83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 112: Eric Goes Hardcore! (Nitro 06.05.00)

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad look back on the June 5, 2000 episode of WCW Monday Nitro, which took place at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta, GA. It was the go home Nitro for the upcoming Great American Bash PPV, and also where we'd see Eric WIN the Hardcore Title! Did you know you could be enjoying 83 Weeks days, even a week in advance on ADFreeShows.com? ADFreeShows.com is a SUPER Patreon page that brings all Conrad's podcasts under one roof, early and AD FREE! Not only do subscribers get the regular shows, they also have access to BONUS content you won't see or hear anywhere else! Join ADFreeShows.com for as low as $9 a month or choose a higher tier for more access to your favorite podcasts! You can enjoy this episode and other clips of 83 Weeks everyday on YouTube! Subscribe and turn on your notifications at www.83WeeksOnYouTube.com Let us help you save some money and get out of debt today over at www.SaveWithConrad.com If you want the world to hear about the exciting things your doing in your business then you need to advertise on 83 Weeks! We can help make a difference in your company today over at www.AdvertiseWithConrad.com We are always coming up with new hilarious t-shirt designs over at www.EricBischoff.com head over there now and check them out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? Oh, it's an amazingly great day here. Hi, Atop Carter View Drive, Casa at Bischoff Studios is just about perfect. I like that. I like that you're naming your studio now. That's pretty far. Well, this is going to be fun today because I get to, uh, I get to poke the bear a little bit.

We're revisiting a very special nitro that happened 20 years ago on June 5th at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta. And although this is not the best of times for WCW, there is some fun stuff in here. We're not going to be doing this watch along. Eric, you watch this show back so you know what I'm going to be busting your balls about. But anytime you're in Atlanta, this was a big deal for WCW. And I guess we're about a month away from the whole big bash at the beach debacle at 2000. And it's really going to help solidify your decision to move on a little bit with the way things are happening in WCW. Of course, Paul Cogan's going to have a big fallout.

We've talked about all of that in our archives. But even in 2000, WCW coming to do Nitro in Atlanta, it's a pretty special occasion because you've got all the local Turner executives there too, right? Not as many as one might think. We had a few, but by 2000, there were more executive trying to distance themselves from WCW than actually being interested in showing up and showing support. Keep in mind internally in 2000, there were so many people inside the higher levels of Turner, the executive committee level, and certainly Tom Warner, that couldn't wait to figure out a way to get rid of

WCW so there weren't as many executives hanging out as you might think let's let's mention that even though this is not sort of the heyday of WCW we still have 13,487 fans in the Phillips Arena and once a time you guys were next door at the Georgia Dome

and it was an incredible visual but 13,487 fans seems encouraging but then I found in my research only 5,900 of those paid. How do you get that much paper? I mean, is this something that you're just passing out to friends and family of the Turner properties? And, hey, let's bring everybody we know. Or do you think that at this point, you guys are probably doing a lot of promotions

with radio and TV and, you know, other sort of local partners to help just, hey, let's get people in the building and make this thing look good? I don't know that I'm ready to stipend. that only 5,900 of them were paid. I don't know where that research came from. And I'm not suggesting necessarily that it's not true. I'm just not prepared to believe it on the surface without backing that up a little bit. And the reason I say that is because in watching the show, the first note that I made is this crowd is fired up.

I mean, they're on their feet for the majority of this two-hour show. And that doesn't happen when you paper a crowd. People that show up only because they get a free ticket are generally not the most passionate group. And when I watch this show from beginning to the end, almost, there were some dull spots in it where the crowd wasn't reacting. But for the majority of the show, everybody was on their feet. So I don't know. Maybe it's true. Kind of hard to believe that you would generate that much excitement, enthusiasm among fans who wouldn't.

have come unless they got a free ticket well it's worth mentioning though you know 59 39 a 6000 person house that's more than i mean but when house shows were a thing that's more than uh i mean that's like a dynamite tv crowd right and that's more than most w w house shows i mean i don't think i couldn't tell you the last time there were 6 000 people at my local and i'm not and i'm not suggesting that 6 000 is a good number if you just said you know 6 000 people showed up my responsible to have been well every one of those people had a great time right because they were into the show I'm just suggesting that you know what based on what I saw if there were 13,000 people in that arena 12,500 of them were on their feet the majority of the two-hour show and I just

it's just a disconnect to me to think that there was that many free tickets because in my experience people get free tickets they'll come they'll react they'll laugh they'll have a good time but they're not really what you would call you know passionate fans no doubt well listen here's the thing that we've got going on for us here uh we've got a gate of a hundred and seventy eight thousand two hundred ninety five dollars so that's going to be roughly a thirty dollar ticket for those six thousand fans so i do believe the number but still how many times that we cover shows where the gates were way under a hundred thousand dollars so to have a gate of you know 178 grand when you first came in the

wcd that would have been high fives all around dude it when i first got to WCW, people like fantasized and, you know, trying to imagine what it would be like to hit $100,000. That was like the, that was like the holy grail. God, if we can, you know, Gary Jester, you say, you know, hide in his office and probably jerk off over the idea of thinking about being able to, you know, promote a show that would get $100,000, you know, dollar gate. And here we are in 2000, where the wheels have definitely fallen off. Off WCW, WWE has been kicking our ass now for a couple of years, putting out a much better product, a much edgier product, much more coherent product, and we're still drawing $173,000. It is kind of amazing in retrospect.

It is. I mean, even when business is down, it's still much greater than almost everywhere else. Well, with one exception, of course. The next pay-per-view, by the way, is six days from this. this is the go home edition of monday nitro for the great american bash which will cover another time uh but it's great american bash 2000 and uh there's a human torch match uh that's a part of this uh paper view and this is the go home edition we're about a month away from the slambury paper view which is now in the rear view which we've recently covered we saw jeff charrett win

the world title from david arquette in the ready to rumble style three tier cage match also in the match was DDP and we did sort of a breakdown of all that on the Arquette show that we did a couple of months back which is available in the archives over at ad free shows.com on the May 15th nitro we would see Rick Flair win his last world title by defeating Jeff Jarrett but Vince Russo would help strip Rick of the title just one week later on May 22nd and Russo would then award the vacant title to Jeff Jarrett but Kevin Nash steals the belt and then the then Nash is forced to face Jarrett in a no-holds-barred match, which Gerrit wins, and W.W.E. officially recognizes Jarrett's reign is lasting two days and ending on May 24, 2000

when the following episode aired on a tape delay. So lots of moving and shaking here. I guess it's kind of cool that a couple weeks prior to this, Rick wins his last world title. But then the next week, just have Russo strip it

and then Kevin Nash is going to steal it from Jeff Jarrett to I don't know what do you make of this it feels like we're devaluing the most quote unquote valuable stake we have on our presentation so when I first started when I got my pilots license and I decided I'm going to learn I'm going to get instrument rated so I had my own plane and I wanted to be able to fly in almost any weather conditions so I started an instrument training and one of the first things I remember about my instrument training was going up with my instructor and they put this hood over you while you're flying the plane so you can't see anything and then the instructor takes

over the controls and does a series of dives and turns and climbs and all designed to disorient you and induce vertigo and then you have to kind of react to that state of vertigo by using only your instruments because the hood that they put over you only allows you to see the only thing you are the instruments you can't see any visual references outside of the cockpit of the plane listening to you describe the evolution of what happened a month before leading up to this induced that same state of vertigo that my flight instructor did when they tried to get me to fly dizzy that's how it made me feel listening to that oh my god what a cluster well as we said this is the go home edition of nitro for the great american bash we're going to see a new

world champion jeff charrett defend against the former champion kevin nash we're also going to see rick flair wrestle his own son david flare and if rick loses he has to retire we're going to see another potential retirement match on the same show where hulk hogan is going to wrestle kidman for a shot at the world title at bash at the beach and hulk's nephew horace is the ref and if Polk loses, he has to retire. So there's lots going on. You and Rousseau are still running things, and you've been working together for going on two months at this point.

How are things personally and professionally for the two of you at this point? I'm going to share something because I knew this question was going to come up, or a version of it. I'm kind of, I'm embarrassed to say what I'm about to say, but it's the truth. One of the only things that I am truly embarrassed about in my career. Take all the mistakes, take all the creative decisions that people like to rip apart, whatever it is you think.

And none of those things are it, right? What I am embarrassed about it, I thought about it a lot this morning, is that I allowed myself to participate in something that was nothing but a transaction for me. Meaning when I came back to WCW after they let me go on September 99, then I got a call a couple months later saying, hey, okay, we fucked up with the result. Would you mind coming back?

What would it take? And I'm not going to go into it again. I've gone into it and plenty in the past. I had some agents over at CA that were really good at leveraging opportunities. And I came back. And I came back with a hell of a deal, hell of a deal. And shortly after I got back, the first couple of weeks was fine, you know, because I really felt like, okay, my intentions, my motivation was good. I came back because I really hoped that I could figure out a way to work with Vince Rousseau and to kind of change things so that WCW was a better, a better foundation.

creatively. I really believed I could. And that's why I did it. But after having worked with Rousseau for, you know, several weeks, a month, whatever it was, month and a half, I realized it was not going to happen. It just wasn't going to work. It just wasn't. And rather than saying to Brad Siegel, look, Brad, not going to make it happen. It's not going to work. I can't do it. I just, I kind of showed up. I didn't really. put forth the effort. I wasn't really emotionally invested. I was fulfilling an obligation. That's the best way to say it. I was fulfilling an obligation. And for me personally, fulfilling an obligation and being passionate and throwing myself into something are two

entirely different things. And I, God, I can't think of a better way to say it. I took the money. I showed up. I did what I had to do. I argue, you know, I could probably make the case. You know, I didn't have the control and the power, and I didn't have the final voice and all that. You know, those are all excuses. The fact is, I showed up, I did what I had to do, I wasn't into it, I wasn't passionate about it, and I took the money. And I'm embarrassed to say that because I don't think that's ever the right reason to take a job or to stay in a job.

You know, I took the job with the right intentions, but I stayed in the job knowing I was just doing it for the money. And I'm angry at myself for that. So it's not going well with you and with you. No, it sucked. Suck. No, and again, when I say it sucked, it was like, fuck it. You know, I didn't have an office at WCW anymore.

I didn't have to show up at corporate. I didn't have to deal with a lot of things that I used to have to do with, you know, when WCW and I was there. I was literally, you know, my job, if you could even call it, there was never even a written outline of what my job was. It was just a conversation I had with. Brad Siegel was to oversee Vince Rousseau and try to keep him from going off the rails. That was my job.

And I'd fly in, you know, I'd do TV or pay-per-view or whatever. I'd fly home. All of the communication beyond that was over the phone and via fax or computer. You know, and I'd collaborate on formats and things like that. But I didn't have anything to do with, you know, with a hiring, firing, a channel, the day-to-day operations of business. So all that stuff was gone for me. So I didn't, number one, I didn't even really feel a part of it.

And that's, that's not me. You know, that's my, that was my fault for not handling the transition better than I did because I just never felt truly engaged. And that might have been a part of it, too, for me. It's when I don't feel like I'm, you know, really a part of something, it's harder for me to keep interest in it. But, you know, it wasn't miserable. It wasn't like every time I, you know, pick up.

the phone of, you know, Vince Russo was on the other and I didn't want to, like, throw myself in front of a moving garbage truck, well, maybe a couple times towards the end, but for the most part, it was just, you know, very matter of fact. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I was just doing it. Okay, Eric, we've got to take a time out here and tell everybody about a great new sponsor here on our show. We've talked a lot and we've heard a lot about the relief that CBD offers for extreme aches and pains. But what if there's something better than CBO? We found it. It's called Leifah, and it's a brand new relief cream that works on contact, and you don't need a prescription for it. You've been using this for a while now, Eric. How's it working?

Works great for me. It really does. And I'm not a biologist or chemist, brain stress of the imagination, but I think the balance of ingredients here that allows the CBD ingredients to get into your system faster. and probably more deeply, works fantastic. I've used other CBD products before, but I really, really love this. I do. I think everybody's going to love it. I've applied it. I've got some trouble with my left knee. I've got some torn stuff in there for a long, long time.

I've just put off of not ever really fixed. I apply a little bit of this stuff, man. Leifah hooks me up. I feel really great. It absorbs fast. It leaves no greasy residue. And Leifah made my knee feel so much better. on contact it smells great too it's not a bad medicine smell like you may have had with other

products but you don't have to take my word for it try this stuff for yourself you've got to experience leifah's relief and they're even going to give you a free which by the way is a sixty dollar value nationwide trial leifah is doing a free nationwide trial all you've got to do is pay shipping try it right now for free and get your free leifah by going to get leifah cream dot com that's get leaf a cream.com for your free trial. That's G-E-T-L-E-F-A-C-R-E-M dot com, getleafocream.com to try it right now for free. Two retirement matches coming up at Great American Bash,

the two big start. What? You sound so exasperated. What? Did I say something? No, not at all. I just, I'm really struggling with. We've got Hulk Hogan and Rick flair on the roster and we want to have stakes which is something you and I've talked about a

lot not just Omaha stakes but stakes for the matches and we have a Hulk Hogan retirement match and a Rick flair retirement match on the exact same show and when I ran through that a minute ago you just had this big like because I mean well you can't if you have two neither one makes neither one matter right like if you have one it's a big deal but if you have too it's like nah just another match no it's like having you know three hardcore matches back to back what the fuck what no you're right and i'm i'm embarrassed you know i let it happen i could have in the position i was in even though i didn't have any control and i didn't have the final vote that was brad seagull's right that was the deal you know work with vince russo if you guys can't

work it out let you know brad seagel be the tiebreaker that was the you know unofficial kind of architecture of that trifecta. And I should have. I should have stood up. I should have said no. I should have applied myself more than I did here. That's one of the reasons why I'm embarrassed. This show, there's some things about it that I thought were pretty interesting,

but there's so many things about it that I know were so wrong. And I knew they were wrong back then. And I just didn't, I'm embarrassed. I feel like, I don't know, I'm impaired. I don't know any other way to say it. I didn't apply myself the way I should have applied myself. And I'm not proud of that. Well, let's get you on something I know you enjoy talking about.

Dave Meltzer would write, multi-channel news ran a story about the WCW SFX negotiations saying that the May 25th meeting between the two sides may have been about acquiring a stake in the company as SFX requests a detailed financial information about the company a three-year cash flow statement and a listing of all employees, titles, contracts, and information about pending litigation. Turner Sports spokesperson Greg Hughes said the story that WCW was not for sale,

but many sources indicate the company is trying to unload the financial burden, but if possible, maintain the programming. The story said WCW is projected to post a $61.2 million loss this year as an entity and also drain the Time Warner Inc. earnings because of more money spent on programming costs this year, but lesser results as far as garnering ad revenue because of declining ratings. Jason Hervey and Mandalay Sports have been the intermediary in the SFX slash WCW negotiations. Hervey is a longtime friend of Eric Bischoff. Chat me up.

What does this, does this ring a bell? There were some discussions. with SFX and there were pretty serious discussions I guess initially they weren't cursory but there was never any real traction there

I think one of the things that WCW was looking for was a clear channel type promoter you know somebody that already had a sophisticated infrastructure that was already promoting live events around the country that already around the world for that matter that had a footprint you know with

arenas and venues all over the world so that we could offload some of the live event components of our show and focus mostly on television so that part of that whole thing was true where again you know the 61 million dollar loss i encourage people read guy evans book i just listened to an interview this morning actually when i got up early early this morning i found it on my twitter feed um where a couple of journalists in the UK interviewed Guy Evans and was asking questions about, now this is Guy Evans,

the guy that did, unlike Dave Mouser and that little Jack sniffing pimple on a hamster's ass, you know, partner his, Bright Alvarez, unlike the horrible reporting, it's not even reporting, it's speculation and bullshit that

they did where they're talking about the $60 million. The guy that actually interviewed people on the finance side of Turner Broadcasting acknowledges that a lot of a lot of those losses were other people's losses that they, through intercompany allocations, dumped on WCW because they knew they were getting rid of WCW. And that way the losses would show up on WCW's side of the equation and not on some other department's side of the equation, making that other department look better than they otherwise

would have had they not been able to dump their losses into WCW. Perfectly legal, by the way. I'm not suggesting that it wasn't. That is the mystery and the shell game. of intercompany allocations. But again, this from a guy who actually did the research of the people, did interviews with the people who were actually instrumental in all that. So when you hear the $60 million loss narrative, know that that's Dave Meltzer and Brian,

whatever's name is Alvarez, not doing a fucking minutes worth of actual research because they're lazy fucking scumbags. Okay, I'm off that. What was the question? Well, I wanted to ask, just take a run of time out right now because last week when we were covering the first AEW pay-per-view, double or nothing, 2019, you went on and on about how much you loved Cody and Dustin, but most importantly, the Young Buck match and the Luchabros, but the thing that really stuck out to a lot of people is you went on an incredible tangent, murdering great close personal friend of the show Alex Marvez, only too late. or realize, wait a minute, you met Brian Alvarez. I know. I feel so horrible about that.

And I'm really glad you put a pin in that and brought that up here. Because I want to personally apologize to Alex Marvis. I did immediately. And one of my, one of the, one of my followers on Twitter pointed it out to me. And the minute he did it, I went, oh, my God. Now, I'm going to. Alex Marvez's play-by-play. You didn't enjoy his work, but you weren't going to just fucking murder the guy.

No, because I don't know him. Right. I've got nothing against him. I've never met the guy that I can recall. I may have even done an interview with him or two in the past. I don't know. But I absolutely feel like the world's biggest schmuck for unloading on a guy that didn't deserve it. So I apologize.

if I ever get to meet Alex, I'll buy a mistake dinner I'll take him out for sushi whatever he wants it's on me he doesn't even have to go with me probably hates my guts now and I don't blame him but I'll still buy him the damn dinner

and he can take a guest of his choice and I'll still pay for it so I apologize I was a complete ass I admit when I'm wrong and I couldn't have been more wrong Well, all good. I'm glad that we got that cleared up.

You have done interviews with Alex back when he wrote for newspapers in South Florida and whatnot, but it's a different guy than Brian Alvarez. Yeah, Brian Alvarez is that's a little sought off jock sniff and piece of shit that follows Dave Meltzer around like he's handed out free cookies. I mean, that's the guy I thought I was talking about. You know, the guy that, you know, wasn't Brian Alvarez supposed to show up and debate the, the piece of shit book that he had something to do with. He was invited. He was invited, but he took a pass.

No, he did, okay. Taking a pass is one thing, but didn't he make the claim that he didn't want to be on the stage with me because he didn't want to give me the rub? Are you kidding me? This little sort of piece of shit,

you can roll him in dog shit, run him through the woods and flies wouldn't even be attracted to him. Nobody knows. who he is and he missed the golden opportunity to defend that tripe that he wrote with that other goof i don't remember his name anymore and he rather than manning up and getting on stage and owning up to the nonsense he decided he was going to no-show chicken shit whatever but i do i do apologize to alex Alex is i'm not a big fan of you play by play Alex i'm going to tell you

not your strong suit he's not doing it anymore it's well there you go all right we agree on that but um certainly did not justify me going off on him because i thought he was somebody else let's get back to the show here like we mentioned this is the nitro that's a go home show for the great american bash uh did you have like a formula or do you know that the russo maybe had a formula for all right on our go home show you always make sure you sell your A angle in the top segment and your B angle at the crossover. Was there a formula like that for, hey, this is the tried and true way to sell a pay-per-view a few days out?

No, we didn't. You know, and it's funny that you bring it up because it was really when I got to T&A, I'm going to be careful not to go too far in the weeds in this because this is just not necessarily on topic. But when Harvey and I were producing a lot of reality shows. We'd pitch these shows. And one of the first things, when you go in to pitch a television show, now, I haven't done it in a couple years, so things may have changed, I don't know. But when we would go in and pitch a television show, usually the first question that, you know, an executive or, it usually there was more than one executive in the room of a network.

The first thing I would say is, okay, what's the show? Tell me what the show is, right? Don't tell me who's in the show. Give me all the sizzle. Give me the steak. Put some meat on the boat. What's the show? And in the beginning, you know, we would struggle with that because both Herbie and I were really good salesmen.

And while we could see the show in our heads, and we had, you know, PowerPoints and decks we put together. But the question that the executives were really asking was, what's the format? They didn't say, what's the format. But that's really what they wanted to know. They wanted to know how was this show crafted in such a way as to attract an audience at the beginning, hold them through the middle of the show, with the crossover, as you would point out here, perhaps if it was a one-hour show. And how did it pay off?

And how did we hook them to keep him coming back next week? That's a formula. Call it a formula, call it a format, call it whatever you want. And after having gone through that process from about 2002, probably all the way up until the time that Hervey and I really stopped working together, producing shows which was about 2017 maybe 2018 17 I guess um we kind of perfected that and during that period of time is when I really learn from working with others honestly um how to really identify and perfect that ABC a D storyline format and apply it to rustling so by the time I got to TNA, this is this long-winded answer, by the time I got to TNA, I had a very firm grasp on

A stories, B, stories, C, you know, and not only had a firm grasp on how to grasp on how to use them within a particular format, but more importantly, how to take what has been a D story and a C story for the first couple of weeks and start evolving it so that in a period of time that we predetermined, if we wanted our D story to be the main event three months from now, we would grow that D story so that after a couple weeks it became the C story and after a couple more weeks it became the B story. And before you know it, now it's the A story and you

blow it off in a pay-per-view. And I really learned how to adapt that A, B, C, D kind of, and you know, you take it all the way down through a two-hour show, you had more than that. But really learned how to do that. But it really wasn't until I got to T&A that that was kind of a formula that was almost second nature to me. So to answer your question, no. That we were flying by the seat of our pants. We were operating on gut instinct and nothing more. And if I were to try to suggest to you that there was more rhyme nor reason to some of the things that we did in

this show and that there was actually a strategy behind it, I would be blowing so much smoke. You would think I was Vince Rousseau. So I'm not going to do that. We were flying blind. All right. Let's talk about something that you and I have to do every week here on the show. And let's do a little research, do a little prep. And during that, we're wearing our Racon earbuds. And this has become a regular part of my life. And we've been talking about Racon for a long, long time. But since everybody's been working from home, I got to tell you, I used mine a lot more than I ever thought I might.

Beforehand, it was just when I was watching wrestling and maybe listening to music. I've been taking calls. I've been doing business on my Rekons. And it's become just part of my daily routine. How about you, Eric? same here brother the other day Mrs. B

sent me to the store I do the grocery shopping whatever reason that's like my list of things to do every probably two or three days so I load up my dog

I jump in the truck I'm heading down the road I get about 15 minutes from my house I go damn I forgot my earbuds had to turn the truck around

drive all the way back home because I just don't leave home without it. I just don't. And particularly, like, when I'm in my truck, you know, the dog's in the truck, I get the windows down, it's noisy, right? So if I get a phone call in my truck with my dog and the noisy

wind, and I got my earbuds in, I can have a perfect conversation that I couldn't have if I didn't have those earbuds. So I'm like you. I use it for everything. And here's the other thing. I don't know how much news you watch, but if you watch the news now, everything, you know, everybody's doing everything via Zoom or Skype.

Right. Very few people in a studio studio. So everybody's wearing these deep fucking little white earbuds that hang down to about the bottom of your jaw. Yeah. It looks like some cheap kind of fucking dollar-story earring that your grandma bought.

It's really ridiculous looking. I find them just, you know, when I see people wearing it, it's like, fucking wearing those more. When you could be wearing these, nobody could even really see them when you're in your ear and they're comfortable and they sound better too. Yeah, no dangling wires or stems.

It's not going to distract. anybody during your video calls. These are stylish. They're discreet. It's Raycon all the way, man, whether you're working out or you're working at home or whatever you got going on. The dogs, the kids, whatever's happening in the background. It's all gone away thanks to the wireless earbuds from Raycon. And by the way, you already know that Raycon earbuds start about half the price of those other premium wireless earbuds on the market. But as Eric said, you need to know, they sound as good and I think even better, especially when it comes to base. We should also mention their newest model, the everyday E25 earbuds.

These are perhaps the best ones yet. They've got six hours on playtime, seamless, and I mean seamless Bluetooth pairing, more base, as I said, and a more compact design that's going to give you a nice noise-isolating fit. We should mention, too, Eric, that you've mentioned before, that some other earbuds solutions you've tried, they're not exactly comfortable. You always went for the over-the-year, but these are so comfortable. They're perfect for conference calls or binging podcasts. and you've heard us talk about how it was founded by RayJ, which is why it's called RayCon.

But you've got to know that Snoop Dog, Cardi B, Melissa Etheridge, J.R., Brandy, everybody is using Raycon. They're all obsessed with them. So pick up a pair and see what the hype is all about. And now it's time to get the latest and greatest from Raycon, including 15% off when you go to buyraycon.com slash 83 weeks. Again, you'll get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash 83 weeks. weeks. That's 15% off Raycon Wireless Earbuds at Buyraycon.com slash 83 weeks. This is a big nitro. Maybe the biggest nitro since you and Rousseau took back over as sort of a joint

powers that be here. We see Goldberg's first match in six months. He's going to take on Tank Abbott. And I think you guys even bought like a big ad in the USA today to hype his return. And, it's like a pay-per-view lineup of matches here what was I mean do you could you guess maybe a cost of a USA today ad because this is something that you guys did pretty commonly and you've explained the strategy and I want you to explain that again but

what was the cost and why was USA the best bang for the buck God I wish I remembered the cost six figures I think it was I was going to say 100 grand in the neighborhood of 100 grand And that's just a guess, but I'm guessing that's what it was back then. And the reason that we felt it was a good investment was because of the fact that, you know, in any major market, you know, you're Monday through Friday, morning drive, classic rock, usually, you've got your host and your co-host talking about sports.

It's sports and music in most of the major market. FM radio formats that had classic rock. And there were a lot of regular just sports talk shows as well. And they would often find their topics to discuss on that morning show in the USA, USA Today. They would just search the headlines to get the latest update on what was going on in the world of sports. And that would be included in their format, in their radio format, on any given morning. So I thought, well, what better way to get free advertising all over the United States? Rather than buying the individual markets, I'll take out a really big full-page ad that

nobody can miss and give these jocks, something to talk about, radio personalities in most cases, give them something to talk about. So when you're looking for a material to cover, let's give it to them. And it didn't cost it. So while they're talking about it, which normally would have cost us money to buy in that local market, we're getting it essentially for one flat rate of $100,000 nationwide, which was a pretty good deal.

It is. You know, and you've talked about the strategy before, and to get coverage like this nationwide, it makes sense. Let's get to the actual show. We see in a clip from earlier, Tank Abbott and Rick Steiner arriving to the Phillips Arena.

And then the show opens with Russo and yourself walking to the ring with R&V security. You welcome back the Atlanta fans to the wrestling empire that you've built. And he said Scott Steiner's going to face Vampiro and Kevin Nash would run the new blood gauntlet with the stipulation being that if Nash lost one match, he's going to relinquish his title shot at Great American Bash. And he also announced that Sting is going to wrestle Jeff Jarrett. And then Russo is going to get on the mic and send out of the first. challenge to John Rocker of the Atlanta Braves.

And then Vince would tell Rick Flair, he's going to wrestle in him a cage later in this same show. And you say that at some point in the night, he's going to take, or you are going to take the hardcore title from Terry Funk. And then we see Goldberg watching on a monitor in the back as Rousseau's talking smack about our hometown boy here. And Goldberg comes out to the ring, destroys the security. You and Rousseau run to the back. A lot happening in this open. segment what did you think oh i was hard one to watch um and i think it's probably for personal

reasons as much as anything i just i can't when i hear rousseau's voice my skin begins to crawl i just i can't stand the sound of his fucking voice and it's just yeah it's hard to watch and it was too long back went over 13 minutes I think I looked at it. It was like, oh, my God, get to the point. Me too. You know, by the way, I was out there too long. You know, I had a lot of heat.

Crowd reacted the way I wanted him to. Rousseau had zero fucking heat. I had pretty decent heat. Not as much as I had in 97 and 98, but it was still there. It was still, you know, there was enough heat there to work with and to make use of. But the segment just went so fucking long.

Yeah. It is a long segment. What do you think of, and this doesn't age will, the John Rocker call out from Rousseau? I, you know, I'm not, what's it to do with John Rocker? I'm a little disconnected. John Rocker is the really controversial baseball player who had some rather racist comments about New York and the people who live in New York. And he was not popular with, well, any minority, African Americans,

homosexuals if you weren't a white dude uh he probably pissed you off at some point in the late no wonder i don't remember his name i thought it was just because i'm not really much of a baseball fan but clearly this clearly this is a guy that everybody wanted to forget yeah everybody hated this guy uh backstage you tell jeff charit to suck it up and defeat sting later on their match and then when kidman asked you if he can take care of horace you said do whatever you want and this seems to anger tory who walks away the first match on the show is for the World Tag Team titles. It's Chuck Palumbo and Sean Stasey,

the hack tanking on Chronic. What did you think? I thought Tori Wilson looked great in that shot. Back in a locker room. Did you see that? Yeah. I mean, come on.

She put the side and side boob in that shot. That was awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And Billy, God bless his soul, one of the best performers in the ring. But, man, his promos just,

less is more when it came to Billy Kidman on the mic but what did I think of it? I don't know I didn't not much I couldn't think of anything positive to say about it other than my comments about Tori

what do you think of the match that followed though with Chronic Palumbo and Stasiak we see Ernest the cat Miller come in the ring and tell the referee to count the wrestlers out Billy Silverman's going to refuse. So Kat puts them in a chicken wing. Yeah, no, I, I, I, yeah, here's my thought, my thoughts on that.

I didn't make notes, but I remember watching it. It shocked me how much the crowd was reacting to that silliness. You know, Ernest did a great job. He was doing what he was asked to do. That wasn't Ernest's idea, right? And the way he had Billy Silverman kind of chicken wing was, a little bit awkward to say the least. I wasn't really sure what he was doing with him.

And part of that was a bad camera angle. But the whole thing took so long to develop that I'm really shocked that they were able to sustain the reaction from the crowd that they did. But they did. That's again, you know, perfect example. It's what we, you know, when I talked about a reference when we first started talking about this,

is how shocked I was that that crowd was as much of a fever pitch as they were from beginning to end. And this match is a perfect example. You know, if I were to look at this match on paper without seeing the crowd reaction, I would have thought, oh, my God, this is going to kill the whole night. You're going to start off in the toilet with this match. But after watching it on television, it shocked me how much the crowd was into it. Yeah, it is a little weird.

I don't know if it's just because it's the hometown crowd or what, but the crowd's into it, even though some of it, well, it's not the best stuff that we've ever seen. um after the bell uh miller would tell chronic that his best friend eric bischoff is going to come kick them out if they touch him they attempt to double slam their stop by stasiak and palombo who he then left laying instead and backstage we see billy kidman tell tory not to embarrass him in front of the bosses again and when major guns comes to uh tory's aid kidman calls her a dumb bitch and tells her to get lost couldn't get away with that today could you backstage we see uh nash and scott with your announcement from earlier in the show

and then we see major guns tell the misfits in action that kidman yelled at her g i bro the former booker t tells them that their mission for the night is to kick kiddman's ass what did you think of g i bro which i believe was booker t's first wrestling persona in global way back in Houston and in the day. But now that he sort of branded himself as Booker T, I think Rousseau or either you and Rousseau decided to create this misfits in action.

Everybody gets different names. Of course, Hugh Morris, humorous, is renamed General Hugh G. Rection. And now Booker T. That was all of that is Rousseau.

Don't, and I know you don't. But let's, don't. don't say you and Rousseau did this or did that it include this bullshit in that that was done

God I'm hoping I'm praying I'm sure I'm probably wrong about this but I'm hoping that it turns out that a lot of those choices and decisions were made before I got back I don't know if I went along with it then I need to get my ass kicked because this is so

it's embarrassing I mean it's just huge erection, major guns. Come on. Are you 14 years old for crying out loud? Are you sitting out behind a garage with your best friend smoking a couple of cigarettes you stole from your grandmother while you're leafing through a playboy jerking off over pictures of naked women because you'd never seen one before? And somehow you get stuck in that fucking time warp in your head and even though you're a grown adult you still think like that 14 year old little jerk off smoking a fucking cigarette behind the garage looking in a playboy and you come out with major guns

and hugh g rection you fucking man child next up we uh we uh we see kevin nash tell goldberg to destroy tank and reminds him that, hey, Nash shows you one. And the next match is GI Bro with the Misfits in Action versus Billy Kidman with the filthy animals. And the finish would come and we see Tori come to the ring and deliver a low blow to Kidman. Kidman reaches into his pants to remove a cup, but then he's hit with the GI slam for the pen.

And after the bell, the animals in Kidman attack MIA and bro leaving him laying in the ring. you know, you told us what you thought of misfits in action. What did you think of the filthy animals presentation here? The shit. It was all the shits. It was all the same.

There was nothing there was nothing that distinguished any of these individuals from each other or from their respective groups. It's just the sameness. And I think part of, you know, going back to when Brad Siegel called me up and said, hey, what would it take for you to come back and oversee

Rousseau? One of the comments that always has stuck with me that Brad said, he says, look, Vince is just too dark. His approach to television, everything is just nasty and dark. And I really wasn't sure what he meant, you know, because I had been watching WCW after I left in September 99. It wasn't like I was sitting at home, you know, watching it every week. So I wasn't really totally familiar with what he, or I didn't really understand what Brad meant when he said too dark. But this, I think, is an example of that. There's a, God, I don't know the word, Conrad. It's like everything had a layer of dirt or scum on it.

Nothing was, no story was clean and crisp and easy to follow and triggered emotions as a result of it. everything had this dark kind of I don't know like sewage scum kind of vibe to it and it's nothing against the talent that weren't wrong again talent was doing what the talent was asked to do and give it an opportunity to do so I don't mean to be you know castigating the talent here but all of this stuff just felt so dirty just for the sake of being dirty major guns she's a fucking porn star Come on. I mean, why, why, why does one think that somehow a wrestling audience is going to gravitate towards that? You know, Miss Hancock, come on. There's a 14-year-old kid behind a garage, smoke, a cigarette reading Playboy again. All of his stuff had that same kind of juvenile, just junky feel to it. I don't know.

I just get to it. I didn't like it. I don't like any of it. okay eric it's that time of the show uh this feels like uh we've done this i don't know every single episode let's talk about your dick eric let's talk about bluechew dot com if you like sex you're gonna love bluechew dot com blue chew offers men of performance enhancement for the bedroom that's right we're talking about peds for your penis bluechew dot com can get you the first chewables with the same active ingredients as both viagra and cealis and here's how it works you go to blue

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I didn't have issues issues, but let me put it to you this way. If you're listening to this, you have an option to go out to your garage and you've got a 1968 Ford F-150, F-100, sitting in the garage. Or you've got a beautiful Porsche 9-11. 11 convertible. If you're looking for performance, what are you going to get into? Of course you're going to get into the Porsche. Of course you want the best performance you can possibly enjoy. And that's what Blue 2 is.

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Well, I'm sure you love the next one. You booked yourself to wrestle Terry Funk for the hardcore title. That was awesome. the cat's here he's passing weapons to you you're going to swing them at terry funk in the ring Terry hits you over the head with the trash can prompting the cat to take you to the back miss hancock enters the ring and starts to dance until Kimberly and Mike awesome come out Kim says Hancock is stealing her spotlight hits her with a clipboard on the back as Kim and also walk away Hancock tells mrs. Page to get her fat ass back in the ring

Kim says she's going to take care of Hancock later back to your match. Funk and yourself fight back up the ramp with Funk wheeling you to the ring in a wheelbarrow. And backstage Vince Russo tells the mama lukes to go out and stop the slaughter. And in the ring, Funk starts to drop his pants exposing his ass to you while you're slumped in the corner. And then the mama lukes come out and beat up Funk with a chair and a broom handle. And then Big Vito puts you on top of Funk for the pen. And now Eric Bischoff is the WCW hardcore champion, having picked up a win over the hardcore icon himself, Terry Funk.

Eric, who booked this shit? What the fuck? Oh, you know, I can't blame it on Russo because I had the ability, especially because it involved me, I would have had the ability to pull the plug on it, and I clearly didn't. This is, you know, this must be some kind of effort on your part

to help me grow as a human being by recognizing all the stupid shit that I've done in the past, because it's all right here in front of us. All one has to do is look at the show and go, eh, you should have never done that. You should have never done that. I mean, there's so much of it here. And honestly, I'm not even trying to be fun.

I just cringed when I saw this because I forgot about the match. I knew that I wrestled Terry. I knew that I beat him for the hardcore title. That in and of itself doesn't bother me too much because a hardcore title in the big team of things didn't really mean all that much in WCW anyway. And I just, I was not a fan of hardcore matches to begin with.

So for me, you know, to take that title from a guy who the audience recognizes the king of hardcore, that was heat. That was a way from my smarmy little sub. after getting my ass kicked all over the arena to be able to say that I beat Terry Fogg and get heat in the process.

So the idea of me doing it didn't bother me near as much or doesn't bother me near as much right now is the actual execution of it, which was just shh, drach, as my Jewish friends would say. Drek. Well, there is some drag coming up here,

but before we get to it, How was Terry to work with? And what did you think of Mr. Funk's ass? Well, I had my eyes close, so I didn't see it. Fortunately, it was not a rakishi moment, thank God. Cherry is the, Terry Funk is, my only regret is that I didn't get to know Terry when he was younger and I was younger. I would have loved, loved, loved to have been in a car traveling around listening to Terry. Funk and learning from Terry Funk because Terry was Dusty Rhodes in many respects.

I mean, I remember when I got to WCW and, you know, Dusty immediately kind of took me under his wing and kind of smart me up about a lot of things and a lot of people in WCW. But Terry Funk was a sore spot for Dusty. And I think it was just because same era, same territories, you know, competing for the limelight, you know. But there was always this, I always got the feeling when I listened to Dusty talk about Terry Funk that there was some resentment there. And I think part of it was because there was always, you know, in a rumor that would float around about once every six months that Terry Funk was interested in coming in taking over the booking in WCW. This is when I was an announcer, right? So I wasn't really involved in any of the politics. And I would just, as an innocent bystand, well, not so innocent, but as a bystander, I would hear these things, you know, internally.

but I just always remember there will always be a little bit of an edge between Dusty and Terry Funk and I think it's because they were so similar in many respects not necessarily in the way they wrestled their characters but they came up in the same era and you know they learned

much the same way but Terry Funk you know the little bit of time I've gotten to spend with Terry even subsequent to this as recently as a couple years ago I went to an event with Terry and we ended up riding together over to the venue

and just hanging out with him He's such an interesting cat. I wish I would have gotten to know him better. And he was easy to work with. He was easy to work with. Couldn't have been any easier. Outside, we see Rick Flair and his family arrive to the Phillips Arena. And our next match is for the United States title.

It's Scott Steiner and Vampiro. The finish would see Medea come from the top of the body block on Vampiro. He chases her down the ramp, finally stopping her as he pours gasoline around her. Sting comes out, beats Vampiro to the back with a baseball bat, and then Steiner hits Vampiro with a belly to belly, followed by a Steiner recliner for the submission win, and R&B security was then attacked by Sting, and Steiner attacks after the match as well.

We've got a few days away here from a human torch match, which is our co-main event with Vampiro and Sting. But for God's sake, we're using gasoline on Nitro, threatening low-key threatening to burn people what the fuck insane i don't know how we got away with that i do not know how standards and practices allowed us to get away with that right for all the they would get on our shit

if one wrestle was cutting up a promo and called another wrestler stupid or ignorant that was a no-no couldn't say that because you might be offending a certain part of the community it's like what the fuck but yet you can you know poor gasoline or all around somebody with a blow torch in your hand and set it

and threatened to incinerate them what the hell but yeah we did that it's unbelievable the next match is Goldberg and Tank Abbott which I can't believe is a real thing the finish I can't believe it was as good as it was

I thought it was pretty decent we see Rick Steiner attack Goldberg with a chair and then Steiner and Abbott would beat up Goldberg until Nash makes the save Nash trips up Rick allowing Goldberg to spear and jackhammer Abbott for the win and then backstage Goldberg would thank Kevin Nash and tell the WCW trainer Danny Young to stitch him up

talk to me about I mean at this point have we had a match where there wasn't a ton of interference this feels like just par for course here no it's like a it's like animal house it's just it's insane nothing but run-ins and rough bumps and multiple attacks and multiple people

and look the one you know the one thing I will say about the show and whether it was good or bad right or wrong I'm not debating that but there at least was one kind of underlying thread throughout the show and it was to support the old or the new blood versus the millionaires

that was the theme I guess that was underlying most of everything that you saw here unfortunately it just all looked exactly the same I mean it just it's just it was like one like at the beginning of the two hours the bell rang and there were some commercials in between and then the show was over and it was like one long match because nothing felt unique or distinguished even the cage match was like crazy hokey shit. We'll talk about with Rick and Rousseau in a minute, but I don't know, man. It's just

this would hurt to watch. This was really painful to watch. Missed opportunity. Again, missed opportunity. Next up is a Kimberley and Mike Awesome interview as Pamela Paul Shock starts to interview. Kim tells her that she was forgiven for stealing the spotlight because

she was new. And then Kim challenged Ms. Hancock to find a partner to face her and Mike Awesome. What did you think of Kimberly as an on-air talent no longer part of the nitro girls and sort of leading that troop but now she's got a speaking role she's managing guys what do you think Kimberly is a friend of the family okay I mean we haven't seen her now in a couple years she she actually her and her husband she remarried came out and hung out with us for

an evening over the 4th of July a couple years ago but she she was She was horrible. I hate to say that because she is a friend and a friend of the family. But, man, she just, her voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. And her promo, and it's not her fault. Again, you know, when I say these things, I feel badly because I feel like I'm picking on the talent and I'm cutting down talent. And I don't need to do that. She was put into a position that, hey, she wasn't really comfortable doing.

She didn't really want that role from what I remember. and she wasn't prepared she wasn't given any training nobody worked with her I'm sure DDP did but he had he had his own issues with the best way to do promo sometimes and she just

you could tell you know you maybe have heard me talk about this in a past but when talent who are forced to perform a scripted promo it never sounds like they really mean it because they're memorizing it and they're not their words there's some

writer's words you know there's a writer somewhere in a little office on a laptop, trying to write a promo that that writer thinks that particular talent might say. And more often than not, they're wrong because they don't know the talent well enough and they don't know how the talent really speaks. So they don't write a promo with the talent's voice in mind. They just write a really good promo that somebody's going to approve and say, oh, good job on that promo.

But whether or not it actually fits the respective talent or not is an afterthought. Sometimes they get lucky, and sometimes most times they don't. This was a perfect example of a talent who was really underqualified to go out there by herself and cut that long promo, which for her was a long promo, when she really wasn't comfortable with it, because it sounded so unnatural. It was like, I'm memorizing this script with this voice that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. she's like oh killing me she looked great the nitro girls were hot the minute there was an effort to put the nitro girls in the ring dumb dumb idea dumb idea next up it's a non-title match it's the world champion jiff gerrit taken on sting the finish would see jarratt beat sting with a steel chair on the ramp way and after a sunset flip

attempt on Jarrett um there's a three count the referee awards sting the belt and you came out and said wait a minute I never booked this match for the title and sting then tells you that Jarrett is going to arrive to the bash in a body bag sting beats up jeff hits him over the head with a guitar Jarrett stretched out of the arena into an ambulance so now we've got an ambulance a couple segments after we threatened to set someone on fire. What did you think of this segment? It wasn't bad for what it was. You know,

put a pretty good adjuncting. Jeff was obviously a great worker in the ring. His character was so-so. I don't think anybody really cared about the character, Jeff Jarrett, but his performance in the ring was excellent. I like the shot, him going off the side of the state or the ramp, whatever it was. It was pretty dramatic.

It wasn't bad. for what it was let's let's talk about what's next here after they get the ambulance out of the shot here it's ddp and miss hancock taking on mike awesome and Kimberly and this is a nice little uh spin that i kind of forgot happened until i watched it as you recall kimberley's telling hancock hey go find a partner to take on me and mike well who else it's ddp uh and awesome tells ddp he has six days left until the end of his career Kim comes out blowing mock kisses to the crowd. Ms. Hancock is going to make Kim sign a paper that releases her from all the

damages she's about to do. Kim laughs and signs the paper and his Hancock brings DDP out for her partner. Kimberly reminds him of the 500 foot restraining order and Page is happy to point out that she just signed all those rights away and now the match is on. The finish sees awesome go for the awesome bomb on DDP but Hancock distracts her or Hancock gets the distraction by lifting her skirt which allows DDP to of course set

and deliver the diamond cutter for the pinfall I like this story it's a cute TV match what did you think I did too I did too that was a that was a very creative setup to the match kind of boxed Kimberly in the corner

you know you took this character this heel character in Kimberly you thought she was on top of the world and totally in control and you know Miss Hancock swirves her and makes her sign her life away and all the protections that Kimberly thought she had, she no longer had,

which added to the stakes in the match and a surprise and the audience was in on it. The television audience could follow it. So I thought it was well executed and done pretty well. I thought DDP and Mike Awesome did a great job. DDP was really fired up in this match. He looked great.

It was very, very intense. The crowd reacted exactly how you, would want a crowd to react seem to enjoy the match quite a bit so on my scale of one to ten i'd probably give it a seven seven and a half ship son of a bitch these are the noises i used to make when i cut myself shaving before i discovered manscape.com thank you manscape for turning my life around and turning those loud tricks into multiple peaks eric when's the last time you cut your sack or the first time you cut your sack was it a traumatic experience that you have a little CSI Wyoming situation

I thought I was going to bleed to death I thought this could be it this could be it you know because there's certain parts of your body you can cut you know and not worry about it too much you know your arm your hand or whatever unless you get a major you know vein but when you're like

down around your junk with a razor blade and you start hacking something up it scares you half to death I thought I was it was like The Lorena Bobbitt, I was haunted by the ghost of Lorena Bobbitt. It's the first thing that came into my mind. It's like, oh, my God. How horrible would that have been?

So, yeah, I'm a big fan of a landscape. The little headlight on the gimmick, you know, I can do it in the dark. Oh, see, you're talking about the brand new lawnmower 3.0. That's the new headlight on the gimmick. It's a brand new LED light. It's going to illuminate that grooming area for a close, certain more precise trimming and oh by the way can i can i interrupt you can i know the other thing it does it's like when you have when you hold it if you do it in front of a mirror and you turn

off the lights in the bathroom so the only light is on your on your mascape device it makes your junk look scary as hell it's like a horror movie well i mean you're going to go do some bad things with it and by the way you got plenty of time to get it right down there This new battery in the new Lawnmore 3.0 can last up to 90 minutes. And if you need more than that, well, you're probably not a animal. Yeah, no shit. The engineering team over there spent 18 months perfecting what they believe to be the greatest ball hair trimmer ever created. Of course, it's the lawnmore 3.0.

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When you go to manscaped.com, you'll get not only free shipping, but 20% off at manscape.com and use our promo code 83 weeks. oh man next up we've got this backstage promo where pamela paulshok is standing outside of hulk hogan's dressing room and she says that hulk had stated he's not going to fight horace but the next match is supposed to be the steel cage match between hulk and horace and you tell horace that he has the night off but then the n w o music kits and hogan comes out to the stage and he says that hulk hogan uh is not going to wrestle but hollywood is going to to kick his nephew's ass the cage is lowered and the match starts and it doesn't last too long

and the finish comes when we see hulk place a chair over horace's face and leg drop it for the pin after the bell kidman enters and he's thrown over the ropes and then through a table by hulk hogan what did you make of this segment what did you think of the cage match here and hulk sort of saying hulk hogan's not going to but hollywood will that was cute you know i don't know how effective it was. I don't know if there were any people that went, oh, Paul Coogan is not going to wrestle, I'm not going to watch. Maybe, I don't know,

half a dozen people, maybe thought he was serious and got confused and left the show, but for the most part, it was just kind of an innocuous little swerve that, you know, didn't really mean a whole lot, but it was interesting. It was a cute move.

The match itself was what one would expect the match to be. Again, the underlying significance of the match is Hulk Hogan. Horace was Hulk Hogan's nephew, so it's a little bit of a family feud type of thing. And we were trying to get over some of the

younger talent because that was such a mantra, such a ever-present narrative and all the critiques about WCW is the young guys are just not getting their turn and the older guys are keeping the younger guys down. So rather than, you know, working through all that and not overreacting to it, of course, you know, we embraced it. We tried to overcome it. And that's why you had Hulk Hogan and

Billy Kidman in an angle because we thought we were trying to ascribe to the theory that by, you know, putting Billy into a high profile angle with a guy like Hulk Hogan would catapult Billy's career. Didn't. Won't. Never would. Billy would have to elevate Billy's career. by really becoming great on the mic to add to his exceptional skills in the ring. Just having Billy Kidman in a match and a storyline with Hulk Hogan. Didn't do anything for Billy Kidman's career, but that was the attempt here. And the same thing, you know, the same was true with a lot of the matches on this card. These were all attempts to get some of that undercard talent, more exposure,

giving some time in the limelight, and hopefully get them over. And that's what the Horace Hulk Hogan match was in part about. Next is a Rick Flair interview. Rick's going to tell Pamela that he's going to show Vince Rousseau while he's the dirtiest player in the game. And now it's another steel cage match, two on the same show. Vince Rousseau and Rick Flair, who had his wife at the time, Beth,

and of course their son Reed is all in tow. The finish would see David Flair appear from under the ring. Rick starts chopping him and Rousseau commandeers a ladder here, opens a section of the cage and climbs on top. Flair follows. and now they're on top of the cage. Rick Flair is on top of a cage here. And when they climb back down,

Rick puts Vince in the figure four until the new bloodbath fell from the ceiling, covering everyone in the ring. Rousseau and David then beat up Rick and Rousseau pins Rick to win the match. So I guess here, I guess the story is both you and Rousseau now have pinfall victories over Rick Flair.

What the fuck did you? you think of this train ring it was so bad it was just uh i don't know man i don't even know how to comment on it it was that bad you know the the red blood in the ring and i mean i get david flare you know there's storyline there so i'm good with that and the way we use david here what we're trying to do and seeing david put the figure four on his father i yeah i get that that probably worked to help put heat on David. I get all that. So it's like on paper,

it's one of those things where you probably sit around in a meeting or over the phone in my case with Rousseau and we're walking through this on paper. It probably made a lot of sense, but in execution, you know, just the fact that you've got back-to-back cage matches. Right off the bat disqualifies it from being a good idea. It's already a bad idea just because. it's a cage match

for the sake of a cage match with no real meaning no real stakes no nothing it's just oh let's do this that'll be cool let's do this

it's like a 12 year old kid booking a television show and by the way I'm not just blaming Russo I let it happen so as is as critical as I'm being right now about the creative

I let it happen I had a voice I could have raised my hand I could have called Brad and said Brad I don't want to do this and Vince does, you make the call. But I didn't. So I'm as guilty as the schmuck

who came up with it. But, yeah, I didn't like it at all. Garbage. Garbage. I don't know what to say about the blood falling from the ceiling. This is just... Garbage.

Dumb. Dumb garbage. The final match on the show is the gauntlet match between Kevin Nash and the new blood. Russo comes out and says that Nash would lose his shot if he lost a single fall or if a member of the Millionaire's Club interferes. And Nash quickly runs through the new blood members.

And eventually it's seven on one until Goldberg comes out for the save. And then you said you would suspend Goldberg on Thunder. And Goldberg said if that was a suspension, you handed out, then you were going to be next. And that's the show. What do you think of this last segment? my ear?

It was all right. You know, it was a veiled attempt at a cliffhanger. It was just okay. Scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 4, 5, maybe. Of course, the performances were great. I could have been better. I was at the top of my fucking game as a performer. Listen to you with this bullshit.

I know, I've got to have fun with this, right? otherwise honestly it's only what time is it here we're doing this on a saturday morning it's 11 a.m. my time i guess it's i guess it's late enough in the morning to start drinking because that's about what i feel like doing now after talking about this for the last hour and a half for two hours i feel like i really need to crack open a fresh bottle of jameson black barrel let's uh let's remind everybody that even though this was a heavily promoted nitro even with the usa today there's tons of big pay-per-view style matches it doesn't matter raw still wins the ratings for the night raw gets a 5.95 rating and a 9.3 share nitro gets a 2.86 and a 4.4 share so the head-to-head

portion of these shows becomes 5.49 versus 2.67 goldberg who is sort of the podpiper here for wcd his return match his first match on tv in six months against tank abit gets a 2.9 rating and nitro's audience drops 15% when raw starts so we're going to break down the ratings a little bit more but first let's just touch on that because i thought that was worth a discussion between you and i that nitro's rating would drop 15% the moment raw starts is there any math or lesson we can learn from that stat i don't think there's anything to learn other than, you know, I'm going to reflect back to something I said a couple weeks ago on one of our shows. A good friend of mine, Gary Considine, former executive

producer at the Tonight Show at Jay Leno over at NBC, told me once in a conversation that they had nothing to do with anything about wrestling. He said, Eric, once the audience votes with a remote, there's almost nothing you can do to get them back. And I think I've used that statement in the past to illustrate points, but I think there's no better way to illustrate that sentiment or that point of view than what we have right here. I mean, on paper, you talk about the USA Today ad and all that, but even amongst wrestling fans, on paper, until you actually see what a cluster of this show is, on paper, it looks pretty good.

It looks like something you'd have to tune into. The people in the arena were excited as hell about it, but we lost our television audience. The audience voted with their remote. They voted a long time previous to this, that they were, they much preferred WWE's programming. And there was nothing that we were going to do in the short term, especially, to get them back. This wasn't going to happen. And I think that's, and again, that's one of the, one of the things that, and to kind of bring this home and talk about, you know, its relevancy today, one of the things that I'm really interested in watching. And I'm not a pessimist. I'm pretty much of an optimist. You probably know that enough about me by now,

that if there's an opportunity, I will always gravitate towards a positive outcome of any opportunity until something happens to convince me otherwise. But in the situation that we're in right now, we know, COVID, no fans, no arenas, and you look at the deterioration in, you know, television ratings across the board for everybody's shows. It's not pointing fingers in anybody because it's nobody's fault. There's no critique here. It's just an observation. But if you look across the boards

at Monday Night Raw at Smackdown at AEW, although AEW came back nicely this past week with the Mike Tyson thing, which I was really excited about, by the way, because I'm a huge Mike Tyson fan, and I thought he was used really, really well. But with the exception of this past Wednesday show,

where I think AEW came in around 800,000 somewhere in that area, their numbers have been gradually going down week after week after week. And my concern and my observation is, are these people going to come back? Because they have clear, they're still around. Logic would suggest, if you think about it, all right, more people are at home. They can't go out and play. They can't go to restaurants.

They can't go to bars. They can't play softball. They can't go to movie theaters. There's no sporting events to go to. gee, you would think more people are home watching television because there's really nothing else to do. But even though there's more people home watching television, guess what's happening to professional wrestling's audiences?

They're deteriorating week after week after week after week because they're hard to watch. The question now, in this long-winded trip into the jungle, the question is, will they come back? now that they've voted with their remote they've consciously or subconsciously said I don't really want to watch that I would rather watch this

for my entertainment is the this part of that statement something that they've decided they like more than wrestling or are they just going to go and watch this or something else until they get their wrestling back the way they know it I don't know the answer

we're probably going to find out in the weeks and months to come is is people are able to, to, you know, start producing shows in front of crowds again at some point. But until then, my question is, has the current audience voted with their remote because of Corona, not because of bad booking or bad talent or anything like that, because of bad television as a result of Corona, have they voted with a remote and will they come back? It'll be really interesting to see. Clearly, they didn't hear for us in this show.

They voted with their remote. They started watching WWE, and no matter what we did, we were willing to set a woman on fire for crying out loud, and we couldn't get them back. You love wrestling from the 80s, 90s, and 2000? What about the pop culture from that era, including your favorite movies, TV shows, and hit music? From The Incredible Hulk to Hulk Hogan, the Mega Powers to Mega Man, from Star Wars to StarCade. Saved by the Pod is the premiere podcast. wrapped in both pro wrestling and pop culture. Each week, Saved by the Pod highlights a wrestling event

and discusses the top songs, movies, and TV shows from that time period to give you a fully immersive pop culture experience. Saved by the Pod is also giving away cash. Wait a minute. That's right, cold hard cash every month. Plus, listen to find out how you can win two tickets to AEWs all out in September, or the next fan attended AEW pay-per-view.

Tickets and cash, no other show was doing that, join host Polly B, along with Timmy C, for a fun trip down memory lane and everyone's favorite, Ephron, for an alternate look at the pay-per-views from the past. Why are they saying alternate look?

Okay. What are you waiting for? Find them at savedbythepod.com or on Twitter at saved BT pod. Exclamation point. I'm pretty sure the exclamation point is not supposed to be in this. I think that they just want me to be excited, right? So it's just at saved BTPOD on Twitter.

Okay. Or saved by the pod.com. A serious business. These guys are friends of mine. I am a big fan of Effron and all of his silliness. Polly B is an OG and I don't know who this asshole Timmy is. Who'd he ever beat? But seriously, check out Saved by the pod.

great friends of the show appreciate what they're doing and if you enjoy wrestling and pop culture it's hard to beat saved by the pod.com as far as the main event comparisons here rock and triple h does a 6.47 final quarter hour and then they do a 7.58 overrun wcw has nash running the gauntlet and it does a 2.7 the other head-to-head numbers have raw at a 5.97 which is where uh there's a conference with the rock undertaker and cane involved and that compares to sting wrestling jeff charit which gets a 2.15 and then raw falls down to a 5.38 for rikishi and two cool taking on valvenous and t and a and then benoit taking on road dog meanwhile nitro goes up a little bit so

some of those raw people do switch over and they check out the uh the mix tag we talked about with Kimberly and Awesome taken on Page and Hancock and of course Hogan and Horace and then Raw did a 5.26 for Briscoe versus Crash Holly to Nitro's 2.79 for Flair versus Rucho in a cage match and then raw does a 6.13 for Rock versus Kane versus Undertaker which compares to Nitro's 2.70 with Nash

running the gauntlet. So it's a slaughter And when these ratings come in, I'm curious after you guys take out the big ad in USA Today, you've got multiple cage matches, you've got lots of big spots planned, you're on a go home show for a pay-per-view. Based on everything that we hear, this feels like it's going to check all the boxes and it's going to be a big night. And then it's just a fucking thumping man when the ratings come in. What's the mood? Are you in the office every day? How do you and Rousseau discover what the ratings were and are you already working on the next week? week's show or is there a conference when the ratings come in to discuss them or talk me through what a Tuesday afternoon or a Wednesday morning looks like?

Well, as I said before, I wasn't in the office. I didn't have an office at Turner any longer nor did I want one. I specifically had my contract drafted in such way that it made clear that I wasn't going to be coming into the office and participating in anything other than overseeing creative, which I was doing from my home. So at the time, this was a in June. So I was in Wyoming. I was here where I am right now. And, you know, once the show was over, I'd get on a plane, I'd fly back home, get home. Rousseau and I would start talking late Tuesday and mostly on Wednesday, didn't really discuss ratings. You know, the idea that, you know, we would sit down every week and analyze ratings and what worked and what didn't work.

It's not really true. We were certainly aware of it. We were disappointed in it. But I don't think anybody was naive enough to think that we were going to be able to turn around WCW's fortunes in a three or four or five-month window. So there wasn't the pressure that one would expect on us because nobody in their right mind that's ever spent more than five minutes watching a television, more or less being in the television business, thinks that you're going to be able to turn around a ratings deficit like we had going into the show in a period of three, four, five months. This would have been, had WCW stuck it out or had Fusion Media been able to buy WCW and commit to something long term, maybe there would have been a reversal of our fortune over the course of 12 or 18 months. By no means, am I suggesting we would have been able to overtake WWE because by that time they had such phenomenal momentum. And with, you know, Rock and Sokol and Steve Austin and all the people that they had at the top,

Sina, you know, soon to emerge a year or two later, it would have been highly unlikely that we would have been able to overtake W.W.E. again, but we could have certainly shored up the numbers, the number gap. But even that would have taken a year of really hard work and consistently good programming to even achieve that. So we didn't talk about it. And we would talk about the radius is what I meant. We would talk throughout the week.

you know, we start, you know, isolating the things that we want to do for sure the following week. Then, you know, Vince would go back and work with whoever he was working with at the time. And he would come back back to me probably on a Friday or Saturday and send me a first draft of the format of the show that he saw in his head. And I would go through that format and make whatever changes I felt needed to be made or add whatever I felt needed to be added. And we would continue to tweak it over the weekend and fine-tune it on Monday when we got together. that was typically the process Let's take to Twitter We posted on Twitter

But we were going to be covering this episode I'll let you guys ask questions And if you haven't already You need to follow us on Twitter So you can participate and ask questions Next week and from now on It's at 83 weeks Rejeeve has a lot of interesting questions here

We'll try to answer a few of them One of them that we didn't touch on here though Was during the show There would be an occasional thumping noise Over the PA system when someone would strike another, like when Sting hit Vampiro with the bat or Hulk clenching Horace. Whose idea was that?

And what's the reasoning? It just seemed odd to me. So they sort of sweetened to the sound a little bit. What did you think of that? You know, I don't, I, I would have to go back and pay close attention to it and try to pick it up. Obviously, if we were sweetening the audience, it was because we felt there was a lack of energy, naturally speaking.

So it might have been an effort to kind of give the sense of something being bigger and more significant than it really was. But I honestly, I don't, I just don't recall hearing it or even a discussion about it. Let's talk about something else that we haven't ever really addressed, which was when you guys started to sweeten the Goldberg chance. And it didn't happen on this show. But of course, the Goldberg chance happened naturally and organically. but in time it felt like you guys thought goldberg maybe wasn't the same performer didn't have the same presentation on tv if the crowd wasn't doing that so aha we'll just use a workaround and pipe in goldberg chance was that something you struggled with or was it

just part of tv for you um you know you never want to have to do that i don't think it was because goldberg became any less of a talent or less significant i just think there we were losing audience over time, and we were losing support across the boards, and Bill happened to be, you know, a victim of it. And we weren't getting that same intensity of Goldberg chance later on with Bill that we were getting in the beginning. And keep in mind, Bill was new. It was fresh. It was exciting. You know, when Bill first emerged, things were really rocking and rolling for WCW. So, you know, we had 10 times more intensity across every level than we had by June of 2000.

So, yeah, it wasn't something you wanted to do. You know, the downside is, you know, enough people would recognize it for what it was, that it, you know, became somewhat public. And that doesn't help. But it doesn't hurt nearly as much as having Bill Goldberg come out to a less than enthusiastic champ. Because that just really starts making it obvious that you're taking a, you're taking on water so it was a it was a choice it wasn't an ideal choice but it was probably the best choice at that time under those circumstances another one from rjeev here during your

promo at the top of the show how hard was it for you to say uh to vince russo that he was a quote unquote genius and nothing less than an inspiration you know it's easy for me because as a heel you know your character lies cheats and steals thank you Eddie Guerrero. Thank you so much, Eddie. So for me to be able to come out as a heel character and say those things, it was very, very easy and natural because it was indeed a lie.

Rijeeve would ask, you've mentioned before that you don't like gimmick matches. What did you think of the concept of a gauntlet match, or is that too gimmicky for you? I like them if they have a great story and are given enough time. To me, though, this one left a lot to be designed. it is a gimmick match

and I don't have a problem with gimmick matches per se if like Rajiv said and by the way I had a great conversation with Rajiv on adfreeshows.com he called in and we chat it for about 40 minutes I think

35 or 40 minutes great fan great supporter of adfrey shows.com And I think he's even up on the 83 weeks YouTube channel. I think I posted that interview with Rajiv there. So appreciate it, Rejeev. I don't have a problem with giving matches if there's a story behind it. If it's a blowoff to a story that makes sense and has an arc and we're following the journey of our baby-faced character.

We care. We've invested in the back. backstory enough so that when the actual gimmick match happens, the outcome matters to me. Then I'll buy into it. But to have a gimmick match for the sake of a giving match, which is what normally happens 80% of the time across the board, there's no real reason to have it. Other than, hey, we haven't hit one of these in a while, let's do this. Or the talent gets excited about performing in a cage or a certain type of gimmick match,

whatever. That's not a good reason to have it. I agree with Rejee. If there's a great backstory or a great story built into it and the gimmick match is the natural evolution of that story, I'm all for it. But if you're just going to have a gauntlet match for the sake of a gauntlet match with no real reason, rhyme or reason behind it, then it's just a fucking hot shot angle and I hate him. Okay. One last question from Rajeev here.

And this is something I haven't talked a lot about on the show. Why did you come back to WCW during the New Blood Angle with your naturally gray hair instead of the dyed black hair we were used to? Because I hated my hair. The reason I had my, I think Rick Flair was the first person to shave my head, I think. That was my idea because I was sick of dyeing my hair. I'd been dyeing my hair since I was 27 years old. I started turning gray when I was 25. I hated it.

And here's the thing. I always joke about my hair, right? because I do have the best hair in a business, including Charles Robinson. But head and shoulders above Charles Robinson, get it, head and shoulders. My hair was so thick and heavy and grew so fast that I'd get my hair cut on a Friday and died. Right? I'd get my hair cut and I died on a Friday. by the following Thursday

it had already grown out about a quarter of an inch maybe an eighth of an inch and because my hair was so heavy and straight it would just kind of naturally part either in the middle or off to one side and then I'd have this fucking silver streak

running down the middle of my head like Pepe Lapeu the cartoon skunk and I hated it and then my option was okay I put some you know hair coloring for men or some stupid shit in it and that's bad for your hair. It's just not a good product to use.

So I just got sick of it. And I came up with the idea of getting into a match with it. I'm pretty sure it was Rick. And if I lost to get to shave my head, well, shaving my head was my idea of my way of going, fuck, I don't ever want to dye my hair again. Because once it grew out, I could just keep my natural hair color. And I did all the way until the time I went back to WWE.

And Stephanie wanted me to dye my hair black. And I was back at it again. until I could get my head shaved. Just rinse and repeat. Okay, we need to let you guys in on a secret right now. Eric and I, as you know, are dog lovers. And I think we've cracked the code, man. Of course, we're talking about our friends over at Solid Gold.

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Check it out. Solid gold pet.com forward slash 83 weeks. This is a fun question here that you and I've never really talked about. but I feel like there's a lot of truth to this. Jake Word right. This is Jake Rudge was it constantly felt backstage that WCW just needed

one great big storyline idea like the NWO to turn things around. Whether it was Goldberg turning heel, Russo's shoot on Hogan, reported rumors of Vampiro being the next thing, etc. Maybe those aren't the best examples, Eric,

but we've heard Bruce talk about how Lisa Wolf in the mid-90s would say Vince just needs a hit. He's just looking for his next big hit because he had one with WrestleMania with Hulk Hogan and Rock and Wrestling and WrestleMania and SummerSlam and I mean he had hits and then he tried some other things and they were smaller hits but hits still ultimate warrior Brent Hart. But were you post to 1996, you ride that out into 97 and then Goldberg sort of becomes a phenomenon in 98 but as you cruise through 99 and now into 2000 are you looking for

that next big thing i mean that's that's sort of what wrestling is about right you're looking for hey what's going to be the next big thing that's going to carry us well you're always looking for it you're always hoping that you'll discover it or an opportunity will come your way that you can take advantage of that will be that next big thing um but it's you you you don't I'll speak for myself. I wasn't hoping for that at the expense or the exclusion of trying to develop the things that we did have and improve upon what we were doing. You know, my biggest issue, and again, I'm going to cut myself a little bit of slack here.

You know, I don't think I came back to WCW until, what, was it, March or April? April, yeah. In 2000. So, you know, 30 days in, 60 days in, that is not enough. time to turn things around. Had I had a great master plan, had I had taken, you know, September of 99 off all way until April of 2000 and spent, you know, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, crafting a master plan, you know, from a creative perspective for all the existing roster, it would

have taken a year to really implement correctly, you know. So I was looking more. more at how to achieve more creative efficiency, get more bang for our buck with the talent that we had much more than I was laying in bed at night, you know, hoping or trying to grab a hold of that next big thing because that's an illusion, you know, you can't manufacture the next big thing in the short term. You just can't. Once in a while you get lucky, you know, in an opportunity you'll come your way or an idea will come your way or something. somebody will come to you with an idea that you see a ton of potential in.

Or maybe you don't. Maybe somebody comes to you with an idea. And I'm not going to, I'm going to be intentionally vague here because it's, it's WWE. And I, you know, I'm friends with a lot of people there. And it's really not necessarily to point fingers at anybody. But there has been ideas that have exploded at WWE that almost didn't make it to television. And the same thing was true with WCW.

I'm not picking on anybody. You know, sometimes somebody will come to you with an idea and I don't know. We'll give that a try and then bam, it blows up. But, you know, that happens once every couple of years, you know. The rest of the time, it's just grunt work. It's just work and trying to create it. And it's hit or miss. You know, you can't always predict.

Anybody that any, the only people that, you know, have never made them mistake or is willing to admit the mistakes they've made in creative are the people that have never done it for a living. You know, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many movies of great writers and great directors written or directed and great actors starred in that sucked, that died? You can't become a star. You can't become a success in anything without, you know, having a track record of things that you, track record of things that you did

that you wished you didn't but the good ideas here's one of the things I really believe and this is something else I think I've learned now after part of it is just doing these shows with you Conrad and going back and looking at you know what worked and what didn't work

and putting things into context I really more than ever now believe that investing in story investing in your characters planning for the long term, not chasing a number or chasing a weekly rating, that's short-term thinking, I think it really is incumbent about people that want to turn their fortunes around

in the television business right now, whether it's wrestling or otherwise, is, you know, to focus of the quality of the story of the characters, because that's always what drives success. Every once in a while, just like we did with reality television when, you know, Survivor, you know, became a big hit in 2000 and was like the number one rated show on network television. And then shortly thereafter, everybody started dumping scripted content and everybody started going towards reality shows or non-scripted content. And everybody in Hollywood thought, you know, writers are, they're going to be extinct. Nobody's going to use writers anymore because the entire world is shifting over to reality television.

Well, that was true for a minute. And then it went back to scripted television with shows like the Sopranos of Breaking Bad and any others. And now you can't turn on television without seeing world-class scripted entertainment anymore. It's everywhere. So there's always a shift. And I think right now we've been going through this phase for the last couple of years where, yeah, we don't really need story. We just need to give them this high, fast-paced, short attention span, ADD, but very risky, high-flying action. Because that's what the audience wants. And to a degree, that's true. A portion of the audience does want that. But when you give, when you, when you, when you give your audience so much

of that and you compromise story and characters, you start to flatline. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're seeing flatlines now is because there's just been too much emphasis on high flying crazy super athletic action for the sake of crazy super athletic action, as opposed to super athletic action, crazy shit with a great story behind it. And we're going to get there. but it's all long-term planning, you know, chasing things week to week or chasing a rating or, you know, it's just not the way to go about business. All right, check it out, guys. We want to tell you about a great new sponsor here on the show.

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former Philly Radio personality, Bruce Wirt. VOC Nation's two most popular shows are wrestling with history featuring Ken Resnick and Bruce Wirt streaming live on Wednesday nights at 930 Eastern and, of course, in the room, featuring Pro Wrestling Illustrators, Brady Hicks, and WCW alum, The Maestro. And by the way, both of these shows take callers live during the show. And these guys have had incredible guests recently. General Adnan, Tito Santana, Haku, Earl Hebner, Dangerous Danny Davis, Jimmy Hart, Ricky Steamboat, Brodus Clay, and so many more.

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and subscribe to all of our podcasts by searching for VOC Nation Radio Network on your favorite podcast app. Oh, and follow them on Twitter too, at VOC Nation. And we thank them for sponsoring the podcast. no doubt about it eric would write in what are your thoughts on the blue ring canvas we've seen logos be an identity on wcw rings many times but it's typically gray here it's blue what's your take on that's a mile like you did like the blue better yeah I did why did we not see more of that do you think uh I don't know I don't know why we didn't see more of it but

I did like it better because it it number one you know white reflects so you don't want anything white because it just makes everything else dark gray was kind of just dingy to me I just liked the blue it was bright enough and it it just looked fresh and crisp to me just personal preference that's all but by and large when you said I don't know why we didn't see more I mean you could have said hey guys we're going with blue and then they're probably probably would have done that but it's just wasn't something that was that important right no it just wasn't a priority at that time there were there were bigger priorities and bigger issues uh dan walter day wants to know did you think this show was going to be the game changer to

help win the monday night war of course maybe didn't think you were going to win but i mean you had to be even though you're not as invested as maybe you once were that you've acknowledged here on the show and you got to be disappointed that goldberg's return after six months is not a bigger number, right? I was pretty realistic. I knew where we were. We were in a hole and we were struggling every week to dig out of that hole. So, no, to answer the question, I didn't think that this was going to be the show to help turn things around.

As I've said, you know, for the last 15 minutes, I knew 20 years ago when I did this that WCW was in for a long, hard, road to get back close to where we were and close the gap up. So to suggest that this one show, as much as it felt like a hot shot show and it was, and bringing back Bill Goldberg, was I disappointed? I personally wasn't disappointed. Was Turner Broadcasting disappointed based on the amount of money that they had to pay Bill? Thanks to Henry Holmes and Barry Bloom, yeah, they were because the return on that investment was obviously not going to pay off for a long, long time.

but I didn't I wasn't concerned about it because I had a realistic expectation going into this let's take a look at the hardcore championship we got lots of questions about that of course that's really the reason I picked it

because I thought it was ridiculous that you would beat Terry Funk for the hardcore title and you beat Rick Flair at Starcade asshole PDK wants to know why do you think the hardcore title is such a joke in WWV or at least it was for example we would see peri saturn come with a trash can full of junk and a mop and he would

be your typical challenger it seems to me that's what the 24-7 title has also become it's just a time-wasting joke of all jokes what say you i feel different about the 24-7 title than i do about the hardcore title because a 24-7 title is intended was designed conceived to be funny and to be humorous and not to be taken too seriously. Whereas the hardcore belt, for example, or the hardcore championship was one that people tried to make you believe they actually cared about, which was fine, except for the way they went about it was ridiculous. I don't care if you hit me in the head with the fucking garbage can. I will let you go out and hit me in the head with a garbage can for $20 a pop all fucking day long. it doesn't hurt

everybody knows it doesn't hurt and oh yeah a cookie sheet come on it's so silly while trying to be presented as serious that it's just like an internal

conflict for me it's like it just causes my brain to fight the left side wants to kick the shit out of the right side or the right side wants to kick the shit out of the left side just for watching it my brain's at a battle just watching hardcore shit

because there's nothing that's in that look bully good buddy mine divan love him to death has nothing to do with the people that made their bones in it because there was a point in ECW and even after ECW there was a point where hardcore matches you know Mick Foley could make them really

believable but then they got to a point after that hardcore glory day period, if you will, when it just became cheesy as fuck, I'm sorry. I mean, the minute somebody pulls something out from underneath the ring, the first question any reasonable audience member would have is, why is there cookie sheets and pie pans under the ring? And why am I supposed to believe that it hurts when I have one in my house and my friends and I beat the shit out of each other with it for fun?

pretending we're rustling. It's just it doesn't make any sense to be. And again, I think the contrast with the 24-7 title is they're not to be taken seriously. Nobody's trying to make you think that they're serious. They're trying to entertain you with humor. There's two different things. Well, we appreciate you taking time to break down another disappointing Nitro. Next week, though, we're going to switch gears.

We're going to do something totally different. We're going to talk about T&A from 2010. Of course, we're going to cover one of their big pay-per-views. This is Slammaversary 8 and went down on June 13th, 2010. I'm pretty excited about this one, believe it or not, because I've had a lot of fun covering this T&A arrow with you. On top, it's Rob Van Dam, defending his world title against Sting.

Jeff Hardy is going to be teaming up with Mr. Anderson to take on beer money, which is James Storm and Robert Rood. We've got Jay Lethal taken on AJ Styles and Rick Flair is in AJ's corner. Desmond Wolf has Chelsea in her corner or his corner rather and he's going to be taken on the Biss in a Monsters Ball match, which is a hardcore match. Matt Morgan will be working with Hernandez. Jesse Neal will be working with Brother Ray.

Madison Rain will be taking on Roxy in a title versus career match for the TNA Women's Knockout Championship. and then the X division title will be on the line when Doug Williams defends against Brian Kendrick and believe it or not the opening match on the card Kurt Angle and Kazarian that happens at the impact zone in Orlando in front of roughly 1,100 people what what jumps to mind when you think about slam reversary 8 with Sting and Van Dam on top got it I'm going to have to go back and watch it because it's a blur to me I really not

Nothing stands out to me in my mind. And I'm not suggesting it wasn't a good show. But when you ask me, you know, what's your reaction to it? One of my thoughts on it? I don't have any. I've got to go back and watch it to remind myself. Slammiversary, the very first one, happened in 2006 at the Impact Zone. This is the first slam anniversary where there's no king of the mountain match.

So it's a little bit different. And this is going to be a fun show that we have fun breaking down. dixie carter to promote this show just a few days ahead of time she would become famous for this but maybe this is one of the first time she did it she sends a tweet out that says there's a big surprise at slam aversory that could ultimately change t and a forever uh which is uh going to be not the case slam reversory wait wait wait wait a manage expectations well we're going to try to do that listen we did our best with a really bad nitro today we're going to do our best with uh maybe an overwhelming pay-per-view we'll see what uh what all the critics thought

and what you thought we would encourage you to go check it out uh we're going to watch it on the impact plus app i hope you do too then no this is not a paid ad no we're not getting paid to shield for them but eric it's it's even cheaper than the wb network and there is a ton I mean, a ton of great old stuff on here. Yeah, sometimes you've got to look for it. But it's in there, is it not? It is indeed. You know, I encourage you if you, you know,

one of the great things about the Impact Plus app is, you know, you get a chance to see, you know, early AJ styles, early Bobby Rood, you know, a lot of talent that, you know, or many talent that are now in WWE that kind of cut their teeth in impact. So it's, it's, and, you know, get to see some good stuff with, you know, Rick Flair and Hulk Hogan and others. So there is, despite, uh, despite TNA's reputation within the industry, there's still

a lot of great content there. Can't recommend it enough. Go check it out. Impactplus. TV is where you can find it online. Uh, we'll be back next week with more great content. Of course, if you haven't already, you need to check us out over at ad-freeshows.com. We just did a hell of them, a bonus episode where we broke down, uh, the time you

wrestled and defeated. the young bucks with a little help from your tag team partner matt hardy we told the behind the scene story and talked a little bit about the young bucks shoot interview where they sort of broke down what happened from their perspective and to see where they are now has become fairly remarkable you know to see what all of this became and you mentioned earlier and i wanted to keep it moving to keep the flow of the show somewhat intact that you were pleased with how you saw a ewe use Mike Tyson this past week. Of course, he was there to present the new T&T championship belt to Cody Rhodes after he picked up a victory over Lance Archer on the pay-per-view. So Cody is going to be

your first T&T champion. But then the next day, they did a pull apart after a Jericho inner circle segment. Tyson comes down to the ring with his band of friends, as all they recall, but three of the group are probably Hall of Fame UFC legends. And Tyson tears his shirt, it's in a shoving match. It's a big brawl. It felt a lot like raw back in the day with Tyson and Austin, except Jericho in the Austin spot. It was heavily criticized online, but you liked it.

How did you land on, hey, they used him well? Because I think they did, you know. I mean, he's Mike Tyson for crying out a lot. Mike Tyson has been in the news quite a bit as of late, whether it's speculation that he's creating about, you know, getting back into the ring. And I've seen a number of people that have stepped up and said they want to fight, including Evanderthold, Holyfield, would love to get in the ring with Mike Tyson.

So whether that's, you know, a shoot or not, or whether it's really going to happen or not, it doesn't really matter. Mike Tyson's been in the news quite a bit. And Mike Tyson is an interesting cat. I've always been a fan of Mike Tyson from when he was young and obviously he ran into some personal issues as we all know about

but he's come out of that and I find him to be one of the more interesting sports characters in the last couple of decades and I think they did use him right they didn't over expose him they didn't use him in a way that took anything away from other talent

look just look at the numbers the following week right after the big pay-per-view and the show that they did I think it was 847,000 viewers this past Wednesday. Yeah, they were up. It's the biggest number they've had in a long time. So that would suggest to me

that Tyson at least had something to do with that and to deliver a number 847,000 you know it's not two million like monday night raw two million like smackdown but for that show on that particular night that's a big jump in what they had been doing in this you know current corona environment with no audience i think it's a good solid number and like i said they didn't use them in a way that took anything away from anybody they used them in a way that enhanced everybody that was associated with them i don't know why this would get such criticism online unless it's kind of a Pavlovian dirt sheet

reading audience that feels the need to kind of, you know, hate on something. But I liked it. I watched the clips of it. I watched the pull apart. I thought it was really, really well done. I just, I don't know where the criticism comes from or why. Well,

I know we don't talk about current stuff a lot, but I appreciate that you sort of gave your perspective on something as current as this past week. But next week, we're getting our way back machine talking 10 years ago, T&A, Slammiversary 2010. We'll be there.

Catch all the bonus shows and all the behind the scenes content you can check a stick at and get this show early in ad free over at adfreeshows.com. But until next time, follow us on Twitter at 83 weeks. He is at E. Bischoff. I am at Hey, hey, hey, it's Conrad. And we are out of time. We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks

with Eric Bischop. All right, guys, thanks for listening. appreciate your support. As a reminder, you can get all these shows early and ad free over at ad free shows.com. And you've got to join us just to watch wrestling with Arne. To go back and watch him winning the tag titles and then challenge for the NWA world title were great fun. And next up, as you heard, want to make him watch the renegade match where he dropped his most coveted television title to him. It's a lot of fun over at adfreeshows.com. You can also get the brand new episode where Bruce Pritchard and I discuss the very first in your house.

from 1995 where the company actually gave away a house. We also watched an old Saturday night's main event from 1990 with a tremendous match between the Heart Foundation and the Rockers. Of course, demolition was there to watch on. Hulk Hogan was working with Mr. Perfect. The Ultimate Warrior was defending his brand new world championship against Haku.

So many great things happening on that old show from 1990. You don't want to miss it. It's all over at ad-free shows.com. And that's also where you can watch wrestling with Jim Ross. we watched a great mass from 1984 and mid-south part of bill watts promotion when the midnight express took on the rock and roll express and perhaps our most requested topic the plane ride from hell well jim tells it in great detail and i've got lots of follow-up questions i think i even got under a skin a little bit over at ad-free shows dot com tony shivani and i did a watch-along for the first episode of tiger king which feels like a fever dream and is almost as surreal as our most recent bonus piece of action where we watched the stars of the NWA playing a charity basketball game against Charlotte's Police Department in 1988. It is a lot of fun and you don't want to miss it.

You can also get all the current shows that we're doing this week, including tomorrow's What Happened to Win, and we watch the Impact debut on Fox Sportsnet. And of course, Grill and J.R. It's all about stone cold walking out and you don't want to miss ECW's one-night stand. All of those shows are going to show up early and ad-free over at ad-freeshows. com in fact we've already gotten next week's arn anderson for a hashtag ask rn anything i'm telling you we're overloading you with this content and some really fun experiences uh certain levels will get autographed merchandise in the mail some special commemorative memorabilia here and there

but the big to do is a big get together we're going to do in huntsville arn will be here eric will be here jr's going to do a run in tony's going to scoot over it's going to be a lot of fun to spend the weekend with these guys and have some fun drink some beer and watch old wrestling you don't want to miss it we're trying to create a little community over there it's all happening at ad free shows.com there's been fun stuff you know eric's doing zoom party calls and uh we've even had some fun little skits with tony chivani and lois maybe the my favorite new thing we've done is on the road again we mounted a couple of dashboard cams and we're teasing and dropping out new episodes every week with jim ross and tony shivani as they make their way to these shows in

jacksonville it's a lot of fun see what all the fuss is about it starts it just nine bucks it's ad free shows.com.