83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 287: WCW Nitro 08.31.98 Watch Along

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

On this episode of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff, Eric and Conrad fire up the tape machines a historic WCW Nitro action circa 1998! This Nitro is the highest rated show in the companies history, so you know it's going to be good...kind of. Sit back and enjoy the return of the Warrior, Eddie Guerrero's declaration of not being sued, Arn Anderson being put on notice by the Horsemen, and so much smoke (you'll understand if you watch along) All that, plus Eric shares his thoughts on everything happening in professional wrestling. Eric shares his insight on the event and spills the tea on what was happening behind the scenes leading up to the epic show. GAMETIME - Snag the tickets without the stress with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. 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. PRIZE PICKS - Go to PrizePicks.com/83WEEKS and use code 83WEEKS for a first deposit match up to $100! BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s BlueChew.com, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS AG 1 - 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. 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

Double J. Jeff Jarrett here to tell you about save with Conrad.com. You've heard Conrad talk about the total nonstop savings they've provided current homeowners. But did you know Conrad and his team can also help my world listeners become homeowners? They make buying a home easier than getting the bag after a good housekeeping match. But don't take the last outlaw's word for it. Franklin Dove, Orlando, Florida. After listening to all of Conrad's podcasts and hearing the different stories that he shared, I felt the time was right for me to explore buying a home again and reached out,

and one thing led to another and finally closed last week. It was excellent. Everything flowed smoothly from my first contact. I just put in the initial request online. Francis reached out. We started the application process, got the approval moving. Holly was great. Larry Thompson was amazing. Everything was smooth. Communication is perfect. Really, it was a much better experience than any things that I could have imagined.

My name is Franklin Dove in Orlando, Florida, and I got into my dream home thanks to savewithconrad.com. That's right. In my world, it doesn't get any better than five stars. Don't let your landlord get over on you. Walk out on that bad deal and stop throwing your money away on rent today. with conrad.com. That's right. It's saved with Conrad. And MLS number 65084, Equal Healthy Lended.

Woo! Woo! Hey, hey, it's John Ed Thompson and you're listening. The 83 movies. Of course, we couldn't do it. Without the Hall of Famer himself, ladies and gentlemen,

Mr. Eric Bischoff. Eric, how are you, man? I am just rolling, Conrad, just rolling. All right. I like the sound of that. But in the more traditional version of the term, not in the drug addled term. So I'm good. Yeah.

I'm really good. I didn't assume you had a bunch of ecstasy for breakfast this morning. But we do. This could be ecstasy. This show could be. Well, here's what we're doing today. we're doing something kind of fun of course we're going to catch up on on all the latest moving and shaking in the world of professional wrestling but we'll do that through

the course of our conversation as we watch an old school nitro if you will august 31st 1998 our plan was to watch this uh but we could have never predicted what was going to happen with cm punk and all the league wrestling so that sort of took precedent uh so we're going to pick up where we left off we want you to watch along with us get your peacock out is season four episode 35 this is the three hour era of nitro so it's going to be about a two and a half hour watch along all told that'll give us plenty of time to talk about what was going on in 1998 and what's going on today uh so without further redo eric let's jump right into it man this is nitro from august 31st 1998 one more time if you're

watching along with us on peacock for a second screen experience if you will that's season four episode 35 look at mitro season four episode 35 and uh i think we're ready for here we go in three two one play ladies and gentlemen we are inside of two weeks for ball and you're looking live downtown miami florida welcome's nitro t and t is on the air for three hours live It's Tony Schumani, Mike today, and the one, the only living legend, Larry's Abisco. The very familiar tunes, Mike, today. So, here comes in. So how about this entrance, man, is this one day when somebody wants to talk about the legacy of Eric Vishal, they'll talk about you come and do that tunnel.

I mean, this, you know, this clip of you coming through the nitro set at an angle with all the smoke and whole COVID behind you like that's probably what people are going to associate you with more than anything else right as far as on camera I think so you know I've had I think my on camera career started at about at 1989 in the AWA ended up posting a Monday through Friday show on ESPN for Vern believe it or not it aired it in the Midwest where I lived in in Minneapolis, it aired at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but it was still. You know, I was five days a week. And then, of course, my early work in WCW and even afterwards, you know, in WWE,

brief stint in TNA, which I wish people would really forget, to be honest. But, you know, of all the things that I've really been on camera for the better part of 30 years. Yeah. And of that 30, about six or eight of it was pretty high profile, maybe a little more. but I think you're right this is the most familiar I think this is what matters the most

I think to when people think about WCW and Nitro and the Monday Night Wars and being a part of that will something I'll be carrying around for a long time well we're still carrying around the legacy of the NWO and you might say to yourself self why exactly are Conrad

and Eric watching this old Mitro from Miami August 31st 1998 this is the most watched monday nitro in history of the show uh this is the day after summer slam nineteen ninety eight and the reason this is the most watched show in history of nitro isn't because no one cared about what was going on with somerslam 98 on that highway to hell with the undertaker and stone cold it's because raw that night was preempted by the u.s open so it's a big opportunity for people who maybe are Joneses or their wrestling fix there's no competition so it's

just you guys you're about three weeks removed from road wild that's where we had j leno in the main event we've covered that in the archives over 83 weeks on youtube.com but as you heard we're we're sort of home stretching it here for fall brawl this opportunity to be unopposed I mean, this was really a chance to hit the reset button on these Monday Night Wars. I mean, this was a chance for you to gain some ground if you felt like you had lost some, right? Oh, well, we had, you know, we were beginning to lose some for sure. But the, you know, it's not so much I think that people were Jonesing for wrestling because WWE was preempted.

But I do believe that there's just a lot of people going back and forth during that Monday night war era. And it was a great opportunity for us to capture what would otherwise probably be a more WWE dominant audience for them and capture them for extended periods of time. And in this case, we get a three-hour show. So we had the platform or the stage to ourselves without people flip it back and forth and definitely wanted to take advantage of that. You're trying to set up war games here in the promo. You are doing a bisch off or are you and Hogan? are doing a promo here saying that Stevie Ray is going to be the third man on the war games team

and and you're going to say that you're forcing Eddie Guerrero to wrestle on the show and according to Dave Meltzer Hogan mentioned something about Ultimate Warrior but they edited out ultimate and called him a coward and asked him to come out. This is a show on a seven second delay so no naughty words like Ultimate Air since the wrestlers are having a hard time these day not not saying naughty. words. So before we get into the Ultimate Warrior appearance, which is going to come up on our screen here in a moment, the seven second delay is something you and I have never really spent any time talking about. It's pretty common in radio and television, certainly live. I know in radio,

they call it the old dump button, but occasionally you would have a guy go out there and get a little overzealous. And I know Sean Waltman got a little excited and said a bad word here, there. The camera picks it up and he gets reprimanded. But in this case, it's not necessarily a four-letter word, but it's simply a function of one of the guys for getting, oh, yeah, that is actually a WWF trademark. We can't say Ultimate Warrior. Do you remember any other times that the seven-second delay button came in handy

or what specifically became the catalyst for thinking, okay, maybe we need one? Oh, I think as soon as we went live and the decision was made early, you know before we before we fired up a camera for the very first nitro we knew we were going to be going live and the network I think you know I think it was a policy for them

that in live broadcast that there's a seven second delay regardless of whether it's wrestling or football or anything else so not unusual did you I mean I know that this is a had to be a sensitive topic for legal at the time because you did have all of this going on with the

Scott Hall and Kevin Nash lawsuit about Diesel and Razor with the WWF, but bleeping the word ultimate, I mean, obviously, that's just force a habit, slip of the tongue, not intentional. Was there ever something where you felt like someone did that intentionally, or is it always just an honest mistake? No, it's always an honest mistake. You know, and to this, to this day, I think all of us who have, you know, known people for a long time and, you know, I don't know about you, but just out of respect, I, I, I always refer to people, even if they're close friends of mine, by their character name. I just, I just do, unless it's a more serious conversation or perhaps we're just in private.

But when I refer to, I don't refer to Terry Belaya very often. I often refer to Hulk Hogan. When we talk on a phone, it's, hey, Hulk, how you doing? It's not, hey, Terry, how you do it? So I think when you've been around the industry long enough and you get used to that culture and out of respect, referred to people as their character names, sometimes it's hard to unprogram yourself, you know, and go, oh, wait a minute, no, there's a copyright, trademark, you know, problem there.

I better remind myself to call someone something different. That doesn't happen, especially when you're fired up, you're getting yourself psyched up, you're going out there to cut a promo and it happens. You know, the seven-second delay came in. Oftentimes, it became more valuable when there was action going on outside of the ring. Occasionally, people, you know, talent inside of the ring during a promo would, you know, drop an F-bomb or something similar. And that's obvious. But more often than not, the seven-second delay came in handy.

when there was action going on outside of the ring. Because that's, it gets a little bit, not off, not all the time, but can get a lot more intense. And then you've got the crowd right there, you know, the camera mics are going to pick up more ambient sound. So when you get outside of that ring and you're, you know, a foot and a half away from the crowd and they're fired up and they're pissed off, you're going to hear about it, a lot of it. And that's probably when the seven second delay got used more often than, any other time well it's a big crowd here to see the ultimate warrior lots of special effects lots of lighting lots of pyro um 12,481 fans here it's a sellout $286,000 at the gate Meltzer would say warrior got a big pop the first time he came out and in his case when it comes

to drawing money they fit perfectly that less is definitely more. I'm still trying to figure out how Bischoff is running WCW and Harvey Schiller didn't even want to hear about him taking a leak in the men's room. Let's talk about where WCW is at this point creatively. I mean, is what's what's creative the team for WCW look like? I mean, obviously you're involved. Kevin Sullivan's involved. As I understand that Kevin Nash is starting to contribute a little more. Who else would be sort of steering? the ship creatively by the summer of 98? Summer of 98.

Terry Taylor may have been there. Terry was kind of in and out a couple times during the period of time when I was in charge of WCW. But in all likelihood, Terry Taylor was there. Craig Leathers, our director, would have been part of it. You know, I thought it was important for as often as possible. It wasn't possible every single week, but as often as possible. I liked Craig to sit in on the meetings because the better idea your

director has of the picture that you're trying to paint, the more likely it's going to come off the way you want to come off. So in other words, if a director is only going to see the format an hour before the show or two hours before the show, it's really hard to get a feel for the intention and the direction and the goals that you're really trying to. chief on a specific episode because some of it is nuanced. It's not always obvious. You could be planting seeds. You could be, you know, trying to nurture a part of a story along and you don't want it to become too obvious. But it's still important that it gets covered. So I would often have Craig in there. Annette Yoder would be in there. Tony, I think, was in and out. Tony,

Tony Shavani. I can't really remember during 98 if he would have been participating or not. But I always like to have Tony in there as well for the same reason that I like to have Craig in, Craig Leathers, the directors, because if the announcer's got a feel and as part of the creative process, it's much more likely that the playback play and the color will flow in the direction you want it to be and feel like it's part of the show as opposed to kind of remote and not really being attached to the process. So this is an interesting thing. want to talk about because if you're watching along with us and we hope you are uh over either on peacock or 83 weeks on youtube.com we started the show with your

entrance and then an in ring promo with you and hogan where warrior interrupts we get the big smoke effect where did he go oh it's so spooky but then we get the nitro open and then we see tony and mike teney and larry's abiscoe at the desk and i've seen a lot of television shows do that before but it wasn't something that wrestling did a lot where you get like a teaser of here's what to expect on today's episode then the open you would see that in other television but not too often in wrestling who would have been an advocate for that as opposed to just opening with the standard nitro open that was my my decision i've always i tinkered with the open a lot i tried doing things differently to see what's worked best.

I firmly believe that if you can hook the audience, if you could tell the, and I learned it from somebody who was far more experienced in television than I was at the time, but I learned how important the opening few moments of a show is, because you're essentially telling the viewer how to watch the show and what to anticipate, without it being a graphic or a typical card rundown show open because people don't pay attention to that. You know, they kind of tune out. It's almost like background noise. But by configuring the open, the first two, three minutes of the show differently,

you have a chance to make the show feel special, especially if you don't do the same thing every week. I could talk a long time about show opens because I've been adamant about it. It was one of the things that I really wanted to try to address when I had my a cup of coffee at WWE back in 2019. It's because I felt like the show opens were not, it just didn't do a great job of threading the stories and telling the audience how to watch the show and what to anticipate.

But I broached the subject once, I think probably about a month after I first got there. And the people on my team that have been there for a while, a couple of them, you might know what to bring that up. Kevin Dunn hates that. I wouldn't bring that up if I were here. I thought, okay, I'm going to bring it up right now because, you know, the ink's still dry on my contractor.

I didn't have a contract, but the ink still dry on my employment documents. I'll let that dry and I'm going to come back at it. But, yeah, I loved messing around with opens. I did it a lot in T&A as well. Sometimes I'd like to start a show almost in action, like without a ring announcer, just jumpstart the show. because that creates the sense of, holy crap, it reinforces the fact, number one, that you're live

because you're not doing the same thing, the same way every single week. It also kind of creates a little bit of a subconscious urgency in the viewer. You're training the viewer to be sure that they tune in on time. Make sure it's a way of reinforcing the whole concept of appointment television, which isn't really that relevant today, and I get that, But I still think for live television, the first opening moments of a show is critically important. It's as important as the final two or three minutes of a show.

This is a pretty historic moment between segments here. So we've got to match in the ring right now with Brian Clark doing his thing against Jim Powers. But before, we saw a package from earlier in the day where Goldberg went to visit the Miami Marlins and the visiting St. Louis Cardinals. Mark McGuire is in the middle of the biggest story in sports in 1998. And as a reminder, we're just a few weeks really removed, I guess several weeks at this point,

with Dennis Rodman and Carl Malone, and they're, of course, in the NBA finals, and now they're going to be in a wrestling ring. That's a hot property for WCW. But to see Goldberg hanging out with Mark McGuire in the middle of, really what brought baseball back after a few dark years, including a strike, it was the home run chase, the chase for Roger Maris's record between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, who's going to get there first?

It felt like both of these guys had all this momentum. And baseball for the first time in a while was really exciting. And it was selling more tickets and getting more coverage. It was no longer, I mean, it was starting to feel more rather like America's pastime again. So to just have the opportunity to have Martin McGuire and Goldberg on camera together, that's a big deal for WCW. It certainly was a big deal.

Like you pointed out, you know, Mark McGuire was in the headlines on a regular basis, especially at this time of the year as you're heading into playoff season, chasing a record, all of those good things. And you know that every morning your sports writers are talking about it. your AM morning drive FM morning drive radio hosts are talking about it.

So yeah, to have WCW once again aligned with Major League Baseball, especially with someone at this high profile coming off of Carl Malone and Dennis Rodman and the profile that they had early in the summer was pretty awesome. It gave us a lot of credibility and made us a little more sponsor friendly. we we got to at least ask because it was written in the observer that you guys would have here's the exact quote and yes wcw's interested in having maguire wrestle after the season is over although that deal is probably not even in the preliminary stages obviously doing anything with mark mcguire in a wrestling ring would have been huge in 1998 was it ever seriously considered or discussed only in dave's warped mind or or substuge what you know i'm I'm going to tell Dave this and let him know, you know, we're talking about it and see if he's dumb enough to print it. And, of course, he would be because that's what Dave does. But there was never a syllable of conversation, unless somebody was joking about it in the car on the way to the hotel room after the show is over or something.

No, that's the silliest damn thing I've ever heard, but typical Dave Meltzer bullshit. We saw a squash match there. they took a break to we'll go ahead and hit pause right now because here's what's typical right tickets start moving for something you get excited maybe somebody in your family your household your kids really want to go see something you're like yeah yeah that'll take you no big deal and then life gets in the way and now it's sold out what do we do in time buying tickets to your favorite events shouldn't be stressful game time is the fast and easy way to buy tickets for everything you're looking for.

Sports, music, comedy, theater. They've got killer deals on last minute tickets and their best price guarantee. And that means you can stop stressing over tickets. Start getting hype for the fun you'll have with your friends and family. Seriously, I absolutely love GameTime. This has been something that has been a part of my life

for, I guess, the better part of a year now. And I've used it multiple times, including this year's WrestleMania. Yeah, I've got my WrestleMania tickets from Game Time. Here's what I like best about game time Sometimes I take a look at a seat map And I say to myself, self Hey, is that even a good seat?

I don't really know But you get images of seat views with game time So they'll have the layout that you would see Except now it's almost three dimensional So you kind of know what to expect when you sit down Not only that, you can buy with real peace of mind And this might be my favorite part of the game time offer To have something called the game time guarantee

where they guarantee you always get the best price. Let me explain. If you find tickets in the same section and the same row for less money, game time will credit you 110% of the difference. So not only do you know exactly what your seats are going to look like before you sit down, you know the guy sitting to your left and to your right, you probably got a better deal than they did. How do you beat that?

You get these exclusive flash deals on everything from football to basketball to baseball to concerts to comedy. theater and more. And you don't have to worry about doing this months in advance, guys. Game time lets you do this the day of the event. How's that? Not only that, it's just two taps and boom, the tickets are in your phone. You don't even have to go digging through your email. I highly recommend this if you're looking to take the family out to something. If you're looking to see when WWEs coming to your area again, and by the way, they're selling out left and right. Get a great seat at a great price for you and the whole fam using Game Time.

those tickets without the stressful game time folks just download the game time app create an account and use our code weeks for $20 off your first purchase terms apply again create an account and redeem the code weeks that's WEEKS for $20 off download game time today last minute tickets lowest price guarantee you I just I just used not to interrupt you kind of right I'm sorry But just used game time a couple of weeks ago. Lori and I are going to Minneapolis to hang out with my brother and sister over Thanksgiving, kind of a tradition we've been doing now for a few years. And I find out that the Eagles are going to be there.

It's going to be close to when we were going to go anyway. So I talked to Lori and say, hey, let's kind of modify our schedule a little bit so we could get into Minneapolis earlier than we planned and use game time to pick up tickets to the Eagles. So the cool part is, because it's been a long time since I've been in arena there, but you can literally see perspective from your seats and what it's going to look like. I thought was really freaking cool. Check it out. Download that game time app. You'll be glad you did. And let's get back to our Nitro watch along here.

So this is the last day of August, 1998. We just saw Rath in a squash match. He beat Jim Powers. And now we'll pick it up where we were in three, two, one. play and i wanted to ask you about wrath because man fans at the time they were really wondering is this going to be like the next guy to get the big gold bush he was featured in a lot of quote unquote squash matches or just here on nitro and thunder at the time and he was usually getting pretty dominant and pretty quick wins and i know that you know a couple years down

the road we're going to try that goldberg streak again with the millennium man with sid vicious but was there an opportunity or a consideration of hey man maybe we can do some of that treatment for wrath he's a big guy with a great look uh we could probably build a worthwhile opponent for goldberg if we just use that same formula yeah i don't think the formula was anything really innovative you know it had been you know big guys coming in and squashing people has been kind of a uh a staple in the the wrestling formula for decades you know it's how you make it's how it's how Hulk Hogan was built, you know, before, you know, it's how I, when I first saw Hall Cogan wrestle in the AWA, that was the methodology, if you will, when it came to creative.

So it wasn't anything innovative, but, and I don't, you know, I don't think we were trying to emulate the Goldberg formula per se, but certainly wanted to draw attention to the fact that Rath was a big, powerful, tough, looking, intimidating character. And certainly by having them go in and squashing people, it just reinforced that. But I don't think there was any effort to really kind of dip into the Goldberg well. The Nitro party, if you're watching along with us, is alive and well. It's still a big part of the programming here. And I'm sure contesting and sponsorship.

I mean, and it just really adds a more party vibe. We're getting ready to see Scott Norton and Norman Smiley in the in ring here. But I wanted to ask you briefly about. a little bit of legal issue that is written about in The Observer, and this might be a longer discussion. But Dave writes, lots of front office dissension, even more than wrestling dissension,

which may account for the poor product quality. Nick Lambros, whose official title was vice president of business affairs, left the company basically after losing a power plate of Bischoff. Officially, since Lambros has a contract with Turner, he's been moved to an executive position with Turner's attempted, new football league venture this is something you and i haven't spent a lot of time talking about the the insinuation here is that nick lambrose tried to pull a power play on you it didn't work

and his ass got reassigned is that real in essence yes okay it was more complicated not more complicated but i really really liked nick lambrose and he was a very talented very smart guy. And I enjoyed working with Nick for a long time. But this is, you know, you and I have, we've talked about this kind of thing before. Right around this time, August of 98, in the July, first part of August, 98, August, this period of time is when I realized that we were, we WCW were on the verge of getting fucked over by Turner Broadcasting. Okay.

The handwriting became very apparent that as a result of merger mania, there was just a lot of jockeying for position. It's not just a W I mean, WCW was, you know, a hamster or a pimple on a hamster's ass at that point compared to everything else that was going on in Turner. But within the Turner executive structure, there was a lot of drama and power play going on. And Nick Harvey was caught up in it. I think Harvey wanted to be the president of TBS. There's no doubt in my mind.

I think Harvey's focus. And Harvey, you know, the great thing about, and I know it sounds critical of Harvey, but it's not. But Harvey, I love working for Harvey. First of all, he was really, really freaking smart, like way smarter than anybody else I never worked with. And I like working with and around smart people because you learn shit, right? It makes you better generally. And Harvey was, but he was, Harvey was also very straightforward.

Like, he looked you in the eye and tell you exactly what he thought. And there's nothing I appreciate. appreciate more in a human being, but especially someone that you report to. I love having a boss that would, you know, good news, bad news, whatever, look me in the eye without blinking and tell me what you really feel. See, I can work with that. What's hard to work with is the corporate speak and the HR speak and people that don't have the strength of character to really be honest and communicate clearly.

Harvey had all that, but Harvey also had much greater aspirations, I think, in Turner. He saw himself and the opportunity to become president of TBS. I saw that. I also, because Nick was well, Nick was way more in tune with the corporate side of things than I was because that's where he came from. Nick came out of the legal department. So he's in Turner broadcasting. So he had a lot, his sphere of information and communication was a lot different than mine. I was never on the north side of the CNN Center unless I got a call from Ted or Bill Shaw.

Beyond that, I never stepped foot in the North Tower. Nick spent a lot of time there because that's where his relationships were. It's where he came from. And as such, I think he had a different view of what was going on. And Nick was more of a corporate guy than I was. I'm, I wasn't. Nick was very, very corporate. And I think Nick started seeing opportunity for himself too,

which I didn't, didn't mind that. I didn't have a problem with that on the surface, but it started to become problematic for me. And I just, I think I talked to Nick about it once or twice. And after one or two conversations and not seeing any change, I just called the ball. So, I mean, listen, I got to ask, what did he do that, that rubs? It's not so much what he did.

It's, look, when I brought Nick in, Nick Lambros as a part of Turner Legal, I've explained this before, but in case anybody's a new listener, the way Turner was structured, I had complete control over all of the departments within WCW, licensing, merchandising, live events. events, PR, whatever. Name one I had, I was responsible for it. The only two areas of the corporate structure that I was not in charge of was legal and finance. And that was done to protect Turner Broadcasting, right? It was a smart move. So whenever we had legal issues within Turner Broadcasting, I would work with whoever it was that was assigned to

to WCW from Turner Legal, but they didn't report to me. I couldn't give them direction, nor should I have been able. I'm not a lawyer, right? But they were independent of WCW. Well, WCW started to get so big that it became apparent we needed an in-house legal representative, not just someone that we could call once or twice a week if we had an issue. We need somebody that was there full-time. So Nick left Turner Legal, he was still in a turn, but he left Turner Legal and came on to be a vice president of business affairs.

But in essence, his job was exactly the same. But it would be easier for Nick to deal with legal issues and the representative over internal legal. It would be a much more efficient way of handling things. So that's why Nick came in and took on that role. And I was excited. And he did a very good job in that role. He's really good at it. But I think Nick got to a point where he wanted more.

And he wanted more when it came to, for example, marketing. The cat's ass logo was a Nick Lambros initiative. It just is. And hiring Jay Hassman, that was a Nick Lambros hire. Nick wanted to have control over areas within WCW other than business affairs, because let's face it, business affairs, while incredibly important and valuable,

is a little mundane compared to some of the other parts of the business, like marketing and pay-per-view and other semi-creative positions. So Nick wanted more, and we talked about it and worked that out, but I think it got to the point where Nick forgot about what he was really there to do and was far more interested in pursuing the areas of the business that he wasn't there to do. It's one of the reasons why, and it's my fault. I did it, not fading the heat to anybody else, but I remember talking to Harvey about this, and Harvey saying to me, and I, you know, it was good advice.

Harvey said, Eric, you're controlling too much. You've got to learn to delegate. you've got to learn to let other people succeed and fail along the way because you can't do everything yourself. And I was, this period of time, I was rocking pretty hard. And I thought, okay, I'm going to, because that was a flaw as a, as a manager, Harvey made it clear that he thought, you know, while I was doing a lot of things right, obviously, you know, 98, I think was the most financially successful year in WCW's history.

we were still rocking and everything was going just dandy in 1998, right, even in August of 98. And but Harvey made it clear to me that one of the flaws in my game as a manager was just controlling everything. Okay, Harvey, I'm going to work on that because I wanted to be better. I wanted to improve. I wasn't stubborn about it. So I started letting other people make decisions.

And the cat's ass logo is one of them. I remember, look, you know, this was Nick was so excited. I brought Jay Hasman in and he had these different designs and logos created and he presented them, you know, this is a guy who up until that point just made sure that eyes were dotted, T's were crossed, legal contracts were structured properly. And now he gets to play in the more creative side of things. And again, I'm not criticizing for it because it's human nature. You know, you want to learn something new, do something different.

Yeah. But I remember going, this fucking sucks. This is horrible. But I didn't want to be that guy that said, no, I don't like it. I'm not going to let you do it. I felt like it was better in the long run to let go. And that's an example of that's what that was a first of all, we didn't need to change the fucking logo to anything.

The logo was great. And there was no real need to change it. The show was doing great. I mean, when people saw that logo, they heard that music. They knew exactly what was coming down the tracks and they were excited for it. So why change it just for the sake of changing it? And then to change that logo and a lot of the other, the graphics and everything else, to go through the expense and the time and effort to do that for no reason was a mistake right out of the shoot.

And then to end up with what we ended up with was another one. And that was kind of the beginning of the end as far as my relationship. with nick and working relationship still friends i saw him a couple years ago i went to Atlanta and looked him up and went out and had lunch and all that but the working part of it uh it started to deteriorate when nick decided he wanted to be something other than business affairs well well we just got the nick lambrose saga that's really the first time we've talked about that uh how did how did he take it when you helped him find a new gig I think his feelings were hurt more than anything.

You know, because he didn't do anything wrong. You know, it wasn't like he made a decision that was horrible and cost the company a lot of money or anything like that. It was just he wasn't what I needed at that time. He wasn't the counterbalance that I needed. I didn't need somebody to improve marketing. it wasn't really broken but again i think he was just at nick was just at this crossroads where he was really bored doing the things that he had been doing and wanted to do something else and and probably pushed a little too hard too often and when it happened i think his feelings

were hurt there's no question about it in fact we talked about it a couple years ago when i took him out to lunch when i was in alana but i think he also understood Looking for relevant CME-eligible content that fits your schedule, check out ACOG's new podcast series. We cover the latest on early onset breast cancer and provide practical strategies for the prevention and early diagnosis of breast cancer and gynecological cancers. Stay on top of the info you need to better care for your patients.

Search for women's cancer conversations wherever you listen to podcasts, or visit www.acog.org forward slash women's cancer pod to learn more. Well, we're excited to learn more about the behind the scenes moving and shaking of WCW in 1998. They're taking a break right now, though, on Nitro. We will too. And we're going to take a break now to tell you about a product that, well, Eric and I use very, very proudly. It's Henson Razors. I just absolutely love the story of this company. You know, these guys didn't even start making razors. That wasn't the original plan. You see, this is a family-owned business. It's actually an aerospace parts manufacturer. These cats have made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars rover. And now they're bringing that same precision engineering to your doggone face. You see, what they're doing is they're using their aerospace grade CNC machines to make the thinnest razors you've ever seen. I know what you're saying to yourself. You're saying to yourself, self, how thin are these razors? Well, they're 0.0013 inches. That is thinner than a human

hair. And what that means is a smoother shave. It means there's less wobble. It means there's less vibration. It means you'll have less nicks and cuts and scrapes. You're going to have the best shave of your life. If you're watching along with us, you see that this is an old school razor. It's like one your handsome-ass grandfather used. It's an old-school traditional double-sided razor, one that everyone in wrestling is very, very familiar with. Except Pop Pop never had a razor this thin, but this razor from Henson actually has built-in channels to evacuate hair and cream. It makes clogging virtually impossible. I think they've nailed it, Eric. I think they've made the world's most perfect razor. And that's

what I admire most, is they didn't go into this as quote-unquote businessmen looking to make the best razor business. If you're only looking for profits, you're going to make sure that these razors are very expensive. These are very affordable. You're also going to make sure that there's some planned obsolescence. If you've had an old iPhone and get a new one and now magically you got to have a new charger, you know what I'm talking about. The razor companies, they do this all the time and they make a bunch of plastic junk. This is not. This is the last razor you'll ever need. And oh, by the way, not only do they not do they not do any of those gimmicks, they don't even do a subscription gimmick. You don't need any of that. You need this one

razor that will last you the rest of your life and it's rare that you find something that's better and also more affordable we're all sort of a custom and understand hey if you want something better it's going to cost more not only is this the best jave you've ever had it's also much more affordable than if you went down to the drugstore down there man they're keeping the razors under lock and key not here when you get ready to replace your blades with a hinson razor it's only three to five dollars not three to five dollars a quarter three to five dollars a year but right now we're going to get you two years worth of blades free here's how it's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime visit a com slash 83 weeks pick the razor for you

and use our code 83 weeks and we'll get you two years worth of blades free with your razor just be sure to add them to your cart that's a hundred free free Blades. When you go to H-E-N-S-O-N-S-H-A-V-I-N-G.com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks. That's Hensonshaving.com slash 83 weeks. And let's get back to Nitro here in three, two, one, play. So we just talked over a Kevin Nash promo and Meltzer would be pretty critical about it in The Observer. He says, did you ever see the movie Groundhog Day? It's like I wake up every morning. and keep hearing the exact same interview. The cities change every week,

but the interview stays the same. Anyway, Nash said the wolf pack, Drew Strauss, to decide who would be in the war games, which is a very nice way to protect Conan from being portrayed as the weak link of the team. He then challenged Piper and brought up that they had a problem outside of the ring once and told the story in regards to Hellwig

about a guy who fell asleep for years and then woke up and he was surrounded by wolves. One of which he thought he knew, and that one bit his hand and the others had a feeding frenzy with him. Actually, this was a pretty good interview. So whereas Meltzer starts to be critical because that's just the talk about he's riding the observer,

he doesn't end around and says, that's actually pretty decent. He's a fucking lunatic. It's an interesting way to build this pay-per-view, though. Historically, when you think about war games, you think about, or at least I do, I think about the old horseman days. So all the good guys on one side,

all the bad guys on the other side now here though it feels like all right we're going to have a piper team and a wcw team and and a red and black NWO team and a and a white and black NWO team like multiple teams but smaller teams in a cage were we over complicating this were we doing for the sake of doing it what do you think I'll say I got vertigo just listening to you recap it's just that's a lot to track it's a lot to get invested in it's just it's too much way overly complicated well we see

Tony Chivani in the ring right now dressed like a cruise director he's going to be your entertainment czar for the week here on Carnival he's with J.J. Dillon who'd like to have a word with you about your term life insurance and then he's here with Arne Anderson

who looks like he's here for a promise keepers men's convention he's wearing a polo shirt for quite on that he was just pretty pretty fancy there for our no i'm saying he's a sharp dressed man i'm for it i uh i wanted to ask you about a little controversy that was brewing on the independence if we could even call ECW an independent by 1998 i guess once upon a time tas ran the ECW school the dojo if you will and he was sort of co-training there with perry saturn as we all recall in 1997, Perry Saturn switches jerseys. He joins WCW. And I guess Perry started to portray

himself on camera. Look at this old school Arne Anderson promo. This is the promo that they're going on TV that got him hired by Dusty Rhodes and Jim Crocker promotions. We'll talk about Saturn in a moment. Let's track this arm promo what's left. I'm packing daddy. Some of them's working at Hank's hot dog stand. Some's working at 7-Eleven, but none of them are wrestling. Well, just because you think that's all over, brother. That was the calm before the storm because the best, the youngest, the best looking Anderson is on his way. You understand what I'm saying? Now, you've got several timid fellas running around there blowing their own horn.

You got Dusty Rose, the American Dream, apple pie, mom, hot dogs. Well, brother, your mama must have fed you a lot of apple pie and hot dogs. You got Rick and Steamboat. Looks like you ought to build a wine punch commercial. You got some Magnum T.A. Once they're going to pull up in a red sports car, all smiles with pretty teeth, but this is not a toothpaste commercial. This is professional wrestling. And what I do very best, better than anything, is wrestle, wrestling machine.

So just remember one thing, boys, I'm heading your way. Mid-Atlantic Sports has piled enough money, and they're going to throw it all back together. So just one thing, just one brief thing for you to do, boys. Delta has five, nine stops daily, 250 pounds. of culture box heading your way. You guess which plane I'm gonna be in. You guess when I'm gonna show up, but I'm coming real soon.

See ya, boys. Boy, does that bring back some members? Wow. Where did you find that? That tape is well over, I don't know, it didn't have a date off, but I know it was well over 15 years old. And I was fortunate 15 some years ago to have my opinion be very highly respectful

in the profession when it came to evaluating young wrestlers. And I saw something there. Before he was the enforcer, he was rough around the edges, he was untested, but there was definitely something there. And I went to bat for him, and he became one of the original horsemen, and he was there through the glory years, and he's still the heart and soul of the horsemen.

But you know, there's something of even greater significance as we look at that tape, because when I think of the horsemen and WCW, they're kind of synonymous. They're kind of synonymous with each other. And as long as the horsemen were ride, WCW was going to be okay. But two years ago, I saw the black and white break away, a fragment.

I saw the red and black break away, another fragment. And I started to worry just what was going to happen to WCW. And then, over the last couple months, I really started to worry because I wasn't sure anymore if the horsemen were ever going to ride again. And I saw a steeper Mungo McMichael. I saw Crippa Chris Benoit, Park de Rigo's, take risks, come out, come up to you,

just like you did to me 15 years ago. And they weren't coming to ask you to put on the tights and wrestle again because that's no longer an option. They were coming to you just like you came to me 15 years ago for some direction, for some advice. And what troubled me was, I heard you say to them, hey, you guys just don't get it. Well, Army, I think it's you that doesn't get it. Yeah. Now, I know

there's a couple guys here tonight and they're making their way down to the ring. So if you're not watching along with us, Kristen Waugh and Steve McMichael have now doing the party here. I know these guys got some things to say to you one more time, and I hope

you'll listen to them like you've never listened to them before. And maybe look at what they have to say from a different perspective. Excuse me a minute, Tony. So we can cut the audio. The idea is we're building up the return of Rick Flair to WCW here.

We're still just a few weeks away from that happening. It's going to become a magical moment for TV. We've talked about it in the archives, but I mean, at this point, are you just happy to have the whole Rick Flair, Eric Bischoff, WCW saga, at least tabled for now. I mean, this has to be a bit of a relief to this.

This is one last thing to worry about, right? Yeah, it wasn't so much I was worried about anything. It was just a really, really uncomfortable situation. I had always thought of Rick as a friend up until this point. And yes, we had issues and just like anybody else that works together would have from time to time. But this got so personal and it weighed very heavily on me. I was just glad to get it, just glad to get it done and move on. But before we talk about anything else,

I want to go, J.J. Dillon was really freaking good at what he was doing. He really told a great story there that felt so believable and real, because some of it was. But he was able to tell that story and got business done, check the business box. But it didn't feel like business. It felt personal and intimate and real. And that's talent, by the way.

Anybody can memorize, not anybody, unfortunately, a lot of people can't. But memorizing a script is one thing. But being able to go out there and deliver it in a way that it doesn't feel like you've memorized a script is that's the art. JJ really did a great job with that. He kind of bounced around a little bit to the end and got a little, I think, distracted. But 85% of that promo was probably one of the better ones that you'll see, you know, watching wrestling because it was believable and real. Arne's reaction to it.

And it was easy for Arn, you know, if you look at that reaction when JJ said to R&R, you know, whatever the words were, I think you're wrong. you know and it caught arn by surprise because up until that moment in that promo jj was putting him on a pedestal it was like his w w it was like his hall of fame speech right and then jj shifted gears and when he did the if you saw the tight shot there that craig leathers got of arn it was like what the fuck j j j j he was it just and it was so subtle that's the thing you know because we're so used to seeing everything big and over the top and loud and overacted for the most part but in that moment that was a

very tight shot and you got arm's eyes and arm's reaction was so believable that you forgot you were watching professional wrestling it was so good really glad i saw that it was really really good. So before we took a listen to the Aaron Anderson promo, the fabulous promo that got him hired from Jim Crockett promotions all those years ago, we were talking

a little bit about Perry Saturn and Taz and that Perry Saturn started to maybe borrow from his old friend Taz in ECW and Taz was not too happy about that. The segment that we saw in a backstage skit earlier where Mike Tenae was

talking to Lodi and Saturn I guess the idea was that Saturn has to act as Lodi's manslave, if you will, until the middle of September. He looks on the camera and says pain is temporary and pride is forever, something that I guess Taz had used on ECW television before. Was Taz ever on your radar for WCW? I mean, we know ultimately he's going to be the top guy in ACW and then makes his way over to the WWF. But when we saw Sandman and we saw Raven and we saw so many others, Stevie Richards and Saturn and Whiprack and on and on. Was Taz ever in serious consideration for a WCW deal, do you think?

No, not by me. Now, again, there was nobody in ECW that was on my radar because I didn't watch it. And I wasn't following it. So what I say, there was nobody on my radar, no disrespect to them, but I really didn't watch the product. So, no, not for me. Now, did Terry Taylor have a thought about Taz to Kevin Sullivan? Because Kevin and Terry, I think we're far more familiar and followed the product and had friends there and relationships there.

So they very well could have had thoughts or plans for TAS that just never made it to my desk. We should talk about some other folks behind the scenes. You mentioned Terry Taylor. I can't believe this is real, but it makes the observer. Terry Taylor was told to stay home on August 31st. That's the show we're watching for Miami due to heat between he and television producer Annette Yother from a week prior. Taylor and Kevin Sullivan had basically been taking time off from having any real input on either Monday or Thursday and are now just putting together the Saturday night show.

Bischoff is booking Monday and Thursday largely on the advice of Hogan and Now. Ash. We've talked a little bit about creative. We can table that for now. But the issue with Annette Yoder and Terry Taylor, any context or details you recall about that? No. And if I did, I wouldn't repeat it. Look, we've all. No. No, I don't. And I'm not saying no because I don't want to talk about it. But even if I did, I wouldn't. But I really don't remember what the issue was. I mean, you said even if you knew you wouldn't repeat it, that implies it was a personal issue, not a work issue. Is that fair? Oh, I think so. Okay.

Because Annette and Terry didn't, Annette didn't report to Terry or vice versa. So it would have been a chemistry issue. And I have a vague recollection, but it was not, it was more chemistry probably than anything else in a personal issue. but I don't, I honestly don't remember. If I remembered the details, I would say, Conrad, I remember, but I'm not going to speak to it. But I honestly don't remember. I just know that it was chemistry. Copy.

We should talk about Vampiro, too. There was rumor and innuendo that he was supposed to debut here in Miami on August 31st, but I guess his costume wasn't done yet. At the time, a lot of his costuming was done by the same person who made the costumes for Marilyn Manson. And they wanted, you guys wanted him to have a cool, you know, debut and, and first impression. So it gets tabled. And it said that it'll push back two weeks. But that two weeks September 14th, well, that'll be the night that Rick Flair returns. And I'm sure that's probably something people are worried like, hey, is that going to get lost in the shuffle? Had you seen any

of Vampiro stuff before WCW or was he not somebody on your radar? Well, no, he was. He wasn't on my radar. I didn't bring him in. I didn't scout him. That would have come probably from Kevin Sullivan, more than likely. But once Kevin brought him to me, of course, I saw tape. I saw eight by tens, you know, to get a, get an idea, you know, where he would fit. That would have been a Kevin Sullivan hire. He winds up not actually debuting until March of 99. I mean, here we are in late August. So I guess that cap just got to hang around and collect some checks in the meantime. But it was a long-term investment. You know, who were we to say that wasn't the right call? Even though you just did, but yeah, okay. Well, I mean, listen, I don't know exactly

what all was going on. I mean, you've indicated behind the scenes. There were a lot of things going on. I don't know what Vampiro's contract was, but it probably wasn't, you know, tipy top guy money but to just have a guy just sitting around for six or seven months collecting a check yeah i mean you see a lot of that going around even today don't we i think i think with regard to um vampiro this is a guess now but vampiro still had obligations in me and he very well may have been one of the talents that i allowed to work in mexico provided it didn't create a scheduling conflict with WCW. So there may have been some of that.

He may have been wrapping up some of his previous commitments and things like that. And, you know, without sounding like a jackass, it wasn't like Vampire was, we're going to bring him to the company and put him on the top and build an entire program around him. He was going to be in addition to the roster. Yes. Not a major player. So is what it is.

It was what it was. we're watching eddie guerrero here he is uh wrestling brian adams and if you've noticed anytime we see a member of the n w o black and white in the ring we see the ultimate warrior hanging out in the rafters yeah not in 1996 or 97 but his old tag team partner warrior in 1998 doing his best sting impression this is uh i don't know it doesn't let me saving the trouble it's fucking stupid well there you go horrible it's horrible beat myself with a board for that god dang it that's embarrassing it really is embarrassing sitting here i did i forgot all about it i love doing these shows because i do these shows and i go back and i see things and i absolutely i didn't even see it when it was happening half the time because i'm running around backstage or doing what i'm doing you know i saw the show on paper before we did it once it's done i went home i may have watched the replay if we got to the hotel bar

quick enough more often than not we did sometimes we didn't but if we did that would have been the only time i would have seen this so when i see these shows when we go back and we do these watchalongs i get really excited because some of this stuff i'm seeing for the very first time and then sometimes i see things that i wish i would never see well i um i'm excited for us to talk about the eddie guerrero promo that we're going to get in just a moment what are we doing here what's going on Eddie how about that for a little storyline Eddie Gary was going to do an interview where he said he was going to wrestle because he didn't want to get sued by Bischoff in reference to the flare deal it then did a match with

Brian Adams where he laid on the ground and covered up and basically did nothing and began the systematic destruction of the TV show after he got pinned in two minutes and 23 seconds the live crowd hated this but it got worse so listen we're maybe a little too inside baseball here maybe a little too cute no yes yes without question let's track it you may have the power but i'm not going to give you the opportunity to sue me like you have other people in this company all right fans we'll be back stay with us so we're cutting his mic too we're leaning way heavy in the story they're going to take a break we will too and uh man we're going to talk about something that i'm pretty excited about eric and and i'm sure you are too prize picks

price picks is the most fun i've had winning up to 25x by money this football season you just select two or more players you pick more or less on their projected stats and you place your entry get to test your skills against prize picks this football season and it's the most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports if you got the skills you can turn 10 dollars into 250 bucks and just a few taps it really is simple to play you make your picks and submit your entry in less than 60 seconds you get quick withdrawals easy gameplay and an enormous selection players and stat types that's what prize picks is all about and that's the reason prospects is the number one daily fantasy sports app. This week on prize picks, you can

pick things like Barkley for more than 60 yards and Patrick Mahomes for more than two passing touchdowns, or maybe Aaron Rogers for more than three passing touchdowns, and Travis Kelsey for more than 50 yards. You've got all these different options that you could throw down, even like Odell Beckham Jr. for more than 50 yards and Josh Allen for more than two passing touchdowns. Prize picks offers weekly promotions, that can lead to big payouts like my favorite Taco Tuesday. Each Tuesday, prize picks discounts players projections up to 25% that provides you even more value.

And now price picks even has Apple pay for quick and easy deposits into your account this football season. And guys, if you've just been watching football without prize picks, you're missing out, it's so much fun. This has been something that I have to admit I was a little late to the party on,

but I had fun with it last week. week. I'm ready for it this week. You're going to love it. Uh, and it provides a trash talk opportunity around the office. You know I love that. Go right now to prizepicks.com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks for a first deposit match of up to $100. That's pricepicks.com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks for a first deposit match up to $100. Prize picks daily fantasy sports made easy Eric, how fun is this, man? I mean, we get to watch football, we get to have some skin in the game,

we get to have stakes. That's Eric Bischoff all day, is it not? It is. And, you know, one of the things that I've started doing over the last couple of years, I love listening to sports talk on a radio. You know, Sean Pendergast, for example, is someone that I love listening to. And most, just about everybody,

Sean was formerly with CBS Sports Radio. But a lot of the CBS Sports Radio, content like on Saturdays, but particularly on Sundays. I really, really enjoy. And being that I'm not really, you know, an avid sports fan in general, but NFL fan for sure, I consider myself a peripheral fan. I'll watch it occasionally if the weather's bad outside and I've got nothing else to do. I'll watch it. But over the last couple of years, as I listen to radio more, sports radio. And because I appreciate the art of good radio. It's becoming a lost art. And when you find somebody really good, like Sean Pendergast is, for example, the reason I like Sean so much is

because he tells a story. It's not just stats in opinion. It's a story. And he's so good at it. He's made me and others have made me interested in sports that I wouldn't otherwise have an interested. And now I can take that interest and have a little. fun with it and go into placing some of these bets maybe i don't know what i'm talking about but some of the people that i really enjoy listening to and learn from do and it just it kind of ups my level of enjoyment in the game itself check it out it's prize picks you're going to love it let's get back to uh nitro here we're august 31st 1998 what a crazy show this is and three two two one play so we got ernest miller who's going to be wrestling scotty rigged here um we should also

mention that at the start of the show that promo which had you and hulk in the ring together you're talking about stevie ray being the third man on the team we haven't really done a ton with stevie ray at this point in wcw and he's most famous for being one half of harlem heat but we know booker t has gone on to enjoy great single success and for whatever reason it feels like Stevie's sort of on the outside looking in. So having this association and big name dropped by Hulk Hogan in the opening segment of the show, that's a, that's a big opportunity for Stevie,

but one that a lot of fans online were critical of at the time. Why did you and Hogan have so much confidence in Stevie Ray here in 1999? Steve was a great performer in the ring. And he was all, he was intimidating as hell to look at believable, incredible. So the flaw in his game was his promo ability. One of the reasons of Booker was always out in front of that team and on the mic.

And one of the reasons that Booker T. became so successful, you know, after he hung up his boots, so to speak, it's because he's so good on the mic. And Stevie didn't have that talent. So within the NWO, that was easily camouflaged. So you have all the assets that Stevie brought to the table without having. to worry about whether or not he could carry a promo just it was a great fit it's a fun um it's a fun time in wcw because it feels like you know we're we're no longer in 1997 where it feels like we're building towards this one story of sting and the nw o

but man we've got so much other stuff going on i mean we've got two different factions of the the NWO and we've got Goldberg, but it also creates opportunities for new characters like Ernest Miller, who I think fans, I know he's trying to be a heel here. And I just found that so hard. Like there was so much natural charisma with Ernest, it's really difficult to get me to want to boo him.

I mean, I just think that guy reading a phone book would be entertaining. Yeah, and that was bad booking. You know, that was bad creative on our part. And Ernest, I talked Ernest into coming,

to WCW. It was a tough sell. It took me two or three sushi dinners to get him convinced to give WCW a try. Ernest was deep into his martial arts career. He was a highly rated kickboxer and loved it. He had his own karate school. He was very successful. And wrestling was not something that was high in his list of things to do or explore. But the mistake I made in convincing him was having coming in as a heel because you're absolutely right. And I knew he had charisma because I was friends with Ernest long before he came into WCW. He was my son's martial arts instructor. And I ended up training with Ernest and a couple of his other black belts on the weekends and had a great relationship with it.

But as much as I recognize that he had all the potential and had a big personality, um i didn't realize how much how great of a baby face he could have been and cast him as a heel and it was just the wrong thing to do we see ernest wrestling scotty riggs here they're going to go two and a half minutes uh next up we've got conan in his hometown Miami florida he'll be taken on marty genetti uh who has uh enjoyed a resurgence here at least in the online conversation but Marty Genetti is a guy that a lot of people forget was even in WCW. I mean, this is the guy who felt like he had 14 different stops and starts with Vince McMahon

and the WWF. How do you think Marty wound up on your radar? I have, well, one of the very first live events that I ever promoted back in, I think it was September of 87, maybe in a spring of 88, but Vern let me, I got TV clearance in a town because that was part of my job, right, syndication. So I went down to Mason City, Iowa, K-I-M-T television, actually. I went down to Mason City, Iowa.

It was a CBS affiliate, I think. Went down there, I had a meeting with a program director. He was an older guy who was probably on his, he was probably looking at retirement on his calendar anytime. Went down there and he was an old Vergaun guy. Anyway, I was able to get the show on the air. And about two or three months after I got the show on the air, I went to Vern and said, you know, can I promote this? I've never promoted a town before.

The only promotion I ever did was for Vern. I promoted a touch football game between former Minnesota Vikings and a lot of the guys from the AWA professional wrestlers. We had David Casper come in from the Oakland Raiders. He had a bunch of ex-baseball players, ex-football players, and wrestlers. and we put on this touch football game that drew to like 14,000 people at the Hubbard H. Humphrey Metro Dome.

So I was pretty proud of that. Got a sponsor. G. Heilman Brewing Company was a sponsor to the event. I think they spent like 100 grand on it. So it was the first time Vern had ever seen a sponsorship that actually had a cash value to it. So I think Vern had a little bit of confidence in me and he let me promote Mason City, Iowa, all by myself.

And on that card, we're the Midnight Rockers. Marty Janetti and Sean Michaels. The main event was Manny Fernandez and Wahoo McDaniel. And it was a bloodbath. It was a bloodbath. So I knew of Marty Janetti back from my time when he was in the AWA and so was I. How he ended up here, though. Like I forgot all about that.

I don't know why or how I would have let that happen, but clearly I did. I don't know why, but that might be the quote of the day. I don't know how or why I let that happen. I feel like that's not sugar coating my own shit. That's probably been said more than once in regards to to Marty Janetti. Did you have a chance to see his episode of Dark Side of the Ring? No, I didn't. It was wild.

I'll tell you that. Let me just say that. Uh, so they're actually going to get a decent little match here, uh, him and Marty Janetti, Conan and Marty Janetti, they go nine minutes and seven seconds. And it's written in the observer that Janetti got his first haircut in 18 years and looks like a new person. Uh, and he says the problem is nobody recognized who this new person was and the fans who were really into Conan were not enjoying this aging gigolo David Cassidy at 40 looking

pretty boy whipping on their guy in the match. And it felt like it last. had six weeks because conan does wind up giving marty a lot of offense but man it's weird how a haircut changes the way people feel about a character uh i know that you know rick was pretty critical back in the um early 90s of being asked to cut his hair and felt like he could walk through the the charlotte airport and not be bothered because no one recognized him without the the trademark main i guess marty and eddy sort of the same thing here with the fans they're used to seeing that long main and now it's a it's a different look do you think i mean i know that like

tattoos i guess really matter for things like action figures and things like that does a hairstyle really affect a wrestler's marketability do you think it can certainly um i think if you could imagine you know what if bill goldberg would have come out wearing a wig three weeks after we first saw you know i mean his part of his brand his trademark was his look and A big part of your look is your hair. You know, Stings, you know, Surfer Sting's flat top platinum hairdo. It's a big part of his trademark. When Sting started growing his hair out because he got tired of dying and bleaching it,

it certainly affected, you know, the way people felt about Sting. They weren't sure how they felt about it, but it was very, very noticeable. You know, can you imagine Hulk Hogan coming out without the blonde hair coming, you know, out from underneath the headband? I mean, you can point to a million different examples, but I think in the case of Marty Janetti, at this time, it's like people probably had not seen him in a long time. And then to see him not looking like you remember him, it probably was just hard for people to connect to him.

I want to ask you about the rating for this show, but we'll do that a little later. As a reminder, this is the highest rated nitro of all time because it's preempted. And that led to a pretty good question from. Justin Hone. On those instances where you're running unopposed, how far out was it on everyone's radar that that was happening? And how much time did you put into doing anything different or special for those nights? That's a really good question. From what I recall, we would probably know a couple months in advance, you know, because network schedules were not top secret. Right. Especially for big events, like the U.S. Open or the dog show, because they start

advertising and promoting. So you knew at least, I would say probably six, eight, maybe 12 weeks in advance. So we had time to plan. Didn't really change the way we would do TV. Format was the format. We might load it up for sure, recognizing that we have the stage to ourselves and maybe put a little bit more gas on it than we might otherwise put on it in terms of the tax. that we had on the show or whatever the stories were that we're playing on on the show. But it didn't really require a lot of reconstructive surgery just because of the opportunity. Good question, though. Great question.

We, uh, I want to encourage everybody to go watch this because it is kind of surreal to see Marty Janetti wrestling without the long hair. But look at him go. I will still, I mean, he's, he's bumping. I mean, he's selling great. I mean, there's, you know, we know, we know. know Marty and Marty's got history and not all of it's really very good but when when he was on he was really really talented interesting question from on this day in wb of course we've talked

about the ultimate warriors debut before and just how long and rambling that promo was and what you felt like being in the ring and hearing all that we've got that episode of up on the archives right now at 83 weeks on YouTube.com but a great question from on this day in WWE. Did Warrior actually own a pair of moccasins as Hogan claimed and after the disaster of their first confrontation what measures did Eric put in place to stop a repeat? I do think that's worth discussing

not the moccasins but you had that long rambling promo in the debut and now we've tried a lot of other stuff so we saw the big pyro entrance and the smoke filled ring and he disappeared and then later he's he's in the ceiling we're definitely going with less is more we're not going to show a really long match we're not going to give him an opportunity to have a 17 minute promo so we're trying to work around it that had to be a conscious effort who else would have helped you in trying to do that and then how are you positioning it to warrior so it doesn't feel like something he's going to take personally i i wasn't too worried about

it. If he took it personally or not, it was just an obvious issue. And it's funny, I chuckled when you said, you know, obviously you're, you know, thinking about less as more, because right before you actually said it, I was going, man, this guy defines less as more. And it became really apparent to me while I was standing in the ring after six or eight minutes of listening to that 26 minute promo or whatever the fuck it ended up being. There's just no way I'll ever put a microphone in this guy's hand again that I can't, not live. Anything that he does when it comes to speaking, I'm going to do my best to make sure that it's something we do backstage or can edit or otherwise fix. I was not going to give him a live mic.

And I don't know that I felt the need to explain to him why or I may have. I don't know, but I wasn't concerned one way or the other because there was no way I was going to repeat that again. Great question, though. um andy wants to know during this time there never seemed to be a direct path for brett did you want brett to ultimately be a face or a heel that's an interesting question like did you have a preference i mean we know that he coming off of the hottest heel run he had ever had with the w f he comes into wcw what feels like a natural baby face but man he really was hitting on all cylinders as a heel what would your if you had it to do over

again or maybe even back then did you think man we got to get this guy over as a blank no i saw him as a baby face that was the initial plan the discussions i had with brett um just because of what happened in montreal i think he was a sympathetic figure amongst the wrestling fans i think everybody felt like he was done wrong and it was just much easier for him to come in as a baby face and that's how I saw him in all the conversations I had with Brett about what we could do and where we might go him as a baby face was was it not that you know it wouldn't have evolved into a heel turn somewhere down the road but those were not the initial discussions uh Ed wants to bust your balls a little bit and he says great you analyze the show

now how many of those matches progressed a story if it's a lot AEW can learn if it's not a lot Eric Bischoff can stop being so critical. This is when Eric says the merger took his eye off the ball. So is this a good snapshot of his eye on the ball? Well, you know, listen, well, you've been pretty critical about A.W. So, and you've also been very honest about taking your, your lumps when we go back and watch a show like this. I mean, before I even get a chance to be critical, you cut me off and say, oh, that sucked. But it is a function of, man, we got to do this, 52,

times a year not just on nitro but on thunder it's five hours of content a week it's easy for anybody to get burn out at this pace but you know well this is the highest revenue year this the highest rated show it's really hard to be super critical of wcw for the overall course or on this particular night a 6.0 rating i mean just a crazy number you know when you look back at this, are there lessons that could be, you know, gleaned for someone in the modern era watching a show like this or no? To answer this question, one would have to go back and look at the episodes leading up to it and look at the episodes that follow it in order to be able to tell you how many of these matches were advancing storylines, wouldn't it? I mean,

it's like looking at a page of a book and say, okay, you wrote this book. Uh, you've wrote it 25 years ago, does everything on this page advance the story? Well, I don't know. Let me go back and look at the story and see where it ties together. So it's, you know, a smart-ass question from a, from a smart-ass listener, and I appreciate smart-ass listeners, but it's kind of a stupid question in a way without looking at what was going on in context, without listening to the commentary. Listening to the commentary would probably tell me a lot about whether or not there were stories being tied together or not. So maybe the person who asked the question should go back and look at Peacock and look at a couple, two or three episodes prior to this and two or three

episodes after this. And then perhaps you could answer your own smart ass question. And then come back to me and tell me what you found. If you can be honest about it, which I doubt you can, because usually smart-ass questions come from non-serious people. Thanks for the question. opportunity to make you look like an idiot oh goodness gracious let's come on man heal me still lives i love it poke it you're gonna get it you know i'm it's still there that instinct is still there i try to suppress it i really really do but occasionally it reveals itself well let's talk about uh you know listen shivani would often say in this era oh it's the greatest night in the history of our great sport

still does still does uh melzer would write it was expected that going unopposed during the period where pro wrestling interest is so high that wcd would set record ratings on august 31st with raw preempted due to the u.s open

and even putting on an atrocious television which saw unopposed the audience drop during the third hour it wasn't enough prevented from creating all time records and those records being smashed Nitro said an all-time record rating with a 6.03, that's a 5.08 first hour, a 6.62 second hour, and a 6.39 third hour. That's a 9.27 share in an average of 4,485,33 homes per minute. The NBA playoffs was involved in the prior record, and that was when you, guys had a 5.69 rating and an 8.18 share for 4.18 million homes over on raw. That was for

Steve Austin versus Gold Dust. So when you guys are preempted back in April after the Austin era has begun on the heels of WrestleMania 14, 5.69 was the record at the time. You guys crush it. 6.03 huge number. And The idea that it got a 9.27 share is maybe what's most interesting to me. Because these days, when we talk about ratings, more often than not, people talk about the number of people. In this era, we're talking about the number of homes, 4,485,000 homes and a 9.27, which is just crazy. It's a view. It's a view. So people can understand that. how many homes was it in four point four point four million times one point five because i think

one point five is what nielsen that was their calculation on average of how many people are in the household watching the tv while it's on so you've got what about six seven million people watching this show so yeah i think the stories were probably holding together and threading pretty well going back to the previous question i and in And the other thing I want to point out, because I have to sit and listen to this bullshit is Dave Munzer, even though the third hour, you know, lost audience. Are you fucking kidding me? Three hours of live wrestling.

And yeah, at 11 o'clock at night, people start fading away in because they've got to get up and go to work in the morning. How many three-hour shows do we know where the third hour actually increases? I think it probably happens, but it's very fucking rare. but someone in television would know that somebody that writes about television has never produced it wouldn't just want to get that clear such a now you're getting me fired up with this fucking day belts or shit the previous all-time record uh for t-and-t was on march 16th and when we're saying all-time guys we mean earlier this same year it was a spring breakout nitro it was

unopposed due to moby dick and it drew a 5.5.5 8 rating and an 8.48 share. That was with Sting and Lugar teaming up to take on Hogan and Savage. And I mean, this is just monster numbers. I mean, even think about this. Lodi and Saturn teaming up against high voltage

becomes the second most most watch pro wrestling match of all time. I want to repeat that. High voltage. Yeah. The WCW Saturday Night team, rage and chaos. They teamed up against Lodi and Saturn and more than 5,000, 35,000 homes watched it.

That popped a 6.77 rating. Now, the most watched all-time match at the time was Hogan and Goldberg for the title at the Georgia Dome. Number two, though, high voltage Lodi and Saturn. It's remarkable. The promo, though, that actually popped the biggest rating on the whole day. is DDP and Dennis or Roddy Piper, not Dennis Rodman, but Diamond Dallas Page and Roddy Piper do a promo that does a 6.83 rating. It's in 5,082,000 homes.

And then the main event, Hogan and Brett taking on. That gets a 6.21 rating. So it's pretty good, but not quite as high as that high voltage rating. Isn't it ironic, though? you're talking about all these records and, you know, eight, 10 million people watching, you know, Nitro. And this was after Starcade 97 when everybody

thought, including Dave Meltzer and all his fucking minions that, oh, that's what killed WCW. Did it really? Considering in 1998, we had one of the most profitable years we've ever had and broke almost every record that existed in terms of television ratings. So it's kind of weird, isn't it? You know, one of the things, two facts,

you just kind of scratch your head. We got a fun promo in the ring right now with Canyon and Saturn. Saturn is dressing like a goof. It's fun. I wanted to ask you about the preemption because you and Bruce Pritchard have talked about privately a lot and we've sort of alluded to it a little bit here that when we're when we're taking a look at the wrestling audience at large. So not just a nitro audience, not just a raw audience,

but both of them combined most people would say okay well you just take a look at how many people were watching nitro and then you add it to the list of how many people were watching raw but what you and bruce have pointed out is that's not really factoring in people who are switching and watching both so when people just come out and say things like well 10 million people were watching monday night raw or wrestling on monday nights maybe that's not exactly true because you're getting some folks who are switching channels and they're getting counted twice Meltzer points something out here that I found fascinating, and I wanted to bring it up to you. The general rule has been that one pro wrestling show gets preempted.

The remaining show usually draws about 62% of the total pro wrestling audience from the previous week, which in this case would be a 6.03 rating or exactly what the show did. I find that interesting that he's got it dialed in that if there is a preemption, either on raw or nitro, the show that remains will get 62% of the total rating from the week before. Interesting to me that 62% are going to stick around. And I think there's probably some parallels we could bring to what you and Bruce have often said is that there is crossover there.

And 62% seems to hit the nail on the head. It did it. It did on this, perhaps on this particular show. But look, there's no doubt that there's duplication. And there was duplicate, they referred to it as duplication back then. But, you know, to your point, you have a wrestling audience that is 10 pounds. And they go back and forth between the two shows. And when one of those shows is no longer there, you don't have that back and forth.

So you're going to see an increase. But it is certainly not double. And I think, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, um, amount of increase in viewership when one show is is preempted that the other we see i'm sure it varies on the time of year what else is going on um what happens what else is going on in television what happens to be going on leading into whatever the next pay-per-view is how hot are the stories all those are variable so i don't think it's consistent across the board but certainly there's we've always known that there's there's duplication there you can see it when you watch the

You know, you sit down and you look at the minute by minutes for each show, which I've done in the past. You can literally see it happen right in front of you. How you calculate that, you know, I never gave that much thought because it really wasn't that important. But, yeah, everybody knew, including advertisers knew there was duplication. Advertisers didn't believe when Nitro got a five and Raw got a five that there was actually, you know, a 10 rating out there watching wrestling. nobody believe that well nobody believes that this is the second most pro wrestling match second most watch pro wrestling match of all time um lowdy and saturn taking on high voltage here sling blade is our referee uh they're going to go five minutes and 14 seconds and on the other side

of this is where we see the ddp interview with roddy piper uh that really set the high water mark for the entire freaking uh shi I mean, I don't know that I would have guessed that either, that the highest rated segment was a promo, but it wasn't unusual, isn't it? Promos generally are, you know, they're kind of a necessary evil very rarely. They can happen, you know, if you've got somebody like a Rick Flair or Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin, who's been off TV for a while and is now coming back and the first time you see him in a promo, you're going to bet that that promo is going

to get a big number. But just as a normal course, of business typically promos would lose audience or at the very best hold in audience very rarely do the gain audience i'm excited for us to uh to talk about modern stuff uh we'll do that during the the piper uh ddp promo but high voltage man you know i've sort of tongue and cheek reference to them as the saturday night tag team but man they checked all the boxes so i understand that these guys are power plant guys but they look like professional wrestlers and i mean they look like i forget if that's rage or chaos right now but the guy who

just threw saturn he looks like he's brawn breaker's uncle i was just going to say there's a lot of similarities between them and the stainers i could i could have seen and i understand that positioning is everything and time well timing is really everything and positioning is probably a number too but with a different name a different gimmick a different presentation a manager i don't know like these guys check all the boxes it they just seemingly never really got the opportunity but i don't know it feels like there could have been more there for instance it's also timing conred you can't just take a team out of the power plant no matter how good they are technically um and put him on tv and think they're going to get over it takes time i've said this many

times before, but if you take Rock, send him off to the side, you take Goldberg and set him off to the side, because I think both of them were benefited so much from just the peak and popularity of wrestling and the talent that was around them to help get them over, but put them off to the side, everybody else that you can think of that really is main event level or upper third of the roster, have probably been in the business for eight or ten years before they got there it takes time not so much to learn the art that takes time too otherwise you're just going through the motions and having a match but just doesn't generally create a lot of emotion but i think the wrestling audience is so demanding in a way you've got to earn their respect no matter how good

you are you've got to be around for a minute before they finally really accept you as a legitimate viable player and that just comes with time and these guys like you said they're fresh out of the fucking power plant now they're on you know prime time television in front of eight million people it takes a minute it's uh it's fascinating to think you know in an alternate universe what could have been but here it is lodi gets the win lodi and saturn have just won the second most watched wrestling match of all time uh would say no heat at all show was already killed by this point although saturn did a good job uh yeah it's funny we're just writing the show off right away by the way it set to every record

there ever was but people hated it okay they're taking a break we will too uh something that you and i hate for sure is throwing our money away and not even realizing that we're doing it and i have to admit i wasn't sure that this even applied to me i was shocked saved nearly a thousand dollars a year and you can't with our friends at Rocket Money. I tell you what, man, I thought for sure when I heard, well, they help you cancel unwanted subscriptions. I'm like, well, dude, I want all my subscriptions.

I'm using everything. What I didn't realize is like my wife and I both signed up for Hulu. But we watch TV together. We don't need two Hulu accounts. She thought we were using her account. I thought we were using my account. One of us was wrong. But now we're both saving money.

It's not just that. How about DeZone? I came out of pocket and signed up for a big monthly subscription I wanted to watch one fight like a year later with rocket money and realized I've been paying for this every month and didn't even know it that alone was like 70 bucks a month dude you can save so much money with rocket money it blew my mind because I thought for sure I'm on top of this well it turns out like 80% of people have subscriptions they've forgotten about you know the deal sign up and try it for free and see if you like it

you can cancel any time and then we just freaking forget well it turns out the average person has like 12 of those paid subscriptions and you might not even remember like half of them. It doesn't just cancel your unwanted subscriptions by the way. Rocket money can help you keep track of all your expenses so you know where your money is actually going. And most people think they're spending like 80 bucks a month on their subscriptions, but in reality, the number's closer to 200. And when you've signed up for so many things like streaming services, you used to just watch one show or free trials for delivery that you don't use, or maybe it's a gym membership you forgot about or some fitness app you don't even use anymore. Well,

Rocket Money can help. It's a personal finance app that fines and cancels your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and it helps you lower your bills all in one place. And with Rocket Money, you can easily cancel the ones you don't want. You just press one button. Bam, they do the rest. No more long hold times, no more emailing with customer service trying to get them to take care of it. How about this? Rocket Money, and this is something I didn't know until recently. They can even negotiate. to help lower your bills for you, up to 20%. All you have to do is take a picture of your bill,

and Rocket Money will take care of the rest. Rocket Money also lets you monitor all your expenses in one place. They recommend custom budgets based on your past spending. They'll even give you a heads up, send you a notification once you've reached your spending limits that you set. Man, they're really somebody you want in your back pocket. With over 3 million users and counting, they're bragging that they're saving their customers over 700, $120 a year on average.

How much can you save? Find out right now for free and stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and manage your money the easy way by going to RocketMoney.com slash 83 weeks. That's rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. Try it right now, folks. It's rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. I saved so much cash with this Eric.

It blew my mind. I thought for sure. I'm on top of this. But dude, we both had Hulu. I can't imagine how many other people are doing the exact same thing, Megan and I did. Yeah, I think my number, and it's been about six months since I did it. But I think I was up over $300 a month on stuff that I forgot I had. It was like 340 or 360 or something like that.

It was a lot. And the other thing that I like about Rocket is one of the reasons why you say, 30 days free and then you give them all your information and of course you forget about it as you pointed out and then when you do remember and you go back to unsubscribe it's not that easy in some places make it far more difficult than others that's another reason i love is just tell them what you want eliminated and they do it it's easy check it out rocket money you're going to love it uh something else that you're going to love is this old ddp interview let's roll that beautiful bean footage here in three two one play so ddp's going to do a promo

he's going to call out roddy piper piper's going to start ripping on brett heart until the giant comes out and uh the giant's going to get handcuffed and taken out by security we're heavy on story here and we got so many top stars i mean think about this guys we started the show with hulk hogan oh oh by the way the ultimate warriors here and so's kevin Nash and so's DDP and so's Roddy Piper and I mean just on and on and on and we're teasing the big return for Rick Flair so there's a lot of talent here we're trying to stretch as much of that as we can across the three hours um but that's something that we're we're battling with all in modern wrestling too we've got so many stars and we've got in the scheme of things so little amount

of time to get everybody on TV because just like you guys had five hours a week back then AEW has five hours a week now. Of course, they've got two hours on Wednesday, one hour on Friday, and two hours on Saturday. Collision, the ratings were in, was the lowest rated collision thus far. And I guess the best rating was the announcement from Tony Con that Punk is no longer going to be a part of the program. And he's been released from AEW. And it just sort of went down from there. As I understand it, the segment that did best was the segment with Dennis Rodman returning to the

United Center. So I'm glad they got that moment. But man, I, uh, you and I haven't talked this week, but man, my phone blew up about our conversation last week about AEW. I'm curious what feedback you got about our discussion about CM Punk and AEW. Um, you know, it's funny because the, the hardcore AEW, well, it's all they are is hardcore AEW fans. They don't have anybody outside a hardcore fan base because that's what they produce their show for. It's the Dave Meltzer Dirtsheet universe that is predominantly the AEW audience. And anytime that I'm critical of AEW, even if it's my attempt to be constructively critical, I get overwhelmed with the kind of stupid-ass comments and questions that one of our previous

listeners sent in questioning the story of this particular episode, which I think you just covered when you said it was heavy on story. but surprisingly almost all of the the responses I got on social media agreed with me very there were some that disagree there were some the snarky you know Dave Meltzer wannabes dirt sheet wannabes some of those guys of course you know were critical of what I had to say and what we talked about but the vast majority I would say 80% were in agreement Some, vociferously. I love, that's a good word.

Bociferously. So, yeah, it was surprising. But it should be obvious that it was time to make a move. There was no happy ending in that story. We, what was, what kind of reaction did you get? People in the business. not a lot of people were happy that we talked about it but I mean we had to talk about it

it kind of is what it is and I got I mean they weren't happy that we talked about it we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen well I think but I'm curious tell me you don't have to name a name but what was what was the bitch what were the unhappy about well as you know everything we say on this show gets cut up and and turned into

a bunch of different news articles across the wrestling landscape and there were some quotes that were directly attributed that were really when we're talking about the narrative in the rumor and innuendo and the common beliefs but really that nobody ultimately knows the only people who really know and you pointed this out last week what happened are tony con and see and punk and outside of that it's a lot of hearsay and it led to like some wrestling beefs where you know this camp people believed we're getting their information from one side and well this camp they believe they were getting their information from the other side and i'm talking about when i say camps i mean news websites but when the story becomes more about

who's reporting it rather than what they're reporting i think we kind of lose focus of what's important and really hope that we haven't seen the last of see and punk in professional wrestling i don't think that wrestling fans are doing with him. And I think all the metrics would prove that. It's a function now of what he wants to do next. And I talked about that with Jeff Jarrett last week on his podcast, My World. And I said, could you see him doing something, you know, in Mexico for AAA with Triple Mania?

Could you see him doing something with New Japan and doing something at the Tokyo Dome? That might be challenging because both of those companies have relationships with a w so do you think he does something uh with his pals at impact wrestling because he did show up at an impact show and as i understand it he's friends with some of the folks in management there and he's been there before he kind of started his career there or could you see him where most people will assume maybe he does something with wb and jeff said no no no he thinks maybe punk could just do his own thing i don't think by do his own thing he means go get a networked TV deal and start his own wrestling promotion,

but run a handful of shows a year where he's sort of the top star and the promoter, maybe like a quote-unquote Rick Flair's love indie super show, if you will. And I wanted to get your take on that because I got tagged in that a lot this last week where people saying,

oh, you should promote a show with punk. I mean, I don't really, I'm not itching to go promote wrestling, but I am curious from your perspective. What do you think punk does next? don't you know i don't know the man never had a syllable of conversation with him so i have no insight as to what his goals and aspirations are and i think a lot of it has to do with how much money has he got in the bank if he's sitting on a pile of cash and he's not financially motivated

or doesn't feel the need from a financial perspective to make a move well that's a factor and a variable um you know doing your own thing promoting your own show i mean if you've passed passionate about it. You really want to do it. It's fun for you and you like that sort of thing, have at it. But it'll last once or twice. It'll be a failed experiment. It just is what it is. The cost of doing it well and promoting it well, it's such a high risk, little reward opportunity that unless you're doing it because it's your passion, it's probably not going to be a long-term solution. I feel a little differently. And again, I don't know Phil.

I know the character see a puck, but I don't know the person, Phil Brooks. I just think this is just human nature. If Phil wakes up this morning and, again, this is what I don't know, and says, wow. I'm how old is he 40 some 30 late 30 I think he's 44 45 he's 44 years old he's got another 22 he's got another 25 30 years of kicking around this planet where he's going to want to have some bucks in the bank right so unless he's got enough money sitting to the bank right now

where he doesn't have to worry about the next 25 years at some point he's going to wake up trust me I do it every day you wake up and you go oh man I got to make something happen here now depending on how intense that pressure is on him him determines a lot. But if he comes to the realization that, okay, I can't live off of the mystique that I created in WW any longer. The thing with AEW didn't work out. There's not a lot of other places to go. I like the idea, you know, impact and all that. Great. They don't have two nickels to rub together compared to what Phil was making in AEW or probably what he made in WW. It becomes a financial issue at some point.

If Phil were to wake up and just have a cup of coffee and realize it, okay, I kind of think I fucked up a little bit. At least it's 50% of my fault. You know, I could have done things better. I mean, we can all say that. Every time we wake up in the morning, we could have gone through the day before and done it better if we really thought about it, right? So if Phil wakes up and says, okay, I'm 44 years old, I've still got three or four years in my tank of being able to go out and make millions of dollars a year.

If I can convince people that I recognize what I did wrong, I want to correct it, and I want to make the most of the last three or four or five, whatever he's got left in a tank, at least three years for sure. I think if Phil sat down with Paul Levick and had an honest conversation and just laid it on the table and left his ego back in Chicago and just really had a heart-to-heart honest conversation and was able to convince Paul that he really did want to end his career on a high note, I think that that's a possibility. I really do. We've seen it before in WWE. The culture has established the WWE culture, whether it's Vince. I think Paul Levec, you know, I've known Paul forever, but I don't know him really, really well. I just know that he's a really smart guy, and he's seen a lot.

And I think that Paul would be reasonable. And again, it would all come down to Phil Brooks being able to convince Paul that he's sincere. That's the part that's going to be the most difficult part of whether or not punk has another chapter in his story or not. I think these other opportunities with its impact. In New Japan, what did they gross? $33 million last year. Gross. That's not profit.

That's gross sales, $33 million or something close to that. They're not going to be able to afford punk in any significant way. Impact, same thing. They just don't have the budget. So there's not real viable financial opportunities, especially compared to what he was making in AEW or like I said, what he made in WWE. So I think it all comes down to money and aspirations.

I would hope, not knowing Phil Brooks at all, I would hope that at some point soon he recognizes that the clock is ticking and more than that recognizes that he is an absolute control of the final chapter of his professional wrestling story and i would think that he would want that to end on a high note that's what i hope happens whether or not it does who knows but i think that's the most viable option for punk otherwise he'll just fade away he'll make an appearance here make an appearance there he could probably make a killing doing personal appearances and signing autographs i'm sure if he went over to the uk right now he could pull 25 or

30 grand, you know, in an afternoon, you know, and you can do that for a while, you know, until that wears off, you know, a couple years of that, and everybody that wants an autograph has got one, everybody that wants a picture's got one. So you can live off that for a little while. But long term, writing the end of you, you know, closing the chapter out on your career on a high note, I hope that that's his biggest motivation. And I hope that Paul LeVec would sit down and have that conversation with him. I just don't know how much real heat Phil has behind the scenes because you don't want to you don't want to turn your roster inside out and create a bunch of drama and have a bunch of unhappy people for if you can avoid

it you know and that'll be that'll probably based on some comments that I've heard recently that'll take some that'll take a little bit of time and effort to get the roster to to accept him I'm sure there were people there that would love to see him back by the way I and I've heard some of those comments from some of those people but I've also heard comments from people who I trust who have known a long time and who are credible not the day belts or dirt sheet dirt bags of the of the world but people that I know well and there are some issues there but I don't think there are issues that can't be resolved very rarely are there issues that can't be resolved unless you've got really stubborn

egomaniacal people involved Speaking of egomaniacal people, we've got one on the mic here. Let's listen to Scott Steiner and hear what's going on here with this other character. And you can see, I brought my world famous doctor with me again. But you see, I still have a problem with that. pencil pushing piece of trash j j dillon question the seriousness of my injury this is awesome so i only not only got one doctor i'm going to have a panel of doctors to prove that i'm not a hundred Now Doc, I understand you were flew in a doctor in tonight from where? Jamaica, man.

And this guy's good, right? Right on. What's this guy's name? Dr. Juju Yubangy. And he's good. And he's here tonight. Right on, right on. Well, come on down, Dr. Yubangy.

down doctor you're bangy and come on and show jay dillon what it's all about come on down the doctor has no pants on that should matter to you right now that would make me leave the office what is don't worry man be happy oh hello man so now we've got buff bagwell coming out as a Jamaican doctor and the audience and the audience is on their fack in the ring feet they love it look there is no one sitting down of course I knew that this is him right let me introduce myself my juju you bangy hello hello Americans yes big pop-up-pup I'm it's my understanding that Jay J.J. Dill seems not to understand is this up by right that's correct as you

You know, Dr. Cecil Swartz, a personal friend, and by one of the best doctors in the world today. But you know what, Big Papa, Pop, Pop, I'm going to heal you, but I got to have you concentrate on me, man. Can you do this? Concentrate. this is awesome dude it is so stupid it is so fucking stupid it's great melzer says rick steiner showed up and everyone ran away i hope somebody out there

thinks having scotty go out there and do these lengthy poorly delivered superstar billy grand mid-70s entertaining because the crowd was booing this in a bad way and that wasn't feel heat they were getting it was this show rots heat i don't know man are you hearing that conrad do you hear what dave heard how much more do we have to endure this my goodness my goodness now listen man last week you cannot hold this left arm up now please show the people the big papa is okay to wrestle that stupid dog-faced gremlin hold it up big pop-up please he's healed he's healed thank god for Jamaica man Jamaica man he's healed and I'm buff and I'm the stuff there you go Eric we have a little fun with the silliness here

we know that we're setting up rick steiner coming out uh this pairing would would continue through uh i guess the rest of the year buff bagwell and scott steiner i liked them as a duo i know that uh a couple of months after this i guess in november they bring out scott steiner's mom and uh i actually found out over this past weekend at starcast that scott steiner's mom was actually played by lash laroo uh and and so that was actually lash his first time on nitro that would have been november of 98 he didn't actually make his on-screen debut for you guys until february of 99 um so you had a lot of fun with these types skits and segments who saw the the the value i mean this is before vince russo's here

somebody is a big advocate for this pairing and them doing these sort of outside of the box things was that you i think we all were we all were look scus i mean someone of the stuff that Scott did back in the day has gone on to become kind of cult classic stuff. It was highly, highly entertaining, bizarre as it may be, and such a departure from the character that Scott Steiner, you know, portrayed before when he was part of the Steiner Brothers tag team. He was just such a straight down the middle kind of character. Here he's, I don't know what he is. He's not quite a stand-up comedian, but he's funny as fuck.

and it was so different. But I think we all, I don't think there was any one person that was like, wow, Buff Bagwell and Scott Seiner, that might be a good team. I think we all saw it. They had a good relationship. The chemistry was good. They were close friends. They fed off of each other very, very well.

It was almost like it was just a natural pairing. We love that natural pair. pairing. I feel like we should take a time out right now to tell everybody about another national or natural pairing. Every single day, you said, C and Punk is going to wake up and say, do I have enough money to make it to the end of my life? And every single day, I know what you wake up and do, Eric. You say to yourself, self, where's the athletic greens? I need to stuff this day right. I need one scoop of those delicious agey ones. And bam, I'm hooked up. That's all it is one scoop and a cup of water and you're going to set yourself up for success it's a science

driven formulation of vitamins probiotics in whole food source nutrients you see ag1 replaces your multivitamin and your probiotic and more all in one simple drinkable habit think of it as a micro habit with macro results it's whole body health and this is really your foundation and i would like to consider it like a foundational nutritional supplement it gives you a comprehensive that checks all the boxes. And how does it do that? 75 different high quality ingredients that are going to set you up for success. They're going to support energy and focus and strength and clarity.

It's something my wife has been using for a long time. She was doing it long before the pandemic, in fact. And she felt like she was more productive in her workouts. She gets up early every morning, goes to the gym, but on her way, it's one scoop in a cup of water of AG1. She feels like she's more productive. on the off chance we're traveling and she forgets or she misses a day she's out of her routine she finds herself feeling like she's sort of going through the motions at the gym she's not as productive

now my experience is a little different prior to ag one i would have that afternoon crash like around three or three 30 no longer i no longer feel like man i just can't focus anymore my head's kind of mush i'm not as sharp as i was in the morning that sharpness stays with me through the end of my day i know i'm more productive because of AG1 and if you want to feel unstoppable if you want to feel like you're doing something good for your gut health or maybe you hate taking pills or vitamins maybe you want to support your immune system if you just want to cover all of your nutritional bases every day and you want a supplement that tastes great AG1 is for you and if a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine we recommend you try AG1 and get a free one year supply of

vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Just go right now to drinkag1.com slash 83 weeks. That's drinkag1.com slash 83 weeks. Check it out. You'd be glad you did. Let's get back to Nitro here in three, two, one, play. We're still not done, man. We got a lot of wrestling to cover.

We've got our main event. And I think coming up next, we've got the cruiserweight title on the line. as we see hub and two guerrera going to be defending against evan courageous uh and we're seeing these clips of the warrior uh upstairs in the uh the top of the arena it just feels a little sting 2.0 doesn't know oh my it just so bad so bad not a fan of that huh no no no Fan of this, though, Hu-Too-Garra, a big fan of Hutu-Tus. I mean, he was flaky as fuck back then, but he was great in the ring.

Did he ever refer to himself to you as the juice? I think he did. And I could be mixing that up from, you know, my mind, I've heard him refer to himself as the juice in promos and such. And maybe in my mind, I think he actually talked about himself in a third person in that normal conversation, but I think so, 100% sure, but I think so. Eric, something fun happened in this match. And if you're watching the crowd, you'll notice that it looks like maybe fans aren't

as excited about Hoving 2 Guerrera. And it's not because he took off his mask. It's because a couple of blonde-haired ladies took their tops off in the crowd. Awesome. They're going to tease that they're going to do it. And I guess it was maybe a can you top? this and where one gal didn't go all the way the other did and boy there was a pop and everybody's paying attention to that and they don't give a shit what Evan courageous thinks about it taking a

look the other way do you I mean listen we know that happened a lot over on the WWF channel I mean DX was out there basically encouraging folks to do that I mean there's tons of footage of them encouraging ladies to do that that was not really something that was a big part of WCW, like as far as the characters in the ring encouraging it, but it still happened. I mean, this is a party vibe that is, you know, these days, it feels like wrestlings for kids or a bunch of late 30s, early 40 dudes, but there's a lot, this is a date night opportunity in, in this era. And so as a result, you have more ladies there and there's more alcohol and, well, things

happen. Do you remember there being, you see it now in this match because everybody's, a lot of the people at a ring side have their back turn to the ring. that's awesome i mean listen boobs are over then now forever together that's awesome what do you think man do you remember this being a thing like the nw o just hey look at you i mean it did happen but so rarely you know for us and we didn't encourage it in fact if it would have ended up on camera it would have been an issue so uh you know it did happen obviously but not often enough it's crazy to think i mean i can't even imagine if we were at an

a tv show and that started happening or even a w w house show just it feels like another common place where that was you know somebody i don't know who said it to me but it could have been rick flair arnie anderson or dusty or somebody when i first got to wcd it's like you can really tell how over you are by the quality of the spectator comes to the show when you when you start getting attractive women coming to your show that's a good indication that you're starting to get over and i think there's probably some truth to that because it does it did certainly nitro you know we saw a clip i was probably talking over or you were but there was a clip of a nitro party earlier on in the show from Ohio

and looked like there was you know 300 people at that party and they were partying when Nitro really got hot I often described it internally is I want the show to feel like a party

I want the show to feel like something that's going on that people will feel bad if they weren't a part of and it became that And a lot of that had to do with the quality of the talent that would come and sit around the ring and watch the show. And not just because we, you know, I tried it. We tried it.

People before me tried bringing in, you know, hot chicks and put them in, you know, tight shirts and lots of cleavage. And let's make a point of showing them off and all that way. But there's a difference. You know as a viewer if it's really, if it's real or not. But Night Show got to the point where it literally did fuel. like a great college party and a lot of the talent that was at ringside was there because they wanted to be there not because they were paid to be there yeah it's a fun time uh for pro wrestling and it is a part of pop culture and you know i don't know that that's necessarily the case now

but i mean revenues are higher than ever so while it may be true that there are fewer people watching wrestling than there were back then it does feel like it's it's a much more profitable time but there are some some holes some opportunities some room for improvement like as you and i are recording this eric we're home stretching it for a big show at arthur ash for a w and when they first ran that stadium two years ago man they sold it out in minutes as i recall 20 000 tickets in 20 minutes it was it was unbelievable and as we're recording now i think they've sold less than 6,000 tickets for that show and it's they've scaled it down to 12,000 so they've recognized that they're not selling tickets like they were so they cut the the scale down to a little

more than half and they've only sold half of those tickets and that shows about six or eight days away you know even uh this Wednesday show um so the show that'll air two days from now as folks are listening to this when I last saw there were around 1,800 tickets sold for that and that's not a house show that's not a live event uh this this is a live television show the a show if you will dynamite and there's a lag in ticket sales and it feels like it's trending down but it's hard it's hard for me to reconcile that eric and i know you're going to have a reason to poke holes in that but when we go from 81,000 35 paying fans on a sunday and then we come home to like the spiritual home of AEW and certainly starcast and all in and all that stuff

we're at the now arena on Wednesday and we've got like 3,000 tickets I don't know how to fix that I can't wrap I can't make it make sense like clearly hard Conrad talk but talk me through it I've been talking you through it for the last year and a half and every time I do it's like oh he's the old man who's screaming at the clouds man, you're just fucking jealous because Tony won't hire him. First of all, I wouldn't take a job in AEW right now. Well, I won't say for any amount of money because we all know I'm a whore. But realistically, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that clown car.

And the reason for that is because there is a failure to recognize what's wrong. It's simple. It's story. And it's legitimate story, not what a wrestling fan thinks is. a story or unfortunately with a lot of the talent in the ring refer to as a story just because you've wrestled in the past and you have quote unquote history does not mean you have a story story is a well-defined arc with plot points that happen along the way in a very precise manner so that they peak at certain points within that arc and they dovetail into other stories

within the context of wrestling that are going on that's what that's what that's what what WWE is doing. It's the, the schematic is right in front of you. It's the inability to recognize it that is what's causing this issue. I've been saying it for a year and a half. When I first started saying it is, I think it was in November, October, November a year, almost two years ago now it's there the story has to this there has to be story that has to be the focus it can't be dream matches hardcore just bleed all over the fucking place random matches thrown together there needs to be character development and evolution there needs to be great story and i said a year and a half almost two years ago if they don't do if they continue to ignore

that AEW ratings are going to become flat and then deteriorate It was almost two years ago. What are the ratings doing now? They're flat and they're deteriorating. If you go, Brandon Thurston posted a really interesting graphic earlier this week that talks about AEW's ticket sales. And I'll do a poor job recapping it, but I think summarizing it, if you go back and you look at all of the markets where AEW has been more than once

over the course of two years, every one of them, there's been. been a deterioration in ticket sales. Some of it very significant. Arthur Ash, probably the most significant at this point. You go from 20,000 down to about 6,000 a week before the show and you've already scaled it down to 12. If that doesn't tell you that you're not satisfying, not only you're not building new audience, which is absolutely critical at a television show and it's absolutely critical on a live event business. If at the very least, least hold on to your audience, but they're losing them in, day meaning AW, is losing audience in significant quantities while at the same time, WWE is selling out live events,

selling out their television shows, putting 12,000 people in for a Monday Night Raw or Smackdown, and Tony Khan put in, what, 3,800 for Dynamite in Chicago, didn't sell it out after coming off of Wembley, it's not just me screaming at the clouds. It's my perspective based on 30-some-odd years of experience and both success and failure. And Tony's refusing to look at it. And until he does, he's going to keep doing the same things over and over and over again, and you're going to get the same results over and over and over again. And you can convince yourself all you want that you're a great storyteller or a great television producer. But it's not showing up on screen and it's not showing up at the gate and it's not

showing up anywhere else. Yeah, Wembley was a fantastic feather in Tony's cap, but that's all that it was. And you laughed at me last week when I said, if they go, maybe it was you, maybe it was somebody else. But I made the comment, yeah, they did $81,000. They should be, you know, blowing out their shoulders patting each other and themselves at the back for doing so because they deserve it. But if they go back next year, they'll be lucky to hit 40 or 50,000.

Not that 40 or 50,000 is a bad number, but a 30 or 40% drop is a bad number. It's just not, it's not working. And you can spin it, you can, because you, not you, but the collective view, we spin it all we want because we like Tony and he's a swell guy. He's just good things for people. And those are all, those are all things that are true that are true that I believe. I don't really know the man that well, but I know some of the things that he's done, as we all do. But it's not working.

And until that's reconciled, until somebody admits it, and Tony has the talent to do it, he's got Brian Deonneson there. Give Brian Deionnison, give him collision. Let him do it. You don't have to be the guy that's in charge of everything. Harvey Schiller tell me, learn how to delegate. Sometimes it'll work. Sometimes it won't. but at this point there's nothing to lose you got chris jericho there chris jericho knows how to produce

good television christ jericho is way more talented than people give him credit for we think about chris jericho and his talents and abilities inside of the ring and they're massive but it's his talent it goes way beyond that give those guys an opportunity and see if it works but if not you know there probably won't be an arthurash this time next year it'll be scaled down to 5,000 people and they'll be lucky to sell that out and i say that because i've experienced it i know what happens when you don't do it do it meaning build story and characters well listen they uh they just took a break here after the night trip party we will too we'll hit a timeout right now uh because i do want to talk about why it feels like you have such a hard on for tony con and a e w and see a punk

we'll do that on the other side. What I want to remind everybody listening is, if you want an Eric Bischoff level hard on towards AEW, you need Blue Chew, boys and girls, this episode and every episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. It's going to get you so hard, even a cat couldn't scratch it.

That's what Arn Anderson told me once. I don't really know what it means, but it sounds pretty good. Is that me knocking on wood? And what kind of wood? Well, you'll have to find out when you try it. It's got the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis and Lepitra, but in chewable form and at a fraction of the cost, I'll do it again

that time with no hands. Take them any time, day or night, so you can plan ahead or be ready whenever an opportunity arises. And the process is super simple. You sign up at Bluetooth.com, consult with one of their licensed medical providers, and once you're approved, you'll receive your prescription within a few days. Seriously, it's made in the USA. It's prepared and shipped directly to your door, all in a discrete package.

That's it knocking. or is it knocking? I don't know. We'll have to find out. The best part, though, it's all done online. No visits to the doctor's office, no awkward conversation, no waiting in line at the pharmacy. Just, yeah, all day long. Come on. Blue Chew wants to help you have better sex. Discover your options at bluechew.com. Chew it and do it. Got a special deal for our listeners. Try Blue Chew free when you use our promo code 83 weeks to check out. Just pay $5 shipping. That's bluechew.com. The promo code is 83 weeks. and you've received your first month free,

visit bluechoo.com for more details and important safety information. And we want to thank BluCew for sponsoring today's podcast and Eric's Wiener. All right, let's get back to the show here in three, two, one. And we're back on Nitro. We're home stretching it, man. We've got Goldberg coming up in a title match. We've still got our main event.

And we've got Jericho, who's going to be wrestling Disco Inferno here for the TV title. This is my favorite era of Jericho. You see him strutton of the ring, sporting Monday night Jericho shirt. He's no longer a cruiserweight champion like he was earlier in the spring. That fabulous feud he had with Dean Malenko. Now he's the television champion. He's trying to work his way up the card.

And this is a real highlight. Let's track Jericho on the mic. Welcome to Monday night Jericho. And I know why you are all Jericho. I know it's because I am who you all want to be I am better than each and every one of you but as your role model I promise to never ever let you down thank you so here he come disco inferno to two wrestlers two podcasts for the TV title um let's talk about Goldberg he's going to be out here in a minute beating up Al Green

who used to be Kevin Nash's tag team partner and I want to talk about what was going on just a few days prior at a house show loop with Goldberg but before we do I want to circle back to the AW topic and conversation I um I wondered if there are lessons that are maybe paralleling with WCW and AEW because you said that earlier in the show, very early on in today's program, we talked about Nick Lambrose and that perhaps he was trying to do a power play and perhaps he wound up getting his ass reassigned as a result. I wasn't there. I don't know all the details. You shared with us what you best you could or the best of your recollection. But through that process, he said

something like, I was told I needed to delegate more. I needed to carve off some responsibilities. I needed to let other people make decisions. And you even pointed to, as you call it, the cat's ass logo, the redesign logo, as being a Lambros initiative that maybe wasn't necessary, but you were trying to embrace delegation. I don't know this to be the case, but I wonder, do you think that might be something that Tony is struggling with, an AEW as well, like this, you know, people still talk about AEW as if it's a startup, but it's nearly five years old. So it's no longer, quote unquote, a startup. It was, but now it's a nearly five-year-old business. and I wonder, you know,

as this company has gotten bigger and they went from no television shows to one to two to three and we thought maybe once upon a time we'd have four pay-per-views, it looks like they're going to have seven. So it just continues to grow and grow. And now they've got all these new initiatives,

you know, like trading cards and like video games and Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan. Do you think that delegation may be an issue with Tony too? And I want to add the context of unlike yourself back when you were running WCW. He's also helping run Fulham and the Jaguars. So he's got what would be considered three very, very full-time jobs. And he's just one dude. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made just on the AEW side of things.

You think delegation might be something that he's struggling with as well. Could be. You know, I don't know what he does for the Jaguars. I don't know what he does for the. the soccer team or the football team in the UK. I don't know what his actual day-to-day involvement is in that. Perhaps you do. Maybe he's very little, or it could be a lot.

So that's a big factor, right? So unless you know how much of his time is spent somewhere else, you don't know how much of a negative impact that could be having on AEW. Let's assume it's enough that out of a 60-hour week, it's taking 20, 25, 30 hours. That's a lot. If that's the case, then he's definitely in over his head. But I think it, in terms of time and just ability to focus

and to really put in energy. I think it goes beyond that. And I say this only because of things that Tony himself has said. And one of the things when you ask me about my attitude towards Tony and AEW, it happens almost two years. ago in November when Tony came out and I thought was extremely disrespectful to Ted Turner and to me in WCW. It didn't bother me too much because I've been hearing it now for a long time. But when Tony came

out and said if Ted Turner knew half as much about wrestling as I did, WCW would still be around. In that moment, as a result of that quote, I lost all respect for Tony professionally. I do believe he's a nice person and a good person and he has good intentions. But professional, I thought he made an ass of himself and he continues to. And that really is where I came out. You may remember this. I came, that's why I came out.

So just shut up and wrestle. Quit comparing yourself and trying to convince people that you're better than WWE or you're bigger than WWE. And I came out and I said something on this show probably the equivalent of Tony, just shut up and wrestle. Right. And evidently that bothered Tony so much that he started blowing up the phone of someone who we both know. And that someone said, hey, why don't you give him a call and, you know, apologize or say whatever you're going to say.

And I did. I gave him a call. And he never returned it. And that's okay. I don't feel like I'm owed anything. But it just reinforced to me the lack of respect. You know, if you've got a bitch with me and I'm making an effort to call and apologize for something I said, but you'll bitch to everybody else, but you won't take the call, that says something to me. That paints a picture, whether it's right or wrong, it paints a picture in my mind.

And I just think Tony sees himself or wants to see himself so badly as the Vince McMahon of WWE or the Paul Heyman of ECW or even the Eric Bischoff of WCW. when it was successful. Tony wants or needs that recognition so badly that I don't think whether it's because he's so immersed in other things or distracted or if he's really just driven by his ego so much that he's not making those decisions or those choices to let other people who, by the way, unlike the parallel, you know, with Nick Lambros was an attorney who wanted to be the vice president of marketing. You know, it's like the vice president marketing that wants to be an attorney.

It doesn't work. But Tony has people around him at this moment that are so much more experience and probably way better at creative and understanding the wrestling audience. Because Tony, I think, understands the wrestling audience that in his mind he was. He's writing for himself. He's writing for 14-year-old. Tony Kahn, who was showing up at ECW events and writing to the things that stimulated him at that point in time that he liked. It's not uncommon, but he does not understand television.

He doesn't understand storytelling. He understands what he enjoys, and it's not the same thing. When you've got such a wealth of experience, at your fingertips, that's the, what you, it's not, I want, them to succeed. I don't have a hard on form. I want them to succeed. What I get upset about is loss of opportunity and blowing opportunity. And Tony has such a fantastic opportunity right now and has had, but he keeps going down this same path that isn't working. And it drives me nuts. It's not my money. I have no dog and hon. I don't really care. I mean, it gives me something to talk about when I do podcasts and stuff. So I guess that's great for me. But it's such a waste. It's So it's right there for him.

All he's got to do is go, you know what, I'm going to let somebody else take control of one show. Give them six months. If it doesn't work, then go back to doing what you were doing because that already wasn't working. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. That's not having a hard on for Tony Kahn. That's not having a hard on for AEW.

That's my honest perspective. And I give it when I'm asked. When I leave this, this, when I leave this studio, when I walk away from this microphone, AEW will not cross my mind until the next time I sit in front of this microphone, unless something really big happens and it catches my eye on social media. But I really wanted to succeed. I know I sound like I don't. If I heard myself, you know, if I was somebody else and I listened to me, I don't, fuck, he just hates everybody. But it's actually the opposite of that. Whatever.

no I know that because you and I have talked a lot off air about you know how good it is for the business and I mean you know I know that there are people who listen to this show who really like when you quote unquote dunk on Tony but you and I both agree that he's been a net positive for wrestling and the people in wrestling like he's really done some amazing things but I think you're trying to offer critiques and criticism where you think it just could be better and you're trying to hope that but maybe folks learn from some of your mistakes and the lessons that you learned in WCW. And, you know, maybe a friend of mine told me recently, salt and sugar are the same color. And sometimes they get confused for one another. But I think your criticisms more often than not come from a good place. And, you know, I for one, I hope that that AW continues to grow and thrive. And it does feel like, you know, ticket sales are in a bit of a lull now domestically, but not internationally. And maybe it was because it was a new market and that sort of thing.

But I'm really, really pulling for them because I watched the show the other night. And I really enjoyed the show. It felt like it was, I enjoyed it. But I understand what you're saying about, hey, maybe we do need some deeper stories. Maybe it needs to be. And I think, you know, they've got some great stories going right now. it's a question of can they keep that momentum going we'll see here's how you know it's going to be a big nitro michael buffer comes out in his white jacket uh we got some big time stars coming in

before we watch this main event and talk about it and chop it up i want to wrenching uh something that happened in indiana in late august of 98 here goldberg versus giant was advertised as the dark match main event in both terry hot who has screwed that name up and peoria sometime back goldberg had asked for both of those days off and JJ gave him the days off. Somehow, with the typical great communication internally, the promotions department never knew that and continued to advertise him. Nobody even knew there was a problem until the day of when they realized the only advertised match was Goldberg versus Giant and Goldberg wasn't there. The Providence deal turned into a disaster as the original thinking was that maybe 40% of the 7,000 who paid

would actually go to the box office that week and ask for refunds. But as it turned out, all but 1800 got refunds. So the idea of what they were doing in Providence was ruled out, although WCW didn't again do itself any favors, but never booking a firm return date to Providence for fans to use those tickets and instead just refunding them. So instead, a decision was made not to inform the crowd here in Indiana about Goldberg not being there

and basically warm up the cars and sprint out of the building or Earl Hebner in Montreal after Page and Henning was the match that went on last and it was over before anyone in the crowd, even realized what was up and then they started throwing furniture basically Goldberg had to be practically begged to appear in Peoria and he did come but he wasn't happy about it and it made it doubly screwy for him because WCW had booked him for the main event in Peoria at the end of a four-hour taping and then he had to be on all sorts of media appearances in New York City early the next morning as a part of the Nassau Coliseum ticket kickoff sale so they had to charter a jet for him for

$11,000. Now, this is one of those growing pain type scenarios. Again, it's not a startup. This is WCW. They've been around for a long, long time. But we've got him advertised, but we've also granted him the day off. And now we've got to try to make chicken salad. I'm sure this is just left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing, as we say here in the South. But that seemed to be pretty commonplace at times. Was there just not enough, I don't know, infrastructure to make sure that didn't happen. I don't know that it was commonplace, number one. I don't know that the recap of this scenario is even close to what really happened.

Who wrote that? Dave Meltzer. Okay. Enough said. Dave is a bitter little bitch. And he always had an issue with me in WCW. I mean, it could be true. It could not be true.

There could be parts of it that are true, but none of us know, and I'm not going to comment on a Dave Meltzer fucking recap of anything because you just don't know how much of it is real and how much is just Dave menstruating. I mean, he's just, were there issues? Of course there were. Were there breakdowns of communication? There are in every company.

yes, it did happen, especially when we started really growing fast. Let's take a look at the growth. Was it a startup? Was WCW startup? In many ways, it absolutely was not. But effectively it was. From the day I took over at about 1993 to about 1996, you've got a three-year window when we went from $25 million in annual sales to $300 million in annual sales,

are close to it. while it's technically not a startup, effectively it is because it's an entirely different business. And some of it operated fairly well. Some of it didn't. Some of it was an issue because travel, for example, wasn't coordinated through WCW, was coordinated through Turner Travel. So there are always issues that would come up from time to time.

But I can't comment on the details of what Dave Meltzer had to say, nor should anybody in their right mind. Dave wasn't there. I guarantee you Dave wasn't at the fucking building. So where did that information come from? And by the way, it's not Terry Hot. Terry Hot was a stripper and Terre Haute. Listen, we got a bunch of different questions about our main event here.

Dylan Leahy wants to know. Did Eric think was Brett was checked out of wrestling by this point? Or did he still think that Brett had something to offer to WCW? Oh, it's hard for me to reflect back on. where Brett was or I was with relationship to Brett, I think I was still very hopeful that we could pull it together. But there was, you know, and I've talked about this before, and I know Brett doesn't want to hear this and either the fans of Brett.

And I want to make it clear before I say what I'm about to say, I've got a ton of respect for Brett Hart and what he accomplished in his role in the industry and what he was able to do. That said, and I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again, the Brett Hart that came to WCW was not the same Brett Hart that was in WWE based on people that worked with them in WWE. There was a lot going on with Brett. And a lot of that was my responsibility and my fault.

And some of it was Brett's responsibility and Brett's fault. But I couldn't tell you in August of 1998, you know, what the chemistry was at that point. I just, I couldn't. We should do another one here from, my Instagram, a wrestling historian, he wants to know. What was your reaction to finding out you got a 6.0 rating? I don't remember, but I probably wasn't that surprised. You know, we were hovering around 4s, even in competition at this point, I think,

maybe sometimes greater than, you know, 4 plus. So, you know, a 6 was awesome, but it wasn't like, oh, my God, I can't believe we did a 6 rating. It was probably more than anything along the lines of, well, that's kind of what we expected. That would be my guess. a great one here from uh francis reyes what did you think of ernest the cat miller's robe and did the company design that for him that feels like it's just right out of the personal collection of ernest the cat miller me i don't know if we designed it for him but he would

have had a hand in it it was so ernest miller i thought everything about ernest was entertaining still do as a matter of fact i've got a i think we're going to be doing a uh a watch along of a trailer that Ernest Miller and Glacier, uh, it was involved with. They've got a new movie coming out. And I just talked to Evan Polisher yesterday and we're going to kind of review the trailer and talk about that movie. I can't wait. Is Ernest Miller and Ray Lloyd to, two amazingly quality people, high quality people and I look forward to it. But I, you know, I think anything Ernest Miller does is pretty entertaining. If you just sit down with him and have dinners you will find yourself laughing your ass off you could you could go into a ruthcris

steakhouse in the worst mood in the world kind of like you are when you get done recording with me you could be in a horrible shitty mood because you just rr and you sit down with ernest miller and you'll be laughing your ass off in 15 or 20 minutes that's who ernest miller is we uh we should also mention this main event we're watching that everybody thought what set the record it actually didn't it was uh that interview with dallas page and roddy piper and then of course the high voltage tag the high voltage tag did more than this one did but we've got sort of the faces if you will the top baby faces of wcw back in the day sting and lex luger so when we're talking about we'll call it late 80s early 90s wcw man those were the top two baby faces now on the other channel

Hulk Hogan and Brett Hart were the top two baby faces and now they're all facing off here we got tomato face sting tagging up with Lex Luger and black jeans taking on Hollywood Hogan and Brett Hart this is uh can get here now I wonder if the fact that this wasn't the highest rated episode of the show I think that had a lot to do with being so late into the third hour because you do get off audience fatigue in around 10 o'clock it's hard to hold an audience after 10 o'clock at night it's my only explanation because the the name power alone should have done better than it did obviously it's um it's a big time main event i mean you want to talk about star power it's just dripping off of it

And I've always wondered, and I know we've talked about it before, but I just can't help but think, man, what if with Brett? You know, his career cut way too soon after, you know, the injuries required him to step away from the ring. But we never got to see the big pay-per-view main event with him and Hogan. I'm not saying it necessarily would have been the best match ever, but it is one of those that just feels like it got away from us. And we talk about things.

You know, the match might not have been the best to your point, just, But Brett could have made Hulk look pretty good if that was the goal. Brett had that skill set, much like Rick Flair, can pretty much make anybody look great. The build that could have been, though, that's the part that I think I regret more than anything, is had the focus been there, had the commitment been there, had the chemistry been there, a couple variables going on there, but had it been, had everything been right, the build, the story i'm not saying it could have been a sting kind of build but it could have been damn close maybe better that's that's the part that i regret well something you won't regret

is signing up for ad free shows dot com you get all of our shows early and ad free over there there's more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcast starting at just nine dollars a month that's like less than 20 cents an episode each month but that's not all there's tons of extra bonus content not just audio but video as well things you can't hear anywhere else like the book with david crockett or the insiders or ask conrad or monday mailbag with mike keota and nick patrick or how about the brand new series tuesdays with the taskmaster kevin sullivan and we just announced i can't believe this is real we've got a hacksaw hour and uh they tell me there's another hall of famer that we've got up our sleeves as well it's more content than you can

shake a stick out and it's all exclusive to ad free shows dot com You get to be a part of the live recordings that we do. We call it our live studio audience. You can also do live Q&A chats for our bonus episodes. You get to interact and be on camera asking your favorite wrestling legends like Tony Chivani or Eric Bischoff or Jim Ross questions. And how about watchalongs with your favorite host? You can be a part of all that and a lot more over at adfreeshows.com.

By the way, if your business targets men that are 25 to 50, 4 years old, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 weeks. You've heard us do some of the same ads for the same. same companies year after year. Why is that? Well, because it really works. If you're looking for dudes, we got them. And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go right now to advertise witheric.com and find out more about how affordable it is to advertise here on 83 weeks. You can also pick up Eric's new book, Grateful, available now over on Amazon. Love to have your interaction and your feedback. If you think we've earned it, throw us a like,

hit the subscribe button. Leave us a five-star rating on the platform that you listen to us on, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever. You can also interact with the show and ask questions like the ones we've read off from listeners today at 83 weeks over on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. And the easiest, best, and cheapest way to support the show is just to subscribe to our YouTube. Check it out if you haven't already. It's 83 weeks on YouTube.com. It's one thing to hear Eric's rants.

It's another to see them. And speaking of seeing Eric, you can see Eric and a whole lot of new merch over at Box of Gimmix.com, including the now infamous Mucker Fother hoodie and so much more. We got some big gold stickers. We got some Yeti cups, some tank tops, some hats, some beach towels, something for everybody at Box of Gimmicks.com. Personally, we're on all the social media forums. He is at E. Bischoff on Twitter.

I am at Hey, Hey, Hey, it's Conrad. On Instagram, he's at the real Eric Bischoff. I'm at Hey, Hey, it's Conrad Thompson. And we're both on Facebook at E. Bischoff and Hey, Hey, it's Conrad. So I greatly appreciate you guys checking out and hang on along with a fun ride here. Man, this is the high watermark for Nitro. Who would have thought?

August 31st, 1998, a ratings record over a six. Dude, that's just crazy. And can you imagine if Smackdown pulled a six some Friday night? People would lose their mind. Have you heard, speaking on SmackDown, have you heard anything about the license agreement negotiations? Is that still kind of just floating around out there in the ether? It is.

And I think that it's something that they were probably, trying to get in front of with this new merger, which, you know, what's funny is I've heard conflicting stories on that. I've heard some people said, hey, man, they'd be lucky to get that done by the end of the year. And then I've seen other people who say, oh, no, it'll be done by the end of September. What do you think? The merger? Yeah. It'll be done Tuesday. Oh, that's it, huh, tomorrow? Yeah. I mean, uh, this Tuesday or maybe, no, September 12th. Yeah, so this Tuesday, tomorrow. Yeah, is what I read recently.

And I think that was an announcement from WWE to their staff via email, which made its way out into social media. But yeah, I think it's going to close on September 12th, which is, I think it closed faster than I suspected or gassed, I shouldn't say suspected. I thought it might take a little longer, but it went relatively quickly for, you know, the scope, the size of the merger. I feel like we should at least acknowledge it, as folks are listening to this, unbelievably, today is September 11th or as we call it here in America at 9-11, and it's the anniversary of, I guess, the greatest tragedy we've ever had here in America, the attack with those planes in New York City and the towers and my goodness, reflecting on things like that, it brings a little clarity to, hey, is, any of this wrestling shit really all that important i mean a lot of people

lost a whole lot more than a ratings point that day my goodness indeed and it's still something that you know i know here in cody there is a a big event this morning at the buffalo bill statue there are 55 steps from the ground up to the to the top of the statue and uh there's a lady here in town that put together an event and she invited everybody and Cody to come down and they're going to run whatever it is, they're going to run it to equal the number of steps that the firefighters had to run up during that fire. So there's still people commemorating that event in a very, very meaningful way today in large

towns, small towns like Cody, Wyoming still matters. And as it should, people should remember. and never forget. You see tunnel for towers, a tunnel to towers, I should say, is doing amazing things for first responders and families of first responders and people who have lost their lives or limbs in war, still doing a lot of great things today. So it kind of does remind you of what's actually important

and what is really nothing more than sheer entertainment. Shear entertainment. Shout out to the friends and family that were impacted by that and served as first responders and just brings a little focus to what's really important today. So I hope we all take a minute today and just remember where we were and those who paid the ultimate sacrifice and those who are no longer with us because, you know, listen, we like to hoot and holler on this show and play a little grab ass every now and again about uh professional wrestling but in the scheme of things none of that's really important

but what is important as well like and subscribe get us out there so you see the uh things are pulling apart here at the end uh it looks like a miscommunication between brett hart and holkogen and brutus the barber beefcake and brian adams trying to get in the middle here we're trying to lean on story I would have loved to have seen it paid off in a big way and never really happened it's one of those great what-ifs I think and here comes the smoke wouldn't you know it let's track it as we go off the air here the ring don't go any place don't leave that set the ring is filling up And the Warriors appeared again.

From where? They're all laid out. There's bodies everywhere. Every member of the NW. Black and White is face down. Hogan's hiding. You smell the fear? Hogan, you can get up.

We can smell your fear. Oh, God, Cunner. He wants no part of the warrior. Oh. And Ferdin took a powder. He couldn't wait to get the fuck out of that ring is what it was. That was horrible. Well, Eric, uh,

I think if you're thinking what I'm thinking we've got to get AEW some good stories like that ultimate warrior story yeah Tony take a look at that there's your temper right there Eric I never know what to expect when we sit down and we record but man it was super fun to take a look at the highest rate of nitro in all time and try to draw some parallels to what's going on with wrestling today we'll be back next week talking all things 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. We had a blast at Starcast 6. A huge thank you to everyone who attended.

And if you want to relive our state show experience, you can with Premier Streaming Network. Over 20 state shows took place Starcast weekend. From comedy shows, design panels, musical performances, talk shows, and more, including a live edition of AEW Unrestricted with CEO Tony Kod. Sign up for Premier. streaming network today and check out the shows available now on demand and in hd and if you sign up today

you'll get two months free of premier plus enjoy the amazing lineup of content that premier streaming network offers including all five previous starcast stage show lineups hundreds of hours of fantastic wrestling content at your fingertips visit starcast on premier dot com Rand Thompson, here to tell you a little more about what ad-freeshows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts every single week, starting at just nine bucks. That's less than 20 cents an episode each month. And yes, you can listen to them all directly through Apple Podcasts or your regular podcast apps.

How easy is that? Ad-free shows also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content and docuseries like title chase, Eric Fires Biosk. conversations with Conrad and The Insiders. Plus new series like The Book with David Crockett, Monday Mailbags with Mike Keota and Nick Patrick and a whole lot more. And you want to talk about early. You can't get any earlier than listening to the shows live.

You can be a part of the live studio audience as we record the podcast. Plus ride shotgun alongside your favorite childhood heroes for live watch-alongs, Q&A's, and other interactive experiences every single month. Come on now. See for yourself what thousands of other wrestling fans from around the world have discovered that ad-freeshows.com is the best value in wrestling. Check it out today. And hey, when you do, the first week is completely free ad-freeshows.com.