live and how cool is it that we are blessed enough to be able to do something that we have fun doing and we can pair bills with it i mean not a lot of people get to say that right well and also look at it from the fans perspective. They don't have to sit outside an arena until nightfall, freezing their butt off to say hello to someone they're a fan of or get a picture or get an autograph or an interaction. You can do it from the comfort of your own home, just like we are. And here's what's cool about ad free shows. I know this is a shameless plug, but I don't care. You know, right now we've

got a bunch of our family members from Anne Free shows hanging out in San Antonio, watching us live, Donovia Smack, his whole crew, sent me a picture this morning with him and his lovely daughter and said, they're going to be watching live. And every shows has brought people together. And not only do people like me and Chavani and Ross get to develop our own relationships with bands and that become friends and friends that become almost like family, but we're seeing a lot of the folks over at everyshows.com that never knew each other before. just coming together and travel around the country and supporting independent wrestling, supporting big shows like we have today in San Antonio.

And for me, it's just fun to sit back and just watch how these things all come together. Man, it's every shows and what Conrad, and Conrad's teeth. You know, we all know Conrad is the podfather and, you know, a visionary in many respects when it comes to podcasting. But, man, he's also got a great team of people behind him too. And not to mention years from now, people will look back and be like, you know, Conrad was the Woodstock of wrestling. He brought so many worlds together and people together that maybe would have never worked together or taken a chance on something. You know, I look at Rick Flair's

last match in Tennessee and how many people were involved from different companies, all one common goal, you know, to make this the best weekend possible. And they wouldn't do that for just anybody. So that says a lot about Conrad. And you guys in particular, last week's episode, with Buff Bagwell, I thought was such an awesome episode. I'm just curious what kind of feedback you got on last week's episode. I'm Tonya Shulay. That's another thing that I'm, it's just every day I realize how many little things, sometimes are big things, but how many things occur every single day?

Again, as a result of the show, that have this downstream really positive impact, either on a fan or a talent, look at Marcus Bagwell. And the positive responses and the support that I got tagged in on because of that show with Marcus Bagwell, I just felt really good about myself and not about myself personally, but I felt really good that I got to be a part of this podcast and Conrad's team. And because you're doing something that has a positive effect up. I know Mark Bagwell must have got a ton of the same positive response I did. And that's, man, you're giving that guy.

strength in a way at a time when he really needs it and i just it's just a beautiful thing i don't know another way to say it that i agree with you it's a there's something so uh refreshing about seeing somebody who's finally got it together you know or at least is on that path taking those those tough first few steps of of changing their life you know it's not easy they've been doing it for decades and uh it's all they know so it's a big step And it was a powerful episode. I loved it, man. I love the realer it gets, the better, in my opinion, you know?

Yep. Well, speaking of real, let's get to some real questions from the listeners out here. Are you ready, Eric? I'm ready. All right. I'm drinking my caffeine. I got my jug of moonshine. I'm good.

This man is ready for action. Let's go. This one from Johnny Glow. And he writes, during your time as general manager on raw, did you have any ideas pitched to creative or Vince that would have been money, but they never were approved? No, I, you know, look, when I was general manager,

great question, by the way, but when I was general manager of raw, my role as a performer was to pretend I was a general manager of raw. I was strictly an on-camera opportunity for me. It's one I'm, again, really grateful for it because I had a blast doing it. It was the best decision, probably one of the, best decisions I've made in my wrestling career, to be honest. But I was not involved in any creative process, pitch meetings. I showed up about 11 o'clock in the morning, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I'd get a list of the segments that I was in or in the dialogue that went along with

it. And I would just wait until about the end, towards the end of the day, usually about 5.30 or 6 before I would start thinking about it because I knew it would change. I didn't want to you know, kind of get myself ready for a scene and dialogue that I knew was going to change anyway because I didn't want to, I wanted to keep my head clear so that once I focused on what I was doing, I didn't get myself confused once I got out there live. So I'd wait until about 5, 5.5.30 in the afternoon. And then I'd get my final, supposedly final draft of what we were going to do script-wise. But once it got to that point, the scene was pretty well set.

there may be some minor variations in the dialogue, but once I got that, I'd go find a corner to hide in or I wouldn't be distracted, kind of put myself into that scene and into that dialogue and kind of visualize it in my head and go do it. And then I go home. That was it. It was showing up at the building, hiding in a corner at about 5.30 to figure out what I was going to do and how I wanted to do it, go out and do it and go home. That was the extent of my communication when it came to creative so the answer to that question long-winded as it may be was nah never happened yeah i imagine if you presented vince with a money idea it's going to make money and and you know i don't see him turning down a money idea oh uh i'm going to push back a little bit

on that one yeah i mean that's that was always look and this isn't a people hear this and I'll see a headline tomorrow saying Eric Bischoff Barry's Vince McMahon's approach to creative. Not so. This Vince McMahon has created a multi-billion dollar global media empire based on the way he wanted to do things. And I'll never criticize anybody in any line of work or any profession that is able to achieve that kind of success. I may not agree or I may not want to participate. or I may not be able to contribute in his process,

which is the case for me back in 2019. But it doesn't mean I have any negative things to say about it. I just didn't fit in it or it's not my approach. But one of the challenges in working with Vince McMahon closely is that he can change his mind pretty quickly. You can be fully committed to something and work on it all week and be ready to go and have. have all the drafts of everything ready for TV on Monday, get on his jet,

and by the time you land, you're starting completely over from scratch. Now, that doesn't happen while I was there. It didn't happen to me regularly, but it happened more than twice. And that makes it tough. So pitching a money idea to Vince McMahon often depends, can depend, on what mood he happens to be in, and how long he stays in that mood. Right. Well, I mean, you know, it's roll the dice with him, right? You never know. So I guess that makes it interesting and keeps you on your toes. This next question, Eric, is from After Hours FP. What was the character slash storyline you developed that you didn't realize was going to get as big as it did?

In all, I hate to keep going back to this, but it's the best example there is of that question, the NWO idea. When that idea started taking shape in my head a couple of years before we actually did it. And when I say taking shape in my head, I mean, there were fragments of ideas that were kind of floating around in the back of my mind. And whenever I was on a treadmill or away from the business or out for doing something physical, I would start thinking about some of those random fragmented ideas. And that was the case with the NWO. And then when Scott Hall became available, Kevin Nash became available, all of a sudden, kind of disparate, desperate fragments of ideas started coming together and forming a picture. Now, I thought it was a pretty good idea. I thought when Scott came in and Kevin came

in, I went, aha, here's my opportunity. Again, not knowing at that time that Hulk would be the third man and all that, it was going to be sting. We all know that. And I knew it was a good idea, but I didn't have a clue, not a clue what it would ultimately end up being. And I think if I understood the question correctly, that was probably the best example. I think that's the best example ever of all time in wrestling of

something. I mean, that changed the landscape. So yeah, that blew up for sure. When born Matt has a question. Just listen to an earlier podcast, which I love, by the way. 2023, Eric, is nice, grateful, calmer,

pleasant, someone you'd take home to your mother. But does 2023, Eric, missed the 1997, Eric, who didn't give a fuck about a thing. First of all, I would be a mistake on your part to take me home to your mother. It's however nice you think I am, your mother's going to want to ravage me. I am so over with mothers and grandmothers. Yeah. I'm running into some grandmothers.

Now, these are 60, 50, 50, 60-year-old grandmothers. They started early and they passed that gene along. So, yeah, they're kind of on the younger side of the younger side of the. the Guilf universe. Yeah. But, man, milk and guilt and guilt. Don't, do not take me home to your mother.

But do I miss? Look, people got to realize is the character that you saw on television, um, was a character. And I'm not. That's not true. I am quite a bit different.

I was back in 87. I was supposed to say pretty much the same guy, but that's not true. Is it what? I didn't know. We were both. bullshit in people this early. No, I'm not going to lie to myself or anybody else. No, I don't miss it, man. Look, I was aggressive. I was brash. I was whatever. You want to obnoxious.

You could say whatever you put it whatever you script or you want on it. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't want. I think Muhammad Ali said once that any any person that feels the same way about something 20 years after later hasn't grown a minute. you know and i think i'm butchering that but it's the point is that if you if you don't grow and learn from successes failures experiences relationships whatever um i wouldn't want to be that guy i wouldn't want to be the same today as i was in 97 i don't miss anything about it well my hair yeah yeah and my face is starting you know what chuli it's so fucking and cold. Oh, I said it. I was trying not to swear in the show. It's so cold here in Wyoming and windy this weekend. I was telling my wife, it's like I took my dog outside for a walk

the other day or yesterday. It was so cold. I'm walking into a 30 mile an hour when my face was frozen. I walked in and it had completely shrunk up because of the cold. I was like, man, I look like I, this is how I looked when I was 35. And then your face thaws out. It melts and it starts to hang and gravity takes over. God, no, I'm still old as fuck. I did it again, too. Look at that hair. Come on. Yeah, but still, let me tell you something.

The shirt, the t-shirt that we're going to make, do not take me home to your mother is going to fly off the shelves. I hope so. Listen, I agree. This guy is as smooth as they come. So do not bring them home to mom unless your mom requested you to bring her home a bang, because that's what's going to happen. This guy is a deal closer.

So don't do that. You're putting pressure on me. Yeah. I mean, I've seen you work. John Blue, NY Yellow, or N. Yellow. How old were you when you found out horses can't breed through their mouths? I was 37, and it was last month. See what I mean about growing and experiencing and learning?

as you could. Actually, I didn't, I didn't ever think about how horses breathed. It just never, it never occurred to me. I guess because I've had horses, I've kind of always recognized that horses use their nose primarily for scent. So I just kind of took it for granted, but I don't know. I never gave it much thought till now. Now I'm going to do some. Now I'm going to be on the Google machine. I'm going to be Googling the internet learning the respiratory system of a horse. I think if you have his weed, it would help in this search because I don't know a sober person that has that thought crossed their mind at any point. No, what an epiphany, right? If that's, if that was a big moment for you, you need bigger moments. Have you ever seen an

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That's shipstation.com, and the promo code is 83 weeks. Next question, at Rich Tate. This comment comes only for the sake of discussion. No trolling. I love when they say that, by the way. Yeah, that's a heads up. Right. I'm a huge fan, but when Tony told us Mick was about to win the title,

I changed the channel. I think that was true for a lot of us, and I also think that one backfire. Well, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah, it did. It did backfire. And Mick Foley, every time I see him, which is a couple times a year, you know,

out in the convention circuit or doing what autographs or whatever, he'll usually wait about three or four minutes after greeting before he reminds me every time. No, I did. Look, but you got to remember, you know, that was a, that was, you know, a, a move that I was doing, you know, it was something I started out doing with Nitro and I started giving away their finishes. And the truth is that strategy worked really, really well for a long time until it didn't. And this example is probably the first time it didn't work. And not only didn't it work, I got spanked. Yeah, I got spanked. Yeah, but you're also trying something different.

you're taking a risk you're trying you're evolving you're you're you're not just sitting back and and following the same blueprint that everybody's been following and that's what separates you from from the rest you know i think that you know i think that that's one of the things about the monday night wars is and admittedly not admittedly but i will put myself over to the extent of saying you know when i when i was told that i was going to do monday nightro and go head to head because it wasn't my choice, as most people know, it was Ted Turner's, but it was my job to make it work. Right.

And I knew that I couldn't make it work doing what everybody else did. I had to break the rules. And, you know, the word disruptor didn't exist back then, right? Disruptor's been kind of borne out of social media and the internet and so forth. But I didn't, I just said, man, I got to do it. If I do what they're doing, I'm going to get killed. So I look for every single way that I could do everything as differently as possible. And sometimes I wanted to piss people off in the process.

Giving the finishes away was a perfect example. I knew not only people on WWE, which I smiled about when I thought about how pissed off they were going to be. But also wrestling fans didn't necessarily all think that was a great thing. But that's what created the controversy. And we know what happens when you create controversy if you do it well. That's right. That's right. And I love it. I mean, that is in boxing, you know, there may be a guy that's not as skilled as his opponent, but if he's unorthodox, that adds a level of danger to the opponent that he, he doesn't know what to expect. This guy doesn't lead with a jab. You know, he's, he's not what you've always seen. And that, that is important to throw a wrench into that wheel every now and then, man. Change it up. Look, and it worked. It was fun until it didn't work.

and it wasn't fun, and it's not fun every time I see McFoley. Let's go to Peter Baha'i, or Baha, 27. While you worked for the WWE recently and having to live in Stanford, were you renting out your house for the time being? That's nice real estate agents can check in on the show. Yeah, no, our house here in Wyoming, for me it was a lifelong goal. When the time I was a little kid growing up in Detroit, I was fascinated with the West and mountains. And, you know, you can imagine, you know, even if you've never been to the east side of Detroit where I live.

But it was a very cookie cutter, you know, small houses, 700, 800 square feet houses all in a row. And they were all built back in the 40s and the 50s for people that were coming to Detroit to work in the factories and to work for the auto business. So it was a very sterile, you know, flat, no mountains, nothing, you know, it was just flat. And I just, yeah, as a kid growing up, you know, back then, we're talking about early 60s is when I first started paying attention to things. You know, television was a communal family affair. Like, man, after dinner, everybody sat around that one television because nobody in my neighborhood had more than one. Nobody in my neighborhood got color TV told the late 60s. Remember the first family that got a color TV.

We were hanging around outside the house watching their TV through the window. It was a color TV. But growing up in that environment, I always fantasized about mountains and hiking and camping and hunting and fishing and riding horses. And then I came out here, you know, just randomly in 1977, I was 22 years old. I had never been further west than the Mississippi at that point. And I pulled into this town in Cody, Wyoming. about six o'clock in the morning when I drove into town and I just fell in love and I said

someday I'm going to live here. I don't know how. I don't know when, but I made a commitment at a little restaurant that still exists in town. I made a commitment to someday move here. And it took me a while and we started building this house in 1997. By 1998, we were in it and I've been grateful for that every single minute since. I have no idea why you. I have no idea why. I have no idea why. even went off on that tangent well but you know but because it was because this house is more than just a place we live yeah um we would never write it out we barely have people over that we don't know pretty well right right and was there uh any other uh options other than wyoming when you were thinking being in detroit when you were thinking i want to i want to be in the west i want to

move out west somewhere were there any other options in your mind yeah actually when when my when laurie and i mrs b as i refer to her on the show um you said okay we're going to build a house we're going to build our dream home that we want to retire in that we want to be able to pass down to our kids right that we want our friends and family to be able to come out and enjoy an experience we looked at boulder colorado yeah we came damn close to building in sand outside of sanifay new mexico right i just love that area Just, it's kind of mystical to me in a weird way. There's just a lot of very cool energy.

You're not the first person that I've had that conversation with because I lived in Sedona for a while. So you talk about places with some energy. Sedona's awesome, man. Lori and I used to when we lived in Scottsia, we drive up to Sedona on a regular basis, sometimes stay at some of the really nice resorts up there for a weekend. Oh my God, it's great. But yeah, there were other places.

But it came down to, you know, I kept the feeling that I had in 1977 kind of trumped everything else. Yeah. It just kept gnaw at me. And I said, no, it's got to be Cody. I just feel different here than I do anywhere else. Yeah. And explain it. That's the same feeling I got when I met Conrad.

I had the same feeling. I said, this guy knows where to go eat. Let's go to Rex Griffin's 7. What does Eric think of the Wyoming set TV series Longmire? Have you ever seen? Yeah, you know, I used to watch Longmire. And they often referenced, you know, Wyoming and Cody, but I don't think the show was actually shot here.

Right. But I liked it. You know, it kind of harkened back to the way shows like, that, I guess crime dramas is the category is a little bit of the way they used to be produced. The show didn't rely heavily on, oh, I don't know. I don't want to say violence, but graphic violence and there wasn't a lot of, you know, sacks and car chases and, you know, again, graphic violence. It was just a story.

And, of course, it was set. in a culture that while it may not be Wyoming, it might have been produced somewhere else in Canada or something, it doesn't matter, or another state. But the vibe of it was pretty accurate. You know, that show was set in what to me felt like a little town that I've been to many times, Buffalo, Wyoming, for example, small town outside the mountains.

But I love the way they wove in Native American culture into that show, because I think that's important. That's a big part of the reason I love the West is I love Native American history and culture and there's so much of it here. I have a bar in my house, a physical bar back bar that was right outside the Crow Indian Reservation back in the late 1800s. Wow. And it's now sitting in my living room.

But it came from a literal bar, a business in Hardin, Montana. And eventually that bar got condemned because it was old. Yeah. And the owner auctioned off everything inside, and that's how I ended up with this bar. But if you do the math and you allow yourself to just think about it a little bit and maybe stretch it just a tad, but, you know, I was sitting at that bar with my wife one night. We were having a glass of wine. We had a fire in a fireplace and just kind of thinking about how lucky we were and how grateful we are for everything. And it occurred to me.

I'm looking at this bar, and I didn't refinish it, right? I cleaned it, but I didn't have it completely refinished. I wanted it in its original state. And if you sit down at that bar and you look at all the names that are carved in it and all the messages that were carved in it and things like that, it occurred to me that there were probably some participants, Native Americans that were a part of the little bighorn battle. It wasn't a massacre.

It was a battle. Right. And some of those, and a lot of them were Crow Indians, for example, off the Crow Indian Reservation, Hard Montana is right outside of the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. There were a lot of people that probably sat at that bar that either participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn or someone in their family did.

And just for me, this is a kind of weirdo I am, to be able to sit there and know that people that had a significant role in a very significant part of American history, especially Western, American Western history, are sad at the same bar I'm sitting at. It's just kind of one of those things that I can drift off and really get excited about thinking about. I'm with you.

I'm with you because the people go, the energy is still there. The energy will always kind of be there. You can feel that. If you focus in on it, you can really, you can get a feel for it. What is this one? Jada E's the geek

has a two-parter. Is that the one we're doing? Or did I skip? I skipped. Sorry. Rosenbaum law, my people. What's up, Rosenbaum? All right, let's go here. You worked for Vern in the dying days of the AWA. One, what did you learn from him that helped you with WCW? And two, what did you learn from him on what not to do with WCW? That's a tough one because I think I was influenced greatly by Vern Gagne, in my experience, not just Vern, but a guy by the name of Mike Shields, who passed along not too long ago, passed away not too long ago, the amount of influence that I know

I, how am I, I'm trying to say this, I know I was influenced greatly by that experience, partially because I came in with no preconceived ideas. I didn't know anything about wrestling. I mean, I knew I watched it on television. I enjoyed watching it and had all my life. I used to watch it with my grandmother. She loved. Agnes was her name.

Agnes was a mean bitch, Julie. She hated me. Let me tell you something about Agnes. You're going to have to remind me why I'm answering this question. I will. But Agnes, my grandmother, Again, this is something that was kind of And Kevin Nash and I were talking about this the other day on the phone

Because he's from the same area of Detroit I grew up in And it's like in back in the 60s If you were a Polish descent You were the brunt of every joke Yeah I mean they were like Like we never heard the N word

Right But if you were Polish If you had somebody in your neighborhood that was Polish? Oh my goodness gracious. It was horrible. And that was kind of a thing for some reason at that time in the area of Detroit that I grew up in. Again, because so many people came from other countries, other parts of the states, whatever. They all lived there. And it was a very diverse community. Very diverse. A guy had Italians that lived two doors down for me. And their kids, obviously spoke English, but the parents did. They only spoke Italian, you know. And but man,

if you were Polish, she was horrible. And my grandmother refused to admit that she was Polish because everybody else in my family wouldn't make fun of her for being Polish and she would get mad as hell she denied she smoked palm all cigarettes she changed smoke palm all cigarettes and she starts sucking down those things and she'd get angry denied it and then I signed up for Ancestry.com a few years ago like about 10 years ago or something and I'm really into it I'm going through it and I found out my grandmother's maiden name was Polowski

P-O-H-L-O-W-S-K-I. She was 100% Polish and she just denied it, but she was mean about everything. But the only time she wasn't ragging on me, because she lived with us, which is a real freaking treat. Let me tell you about it. 750 square foot house.

Two, my parents and three kids and my chain-smoking, pall mall devouring grandmother. the only time she wasn't ragged on me she didn't like me at all i don't know why to this day because i was a sweet kid but the only time she we got along is when we were watching wrestling together yeah that's the only time no what was the question i forgot well it was a question of working with verne what did you learn oh my god how did that come about anyway i what i went to work for verna i didn't have an opinion i wasn't influenced by what i read on the internet clearly

it was 1987, I walked in with a clean slate, and I just absorbed. And that was my first impression working for Vern. All of those impressions about the business and what's good, what's bad, what's whatever. All of those came to me and were formulated during my first experience in the industry. So there were so many of those influences. There weren't necessarily lessons, for example. I can't pinpoint one thing, but I'll give you a couple examples of the things that still influenced me today and formed the way I not only produced wrestling when I was producing it, but the way I look and enjoy it now is when I walked into the doors of AW8, 1987, my first day in the job, Vern's building was set up so that you had the television

studio on one side, you had the offices, the administration, all the other stuff on the other side. There was very, you know, the only way you went from the office side and were allowed to go over to the TV studio when things were being produced was if you were on camera or directing. Like you had to have a reason to be there. You couldn't just walk in it out. I'm going to watch these guys got a promo. Vern was really all about cave. He was in a better way to say that.

He was about maintaining the mystery and the intrigue and keeping the audience as best he could in that frame of mind where you allowed yourself to just believe. believe what was going on inside of the ring and identify with it identify with one of the characters and verne didn't smart me up i hate to use that term but verne didn't expose me to anything resembling the creative process until about 19 early 1989 or mid-1989 and then just very gradually and that was because now i'm doing play by play in around that time and that necessitated Vern sitting down with me and kind of giving me the breakdown on what was going to happen and my impression from that that I still hold dearly

and I'm grateful for it because it influenced a lot of things like the NWO for example but is to maintain the integrity of the product and he taught me that my job wasn't to be a star of the show my job was to be a supporting cast member I was like one level up from the janitor, meaning don't try to get myself over. Do everything you can to get the story over, to get the talent over, and to make people feel by virtue of my play-by-play,

which, by the way, wasn't that good at the time, but he tried. But to make people feel like they're in the arena. You know, and that stuck with me, and still does, to this day. those are the types of things that I learned from Vern that created impression upon not just from Vern but from all the people around him and I still hold that to this day I think one of the biggest things that is still the most powerful element in professional wrestling today when it comes to the presentation is when you find those moments where you're not sure if it's real or not or you quit even thinking about it Right. You know, and I've had some coffee shooley, so I'm going to just go so far off the rails with this.

I apologize into everybody listening. But I did a TED talk, TEDx talk a while back. And I talked about how politics is very much like professional wrestling. Insofar as the talking, you know, 24-hour news cycles, talking heads, it's all, it's not really news, right? it's all opinions. That presentation of news currently is designed to make you feel. It's designed to make you afraid. It's designed to make you angry.

It's designed to make you defensive. It's all based in fear. That's what news has become, generally speaking. They want to make you feel. Right. And now wrestling has gotten to the point where oftentimes it makes you think and wrestling should make news should make you think information should be presented you in such a way that it encourages you to think about

both sides of a story or think about two different angles in the situation and then do some research and give it some thought that's what news should be you shouldn't make you feel it should make you think wrestling on the other hand for a lot of things fans, it's all about thinking. And it should be about feeling. And when you find that sweet spot in the story where it's so good that the audience quits thinking about it and starts feeling it, that's the magic. And it still happens, you know, infrequently. But when it does, man, it's magic. That's what I learned or the impressions that I were so strong that I hold them to this day when I work for AWA.

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is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin d and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens.com forward slash 83 weeks. Again, that's athletic greens.com forward slash 83 weeks to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. I liked his follow-up, which was, was there anything that you learned from him by him not doing something correctly or him, you know, maybe was a communication thing or or, but those lessons are almost just as important as the the positive ones is, you know, what did you

learn from that you did not take with you to WC. Vern was very, that's a great question. Vern was very stubborn. What's like Vince McMahon? Those two guys are probably alike in more ways than they're not. Obviously, you know, Vern didn't have the success and all that, but that's the reason for that is because Vern was so set. in his ways he was so he had blinders on much like bill watts did it's one of the reasons

i didn't get along with bill watson why bill watts didn't last long in wcd for the same reason those two were cut from the same cloth but they were both so stubborn when it came to the way the product was presented they both wanted to go back to the 70s they both wanted to go back they believed in their heart and their soul that the only way that wrestling was going to survive is if it went back to doing things the way they used to do them. I can't tell you how many times I heard Vern and Greg and others. WWF is what it was called back. It's never going to last.

It's showbiz, it's not what people. Wrestling fans want wrestling. I heard that a thousand times. And of course, being impressionable for a long time, I went, yep, Vern's saying it must be true, right? But over time, I recognize that Vern's stubbornness and unwillingness to go, okay, I know what worked back in the 70s when I was making a lot of money and the business was at the highest level had ever been for him personally. But you have to recognize that the audience evolves and what they want to watch evolves and how they want to watch it evolves. And Vern was so stubborn, he kept going back to the 70s. He laughed about WWF.

You know, he thought for sure it was going to blow up and ultimately not work. And that was born out of stubbornness. But Watts was much the same way. So to answer the question, what I learned is, and it was reinforced by some of the things that I learned from Ted Turner, by the way, is don't program wrestling or anything that you like, program what the audience likes.

And learning how to read your audience, and how to know your audience. And your audience isn't the most vocal 10% on social media. The audience is the 90, look at the dog, I love that. The audience is the 99 or 90% of the people that just enjoy the show because they want them, they want an alternative to the rest of the programming that's out there. And that is a guest appearance run in by Lila.

Lila, Lila, here's pretty, here, Lila, come here, girl. Here, Lila. Let's get another look at Lila. Come on. Lila, we're going to make you famous. Come here, baby. Get up here. Lila.

My girl. Come here, Lila. Look at it. Nah, she's just loving on you. I get it. Yeah. All right. Get lost.

I love you. I'll see you a little bit. I hear that a lot. Yeah. My wife says when she's in the shower and I pop bitch. Get lost. I'll see you a little bit. Go.

All right. Let's get. on to called Slim has a question I always wanted to know if your NWO boss TV revealed deliberately lessened trillionaire

Ted's TV role planned or just the way it rolled out that's a great question you know no it had nothing to do the billionaire Ted skits the only effect that it had on us is I will

tell you the truth when they first came out. I was like, oh, man, Ted's not going to like this. And Ted eventually, I wasn't there when he watched him. I was told this by Bill Shaw, who worked for Ted Turner and Bill Shaw was my boss since time. I think he was. Bill Shaw told me that Ted laughed his ass off. He thought it was great. And once I knew that, oh, this is no big deal. That was the end of it. I just thought they were entertaining. I did like them personally. Yeah. I did think they were funny. But it also was the first time that Vince started to really sell publicly. Right.

You know, because Vince was like, everybody, no, Vince is never going to sell. He's never going to sell. He'll never acknowledge. And that was just a challenge to me. I thought, okay, well, watch this, you know. And eventually he started selling like a bitch. And I kind of dug it, you know, I finally got him to react and get them, I got him to sell. So that's how I thought they were funny.

And I was kind of proud of myself for making the, the guy. who never sells anything sell it's a big accomplishment my friend uh you should be proud uh now let's go to jada ease the geek uh eric you have talked several times about how eccw did not affect the booking of wcw and was not influenced by it while i'm sure you weren't kevin sullivan was a huge eccw guy and was lead booker do you feel he was influenced thus influencing wcd Yeah, that's a great question. And by the way, for anybody listening, if I ever said specifically ECW didn't have any impact on WCW booking,

then I misspoke. When I say ECW had no impact on me, that's true. I never watched it. I didn't care. I didn't even care what was going on in WWE. Why the hell would I care what was going on in the ECW? Because nobody was watching it. it was a it was the niche of a niche audience you know I joke about it man if you wanted to watch it

where I lived you had to wrap yourself an aluminum foil crawl up on a roof at 1.30 in the morning and hope that the weather would allow you to get the signal it was on these just little tiny television stations that had little or no coverage but clearly Kevin Sullivan was had his finger on the pulse over to ECW. Kevin was into ECW. I never watched it. And I'm absolutely, I would, at a lot of my money that some

of the things that Kevin brought to the table when Kevin was head of creative, I'm sure influenced Kevin, which by default, in fact, affected the WCW product, but not driven by me.

Right. Did I allow what to happen, of course. And you know, it's another thing I was thinking about this the other day. I don't give Kevin Sullivan nearly enough credit often in the discourse here when we talk about that era. Kevin was the lead booker. I didn't get involved in much of the creative, with the exception. I did strategically. Like I was, I was the lead on the cruiserweight division. That was an idea that I had, that I believed in, that I more or less forced into the equation. Obviously, the NWO and the things that happened towards the top of the card with the bigger names, obviously I was involved in that, not necessarily driving the creative, but I was a part

of that. Sometimes I would influence and sometimes I would direct the creative and be the final word on some of the things that happened at the top of the card. But things that generally happened below the line, the line being probably the top 25% of a roster, I was very much involved in it. But being involved doesn't mean I was in control of it. A lot of it was collaborative. A lot of it came from the talent that was involved. But Kevin was the guy, especially for things that happened below that top 25% of the roster. And he deserves a lot of credit for the great things that he did. People assume, because I was the head of the company, that I approved every decision that was made in WCW. It's not true. It's impossible. But when it came to creative,

and I didn't even really get involved in creative, even in that upper 25% of the roster, till really about 1995, 1996, and 1997. By 1997, I was probably getting more involved because I was getting more confident and I learned a lot right in the course of two years of being in the process but even then Kevin was still driving probably 70% or 75% of everything you saw on television was Kevin Sullivan's fingerprints genius guy that's for sure and I miss Kevin I'm going to go out to see him he lives out it lives on an island off the coast of Washington state and he's just the coolest dude and I can't wait to sit down and chat

because he's a great guy and it's beautiful out there my brother lives out there so I've been out there many times legit 1181 Eric will we ever will we ever see an actual sit down

with you Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman I say yes when Eric buys WWE that's yeah that's about what it would take you know I don't think so mostly I mean Paul and I think would love to do it You know, Paul and I still, you know, we don't chat on the phone or anything like that. But we still stay in touch, you know.

How great is work he's doing, by the way? He's in another world. He's in a universe all of his own as a performer. There's nobody you can compare to him ever. Paul and I would love to do it. I just don't see Vince ever going, yeah, I got some time in my schedule this afternoon. I think I'm going to sit down and chat with my old buddy Eric Bishop. and Paul Heyman.

I'll tell you, you throw that on pay-per-view. That's money right there, buddy. I don't think Vince needs the money anymore. I think he's good. I, on the other hand, give me a shout, Vince. I'm here for you. Yeah, we'd have to knock them out like BA and the A team. And you would just wake up and sit down with you guys.

Lauren, why? As once again, I'd like to, Ask Eric to be my Valentine. Love you mean it. Look at that. She's awesome. You know, I talked earlier about ad-free shows and the impact that it's had on people. Josh Rosenbaum got a whole new career because of ad-free shows.

Lauren, early on when I first started working for with Conrad, for Conrad, actually, but with Conrad on a podcast. Somehow we did some promotion. and I was going to call fans or do a Zoom with fans, right? It might have been the first one I ever did. And Lauren was on the list of people for me to reach out to. And I did. And I had her on my phone.

I was chatting with her. She was at a barbecue or a family picnic or something with her kids and her in-laws and all that. And I, you know, I had a great conversation with her. And I hung up and I went, I wish she was a part of ad-free shows. She's good. This young lady has some talent. And then I learned subsequently that, you know, she had worked in news, I think, before and done some things. And I got her, I talked to Conrad and Lauren started doing some things on

ad-free shows and doing a great job at it, hosting some of the Zoom things that we did. She was so fun and brought so much to the party when it came to doing that type of thing, hosting them. And she grew and grew and grew. She became friends with my wife and worked with my wife, you know, off and on with some things. And she became a part of the family, you know, part of a friend of the family, I should say. And then she went on to get a great job working in television news. She covers sports. And she's grown so much because prior to that, she wasn't doing anything. She was kind of wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She gets involved with ad free. She starts working with the team. She gets a job working in TV

news. And she's often running. And I'm proud of her. She's a cool. cool lady uh i i like these uh next couple questions tna related and business related uh first one from uh crazy j j j j leonard 16 is his handle was there any discussion about bringing in goldberg in your time in tna yeah i had a conversation with bill um i remember it kind of specifically when then you know it came up in a meeting i was in dixie was in a part of that meeting and we were kind of thinking about, you know, what's a big move we can make? And Bill's name came up. And I was the only one there that had a relationship with Bill at the time or could reach out and just call him. Um, so I left the meeting and gave Bill a call and

said, hey, man, just what do you think? You know, and Bill, you know, he's a friend. He was very polite, um, but he let me know that he was not interested in at that time getting back in wrestling, especially a teen. I don't think Bill wanted to leave, you know, beating Hulk Hogan in the Georgia Dome in front of however many thousands of people to having matches in a sound stage. It just wasn't on a list of things to do. Not everybody's ready for that transition, my friend. It's a tough one. Right. I can't believe this is real. But Wu wings, your very own virtual restaurant concept is now open and fans can enjoy the legendary flavors

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Hypothetically, could you have gotten a venture capital firm to buy TNA? You know, good question. No. No. And when I say that, it's not to say that there might not have potentially been people out there, especially if, now, if I was going to do it before I would have gone out and tried to make, Obviously, you have to work with the current owners of an organization before you can go out and start fighting people to buy them, right?

Right. You need a certain amount of information and cooperation. That one is pretty important, step one, you know? Step one would have been had I attempted that to have a productive conversation about it and know that at least the door is open for the right opportunity. Correct. Once I check that box, my next step would have been to go on to Viacom and, hypothetically, Mr. Viacom, if a third party comes in, would you be willing to make a long-term commitment to either carry the program or become part of the investment team, which would have been my first move?

Ultimately, I try to do that later on, but if I would have tried to put together a team to buy it, I would have gotten long-term buy-in from Biacom. Because otherwise, you're going to go to an investment group and say, hey, I want to buy this company and they've got a year and a half left on their TV contract, and that's what generates 90% of the revenue. Then the first question from their side is, yeah, but what happens when that goes away? Right. That makes that investment really risky. So the way to mitigate that would be to go to your broadcast partner, in this case, Viacom, and get either get them to become an equity partner, even if they don't bring cash, or at the very least, a long-term television commitment.

Once those two things, those two boxes were checked, then sure, I could have, I could have, anybody could have gone out and it was in that world. and tried to raise money. And I think you could have been successful at the time. But that wasn't my world and that wasn't my goal. I didn't have any goal of being connected to TNA long term. Yeah. Or not a shot at TNA or the wrestling business long term.

I didn't want that to be my life's work. By the way, love hearing you talk business. Never knew I was so into business discussions. but I think the thing I like about it the most is that it's kind of like an episode of Shark Tank, but it's about a field that I understand. It's about a world that I'm a fan of, professional wrestling. So to hear the breakdowns and the behind the scenes and how you would do it and how they should do it, like that stuff I love.

That I love those discussions. And thank you for that. That's quite a compliment because it's not easy to get involved in the business of anything. It's kind of boring compared to somebody doing. you know, cartwheels off a ladder into the crowd while they're on fire. You know, that's an easy thing to go, wow. Right. But, you know, the business of the business is kind of dry.

But if people are like you who are really interested in the business, it's kind of fun to pull back the curtain and see how all the gears grind together. It has got to be explained correctly. Like, it's got to be explained the right way where you don't fall asleep, listening to somebody, right? There's got to be, it's got to go somewhere. And so I think that's, That's what hooks me with, with your, your show with John Alba and just you breaking down business in general.

And by the way, for everybody listening, if you haven't checked out strictly business, I encourage you to do so. Some great stuff there. We had a great conversation with Brian Bedal, the guy that I worked with to try to buy WCW from Turner Broadcasting. He created a couple media ventures, ended up selling them to ESPN and Biacom, CBS. He's got a company that invests in startup tech and media ventures. Brilliant guy. We covered the WWE situation in detail from his perspective of being in that world of mergers and acquisitions and media and so forth. Great show.

We've done a couple really great ones. But if you haven't checked it out, subscribe right now to 83 weeks, wherever you're listening to it. And you'll be notified. when Strictly Business drops off this same feed. So check it out. It's a really cool show. It's growing by leaps and bounds. I'm getting people calling me from outside of the wrestling business to discuss the industry

that shocked me, quite honestly. It's been a great show. And I have so much fun doing it. Alba's doing a great job. He brings a lot to the table. But the only way you're going to get it is to subscribe to 83 weeks. And while you're there, help me kick the hell out of the algorithm thing. I need to move up the list with our YouTube show.

So whether it's here as a podcast, subscribe, like, make some great comments. Give me five stars. I don't care, not me, us. Give us five stars. Same thing with Strictly Business. Let's, let's move that thing to the top of the list. And Tim, in the chat says you should, surely you should listen to Strickley Business. I listen.

What are you kidding me? I threw John Alba a bone. I was going to host that thing with Eric. And I said, you know what? You don't got a lot going on, Johnny. here you take the show i got enough plate spinning right now i know strictly how dare you tim how dare you uh i want to jump around here because i like this question um let's see here from legit 1181 have you even for the slightest second thought about throwing your hat in

with some people and buying wwee there no no i love my life right now and by the way not that I you know that's that the level of people that play in that world that's rarefied air that I never breathe I never get a sniff of it so it's unrealistic but even if it was realistic for me I love my life the way it is I have goals I have things that I want to do in my life now I'm not a kid I'll be 68 years old in May right yep and I've I have a pretty clear picture of what I want the last chapter of my life to be like if it's another 20 or 30 years or whatever it is. And it doesn't have anything to do with being involved in wrestling full time. This one from Adam Leeson. What's the most out of place Eric has felt

in the business? Does Eric believe, and there's a second question, does Eric believe Thunder would have been a success if he'd been given more time to get it on the air and how how much final question, how much extra did it cost to put on? So three questions there for Adam. Yeah, let's break it. I'm not, I don't have the capacity to juggle three questions at once. So what was the first part? The first one was what's the most out of place Eric has felt in the business?

Honest answer is the first day I walked into WWE as an employee back in 2019. And it's just, it's a different culture. and a small part of me every time I walked into my office was, God, you know, I can't believe I'm working for a company that I was competing with so aggressively. I just never felt. And when I say this, I want to be really freaking clear. Everybody in WWE from Vince McMahon, Shane, Stephanie, Linda

Kevin Dunn obviously I was already friends of Bruce Pritchard but there was Triple H was one of the first people to send me a text welcoming me everybody went out of their way to make me feel at home and make me feel comfortable

but there was always that little part of me in the back of my head every time I walked in my office and went that hell am I doing here this is crazy you know and it wasn't uncomfortable necessarily but even when i work for when i worked for turner you know turner was a publicly held company it was very much a corporate culture but it was more of an entrepreneurial corporate culture because that's what ted was like it things trickled down from the top right and ted was brash he was outspoken he said controversial things you know he

He was the atypical media mogul at that time. And that existed throughout Turner. Everybody had a lot more of an entrepreneurial vibe to him than any environment that I had been in up to that point. And once the AOL Time Warner thing happened, I saw that begin to change. People that had that entrepreneurial kind of vibe to them were all of a sudden trying to be like their counterparts at Time Warner thing. because that's actually who they work for now. So guys that would show up wearing a nice pair of jeans, sport coat, nice shirt without a tie, casual shoes, you know, whatever.

All of a sudden, now they're wearing dark blue three-piece suits with wingtip shoes, white shirt, and a red tie. It was crazy. And that was uncomfortable for me. But when I got to WWE, because the culture was so much, Top down, meaning it was driven by the guy at the top. I felt like I was going to work at a law firm in terms of the culture. Everybody was so buttoned up, so tightly and perfectly,

because that's the way Vince operates, right? And that stuff trickles down. People get hired because of the cultural template that's already in existence. So everybody, especially in the upper senior mayor, management level so buttoned up that that's not a comfortable environment for me I have to I had to force myself to put that suit on every day I couldn't wait to rip it off at two o'clock in the morning when I finally got home yeah that was that was kind of uncomfortable what was the second part I'll try to make this shorter uh the second part if we can get the where did the question go up here

uh most out of place in business uh oh here we're go. Does Eric believe Thunder would have been a success if he'd been given more time to get it on the air and how much did it cost to put it on? I don't think it would have been a success. I think it was a bad decision to begin. And it was Ted Turner's decision. It wasn't mine. It wasn't Brad Seagulls. It wasn't anybody at TBS. In fact, everybody that I just mentioned with the exception of Ted Turner tried to convince Ted not to do it. And they all had their various reasons. From my perspective, it was oversaturation. We had a good thing going on Nitro.

We were must-see TV. We were over-delivering on anybody's expectations. We were driving great revenue, well-positioned. WWE was in our rear-view mirror when it came to head-to-head competition. And we were growing by leaps and bounds. And I knew when Harvey Schiller called me, I've told this story before, I'll keep it short. I was actually, I had taken a vacation for the first time in a long, time i was with my wife and kids and we're driving through i think colorado or somewhere and i got a call

from harvey schiller and he said ted wants to go live on thursday nights and i thought harvey was kidding me i thought it was a joke i said harvey what are you're messing up like i'm with my family i'm on vacation quit fucking and i didn't quite say it that way but i didn't think he was serious and he said no eric i'm not this is i know you're on vacation when you get back get the ground run because Ted wants to do Thursdays and I knew it was a mistake so did everybody else I sat with Brad Siegel Brad Siegel who is a president of TNT and he was protective of the nitro because the nitrant was doing really well for TNT and it makes him look good that that is it's a success yeah why why so Brad was against it now Brad reported to Ted Turner I didn't

I reported at that time to Harvey Schiller so I sat down with Brad and and Brad gave pointers. He said, listen, if you're going to, I said, I've tried. Ted won't listen to me. He may listen to you. And if I were you, here's how I would position this. So he coached me on how to try to get Ted to not do thunder. And Ted was determined. And I knew it was a mistake that. So did everybody else. So I don't think it would have been successful. Long, long story short, because the product was just too diluted. You can't have it. One point we had three hours on Monday night in an additional two hours now how much did it cost to put on that was another big issue because nobody wanted to pay for it uh bill burke at tbs he was the the

president of tbs network he didn't want to pay for it you didn't want it coming out of his budget he didn't even want to show ted did so guess who got to pay for that show came out of my budget there was no license fee and the cost of that you'd have to really because talent was under contract and I use talent for both shows, so it's a little bit difficult to assign a cost of doing business, a cost of business with regard to talent, but just the physical production of that show and all the things that went into it, the travel and the rain is in the event, blah, blah, that show was about $250,000, $300,000 at that time to produce. And that came out of my budget.

And you talk about cost. I mean, the cost was killing momentum. them, you know, forget the dollar amount that was a system in place that wasn't broken. And, and then they take, you know, there was the dilution of the product. Hey, y'all, let's take a time out and talk about our friends over at campermax.com. If you've been thinking about in this new year, picking up a travel trailer or a fifth wheel RV, buddy, here's a little life hack for you. Campermax.com will deliver anywhere in the lower 48.

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And be sure to mention my name, Conrad, and get that old friend of a friend discount at campermax.com. Now we got the hard-hitting questions here. K-Fabe Jobber, did name. When are you, Meltzer, and Corny, going to eat and film a table for three. Yeah, that won't happen. You know, I've done one with Jim Cornett, and I, I enjoy Jim's shows, by the way.

He does a great job. He's entertaining as hell. I don't necessarily agree with sometimes the way he says things or even some of the positions he takes. We have distinct differences in many respects, but I also kind of relate to a lot of the things that he says, not all of them, but a lot of them. I think in some respects, we're probably a little more alike than either one of us would even want to admit publicly, although I'm doing it right now. We have sat down.

You know, we were a part of a table for three in WWE. I'd love to sit down and do something like that with Jim. I find him to be a fascinating. He's a very smart guy. I find him fascinating. And I don't mind getting into a table for three type environment with someone that I respect and that I know is intelligent. that would exclude Dave Belzer. And not only from my perspective,

I think from Cornets as well. Yeah. No, you guys are actually in cahoots there. You're finally on the same page, you and Corny. Let's go to Courtney 46. I won't read the rest of the number because I'm feeling it's a zip code or a phone number. Do you think John Cena's heel turn would have been as impactful as Hulk Hogan's. And if yes, who would have been in Cina's NWO?

You know, I can't fantasy book on this show. It just takes too much time. But do I think Cina's Hill Turn would have had the same impact of Hogan's? I think it would have been on the same level in many aspects. I think in terms of the television audience and the reaction to it and the impact that it could have had on business going forward. I think there were very many similarities, and in some respects I think it could have had as much or possibly more of an impact in some ways because WWE was operating at such a high level at that point,

and the audience was at some of those periods of time, if not at its peak close to it. but Hulk Hogan was the first but you know what I mean I mean Hulk Hogan became the first larger than life mainstream professional wrestler cover of Sports Illustrated Johnny Carson rock you know those things happened before that wrestling went during that period of time had transitioned from being this regional kind of low budget, smoky, dingy venue, you know, television product to being something that looked amazing, the production values, the size of the audience, the

costuming, the characters. When Vince McMahon first took WWF back in the 80s to that next step, or whatever the date was, to that next step and became that national promotion vis-a-vis Cable, that was an amazing time, and Hulk Hogan was the focal point of that. And when Hulk established his character that strongly and maintained it for such a long period of time all the way up until the day that he turned heel, that heel turn, that he'll turn affected an audience that had been watching that character for what, 20, 25 years at that point. And that's when I say, I think John would have had,

and WWE would have had tremendous amount of success. In some cases, perhaps, and I'm talking about financially now because of merchandise and things like that. That's an example of something that WWE didn't have in place to the extent that it could have, certainly in comparison to WWE. But there's a perfect example of merch.

Hulk Hogan's turn had a tremendous impact on merch, at WCW because we didn't have any merch at that point from a financial perspective. Yes, we did have merchandise. Yes, we sold T-shirts and venues and things like that. But that's not the same thing as having a retail partnership with Walmart. Right. And that's an example of a way that WWE would have surpassed the Hulk Hogan

heel turn in that category. But in terms of culturally, because Hulk had touched so many different generations, generations of audience in such a profound way that I don't think had seen it turned heel that to this day the same amount of people would have felt this strongly about it because when Hulk Hogan turned heel I saw adults crying yeah yeah you're profound you literally rocked people's foundations like it like they didn't know what because it was it was the one thing you knew was never going to happen is say your prayers and eat your vitamins guy

is going to turn into a bad guy one day. That's never going to happen and move. And when you see, you go back and watch that and I was in the crowd. You know, I wanted to watch it from the cheap seats. And I wasn't down at ringside close enough to actually see some of the people crying around ringside,

but I did after the fact, you know, and there were, there were adults, there were children that were so upset. They had tears. running down their face. When you can do something and remember when I went back and we talked about Vergania and making people feel, that's why we're still talking about that angle and that

storyline because more than anything up until that point and possibly anything that happened since, I've never seen anything create that type of emotion where people were so invested in the character and the story that when the outcome that we saw unexpected outcome happened, people literally were driven to tears. That's getting people to invest. That's the magic that I talked about that I really kind of learned from my experience working with Vernas, keep it real, allow people to believe. Don't feel the need as an announcer to be so smart and subtly, you know, kind of lay things out

in such a way that it actually deflects or minimizes the ability of the audience to get sucked into the story. It's a nuance, but it's an important one. Drew Landry asks, Eric, why didn't we see Brett Hart versus Hogan when you were in charge of WCW? Was Brett mentally done?

Did Hulk not want to do it? To me, that matches money. None of the above. I've mentioned before, and with all due respect to Brett, because I try really hard, not to be negative. Look, Brett Hart, amazing performer in a class all of his own when it comes to in-ring performance and his technical abilities. I loved watching Brett Hart matches.

I still do because of the level of almost perfection that he had in some ways in the ring. but when Brett got to WCW, he had gone through a lot. He was, you know, that Montreal screw job thing had much more of an impact on him than most people know, and maybe even more than he's willing to admit at this point in time. But he, there was no rush. It wasn't that. I don't want to suggest that because of that I didn't book Hogan right away with Brett.

No, it's because when I brought Brett in, it was. was because of thunder it was because ted turner was determined to bring in thunder i knew to avoid the dilution dilution of the product that i could see coming i had to separate the rosters so that you didn't have talent crossing over constantly because then you now you've got five hours of prime time wrestling on uh a week and it's just no way to sustain that from a creative perspective right now one of the hottest shows on television is yellowstone can you imagine if there was five hours of Yellowstone available that that audience would deteriorate so quickly it would make people's headspin and I saw that freight train coming too

much dilution so what was my option okay I'm going to bring in some different talent new talent that we hadn't already seen on Nitro because they were already many of them overexposed especially that upper that upper card so that's why I brought in Brett Hart but when I brought him in, it was more for a long-term creative strategy than, okay, let's make as much money with Brett Hart as we can. Let's book Hogan and Brett because we want to do that right away. It was no, that was antithetical. Google it. Antithetical to the way I wanted to approach things creatively. And Hogan and Brett were going to be there, but I wanted to build up to it. I wanted it to matter. I wanted there to be a great

story. I didn't want to, you know, be the dirt sheet booker of the year and put together a dream match without a long-term strategic plan. And it would have been too soon, honestly. Hogan would have loved to work with Brett. Hogan would want to make sure Brett's head was on straight because, right. Hogan and Brett had issues in WWE. That's part of that. This isn't just snap into WCW. Brett and Hogan had a lot of issues, and I heard Hogan's side of the story where they had to work those issues out in front of Vince McMahon, and Brett Hart ended up walking out the door with his head down and his tail between his legs.

And that existed long before Hogan, or Brett came, excuse me, yeah, Brett came to WCW. But even despite that, Hogan was like, yeah, man, that's money. We'll do that. but not next month. That's a dirt sheet wrestling fan or dirt sheet Booker of the year move. It wouldn't have been a long-term strategic move. Let's go to two count Kyle who asks, hey, Eric, in the time of all this tribalism in wrestling,

it's good to be positive because it's a great time for wrestling fans. With that said, can you tell me something that AEW does better than anyone else and something that WWE does better than anyone else and what they could learn from each other. I've said from day one that I prefer AEW's production values. Now, you can't compare in terms of, I just compared it. To me, when I look at AEW and the way they're producing show, the values of that show, production values i prefer it it's not too glossy it's not too pretty it's perfectly flawed what a great way to say it you like it like a little bit of t-shirt

coffin perfectly flawed you like a little bit of roughness around the edges a little a little bit of uh rawness kind of still shining through there i know why why why Here's the why of it. And it's because how it makes me feel. I feel like I'm in the arena. Because when you're in the arena, you see the warts and the pimples and the acne scars and, you know, you see all that. And when a little bit of that, just the rawness of it and the lack of absolute perfection, it makes me subconsciously feel like I'm there.

And that's the beauty of being live. Why? Yeah, live programming. I started that trend, by the way, in wrestling, folks. I was the first weekly live professional wrestling show in modern history and major cable and prime time. And now everybody does it. Thank you. You're welcome.

But one of the advantages in being live is that it allows the audience to experience that product in a way that they actually feel like they're there. That's why that was the reason that I went live in the first place. I went on a Ross tape. We're going to be live head to head because I explained it to my staff and this is going to sound crude. But when I said we're going to live. live every week because that was a big commitment by the way live is more expensive the economies of scale to get into the weeds a little bit the economies of scale work in your favor when you're doing a tape show right because you can tape two shows for basically the price of one once you get the

crew there the talents there you're paying the talents anyway you've got to pay for a venue why not to do two shows in the same night as opposed to one because it means that hour those two hours are going to cost you half as much each, right? Because you're spreading the cost out over two episodes as opposed to putting it all on one. So when I decided to go live, in addition to satellite time and all the other things that come with it, it was probably 50 to 75 percent more expensive than the way we'd been doing it previously. But I used to, you know, when people were, yeah, but that's going to be expensive. And I would say, yes.

but fleas fucking live is more interesting than most things on tape. So we're going to go live. And now you hear people talking about media values and all that. One of the strongest positions that WW has and AEW have is that they are one of the only other than sports and news live shows on television. Well, guess who started that? y'all welcome thank you perfect no need to stand let me let me finish the question so AEW I prefer their production values and by the way since Mike Mansoury got on board and I put Mike Mansoury over he used to work with Kevin down at WWEs now executive

producer I think I don't know what his title is at AEW Mike is an incredibly talented individual that I think in my opinion long term again I think Mike Mansourri was the best acquisition that Tony Kahn has made to date, including talent. I think Mike Mansoury has the potential of having more of a positive influence on the AEW television product than any one single piece of talent going forward. That's saying a lot, my friend. It is. And Mike, because Mike gets it, you know, high production values is one thing. but when you shoot when you produce a show like wwee does and this is my you know i guess

negative comment it's my opinion it's too pretty i don't feel like i'm in the arena when i watch a ewe i feel like i can get up and go to the concession stand take a leak and get some popcorn when i watch wwee i feel like i'm in a movie theater right i don't feel like i'm there i guess it's you know whatever you like i prefer wwe's production about you. I think now that Mansuri is there, not to keep putting him over, but he deserves it and Tony for bringing him on, I think Mansourri will find the right balance so that you can increase the production value of the show. So people, the business to business side of the wrestling industry, meaning your networks and your advertisers are going to look at your show and know that it's very professionally produced. But not to the extent that you feel like you're watching a Disney on Ice episode in a movie theater. it's it's the difference between seeing a band in an arena and seeing them at a small venue where it's you know much more personal and and and and just it's there you're you're you're not miles away you're not looking over someone's shoulders and head and behind their phone as they're recording everything because they can't be in the moment this is you know i remember me and my friends were in a bar in a And a band came in that had just played a concert for 15,000 people. And they had some drinks at the bar.

And next thing you know, we're at this bar with about 12 people. And we're watching Billy Corrigan and a few others from the Smashing Pumpkins on stage jamming out after just doing a live show in an arena. Now we get this little private personal show that till this day is burned into my memory. I will never forget that moment, you know? So I think your your comparisons of the two and just that kind of dingy kind of dive bar feel that you have watching it sometimes. I agree with that. You lose yourself in the moment easier, I think, right, Eric? Exactly, man.

Exactly. It just allows you. This is all subconscious shit, right? I don't sit there and think about it. I feel it. My point. And it just, I think the age. approach of production allows me to feel like I'm there as opposed to making me feel like

I'm just watching something in a movie theater, which means I'm disconnected from it. I don't have the same connection to it. But you're right, man, how many, I'm trying to think of the band as you were talking, but there's been a number of musicians that I never really cared too much about, and then just for one reason or another caught him live, completely changes the way have feel about them now you know it's it's crazy but yeah lady lady gaga was like that like i was never a huge fan of her music but she came up to howard uh her first time and all they had was the piano in the studio and she just sat there at the piano and just played and sang and that's when i was like

oh my god this this woman's amazing she's unbelievable it's funny you say that because like it was yesterday i don't know you know sometimes i go through my social media, whatever, and things pop up. It might have been on Instagram reels or something, whatever. I'm going through, I'm looking at dog videos and horse videos and baby goat videos because that's my thing. You know, if I'm looking, just kill some time in my head. And I'm going through, and there's certain people like I like, you know, and I've liked

some of the stuff I've seen on Stern show. And it just popped up. It was Lady Gaga in the studio with Stern. And there was no piano. know, she just broke out into, you know, he asked her to sing something and she just, I'm like, whoa, that's amazing. Because you, your expectation when you go to a concert, especially now with big names, you know, they're, they're overproduced, right? It's light. It's cool.

I dig it. But it's about the presentation and the production value as much as it's about the music. but when you hear somebody break out a cappella like that they actually to me sound better than they do in a stage performance it's it's also you know you watch these like talent shows like america's got talent for example and when these singers come on their first audition is just them and a guitar right that's all it is but as they advanced throughout the show they're putting other musicians with them and orchestras and by then you're like i don't even like this person anymore because that's not who they were i want to hear the guy with a guitar with an amazing voice that's all you need that's all you need it's like cooking the less shit you put in it the better it's going to taste isn't that the truth yeah what's you what's your favorite music competition show oh i mean i don't really watch them anymore um you know i'm a comic so i liked american idol for the gag reel for all the for all the horrible people that couldn't sing like me that that i i like

watching. But AGT when Howard was a judge for AGT I was working a lot down there for his station getting interviews and talking to people and all kinds of stuff. So AGT was fun but it was also like America's got

talent. So like I have a good friend who's a comic who's hilarious, made it to the finals and lost to a guy who trained poodles to jump through hoops. So I don't know how you balance out that competition towards the end, you know, but but hey man any any platform where people can get out there and showcase their talents i'm all for

it man you know i like the voice and i like all of them voice is good i like up um the voice we have a family friend actually my daughter's best friend who is in charge of all the backup singers and she she actually travels with blake shelton and she's in his band and all that and because of our relationship with her she's been out here to wyoming she's saying me the song. We were sitting around, we do this on a 4th of July, typically. We'll get everybody, we've been out partying all day long, went to the parade at 7 o'clock in the morning, caught our buzz by 10, you know, continued the process, ate our guts out all day long. So we're all pretty beat by the end of the 4th of July towards night, but we all gather, I have a big fire pit

out in front of my bunkhouse, and we all sit around, we build a big bonfire, we just tell funny stories. It's fun. And Kara, who's my daughter's friend, came out, surprised me. She and my daughter surprised me because my daughter said, oh, I can't make it this year. And I would really depress me. I was kind of sad, brought a tear to my eye. You know, I don't like not being around my family on the 4th of July. But I accepted it. And then that evening, of course, they come blowing

down the driveway, big surprise. Anyway, Kara came out here with my daughter. And we were sitting around the campfire. It was a beautiful night. And Kara said, you want me to sing a song? I thought, wow, because I love her voice. Yeah. Love her voice. She's got an amazing voice. And I said, yeah, I love anything Stevie Nix. And I said, how about landslide? Because I love landslide. She goes, I don't know the song. Let me pull it up. So she pulls up the lyrics. She pulls up the music. She listened to it once. And she pulls up the lyrics. And she sang landslide, Acapello, at my fire pit on the 4th of July. It was so beautiful.

Kara Brits, look her up on social media. She's amazing talent, B-R-I-T-Z. Tell her I said hi. She's amazing talent. And again, man, that moment, I'll never forget that moment. I brought tears to my eyes. It was so beautiful. I loved it.

I had a buddy of mine out here invite me to a home poker game. This was like six, seven months ago. And I won. That's why I haven't been invited back. But I go to the poker game and, you know, I'm in the South. I'm in Alabama now. I'm a Jew from New York. I don't know.

You know, I'm trying to adapt. I'm open-minded. I'm ready to rock. And all of a sudden, I hear this guy singing that he's playing a song and it's just a guitar and him singing. and it sounds like folk music but it's it's outlaw country as they call which is very similar to folk music it's just guitar and and amazing lyrics and i was instantly hooked with it within the first verse of this song i go who the hell is that you hear a voice and you go

what is that it stops you cold uh the guy's name is uh tyler childers and i was new to Tyler Childers. He's a pretty popular singer, uh, but I'm going to send you some of his stuff. It is, it is amazing. I think you'll love it. Love it. And for a Jew from New York to say he's in outlaw country, you know the guy's got to be good. Wow. I can't wait. Man, I am so excited about the Royal Rumble this past weekend. I love seeing Cody finally get his shot at the world title. It's been a long time coming. And how about Sammy Zane? Man, they have done that story right. They have taking their time. But I too said, oh, it's about time. And maybe you're thinking it's about time you get out of debt. Well, savewithconrad.com can help. You know, we've been talking about

how I help people get out of apartments and into houses with little to no money down for a long time now. And of course, we've beat the drum for a long time about how we can show you how to keep more of your own money. But I'm sure part of you are thinking, I don't know, man. Maybe I'll just try my bank. I don't know if I can. I mean, what are we going to do my mortgage with the podcast guy? I get it. Go check out my reviews. Just see for yourself. It would mean a lot for me. If you just go to conradreviews.com, here's a five-star review we just received from David. He says, Dan was very knowledgeable and always found ways to get things done when I was being complicated, very professional, but at the same time personal, to assure me of the process. Lord knows, with my job and unexpected circumstances popping up, she always found a solution to put my mind at ease.

That's what David told us, as he left us a five-star review last week, over in Felton, Pennsylvania. Here's a five-star review from someone who didn't even get alone. Now, pay close attention to this one left last week for Steve Patty. I contacted via social media for information. Quickly, I received a response on how to go about my inquiry. Afterwards, I received a phone call from a representative. Promptly within an hour, I got a phone call from Stephen. Stephen was extremely polite as we conversed about my particular situation.

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8884250105. Savewithconrad.com. Yeah. Speaking of people moving around and coming to your town, Gavin has a question for you. Planning a late summer vacation in Wyoming. What are some hidden gems, a family of three with a four-year-old should make a point to get to? and then he has a wrestling question as well, but I'll let you answer that one first.

Yeah, I mean, with a four-year-old, that's a little tough, right? Because they don't really understand where they're at, have no appreciation for it, and short attention spans, right? So that's going to be a little bit of the challenge. But it's the kid, I think, is what Eric's saying. Yeah, no, I'm not saying that at all.

But look, Yellowstone is right here. You know, it's 42 miles down the road from my house. I literally can look out my window up into the valley and see the mountains in Yellowstone. And there's so many cool things to see an experience there. And so right off the bat, that's a good trip, even with a four-year-old. But you come to Cody, you know, there's a nightly rodeo, you know, every night of the week, starting June 1st throughout the entire summer.

And it's fun. It's a great experience. It'll make you feel something that you didn't expect to feel if you've never been to a small-town rodeo. Because it's kids, it's family, it's, you know, little kids, six years old out there, had no horses around in a barrel race, and it just makes you feel so good because it's a slice of America that's really hard to find right now. And to experience that, even if it's for a night, you'll be glad you did. There's an amazing museum here, the Museum of the West. It's actually five or four museums all under one roof. It would take you three days to get through it.

But it's the Natural History Museum. There's the Plains Indian Museum, which is, I think, fascinating, that you can see so much about the history and the life of the Plains Indians. You have the Buffalo Bill Museum. I think it's the Winchester Gun Museum there, which is just a massive collection that includes the evolution of firearms and weapons dating back to cavemen, right?

There's the Remington Art Museum. You know, Remington was a famous wildlife artist and Western artist. There's a museum here under that roof of Western art by artists from all walks of life at all eras. Fascinating. So there's that. There's river rafting. Might not recommend it for a four-year-old unless you could tie them to you.

But I took my kids when I brought my kids out here when they were little before we built the house, like in 91 or 91, they were, I think my daughter was not too much. older than four or five. And we took them up horseback riding up into the mountains. Fascinating experience. And my kids grew up loving horses as a result of that. So there's a lot of things that you can do. You go up into Red Lodge, Montana, which is only about 60 miles from here. Beautiful, small little town up in the mountains, great restaurants, shops, shopping. It's just a ton here. You go to Bozeman, hour and a half, two hours from here. That's the Yellowstone television series kind of mindset not far away a lot you can do here man you can drop the kid off at

uncle bischoff and you and the wife go make some mistakes you know what i'm saying depending on the day that could work out too i love being around kids uh his follow-up question in the wcd era were there any matches you look back at now that seems surreal from a talent standpoint sting and warrior versus brett and hogan always felt like a fever dream to me says gav yeah there were some real misses there as well that were just bizarre and it seemed like a dream i get that but to me you know anytime i go back and i watch matches in the cruiserweight division Eddie or chris or dean uh chris jericho um a lot of the luchadors i you know occasionally conrad and i will cover a show and i have to go back and watch something that i probably

we've never seen before, you know, because I was there live and didn't go back and watch it at home. It was on to the next show. So every once in a while, when we do these, you know, waybacks and I have to go back and watch something that I haven't seen since 1996 or seven or eight or whatever, I go back and I see some matches that, to me, seem surreal. They're so fantastic and so cutting edge in so many ways for that time that it blows me away. We have Nick.

Devaney has a question. In an interview with Jim Cornett, Greg Gagne made the claim that in 1990, he and Vern were working on a deal with WGN that would have saved the AWA and had even convinced Hulk Hogan to leave Vince and come back there. But when Hulk pulled out at the last minute, it killed the deal and the company. Were you aware of this WGN deal? once again Greg Gunny is lying through his teeth

it's a stupid lie to tell right because it's too easy to disprove it's too easy to go all right let me give Hulk a call and see what he has to say whatever it's such a bullshit and he didn't need to do that there was a lot of conversations between WGN and Vern

trying to remember the name of the guy that Vern was close to He was a very famous guy. I'll think of it hopefully before the show. But Vern did have a very close relationship with WGN. And Vern was attempting desperately by 1990 because I was there, and I sat with Vern and talked about it, desperately trying to find a way to make AWA work. But it had nothing to do with Hulk Hogan.

And for Vern to say it's Hulk Hogan's fault that this deal didn't have. happen, and we could have saved AWA except for Hulk Hogan. That's Greg's way of blaming somebody else for something that he and Vern couldn't achieve. It's not true. Now, is there a kernel of truth in that maybe Vern picked up the phone and said, hey, Terry, there's a chance? And perhaps Hulk didn't say, go to hell, Vern. Do I think that there would have been a conversation here?

Possibly? Do I think there's any chance in hell that, you know, Hulk had any intentions of leaving WWE and going back to the guy that he knew was going to go out of business anyway? Common sense. Anybody with a modicum of common sense would be able to poke holes in that nonsense from Greg Gagne.

And again, the truth is better than a lie. The truth was, yeah, there was some great communication and there were some positive indications that something might happen, but they ultimately, between Vern and G.N. Just couldn't figure out a way to make it work. That's not a failure. But to throw Hulk Hogan's name into it is a way of deferring responsibility or making it seem like Greg was smart enough, you know, to actually be able to put this deal together, but Hulk Hogan wouldn't play ball.

Right. It was so bold. It was right there. It was right there. I had it all lined up. It's so typical of Greg. Anytime somebody says, according to Greg Gunny,

back in whatever date, he did this. It's like, oh, here it comes. What else does Greg deserve all the credit for and none of the responsibility for? Curtis Snyder. He says,

rewatching some early Nitro episodes where yourself and Mongo would constantly rip on the WWF, but Bobby Heenan would never say anything and would even sometimes, changed the subject. Do you think he had a certain gratitude toward Vince that he wouldn't say anything bad and was, uh, and was there ever a conversation about that with you and him? Um, no, you know, I never said, Hey, Bobby, jump on board. Come on with the WWE along with us. No,

I would never do that. I never talked to Bobby about it. I never thought about it beyond the fact that Bobby was the type of professional that didn't feel comfortable for whatever reason. And I would have never asked him to do things that he wasn't comfortable doing. I assumed it was out of respect, out of loyalty, or maybe even because you can't be in the wrestling business without being a little bit cynical, the fact that Bobby might want to be able to go back there someday. And that was the case with a lot of guys, by the way. That was not unusual. There were a lot of guys that ended up coming to WCW because, you know,

in the wrestling business, nothing's really forever for very few people. Maybe if you're an undertaker, you know, or, or whatever. But, you know, all these guys wanted to keep Plan B available. And a lot of them were not comfortable with it. But I assume that that was the case with Bobby. Yeah. And I was fine with that, by the way. I wouldn't expect him to do otherwise.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a gang. You're not forcing him to do something he doesn't want to do. I mean, you, you know, you're just happy to have a guy like Bobby Heen and they're working for you at that point, I imagine. Yeah. And the other thing is, surely you know this, but unless you feel something, you're not going to perform it well. And with Bobby, if I would have said, okay, Bobby, you have to do this. Bobby probably would have given it his best shot, but it wouldn't have been real. and it wouldn't have felt the same.

Well, kind of like in WWE. Yeah, you've got to feel it. Bobby would just, his loyalty to the business in general, yeah, to perhaps Vince, or perhaps it was to himself

knowing that he may need a plan B someday, whatever, for whatever any of those reasons, all of them are very valid to me. If I had to ask Bobby to do something he wasn't comfortable doing with it, wouldn't have been entertaining. Yeah, listen, some people play pool in life.

guys like Heenan played nine ball, you know, they're setting two, three shots in advance, smart. Good analogy. Yeah. Hey guys, Double J. Jeff Jarrett. Need to call a timeout real quick here. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling my world listeners for a while now. It's about all the incredible things happening over on ad-free shows.com. Looking for classic Royal Rumble content, ad-free shows has you covered. First up, honorary DX members, Kurt Engle watches back his favorite match of all time against Chris Benoit at Royal Rumble 2003. It wasn't real smooth. This is a choppy match. It was like we were working for moves. We were working for holds. It wasn't like it was really a clean match. But that's what made it so good.

It was ugly and it was choppy. And, you know, it wasn't like a smooth move that you do all, you know, nice and clean all the way through or a smooth spot. This match was like gritty. And that's what I love most about it. It was more of a fight than it was a wrestling match. For the first time ever, JR watches back the final WWF pay-per-view before he joined the company, the 1993 Royal Rumble, which featured many Hall of Famers and, well, Virgil. All right, next up, we got the man, the myth, the legend, J.R.

One and only, Virgil. There he comes. Meat sauce. The lonely autograph table, the whole deal. I tell you, Virgil's not known for many things. One of those is penis, allegedly. I don't think it's going to be this Royal Rumble experience, but I could be wrong. If you're looking for interactive experiences, ad-free shows members joined Hacksaw Jim Duggan Live,

35 years to the day of his historic win at the very first Royal Rumble. In wrestling, I was going way back as a kid. I live in upstate New York, up by Vermont. My dad would bring me and my sisters in Madison Square Garden to watch the circus. So to only imagine, bring my dad, who was my best man, to pull up in front of Madison Square Garden, and see Hacksaw Duggan versus Andre the Giant. Hey, that's just a small taste of what At Free Shows has waiting for you, including a brand new perk, getting to join in on the live recordings of the shows

with four levels to choose from, see for yourself while ad-free shows is the best value in wrestling today. Sign up now at at-freeshows.com. That's right, sign up today at ad-freeshows.com. Kevin Dean Gander, he writes, when you took over WCW, I'm sure you heard from many people regarding what would make WCW successful. My question is, when Bill W. Watts, Jim Cornett, Oli Anderson, Dusty Rhodes, or other old-timers gave you advice on what makes successful wrestling.

How much credence did you lend them? And then the follow-up is, do you feel Tony Kahn reacts similarly to your advice? So he's assuming that you kind of lashed out or kind of snap back at old-timers, kind of giving you advice when you took over? How much of that is that? accurate. This gentleman asked the question, basically, of you getting advice from the old timers, how you reacted to that advice? And do you see any similarities between, I guess, Tony Kahn reacting to advice that you've given him in AW?

I didn't get a lot of it. You know, look, Vern would call me once in a while and we'd have brief conversations, but it is usually about talent. Like, Vern Gagne called me while Brock Lesnar was still at the University of Minnesota, still competing, because Vern was very close to the University of Minnesota wrestling team. And Vern called me early on. He goes, man, you got to look at this guy, Brock Lesnar. You got to look at this guy. And I always respected Vern's eye for talent. You would have to be a complete idiot not to. And even though I didn't have respect for Vern's approach to business at that time, because he, as I talked about earlier. He was kind of stuck in the 70s. He knew what worked for him back then and

refused to adapt to a new set of circumstances and cultures. So I would have never taken advice from Vern. I would have been polite about it out of respect when it came to business because the business had passed him by. But when he came to talent, Vern had that eye. He had a feel. And he was way more right than he was ever wrong and you could go through a list and talk about the people including Rick Flair who started under Vern Gagnia people may or may not know that

but other than Vern I hired Jerry Jarrett I wanted to see what he had to bring to the table so I hired him and not only didn't react to him negatively like Tony Khan has a tendency to I actually brought him in and paid him because I wanted to see what I could learn from him.

Bill Watts never gave me any advice. And I, when Bill Watts was running at these WCW, I was preparing to quit. Right. Because I had no, I knew he was an idiot. Right. But not an idiot, that's harsh. I knew that he was, the business had passed him by two.

There was nothing out of his mouth that I listened to while I worked under him. that made me think, this guy's got a lot to offer. And he would not have called me when I was running WCW to give me any advice anyway. So I didn't get a lot of input. I think Tony reacts more out of emotion. I think Tony wants, and I'm not saying this derisively. I think one of Tony's goals, and it's a good one to have, is to be, to reach a level of success in the industry that will allow him to be in a conversation

with a Vince McMahon or Eric Bischoff, Nitro. He wants, he wants to be recognized on the same level. And that's not a bad thing unless you're doing it at the expense of what it takes to get you to that level of success. So I think part of Tony's reactions is more emotional reaction based on the fact that he's not getting the kind of respect for me. And I know this is a fact. We have a mutual friend who got a text that basically said so.

And I've heard it for more than one person. My criticism are not meant to be criticisms of Tony the person. I have some admiration for Tony the person, particularly. as of late. I think the person is a really good person. I think I disagree with his approach to the business. My disagreement and my advice is to quit striving to be the dirt sheet booker of the year and quit developing you whatever creative strategy you have based on the reaction that you think you're going to give from the internet because you're not driven by the internet. You're driven by the television audience. Success or failure of your company, Tony, is not how

Well, the dirt sheet universe and the internet wrestling community react to you. It's how well the general audience, who may not even participate in that stuff, react to you. The television audience is your market, not the dirt sheets, not Dave Meltzer, and not the universe of people because there are very small universe of people compared to the totality of the audience that matter. But I think that rubs Tony the wrong way sometimes, and he reacts. And I don't blame him. It's his feelings, his emotion. He should react however he wants to. But I think that's the difference.

I did hire people in that were veterans. I did listen. I paid them for their input. Some of it I thought was valuable. Some of it I didn't. But that's what you do when you're learning on the job is surround yourself with people that don't necessarily agree with you. Because you're not going to learn anything from everybody that does agree with you.

You're just going to do the same thing you're doing because they're going to agree with you because they want to be in your little universe and get that check every two weeks. That's fun, but it's not going to get you where you want to go. Do you think, and I know you don't, you know, know him personally and what he's thinking, but I get the feeling sometimes watching AW and kind of hearing the behind the scenes and backstage stuff that there's a part of him that's almost, I don't want to say afraid, or maybe worried that taking advice from somebody

and trying something new might actually be successful and then people kind of, he goes down a notch in other people's eyes. You know what I'm saying? I don't know if I'm explaining it correctly. Oh, no, you, you're, I knew exactly what you were saying, four syllables in. Okay, so I got a pretty good gut is what you're telling me.

Yeah, I think, and that's also human nature, unfortunately. It gets in the way, unfortunately. Ego. Ego is not your ego, as they say. If you're not confident enough and have enough of a vision to not want to surround yourself with people that may be more talented than you are in different aspects of what it ever is you're doing, whether it's building houses or running a wrestling company. If you're not willing to bring people in around you

that are actually better than you and smarter than you, so you can not only access them as a resource to improve the quality of your product and ultimately get to that level where people are thinking about you in the same terms. And I'm not talking about your dirt sheet universe internet fans. I'm talking about the business community who can actually look at you

and put you in that same category as WWE. But it's going to take surrounding yourself with people that are a lot better at what you do than you are. And I think one of, let me give you an example. Vince McMahon, as many flaws as he may have as a human being, some of the choices and decisions he made. We can, everybody can look at that and they can judge and they can, you know, neglect to look at some of their own flaws

because it's much more comfortable picking on other people and judging other people, right? Yeah, exactly. But if you're one of those people that feels the need to do that and judge everything W.W., everything Vince McMahon has done over the last 40 years by that, eh, to each around. But when I look at Vince and what he built,

it's amazing. And anyway, from any angle you want to look at it, it's nothing short of amazing that this little, niche product that most people were afraid to even admit they watched. We were like one step above porn. It was like, you know, number eight is this. Number nine is professional wrestling. Number 10 is porn.

You know, that's the food chain that we existed on, we meaning the wrestling business until Vince McMahon came along and changed all that. One of the other things Vince did that I think better than anybody is surround himself who are smarter with people who are smarter and better than him. in the areas where he needed that help. And that's evidenced by the fact he walked away and seamlessly that monster company, which is a very complicated company,

that company not only didn't miss a beat, but actually improved. Stock went up, ratings went up, everything went up. And that's because Vince surrounded himself with people who were better at certain aspects of what he did than he was. and unless you're willing to do that, unless you're confident enough in yourself to do that,

good luck. Yeah. Yeah, you're never going to grow unless you got people around you that help you grow. And here's the other thing. This is an important part. And listen, some of this is, you know,

input that I've gotten from people that are very close to the situation. Bringing them in is one thing, but actually listening and allowing them to take you in a direction you might not have otherwise gone taking that risk and what's the risk is yeah maybe business wise you may not agree with it but guess what you may be wrong right the larger percent of the audience may react to something that you just don't necessarily like react positively to something that just isn't necessarily your cup of tea that goes back to not booking for yourself not programming for yourself don't write for your own entertainment right for

your audience is entertainment. But in order to do that, you have to take the risk of bringing in people that are qualified people with a track record, maybe more experience, obviously more experience, and maybe even just better at certain things than you are, and giving them enough rope to see if they're right. It's risky. Now, for someone who's insecure, why is that risky because it proves to you that you're not great at everything that's right that you got shit you can still learn exactly and a lot of people don't want to do that they're fearful of that you don't want to look unqualified or or not as important you know but that's all ego stuff man and it's also people that you know quote unquote I do this for the love of the business so

why wouldn't you want the business to succeed how many wrestlers go 100% into a gimmick or a storyline or whatever that they don't they don't like they hear it they're not crazy about it they don't think it's going to work out but you know what this is what you're offering me this is what you're telling me you want me to do i'm going to give it 110% i'm going to listen to what you're telling me to do and next thing you know it works right so what like listening is the magic word there that that you said Yeah. Hey, and before we go, Mark Nelson has asked this question twice. He's one of our ad-free show shows family members.

And he wants to know, I think I'm going to try to read this fast. It's hard for me to read it, but he wants to know. We talked about the NWO and the promos. We did the black and white thing. How did Hogan, Nash, and Hall react to going from a five to 12-minute promo down to 90 seconds? Initially, it was like, what the hell? You know, and what he's referring to, what Mark is referring to is, When we did those black and white quick cut, kind of, I don't even know how you categorize them,

a real gritty look, and it was just real quick cuts as opposed to long-winded promos with your announcer holding a microphone, like we've seen since, I don't know, they invented dirt. Initially, they were like, what the fuck are we doing? This is weird, because they were so used to doing what they've always done, which is having Gene O'Kle and hold the mic and feed them the story and setting them up. And that was the format that everybody did. By default, it was the only way to do it until we did it differently. And initially, they were just, okay, we'll try this.

And then they saw the finished product. Flip them the fuck out. Flip them out. And by the way, that wasn't my idea. This is what I mean about surrounding yourself with people who are better at some things than you are. That was Craig Leathers. Craig Leathers came up with that style. Because I went to Craig.

You know, these guys are so, first of all, every, each one of them were so used to being the focal point of the interview. That's all they were ever used to. Unless we're in a tag team situation, but that, yeah. For the most part, it was all about them. Now, you've got three guys who are used to being all about them, and you're trying to get them to cut a promo yeah that was tough but when they saw the finished product that was not my idea it was somebody else's idea i posed the challenge to craig Craig took the challenge and said i got an idea let's try this and the idea that Craig leathers came up with was like 10 times better than

anything i could have ever figured out that's what i mean about surrounding yourself with people who are better at you are than some things and that promo that style of promo there's no one thing that made that idea successful, that created successful. But that was one of them. The vibe, the feeling that that created was different than the feeling that everything else that people were used to see and created. And boom, they liked it because of that. Good example.

Good question. Thanks, Mark. Hope I answered it. Yeah. I mean, you answered so much today. You put in two hours worth of moonshine time today, and we appreciate that. God bless you. And 83 weeks on YouTube, on iTunes, Spotify, anywhere and everywhere, highly recommend it.

And then you got ad-freeshows.com. I mean, you guys know, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But for you new people up here on YouTube, if you're a fan of wrestling, if you're a fan of hearing the behind-the-scenes and the breakdowns of this amazing world that I've loved since I was a kid, ad-free shows.com is where you want to be. All your heroes are there. All the legends are there. And even Tony Chavani's there. So it's a great place to be at E. Bischoff on Twitter. Give him a follow.

He's phenomenal. I'm Shalom Shulie on Twitter and the Shully Network on Patreon and YouTube. I'm building my own ad-free shows of comedians and dick jokes. So if you're into those things, come on, check out my world. I'm going to check it out. Not that I'm necessarily into dick jokes, but I, you know, the people you hang with are pretty funny people so yeah i love comedy you do you are a great uh uh first of all you're a great person to bounce jokes off of because if you can get eric to laugh

he doesn't he doesn't sell he's not dave sylva dave sylva you say poopie and he rolls on the ground and laughs uh eric you got to earn it and i like that about eric i like people that they don't bullshit with the laughs no sympathy laughs there uh so eric thank you for your time thank you thank you man for you jumped in on the moments notice our leader in this battle of podcast supremacy you know took a hit got a little food poisoning couldn't do it he reached out to me 15 minutes later he goes back since shulies in 20 minutes later we're doing a show you the man you can work on your feet i love that love you guys man thank you everybody for your support keep supporting our friends and be safe out there and enjoy your weekend enjoy the football

we'll see you guys