83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 281: Sting's 1999

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad discuss and explore the turbulent year of 1999 in Sting's career. Sting starts the year and ends as champion, but the wild storyline ride in between is something Eric cringes to talk about. HENSON SHAVING - It’s time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that’ll last you a lifetime. Visit HENSONSHAVING.com/83WEEKS to pick the razor for you and use code 83WEEKS and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. AG1 - Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. That’s drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. PROWRESTLING CRATE - ProWrestlingCrate.com is a monthly subscription box for the die-hard wrestling fans. Plans start at $9.95 and ship worldwide. Visit prowrestlingcrate.com.  STARRCAST VI - STARRCAST VI - Don't miss a moment of the fun and excitement planned for Starrcast VI! Starrcast VI is coming home to Chicago this Labor Day weekend September 1st through the 3rd. Grab your bracelets and bundles now at STARRCAST.com SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial today at AdFreeShows.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Eric Bischoff here. Now, if you need cash without the controversy, the team at savewithconrad.com can help. But don't take my word for it. My name is Jeffrey Munson. I'm from West Roxbury, Massachusetts. While listening in the car one day with my wife, we both were like, oh, he does mortgages. We should look into this. We've tried to refinance a couple of times, and either the process was too crazy,

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You'd be grateful you did. NMLS number 65084, Equal Healthy Lended. Woo! Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric, Bischoff, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? I'm just doing great, doing great. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law are here for a couple weeks, perhaps.

a little bit longer. They're looking for a house up here in Wyoming. Oh, wow. How about that? That's pretty cool. Yeah. And my nephew just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America down in San Antonio, Texas. And he's here for a month or so as well, which is really freaking awesome because I've had food over the last couple of days that I've never heard of before. And it's just incredible. So it's a gastronomical adventure. well how about that man i uh i didn't realize that you had fam looking to come out there i guess it's going to be uh all the bischoff clan and connier is he still out there no man is you know he still owns a lot of property around here and buildings and he owns a giant ranch about

15 miles from from my house uh it's called monster lake ranch and it's known for trophy trout, so people used to come from all over the world to come here and fly fish for trout. But he bought that and was here for a hot minute and decided he was shifting gears and everything's still here. He hasn't sold anything. Nothing's for sale. It's just all sitting. Must be nice to have that kind of bread. The ranch is for sale for $14.5 million, I think I saw. Wow. All right. Yeah. So kind of out of my league. I mean, you might want to look at it. Let's listen to you. Well, listen, if you want to live in Kanye's old ranch, there you go, 14.5 million, you'd be easy, ease neighbor and probably instantly be the talk of the community, if I had to guess.

Yeah. Well, we miss him, though. He was fun. He was fun to have around. People got all excited. And to be, and, you know, I think I may have said this before, but, you know, he really, he and Kim, now, I didn't have any interface with them at all. But when they would come into town, they'd eat in the, I mean, they were very, they adapted really well to Cody and Cody adapted really well to them. And it was a big deal for about a week when they first got here.

And after that, it was just, oh, hey, Connie, what's going on? How about that? Well, you learn something new every day. And we're going to be talking about something new today. Stings, 1999. I can't believe that's a real thing. Man, who would have thought that Sting would still be doing his thing all these years later? I mean, as you and I are recording this, we're like a month away from all in the big Wembley Stadium show.

Tens of thousands of tickets have been sold. You got to assume this is going to be one of, maybe if not the biggest crowd that Sting has ever wrestled in front of. And, man, think of all the other cats who are running around in 1999. They're not going to get that sort of chance. would you ever imagine that Sting would have the enduring career that he's had? I mean, this is really remarkable. I mean, yes and no. I mean, clearly Sting is a very, very talented performer.

He was there in the beginning of WCW. He was there when it absolutely was in the tank. And then he was there, you know, when we had the success we had in the mid and late 90s. But he was also there when shit hit the fan and it wasn't so good. And knowing Steve Borden a little bit, aka A.K.A. Sting, I would have thought that even if there was an opportunity for Sting to continue to perform, I would have thought after WCW, he would have probably said, you know, I've had a great career enough is enough and engaged the second chapter of his life. But, man, he's really been going at it ever since WCW. He hasn't really slowed down. It was in TNA for a long time and did a lot of great stuff there.

And then in WWE for a cup of coffee. And then, boom, here he is wrestling in Wembley in front of 70 or 80,000 people. They're pretty awesome. No doubt. It's pretty awesome. And we're going to talk about maybe a year that was, well, not as awesome. I mean, most of us grew up with Surferston. I know I certainly did.

It was one of my favorite wrestlers as a kid. And then we've talked a lot on this program about how he adopted a new character in 1996. And that crow character lives on through today. But in 1999, man, it just doesn't feel quite as hot as it was in 1996. And frankly, neither does W. That's an understatement, right? Yeah.

Something else we should at least mention when we're talking about wrestling from that era. I mean, you guys had the mainstream in a big way. I don't think that gets talked about enough. But, you know, the largest pay-per-view of all time, of course, for WCW is featuring Sting and the main event. That's Starcade 1997 and his quest to best the NW and become the WCW world champion, taking that belt from Hollywood Hogan. But the second biggest was Bash at the Beach, 1998. We just passed the 25th anniversary of that show. and certainly Goldberg was on it

defending his new world title that he just won at the Georgia Dome but more importantly the mainstream buzz led to the second largest WCW paper view of all time and that was largely built around Hogan tagging with Dennis Rodman

taking on Diamond Dells page tagging with Carl Malone fresh off of the finals I mean you couldn't have planned that any better if you meant to and somehow some way we've convinced Dennis Rodman to come to Starcast, Eric.

Can you believe that's a real thing? Dennis Rodman doing a wrestling convention? What in the world? Oh, no. It doesn't surprise me. Dennis loves wrestling. I've told you guys that for a long time. He loves it.

He's loved it growing up. He was a fan of wrestling, and he loves a wrestling fan. So it doesn't surprise me. And it's in Chicago. But I was really glad to see it. You didn't clue me in. He didn't give me any hints that it might be happening. and I didn't know it until I read about it on social media

and I put a big smile on my face. I think it's awesome. Well, the whole gang is going to be there. We're going to get all of our casting crew from our podcast network and, of course, a whole bunch of AEW folks. I don't know if it's been announced or whatever, but there's not going to be an AEW fan fest that weekend. So you won't have to compete if you're trying to wonder,

hey, should I do StarCast? Should I do FanFest? Come join us at StarCast. S-A-R-R-C-S-T-com. We've had a whole host. of superstars being announced. And by the way, we're not done with those announcements. We've still got a few more tricks up our sleeve

that I think people are really, really going to get excited about. Let's talk about 1999 and just talk about how the evolution of the Sting character is moving. You know, it's kind of surreal to see maybe Sting at the beginning in 1998 and then at the begin of 1999. Like, as a reminder, there's this big controversy about who the world champion should be at the beginning of 1998. Is it Sting?

Is it Hollywood Hogan? We're going to set up a rematch for Super Brawl, and that storyline will continue. But Sting is right at the top of the cards. Fast forward to the beginning of 1999, and things are a little different. I mean, he joined the Wolfpack in late 1998. He's actually going to lose to Brett Hart

in a match for the U.S. title, not the world title, but the U.S. title at Halloween Havoc. and then he's going to have an injury that keeps him off TV. But at the beginning of 99, as we know, the finger poke of doom, we've already covered in the archives, we're going to bring back both NWOs, and we're going to put them back together.

So the black and white of Hollywood and the red and black of Wolfpack, they're going to get back together. When you're thinking about that, in your mind's eye, does it make sense to involve Sting? Like, okay, you're no longer the Wolfpack. We're putting it all back together. we're going back to one brand and sting you're still in it i mean that just feels weird right especially because there was no motivation there was no reason behind it there was no story

behind it you know what why you know and i you know i harp a lot when it comes to creative and i probably seem picky from time to time but part of it is because of what i love learned from screwing shit up as bad as we did in 99. You know, when you make mistakes and hopefully, you know, I've learned from some of them, maybe not all of them, but some most perhaps at this point of my life. But those mistakes are valuable as long, because you acknowledge them for what they were. You understand why in this case, we're just going to bounce thing around. He's going to be the guy who's fighting off the NWL and then he's going to join part of him.

And then we don't like that so much. It's not really working. So let's just bring back the NWO. But I don't know. For reasons, we don't need a reason. Let's just put Sting in it because he sting. Right. You know, it could have been a good story.

It could have. It has the potential. Anything has the potential being a good story, depending on your level of imagination. But there was zero story. There was zero explanation. And it's just another example of what happens when, one, in this case, me, and the team working with me completely loses focus.

You no longer pay attention to the details, and it's not a little detail. A character's motivation and backstory and all that is kind of critical in any story, whether it's a children's book or a classic novel. You have to understand and relate to a character's motivation in order to relate to the conflict that they engage along the way to get to the end of the story and hopefully have a good ending. But without basic fundamental storytelling, like, okay, we're going to put Sting back in the NWO. Excuse me? Why? Nobody asked that question. We just moved on. Okay, let's put Sting back in the end. I mean, it really was that juvenile.

well let's let's at least acknowledge that that sting is going to make a comeback off air first and i've always been fascinated by this because especially in the current landscape of things it feels like at times there's very little patience in wrestling and you and i have gotten on this program before and complimented the bloodline storyline and complimented that they've had patience, but I've also heard you say that maybe you think that has jumped the shark. Let me explain what's going on with Sting. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what did I say? Who jumped what shark?

Well, you've talked about recently on a podcast that you felt like the bloodline storyline was maybe losing a little steam. Whoa, whoa, if I said anything that gave people the impression, which is entirely possible to get on these things and I go off on tangents and rants and I may have said something to confuse the issue. I don't look is the is the bloodline storyline at its apex now like it was leading into WrestleMania no because we're not going into WrestleMania you can't keep a story at a fever pitch especially one that's lasted this long bloodline get keep it at that either pitch constantly it's going to ebb and it's going to flow just like any dramatic series or anything else a book anything a movie is going to have its kind of rollercoaster

effect when it comes to your your emotions um i think that pacing the bloodline storyline incredibly well and adding lawyers layers but it's not as hot as it was going into russomania but i think that's kind of common sense i didn't mean to infer that it's losing steam let's talk about how I sort of relate that to Sting because he's going to come back to WCW but be working non-televised events back then

boy we called them house shows but he's taking on guys like Rath Bam Bam Bigelow even Brett Hart so he's back and able to return but not yet on TV now I know that some people would say and we see this all the time this type of conversation

online well hey if he's back and he's not hurt and he's able to work why aren't they putting them on TV? My point was, I feel like sometimes, Eric, we don't have the patience we used to have in wrestling. Instead, we wait and make it feel special. And I think the idea behind we're promoting a lot of times is if something feels special, then it is.

And if something is just another segment, then, well, it is. So Sting's return is hyped for April 5th, 1999, and this is the big push of the reset. with a new look and a new set. And the main event is Goldberg versus Hollywood versus Flair versus DDP for the WCW title. And during the match, the fans are even chanting, we want Sting.

The match ends in a no contest. Rick Flair retains the title, but what do you know, just like in the years past, Sting comes down from the ceiling with a baseball bat, Blair's going to powder out, Sting points to the video screen, and Randy Savage announces the spring stampede main event

would include Sting getting a WCW title shot. It's this Sunday in a four corners match. Savage is the referee. I mean, here he is, the big triumphant return. He's in the mix for a pay-per-view. This is the Go-Hong show for that pay-per-view. I know that these days people could be critical of that creative, but as a way to get some buzz and some last-minute buys and intrigue,

I really like that. Can you talk to me a little bit about, you know, pacing and the importance of having patience. I mean, I think a lot of times we've seen some shows where it's like it's one surprise after another. And you and I've talked about that before where it's like, man, now there's not really a surprise. If there's a surprise on every show, then there's not really a surprise. And I just thought this was well done. Hey, man, let's get him on some cards. Let's let him work the rust off.

Let's have some special attractions for the fans in the arena. Then let's have a big idea to bring it back on TV. I thought this was well done. I like it. And I liked it, I should say. And a couple points, you know, and listening to you, because you pointed out a couple really interesting things. I think the idea of keeping a character off television necessarily,

even if he or she are out wrestling and at live events, non-televised live events, is a way, if done well, and supported with other promotional elements to build anticipation story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. And I had no problem. First of all, I've never looked at really careful how I say this, because clearly I don't articulate my thoughts as well as I thought I did. Anticipation is, in my opinion, is the key to promoting. You've got to get people excited.

And there have been times when talent has been injured. Or maybe there was a contractual dispute. Maybe there was a family issue. Who knows? Whatever. For any reason, a talent is injured or is unavailable for television. I mean oftentimes you know you get frustrated because oh if you have a plan which in 99 I doubt we really did but if you know if it was 96 97 98 there would have been at least a pretty good outline in what we wanted to do over the next three to six months and when somebody gets injured in the middle that it's very frustrating but it's also an opportunity to give that character arrest keep that character off TV don't put them on television just for the sake of television because what happens then is you take a big start like Sting was, still is, but we're talking about this context.

You take a big, big star like Sting, and because you don't really have a plan, you don't really, you can't just insert them into something, you know, unless you're going to shoot a hot angle, but you don't necessarily want to do that with the top talent if you don't have to. So you put talent out there in scenes or situations, angles, whatever you want to call promos that don't really matter because there's nothing behind it. You're not going anywhere with it. You were just, it's maintenance.

It's kind of like, remember going back to, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin when I fired him and with the FedEx and all that backstory. You know, one of the things I was trying to do in that situation is bring Steve back and put him on camera just to keep him in the forefront of the audience's mind. In retrospect, that was a bad idea. Now, that's not why Steve didn't come down. was he never said so to me when we asked him to come in and do that interview that he famously refused to do which caused me to fire him um but he would have been right just if he would have said eric no what am i going to come back and talk about you're just going to put me on tv and talk just for the sake of putting me on tv and talking that takes a little bit of the luster

off the talent they no longer feel special the things that they're involved in aren't special therefore the talent doesn't feel special. So I think pacing, long way around the block to get to your answer, I think pacing is critical. You know, it's a part of planning. And I think the temptation to just, well, let's put him on TV because he's under contract or because the internet's going to get frustrated because they're not seeing this talent. I think it's a big, it's a reaction instead of an action.

And it's not a good idea most of the time. let's uh let's talk about spring stampede uh he's going to be back here ddp is going to win the world title this is a big moment for diamond dallas page i know this episode is about sting's 1999 but this is the first time ddp becomes the man and and what a group that he's going to share the ring with his opponents that night are rick flair hulk hogan and sting and the special guest referee is Randy Savage. It's just unbelievable. Meltzer doesn't love the match,

but in this era, there was a lot of let's load up the card as much as we can with his bidding names, and we'll figure out if they can have a good match. Well, it turns out these four old school cats having a four-way match with another wrestler as a referee. Maybe we're going to be more heavy on story than on action. It gets a star in a quarter.

But what I wanted to ask you about was just the overall presentation of Sting. let's again we touched on it at the top of the show we had surfer sting in 1996 we get crow sting now here we are in april of 99 i mean when he was in the wolf pack he was wearing red paint now upon the return do you recall there ever even being a discussion about should we modify the look should we evolve the look should sting have any changes for 1999 do you remember that being discussed at all uh i don't doesn't I mean, and the conversation didn't take place with Kevin Sullivan or any number of other people. But not with me, 99.

We're going to try to make the most out of this sting return. The next night, Nitro is completely sold out. You're no longer running the huge buildings, but still, it's a big building. It's big enough. It's 6,200 fans, $160,000 at the gate. And the show opens with a sting promo. That was unusual for Nitro. You know, the formula that worked for Nitro more often than not

was crazy over the top cruiserweight matches that, man, everybody was talking about. And meanwhile, the other show started usually with a long monologue from Triple H or Mr. McMahon or what have you. Sting's going to come out and do that same sort of thing here and it's just not very good. Melzer would point out that, quote, Sting got less over the more he spoke to the point there were booze at the end.

And he wound up challenging DDP for a title shot. Sting claimed he was the guy who built the house and seemed mad at people like Rhodes and Hogan who had claimed differently, being he's the only one who was there when the company was formed. Like, I like the idea of him as this old, grizzled veteran, but I do think part of the mystique of sting is he really approached less is more like i mean he went forever without speaking and then we were all wondering who side is he on and all of this sort of thing a long sting promo why did you think that's was the the right call at the time you know i certainly don't have the conference the details of those conversations in my head so i can't

make anything up or tell you what we're thinking. I would say if there was any thought process to changing up the format, it probably sounded something like, hey, you know, formulas sometimes are meant to be broken temporarily at least. And there's nothing wrong with mixing things up so that you don't want the show to feel predictable, even when it's working. You know, it's not a bad idea to change up format from time to time because it gets people's attention. Now, if you imagine turning on the news and the minute you turn on the news, you've got your anchor, co-anchor, whatever, sitting there just looking at the camera without saying a word. I would get your attention because you're not used to seeing that.

Everything is so tight when you see a news broadcast. They don't waste a second. They try not to, try real hard not to, especially when it's live. there's nothing wrong with changing it up to get people's attention. I think that, you know, I don't have to go back and look at the interview. I'll say this with so much respect, Steve Borden and the person and the character Sting. Long interviews wasn't his strong point. It never really was.

Sting's promos were best when back in the Surfer Sting era. Sting's promos were best when they were short, sweet to the point, and 100% intensity. Those work for Sting in that Surfer Sting character. Because if you think about that character, you know, just visually you're looking at that character. It looks like you could plug him in like a Christmas tree and he'd light up. You know, he was just so colorful in the sequence, base paint and everything. Bleach blonde hair, he was electric looking. And if his promos were consistent with that character and had that same level of intensity and energy as his physical appearance did, those will generally work as long as you keep them to 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute.

The minute you go into a two or three minute dialogue, monologue at this point, you're up there by yourself, most cases. You better be really good at it or and or have something really important to say. And without even looking at that promo, I venture to guess that it was too long and he didn't really have anything that interesting or compelling to say, my opinion. And if I understood your characterization of his promo, you know, for Steve to come out and taking the position of being the grizzled old vet and I'm the homegrown WCW guy, that's so tired that it I don't know that it ever wasn't tired it's just a I don't know it's a sleepy way to get into a story with with with a character like Steve it's different now if it was

somebody who had you know a Terry Funk and thoughts and prayers with Terry Funk but somebody that really was you know that old grizzled is going to get one more match kind of like John Wayne in the shoot us did you ever see that movie the shoot us with John Wayne I didn't Man, I think it was the last movie that John Wayne ever did. And he started it with Ron Howard. And John Wayne played this aging gunfighter with massive reputation, but he was dying of cancer. I think it was cancer, whatever, tuberculosis, perhaps.

Anyway, long story short. And there was one antagonist that wanted to be the man that put down John Wayne's character, shootist. before he died of natural causes, right? That's a heel. That's a pretty good heel. Now, that character, you know, the way John White portrayed it, he was obviously, he was on death's doorstep.

Now, it was just a matter of time, and the audience knew that. And that's what the story was building around. So in that case, yeah, it's kind of like, all right, if I got to load up the guns one more time to face this one last guy, I'll do what I have to do. And then you enjoy the journey in the process of seeing how he's going to do it and if he's going to survive it. But in this case, Sting wasn't that grizzly old vet.

Now, technically, was it true? Yeah, he was around since the beginning. But is that compelling? It's a fact. Is it a compelling fact? Therein lies the difference. And I think people that have relied upon the heritage, being homegrown. It was one of the things that used to drive me crazy about TNAs.

Everything was homegrown. Like it was, you know, a restaurant serving farm to table food. Now, people aren't necessarily excited about homegrown. It can be an interesting little sidebar or part of a storyline or excuse me, part of a character's bio, but it's not compelling. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, too. I think that was, I had to look it up, but I think that is John Wayne's last movie, a minor critical or a minor success financially. 13 million of change at the box office, the shootest. I'm going to look that up.

I mean, try to watch that with my dad. It's a great movie. I'm surprised. And Ron Howard was great in it. It was a really, really, really good movie. Told a great story. Well, Sting is not really telling a great story in his promo here. I mean, it's not really what we want to hear from Sting.

And that's the thing, it's such a deviation from the old crow character. I want a title shot. I built this house. It came from a place of instead of I'm saving WCW from you, now it's I want to be the champion. And it sort of feels like a promo that almost anybody could do. And that was not maybe what made us love Sting. Well, DDP comes out in this second. And I hate to interrupt you, bro, because I know you've got notes in front of you,

but just to put a finer point on that, for Sting, again, not how we see the interview, just working off of what you're telling me here, but for Sting to come out, historically, he's been, you know, the biggest baby facing a company for a long time. And then to come out and say, I built this. that's now if he's a heel straight up heel i guess go that way you know if you're going to get heat by being selfish and have a high opinion of yourself and take credit for shit you shouldn't take credit for and all that kind of stuff and go for it you know they'll get you a little bit

of heat if you build on that but for a character who's been pretty much of a baby face to know his entire career to come out and take credit for building the company and demanding matches and talking about what you deserve, that is not a good idea. That's not a good formula. Somebody else needs to be saying that for Sting. That would be an announcer's job. Sting should have been humble. Sting should have put DDP over.

That could have been compelling, but to come out and take credit for building WCW and being the old grizzled veteran and deserving of something, it's kind of the opposite of what that character should have been doing. Let's talk about what winds up happening. DDP comes out. He doesn't accept the match. Somehow Flair gets involved and what do you know? Flair winds up working with Sting that night.

They go 15 minutes. Sting gets the win with the Scorpion Death Drop. I mean, listen, it does feel like throughout WCW history, certainly on Nitro, whether it's the first Nistro or the last one. Hey, I'm not sure what we should do. Yeah, just look, Rick Flair and Sting wrestle. That has, that's like our, you know, in case of fire, break glass opportunity. Shit, what do we do?

We don't have a plan. Oh, we really need to kind of get some momentum back. I know, Rick Flair and Sting, because it always worked. So that's not just a narrative that fans have online. Do you agree with that? It became a crutch at times. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But it's not like we went into it begrudgingly either. No. Because you knew you were going to get a good match. You had two great performers that the audience clearly wanted to see. And it would get you that bump if you needed it. So no. But it's not like I didn't see it happening in front of me. Of course, we talked about it often.

Let's also mention Roddy Piper. He's here and he's going to force DDP to put his title on the line against Sting. And Sting gets the win for the WCW title. This is just a few weeks later. after Sting's big return. So a pretty short-lived run for DDP. We put the belt on Sting. In this era, we're in the,

we're called the spring of 99. Are we more often than not booking week to week? I know that this, go ahead, take it from there. No, absolutely. Is that the, I mean, what, what changed? Is it just the, dog fight with the WWF on Raw? Are you feeling pressure from the North Tower? I mean, once upon a time you've gotten on the program before and talked about how stick to your plan. Make your

plan, block out what everybody else is doing. It doesn't matter. Stick to your plan. I know that works, but sometimes that works when you're winning. When you're losing, are you scrambling just to try to gain whatever ground you can every week? When was it time to pivot from Stick to your plan. I don't think there was, there wasn't like a, aha moment or a light bulb went off and, you know,

we said, screw it, let's not stick to our plan. Let's just throw shit up against the wall. It was, it was the result of a lot of the external, not WWE. Really, yes, we were losing ground and had been. Otherwise, it's not new, right?

WWE, when they kind of adopt, the NWO for the nitro formula and turned it into the attitude era and kind of went after the 18 to 34 demo we've talked about it to death and keep going back to it but that that began a seismic shift that seismic shift combined with a lot of the internal Turner AOL time Warner drama is what really began to put probably more more pressure on me for certain I went from never having a conversation with anybody on the corporate side of things from about 1994 to about the fourth quarter of 98. I had very little contact with my bosses. I, you know, when it was Bill Shaw, I would see Bill face to face maybe once a month. We'd have maybe one or two phone calls

if something urgent was on the table. But for the most part, I, I barely saw Bill Shaw. Harvey Schiller came in. And I expected the worst when I read about Harvey Schiller and got a little insight into his background. And I thought, oh, man, this is going to be, this is going to be fun. I'm going to have this military officer who's worked with the Olympics and professional sports and he's going to come in here and try to tell me how to run wrestling.

Never happened. At very little, I had more conversation with Harvey than I did with Bill because I think Harvey was more interested in understanding. So whatever conversations I had with Harvey were productive, and I wouldn't consider them, you know, pressure or undue influence from above, so to speak. But beyond those kinds of conversation with Harvey, I had very, very little day-to-day business contact with Harvey. Now, all of a sudden, my day is filled with conversations and meetings dealing with the crap that was coming down as a result of the pre-merger.

That's probably more responsible for what happened in 1999 with WCW than anything the WWE was doing. That certainly had a big part of it. But those, these things were all happening simultaneously, you know, and again, I'm trying, I'm trying really hard not to say things that I know I've talked about in depth before, but you have to understand what it's like when you've got a budget in place, it's been approved, you've over-delivered, you've generated more revenue than you were projected to do, or profit than you were projected to, to achieve, and then all of a sudden have your guts pulled out financially and your budgets slash or reduced, some cases eliminated.

And now, but you still have to operate at that high level that you were operating with when you had your budgets in place. So that created for me, and I'm going to be really honest about it, it was probably more It wore me out more emotionally, and it's not like I went home and cried about shit. That's not who I am. But I was frustrated. I was angry. I was trying to figure out a way to overcome some of these challenges.

I said it before. I'd pick fights with people that were so far up the food chain for me that I could, if I looked up, I'd maybe see the bottom of their shoes. but if I thought that they were in my way, I'm going to go after them. You know, I'm going to challenge it. I'm not just going to take it. Well, that internal battle created, like I said,

way, way more problems for WCW than anything that anything WWE was doing. Well, remember how I said Sting won the belt here on Nitro? Later the same night on the very same Nitro. That's right. It wasn't the main event. And Singh drops the belt back to DDP, this time in a four-way that involved Nash and Goldberg as well. Listen, I know that there are other podcasters who used to be in booking who have pretty loudly and proudly said, bro, the title's a prop.

And a lot of old school wrestling fans get really upset about that. I mean, I understand he meant, hey, you can use this as a storytelling device to build matches and have stakes. And I understand what he meant. but I can also see how you're trying to get people to tune in and you don't want them to change the channel over to Monday Night at Raw. So we keep it going. But in the process, do you think having the belt go back and forth like this on the same night?

Do we devalue the belt? Like, does it matter as much the next time is a title match if something like this happens? It's interesting conversation when people talk about devaluing the belt because it's kind of like a narrative that exists in the peripheral wrestling universe, right? Fans talking about things like that. I think what it, look, the belt is only as meaningful as the story that's driving it. Just putting a belt on somebody doesn't make them a star.

Conversely, losing a championship doesn't necessarily hurt a star. it all depends on the perception of that title. Is that title associated with meaningful story that's compelling? Then it's valuable. But when you're tossing it around like a 49-cent bag of Dorito chips, no, it's not worth anything. So I guess in a sense that, yeah, referring to it is devaluing it,

certainly in this case would apply, right? Literally flipping that title without any story. I keep going back to the same thing. I get sick of hearing myself say it. Had there been a buildup to that evening or a build up to Sting or, excuse me, DDP winning that title back, if it would have been kind of a,

the last piece of a puzzle that you were putting together, great there's a reason for doing it that wasn't the case here i can assure you this was more this was desperation booking this was booking out of frustration and desperation much more than it was anything that resembled logic the other thing that i really struggled with and i want to ask your opinion because i know this is another philosophical question but it feels like in in learning from Bruce that, man, sometimes baby face versus baby face just didn't work. They really tried that experiment big at WrestleMania 6 with Hogan and Warrior wasn't great. They tried it again six years later with Brett and Sean wasn't great.

I mean, I loved both of those as a kid, but I mean creatively is one thing, business-wise is another. He often believes that more often than not, what works has always worked. you need good versus evil. We're trying new things here. In the mix of all of this spring of 99 stuff, we've got Sting trading punches with Flair. Sting's going to call out Goldberg. At this point, these are your two biggest baby faces.

I mean, we know Flair would go back and forth. He's a good guy. He's a bad guy. But Sting and Goldberg, man, these are perennial baby faces and two of your biggest box office attractions. So it makes sense that you would want to hypothetically fantasy book it. But when they're both baby faces, are you trying this out of desperation or are you just looking for something new?

I would say the former, you know, I've never been afraid to try something new, clearly. Some of it's worked really well. Some of it hadn't worked, didn't work. So, you know, trying something new is never something that I shied away from. In fact, I embraced. You have to. But that's not what this was. This was just desperation.

You know, you ask, you know, was it a week-to-week booking by this point? It was probably day-to-day booking by this point. It was desperation. How do we get this ship back on course? Again, it could have worked. It was long-term. There was some real drama. If there was conflict in there, internal conflict, perhaps.

You know, conflict doesn't always have to be between two individuals or two or more individuals. internal conflict can be far more interesting and compelling for an audience than external conflicts to perform other wrestlers or whatever there was nothing there was none of that there's a great opportunity to you know get inside the head of steve and distinct character and you know let's hear him struggle with the fact that he's going to be in there with the guy that he respects and loves but he's got to throw the respect and the love out the window. There is no respect in love when it comes to the bell rings. It's just survival.

That kind of a promo coming from someone like Sting and seeing him struggle with it. Like maybe to the point where we weren't sure he was really going to go through with it because he just did not want to get in there with someone he was as close to as he was Bill Goldberg. All the while putting Bill Goldberg over. Now you've got a little bit of a story. and the anticipation that you would be building within that story or trying to build in that story is will he or won't he not necessarily willy or won't he win willy or won't he really fight his best friend i mean there's there's a there's a 22nd or 30 second premise to a story

that could have been built upon and could have worked even though it's baby face versus baby face i agree with bruce you're not going to get those big emotional pent-up anticipation explosive responses to a finish of a match when you've got two baby faces because the audience is also a little conflicted. Who do they choose? Oh, who do I want to see get their ass? I don't want to see either one of them get their asses.

I like them both. But you have to overcome that with something. And that, look, I think one of the, and I'm not going to be able to cite you specific examples, but one of the things, I sat down with somebody who was a writer a couple of years. It was when I was in WW. I think I was interviewing.

a writer from Los Angeles and said he had a lot of feature film writing experience and he pointed out that one of the changes in characters that we've seen over the years

in the Marvel comic series is that their superheroes also have Achilles heels or internal conflict you know Superman always had kryptonite right so it's not like a new thing but the internal struggle, the internal emotional struggles are one of the things that make a lot of these larger than life Marvel characters compelling for the audience because they see that even

though this character is larger in life and a superhero, he or she's got real issues too, just like me. It helps you engage a little bit more or identify a little bit more with a character. That's an element that could have been easily included in the Stingle, but it wasn't. it was it's a dream match let's book a dream match oh it's sting it's goldberg these two of our most popular characters oh my god this is going to be huge no it's not for all the reasons we just talked about well and you would think that man they're going to build to this and it'll be hallowing havoc or it'll be starcade nope it's slamberry and way killer has this to say sting and goldberg might be the most under promoted match in wcd w tv pay per view history mike to name made an effort

at the start of the pay-per-view to explain that Flair booked these two against each other in order to limit their power by getting them to fight one another rather than unite. But to throw the Sting Goldberg match on pay-per-view without hyping it to the moon is inexcusable. The so-called WCW franchise of the past 10 years against the WCW franchise of the next 10 years should have alone been enough to pop a huge buy rate. Instead, they braw briefly on Nitro six days earlier for no apparent reason. and then the match isn't even mentioned again on Nitro. I mean, I think it's fair to say here, you know,

and you've taken a lot of criticism over the years, why did you put Goldberg and Hogan on free TV? And we've addressed that. It's in the archives. If you want to check it out, 83 weeks.com. However, this dude, come on. I think he's on to something. You had one brawl six days prior and now it's a pay-per-view match

and that's all the hyping we're doing. like this was a missed opportunity maybe even bigger than the why wasn't Hogan on a paper view like this is lost opportunity to say the least yeah I mean I don't know what else to say about it would be any different or more insightful insightful um than what we just talked about it was literally throwing things up against the wall out of desperation hoping they're going to stick to bias enough time to try to figure it how to create some momentum. It really was that bad.

And I know what's your, I mean, I don't even remember this match happened until we started talking about this episode and doing some research for the show. It's a no contest. Brett Hart's going to come out and deck the referee, Mickey Jay. He's going to start nailing chair shots on Goldberg. After he leaves, the Steiner's are going to come out. And it's just less than ideal. I mean, we're on a paper view.

You know, it almost sounds like Conrad is you just described that to me. That sounds like a WCW finish circa 1991. There you go. 92. Just, I don't know, let's fill up the ring. We'll have a couple run-ins. We'll get some heat at the end once it's all over. You know, all the camouflage and Gaga that you hope will create enough emotion that people will not realize

that what they just watched didn't really make any sense. and he didn't really care about it going in. The next night, Sting is going to answer Rick Steiner's open challenge for a match for the TV title. They go to a double countout. And then we see Buff Bagwell the following week wrestling Rick Steiner. And about three minutes in, a loud noise all of a sudden distracts the Steiner's. And a man who appears to be Sting is going to drive Sting's monster truck down to ringside. As the Steiner's approach the big truck, the man removes the mask and reveals, it's actually Lex Lugar.

Luger points to the ring and Sting is standing in the ring. The cameras missed it, but Chivani points out that Sting had actually come in through the crowd. What are we doing here, Eric? We're creatively bankrupt by 1999. Is that fair to say? We're out of ideas. We're a ship with no sale. We're out of ideas.

We're out of direction. Yeah. We're out of support internally. We are as dysfunctional as WCW probably had ever been at that point. Not quite. Not quite, but damn close. Next up, I know what you're thinking. Man, what are we going to do with this whole Rick Steiner sting thing?

Well, we're going to involve Tank Abbott. Can't believe that's real, but Tank Abbott is going to be the special guest referee. And I guess no one has shown him much wrestling. He doesn't even know he's supposed to be counting pins. He's going to clock Sting and leave the cage. Rick Steiner's going to beat on Sting. Sting's going to make his own comeback. And all this sets up the Great American Bash for 1999.

It's Sting and Rick Steiner in a Falls Count Anywhere match. And listen, I love Rick Steiner as a performer. I know that, boy, he has become a lightning rod in more recent years. When I was a kid, though, the Steiner brothers were my absolute favorite. And my absolute singles favorite was Sting. So like the little kid in me, man, I would have loved this match. But I have to say, by 1999, Sting working with Rick Steiner was like a, emotion for Sting.

I say that respectfully, but like I just associate Rick Steiner with being a tag team wrestler and I associate Sting with being in the world title picture. So Sting having a match with the TV title champion in 99 is like, what are we doing?

And it's kind of a nothing match and Meltzer would say they had no chemistry against each other. He actually gave it a negative one star. What did you? you think of this? I mean, this is a new era for WCW. We're even

trying new things here. Like Rick Steiner's going to grab the mic and say that Baltimore is the shittiest town in America. I mean, I think in ECW that could have worked maybe, but in WCW, it just feels like,

man, we've lost our way a little bit here. Yeah. And there's a little bit of the same situation between Rick Seiner and Sting as it was between Sting and DDP, meaning it just on paper it doesn't make any sense unless you figure out a way to make it make sense. Even though Sting wasn't initially a tag team performer on a regular basis in WCW probably

happened occasionally, but he was known as a singles wrestler, obviously. But he also, it was known and in storylines had exploited the fact, the true life fact that Sting and Rick Steiner were pretty good friends. They were tight. Again, what's, and maybe there was more of an explanation than we're discussing here. If we go back and look, maybe our announced team is doing a good job kind of filling in some of those holes. I have to go back and look at it to see. But if not, and I would say they probably didn't because, again, they can't fill in holes if they don't have the information in front of them.

If they don't know where a story's going, if they don't know how the creative team wants to position them going forward. If you don't have any of that dialogue, you know, you're just filling time out there. You're almost afraid to say too much because since you don't know what's going on, you don't have the information, you don't have the direction of the story, sometimes it's best to do no harm by saying nothing and being general. So you get a very general, basically ineffective color and play by play track. While we're watching a match that's got no real backstory and complete conflict to everything the audience has learned about these two characters over the last 10 or 15 years.

That's what that was. Well, in case you don't have the, I don't know, the emotional capacity to watch this match, because what a match it is, I just want to give you the finish, Eric, and I know this is going to do some flashbacks, and I apologize for this, but through the course of the match, the guys are going to brawl backstage, We're going to do a cutaway shot. We'll see Tank Abbott choking a man who looks like Sting with a title, or with a towel, rather.

And then we're going to have a bunch of dogs attack Sting. And then the Steiner's are going to return back down to the ramp, into the ring, and they're going to intimidate the referee to announce that Rick Steiner has won because he pinned him backstage, even though we didn't see it. Dogs. My goodness, Eric. Dogs.

I don't hate it as much as you do. I don't hate the idea. I hate the execution. I think the execution was done poorly. But if you remember, Rick Steiner was a dog-faced gremlin. Rick Stanton used to come to the ring with a spiked dog collar around his neck. right and bark in his promos he would bark do not clip that and promote that yes that's going to be a maim everywhere

but so it's not the idea of using dogs to you know guard like like rottweilers doberman is the picture of the dog i saw in one of those shots the idea doesn't bother me if the execution is done What bothers me the most, even today, as I'm hearing about this, because I completely forgot about it and seeing some of these pictures is the potential risk. I get it. I have friends that are professional dog trainers, and I get it, you're 99% sure that everything is going to go well, maybe 90% sure when you're using dogs that are trained to attack.

But it's not 100%. And if something were to go wrong, the liability exposure would be ridiculous. Yeah. I'm surprised we did it. Surprised we got away with it. Probably the only reason we got away with it is we didn't ask anybody. We just did it and hoped for the best. That was kind of the mentality was what was going on backstage or in the office at WCD.

This is the same company. I don't hate the idea, though. Once upon a time, this is. It should have been out in front of people. Yes. Well, I don't know. I mean, listen, this is the same company that one. once allowed bears to be walked to the ring

and Scott Steiner to walk a tiger to the ring and now we're having dogs attack a wrestler backstage. This is the same company that once upon a time said, hey, you can't call it a foreign object. That's offensive. We must refer to it as an international object. WCW at Times was missing the point. And maybe you've been missing the point

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com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks. All right, Eric, let's talk about the next day at Nitro. We've got Rick Steiner beating Hack, the former Sandman, in about seven minutes. They're going to be using a Ford Explorer here and a Harley Davidson here. And eventually, Sting is going to show up and attack Rick Steiner. Sting's going to whip Steiner through an RV and then grab the house mic and he's going to do like a Joker-like rhyme. Riddle me this, riddle me that. Who's afraid of Sting's big black bat?

and then Sting nails Rick in the chest with the baseball bat. This is the first time we saw something like, quote, unquote, Joker, Sting, and I liked it. What did you think of this little tease of maybe what we'd see more of in T&A? No, we didn't see more of it in T&A, didn't we? Yeah. I liked it. No, it was kind of improvved on Sting's part. I don't think there was a long discussion or plan in that promo.

I think it really, that sounds like something that really just came off the top of head, uh, a top of Sting's head in the moment. The next week at Nitro, we see Savage, Sid and an entourage come to the ring. Sid's going to power bomb Kidman and psychosis right in the middle of their match. Sting's going to come out and make the save. Eventually Kevin Nash confront Sting and he says something like, I saw you get out of that Black Hummer last week.

Sting says, no, it wasn't the driver. Eventually they announced that it's going to be Sid and Savage against Nash and Sting at the pay-per-view and they've also decided that they're going to let Sid wrestle Sting later in the show. We haven't touched on that infamous Hummer angle who was the driver storyline before. Do you think Sting was ever in serious,

was he ever seriously considered to be the driver there? Or did you have a plan at all for staying with that? I don't know. no i honestly don't know i don't think there was as much of a plan you know the mysterious humber driver um i don't think that that was as well thought out long term what do we do next how do we follow up on that of a plan as it was yeah i've got an idea let's do this tonight just keep the driver secret i don't think there was a lot of intention behind that and one of the

reasons i don't think i i one of the reasons i don't remember is because the conversation probably never took place. Again, you're booking week to week, sometimes day to day, and a lot of the stuff just wasn't thought through at all. It was how do we get through tonight? How do we get through the next two hours, do the best we can with what we've got? That was the extent of it. I think the audience has made a lot more out of who was driving the Hummer

subsequent to that night. The audience made a lot bigger deal out of it than we did. Which, you know, kind of embarrassing, but true, those circumstances. Check this out. We see Sting and Sid Vicious go to a D.Hugh here. We're going to have Lex Lugar and Randy Savage get involved. That's not really the story that there was a non-finish to a main event on my chart. We saw that a lot.

The weird thing about this is to me, Sting is going to take the mic. in response to something Randy Savage was saying and says of him and Lex Lugar, we got two words for you, suck it. Uh, what? I mean, I understand that a lot of fans who watch this show, watch the other show, but what in the world are we doing when we allow Sting to go off the air with that? Again, I will also say that this is more than likely. Sting improvving in the moment.

And it was also desperation on Sting's part. Sting was trying to get over. Yeah. Remember, Sting is a guy who is in WCW when they couldn't attract flies if you rolled horseshit and dog shit. I mean, you just couldn't, they were giving tickets away. They couldn't even give tickets away to pay-per-view. Your house shows, maybe 150, 200 people showed up.

pay-per-views, the performances were embarrassingly bad. And Sting was right there in the middle of it. Now, he was a part of it. He was the face of the company when the company was, in many respects, at its worst. And then Sting, he wrote that out, and he was there when everything turned around. And now we're losing it again. Not just financially, you know, not just perception-wise. well, perception wise for sure, but the talent that was getting so used to going out every

night, selling out nitros, putting 40 or 50,000 people in an arena for a free television show. Now, that sting was also there in the middle of that. And then all of a sudden, and it was all of a sudden, it wasn't as gradual as some people may think. It happened pretty quickly. Within a matter of months, all of a sudden now you just can't get her. reaction and you're desperate as a character. You're going to do things to push the envelope that weren't necessarily discussed and planned out. I don't want to burst any bubbles here, but

for anybody that thinks that everything that happened, whether we were at our peak or fighting from underneath, like we were here in 1999, we were not scripted at all. We had bullet points. We discussed what we're going to talk about and how we're going to talk about it, in some cases, more than others, but it wasn't like every single thing that someone was going to say was going to be run by me or Kevin Sullivan or whoever was booking at the time. It wasn't the case. So this was really Sting, I think, feeling just the void of energy and connection to the audience and threw something out off the top of his head that he was hoping would get a reaction.

That's, to me, that's what that was. And, you know, Sting, if you ever talk to him about it, may say otherwise or think otherwise, but that's how it feels to me as you laid it out. Well, it's interesting because Bash at the Beach 99 is, I mean, again, we just talked about at the top of the show that Bash of the Beach 98 is just an all-time record show for the company. But if you go back a couple of years prior to that, Bash at the Beach 96, it's where Hogan turned. And you go back a couple of years prior to that, that was the biggest WCW paper review in history with Hogan and Flair for the first time.

So what do we do in 1999? What's the world title doing? Well, it's Randy Savage and Sid Vicious taking on Sting and Kevin Nash. That's a tag match. That's a main event. That's big time. That's a lot of star power. But whoever wins is the world champion in a tag match.

So Randy Savage is going to pin Kevin Nash to become the WCW heavyweight champion. It's not without a couple of snafus along the way. Gorgeous George goes to give Nash a low blow. She misses. He pauses and freezes, waits for another one. She finally hits it. And now, Cid's going to body slam Nash, big elbow drop off the top. Negative one star, according to the observer.

It's probably not the best creative time for anyone, whether it's the talent in the back who are putting this together or the talent in the ring who are trying to make it happen. along the way we've got even more uphill battles for Sting the next night we see Rick Flair beat Dean Malenko in 8 minutes and 47 seconds Blair and Arne are going to beat

on Malenko until Sting makes the stave Sting's going to challenge Flair to a match for the company hey I want to take over control here so finally we're getting back to Sting and Flair but maybe not the Sting Flair match you would imagine

you see Rick says Okay, fine, but first you got to beat my son. So, yeah, the Sting flare we get first is David Flair for the U.S. title. Sting gets the scorpion on right away. David starts tapping, but the referee is Charles Robinson. Little Nates just totally ignores that. We've got some nice little storytelling here. But damn, man, who would have thought, I mean, I didn't even remember this happened

until we started doing research. Rick Flair versus a Rick Flair son, David Flair versus Sting. maybe it skips a generation. I don't know, but this one wasn't as magical as the ones he had with his dad. Yeah, and that's not fair to David.

No, of course not. It was a dumb-ass idea. It was really dumb. No thought, really given into it. Put David Flair in incredibly bad situation. I mean,

man, if you want, I don't even know. It's mind-bogglingly bad. Just leave it at that. And forget about how much it hurt David Flair. Any chance David Flair ever had of possibly having a career in professional wrestling, this was probably a death nail in any potential career that David Flair would have.

Because you're not only putting a young man out there who doesn't have the experience, just doesn't and the audience is not accepting him he's not just they're not going to just accept David Flair as a heel or baby face just because he's Rick Sutton

you've got to earn that shit how many times have we seen second generation wrestlers just not live up to the expectation or fill the boots of their fathers that preceded them there's a lot And to put David out there with no experience, no chance in hell of being able to put out a performance that would give him some credibility with the audience.

Somebody would, yeah, he's young, but man, a lot better than I thought it would be. There was, there's nothing there. It's a horrible idea. Well, let's mention that the creative at this time, I think, is being handled by Kevin Nash. And the observer, Dave wrote this. Damn, if Schiller and Siegel actually watched this show, they'd have fired Nash and the rest of the people booking this crap months ago. I mean, listen, you've acknowledged we're fighting and we're trying to scrap

and we're trying to gain what momentum we lost and just not get our ass kicked on Monday. And yes, we're booking week to week. But often dated, hey, Kevin Nash is in an unwinnable position here, too. I mean, I don't think all that criticism is totally fair. Like, momentum is a real thing, right? Momentum's a real thing. And building momentum is a really difficult challenge. Maintaining momentum is an even bigger challenge.

But trying to recreate momentum, once you've created it and lost it, is almost impossible, particularly given situation that WCW was in at that time. And to say that putting Kevin in, first of all, Kevin volunteered for that position because he saw what was going on with me as a friend. He offered to help, knowing, by the way, that that was going to come with nothing but heat and criticism. But somebody had to do it. Kevin was a guy that I trusted him. And whether or not I trusted him to be the most creative person in the room or not was beside the point. and he was willing to do the work and take the heat.

And somebody had to. I couldn't do it at that point in time. I was unable to do it at that point in time. And Kevin, again, seeing what I was going through, stepped up, said, hey, if I can help, I'll do it. And he did. And I don't know who you could have put into that position. You know, you could take the top five greatest wrestling minds.

in the wrestling industry, put him in a room together, and I don't think they could have figured it out. It was an impossible situation. And I respected Kevin then, and I still respect Kevin for stepping up and doing it. It's not like he thought he was going to get a raise. Right. Or all of a sudden, you know, half the locker room is going to love him,

and the other half is going to think he's a pretty good guy. That is not what happens when you. Same thing happened to Rick Flair, you know, putting a, putting an, an active performer in that role as the head of creative is the most thankless position that anybody could be put into. It's never good. It's not going to work. Never has, never will.

Not for any length of time or on a large scale. Sting is finally going to wrestle Rick Flair here for control of the company. And Sting wins. They go eight minutes and 40 seconds. Sid is going to interfere. There's going to be a bunch of ref bumps. Originally, it's written that the reason there was so much hesitation in making the call and ringing the bell is that Flair was supposed to win due to Sid's help as late as one hour before the show started. They changed it again without telling everyone, so they all froze for

a second when Bischoff signaled. Hudson played it really well, and the guy ringing the bell wouldn't ring it, figuring the Bischoff thing was a swerve, but the crowd went nuts for the finish. Sid attacked Sting and powerbombed Bischoff until Hogan showed up and Sting took a powder. So, yeah, there's maybe some confusion. Maybe we didn't catch everybody up. It feels a little bit like, you know, Survivor series, and we know that you're a position of power and you're saying, hey, we need to ring the bell. Here comes, Sid, you're going to take the big power bomb. Man, we've all talked forever about that big power bomb you took from Kevin Nash.

But that one you took onto some boxes off a stage. This one you took in the ring from Sid, which of those power bombs sucked more? I still feel the Sid power bomb to this day. Yeah. If I move my head in the wrong position or if I sleep in the wrong position, I'll wake up and remember that bump. And it was my fault. It wasn't Sid's fault, really. I over-rotated.

I don't think I took my chin as well as I should have. And that one I felt. You know, the Kevin Nash, power bomb off stage, never felt it at all. I mean, I literally, I was excited to get backstage and have a beer. I was so happy with that one. This one, I knew when I hit that it was going to leave a mark. And it did. All these years later, I still remember that one.

Let's talk about what's next. Sting is the new president of WCW, and the next week he's going to ask the crowd if he should be Hulk Hogan's partner, and that gets a mixed response from the crowd. Hogan comes out and is saying, I'm not the same Hollywood I was before. You can trust me. And then we see Kevin Nash team up with Sid Vicious to take on Hogan and Sting. That's interesting. The two guys who were once arched nemesis and a tag team here,

here. What did you think of that creatively? Sting and Hogan together? I didn't hate it at all, and I still don't as you're laying that up. Because again, it had the potential. What are people thinking when they see that promo

and hear Hogan's, you know, trying to convince Sting that he's not the same guy he used to be it, he can trust him. First thing that should occur to you is, no, he's lying. He's going to turn on Sting.

Is it true? I mean, that's enough there to start conversation or start a story and build upon it. But fortunately, it wasn't done. But on paper, the premise of it, I think, like I said,

had a lot of potential. It wasn't a bad idea. Rick Steiner comes down, gets involved. Steiner, that is, and starts nailing some chair shots. The ref takes a bump, wouldn't you know it.

And eventually, Kevin Nash covers Hogan for the pen. So Kevin Nash's team with Sid Vicious. They get the win. Goldberg runs out trying to make the save. Rick's going to hit him with a chair as well. And the show goes off with all the baby faces laying in the ring.

You know, I guess we should just acknowledge. We've seen some different commissioner types and president types. We've seen J.J. Dillon. And we've seen Roddy Piper. And we've seen Rick Flair. And certainly we saw Eric Bischoff. Sting in that role. What did you think of that?

I mean, to me, horrible, horrible. I was going to, I didn't want to interrupt you there a few moments ago, but as you're describing the stakes for the match and who's going to have control with the company, oh, that premise really sucked because no one cared. It, it, nobody cared. And not only did they really not care, but it wouldn't have mattered. The stakes weren't. real. I'll just leave it at that. It was a tired idea, creative idea that worked at one point

and here we are trying to recreate magic with a storyline reminiscent of something that happened a year or two years before. And by that time, the audience didn't care. And could anybody see Sting in that power position? I don't think so. that wasn't his character. You know, Rick Flair, you could almost see it, right? Because he was a limousy, you know, Rick Flair had that kind of swag that, you know, even though it's wrestling,

but he looked like he could play the role of a corporate suit to a degree. Sting? Oh, not even a little. So, yeah, the premise was horseshit. Well, the premise of AG1 is a, horse shit. You and I start our day every day with one delicious scoop and a cup of water. That's it. And we know we're setting ourselves up for success. We've got 75 different high quality ingredients that give you all your key daily nutrients to support energy and focus and

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We should kick it back off here and say that we got Sting and Goldberg. They're trying to be a tag team here on Nitro. Sting's music is going to play. going to come out again. Goldberg's about to walk out. Rick Steiner's going to lure him into a back room. Sid hits Sting or hits Goldberg with a shovel. Then they lock Goldberg in a storage room. Sting's trying to help Goldberg, but Rick and Sid beat him with that said shovel. Yeah, man, shovels. How about the symbolism here? These cats are getting buried. Eventually, it's Sid and Sting, taken on, Sid and Steiner, rather,

taking on Sting and Goldberg. They go about six minutes when all of a sudden Hogan comes out and hit Steiner and Sid with a chair. Nash is going to come out, believe it or not, and Powerbom Hogan through a table. And that's how the show goes off the air. I mean, we've got so much big talent.

I just want to recap. Sid, Steiner, Sting, Goldberg, Nash, Hogan the same segment like you guys baked so many beautiful cakes on Nitro over the years I mean you had record ratings and now all of a sudden

you've got the same ingredients but man it just does not taste the same here at 99 right remember when we first started off the show just you know what was an hour and 21 minutes ago we were talking about pacing and not just throwing talent out there in less than meaningful situations just to get them on TV because it actually can cause a character

to lose value, diminishes the luster of that talent. This is a perfect example of just that. Now, it's just put them on TV. Yeah, I don't know. This story, okay, we're going to call it a story. We've all convinced ourselves in this room and it's actually a storyline, even though the audience doesn't care. But this is an example of what happens when you don't have the discipline. You don't have all the things you talked about.

You set up that question. You didn't have the discipline? Let me back that up. First of all, there was no vision. Zero vision. 96. 94, we had a vision. 95, we had a big vision with Mitro.

96, an even bigger vision with NWO. 97, 98, we dripped vision. In 99, we had none. And now you're putting out of desperation, largely because of the lack of vision. And when I say vision, I'm talking about supporting, creative, and the whole thing. You don't have it. And now you don't even have the discipline to kind of protect your talent by not just constantly throwing them out there in situations in a condition that's just not good.

We could have sent half of that top, if you'd take the top third of that roster and sent half of them home and just worked with what you had, it probably would have been a better solution or decision because you would have had some talent in reserve that had a lot of equity that could still mean something that hadn't been deluded for the last three four, five, six months to the point where nobody cared about them. They were overexposed in under-prepared, non-creative situations. And that's, you know, there's a lot of ways you can get talent over, and there's a lot of ways you can kill talent in a wrestling business.

Overexposing top talent in meaningless storylines or angles is probably one of the best ways to kill talent. I can't wait for us to talk about what's next here in WCW. I'm going to spend a lot more time talking about this, but on August 9th, 1999, they announced that, thankfully, Sting is given control of WCW back to WCW. So Dusty Rhodes is now running the championship committee.

That makes more sense. And we see Goldberg teaming up with Sting to take on Kevin Nash and Rick Steiner and Sid Vicious when all the sudden Hogan comes out and it's his old American-made music. he's in the yellow and red we're going to talk a lot about that next week here on the program at road wild 99 it's sid vicious working with sting and they go 10 minutes and 40 seconds it kind of is what it is melzer would say the two did more than you would think in this

match a star and a half but we're starting a winning streak if you will with sid because why not that worked with goldberg and a couple of nights later on nitrous Lenny is going to be wrestling Ray Mysterio Jr. to a no contest because Sid comes out and attacks both men. Sting and Hogan are now the baby faces of WCW, so they run to the ring and make the save. And Hogan said Sid may have escaped Sting's attack, but he's happy because he wants Sid at 100% when he faces him later. And he says something like, say my prayers, take my vitamins, and kick your ass. So there's an edge to Hulk Hogan, which I'm sure we'll talk about next week. Hogan is going to beat Sid Vicious by DQ and retain the WCW title.

Hogan and Sting are going to be hugging in the ring as the show goes off the air. That's interesting to think about because whenever I think of Hogan and Sting, I always think about like Starcate 97. So, you know, Sting as the crow and Hogan in the black and yellow hugging feels a little weird. And Sting's going to come out the next night on Nitro or the next week, rather, for a promo and hype up his match against Hogan. That's right, we're here. It's Sting versus Hogan.

They're going to do an 80-style match. Meltzer would say it's kind of boring. It would be critical as Chivani screaming like it's an all-time classic. I mean, that does feel like the little kid and me would have loved in 1990. Sting from WCW as Surfer Sting versus Hulk Hogan. That would have been fun. But I don't know that it meant nearly as much here in 1999. with crow sting and this red and yellow sting,

which or red and yellow Hogan, which maybe wasn't what it was in 1990. What do you think of that? Do you think we would have felt differently about this match in 1990? Of course. Or 91 or 92 or 93 or even 94. Right.

You know, but again, and this show is so painful to do because... No matter, and hats off to Derek Sabato and the team that you work with there for doing the research on this. But the answer to every question is almost inevitably the same. Right. You know, and I'm trying to find as many creative ways as I can to explain my perspective on some of this stuff. But it all comes back down to lack of vision, lack of discipline, and desperation.

that really sums up this show. If there's going to be a headline, that would be it. And I don't know what else to say about it. Do I think Steeing and Hogan, like when I first got there in 1991, hell yeah, it would have been, it would have been a dream match. I hate that. I hate when other people do this thing with it. He's a dream match.

And here I am doing it. But yeah, it would have been one of those restaurants. Wrestling magazine covered fantasy matches that everybody could have and would have gotten excited about. It would have been possible. But by this time, we already see, you know, Hulk Hogan come back and red and yellow. I'll save it for next week because we're going to talk about it more detail.

But it falls right into that desperation category, much like Sting, grabbing the microphone and say, I got two words for you, suck it. Yeah. Again, desperation, trying to get. a reaction from a crowd that just really wasn't into what you were doing. Now, you get the Pavlov's dog response when there was a title change, which is one of the reasons why titles back then had a tendency to switch hands so often is because you

would get that pop. The audience in the arena is going to react because they've been conditioned to. They're going to react when they see a title change for a minute, a minute and a half, and that's and that's what I think Sting and the black and white and Hogan and yellow. Yeah, not so much. Not a good idea. Well, as you probably imagine, this Sting and Hogan thing, surprise, it doesn't have a clean finish. Here comes Sid and Steiner.

The next week we continue this who done it. Mean Gene is going to be interviewing Lex Lugar in the middle of the ring and he's going to say, hey, I've been trying to tell my friend Sting of so many years that Hulk Hogan's a scam artist. But I've got a photo here that proves that Hogan was the person driving that White Humber that tried to take Kevin Nash's life and career. And of course, Hogan comes out and says, oh, that doesn't prove anything. And Sting's yelling at Hogan, how many times have you stabbed me in the back already? Sivani's saying, we need to see more evidence.

A week later on Nitro, we see Sting and Lugar going to Hogan. Hogan's dressing room, where we see Hogan seated with Brett Hart. The lights go out and Sting is knocked out. Hogan and Lugar are blaming Brett Hart. Brett Hart is blaming Lex Lugar. So they have a battle royal the next week to determine who's going to get a title shot at the Hogan Sting winner. So we see a cage match.

Hogan and Sting and Goldberg beating Sid, Page, and Steiner in four minutes and 24 seconds. Meltzer would say late in the week, they decided to make this a war games match since they historically do a September pay-per-view with a war games match. But they're not going to this year. Unfortunately, they had already sold tickets as if it was going to be set up for one ring. So a two-ring setup couldn't be done at the very last minute. So this is WCW maybe at its worst. But still, we're building towards Hogan and Sting on a pay-per-view in just a handful of days.

the story gets a little bit diluted maybe a little bit a little bit and i guess this is really the last time you'd work with wcw on tv until the year 2000 they finally do the heel turn at fall brawl but you were gone by then what did you think of the sting hill turn i mean it was at a time when wcd was not hot to say the least so few fans even really talk about it they just assume, oh, he was a baby face, except for when he worked with Watts, but they did try it here. Do you think in hindsight, there was a better way to do it, or should Sting have just never tried a heel turn? No, I think Sting almost became the third man in the NWO storyline. Right. That was real. And I think that would have been very, very effective at that time,

because there was a great story and foundation leading up to that moment if it would have been Sting versus Hogan, I mean instead of Hogan. Here you're in the ditch and it's a muddy ditch filled with swamp water and now you're going to throw one of your top characters into that ditch and think that perhaps he's going to come out stronger than he was when he went in it. The ditch is the ditch, man. We were losing ground. The audience had already made up their mind.

Audience, as my friend Gary Considine once said to me, the audience votes with their remote. And once they voted, it is almost impossible to get them back. And that's where we were. But, you know, and I can't be critical for the decision, the choice. I wasn't there. I wasn't part of the discussion. I don't know who was or what those discussions were.

But I don't think you could have done anything at that point in time that would have meaningfully changed the direction of the company and throwing Sting into that ditch. As opposed to doing something, you know, when Sting was being considered as a third man back in July in 1996, we were hot. Then when you're hot, you got the audience behind you. And you can't wait, you know, you must see television as they, as the kids, no, they're not the kids.

As, as the old people say now, you know, we were hot as hell. And then a sting heel turn would have made sense and it would have worked. But when you're in that ditch, the audience just doesn't really care about what you're doing. It's just the worst time of the world to try a heel turn. And I would imagine the creative behind it, if there was any, absolutely sucked. It did suck. Let me explain how bad it sucked. Sting wins the title.

He beats Hulk Hogan on paper review here. 13 minutes and 55 seconds. Brett comes out before the match starts. They're trying to do a scientific match. It's not doing all that well. DDP's going to come out. He's got Sting's bat. We're going to knock out the referee Nick Patrick

so he can't make the count after Hogan has leg dropped Sting. Then DDP is going to give Hogan the diamond cutter. But Hogan's going to kick out of Sting's pin attempt. Then DDP gives Nick Patrick a diamond cutter. Here comes Brett Hart. He's running after DDP. Sid Vicious runs in after Hogan. He gets the big boot. Lex Luger runs in. He has the same fate. Luger's in the corner and Sting gets the bat and Hogan tells him hit Luger with it. Sting instead hits Hogan twice. Luger is attacking Brett Hart. Sting puts the scorpion on Hogan and the referee stops the match.

So Sting is the heel here, but he gets a huge baby face pop for the win. Man, 1999, what a jumbled mess for WCW and for Sting. We've got a bunch of different questions. I think some of these are self-explanatory. Francis Reyes says, do you think 1999 hurt or enhanced Sting's career, Eric? I think it absolutely hurt it. Yeah. I think Sting's career or Sting's character was on a downward trajectory starting probably about the end of 98 or early 99.

And by this point, it was, as I said, was in the ditch filled with dank, stinky, mucky swamp water. Dylan Leahy says, is Sting the biggest baby face that WCW had or does Eric think there's someone else with a, that was a bigger baby face for WCW? I don't define bigger. You know, it's hard to deny that Bill Goldberg at some, at a point in time, it was a relatively short period of time, talking about a year or two, not talking about a 10 year or 15 year career, but it's hard to deny that Bill Goldberg wasn't arguably the biggest baby face that WCW produced. but Sting had a far longer career at an extremely high level. So it's kind of hard to compare the two. Here's a great question. Trevor wants to know when 99 Hulk returned to the red and yellow.

Was there any consideration of Sting reverting back to Surfer Sting? You know, that's a great question, Trevor. And I think there was conversation from time to time about it. But I don't think Steve Borden wanted to go back to that Surfer Sting character. He had grown tired of it by 1995, right? 1996. Just go back and look at some of the videotape over on Peacock. He was already starting to let his hair grow out, dyeing it.

He was already modifying his character without there ever being a reason to modify it. He just grew tired of that character. I understand that. And it was fortunate for Sting that the crow character, because of Scott Hall, in that moment, you know, we were all sitting backstage and Scott just laid it all out and Sting's eyes were as big as Coke bottles and everybody was excited about that. Had it not been for that moment in that venue, had Scott Hall not, you know, essentially laid out that crow character, I don't know where Sting's character would have ended up. But I do know that he didn't, he really didn't want to go back. and I understand but I'm sure

it was tossed around like a lot of ideas are tossed around and you just move on it's the next one well one of the better ideas I've heard about in a long time is pro wrestling crate.com

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at pro wrestling crate.com. You see these boxes ship worldwide and include brand new merchandise from AEW wrestlers and WW Legends. Every premium box includes two T-shirts, one micro-brawler figure, one autographed 8 by 10, one lapel pin, and more, and the planned start at just 9.95, and they're the perfect gift for any wrestling fan. Visit pro wrestling crate.com today. So a couple more questions, then we'll put a bow on this one. Ryan Connolly has a great suggestion here. I don't know why we'd ever thought of this. could Sting have worked in 1999 as a heel if he removed the face paint and did so in a dramatic break from his previous two iconic looks to stick it to the fans and be about money rather than turn on Hogan?

I just want to remind everybody once upon a time Kiss did this and boy fans were not all about it like they were synonymous Kiss was with the face paint. That's what fans who went to their concerts wanted to see. they wanted to see that guy, and now they couldn't. And I understand they liked the music and all that, but man, it was such a big part of the presentation. I think fans would have really gravitated to that. Like, you're not giving us what we want.

You're not wearing the sting paint. You don't look like sting. I know it would have been a major departure and certainly would have taken a lick on the merchandise side maybe, but man, if you really want to be a heel, just get away from all that. That's pretty smart. What do you think of that?

I love it. I love it. And look, if you're already, if you know you're in a desperate situation and you're throwing things up against a wall hoping something is going to stick, if you're going to take a chance like that, that would have been a good one. Because unlike the kiss example, because if your kiss, you don't want that audience mad at you. You don't want that audience pissed off. but if you're a wrestling character and you're needing to make a dramatic change in your character then you want to piss them off you you want them to be angry and again it's all in the execution that's a that's it's really really a good idea like if i'm sorry what was the name of the person that sent that in uh the the the question that we got was from ryan connelly so if ryan would have been in the booking room with us and would have thrown that out there.

Let's say there's eight people in the room, including Ryan. Out of the seven that we're sitting there listening to Ryan, who was the eighth, I would say four of them would have went, oh, no, that's, that'll never work. The other three would have probably, and I would have been one of the other three, but it's so fast. Let's dig into it. Let's play with that. Let's expand on that idea to see if we can find a way to make it.

work. I like that. Of all the things that we tried, surfers sting, to crow sting, to red and white, red and black sting, back to black and white sting and now heel sting. So it looks like the crow sting. What a muddied mess. This would have been a, this would have been something I would have loved to dug a little deeper into and explore. It's a good idea. Great idea. Where were you by God? Hey, a wrestling story. has a great question for us. He always brings the good questions. Can you tell us how you were able to get Seek and Destroy by Metallica for Sting's entrance theme? You know, we did a little

business. What was Dave's name? Dave from McAllen, Metallica. I can't remember his last name. We got fairly close to them and it was just a music licensing deal, but it was an easy one for us to do. I think you mean Dave Mustaine. That's who you're thinking about. But But, wait, yeah, so I guess it wasn't really Metallica. Right? I can see if you're a Metallica. You're thinking to Dave Mustaine, I think, is who you're talking about. But like the members that I think of are James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.

I mean, I know Dave was in it way back when, but he kind of did his own thing. Either way, though, it is interesting to think that long before Tony Kahn was licensing music, real, music and you were doing it for Hogan and Sting and some others and one last one Andy wants to know do you feel the Wolfpack version of Sting was a missed opportunity when he went Wolfpack it was huge and it seems like there was so much left on the table do you think there was a better idea I disagree with Andy in that one I don't think it was huge I think it was the beginning of the desperation era we went from the herd era to the Watts era, to the nitro era, to the desperation era.

And I think this was the beginning of that. Again, logic, backstory, motivation, it's all lacking. None of it was interesting enough to stick. It was just, hey, I got an idea. Let's do this and see what happens. This was the beginning of it. The sting and the wolf pack. I didn't think it was a good idea then.

I went with it, obviously. But it didn't ring a bell for me. I don't think it worked. So I would disagree with that one. I don't think there was anything on the table to leave. Well, what does work is joining ad-free shows.com. You get all of our shows early in ad-free, including great new series like Making the Town.

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Right now I'm having a lot of conversation. with people who are maxed out on their credit cards and they're wondering, hey man, what should I do? Well, let me give you some pro tips here. First of all, number one, we want to be your mortgage advisor for life at savewithconrad.com. Don't just take my word for it. Go check out our reviews at conradreviews.com. You'll see more than a thousand five-star reviews there from people just like you who wanted to keep more of their own money. Now, for starters, what we're going to do is we're going to show you how to skip your next two house payments. If you haven't already, you won't have to make your August or your September payment, you're done until October 1st. And come October 1st,

man, you're going to have a cheaper monthly payment, especially if you feel like you've been stuck making minimum payments on your credit cards. I'm routinely having conversations with people who are paying 28% interest. You know you can do better than that. Not only is it higher than giraffe, you know what, it's also not tax deductible. See, the interest you pay on a house, you can totally write off. But the interest you pay on a credit card like Discover or something like that, man, you're just throwing that money away. I want to encourage you also, too, if you've been on the sidelines thinking, well, I'm going to wait and buy a house when the rates go down. You mean like everybody else? I can't tell you how many people that I had conversations with are in the

height of the pandemic who made dozens. I'm talking about dozens of offers on houses and they didn't get it. And that's the reason this hysteria of people paying 50,000 and oftentimes 100,000 over asking price happened. Now is not that circumstance. Yes, rates are a little higher, but will they stay there? No. I mean, ask any expert, they all know that rates are going to improve. Now, the reason I bring this up to you is I think you can get the deal of a lifetime on a house right now, whether you're buying or you're refinancing. Because again, you're going to refinance again in the future. If you're buying a house right now with rates where they are, when they fall 2% over the next 18 months, are you going to refinance? Of course. So let's take a look at the monthly payment difference you would make over those, say, 18%. months. That's what you're really paying. And I'm seeing people who are saying, you know what,

I think I'd rather spend an extra $100,000 for the same house in two years rather than pay an extra $200 a month for 18 months. Wait a minute. What? You see, my country math says, wait a minute, you just chose 100 grand higher rather than, you know, three grand high? Dude, what are you doing? Let's go ahead and find out. Let's run the numbers. Let me show you how to save money on your current house, get rid of all your debt, and at the same time, not have to pay a whole new set of closing costs. Let me explain. We have a brand new program that we rolled out years ago that was the leading edge of the industry. It's a seven-year guarantee, and we've been doing this since 2015. If your needs change in the next seven years, we'll refinance you again

without charging you a whole new set of closing costs. Guys like me get paid when we charge you 1% origination. We won't charge that at all. Now, might we have to have your house appraised because it's worth more money? Sure, you'll have to pay for that. Would we have to pay an attorney to actually record the documents down at your county courthouse? Sure, you'll have to pay for that. But there's no brand new set of lender fees on our side. We want to be your mortgage advisor for life. And the way to do that is to go right now to save withconrad.com. And I'm talking to you if you think you don't qualify. I can't tell you how many times I have a conversation with somebody who says, well, I'll never be able to buy a house because I'll file bankruptcy three years ago.

Dude, you don't have to worry about that. FHA lets you do that when you're just two years out of bankruptcy. Think about that. If you file bankruptcy in 2021, you can buy a house today with three and a half percent down. You maybe didn't know that, but you know me, and that's all you need to know. Go right now to save withconrad.com. I want to help answer questions. I want to help you get out of that apartment and into a house.

You don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of your pocket. What you need is a friend in the mortgage business. And buddy, I'm in. Go right now to savewithconrad.com. NMLS number 65084, Equal Housing Lender. Next week, Eric, we're doing it. We're talking about Hollywood Hogan.

We're talking about Hulk Hogan. We're talking about your pal. And we might even mention, my man's engaged again. Hulksters in the news. Who knew? How about that? Yeah, I'm really happy for him. Really happy for him.

I've talked to him a few times over the last six months. or eight months and pretty apparent that he's in a very happy situation. Sky. So, yeah, he's a, he's a happy man. I saw a picture of them on the beach a couple days ago.

Couldn't look any happy. Well, I know that you're not too happy. I beat you up pretty good today about Sting, but I'll do it again next week when we talk about Hulk Hale game. No, no, no, don't get me wrong. It's just hard, you know, shows like this are difficult to do because like I said, so much of

so many of the answers in the context kind of all starts feeling and sounding the same but that's the situation that WCW was in at that time and I only, you know, I thank God that I ended up out here in Wyoming fishing for trial. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

It was WCW in 1999. We'll be back next week talking all things Hollywood Hogan right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey guys, it's the hardcore legend Mick Foley here, and I need to call a quick timeout, a brief timeout, because I wanted to tell your listeners what I have been telling Foley is pod listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening over on ad-free shows.com. On the debut episode of Making the Town, Lumini takes us through the memorable matches and moments of the famed ECW arena, including one that was never seen. Something very special happened after the power went off. Paul Heyman went out into the ring and spoke to the crowd without a microphone, and the crowd just stayed quiet and listened.

And he gave the most heartfelt thank you to that crowd that night. And the biggest shame of it is there's no footage of it because the power went out. On an all-new Tuesday with the Taskmaster, Kevin Sullivan talks about what some of the greatest factions of all time have in common. Four horsemen, four guys, when they're the strongest. NWO, four guys when they're the strongest. And then bloodline, four guys. But they also had a manager, each one of them, JJ, Eric, and Paul.

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