83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - 83 Weeks #258: SuperBrawl VIII

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

On this edition of 83 Weeks Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson talk all about SuperBrawl VII. But along the way they talk about Sami Zayn, Jerry Jarrett, and So Much More!!! Special thanks to this week's sponsors! 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. Again, that is athleticgreens.com/83WEEKS to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance! Manscaped-Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at Manscaped.com. 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! If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Spent a nice, I think, eight days or nine days down in Clearwater, Florida with my kids, my grandson, and enjoyed some weather and was able to crank out a strictly business and do a few other things while I was there. But it was a great week. weather was awesome and just spending time, you know, with Whalen, it's so funny, man. I mean, I had two kids of my own, you know, I should remember this. But, you know, when I go for a month or two without seeing him, Waylon, it just amazes me how

how fast they grow and how quickly they're developing. He's starting to, he's having long conversations. We don't quite understand what he's saying yet, but he talks and talks. And he's, you know, the facial expression. and he uses his hands. It's like he knows exactly what he's saying. He can't figure out why we can't figure it out. But it's just fun to watch him, man.

It's a blast. I had a great time. I know it's got to be hard to leave after you get acclimated and you get to spend so much time with that little rascal. But boy, Mrs. B has just got to be tore up leaving there. Does she not? She's still there. Oh, there you go.

I came home by myself. Now, she'll be coming home tomorrow. And she, you know, we're both the same way in that. are we can't wait to get there we love spending time there but you know you're out of your own rhythm yes you know and anytime you're anytime either one of us are out of our rhythm for more than five or six days it's a little bit it's unsettling we start to get antsy so she's as anxious as she is to be there she's equally as anxious to get home and get back into her rhythm and you know we both have a lot of cool things going on and want to stay on top of those as well so it's just we're

to go back down in June, if not sooner. So we'll, we'll be back down soon. Well, I, uh, I for one cannot wait to, uh, to hear more about way J and follow him on Instagram, which I am. Uh, so shout out to a little man for figuring out how to do an Instagram and it looks like he knows an awful lot about nutrition. So I can't wait for him to. What's his, I haven't even looked at his Instagram handle yet.

What's his Instagram handle in case people want to follow him? You know what? We will let, we'll throw that up and post to make sure that we got that there. because I don't remember the handle off the top of my head, but we'll make sure we plug old WayJ's IG, and so everybody can keep up with all things, WayJ. In the meantime, before we talk about our topic today, which is a great one man, we're getting in our way back machine

and talking about WCW from 25 years ago. We're going to be examining Fall Brawl 1998. This is part two, I guess you might say, from Starcade, which featured Hulk Hogan and Sting in the main event. we're finally going to determine where this world title belongs after there was some controversy for the past couple of months. So before we dig into that, I just want to talk about, you know, what's going on in current wrestling because we're right now, as you and I are recording on the heels of a really big

wrestling weekend, Royal Rumble was on a Saturday this year, and now Elimination Chamber, it was on a Saturday this year. And I think everyone agrees this is the biggest, most worst. watch most celebrated, most successful, quote, unquote, B show in WCW history, certainly the biggest February pay-per-view. Historically, it feels as if we would have a big Royal Rumble, and then there's almost like a placeholder pay-per-view. Years ago, the February show was called Fast Lane, and it was sort of implying that we're

on the Fast Lane to WrestleMania. So it's sort of like a lame duck pay-per-view. everybody's pumped for the rumble everybody's pumped for WrestleMania and in the middle it's just we got to serve us a storyline but this year was different WW had a ton of momentum and they set all kinds of records

I think it's the most watch elimination chamber paper review in history I think it's the most successful financially successful show that WWE's ever ran in Montreal they were the real star of the show that was an ungodly hot crowd

and I know you got a chance to see some clips. What did you think of that crowd and the reception from Montreal? My goodness. Yeah, I got home last night about 10 o'clock by the time I got in the house and I'm packed and all that. And obviously I wasn't able to see the pay-per-view. It was over, but I did jump in and caught about the last half or so of the press conference with started out with Triple H.

And I thought Triple H did a great job. You know, if anything came through in that press conference from Triple H at least, one word would define it, and that would be passion. Yes. You can hear in Triple H's voice, he's not just out there doing what people often do, whether it's politicians or otherwise in a press conference situation or in sports. Man, that was all heart. And if there's any doubt about how and why WWE, this is just my opinion.

I don't know. It's not inside information, but it's just from the outside looking in, man. And if anybody's got any doubt about how and why WWE has turned things around so quickly over the last six or nine months, creatively speaking, I would say, you know, Polovec and team, including our buddy Bruce and a whole lot of, you know, Ed Koski and a lot of really great talented writers on that team are probably now being able to do what they're capable of doing without the kind of duress of tearing up scripts the day of the show. you know, panicking over grammar and rough drafts and things like that. It's like all of their focus is on the story itself and the quality of that story. And it just paid huge dividends. But I did after watching the press conference and I got up this morning and I looked at some of the clips that were available. You know, Sammy's entrance.

Unbelievable. You know, because I heard Sammy talk about it in the press conference. He said, I think he thought it was like five minutes and 22 seconds or something with them. So I, you know, and I knew having been, you know, worked. in Montreal a couple of times myself. And having had a match there with Steve Austin, no way out. I mean, I've said this a million times. And it's no secret, man. The Montreal crowd is one of the hottest, most exciting crowds in wrestling. And, man, I just was taken back by how powerfully Sammy was received by that crowd. I don't know what the attendance was. I

can't remember how big the bell center is but 17,000 and change sold okay then there were 17,000 change behind sammy and it was just so cool i mean i i started to get chill bumps man i was like living vicariously through sammy you could feel it and he just does i am so high on sammy zane right now both as a person and a professional and and as a performer just so high on him because he he felt every bit of that energy from that crowd and he reflected it back to them. Yes. And that's when you have that kind of an exchange

that's genuine and real, it just changes everything. I was just so happy for him. And the whole team at WWE, the creative team especially, they've had to go through a lot, man. I got a brief glimpse into it. They've had to go through a lot.

a lot of those people have been around a long time and now they're finally getting their due and getting the ability to do what they're capable of doing and I just thought it was so awesome I was so happy for everybody really it was a fantastic show and I've heard really really strong reviews from everyone they did a fun match with Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesner of course it wound up being a DQ because Lesnar could not break the full Nelson from Bobby Lashley so does the low blow gets the DQ then we get the big table spot afterwards i don't know what type of stipulation or gimmick match or whatever they're trying to set up for russomania but i'm into it

i like that more than i thought i would really happy to see oska win the um the elimination chamber so it looks like she's punched her ticket for a title shot at russomania and of course uh logan paul made his presence felt it looks as if what we thought would happen in january is going to be the way we stay the course for WrestleMania. Logan Paul versus Seth Rollins. Seth Rollins is crazy like a fox. He continues to make sure that he's in a high

profile spot, whether it's being the first guy to take on Cody Rhodes or the guy to work with Logan Paul, who is, no matter how you feel about him as a wrestling fan, a major influencer and a crossover star, if you will, crossing over into

this space. So kudos for Seth. And then, Austin theory retains his United States championship and the rumor in innuendo is that his opponent will be John Sina at WrestleMania. Of course, we haven't necessarily seen that be confirmed anywhere, but what do you think about the idea of John Sina versus Austin theory at WrestleMania? I think that's just an indication that they have every intention of elevating Austin theory. I think there was some, at least in my part, you know, I thought, you know, because Vince kind of endorsed us in theory right off the bat, you know, on camera,

kind of made him hit, you know, Vince's protege, so to speak. That's a great way to introduce a relatively new, a very new character, right, giving him that kind of a rub with Vince because Vince, typically doesn't do that type of thing. Right. So it definitely set us in theory up, you know, in a massive way. And then in my mind, I was thinking, okay, well, with Vince out of the picture, presumably, where does Austin theory go and it seemed like he was kind of just an afterthought there for a while

but with this win and now facing John Cena that is another massive massive elevation of his character giving him a rub with a guy like John Cena so I'm I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out they're building they're investing they're growing their characters and it's fun to watch it is fun to watch the entire show was fun to watch. Of course, we also saw Edge and his lovely wife Beth Phoenix get a win over Judgment Day. And man, Dominic Mysterio, boy, has he turned the character as a corner or what? I felt like a year ago, people were starting to think of him and treat him like he was on the career path trajectory of maybe an Eric Watts. No disrespect, but it's like,

hey, we loved your father, but. And he was sort of, eh, and just there and a chore to get through that was the narrative I heard I had the good fortune of meeting Dominic a super nice guy and I feel like he was served a bit of a disservice first of all he's got to follow in the steps of one of the all-time greats yeah that's like the biggest challenge ever right it's like you know I know that people talk about you know being Hulk Hogan's son or being Rick Flair's son but make no mistake buddy being Ray Mysterio son like how could you ever compete with that nobody's ever seen anything like that before after Ray is a once-on-a-lifetime performer it couldn't have been easy and how he's sort of thrown into the big time right away it's

not as if he's given the opportunity to you know get his reps in without the big audience they're seeing him grow from like his first matches were on tv and we know that aren't and bryck anderson are dealing with that right now on the w side of things but they just thrust him right into the storyline but it does feel as if the pivot to as silly as it sounds he's a bad guy And then he went to jail slash prison. It's so tongue in cheek. It's hit. And man,

the fans are with it in a big way. And it's, rather than, you know, we got to overcome the shadow of dad, let's dump on dad. Let's heal on dad. Fans don't want to see him disparage Mysterio.

And man, I'm just so proud for Dominic in the evolution. But a lot of that is a commitment to, we're not deviating. We're not, we're not going to be reactionary. We're going to keep. this going and we're going to keep the story going and it worked and I'm just so happy for him to

be enjoying this success that he's got right now I think it's a remarkable story in wrestling yeah and you know I I use the word discipline probably too often when I talk about stories without really explaining what I mean by discipline within the context of a storyline but you just hit it right on the head you know they they had a plan it's a little bit bumpy yes but man they stuck to it, and they're going to grind it out, and it's going to pay off. The only thing, you know, and this is just a, again, observation from the sidelines, I hope they're a little bit careful about how much dialogue they give, Dominic, until he gets a little more comfortable.

He does, in a live interview, like backstage, he does have a tendency to come off a little forced and uncomfortable. That time will fix that. fix that it's just time in reps right same thing i meant it to be same thing yeah we'll fix that and it's not going to take a long time but in the interim until he gets a little bit better on the mic um i think if they limit his narrative to as much as they can because he's still an important character he still has something to say as a character limited or try to keep it in a backstage post-produced environment so that they can really work with him because right now is not the time you want

the guy to come out is try to carry much of much dialogue when he's not quite ready for it because it'll take away from all the other good things so i think if they just manage that aspect of dominic for another couple months you know who knows man dominic could some i mean it's like sammy who would have predicted sammy in this position three years three years ago right you just wouldn't have you wouldn't have bet any money on this well and let's talk about that because i think the word that you said there really tells the story discipline and it feels as if uh and and listen we should say right now we're not there i'm not there you're not there and we certainly don't talk to bruce about this it's just not our style but it does feel as if there's less frantic

negotiation for what are we going to do next it feels as if that whole routine of we're going to tear up the script and start over as the guys are going to the ring and the as mc foley said recently on a podcast the fireworks are going off and we're finding out what we're going to do uh this plan that we saw play out at elimination chamber with our main event in regards to sammy zane feels as if this has been the plan all along and they had this plan and now they're executing it from what i understand you know as soon as they knew this show was in montreal all it's like well that's where sammy's from he should be the guy to challenge roman there now

let's work backwards and that's when the whole kevin owens thing gets added and what do you know sammy winds up being on the chairs and doing all the local promotion and he gets hotter and hotter and hotter but it got so high that it caused the debate amongst a lot of fans especially over the last two weeks but the heat really turned up after the in ring promo with cody and sammy and on the heels of Royal Rumble, I think a lot of fans thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Cody won it, but we really want Sammy. There's a natural story there for Sammy and Roman, especially the post-match angle of Rumble. But boy, Paul Heyman and Cody in one segment on Raw cleared all that up. Now there is a story. Now we're all invested. But there were essentially two options. You can go with Cody,

which certainly feels like what the WWE picked. Or you could go with Sammy, which feels like what the fans picked and a lot of fans thought back nine years ago to 2014 with daniel brian where we all wanted his fans daniel brian to get his world title shot and maybe the office's pick was randy orton and batista we found a way for daniel brian to get involved there wound up being a three-way dance and he wound up getting that big moment and he won and it was special but that wasn't the original plan but vince being the guy in charge pivoted as we record now it doesn't feel as if we're going to pivot it feels as if this has been the plan all along and they're quote unquote staying the course if you're

making the call if you were the guy in charge if this was wcw and you had two really good opportunities here you've got this great story in cody who came in with all the piss and vinegar from AEW and has a phenomenal storyline with with Seth Rollins puts on maybe the performance of the year certainly the performance of a lifetime it'll be the match that defines him or a short list of one with the hell and a cell and the torn peck and all that he gets the the triple H 2002 treatment where he's going to make the return he comes in at number 30 he wins the Royal Rumble we know the backstory I want to win the belt my dad never could and then he gets in the ring with Paul Heyman and they make it personal and now

there's stakes and there's a personal issue and as Jerry Jarrett taught us and we'll talk about Jerry in a minute personal issues draw money so it feels as if this is a great story but oh by the way there's been one 10 months in the works with sammy zane and the fans are white hot for it would you have pivoted to Sammy would you have entertained a three way or would you have played it out exactly as we saw it in elimination chamber well i mean you pose that question i heard it two different ways one is if i was if it was eric bischoff when he was running wcd back in the late 90s yeah i would have probably been inclined to pivot okay to be honest i probably would have gotten a little bit caught up in the emotion of it but as i sit here

talking to you today i've learned since the late 90s. how important it is to have a structured discipline story. I've been saying that so much, and I think people are sick of hearing me say it. But now we're seeing it played out, and everybody's kind of going, well, like, now I get it, you know. Right, right. Social media has changed dramatically over the last 24 hours.

Let me tell you that. I would like to think that I would stay the course. And here's, and you said something that's really important about Sammy, I mean, the fans really want to see him get that title. Yes. It's not like they're going to stop wanting it, right? Right. That's what you want when you've got a baby face that's just a white, hot baby face.

It's not so important that they get the title. It's important that they're chasing that title. And the only way that that works is if the audience really, wants, I mean, genuinely, not because they just want to see a title change and have something to chat about on Reddit or whatever, you know, the emotion that the audience have invested, has invested in Sammy is not going to go anywhere. I'm sure some of the fans, and especially Montreal were let down. I'm sure some of the fans watching a pay-per-view around the world were probably let down because they really wanted it for him. But they're going to want it for him

within the next couple of months. So I don't think Sammy's going to lose any ground. I still think the story, the way it's been set up, and I can't say enough good things about Paul Heyman. I just sent him a text about 20 minutes ago before I sat down here. Can't say enough great things about Paul Heyman. And, you know, he's part of that whole team. But just, you know, it always seems like Paul's the one when you really need to bring it home

and put a fine point on a story. and make it mean something, there's Paul Heyman, and he delivers every single time, it's a dance. You know, obviously, Cody was a big part of that. Sadby was a big part of that. I'm talking about the interview. It was a dance, and everybody danced so well together, but it's always, Paul Heyman seems to be the dance partner, everybody picks whenever it's really critical to advance the story. And he did a great job.

But no, I think, let's stick with Cody and, and Roman, and let's, Let's see where that goes. But in the meantime, you've got a white hot baby face that's ready to step in at any time. And God, what a wonderful position to be in. If you're on the WWE creative team, because now you've got so many things you can do. Yes. Your options have just quadrupled. And any one of them are good.

Right. So it's fun. And this is, AAA said it. And I don't think anybody could have said it better. But when wrestling is done well, when storytelling and character revolution is done well in professional wrestling, I don't think there's another form of entertainment that comes close in terms of creating that emotion and that emotional connection with the audience. I just don't think there is. I know I surprised you a week or so ago when I said I thought the bloodline storyline was better than the NWO. and it is by a mile.

But I think it's the best storyline that's ever been done in the history of wrestling. Now, people that are students of the history of wrestling, guys like Dave Meltzer and others. And I respect Dave's view and knowledge of the history of wrestling. I just think he should stop right there. But they may feel differently about that. But I'm looking at it from a total picture.

with the amount of television and the pressure and the volume of television that exist today, especially in WWE, to be able to construct, manage, and execute a storyline as complex as the bloodline has been. There's a lot of layers. That's what I mean about complexity. There's a lot of little bobs and weaves within that story. There's a main plot, then there's a subplot, then there's a subplot to the subplot. That's hard to manage, especially when you're producing so much content because you don't have a lot of time in between to really evaluate and create the way you ideally would want to.

But I think if you look at the complexity and the execution of that storyline, the Bloodline storyline, I can't think of another storyline. in the history, the televised history of the business since I've been watching in the 60s that's come close to this. It's just so good. Well said. It is good. And I can't wait to see what's next. And I thought, you know, the word you said that I keep coming back to that I think is clicking for a lot of people. And in fact, it might even be a new shirt over at box of gimmicks.com is about discipline. because they didn't rush the Jay stuff.

Jay was in the ring, but we never really saw what's going to happen with Jay. And because I don't know what it's going to happen with Jay, guess what? I want to watch on Friday and see what the hell's going to happen with Jay. And in addition to that, I don't really know that we know exactly what Kevin Owen's intentions are because we didn't get the big hug in raising each other's hands.

We're going to have to wait. We got six weeks, I guess, until WrestleMania. so we're going to see what happens with Kevin Owens and Sammy Zane and are they together and are they a team and where is Jay in all of this? We're going to find out and because they didn't rush all of that stuff and try to cram it in in a big post-match angle, I can't wait to see the program now. And I don't remember the last time, and I mean this sincerely, that I was this excited to see what's going to happen next.

And I know we've said that a few times now with the bloodline, but they've just demonstrated an incredible amount of discipline. They're not rushing it. And I think it's a home run. And Adam, who's riding along with us as part of our studio audience from ad-free shows.com says, Megapowers, subtlety and details are number two,

but it ain't close. Yeah, there's lots of details. There's lots of layers to this. And when you think about that Hogan Savage storyline, it's iconic. And it carried them all the way through their WCW run. Think about that.

It started really in 88 in the WWF. But they rode it through 2000. They got 12 years worth of mileage out of that storyline on in total. And if we could think that maybe the bloodline could do something similar here. Just well done. High fives all around. Anything else you want to mention about, uh, the bloodline storyline and elimination chamber before we move on from that event?

No, I think, uh, I think we've covered it as well as I'm capable of covering it at least. If you were me, if you were a betting man, would you bet on it being Sammy and Kevin against the Uso? for the tag straps and maybe the most important tag match in WrestleMania history? I guess I would

because that's so logical and it'll work. I'd rather I'd rather see something one-on-one with Sammy and Kevin. I'd rather see something there, but that would require a lot of reconstructive surgery, so I don't know that

they'll do that. Hypothetically, if you did, what would you do with the Uso's? I don't know. I don't know. I'd really have to sit down and look at it and think about that. I really don't know. I just think when you have someone as hot as Sammy is right now. Right.

And you put him in a tag, you run the risk. Because a tag is just not going to be, you're not going to have the personal issue. Right. And even if you do, it just gets diluted. It's, I know. know people love tag team wrestling and this is a made for WrestleMania story. It's almost plug and play at this point if that's the way they're going to go and it will be great.

Don't get me wrong. But I would force myself to be thinking a little differently when it comes to Sammy because he's so white hot. I wouldn't want to risk diluting him. Now if there's a way to lay that match out and continue that story and maybe it's that tag and it ends up being Kevin and Sammy somewhere down the row. But I would just be, I'd be reluctant to put Sammy in a tag with anybody at this point just because he's so white hot that I think the focus should be just on him and his opponent.

Well, let me say this. I for one think they could do the tag match in a way where you would enjoy it. I mean, the reality is Jimmy effectively cost Sammy his chance to be world champ. He cost him his shot at what mattered most. So now he wants to take from Jimmy what matters most to him, those tag titles. And of course, both of the Uso's just teed off and had a field day on Sammy's quote unquote brother, Kevin Owens. so I could see how it's brother and brother against brother versus brother and perhaps there is some sort of little callback in the Cody Roman confrontation that does involve Sammy and

maybe the Uso's or something I could see how we could get there and then eventually I think when Kevin Owens turns heel on Sammy after they are a tag team and something sideways happens boy we got a really hot personal issue we can keep it going but I think in the best interest and then we'll move on from this subject but all i could think is boy now would be a great time to have those belts separated because you need a you need a big time storyline on raw and you need a big time storyline on smackdown so if cody's carrying the raw belt and then we can do something separate with the smackdown belt i could see that i could get behind that as could i and like i said that's the most logical it will be great there's no question about it it's just

so much depends on what we're one of the most powerful questions that I learned to ask when I was running wrestling was where does it go from here it's easy to come up with a good match right well it's not easy but that's not as difficult sometimes when you've got so much great talent anybody can book a quote unquote dream match right but where does it go that's way more important than how great the match is where does it go and you just laid out a logical progression of that story of that tag um and that's i mean like i said it's plug and play um i just i just don't want to see sammy lose any steam that's all well for all those months you know where sammy was trying to be a member of the bloodline

uh i am you are not my blood i am part of the bloodline you don't belong and he turns on sammy i think that the the real story this entire bloodline storyline has really been sammy versus j and whatever gets us there makes the most sense and to your point as long as sammy stays this white hot baby face we can figure out the world title some other time. I think what they really want is they want to see Sammy victorious over the bloodline, and him beating Jay is, that's sufficient for me. And that'll get him right back. You know, that will, people will not necessarily forget about last night, but it won't become as big of an issue.

NMLS number 65084, equal housing landed. Woo! The five-star reviews are in and it's confirmed. Saved with Conrad.com. can save you thousands. Jimmy E writes that we saved his family more than $1,000 a month. James S says we saved his family more than $1,200 a month. But how much can you save? It's free to find out right now at save withconrad.com. But if you've got a second mortgage, if you've got credit card debt, or even worse,

if you're in a third of year loan, it's not a matter of if we can save you money, but a matter of how much at save with conrad.com. Yeah. Let me ask your opinion on something that happened over the weekend about modern wrestling. Then we'll kick it old school. we're going to talk about Jerry Jarrett briefly and then we're going to talk about our topic today but I do want to bring this up because I don't know it felt kind of weird if you saw Friday night smackdown you saw Ariel Hawani in Montreal in the crowd

and they were bananas and Ariel of course is a huge wrestling fan but I first became familiar with his work through my fandom in the MMA world and he has become one of the preeminent MMA report quarters and has been for a long long time and it wasn't that long ago that uh he had tony kine on his show and when he was on that show he asked or he was asked tony con was asked about the brawl-out situation and tony wouldn't engage and i understand there were legal reasons perhaps or potential legal reasons to not engage but tony knows why he didn't engage i don't really know but that was certainly the speculation that maybe this was going to become a legal issue.

And Ariel was not happy with that. And then later said he thought it was the worst interview he'd ever done. And that created a little bit of chatter. Well, when Tony Kahn is promoting an EW rampage, which had to air a little bit early this past Friday because of the Turner commitment to the NBA All Star weekend festivities, he tweeted about Ariel Hawani being in the crowd at Smackdown. and having a grand old time seemingly as a fan.

Tony wrote, You're a fraud at Ariel Hawani. You're as legitimate of a reporter as at Tony Shivani. Hashtag AEW Rampage. And Ariel Hawani responded, Thanks for watching, old friend. Can't wait for our next chat. And then in parentheses,

also don't listen to the snowman Chivani. You're a legend. in my books and of course Tony responded good luck with the unbiased journalism so clearly on being in a WWE quote unquote shill and I think Ariel listens to our podcasts I've never had an interaction with Ariel but he follows me on Twitter so I assume he listens to at least one of our podcast families but it makes sense they probably listens to you Eric and I'm curious what you thought of a Ariel being in the crowd and being a part of

WW programming. B. Tony con tweeting at him and questioning whether or not he was a legitimate or unbiased reporter. And then C Ariel has a not so veiled accusation there when he says don't listen to the snowman Chivani. Now you and I don't normally engage in rumor and innuendo but boy there's a whole lot of folks who don't Tony con and have never met Tony

con who have awfully strong opinions and they say because he's so excited and because he's so animated and because he has so much energy he must clearly be doing cocaine this to me has someone who does know Tony con is ridiculous

Tony con's walking around hyped up on coffee my man drinks a lot of coffee the idea that and I don't know how this became a thing, but it did. And listen, there's ugly underbelly rumors about you and WCW that you and I've talked about before.

They're all bullshit too. But this to me, that's fan stuff. That's not something I expected to read from Ariel. What did you think of this exchange? And then I guess to put a button on my C question, Ariel furthering that narrative,

that rumor and innuendo, calling Tony Kahn snowman? What's up with that? yeah i was disappointed to see that look i've heard a lot of the same rumors and i've heard them from people that are in a ewe to be blunt um and i don't put any stock in them i think that's a i think it's a bad i think it's bad form no matter who you are unless unless you were sitting down and watch someone anyone actually doing something whether it's snort in a line of blow or you know, beating their wife or whatever, unless you witness it with your own eyes,

shut the fuck up. And spreading rumors like that, it's a bad reflection, you know, and I don't listen to that. When I hear those things, I immediately shut down when it comes to listen. I don't really pay attention to it. If somebody comes to me and we're in a middle of a conversation and they throw something like that in about Tony or anybody else, that's the end of the conversation as far as my participation goes. I won't be rude about it. I won't get up, walk away or confront someone, but in terms of actually paying attention or engaging in any further conversation, I changed

the subject at that point. It's just bad, bad. You don't want to do that to people. I've had it done to me, and it's, there's no, there's no reason for it. That's that. That's your C question. And I forgot the order. But I think Tony's, look, Tony is inviting a lot of his criticism. He acts like a petulant child in the way he responds. And his response to, to Ariel being in the crowd was a petulant child whose feelings were hurt because somebody took his toy away from him. I mean, it's just so absolutely childish. And I think that's a. reflection, at least in my mind, of who Tony Kahn is. He's immature. He is a child with a vanity project. And he's passionate. I'm not taking anything away from that. It's not like, you know, one eliminates the other, meaning, you know, great. His father's worth, you know, however many billions of dollars. And what I heard, I don't know if it's true or not, doesn't matter if it is or isn't, but I heard that at some point, Tony launched his thing with $100 million of money that

his dad was going to leave him in a will anyway. So it was his, Tony's money. It just came from his dad. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if he earned that $100 million coming up with a cure for cancer or whether he inherited it, in my opinion. It doesn't matter. But when you act the way Tony acts and the way he reacts to things. I think it furthers a negative impression of him. And Tony should have never reacted the way he did to Ariel being out there. If you really wanted to, now I'm not saying that Tony wants to get himself over,

but I think he does. He should as the guy who is out there as the owner and the CEO and head booker and whatever else his titles are. He is the face of that. company in many respects. Handle it, man. Learn to handle it and overreacting to something like that, especially right now when the shows that Tony's have been producing, I watched one last Wednesday, I watched the

actually, I watched all of Monday Night Raw and I watched all of AEW dynamite while I was in Florida, every minute of both of them. And for Tony to come out now and say something like that, especially right now. now when a lot of Tony's own audience is looking at that product and going, eh, and why am I excited about this? Now's not the right time to act childish like that. If I was Tony, I would have put Ariel O'Rour. Congratulations.

Hope you got a free ticket. Have fun. See you next time. You're in town. But instead, he acted like a petulant child. And then to throw in the credible journalism thing, does he not know that, that his tag team, what are they called? The Young Box, what's their name?

Yeah, the Young Box. Oh, they still go by that? I thought they had a different name. The Elite. They got a finishing move called the Meltzer Driver. Yeah. That is promoted on their show. Come on.

Pull your head out of the sand. Focus on your product. Quit. You know, I saw another thing that was out last week. Tony's, you know, trying to drive this. story home that we're in a war. You know, the only war Tony Khan is in is the one against

himself. You're going to take care of that war. Figure out who you are and how you want to run this company and what the vision is for your product and what your strategy for growth is. Because even though Tony may not need the growth, as you and I talked about, maybe he's

absolutely happy with things the way they are. But I guarantee you at some point, somebody that's in charge of that beachfront property that Tony's enjoying right now is going to wonder if they're making as much money off of it as they can maybe not now maybe not in six months maybe not even a year but eventually if you're not growing your audience you're you're you're very vulnerable tony should be focusing on those things and not whether aerial is in a wwe environment or not i just think it's silly well credible journalism i mean oh my gosh

that's that's funny i um I hope that we can all try to be better about that because I was sort of on my heels when Ariel made that sort of inside jab and it's just all to your point nobody's ever seen it nobody it's just nonsense it's just a silly rumor and those things are like I hate to compare anything to cancer because those of us who have had yes that issue touch our lives it's a sensitive issue but it's it's like that it's it just it becomes it mastat metastasizes it starts to grow and grow and feed off itself and it's so long can't think of a better way to say it it's it's less than and I think we should expect better of ourselves as fans but

certainly of journalists like if we really are refuting that oh no I'm a legit journalist by the way let me throw this jab accusation i just felt a little off to me by the way what's a legit journalist in today's world well there are some out there right nobody knows their names well here here's where i was getting to he has developed he had developed a reputation he being aerial for calling the ufc and dana white specifically out on things that weren't fair or weren't right he wouldn't play the game he was the guy who was going to be hard-nosed and asked the tough questions and he developed a reputation for that and that's why i liked his work and still do like his work but i was disappointed to see when he said that because it's like

wait a minute now that's that's not based in fact at all that's something that you read online or someone heard from someone else who said blah blah blah but it's not it's not real uh unfortunately something that is real though that we need to address here before we get going on our topic which we are getting there by the way we're talking about super brawl eight today since you and i have recorded uh we lost a member of wrestling royalty sadly our tag team partner here on ad free shows dot com jeffat lost his father jerry at just 80 years old uh mr jarratt had been battling esophagus cancer for a few months he had started treatment and from what i heard the uh the treatments were just too hard on his old heart and his old heart couldn't take

that's all she wrote and he's no longer with us he leaves behind an incredible legacy of professional wrestling you know um it was pointed out i think jem cornet pointed out in his incredible tribute to mr jared that he was actually the first promoter who grew up with television so his approach was different in that the other guys who ran territories were older veteran stars who had been wrestling long before television was a thing and maybe they were nearly 50 years old before they ever saw a TV. So they simply said, well,

just take the matches we've been doing and put them on TV. And that's largely what happened. But Jerry approached it totally different and said, well, in order to make a good TV show, so Story became a big part in studio wrestling, large part, thanks to Jerry Jarrett,

where we would see angles, not only happening in the ring and through the course of a match, but around the ring and outside of the ring. and they started to do crazy stuff that was way ahead of its time. I mean, Jeff Jarrett's rookie year, in 1986, they were Kendo Stick matches. And we were hitting Jerry Lawler in the car

in a parking lot. There's a lot of crazy stuff. And a who's who went through there from The Undertaker to Mick Foley to Stone Cold to the Rock to a generation older. Paul Kogan. Paul Kogan was there. And so many other greats got their start there.

Of course, Jerry Lawler may be the most iconic and symbolic from there, but even stars that you wouldn't necessarily associate with Memphis. The ultimate warrior and sting started in Memphis. And his legacy just lives on forever and ever. Thankfully now, Jeff is going to carry that banner and we're going to do our best to celebrate his memory. But I wanted you to just have a few minutes after every other talking head

has talked about Jerry Jarrett this last week to say a few words about Mr. Jarrett. And then we'll jump into our topic today. Yeah, you know, I, I never worked really with Jerry. I did bring him into WCW for a brief period of time as a consultant. But even then, it didn't really get a chance to know Jerry. So my perspective of Jerry Jurette and his legacy, first and foremost, is everything that you've already talked about in terms of utilizing TV and expanding the story and doing things that hadn't been done before, like running over or hitting Jerry Lawler with a car on a parking.

a lot. I remember seeing that about a year ago. Somebody sent me that video, and it was pretty well done, by the way. But I guess my respect for Jerry is probably tied a lot more to how long he was able to survive in that territory environment while WWE was expanding nationally. I don't know this to be a fact. Again, I'm not a historian. But it seems. to me that Jerry Jarrett was probably one of the last territory promoters to survive. Yes, he was. He was around after Vernan. He had to close the doors back in whatever year that was, 91, 92, 91, I think.

And Jerry was still promoting. To be able to survive in that territory system while you're being run over by this giant bus called WWE, and still make money and survive, I think should, to me, because I respect the business of the business sometimes more than I respect other aspects of it, that says pretty much everything you need to know about Jerry Jury Jurette and his accomplishments, his strength as a promoter and his resilience and willing to adapt. That's the thing. And you hit it right on the head in the setup, talking about, you know, growing up with television and adapting to television.

television as opposed to just doing things the way they'd always been done, right? That probably says more to more about Jerry Jarrett's vision than probably anything. So I just, hats off to him. I ever reached out to Jeff, I know what it's like when my father passed and my mom passed. It took me about a week before I really wanted to talk to anybody. And I'll reach out to him, but my sense is that Jeff's handling it. pretty well, just based on some of the things I've seen in social media, the fact that he showed up and he worked, you know, in Laredo or El Paso, wherever AEW was last week. I can't remember.

You know, that says a lot to me. And I think he probably, and I don't know this, I shouldn't even say this, but I want to believe it so I'm going to say it. I'm going to manifest it into reality just because I want it to be true. But I think Jeff probably thought about what would my dad want me to do would he want me to work we want me to fulfill my obligation or would you want me to ask for the time off right and i like to think that jerry would have encouraged jeff to make that shot and he did man he um it wasn't even up for debate you know as i heard the story uh jerry's lovely wife of over 50 years miss debra asked at the hospital as all this is going on with her husband,

Jeff, what times your flight? And he sort of incredulously looked at her as if to say, what? Like in the scheme of things, what are we talking about? And she said, well,

your dad would want you to go to work. Mm. Mm. Hmm. Hmm. So Jeff said, that's just, okay.

Yes, ma'am. And he did. And I know he's glad he did. it was probably nice to have some alone time and nice to be around all of his wrestling support system and everybody, even if you didn't work with Mr. Jarrett, you knew his influence and impact on the industry that they all dedicated their lives to. So I'm sure it was worthwhile. And tomorrow it was his celebration of life. We'll throw a graphic up there so you guys

can check that out. And if you're not able to attend, maybe there'll be something we can share with you in the future. But we just want to celebrate Mr. Jared as much as we can and send all the positive vibes we can to Ms. Debra and Jason and Jennifer and Jeff and the whole Jarrett family and just our thoughts and prayers are with them and uh it's the end of an era man and I for one hope that Mr. Lawler has a speedy recovery and we can hear from him about Mr. Jarrett a little more some other time but today we're going to be talking about Super Brawl 8 WCW is hotter than ever here in early 1998 and the concern is what's happening on the other channel with Mike Tyson and you've told the story here several times

that when Zane Bresloff called you and you've even told us you remember where you were what road what car all of that when you got the call you never believe what they're doing it's Mike Tyson well Dave Meltzer is writing about that and saying with the benefit of hindsight let's look back and see one year prior to 1997 what WCW did with Dennis Rodman and Meltzer would say allegedly it was $750,000 per shot and that maybe the pay-view didn't do the buy rates that WCW had hoped for but regardless of that uncensored which was historically not a hallmarked WWE paper view almost like well we know our March show is going to get beat by

WrestleMania that didn't happen in 1997 one of your B or perhaps one of your C shows censored beat WrestleMania 13 in 1997 and Meltzer is saying you know sort of reflecting back on the prior year even if it wasn't a huge financial boost if you had it to do over again would you and Meltzer would say he guarantees you would have I guess the question is when you see what's going on with Mike Tyson and you know he's going to be the special enforcer but you got Dennis Rodman to commit to being in a match did that feel as if you had done the celebrity thing better than they had? Did you have any regret about the way you had approached the celebrity thing?

Would you have changed anything about the way that all went down with Dennis Rodman and WCW? Absolutely not. Yeah. Absolutely not. And again, Dave has a tendency to project. It's one of my biggest issues with him is his own personal, take on things, kind of overshadows any of the information and the facts involved.

Were we disappointed in the bi-rate? Absolutely freaking not. And I think, you know, what Dave tries, historically what he's tried to do is project the way he would look at a bi-rate and how he would react without any real understanding of how, those of us in WCW he didn't know our expectations he had no idea what our strategies going forward where he had no idea how we valued or didn't value things

he only looked at it from oh they brought in Dennis Rodman at 750,000 which by the way is wrong typically wrong but no man I thought I thought the way we used Dennis I thought the press that we got out of Dennis, the awareness that was created for WCW and Nitro because of Dennis,

I think we, I could have cared less what the buy rate was. To be honest, it didn't matter. It's not like every time we put on a paper view, we were like, we had a gun to her head and we had to do a certain revenue, you know, reach a certain revenue threshold. it wasn't the case. Everything that we, I thought I wouldn't have changed one thing with regard to how we used Dennis. And it wasn't 750 grand, it was a million.

So, and it was worth three times that much to WCW as a brand. And that's the part that people that have never really been in the business can't understand. It's not that they're not smart or they're not intelligent or they're not capable of learning things. It's just that they've never been in the business. that situation so it's not apparent to them how someone like Dennis could have such a powerful

impact on Nitro and WCW as a brand irregardless of whatever the buy rate was it's the buy rates are not the end-all be-all by the way we were making money hand over fist in 97 yeah so it wasn't like I had I was over delivering on my my budget and revenue uh by leaps and bounds So there was no pressure whatsoever in terms of that buy rate. To me, it was all about, okay, how do we advance the brand? How do we make Nitro even bigger than it already was in 1997? How do we establish WCW further as a mainstream property in the eyes of wrestling, or excuse me, mainstream media?

Those were my primary considerations. And I don't think I even thought about. what kind of a buy rate we do. I really don't. I'm not saying that to be dismissive of the conversation about biarrates, but it was like on the list of 10 things that were really important to me

about that pay-per-view and Dennis's involvement, the buy rate was probably at number nine or 10. Let's talk a little bit about the comparison between Mike Tyson and Dennis Rodman. Did you think they were comparable? I mean, Dave is maintaining that Mike Tyson in his opinion was a much bigger star what say you i agree with that i agree with that jennis robin

was getting pretty you know the whole thing with madonna and getting married with wearing a wedding dress and all that i mean dennis was pretty controversial but nowhere near the the level of a mike tyson so i i would agree with i would agree with you about that one well we know that we've got another big show coming up. The Inoki retirement show is going to be scheduled for April 8th, and it's billed as New Japan versus NWO Japan. And in our Wolfpack episode, you talked a little bit about building NWO Japan abroad at the time because the NWO was just dominating the ratings here in the States. From a business standpoint, or a strategic business standpoint, we'll call it, can you lay out the importance of NWO, Japan, and how you would try to weave that into a

storyline here? Well, I mean, generally, yeah, I can. The idea was to strengthen and grow the relationship with New Japan. On a personal level, Inoki and I were close. We were, he didn't take me out to dinner any time I was in Japan, just he and I. But we got along very well. I think he respected what I had accomplished in WCW because he had seen what had happened before me. and he was seeing what was happening under my watch.

And I think he respected me. I think he respected my honesty. Again, when I first started doing business with New Japan, I had a lot of repairs to do. Bill Watts had really, really damaged that relationship. There were some financial chenanigans. And there was, New Japan had an extremely bad taste in her mouth. when I made my first trip over there to try to resurrect that relationship.

And by the way, at that time, they didn't know me. I literally came from out of nowhere for them, right? They may have seen me as an announcer or something, but to be the guy that was in charge of WCW, to be the president of WCW at that time, they were very skeptical. It's one of the reasons that I brought Sonny with me to help me manage. And there's nothing Sunday could do in terms of my credibility over there,

but in terms of helping me to understand how best to present my case, meaning how best to convince New Japan that Bill Watts was Bill Watts, that relationship was what that was. I want a clean slate. I had to get them to trust me. And part of that is understanding their culture and understanding the way they looked at WCW because the Japanese business culture, not just in wrestling,

but the Japanese business culture is way different than American business culture. And I knew that going in, and I knew that I had to learn. And Sonny was there as a liaison to help me as best he could. You know, Sonny didn't have a lot of experience doing business in Japan. Sonny left Japan when he was, I think, in his teens. But understanding the Japanese culture was,

very important part of that. I also had Brad Riggins. Brad Riggins was working with Masa Saido. Brad was really the American liaison for all of the American wrestlers that would come over from the United States to Japan. They would all go through Brad. And Brad would coordinate with Masa Saido in New Japan. Masa Saido and Inoki really trusted Brad Riggins a lot. Like they they looked up to Brad. And since I had known Brad since high school and had a relationship with Brad and obviously Brad and I got along very well

and Brad trusted me, Brad helped facilitate that. Brad Riggins really had a lot more to do with us, us meaning WCW, being able to really foster that relationship and repair it than almost anybody, and he did. And now we're, you know, fast forward. Now we're in 1997, the NWO is getting, growing by leaps and bounds.

It took off in Japan. It's, you know, and I don't know what things are like today. You know, everything changes. But back then, if it was American, the Japanese loved it, whether it's fashion or whatever it is, You know, the Japanese aspired to a lot of the American pop culture, even though the real cultures were different.

But if it was, you know, you'd go over to Japan. Here's an example. You go over to Japan. You go buy a hotel. And it's the name of the hotel is in English. It would be like Hotel Skyrock, like something that made no sense. But it would be in English, right? Because the Japanese, oh, that's an American style of hotel.

We'll go there. But by 1997, because the NWO was so hot, it was taking off like crazy in Japan in terms of merchandise sales and everything else, it became, okay, well, how do we do the same thing that we've done so well here in the United States? How do we do that in Japan? And that's what that was all about. having, you know, NWO in Japan gave us the opportunity to participate, to perform there more often instead of once a year or twice a year. Now, because it's storyline driven and they had their own NWO Japan characters, and they had their own storyline within their company based on the NWO. It just enabled us to do a lot more cross-promotion, which was better for everybody. It was better for WCW.

It was better for our talent. it was much better for new japan and it was i did an interview it was over when masasaito passed away a few years ago i went to um a ceremony you know honoring him with with his wife mitchi in a group of japanese obviously that knew massacito and it clearly was sunny and i did an interview with the japanese press while i was there long long long long interview but the reporter, the person that was conducting the interview, and obviously Sonny was there to interpret, as well as Michi,

Michi was fluent English. The reporter told me how much money the NWO merchandise generated in New Japan, and that reporter told all of us that that NWO storyline was the most successful storyline in New Japan history. Wow. So all it did was open the doors, for us to do more together well said i uh i'm glad to have that context um we know that we're going to see uh nakanishi and kojima defeat saito and tenson tens on and uh saito representing n wo

japan we would also see kji muto and masahiro chono defeat nishimura and hashimoto for the tag titles. So it's a it's a big opportunity for them. And these are not characters that you saw on a regular basis on WCW programming, but the NWO man still making money globally at that point. Let's focus on the Monday Night Wars on February 2nd. We had a 4.93 rating here for Nitro and a 7.51 share. And you follow it up with what Meltzer called not only its best nitro show but also the strongest marquee matchup they could have had it was a double headliner hogan versus savage and the steiners winning the tag titles from hall and nash it does a 4.6 and a 6.9 one share meanwhile compare that to what's happening on raw

they're getting a 3.45 share or sorry rating and a 3.2 rating so man you're just dominating 4.93 to 3.45 and then 4.60 to 3.20. At this point, early 98, I know you said, man, it felt different when they got Tyson, but you're still handily winning. Like, it's not even close. When did you start to really get nervous or feel the effects? Or did you know it was just coming once you heard about Tyson? I think what I saw the way they used Tyson. You know, that pull apart at the end and that confrontation between Austin and Tyson and Mr. McMahon, the character, that was so real and so believable. And keep in mind, just a couple months before that is when Vince famously came out,

did that interview and basically told everybody that they're going to take a different approach to creative and no longer. Good guys versus bad guys. Yeah. I mean, what he was really doing was throwing in the flag on his teen and preteen business model that he had enjoyed for such a long time and was so successful for him because he was getting his ass kicked by what we were doing. And he was forced to change. And I'm not saying that to put myself over. It is what it is. You can go back and look at it and look at the differences

in the WWE product following that promo that took place in November of 97. And now you're starting to see it in the first and second quarter of 98 what that change is really going to mean. And it became more reality-based. It became edgier. The fact that they brought in Mike Tyson in and of itself, given his history and some of the baggage that came along with him, made him even more controversial. And it was definitely appealing to an 18 to 49-year-old demo, which we have been dominating even at this point. And McMahon was willing to abandon his teen and preteen strategy, adopt what was working so well for us, and executed in a way that made me go, oh, this is going to leave a mark. Because that scene with McMahon and Austin and Tyson,

that was powerful. I knew, and that was the beginning of the Mr. McMahon character. That was the beginning of the issue between Mr. McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin. That was the, that was act one, if you will, of that storyline and what would become the Attitude Arrow, which all of it, again, a reaction to what had been happening for the last two years on Monday nights. And I knew, I mean, it was so well executed, so well executed. I knew when I saw it, okay, now we're in for it. And it took a while. We were still well through, early, mid-98, I think we were still. you know, still winning in the ratings. I don't know that we were dominating as much as we had

because after Tyson, McMahon, and Austin, a lot of my audience, a lot of Nitro's audience, went, ooh, maybe we should check this out. For the first time, there was something actually happening on Monday Night Raw that the audience that we had dominated for such a long time were now going, I think I want to check these guys out too, but that didn't happen until I think we're on a,

middle of 98, if I'm not mistaken. Hey guys, it's the hardcore legend Mick Foley here, and I need to call a quick timeout, a brief timeout, because I wanted to tell your listeners what I have been telling Foley is pod listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening over on ad-free shows.com. Ad-free shows gives you early ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcast, including the snake pick. with Jake Roberts. This week, the snake welcomed the devil himself,

Kevin Sullivan, to the program. I'm ready to go out, and I see Ming coming back. And all of a sudden, they threw a cinder block and hit him on the shoulder from the roof. He dropped to a knee, but he just shook it off and came in. And they hit him in the head who had killed him. David Crockett joins Conrad for an all-new edition of The Book, as they go day by day through February, 1985,

with the help of Jim Crockett's original book. And what a pivotal month it was, as WrestleMania 1 is right around the corner, and Jim Crockett Promotions is running in Vince's own backyard. In that area, knew him, knew his reputation. It's a working class audience. They like the style of our wrestling, and you put Dusty and Backland together. They're, you know, opposites, but they attract, and they make it work. make it work. This month marks the 35-year anniversary of one of the most memorable angles in wrestling history, the famous twin referee angle on the main event. And ad-free

shows members got to watch it back live alongside Earl Hebner on our latest premium watch-along event. I got to dress, I got to use Andre's dressing room after all this happened. And Andre just loved me. I mean, he just wanted me basically always be a dress. And Hogan, like that. love me to death. That's just a small taste, a sampling, if you will, of what we have waiting for you with four levels to choose from four. See for yourself why ad-free shows is the best value in wrestling today. Sign up now, right now, at ad-freeshows.com. Yeah. So let's talk about um wcw merchandise from the the show in el paso which did that 4.93 rating or i'm sorry this is the

one that was the week after my apologies uh you do a sellout 9,000 85 fans it's a hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars at the gate but nearly a hundred grand in merch 99,635 I feel like we often talk about paid attendance and gate we don't have often delve into the merch but merch is such a significant line item i mean let me just run those numbers again you sold the building out and at max capacity that's a hundred and sixty eight thousand nine hundred and forty dollars but those same people reach in their pockets one more time and pull out 99,635 that is unbelievable dude when you really think about percentage wise folks are spending a lot of folks spent as much or more on Merck's than they did on tickets.

Yeah, I mean, that you were looking, and it's funny because merchandise sales used to be reported a lot along with, you know, ticket sales. Right. And I don't read the dirt sheets anymore, Dave. So I don't know if he still on it or not. I don't report it like that. Because that's a really good indicator. Yeah. Sometimes more.

That's, it's not more than anything else, but it's a very, very good indicator in terms of where you're really going sometimes more accurate than even a gate or even a rating right it's it tells you what the audience is feeling sometimes more accurately than anything else and you know you go back to 1992 1993 you know wcW would be lucky if we would do three dollars ahead on average in merchandise. Lucky. That would be considered a home run. And in this case, we're doing almost $10 ahead on average. That's for us that was unheard of. It was unheard of. We'd always hear about how well WWE's merchandise were doing. And it was always something that we all, man, I wish we could do that. How do we do that? How do we get there? And we got there. And what felt like

overnight it wasn't but it felt that way it was it was exciting exciting time let's uh let's let's circle back to a conversation you and i had once before because we talked about when you first took over wcw that merch wasn't even really a substantial line item i mean you just said it there it was barely three dollars we would be lucky to get it so when you would negotiate the contracts with these guys they didn't have any faith or confidence that they would get those sort of royalties. And maybe you had the same lack of confidence that they would get those same type of royalty checks.

So you just build it in almost like a totally different structure that assumes they're going to sell almost nothing merch wise. So it's more of a guarantee and it's just built in. Whereas we know that over on the other channel, guys would say we never knew what kind of year we were going to have until we got our WrestleMania payoff. Right. Then you hear guys like JR say,

he remembers once for one quarter he handed Austin a check for over a million dollars just for t-shirts that had not yet happened for WCW but now it is starting to happen but you still paid some royalties through court documents that were released that David Bixen span was able to compile several years ago we can tell that Hulk Hogan that year made 52,000 dollars in royalties for merch sting made 29,000 ddp made 12,000 uh Scott hall Kevin Nash and Lex Lugar all came in about three grand and a giant and Randy Savage only made about a grand and I'm sure from the outside looking in a lot of folks would say well boy WCW was really ripping them off on their merch I would argue to say well you probably built

that into their guarantee that be fair to say absolutely I mean when you go back to I mean yes yes and more yes it would be fair it again this is the part that's sometimes hard for me to articulate. But when we brought Hulk Hogan in and we negotiated his contract, for me to sit down and say, well, we're going to give you a percentage of the pay-per-views. We're going to give you a percentage, you know, a large percentage on merchandise. Didn't mean a thing. Or Kevin Nash or Scott Hall or Randy Savage. None of that meant anything to anybody because we didn't have a, we didn't have any track. We didn't have a track record. great, you're going to give me 50% of all my merch.

What did you do in merch last year? 300 bucks? Right. The same was true with pay-per-views. You know, the WWE had structured very successfully, basically an incentive program. You know, it was a revenue share. You got a minimal guarantee, if at all,

but you got paid off how well the houses did. You got paid off, you got paid on how well your merch you got paid on, you know, where you were positioned on a pay-per-view. A lot of that was discretionary, which is the reason why a couple of guys came over because it was really just up to Vince to give you whatever and felt like you should get at that point. We didn't have any of that. It's much like Tony Cotton and now in AEW.

You know, Tony's had to write some really big checks to get some of those top guys, especially guys that had been in WWE that were used to getting some of those big merchandise checks or big pay-per-view bonuses or all of that rev-share that WWE still does to this day. Well, when some of that talent, you know, we'll use John Moxley as an example, comes over to AEW, guess what? Tony doesn't have any, he can't project what he's going to be able to

rev-share with somebody off merchandise or pay-per-views or anything else because he's starting from scratch. You don't have any history. You're starting. That was the same thing was true with WWW. week, which is why, and it's funny, I used to get criticized to death, those, up those guarantees, putting all those people under contract with all those big guarantees, it was like I was Satan for doing that, you know, to the wrestling business. Well, I had no choice.

If you want those big stars to come to WCW or in AEW's case, if Tony wants some of those big stars to come over to AEW, he's going to have to pay them somewhere. what close to what they could expect to make in WWE, even though a lot of that is licensing and merchandising and pay-per-view bonuses. Tony doesn't necessarily have that track record. So what does he do? He guarantees the money.

It's the same thing that I did because we didn't. We couldn't entice people with a revenue share model because we weren't making any money. Again, 94, 93. When I took, when I became executive producer, WCW had only generated $24 million in gross revenues and in the process lost $10 million. So what kind of revenue share opportunity did we have to offer? We didn't. So we had to offer guarantees. Well, I'll tell you what, we'd like to offer a guarantee.

You're going to love athletic greens. Eric and I have been using this product for years. My wife actually started us on it right before the pandemic. And man, we have never stopped. It's a regular part of our routine. And it's for you. If you're looking for better gut health or more energy, maybe you want to optimize your immune system. Maybe you hate taking pills or vitamins. Maybe you just want a supplement that actually tastes great. We can't recommend AG1 enough. Now, what is this stuff? Well, with one delicious scoop of AG1, you're going to be absorbing 75 high quality vitamins. minerals, whole food, source, superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens, everything you need to

start your day right. It's a special blend of ingredients to support that gut health, that nervous system, that immune system, that energy, that focus, that recovery, that aging, all of your things, y'all. Think of it as like your all-in-one nutritional insurance. It's also lifestyle-friendly. It'll work with keto or paleo or vegan or dairy-free or gluten-free. It's got less than one gram of sugar, no GMOs, no nasty chemicals, no artificial, anything. and hey, somehow it still tastes great.

It supports better sleep quality and recovery and also supports mental clarity and alertness. It's also got over 7,000 five-star reviews. So right now, Eric and I think it's time for you to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills or supplements to look out for your health. And to make it easy, athletic greens 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 got to do is visit athletic greens.com slash 83 weeks. Again, that's athletic greens.com slash 83 weeks to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Eric, we love us some AG1 in these parts. Do we not? We do. And I've noticed since I've been more disciplined about taking it every morning,

you know, a lot of times I'd skip it on the week. weekends for whatever reason. But I've kind of upped my AG1 game a little bit. And my ability to focus and pay attention to details when it comes to anything that I'm doing business-wise has really been enhanced greatly. And I think a lot of that has to do with AG1. And AG1's effectiveness and efficiency in helping your digestive system metabolize the vitamins and nutrients and all the things that are in the food that you eat. And in my case, as WayJ will tell you, you know, we eat pretty healthy here. We really focus on that. But AG1 really improves my mental game dramatically. And I think it's just because I'm able to better metabolize

a lot of the vitamins and nutrients that we do take in. So I'm a firm believer. And by the way, I want to do a quick shout out. Josh Henney is in the hospital. had some issues, but it looks like they're kicking them out. It's probably being a pain and he asked to the nurses, Josh, I encourage you when you get home, you're getting out of the hospital, brother. If there's ever a time to focus on your health, do it. And if I were you, I'd be ordering me some AG1 right away and watching what I'm eating. Athletic greens.com forward slash 83 weeks.

Let's talk about Chavo Guerrero Sr. There's a dark match here for this. El Paso show where you actually have Chavo Senior come in and penned Dave Taylor. Did you get a chance to spend any time with Chavo Senior? I know everybody listening to this is familiar with Chavo Jr. But you had Senior on the show. You remember meeting him? Yeah.

And I had met him before. I think I met him in AWA. So it wasn't the first time we had met. But yeah, you know, Chavo Senior was all the Guerrero were very personable people. um they were easy to talk to they were they were they were outgoing you know and and chavo senior was no different and he was he was a cool dude but yeah i had met him first in a w a way so i was pretty familiar with chavo senior let's talk about some pretty controversial topics since we're talking about the latin market with chavo senior eddie guerrero it's written in the

observer is going to come to you trying to get a release and it's written in the observer that you snapped at him but later you did you do it's written in the observer that you snapped at him but later you did apologize and you know this is going to be a theme there's going to be problems with eddie for a while here in wcw we know he's going to ultimately leave i guess two years later a little less than two years later but do you remember this circumstance of uh maybe the wheels coming off with some of the not your main eventers but the guys who had helped make nitro so fun eddie being near the top of that list maybe he was feeling frustrated and it comes and asked for a release and uh apparently you uh maybe you're feeling the stress pop off and then later

apologize what do you remember of this circumstance nothing okay not saying didn't happen i'm not suggesting it did either oftentimes dave's reporting is quite suspect they've probably heard from somebody that heard from somebody else something happened so he reported it as fact like he saw it um Eddie and I, look, Eddie was very passionate. He could be stubborn. I was the same way. You know, I could put up with a lot,

but when people crossed a certain line with me and the way they presented their issues with me or whatever, I would react. And there were more than, more than once with Eddie, we got into it pretty strongly. But once it was, was over, it was over. It was a little bit like Kevin Nash and I. You know, Kevin and I got into it often, not often. We got into it, though, and it would turn into something kind of ugly a couple

times. But once we worked through it, boom, it's over. Let's go grab a beer. Talk about what we're going to do next week. And it's like it never happened. And it was kind of the same thing with Eddie. I don't recall Eddie. Now, is it possible that Eddie was pissed off in El Paso that night? Sure. Is it possible that Eddie and I got into it? And maybe I got a little more heated than I probably should up. Sure. I could see that happening. But I don't know if it was over a release.

That's the part I'm suspect about. Well, where there's smoke, there's fire. Conan does an internet chat in this era. And boy, he pisses you off because when asked, he praises the creative direction of the WWF. And even remarks that WCW isn't interested in pushing the Mexicans. and that when their contracts are up in a couple of years, he expects they'll all try to go to the WWF.

Now, I bring this up because we're just a few months removed from Halloween Havoc 97, or as the story goes, the plan was for you to have Ray lose his mask to Eddie Guerrero. Ray pleads eventually the same day, you have a change of heart and decide to go a different direction. Ray wins the match,

keeps the mask. but now as we get ready for super brawl now it's hoovintoot's turn and hoovintude is about to lose his mask to chris jericho and hovintude i believe would contend that he was under the impression he's going to have a run with the title and then this big meaningful feud and there's going to be some circumstance and some some context and some stakes and now hey you're losing the mask this weekend it's super brawl um so i could see why conan would feel like a lot of the losing of stars were in their feelings, were you hearing that and was it important to you at the time and with the benefit of hindsight, was you handle it differently?

Was it important to me? Of course, it was important to me because the cruiserweight of vision was an important aspect of Nitro. And while I appreciate it more now than I did then, I still appreciated it then. I don't mean to imply that I didn't really think much of it or I didn't realize how significant it was. the reason I put it in the crossover hour, which is in a sense the second main event position

when you're on a two-hour show. And so I knew how valuable they were. And I knew what a contribution that they were making. But here's where, you know, when you asked me, you know, would I have handled it any differently? I'd like to think I would have. But that wasn't all on me. Now, Conan and I are tight.

I do a show on a regular basis. I find him to be a fascinating guy to talk to. I have a lot of respect for Conan. But I was waiting on it. I heard that butt coming. There was a time. Because Conan was the, he was the middleman, right?

He was the liaison between all of the lucidors that lived in Mexico, that were coming in from Mexico, NWCW. If Huvintu was promised a run with the title, I can assure you it didn't come from me. Could Kevin Sullivan maybe have implied it or suggested it? Maybe, maybe not. Or was that Conan, especially when he's putting over WWF

and talking about how the luchadors are going to want to cross over to WWF when their contracts are up? That's all negotiating. That's just gamesmanship. And Conan was good at it. Conan would stir the pot. Conan was a real challenge. But I had no choice, man.

He had the relationships. And we didn't. And a lot of the luchadors didn't speak English, right? Some did. Some did, but convinced me they couldn't, right? That was like one of the big ribs on me early on. so you know one of the things that conan did i think to keep himself really important in that equation is oh man these guys don't they don't they don't understand what you're talking about you

go through me and i'll you know in the beginning it worked out great but um it got a little sketchy there for a while and i'll never forget there was and i don't remember which one of the guys it was which one of the lichadors it was but it was one of the ones i didn't think spoke english i was totally didn't and i can walk into the locker and when i heard him having a conversation with one of the wcw guys and you know while it wasn't perfect english he spoke English. I'm getting played here a little bit, but that's cool.

Now I know what I know. But look, I don't think all of that was on me. I think there was a lot of gamesmanship involved with Conant. And that probably resulted in a lot of the friction. But I can assure you, you know, I never promised him to Grerer.

He was having to run with a title. Well, I think the implication specifically is that there was going to be a longer, more substantial program with Jericho, and maybe one where Jericho would put, put his hair on the line and it just feels like we maybe rush this storyline a little bit would that be a fair criticism that at times we could well we had this great idea and maybe it was going to be a seven week story but we need something tonight and we talked a lot at the top

of the show about sammy zane and the current bloodline storyline about how great it is and how much credit being quote unquote disciplined uh mattered there do you think maybe at times we lacked discipline during the monday night wars on the wcd side of things no without question okay of course yes I'd be a fool to try to argue otherwise yeah um yeah i won't even try to make an excuse as to why i mean yes it's like you know we've been on this treadmill you know it's going two and a half miles an hour it's pretty comfortable you can you can you can still walk and talk on that treadmill without working too hard at it and then in a very short period of time that treadmill's doing eight miles an hour and you haven't cooked you're not

really in shape to run eight miles an hour on a on a treadmill and you're just trying to catch up that's where we were we went from relative obscurity in the rest of we were we were like a distant number two in many respects to being number one in what felt like over and And as a result, there wasn't as much discipline in storytelling. It's one of the reasons why I put the bloodline over, regardless of how impactful the NWO story was. And I don't think the bloodline will impact the business. Or maybe it will. I'm hoping it will.

But in all the likelihood, two or three years from now, people still think very finely of it, but you're not going to see bloodline merchandise around the world. Okay, like you still do to this day with the NWO merchandise. That's fair. I don't think the bloodline storyline will have the major impact on wrestling that the NWO storyline did. But as far as a storyline, you can't compare the two. Bloodline is light years ahead of the NWO because of its discipline. And we didn't have that in WCW.

It was not saying we booked week to week. We tried to book pay-per-view to pay-per-view. And in some cases, we held out certain stories, certain aims. A stories, we would hold off for longer periods of time. But everything underneath those A stories was, uh, month to month would be generous in some cases, in some cases it was week to week. Let's talk about something that's not going to be any fun for us to discuss, but we should because Oh, well, I can't wait.

Let's do that. Unfortunately, it's Louis Piccoli. Right. Uh, there's a great storyline happening here. Louis Spacoli is position. is essentially Scott Hall's lackey. Scott Hall has been in a feud with Larry Zabisco for what seems like forever at this point. And now it's going to pay off with a match. It's going to be Spacoli versus Zabisco at Super Brawl. But sadly, it doesn't happen because

Louis passes away. Last time we would see him wrestle would be February 9th Nitro from El Paso. And when Dave Meltzer wrote about his passing. He referenced that some of his friends had been razzing him at his home in California about all the weight gain he had put on and his messy appearance. And Louis would say, well, that's because my character is like Chris Farley of wrestling. And you've even heard Tony Chivani use that phrase and say he was going to be like our Chris Farley. Unfortunately, the drugs that maybe he had a problem with back in ECW and maybe back in the WWF, They catch up with him here.

He passes away in his 20s, just way, way too young. Meltzer would even say Spicoli had taken 26 somas, a prescription sleeping pill slash painkiller that is the drug of choice and the wrestling profession today. The drugs are easily obtainable through noted quote unquote Mark Doctors, who want to be friends with celebrities, a.k.a. modern days of Horians. He combined the pills with drinking a lot of wine.

Apparently, it was the only beverage in his house at the time. and it was his normal daily routine to get to sleep and by no means was this a suicide attempt according to Meltzer but he would take 15 of these summers and it wouldn't even affect him so he would take 25 to 30 every night just to get to sleep because he's built up such a tolerance and for recreation he would take more later but eventually he would lose count And once that wine buzz kicked in, he would just start taking more indiscriminately. And it catches up with him here. Did you know of his rumored drug issues when he first came into WCW or did you find out the hard way here?

I mean, I'd heard it, sure. But like a lot of things, you know, that you hear, um, didn't necessarily register real high on my richer scale. Right. A couple things, though, and Dave's stellar reporting, Soma isn't a painkiller. It's a muscle relaxer. Yeah. And it's not an opiate.

But it is a muscle relaxer. And what I did here and found out to be true was that a lot of those, a lot of the somas weren't coming from wrestling mark. doctors was Mexico right they were coming over from Mexico I mean in particularly in Spacoli's case um he'd come because you could get him over the counter in Mexico you don't even you didn't even need a prescription like a lot of things that you need prescriptions here for in the U.S you can literally walk across the border and buy it in a drugstore and bring him back to the United States um that's where the soma's in Spacoli's case were coming from and

Louis would make trips down to Mexico and bring back buckets of somas and then share them with the people he shared them with. But the indications of somas, you know, I've seen, I don't want to mention any names, especially for people that aren't around, because it doesn't matter. The names don't matter. But I was sitting across, I was eating dinner after a show with a major talent, sat down, and this particular talent at that point in time was really, really watching the alcohol consumption, very careful about it,

and had like one beer, ordered a meal, food came, sat down, we're in the middle of a conversation, and he's just face planted in his food. I mean, he was having a perfectly normal conversation. There was no indication that he had been drinking or was on any pills. I mean, he was speaking no different than you and I are right now. right completely lucid and then he just started his head would just move around a little bit

boom face plant right into his food and i i found out later on that it was soma's and where they came from and that was that that's what happened a lot of times with somers and i started seeing it more and more because now i knew what i was looking for and you could see guys that you know show up after the show and i'll go to watch the replay at the hotel bar that was kind of standard operating procedure one minute they're fine 30 seconds later they're passed out in a corner that was soma in terms of how many you know louis took and all that i i don't know and i'm not sure that dave knows unless there was an autopsy report or something right but um yeah it it happened a lot and a lot of it was because guys would do things to

get themselves up you know whatever that was prescription or otherwise and it at the end of the night they had to slow it down and somers and alcohol was a great combination for that unfortunately in louis's case he went to sleep forever he's not the only one it's such a shame man uh melzer would report that when the police arrived to louis home they theorized that the wine had multiplied the effects of the somas by as much as tenfold and of course this is happening in february just back in october a handful of months prior is when we lost Brian Pillman. Unfortunately, at the time, it felt as if drugs were a quote-unquote

WWF problem because we hadn't seen this sort of thing in WCW, but now we've got a death on your watch. Is this something, I hate that we're talking about this in such terms, and I apologize if this is not as sensitive as perhaps it should be. But when you're captaining the ship and you're answering to the North Tower or whatever we want to call it, the Turner executives. Having a death on your watch like this,

does that raise a red flag or is it business as usual? To suggest it's business as usual, nobody cares, nobody thinks about it as unfair. No, when anytime somebody that works with you in any capacity passes away, people take notice. Right.

Now, Louis hadn't been, in WCW very long and certainly was not a high profile, you know, performer. But he was on the roster. He was getting paid by WCW. And yes, he died. And yes, it was from abuse of prescription drugs or in this case, drugs that didn't require prescription, but were brought over from Mexico. Yeah, we paid attention.

Yeah, we discussed it. But here's, you know. this is the part where I can get a little pissed off. So I'm going to be careful. Every talent that worked for WCW was an independent contractor. Yeah. And as such, WCW, Turner Broadcasting, only had so much control over their lives.

Certainly while they were in the building and performing for us, absolutely. We had a lot of control over. them but once they left the building I'm not sure what WCW could have done legally independent contractor or otherwise it makes it more difficult as an independent contractor for a lot of reasons but even as an employee if somebody abuses a prescription there's only so much we could do right or we'd be

in breach of contract But again, people that aren't in the business don't understand that because I've never had to deal with that issue. So, you know, in the case of Scott Hall, it was a little different situation because Scott would show up and ebriated. That gave, I'm sorry? He wasn't capable of performing. Right. And that gave us a little bit more latitude in terms of what we could do or try to do. Right.

But with a guy like Louis who smuggles somers over the border on his own time and abuses them in his own home and dies, I'm not exactly sure what anybody would think WCW could do about that other than to feel bad about it as anybody would to try to communicate to the people that were under contract as independent contractors, guys, you've got to pay attention. These things will get you. but if they're prescription, you know, it's not like somebody would, it's not like Louis was, you know, in the back of the building, shooting up heroin.

Right. But yeah, we, we noticed it, talked about ways we could encourage people not to do it, but from a strictly contractual perspective, what is it we could have done? You can argue, and it would be a fair argument, that if we knew somebody was abusing, and by the way, it wasn't apparent, you know, Louis didn't show up smashed.

Louis didn't show up incapable of working, quite the opposite. Louis, when he showed up for work, he was ready to work. Right. How do you manage someone's personal life as an independent contractor? I don't know. All we can do is try hard to encourage him not to do those things. Now, we could have said, oh, you're under contract, we're just not going to use you. We're going to keep paying you, but we're not going to use you because we suspect your

abusing prescription drugs now we're now we're now we're now we're now we're up for a breach of contract it's a very complex situation it's not like you it's it's it's just different i can't explain it any further than it Tony shivani has said that he recalls there being one story in particular where you guys were at a quote unquote company hotel after television taping and security starts banging on Tony's door. He opens the door and they ask him, do you know this man? And it was a very inebriated or under the influence, Louis Piccoli, trying to climb the walls. Chivani got Terry Taylor and they put him in his bed and had him sleep at off.

Of course, we know ultimately Louis passed away in his sleep. But I'm curious, was there some sort of a protocol? for circumstances like that within the office or was this an era where it was very much you don't quote unquote rat on the boys because i know there's always been a conversation in wrestling where there's office and then there's the boys and in an effort to maybe not let one of the other guys get in trouble maybe we did a disservice by not raising our hand what can you speak to about that if anything i think that would have been a that would have been a situation where

WCW would have been well within their right to suspend or cut. I don't know that we could suspend people. I don't know that contracts allowed for suspension. But certainly could have cut him because now he's in a WCW hotel.

WCW paid for that hotel. Right. And he was there under our employee yes. In that particular evening. That gave us much more latitude. And I think that situation we did WCW did did do as a service. Terry Taylor did and so did Tony Chivani. I'm not bringing it to HR. We're not bringing it to me. We're not bringing it to

Diana Myers or Nick Lambros and saying this is what happened. So this is the first time I've heard of that. Right. But if if someone in management isn't aware of it, how would you know? Yeah. Yeah. I leave my crystal. a ball at home whenever I travel. I want to be clear. I'm not, uh, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not wagging my finger at you. Oh, no, no, no. I don't know. And I'm not taking it as you are. It's just it, it's, it's, it's a frustrating conversation to have. And as it should be, you know, because you want to help people. You want to do the right thing. But there is a limit to what we can do. Even with people in our own family and friends and associates, you know, there's a limit to what you can do. But in the

case that you just described, that would have been an opening for WCW to take action. We could have under those circumstances. Whereas of the earlier discussion about Louis doing something at home, that's different. Sorry. I mean, it's a horrible thing, but what can we do about that? Did we assign them a babysitter 24 hours a day? You have a cop following them around? I mean, you've got to be realistic. But in this situation, where you just described, WCW would have been well within your right to make a move. Meltzer would say in the wake of Spacoli's death, WCW would test about a dozen or so undercard wrestlers,

about 28% of whom came up positive largely for either marijuana or steroids. There were no suspensions as WCW policy is for them to attend an educational class on first offense, but wouldn't such a high percentage of positives indicate a company with more serious problems and almost demand full-scale regular testing to make an attempt to get it under control. So let's just time out there. you know we we have a really small sample size here some of the math doesn't make sense I don't know if we have about a dozen or so when we're saying about 28% came up positive and largely for marijuana or steroids guys just the math on that means it's

three or four guys and largely for this or that there's so it's fuzzy reporting to say the least but I am curious how serious did company-wide testing discussions get with WCW. I ask simply because we're only a few years removed from the big steroid trial that Vince O'Man was dealing with. Do you remember how far down the road that got and what was implemented, if anything? Yeah, it got very serious. Harvey Schiller, to his credit, and I may get some of this wrong,

but Harvey Schiller was a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. and as such was very knowledgeable and took part in some of the testing procedures that screened athletes for performance-enhancing drugs. Harvey had a relationship with one of the doctors that the Olympics used to test athletes. And this particular doctor at that time, when we're talking about the late 90s, had the testing technology and the ability to detect drugs that a lot of other doctors and testing facilities just didn't have. Right.

The Olympics had a much more sophisticated and rigorous testing policy. So Harvey, and I wasn't involved in this, and Harvey wanted it that way. He didn't want me involved. And it'll make sense why in a few moments. But Harvey is as president of Turner Sports, and I report. to Harvey, even though I was president of WCW, I reported the Harvey Schiller. Harvey took charge of that one, along with Diana Myers and Nick Lambros and instituted a much stricter policy and used this particular doctor that

Harvard, and the doctor had a service. It wasn't just one doctor. He had a staff that traveled around. And we did institute a much more rigid and credible testing. regimen and protocol at that point in time we uh we know on screen we're going to have tony chivoni ask larry zabiscoe on commentary if he has any comments on larry's on on louis fecoli and larry gives an in character answer scott hall mike teney redhart none of these folks address it on camera was that a bischoff decision a turner decision do you

recall just to not really acknowledge it but i mean you did open with a graphic to start the show before we started the show but he was a big part of storylines and then gone and now we're just moving on not saying you should have done anything differently but i'm wondering was there a discussion before the show went to air of how should we handle this there probably was uh before we even left to go to the show and that discussion was probably between myself and diana myers and Nick Lambrose in terms of what we can do, should do, can't do, shouldn't do. And I think the idea was to acknowledge it. I don't recall having a conversation with Larry or not.

I may have. I just don't remember. Well, things are a booming here for WCW. You're up 59.1% in attendance year over year. you're coming off 97 which had a 56% increase from 96 so just every metric is way up you just had a monster show in Boston which has already drawn 18,759 fans it's a sellout $325,000 and it's Hogan versus Sting in the cage match and you try something kind of neat here. It's the first ever internet pay-per-listen event. And then just two nights

later, you run the Alamo Dome, second largest crowd, third-largest gay and company history. 21,21313 fans. Merch is a record. $249,000. It feels as if you have just the mightest touch with WCW at this point. Everywhere you go, it's a new record. And you're even trying new things like pay per listen. Is that a Bob Ryder initiative or how does that come to be? Do you recall? Yes, it would have been Bob. And I've been working with, you know, Bob back when he had his prodigy chat.

And we were always looking for new ways to deliver content, even back then. And, you know, people can criticize me all they want for some of the ideas that maybe weren't so good. but I was always a fan of you. You got to at least try because you never know. You know, if there's a new way of presenting something, if there's a new way of distributing something, you have to try. And it made all the sense in the world to me

to try to do the paper listen. But Bob Ryder would have been a big part of that. I don't know if he came to me with the idea or how the idea actually germinated how it began, but certainly Bob would have been a big part of it. well i'll tell you an idea that i think we can all get behind is manscaped man they're doing beards now eric they've got a brand new beard hedger pro kit and we're excited to tell you about it because now you've already heard everything about manscape right we know all about

the below the belt grooming but now manscape can finally help you make your drapes match your carpet over at manscape dot com when you use the promo code 83 weeks you get 20% off and free shipping here's the reality folks it's time to tame your mane. I see nobody likes a weird beard. So take about all your stubble trouble. Check out Manscapes Probeard kit. It all starts with the beard hedger. And if

you're like me, you've probably had one of these before where you get a beard trimmer and they send you like 20 guards. Well, what do we do with those? They become a renter for a junk drawer in our kitchen or in our bathroom. Like what are you doing with all that junk? All these different guards, all these different sizes. You don't need any of that with the beard hedger. They give you

20 positions of precision with just one guard. It's also waterproof, so you can use it in the shower. It's got single stroke efficiency, meaning that it's tough on hair but smooth on your face, because let's face it, your beard hair is different from your head hair. That's why they even send you beard shampoo and conditioner. And they send you beard oil.

Maybe your beard is brittle or dry. Well, this will fix that and give you a little shimmer and shine, make you look extra fine. How about beard balm? That's going to help you style and moisturize and tame a more sculpted look. They even include three free gifts, a beard brush, a comb, and scissors. You're going to make sure that your beard is ready to impress. So get 20% off and free shipping with the promo code 83 weeks at manscape.com.

That's 20% off with free shipping at manscape.com. And be sure to use the code 83 weeks. Manscaped beard hedger, one stroke, one guard, 20 lengths. we thank Manscape for sponsoring today's program. Let's talk about your old pal, Kevin Nash. He apparently is not too happy. It's written in The Observer that when he first joined the company, since he did quote, unquote, so few moves, my goodness.

He felt the power bomb should be protected and says, Finisher, we don't need a bunch of other guys running around doing this move. I guess that makes sense. And in the middle of this storyline, after the whole sold-out accident where he accidentally dropped the giant on his head. J.J. Dillon comes out and says the power bomb is banned. It's illegal. We're going to find guys. No more power bombs. Somehow Billy Kidman forgets and uses a power bomb in a match. Kevin Nash is quick to point that out on TV, and apparently he's pretty doggone pissed about this in real life.

Like, wait a minute now, we're letting these cruiserweight guys do stuff that's exactly contradictory to one of our primary storylines. And by the way, we're saying I can't use the move. It's my finish. He shouldn't be using it at all. And I kind of see Big Kev's point on this. Do you remember this?

I don't remember it, but obviously it happened. And Kevin would have been right. Right. It would have been absolutely right. Because Kevin did so few moves. He was almost seven feet freaking tall and almost 300 pounds. Even at that time,

he had a dozen knee-ser. he's under his belt. Right. What did the useful idiot think he was going to do? Go out there and do Hurricane Rattas? It's such a stupid thing to say. But Kevin would have been absolutely within his right to be pissed. The Jack and my power bomb was a big move from a big man.

Why would you want to dilute it and make it less significant? The guys, cruiserweight's doing it, and probably is not even a finish. move we see that a lot today right right only those big former finishing moves do we see you know in a in a sequence of 10 or 12 different moves and nobody sells one of them that was starting to happen already in a cruiserweight division because of the difference of style so yeah kevin would have been well with it is right i wouldn't have blamed him being pissed let's talk a little bit about somebody else who's going to have some issues with you

in 1998 rick flick he's supposed to be on thunder on February 5th in Beaumont, Texas to wrestle Eddie Guerrero, but there's some sort of wires crossed, and Flare's not even at the building, and he does wrestle weekend house shows in Texas, and it was, whatever they were going to do on Thunder was going to lead to Flair and Brett teaming up as a team against Hall and Nash. But instead, he's booked on the 10th and the 11th in New York as a part of a toy fair representing WCW, but this is one of those unfortunate circumstances again where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing someone in wcw sent him to the toy fair but they didn't communicate that with the booking committee

so we had different plans and along the way there is discussion about his contract and that flair has in theory agreed to a new three-year deal but he never actually got around the signing the paperwork and the w f is talking on their hotline as if there's a former NWA champion looking to join the NWA of course this is probably just nonsense according to Meltzer but this is two months prior to the big blowup over the April 8th appearance that he was not at and that's when you guys really became unable to communicate were these missteps here which don't appear to be Flair's fault Flares told to do one thing and he's doing it, I suppose at the tour fair, but somehow the booking side thinks he needs to be doing

a match. You can't be two places at once, not exactly his fault, but do you think there were hurt feelings based on this communication that led up to the big blow up two months later or no? I got to get a little clear because it's a little hard to follow that reporting. Okay. So Flair doesn't show up for a Thursday thunder. He's not told to be there.

So he's not there. and the booking committee had him down for a match and then the booking committee also thought he was going to be working tags with brett hard against scott hall and kevin nash in-house shows uh i think those were on tv uh but weekend but that's the 10th and the 11 so he missed uh show would have been on friday so it would have been a tuesday wednesday show is when he's in new york either way the point is maybe we were building to something and now we can't deliver i don't know that brett was working a lot of house shows in that era no this whole thing doesn't make any sense to be honest so he misses the thunder there's no tv on on the weekends right right so whether he made a weekend shot or

didn't make a weekend shot it would have had nothing to do with tv i'm trying to figure out where by based on the story i'm trying to figure out where the conflict was so he misses show the tv there's a big conflict, especially if he booked and advertised for a match as part of a story. That's a big problem. I'm just not sure where the toy fair thing played into it. Flare was scheduled to appear on the February 5th Thunder from Beaumont, Texas, and a singles match against Sadie Guerrero. Don't know what the situation was and where the signals were crossed,

but this time Flare wasn't at the building. Flare did wrestle the weekend house shows in Texas, which would have been Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And at one point, the plan was to shoot an angle in El Paso, which was the Thunder he missed, or I'm sorry, the ninth, which would apparently have led to a Flair and Brett Hart tag team against Holland Nash, but Flair was booked on a toy show in the 10th and 11th in New York. So he wasn't. Okay. So there's, there's two separate issues. Yes.

Flair didn't show up for a, when I say he didn't show up. He wasn't in the building for Thunder. Creative thought he was supposed to be at a Thunder TV. He no showed it for whatever reason, bad communication, whatever, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt in this discussion. Sure. And then secondarily, there was another plan. For the following Monday. He was double booked. Yes.

Okay. That's hard for me to understand because television always took a priority over anything to do with licensing or merchandising. So it's hard for me to, I mean, again, I don't recall the specific incident So it's, and based on the reporting, it's a little tricky for me to try to connect some dots here. But there are two separate issues. One being, if he should have been at TV on a Thursday and wasn't, that's a big issue. Why that happened?

I don't know. I have no idea. It should have never happened. As far as double booking goes, we could certainly chalk that off to really piss poor communication because there was a lot of that going around. Right. There's no question about that. And that might not have been Rick's fault.

As far as missing a thunder, I don't know. I don't, I wouldn't know where to begin to try to figure out how that happened. Do you think any of this, he said, she said, who's on first routine did become something that you had to burn to your saddle about? Like, I know that ultimately it's going to blow up in two months. And I know. Yeah, because it happens again. It happens again. And this time it was.

a bigger issue. Right. I don't think, you know, look, I don't know, because you haven't seen that part of me that gets angry about things yet. It's just not the nature of what we do. But yes, I can get very hot, not as much anymore as I used to. But once it's over, it's over. I don't have a burr under my saddle that I carry around with me. Okay. I don't, I don't, I don't stack. issues until they boil over now I have to really attack my once it's over it's over figure out what caused the problem once you figure it out move on and don't do it again that's kind of always been my approach to things or try as often as I can for that to be my approach to thing

but in the case that we're referring to later on with april that was a bigger issue and I think look every time this story comes up in any way shape or form Rick gets people pissed off all over again like it happened five minutes ago. So if I'm hesitating to get back into it, that's why. But I can certainly tell you that in the case in April, while I didn't carry any baggage with me and I didn't keep the burr that was under my saddle with me, the situation happened to April was far more egregious. And Rick and say whatever he wants to say or feel however he wants to feel,

he was as responsible for that breakdown of communication as anybody in WCW was. I don't think WCW was blameless at all, not suggesting that, nor am I suggesting that Rick should carry all the blame. Right. But there was enough blame to go around in that situation, and that's when it got ugly. But it had nothing to do with what happened two or three weeks before that or months or whatever it was.

well thankfully you're going to get some good news february 16th thrall was preempted for the westminster dog show and nitro does an unbelievable rating 5.1 over three hours 4.75 an hour 1 5.2 an hour 2 and 5.3 and 5 this is high 5s all around is it not we're happy a 5 obviously we were we were very happy It was funny because I think right around this, what was the date on this that this happened? We're on our way. It's February of 98. Yeah, this is right around the time of the up fronts. And I don't think, I don't think the upfronts for cable were going on quite at that point.

They may have been. But I may have talked about this before with you. The Wall Street Journal had a full page ad on the business section of the Wall Street Journal where ABC television was trying to convince advertisers not to advertise in Nitro or in wrestling in general and they had a they had a chart up of the top 10 programs in all of cable not on a given night okay which is what everybody's doing today oh number five for the night freaking deal where were you for the week

because Nitro would typically be in a top two or three even during Monday night football we'd be in a top two three four for the week in cable television. And ABC, which was carrying Monday Night Football at the time, took out a full-page ad trying to convince advertisers going into the up-front season. And the up-front season is where advertisers commit all their dollars for the upcoming television season, the upcoming year.

ABC was trying to convince advertisers not to spend their money in wrestling because wrestling was dominating everything and was eating a big chunk of Monday night football's ass. i just love talking about uh this era but i know it can't all be roses for you we've talked about some of the challenges you know some of the the hurt feelings and melzer would write a lot about that saying it's going to be nearly impossible to keep a hundred wrestlers under contract and everyone happy and we're probably seeing some of that in modern wrestling but we'll leave that just where it is but holke hogan has a lot of power and a

lot of stroke here and apparently he is not yet signed his new deal and melzer would be pretty critical here and saying that there's probably too much hogan on tv in this era but he has the leverage he's trying to get a new deal do you remember feeling like in 98 that maybe hulk was playing his creative card and using that leverage of whether he will or won't sign a new contract maybe taking a little too far or no i never i never felt that way. Good. You know, I never, I was never concerned. I mean, there was, I think we talked about it once on a previous podcast where, um, I think we were in Denver the night. And after the show, you know, typically Tara and I would get together and go out, grab bite to eat or have a beer

or watch it, watch it replay. And, uh, I'll say, like, I got a meeting with Vince. I said, what? He goes, yeah, Vince is in town. Wanted me to come over and meet him. I said, all right. So let me know what happens. And I wasn't worried then. I was never worried or concern that there was any gamesmanship going on. You know, Hulk had an attorney by the name of Henry Holmes, who was a real challenge because he was a really good attorney. And he would make it difficult.

But I was never concerned about signing or not signing. I always knew he was going to stick around. Well, we're glad you got stuck around. because we're over two hours in and we're finally talking about our topic. Super Brawl 8 the show got 30 or I'm sorry 85% thumbs up in the observer only 16% thumbs down 8% thumbs in the middle as a comparison the WWF paper view that month February of 98 was no way out of Texas and it was not good 22% thumbs up 63.8% thumbs down 14.1% thumbs in the middle so as far as creative and just the critical response buddy WCW is delivering in droves here it's a sellout crowd no surprise there 12,620 fans a new city record 310,9774 dollars here at the cow palace $127,000 in merch and Meltzer called it an outdated facility and by the way they're still running wrestling in it today

is just amazing to me that it was outdated 25 years ago let's jump right into it booker t is going to wrestle rick martel and uh he's going to win the television title in 10 minutes and 23 seconds and ultimately this is the match where martel who's fresh freshly back in the wcw here he's uh he's done he's going to blow his knee out early in the match and that's going to be the pretty much the end of his wrestling career um two and three quarter stars. I know you were excited to have Rick Martel back. I know he had quite a following from his WWF days and a lot of success over in Japan. Booker T is clearly on the rise here. I ate the most decorated tag team wrestler in WCW history. Now here he is with the

TV title. We know next is the US and then finally the world. He's got the rocket strapped to him, but Rick Martel going down with injury here after he's only been with the company a short time. total accident not saying it was anyone's fault but less than ideal news no yeah it was it was unfortunate you know i was uh i was a fan of rick mortels uh i was really hoping that he could have been an important part of the team and strategically he was someone that i thought could really help us in canada because we were having a really difficult time being successful in canada there's a lot of different reasons for it but not the least of which is we didn't have a lot of Native Canadians on the show.

And back then, I don't know what it's like today, but back then there were Canadian content rules of television and in order to produce television in Canada, you had to have a certain number of people that were on the production staff that were Canadian. You had to have a certain number of people on cameras, talent, that were Canadian. There was just a lot of issues like that. And it was one of the things we were trying to do to help improve, our position in Canada, much like we were doing in the U.K.

In different parts of the country, where we were trying to build up our ability to tour outside of the U.S. But aside from even the strategic aspect of it, I just liked watching Rick Martell work. He had a great look. He was a great worker. He was a real pro. So I think we're all disappointed when he went down with a bad knee.

The question about it. he's going to wind up leaving wcw in july of 98 and officially retire about a year later um you could tell though booker t man he was he was going to be a big star next up is uh booker t wrestling perry saturn that's right double duty here this one goes 14 minutes and 23 seconds he retains the tv title and only gets a star in a quarter uh melzer would say there's a lack of heat here maybe there's some miscommunication because it does feel like there's a couple of quote blown spots but you're asking a lot of a guy and even the fans to be emotionally invested in one story and one match it ends and now we're going to do it again immediately if you had it

to do over again would you have spaced these out you think definitely yeah definitely formatting is is something that um i guess we got better at it but man formatting the show and the timing of some of these matches and positioning of some of these matches and one of the other things we didn't do really well and we've talked about this a bunch of times

is you know you'd have very similar finishes and matches that were back to back you know that was one along with not having a really good finish man in WCW at the time we weren't really as good at formatting as we should have been either and right this is one great example of that next up is a weird match

but it worked good according to melzer 11 minutes and 41 seconds for disco inferno beating laparca uh 2 and a quarter stars of course the finish is disco inferno's chart buster that's the storm cold stunter so fans are going to pop for that they're working their asses off here uh and listen i know it sounds crazy that i'm saying go watch a disco inferno match but disco and lefarka here had a way better than you expect match just go was capable of having great matches you know he's had this had a character that people found so just aggravating, you know, the Disco character was designed to get a lot of heat and Disco did it so well that sometimes he did it too well and that people didn't look at the quality of his work in the ring. But when Disco was in the right situation,

meaning with the right partner, the right opponent who was capable of going, Disco could up his game and hang with just about anybody. next up we see a j j dillon interview where he's going to reinstate nick patrick and um when he's asked is he going to be the referee for sting and hogan that j j says absolutely not but nick patrick is reinstated and melzer would write in the observer that you guys reached out to johnny cochran and it doesn't materialize but you actually put together a deal for robert shapiro if these names are familiar to you if you're listening to this those were o j simpson's attorneys and so shapiro apparently gets cold feet

i guess maybe someone close to him said man you don't want to associate yourself with pro wrestling it'll affect your image so allegedly he backs out at the last minute you guys try to throw the hail mary back to johnny cochran he hits you with the old prior commitments so you don't get anybody here do you remember this happening and if so would this i i i this is all this is the first this is the first I've heard of this. Never heard of Johnny Cochran in WCW. No. Oh, my gosh.

Could it have been thrown out in a, in a, you know, creative meeting early on? Hey, what if? What if? But no. No. No. No. Well, well, I don't know what to say here.

You can draw your own conclusions. Match number four. Bill Goldberg is going to beat. Brad Armstrong at two minutes and 23 seconds. It was what it needed to be, according to Meltzer, one star. We know what's happening.

Goldberg is on a tear. This tear will continue. He becomes the man for real in July. I'm just glad to see Brad Armstrong on a pay-per-view, even if it is doing a favor. We're in that old classic Armstrong curse t-shirt. Next up, match five. And boy, this is a big one.

Go out of your way to see this one. If you're going to watch one match on this show, I would say make this the one. it's Chris Jericho retaining his cruiserweight title is going to beat Hovintude Guerrero and Hovintude has to unmask Um, Mouser would write Guerrera, who was really upset about losing his mask under these circumstances wore Hoovey forever on his tights. This was easily the best match on the show.

And of course, when he eventually unmasks after losing to the lion tamer, there is a noticeable female pop when the mask came off. But unlike in Mexico, The unmasking wasn't really emphasized at all. Narnity mentioned his real name or reveal his identity. The reason Guerrera at first kept his hair in front of his face when he unmasked was because he wanted to hide the fact that he was crying, particularly when he said how much he loved his father,

since this was a really big deal to him and his family, even though WCW doesn't give a rat's ass about wrestling or family tradition anywhere else. Three and three quarter stars. Yeah, because we are producing television for the United States. Dave. And I know you've never done that, Dave. You've never had the burden or the pressure of producing anything related to the television in the United States. So it would be hard for you to understand why we would focus on that U.S. audience. And I'm not suggesting that we couldn't

have done a better job and maybe make that a bigger deal than we did. We certainly could have done it because all that would have done was raise the stakes. Right. It suggests that we should, should have, you know, gone out of our way to pay homage to the, you know, Mexican wrestling tradition is, that would have been lost on a lot of our audience, by the way. Not everybody's a fanboy like Dave or Mark like Dave, because he is one. So you've got to be a little more balanced and remember where you're producing or who you're producing your show for. But I will acknowledge that we could have done more than we did that we could have done but to suggest that we would have made it a big deal and to fix that we didn't give a rat's ass about history and all that

oh oh i'm trying really hard right now dude i am trying with every fiber of my being not to spend the rest of whatever's left of the show shredding that useful idiot into the little pieces of trash that he really is. Okay. Well, let me ask this. Do you remember who've been to pleading or trying to overturn this? Did he ever request to sit down? Do you remember having a conversation with him? Can you give me any context? Any of that? No, me. No. No. He would have had it with Kevin Sullivan, perhaps. Kevin may have come to me. Um, but we were determined to do what we're going to do. Do I, he was emotional. He was, emotional. I do remember that, but

movie was a very emotional cat. He, he was. Um, but did he request to sit down with me? No, he didn't. Next up is a crazy match. Not necessarily crazy good match. It's Davey Boy Smith wrestling Steve

Mongo, McMichael in six minutes and 10 seconds. And Meltzer would say McMichael went into the match with a legitimate broken wrist or forearm. To explain the injury, they did this match where McMichael punched the ring post and Smith smashed the hand on the steps and the guardrail before putting him in a wrist lock. And he says that this was similar to a match that happened in Pancras back in December. Afterwards, of course, after the ref stops it, McMichael says, hey, I never quit and shoves down

the referee. He gives it a dud rating. I know that Meltzer's critical of the performance they're coming in and wrestling a match with a legitimate broken wrist or forearm against a big old boy like navy boy smith what do we expect right yeah yeah i'd have to go back and watch that show to get a better feel for how that played out um i just don't remember it i hate to say that but next up is ddp retaining the U.S. title over Chris Benoit in 15 minutes and 46 seconds, Meltzer says the crowd didn't seem to know how to react to these guys since neither were former WWFers. Towards the finish, things picked up with Paige doing a superplex off the top rope and a

clothes line off the top for near falls. Benoit came back with the cross face, but Paige made the ropes. Page hits a belly to belly for a near fall. Benoit comes back with three rolling Germans for near falls, and Paige kicks out of the third German and the crowd pops, hoping it would be a win or the crowd booed hoping it would be a win and then page hit a dd for a near fall and then gets the diamond cutter diamond cutter still over man three and three quarters of a stars um this is i love that i love the way this is why he's such a piece of garbage no matter what he does he sets it up with his own take on things right like ddp wasn't over he was over Dave you're an idiot you're not only a fraud you're so transparent you're an idiot

to suggest even in 1998 because you haven't gotten a lick smarter to suggest that the audience didn't react to him because he wasn't a former WWFer if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about that piece of garbage I don't know what would other than the fact that, you know, he's got caught posting stories from people that are impersonating somebody else and he reported him as fact. I mean, there's so many more, I can't believe that anybody reads this guy or pays attention to him. I'm glad they do because I just take, I get so much joy out of trashing him and exposing

him whenever possible. And I try to manage that so I don't do it too often, but he just provides way too many opportunities like this one, even though we're going back to 1990. Neither, the audience didn't know how to react to Diamond Dallas Page or Chris Benoit. I'm sorry, dipshit. They'd been reacting like crazy for both of them throughout 1998. Like the audience in San Francisco, the only ones that don't watch television, they only watch WWE?

I mean, that was such a stupid thing for him to say. But it is fun to make fun of. So I'm glad we talked about it here. match eight is lex luger beating randy savage in seven minutes and 26 seconds of a no dq match even though luger's the baby face the fans are totally behind randy savage the chanting lugar sucks and the biggest pop of the entire show is when lugar racks savage and elizabeth does a run in raking luger's eyes and at this point here comes the n wob team they all team together Uh, there's going to be, um, a DQ here, even though it's a no DQ match.

I don't know. It is what it is. Three quarters of a star, but boy, the fans here love Randy Savage. Of course, I know you take issue with this, but before more this modern era, San Francisco is largely a WWF town. That's probably fair to say, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, not in fact.

probably yeah but i mean with the exception the last two years when you guys got hot this was normally these guys grew up watching randy savage is my point and uh they're behind him next up though is maybe one of the more important angles that we're going to talk about from 1998 because it's the end of an era the outsiders regain the wcd tag titles when they defeat the steiner brothers in four minutes and sixteen seconds and melzer says this wasn't a match at all it's a backdrop for the angle of Scott Steiner turning heel and the angle itself was really good. Scott comes out looking mad and really teasing the turn big time and after knocking the outsiders out of the ring, Rick was running around and kneeled on the ground like a dog

with Scott on top of him and then Scott turned on him and it got a huge reaction. He also decks Ted DiBiase who then posted by Dusty Rhodes. All goes to Penn Rick who kicks out the first time. Scott wouldn't tag him He ends up being overpowered All goes for the edge Simply can't lift him the first time Gets him the second time and that's the pen

And then Scott throws the referee And this is his second bump tonight I guess because Mongo pushed him down too Either way Scott gives the NWO hand signal And climbs the ropes And the crowd is going to boo him heavily So they love the NWO

They love to see the angle but they're booing that the Steiner brothers are breaking up and this is the end of an era i mean we talked about it at the top of the show uh very beginning of the card booker t one half of harlem heat the most decorated wcdb tag team in history but when you think of tag teams in wcd you always think of one a and one b Harlem heat and the steiner brothers the steiner brothers have been here since the very early 90s maybe 90 maybe 89 i don't know a long time and always near the top of the card, always in the hunt. So the idea that they're breaking up,

I don't know, maybe a lot of people weren't ready for that. We know it's about to be the big pop-a-pump era. I think at first we try calling him White Thunder, and then we find something we like a little better. What do you remember about the Steiner breakup where Scott or Rick hesitant to do this? There's a pretty famous story out there that the WWF liked the idea

of Scott Steiner winning the Rumble and going on to get a title shot at WrestleMania and pushing him as a single star and Scott flatly refused he did not want to break up the tag team with his brother that was then this is now timing is everything apparently he's ready because it's happening did you have conversations with the brothers about how this was going to go down and was there any hesitation yes I did because I was pretty close I was closer to Rick than I was with Scott but even at that time I was pretty you know I was a really good term for Scott Yes, we did talk about it and they were both excited about it. I think because they had been to tag team for so long and they had seen so much build around them and so much explosive growth and opportunity around them that I think they were both probably at that point where they want, you know, we've done everything we can do as a tag team. Let's see how it goes. I can't speak for them. I can only tell you that there was absolutely no hesitation on either of their parts, not to me. well next up it's time for our main event

hogan and sting the rematch from starcade they get 16 minutes and 32 seconds hogan is going to dominate most of the match melter's going to be pretty critical saying that his offense is pretty bad uh eventually there's a a ref bump charles robinson comes down so what do you know here comes nick patrick which explains why we saw that earlier in the program and uh hogan is going to leg drop sting patrick's going to count and sting kicks out hogan's upset with patrick for not counting faster hogan starts throwing punches and patrick stops hogan from throwing them and then most of the rest of the match would see hogan go for pins not get them and then argue with

nick patrick about it eventually sting makes the big superman come back hits two stinger splashes goes for the reverse ddt and on the way down hogan kicks patrick who goes down so now Conan, Norton, Bagwell, and Vincent run out. Sting takes them all out. And while this is happening, Savage hits the ring, knocks out Hogan with a spray can. Magically, Nick Patrick is revived and counts as Sting, Penn's Hulk Hogan. And Sting is going to spray paint WCW on Hogan's back, and the show goes off the air. This is a major moment.

There's lots of interference. There's lots of guy guy. There's multiple ref bumps, but it's a big moment and it's a big pay-per-view. Super brawl always felt like maybe it was a step down from Halloween Havoc or Starcade, but it felt like, you know, it's up there. Maybe it's in that bash at the beach level, but if WCW had a big four, Super brawl and Bash at the beach probably rounded it out for me as a fan, what did you think of this story and the creative and was this once upon a time discussed as being not the end of the NWO because that's our money printer

but is this one of the things that helps us pivot into the Wolfpack? Talk us through just the context of this moment and this match. No, I don't think it had anything to do with the creation of the Wolfpack. I think the creation of the Wolfpack had a lot more to do with,

okay, we've got to tell a different story. It's no longer NWO. taking over the world and taking over and trying to control WCW, we've been doing that now for a while. Now we've got to create some inner conflict within the NWO. And that's what the Wolfpack represented. It's really that simple. In terms of the match, just the way you described it to me, it was overbooked. You know, it's one of the things I've said it a hundred times. I'm sure you've heard it, all of them. We sucked at finishes. This is a perfect example of a overbooked overly complex you know i parts of it i have no issue with but the multiple rep bumps

because they always look like crap yeah i don't care i i shouldn't say always but 90% of the time they look so bad that it takes me out of the moment and in this case we saw way too many of them way too many of them it should have been easier than that it should have been cleaner than that because all of that complexity, which is nothing more than camouflage, right, all that does is dilute the emotion at the end. You just don't need it. It's overthinking. It's overbooking. And we did that far too often. I'm sure I've got a great reaction. I'm sure Sting, Spray painting WCW and Hogan's back. You know, we got a great reaction. Although if I remember, right, Kyle Pallas was more of a heel town than a baby face town yeah could have that wrong it's been a minute but um i'm sure

because of the buildup and everything that was going on i'm sure it got a great reaction and people were happy to see it but man they would have been a lot happier without all the gaga shakespeare that went on in between the opening bell in the finish talk to me a little bit about you know you and i have pretty famously fussed and fought on this program about the Starcade finish. This feels like part two. This feels like our chance to make it better to write the wrongs. And when we look back at Starcate, I think we all kind of agree. Maybe it was a little overbook. Maybe we could have done it a little differently. But instead of eliminating the ref bump and the fast count. We went right back to it. You went right back to it. It's like a,

it's like a callback. Yes. You know, and I think part of it, I don't know, you know, because I wasn't involved in laying out to finish. But I think there's, I think there were some reasonably good intentions involved here. It's kind of like, okay, we did this thing in December. It didn't work out. Let's make it look like we're attempting to do the same thing again. Only this time sting prevails. I think that was the creative foundation or the approach to that finish. I don't think it was, oh, let's make it overly complicated. Let's have some ref bombs. Let's make sure Hogan gets overwhelmed and blah, blah, blah, blah, because we, you know, we want to protect Hulk. That wasn't yet. I think it was more of, okay, we kind of shit the bed in December.

Let's make everybody think, oh, it's going to be the same finish, only to give them what they want. Again, not suggesting that the execution was good. It wasn't. It was overthinking. but I don't think it was necessarily selfish or ego-driven. I think it was just nobody really had a great feel for finishes. That's what it was. And it wasn't just a mismatch. It was historically you go back and look at WCW from the beginning of WCW throughout my era as the president of WCW.

We sucked at finishes, always did. No matter who was running creative, we just sucked at it. let me get my tin foil hat out here for a minute i think critics of hogan would say he just didn't want to put over sting and if he was going to get beat he needed to get a beat because randy savage came in and hit him with a foreign object that way he didn't lose his heat it feels as if once again we can't just beat hogan clean and i know we need hogan to stay somewhat strong because we're going to go to hogan savage next and there is going to be in fire and that does you know you said you wanted the the wolf pack storyline to be about inner

conflict within the end of yo well there it is right there i mean i get that that's where we're going but couldn't that have happened maybe after the match couldn't sting of just beat him clean here you started off with critics of hogan will say well those critics are generally those people who are internet wrestling fans today or dirt sheet fans of Dave's back in the day. Hogan had no issue with getting beat clean. Hogan wanted to keep stories alive. Now, you can argue and criticize his way of doing that,

but it wasn't ego. That's the part that I get so pissed off when I hear that because it's not true, number one. And it's like the lowest common denominator of wrestling fans are those that, you know, believe Dave Meltzer and he, his point of view, which is typically where this, that's why when like 85% of the wrestling observer fans give it a thumbs up, I do not give a fine fuck.

You know, if anything, that tells me I may be doing something wrong. You know, when you, but no, it wasn't ego driven. It was just not being good at finishes and overthinking and overcomplicating them. it's all it was it wasn't ogan didn't want to get be clean that's such a sophomoreic and in juvenile like fifth grade view of things that it's hard for me to really talk about it about getting pissed off it would be easier to buy your argument if he just did it you know but he just didn't nobody has though right did he did he when did sting made him clean Oh, no, no, no, I'm not saying Hogan has been beaten clean, just not in this match.

I'm not arguing that he's never been beaten clean. I'm not, I don't know, I'm, you started this program today by saying, kind of you were shocked when I said that the bloodline storyline was better than the NWO storyline. But maybe this is one of the reasons why. I mean, I kind of was like, whoa, because I still think the NWO is the number one storyline. But if we had to go back and, and look at it with a critical lie, I think most fans would agree, man, Starcade would have been better if Sting just won clean.

No, and I, and I agree with that. In fact, one of our entry shows members, I was going to try to comment on it when it came up, but somebody suggested early on the show when I was putting over the bloodline storyline and saying it's the best thing that's ever happened in wrestling, somebody pointed out, yeah, but the, you know, the Sting, Hogan story in 97 would have been that had the finish been better. And I absolutely agree with that. And look, I'm not going to go back into it and relitigate this shit because I'm tired

talking about it. and there's nothing new to say. But the reason there was a change in a finish at Starcade, even though we've had a lot of fun talking about the tan, had a lot more to do with preparedness. And where Sting's head was at. And I'm trying to be very, very gentle and classy about that. And by not going into it in any more detail,

even though people like to have fun talking about the tan comment, including me, by the way. I think it's a fun residual benefit, if you will. of that brawl that you and I had a couple years ago over this subject. But I agree. I think if things would have gone according to plan, and there was a plan, it was about an 18-month plan, 14-month plan,

had things gone according to plan, and we would have ended up with the finish that we wanted to have going into that circade finish, yes, that storyline would have probably been as good or better than the NWO storyline. and it really was an offshoot of the NWO storyline in a way it was kind of a spin-off if you will but yes it would have been better and a lot of things would have been better if they weren't overbooked and had shitty finishes yeah fair this is just

one example no doubt about it Jeremy Sasser asked a question that I think everybody wants to know the answer to or at least your take now On Twitter, he says at Starcade 97, Sting wasn't ready to win, according to Hogan and Eric. What changed between the December Starcade show and this show in February that showed Sting was ready? What changed was the fallout. Okay. That makes sense. Instagram or wrestling historian says,

Was it your call or Sullivan's to break up the Steiner brothers, thanks in advance? couldn't tell you you know i know it's for and i appreciate the question i really do and i appreciate everybody that's here with uh every shows by the way um but it's so hard because i know fans when you go well whose idea was that one thing right right right one idea who came up with that and i know i mean i want to know those things but the fact is Nobody does. Nobody can. We're talking about something number one that happened 25, 26, 28, 22 years ago, depending on the subject we're talking about, number one.

And number two, most everything is a collaborative deal. Once a storyline gets laid out, once we start moving forward with something, especially on finishes, that's always a collaborative thing. But in the case of the Steiner brothers, I tend to believe it would have been my idea only because the economics of tag team wrestling didn't work for me, brother. And we've talked about that before.

And also because the Steiner's needed something fresh. There were two amazing talents. And they'd been together since day one, as you pointed out in WCW, it was time. you can't just, you know, you just can't go out there and, you know, play the same concert set every single concert. Eventually, you've got to add some new music to the lineup. And with the Steiner brothers, they'd been out there performing the same concert for a long time

and as great as they were at it. I think even they were bored, particularly again, when there was so much going on around them and there was so much growth, explosive growth. They want to be a part of it as well. But I think the economics of the tag team division would have probably been one of the reasons why I would have wanted to split them up, to be fair. But I couldn't bet. I wouldn't bet money on it. It could have been Kevin Sullivan's idea.

Could have been anybody's idea. Dan Ponce wants to know. Why wasn't Brett Hart on this card somewhere? I don't know. I don't know. Ladies and gentlemen, we have beat up Eric Bischoff enough today. we greatly appreciate all of you tuning in oh but i mean it's you know why wasn't the other card i can i can only speculate you know i can't tell you what was going through here's why he wasn't a card

he wasn't a priority you had the hottest heel in wc wcd and he wasn't a priority we found a spot for peric saturn we found two matches for rick for booker t we found a spot for rick martel found one full of parka on this show disco inferno got a match so to brad armstrong uh we also found away to put so we should have so so so by your okay that argument only says zero in on that so i should have replaced brett armstrong with brett hart no you should have given him a storyline maybe we had a storyline do you know that we didn't have a storyline do you know or no is it does anybody know if there was maybe a discussion about a bigger plan for bret heart or do do we need to do we need to cram everybody that's on the roster on the card regardless i i i i

You know, I wish I knew. I wish I had my notes from back at this time in 1998. And I would be able to say, well, that's because we were really thinking about doing this with Brett and there would be no need to expose them in something that isn't as important on this particular show because this particular show is loaded. I don't know. It's not that I don't want to answer the question or even that I'm irritated, but it's, it's hard to answer some of these questions.

Why wasn't Brett Hart on the show? Because it wasn't a storyline form. Why wasn't there a storyline form? because we didn't need a storyline form on this particular show. That's why we just didn't need it. You can't put every single piece of talent no matter how hot they are on every show and not overexposed them. We were trying to find something for Brett.

We were. I'm of the opinion that you at times were so focused on winning the war that you would make decisions and sign talent. based on what would hurt WWF more so no that's that's third grade shit you didn't do shit with brad heart i mean those are that's just facts no i didn't sign brett heart because i thought it would hurt WWF you didn't have a sign brunt because i i signed brett heart because i needed somebody fresh at that level to sit at home and not be on the show huh to sit on the show so sit at home and not be on the show. No, to be positioned to be the leader and one of the key players

on Thunder and in WCW. That was the reason that I hired Brett Hart. That was the only reason I hired Brett Hart. I did not give a flying buck whether it had any impact on WWE or not because I was stomping a mud hole in WWE at the time. And I was not concerned about them whether they survived or didn't survive or whether one single piece of talent would make a difference in that equation that's childish if anybody that thinks that is thinking from the perspective of a 14 year old dirt sheet reader we uh we got a match for him on march second he's going to wrestle brian adams that's what he's doing see i told you we had a plan I told you.

Checkmate. Yeah, because boy, that Brian Adams shit, who people will never forget it. Here's what they won't forget. We've talked, we've busted Eric's balls pretty good today.

But as we're recording this, it's Sunday night. And A&E Sunday night biographies are back and they're doing a legend's piece and their first topic of season two, the NWO. I am looking. I'm looking for. In fact, I got a call yesterday from WWA asking me to, reminding me to promote that on social media.

I'm going to do that as soon as I'm done with this. I'm really looking forward to it. The producers and the director on this one did a really good job, at least from what I could see. I mean, really did his research. So I'm really excited to see it. I really am. I'm really excited to see how we handle next week's program. It's going to be pretty fun.

As a reminder, I do a show with Tony Chivani every week, and I want to just plug that here, because we cover the thunder right after this show that we just covered, Super Brow 8. So by all means, check out Tony Chivani's What Happened Win podcast, and we'll pick up the pieces from this Superbrall fallout on Wednesday with Tony Chivani. But next Monday, we'll be back talking about March 2nd, 1998.

You're live from Philadelphia, and it's a nitro main event that we never thought we would see. It's an NWO wrestler, teaming up with a WCW wrestler. The macho man is going to team up with Sting to take on Hollywood Hogan and Scott Hall. Of course, Scott Hall is going to get a shot at the title. Randy Savage is embroiled in a feud with Hollywood Hogan after seeing him costing the title here. We also got a Philly street fight between Public Enemy and the Barbarian and Hugh Morris. DDP's wrestling Van Hammer Stuck Mojo's here

Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit are teaming up to take on Booker T and Dean Malenko again and on the other channel Mike Tyson is going to join TNA or DX rather TNA listen to me I do want to mention you get all of our shows here early and ad free and you can even be a part of our live studio audience over at ad free shows.com

it starts at just $9 and you can listen to them directly through your regular podcast app and right now you can enjoy the first week on us completely free. Sign up for a free trial and get a taste of what ad-free shows is all about at ad-freeshows.com. While you're there, you should check out the book.

We just launched February 1985's episode with David Crockett where we go through his brother's red books day by day the entire year and month of February 85 is what's posted right now. You've heard Gary Juster's name a lot on this program, but you've probably never heard

a Gary Juster interview. Well, we've got one over at AdPree Shows com and if you're looking to grow your business and you're looking to target men 25 to 54 years old no better place than advertise right here on 83 weeks you've often heard us do the same companies over and over and over for years why is that because it really works with our super targeted audience there's very little waste go right now to advertise with eric.com and find out how easy it is to advertise here on 83 weeks in the meantime we'd love to have your follow for at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

But the best way to support the show is on YouTube. It's 83 weeks on YouTube.com. I should mention we've got some brand new merch up right now at box of gimmicks.com, including the now infamous Muckerfather hoodie, which I'm definitely one today after putting Eric's feet to the fire about all things WCW1998. But next week, man, talk about a cool main event. Hogan and Scott Hall against an NWO.

guy Randy Savage and a WCW guy Sting. It's going to be fun to talk about that show right here on 83. Yeah, and I'm going to go back and watch that one before we before we cover it. I wish I would have done that today. But before we go, Adam Arpin has been banging on a question here and he's been very patient. Adam's question was Adam is from at three shows

and he's with us live. Adam wants to know a question. Was there ever any thought of having DiBiase to be a mole that recruited Scott Snyder to join the NWO as a a way of explaining why he aligned himself with the Steiner brothers. Adam, where were you when I needed you? That would have worked. Adam, where were you?

I would have taken your call. You could have sent me an email. He wouldn't have taken your call and he would have thrown coffee at you. And here's the answer. He didn't have a plan for him. He didn't have a plan. He wasn't needed.

No, it wasn't. We didn't think of that, but I'm kind of joking, but I'm kind of not. That would have been a good idea. It would have, you know, it would have explained why. And that's one of the things that I think we could have done a better job then. I've certainly learned a lot more about now. But in any story, anything that you're watching on any wrestling show or non-wrestling show, there's going to be a reason why.

What's the motivation, right, for a character to do anything, or in this case, two characters. And yes, that would have been, oh, he was in high school flipping burgers. well that's probably where I should have been at this point but uh no we didn't think of it but it is a good idea because it would explain why anything else Eric no man I'm done I'm I think you need to go take some medicine take a nap I'm not going to take a nap why not what do you think I'm 80 I don't take no naps you had a long travel day from Florida you get us left all the way home oh okay I was wide awake when I got here now I feel good I got a little bit of a head cold while I was gone but I feel

fantastic I'll feel even better next week I can't wait because next week we'll have something else to argue about and I'll bring you some Meltzer quotes and Tony con stats and it'll be good for all of us that'll be fun please do we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric fish off