83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 294: Halloween Havoc 1999

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

On this ghoulish edition of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad are taking us back to the horrors of WCW in 1999. The guys sit back and endure 3+ hours of Halloween Havoc madness. From the bizarre booking decision of Vince Russo, to Madusa attempting to sell the Nitro cologne this PPV has it all. EMBRACE PET INSURANCE - Don't wait for the unexpected to happen— join the massive community of pet owners who trust Embrace Pet Insurance to protect their pet. Make sure you go to EmbracePetInsurance.com/83WEEKS or else they won’t know I sent you! ZBIOTICS - Your first drink of the night for a better tomorrow - visit zbiotics.com/83WEEKS to get 15% off your first order of generically engineered probiotics when you use 83WEEKS at checkout. HENSON SHAVING - It’s time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that’ll last you a lifetime. Visit HENSONSHAVING.com/ERIC to pick the razor for you and use code ERIC and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. 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 AG1 - Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. That’s drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. WRESTLECADE - Come meet Eric Bischoff at WrestleCade! Wrestlecade is a 3-day family friendly convention for fans of wrestling & sports entertainment which brings together more than 125 of your favorite wrestling stars from all eras. November 24-26, 2023 at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, NC. ➡️ Tickets or info at https://www.wrestlecade.com" SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial today at AdFreeShows.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get what you earned. Visit shoes.va.gov. Not all veterans are eligible for the type or amount of benefits mentioned here. Hey, hey, it's John Hatt Thompson. And you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric. Chris Schoff, Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I am just, I'm having a great day, man.

Early Sunday morning as we're recording this. It's a beautiful day. We have some house guests. My sister-in-law and her husband are here, and they're taking off. So Mrs. B and I will have the house to our for an entire week. How about that? Yeah.

And I, you know, I made sure I checked up on my stock of Blue Chew and I'm good to go. So it's going to be a fun week coming up. How many days were you run around the house naked? No, I don't do that. I don't do that. You encourage Mrs. B to do that as much as I can.

Yes. There's a big difference. There is a difference. But she's, you know, she's, she's, I don't want to say shy, but she's a little more conservative in that regard well i'll tell you who wasn't conservative wcw in 1999 that's what we're going to be doing today we're doing a watch along to get you in that Halloween spirit of course as you're listening to this tomorrow is Halloween so we thought hey man let's go back and watch a Halloween havoc this one from 1999 so without further ado get your peacock out we've got a season

11 episode one Halloween havoc 1999 we've got a two hour 46 minute and 22 second run time. Of course, we're going to pay some bills along the way. So we're going to clock in for a three hour episode here of 83 weeks. So without further ado, Eric, I say we get this party started. I think Silva's got us ready and hopefully you're ready at home with us. Get your peacock ready. Season 11, episode one, Halloween having 1999.

Here we go. In three, two, one, play. There's the old, uh, exploding vagina or cat's asshole logo, depending on who you ask. I have never been so serious. I'm kicking one man's ass in my life. Since you got that belt, I want it. You can't text me. I'm gonna get it.

Or you lose your opportunity. Oh, the hell with that! He touched him! I saw him! He ran over him and he's out! I'm going to rip up your future destination! Sidney's business now! He threw that! Oh, my God! He got kicked in a face! Jack Knife! Powerbomb! Gover! At hell are we having! I will kick your ass!

Promises do not come through in this business. I will not stab the Stinger in the back. The Stinger is back. in black. I can't believe Sting used the baseball bat on Hokey. We've all been screwed in this business. Who can you trust? Hulk Hogan, who's going to get in the last laugh?

They're going to destroy the legs of Hogan. I'm going to kick us out. It's show time, folks. So that's how we open Halloween Havoc. We've got two big storylines. Sid and Goldberg on one side, Hogan and Sting on the other. Two big matches.

We're in Las Vegas. It doesn't quite feel the same as it has in years past. 1996 Halloween havings, maybe my favorite WCW pay-per-view of all time. But I see so many people say that this set is their favorite paper-view set of all time. Of course, we see the giant pumpkin, the screens on either side.

What would you describe that gargural with the nose steam? How would you describe that look and feel? And who deserves some props for this great-looking set? Well, I wasn't there at the time, so I couldn't tell you for sure, but if all things were the same at this point, I'm sure there were. I doubt there was many changes in terms of production at this point. I would have, you know, gosh, you know, it would have started with David Crockett, but there would have been a lot of other people involved. This would have been your second pay-per-view that you would have missed. Of course, you go home before the September pay-per-view in 1999.

Here we are at the October pay-per-view. and sitting ringside at the desk sort of recapping how we got here and what to expect tonight or Tony Chivani and Bobby the Brain Heenan. Man, I think you and I both just think the absolute world of Tony Chivani. But I know once upon a time, man, Chivani and Heenan, they were not best of friends. It felt like it ended poorly there. We would see Bobby writes some not so nice things about Tony Chivani in his book

and maybe have some sideways comments and some shoot interviews. did you know of any perceived heat between the two way back when you worked with them together? I really didn't. And, you know, I know I've heard that before, but hearing you say again, really, it surprises me. And I don't know how you don't get along with Tony Chivani. He's just, you know, number one, he's super professional. And regardless if they were raw feelings one way or the other, Tony would have never let that, you know, come through in his work. And he's just a fun guy to be around. So I, I don't know. Has Tony ever discussed it

with you? He has a little bit off air. Um, he doesn't really want to get into it too much on here because it feels like no matter what you say, you'd be picking on somebody who's no longer able to defend themselves. Tell me about it. Uh, yeah. And, and listen, we've, we've, we've, we've faced that circumstance recently here on our program. Uh, we're going to get started here with a cruiserweight title match. This is going to be a fun show. We're going to get things kicked off here with Disco Inferno taking on Lash Leroux. Our old pal Lash Leroux is challenging. Let's track it here.

Listen to his entrance. So here. So here you would describe that hat. But it looks like something gorgeous, George, as well. born in a previous life maybe yeah i think he borrowed that from a macho man savages uh gorgeous george the former stripper turn valet i mean that does look like that does look like a hat a stripper would wear in Vegas right yes no i could just i could just hear the i could hear the music she'd be dancing to it'll be joe cocker's you can leave your hat on everything else that come

off but the hat would stay on you know i was i was saying the other day i was uh riding down the road listening to the radio with the wife and some song came on and i was like oh this was a strip club anthem back in the day and i realized wow that was my outside voice i should have just left that my inside voice but do think we need a playlist so i was hoping to get lash loroo and his entrance song here let's see what we've got now that we had to listen to disco is our great close personal friend Cassio kid. Here he comes. Lash Leroux, who just made after like a 14-year layoff,

his comeback match over Labor Day weekend in Chicago for G.CW. Do you get to spend much time with Lash Leroo back in the day? Any good memories of Lash at all? I did not. I spent more time talking to Lash at the Top Guy event that took place in Alabama or in Huntsville not long ago and really got to know him what a fantastic human being he is so impressive number one he's incredibly talented some of the artwork he does is just so great and it's fun to have it's fun to own and just getting

to know him a little bit i mean he's a really really solid human being super fun guy and this is going to be a fun match to super fun characters uh in front of the camera and behind the camera disco inferno and last laru kicking it off here it feels a little different you know a few years prior to this, we would open the show with like Ray Mysterio and Dean Malenko for the cruiser way title. We're certainly leaning heavy into character here. Uh, as a reminder, because you touched on it, hey, I wasn't at this show. Uh, I believe the date is September 10th, 1999. You get sent home by Harvey Schiller. Two days later is the fall brawl pay-per-view. So we're about a month after that here for Halloween

havoc, 1999. But almost immediately after you're gone, they make the big announcement. Hey, Vince Rousseau is. leaving the World Wrestling Federation and bringing his old pal Ed Ferrara down to WCW to take over creative and that happened according to the Nitro book on Saturday October 2nd Russo boarded a 10 a.m. flight for Atlanta Georgia his plans for a defection a closely guarded secret during the afternoon he traveled to a Marriott hotel to meet with a contingent of WCW representatives including JJ Dylan Bill Bush and Gary Jester the company's vice president of arenas and

merchandise throughout the day and as reported by Dylan in his autobiography quote Russo did a great job selling himself to Bill Bush he told Bill he had been writing the shows for the WWF not Vince McMahon he also claimed that McMahon would have a cursory glance of the scripts and then sign off on him so the Russo era has begun here in WCW is this the first time you've watched Halloween Havoc 99. I can't, I can't imagine you sat down and watch this at the time. No, this is. I, and I was so tempted to sit down and watch it before we recorded this podcast, just to get familiar with what we're going to be talking about. But, you know, I looked

over the notes. Derek Sabato did a great job on the notes and research. And I thought, you know, I, I love seeing these things for the very first time because my reactions to them are real and authentic. And this is the very first time I've seen this. This is going to be a fun match to get us going here it gets a star and a quarter in the observer they go seven minutes and thirty five seconds melzer would say larue has shown a lot of potential but these two simply did not work well together um it is a different time in wcd you know where things are evolving especially that cruiserate division like we touched on we're doing much more character here instead of more bell to bell uh let's talk about what you're doing at this time though i know

you're home you're not working on wrestling are you still getting paid paid like on a weekly basis. I mean, I know they were paying you through your contract, but what, what did that look like as far as the way you received income or continued to receive payment from Turner? Every two weeks, I'd get a check of the mail. Just right as rain on time. I had two and a half years left of my contract when Schiller sent me home. So I was in no hurry to do much of anything. I was probably, I was probably still in Wyoming fishing when this, this took place. So I was in no hurry.

I had no need to really go out and try to figure out what I was going to do for my life because I had a little bit of time to figure it out. Well, somebody else who's had a little bit of time to figure it out as we're watching a pretty fun match here with Lash Leroux. And boy, that did not last did not get all of that one. That couldn't have felt good. I wanted to ask you about a recent debut we saw on the AW side of things. I don't think a lot of people would have necessarily called this, but it happened.

Rick Flair came out on AEW Dynamite this past Wednesday night, and he was Tony Khan's quote-unquote gift to Sting. Flair made the announcement that he wants to ride this wave with Sting, and he's going to hang in there until the final chapter closes for Sting, which Sting has announced, and we've discussed here in earlier episodes on the show. He's going to be retiring at what is historically like their March pay-per-view. revolution. I don't think as of yet, they've pinned down a host city. I think my understanding is they've got it narrowed down. And I'm interested to see what did you think of the,

uh, the introduction of Rick Flair at AEW programming? You know, I like the fact that it was a surprise and it wasn't promoted. And I know the ratings probably weren't what anybody in AEW was hoping for. They got shellacked pretty good this past Wednesday night. But again, Rick wasn't advertised. So I love the way they brought them out. I think we're going to see the impact of Rick Flair's involvement, association with Sting, on next week's ratings since he was a surprise last week. But we'll see. You know, I loved it.

You know, I think I talked about, you know, somebody asked me, it was either on this podcast or a different one or whatever. Somebody said, you know, who would you like to see Sting wrestle for his last match? And I said, let me clear that everybody hears this. that although I doubt sincerely it would or could ever happen, I would love just because of history and legacy and nostalgia or whatever, I'd love to see it be Rick Flair. And lo and behold, now Rick is introduced and he's partnering with Sting

or going to be there, I assume in his corner and quote unquote be on that ride with him. I didn't really understand the level of heat that Christian put on Rick. I mean, he really buried Rick, which is fine if there's a comeback. If Rick's going to get a chance to actually get a little physical and have some fun in the ring, then I guess it can make sense because it would, creatively speaking, motivate Rick and kind of push him to do something that he might not otherwise be interested in doing. So I hope it goes that way.

I'm not going to be too critical of anything until we see how it plays out. But overall, you know, thrilled to see Rick standing there next to Sting. I don't know how you couldn't be if you've been following Sting's career and Rick's career. And Rick Flair was a guy to put Sting on the map. That's the full circle kind of vibe that I love to see play out, you know, in a great way that also, you know, pays homage a little bit here to Rick's career as well, as opposed to just coming out and burying him the way he, did again if there's a good comeback no issue with it whatsoever if there's no comeback for

rick and not sure it was the best use of someone like what did you think what did you think about it i thought rick more than held his own you know i was really uh happy to see him there i know that it means a lot to him and uh and sting to have this opportunity and the nostalgia feeling of seeing, you know, Rick Flair, Sting, and Tony Chivani together on T&T was a little crazy, a little fun. I enjoyed it. I was, I was happy to say that it happened and to see it happen. Have you talked to Rick?

Did you find out how Rick felt about it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I talk, I've been talking to Rick before and after. And, um, I'm excited to see, uh, where it goes next. So yeah, it's going to be a cool, it's going to be a cool little wrinkle to the story. and you know as a fan i'm wondering you know rick's just doing this so he can turn on sting one last time right oh you think you think so there's disco winning with a blockbuster in the opening match against lash loroo and um i think we've actually got somebody who wants to jump on

and ask a question about this cruiserweight division welcome into the show madfrey shows dot com mr aaron sheen erin welcome to the program what's your question for We're easy E today. Eric, I was wondering, did you feel like the cruiserweight division was dead at this point? I have to be honest with you, man. I wasn't watching enough of it to form a strong opinion. I can tell you that subsequently, it looked to me like the cruiserweight division was kind of losing its identity a little bit. But that's just me.

you know, I was kind of, I was really focused on keeping it a cruiserweight division and not having guys like Disco, for example, or even Lash, who typically would wrestle outside of the Cruiserweight Division. I think when you, when you do too much of that, the Cruiserweight Division loses its character to a degree. And certainly that happened later on. It was an issue that I had with TNA as well, with their X Division, which was just another name for the Cruiserweight Division initially. but you'd have guys that weighed, you know, 275 pounds in the X-Division. And that was one of my big bitches in T&A's. You know, the X-Division has to feel unique. And the Cruiserweight Division had to feel unique in order for it to be something special.

And when you had talent crossing over between the regular roster and a cruiser-of-weight division, it lost some of that identity in my period, in my opinion. And certainly we're seeing a lot of that during this period of time and subsequent to this period. okay thanks thank you man thanks thanks hearing or yeah thanks hearing for your question and of course we're finished with match one now we're back at the desk with tony shivani and uh bobby the brain he'don and i think we should throw a little pause in here eric when i get to the 16 minute mark i'm going to hit the pause button there it is we're going to take this time out to talk about our friends and embrace pet insurance this podcast is proudly sponsored by embrace pet insurance and

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Head to Embracepetinsurance.com slash 83 weeks and sign up for pet insurance today. Make sure you go to Embracepetinsurance.com slash 83 weeks or else they won't know that I sent you. That's Embracepet Insurance.com slash 83 weeks. And we've got the game rolling here. We're at 16 minutes on the nose. We're stuck on a shot of Tony Chivani and Bobby the Brain Heenan at the desk. I'll count us back in and track it here in three, two, one, play. Well, then let's see it and quit talking about it.

That's what I want to do. I hate the guy just talks and talks and talks and doesn't say nothing. Earlier today. Hey, listen, what about you guys? Say, I've changed you. We called you. know you've been in Japan, but you can't call us bail. Tonight's a good night for the revolution, man.

You know, Perry, you're right. Me and Chris did have a week to think about it. As far as we're concerned, you can take the revolution and stick it up your ass. Ooh, we're saying ass now. I think that makes it pretty official. The revolution is split. They're to fight it. If there was any doubt in anybody's mind, now for sure, Malenko and Ben Law on one side, Shane Douglas and Perry Shannon on the other.

So there you go. That was Perry Saturn. watching Chris Monois and Dean Malenko backstage. It said earlier today, but we're certainly trying to program this more like a television show. Here's Mike Teney with Booker T and Stevie Ray. Let's track it. To survive a false count anywhere,

anything goes match with both the first family as well as the filthy animals. You know, Mike, survival ain't nothing new to me and my brother. See, we grew up on the street whooping punk asses like the first family, you know, in the filthy animal, each and every day of all. our lives so tonight it's going to be just like old school it's going to be just like old time and see it won't be long so we get the titles back around our way now can you dig that man can relate to that you know both of these teams filthy animals Brian knobs Hugh Morris that rat Jimmy Hart they found their place in the wrong place at the wrong time this is hall of heat's nights

and we're going to take those filthy animals that stole our belt and we're going to put them out there misery if you know what I'm talking about that will be the extermination of them tonight is Harlem heat tonight and don't you forget it I don't want them fat fruit fooders to forget it and them filthy rotten egg sucking animals they better not forget it now can you think that so the idea here is raymous serio is injured we're going to hold those tag titles up and they're going to be decided in a three way here Harlem heat will be in there against conan and billa kidman and against brian nobs and humorous they go five minutes and two seconds belser would say it was a decent brawl but too short

with the w bf style finish and of course they're flip-flopping these titles around quite a bit you know so we've stripped uh ray mysterio because he can't defend it they're vacant harlem he's going to win the tag titles tonight lose them tomorrow night i know that rousseau has come out and said something that a lot of fans get pretty excited about but i've heard a lot of other people say it. What do you take about Rousseau's stance that quote unquote, the belt's a prop? I mean, it's a tool, right? It's a tool that one uses as stakes. So in the sense that the belt is what everybody should be striving for and is inherently the stakes in just about any storing line,

one could argue that technically he would be right. But to diminish the value of the title as it relates to how important it is for stakes and how important it is that the stakes matter, therefore how important it is that the titles matter, which is really the issue that I think most people have with that comment. And I think it was really a reflection of Rousseau's feelings that, you know, belts are just belts and yes you can switch them back and forth and it doesn't really matter um that's what i think people take exception to and i think that's flawed thinking at the very least well here come the Harlem heat certainly this is not the Harlem heat that um

we grew up with their look is a little different their style is a little different and booker t is about to be firmly on his way to the world title of course at this point he's ventured out and had some single success, but I like putting them back together in a more traditional tag team. Of course, we know that Hugh Morris is teaming with Brian Knobbs. There is no Jerry Sags involved. Man, is it just me or did the video just jump right to like a midmatch? Yeah, what the hell was that. Man, what a weird little edit that was that we discovered on Peacock. You know, something else that people discovered over the weekend that you and I haven't talked about was the documentary that they did a few years ago that is finally all.

the shelf talking about the wdb super fan vladmere did you ever have the opportunity to meet vladmere before i don't think i have uh if i did i you know unfortunately don't remember but i'm pretty sure i have not and i've heard a lot of good things about that documentary uh i'm going to definitely check it out because some of the people some people that i really respect really really put it over it's called a super fan uh okay so that was a video that was i guess getting us ready for what we were doing but man there should have an on-screen graphic there to sort of tease that and promote it yeah that was confusing here comes conan and uh kidman and conan is uh looking cooler than the other side of the pillow and here comes

kidman with a home camera and uh you can only hope that he made a lot of other movies in that era you dirty bastard well i don't know i mean you guys were you were in the films you like to my i mean I saw like a fagwell had a movie whole kogan had some movies maybe he was looking to get in on that game I don't know well fortunately if if he did those videos remain locked under key which is the classy thing to do wow I would agree let's see what he was a classy dude by the way very very classy guy enjoying a tremendous career in w.m. Josh Williams wants to know who came up with the Halloween Havoc logo any chance you remember that I mean I guess that sort of predate you even I mean they had one in 89 yeah I wouldn't know you know it had been

modified over the years a little bit but you know any of the branding for pay per views generally came out of the office of Sharon Sadello or Mike Weber was involved I'm sure but I wasn't involved you think if WCW would have continued I know that you've sort of contended that in your opinion Halloween Havoc was was the big super show and not Starcade and I think I mean I can't argue that because they certainly feel big I think the only thing I would always come back to it was like the Hogan Sting thing that maybe could have been blown off at your version of WrestleMania perhaps it should have happened to Halloween Havoc rather than Starcade but if WCW would have persisted and they wouldn't have gone under you think eventually

people could have talked about Halloween havoc in the same vein they would or WrestleMania like you got to have your set of WrestleMania moment your Halloween Havoc moment that sort of thing I think it definitely would have been a tent pole for us I liked Halloween Havoc

also because it was in October and not December December there's so much going on you've got the Christmas holidays you've got people spending money on Christmas a lot of travel going on it's not the best time of the year to do a pay-per-view Whereas October, although you're affected by Monday Night Football ratings and your TV ratings take a little bit of a hit, overall, I thought that October was a much better tent pole because of the timing, because of the nature of it being Halloween havoc and the fun that you could have, you know, playing off of it. If I would have been involved with WCW long term, if the Fusion media deal would have gone down the way we hoped it would,

Halloween Havoc would have been the biggest pay-per-view for WCW for all the right reasons. What did you think of a big cluster fuck like this for a tag team match? It's a garbage match. It's a brawl. We're not working tags. It's just six guys running around with weapons in the ring altogether. You know how I feel about that. It's just, it's just too hard for the audience to, I mean, look at the audience.

They're just sitting there. They don't even know what to get excited about because there's so much going on in the ring and none of it really makes sense it's just as you said a cluster for the sake of a cluster not not really digging it never have never will rcs 88 wants to know where do you rank great american bash like if hallowing havoc's number one is star k2 and bash three or yeah i think i think that would be fair no no doubt about it i mean they're there there you know, they're the, they're the branded pay-per-views that have been around the longest. So I think by default, they would rank for me in that order, for sure.

We should remind everybody that Rousseau has been with the company now for just under three weeks. So this is officially his first pay-per-view. That big meeting happens on October 2nd. And it's written in the Nitro book. before Russo could fly back to Connecticut, the party tendered its offer, the position of creative director, a role purportedly promising full control over WCW programming as part of a three-year deal effective immediately. In terms of compensation, a generous base salary was offered, augmented by bonuses for achieving targets related to the ratings and pay-per-view

buy rates. In response, a weary Russo, sensing creative fatigue to be imminent, pushed for the pack to expire a year earlier. I knew at that point I was already burned out on the wrestling business. He says, I was looking to give WCW my all for two years and then walk away from the business. He said that in 1999, that that was his plan in 1999, two more years, and then I'm done. Of course, we know that wound up not being actually the case.

Did he even make it a full two years? Didn't he like, no, pack up his bags and go home and pout and. Yeah, he had a pattern of doing that. It happened a couple times in T&A that I was aware of. Anytime you put any pressure on a guy like Vince Rousseau, he collapses like a house of cards. And he did it a couple of times. I think during his first run of WCW.

So we've got the guys brawling in the backstage area here. You see Booker T and Brian Knobbs. Meanwhile, in the ring, Jimmy Hart is helping Hugh Morris set up a table. And they're putting his former Dungeon of Doom, tablemate, stablemate, easy for me to say, Conan on it. Here, there, let's go. Up top, here we go. Now laughing now.

And it split the, it's spliced down. He hit him with a mummy. He hit him with a mummy. His mummy, sir. Cover one, two. We got a pit here. So we saw Hugh Morris do a moonsault off the top rope through the, table that conan was laying on with conan on it uh but instead that's not the pen in the backstage

area where no one could see referee slick johnson counted three as stevie ray uh pinned brian nobs and they've just missed this big moment in the ring whatever the hell kidman just did isn't that weird absolutely chaos snafu i don't even know how to describe what we're looking at here but it's a mess it really is and I think again that goes to you know Vince Russo had this vision for a crash TV style where things are happening all over the place and very very quickly and it's it's a mess it really is a mess so Billy Silverman was thinking that you know Billy Kidman was counting the pinfall here when in fact Slick Johnson

was backstage counting the pinfall on Stevie Ray so it's a convoluted mess we're going to get a rematch we're going to get a follow-up but next up I think we've got DDP and Kimberly coming out to do an interview because we've got a flare and page going to be working together here pretty soon it's um it's interesting to watch wrestling in 1999 because you know as as hot on the product as I was in 1997 and certainly 98 my enthusiasm for wrestling was starting to really Peter out in 1999 like I can look remember like 99 and 2000 2001 for whatever reason those years were not as big in my fandom and I don't know if it's because things had changed so quickly with with both WCW and ECW because by this point ECW is on

T and in they started back in August of 99 and it was just not the same as the late night syndicated show so many of the talent were going and I don't know just didn't feel the same and neither does the WCW presentation like once upon a time Halloween Havoc would have been can't miss for me I don't even recall if we got this pay-per-view do you think that has to do with the product itself at that time or do you think that maybe you were aging out of the demo a little bit and beginning to start your own business and just now I mean at this point I'm still going to college I'm still working in sales but no I was still classify and call myself a wrestling fan I just don't

don't think like you know creatively we're not hitting on all cylinders here like what made me such a big nitro fan was the cruiser weights and specifically the nw oh and we don't really have the nw o the way we used to i mean we're going to have red and yellow Hulk Hogan here so it's just it's just a little different i don't know it's not it's not as fun for me i get it wasn't as fun for me either no doubt it's crazy how quickly that changes too though but you know i'll find myself with the current product like that like I sort of fell out of watching for quite a while the WWE program and then got back with it and it's been fantastic speaking of fantastic what a fun spot that was the mummy getting slammed down on Brian knobs the referee just

flipping out oh I was wrong it was Booker T who made the cover it was Stevie Ray who did the mummy spot whatever I wonder if that was a nod to Ron Reese uh that me uh yeah maybe let's uh let's uh let's track it here we see rick flair strutting ass in to the river rick flair and david flair walking in what's that in his what's that in his hand that's a crowbar is that he isn't out there stealing tires off cars off car is an angry man and i can tell you what as we go back what's this about here Dallas make his music. It's not on my format for DDP to come out of here,

but I guess that's what's happening with his music. Well, let's just hold on to see. There could have been a change in the back. You'd never know. Flair stalks in like a man possessed. And Diamond Dallas Page and Kimberly come to the ring. Notice what DDP's wearing here. Meltzer would note that he's wearing an expensive shirt

and doing gestures. like the rock talking about flare locking the spank it whack it and jacket standards and practices must have had a lot of fun with that so let's take a look and see uh what we think of uh melzer's criticism or critique of ddp here in his expensive shirt and is he doing a rock impression we'll see Fourteen times. Rick Flair, you and I both know what I'm talking about, and it's not the number of times that you won that stupid belt. Fourteen is the number of times that you took your hand and smacked it on my butt.

I've seven with each hand. But... You're uncrude. I got a little news for you, Rick. You see, when Paige and I are together, intimately speaking, that is, I consider a 14-time spanking just a little warm-up. Definitely a Russo line right there. When Paige does it, it's a good, good thing.

But when you do it, it's a bad, bad thing. You see, Nature Boy, I love her. I hate you. And after tonight, you're never going to be forget me. Now let me get this straight. Kimberly invites David Flair up to her room. An obvious slurve.

Baby boy has Nature Boy fill his shoes. I can't possibly suck. I'm not from Loss Vegas. Like I was saying, over here, like I was saying, over here, baby boy has Nature Boy fill his shoes. Either way, a boy is said to do a man's job.

Look at the facts. Nature Boy, you're in a hotel, room with this and all you can think about is spanking it. There's a line there somewhere. Not one time, not two times, two times, two times. But 14 times, you run your hand over this. You like to spank it, don't you nature boy? Of course you do.

Well, DDP's got your spank right here. You want to spank it, nature boy? Let's whack it, let's jack it. all night long. Blinchie spot. Not match, me and you. You want the truth, nature, boy. You can't handle the truth.

The truth is, I want you to take this strap if you get the shot, and I want you to whack it. all night long jeez your ass i'm going to be whacking you and that's a promise from the new king of ba-da-bang butta-boom barcesterfully it's over we're going to stop it at uh 36 50 i'm going to hit pauls at 36 minutes and 50 seconds and hopefully you will too Boy, it felt like right there that stuff.

Before they wrote that down, they had to be drinking a little bit, and I can only hope they had a time machine and they had some zbiotics. Because they woke up with a Halloween havoc nightmare. I mean, you want to talk about feeling rough the next day. Yeah, we're all feeling a little rough after that one. And I want to give you a pro tip. Next time you're going to have friends and family over, you're going to get a little get together. Maybe you've missed your chance. chance for Halloween. Do it in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm talking about Zbiotics.

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You see, it's designed to work like your liver, but in your gut where you need it most. To drink Zibiotics before drinking, drink responsibly, and enjoy the night with confidence, Eric and I became true believers a few years ago of podcast movement. We knew we were going to have a few cocktails, so we try to Zibiotics and close. down the bars that night boys and girls but we were on stage bright-eyed and bushytailed the next morning all thanks to Zbiotics it really really works and I want you to savor the moment let Zbiotics do the rest go right now to Zbiotics.com slash 83 weeks you'll get 15% off your first order

when you use 83 weeks at checkout Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money-back guarantee so if you're unsatisfied for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked remember head to zbiotics.com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks at checkout for 15% off and we want to thank zbiotics for sponsoring this episode let's get back to our countdown we're at 36 minutes and 50 seconds we see ddp on the second rope looking out of the crowd 3650 here we go in three two one play this is going to be great listen they're trying to sell some tickets I guess

I don't even know if that really counts, though, because this isn't a promo on TV to get to the pay-per-view. It's a promo during the pay-per-view, about a match later in the same show. Maybe we're trying to firmly establish that he's a heel here, but I can't really understand why we did the promo here. And I think it goes without saying the promo was, uh, well, less than ideal, maybe. What'd you think? I thought it just sucked. I mean, that was, it just reeked. of Vince Rousseau, the overt kind of sexual double entendres and it was poorly done.

I get the feeling listening to that, that Page wasn't too excited about it, but the relationship was new with Rousseau and, you know, Paige as a team player, but that was so uncomfortable. And look, Kimberly was great on camera for a lot of things, but cutting a promo wasn't one of them. I don't mean to be critical of her. She was doing her best, but she just didn't have the experience on the mic. And it felt very unnatural. You put someone like Kimberly in a situation where she's not really that comfortable on the mic anyway. And now she's cutting a promo talking about how many times Rick Flair grabbed her ass and pages in there talking about jacking it and whack at it.

It was just so childish and incoherent in many ways. That was God awful. Page, I'm sorry, you know, you're a good friend. I love you to death, but that promo just sucked. We got a fun promo backstage right there with Eddie Guerrero and Mike Teney. He was also briefly joined by Tori Wilson and Billy Kidman. And you saw Eddie was sporting a Rolex there. That is Rick Flair's Rolex that he stole from Nitro.

And what a treat we've got here. Eddie Guerrero is going to be taken on Perry Saturn. Saturn's going to come out first. But when you see, Eddie come out. He's going to be rocking that Flair Rolex and he'll give it to Bobby Heenan ringside. 11 minutes and 12 seconds. What a cool look this is, man. I love that giant pumpkin. I think that thing wound up in a storage building auction or something like that. About a year ago, I saw somebody had found it and inflated it in their front yard. And I was

like, man, you want to talk about owning the neighborhood with Halloween decorations. That's the way to do it. I can't believe you didn't reach it. Where are we at time, time code wise? uh 36 39 26 27 28 29 39 30 all right appreciate that i'm surprised conrad you didn't reach out and try to buy that pumpkin i don't know what i would do with it if i hadn't but um front of your house up on the mountain you know in the mountain people could see it from miles away it'd be like the sphere when you fly over it everybody would look down and said look at that pumpkin in conrad's yard here's what we'll do when we hang up why don't you call me and see if you can work it out ha ha ha uh what a fun set though here comes Eddie Guerrero and man I love he's got wrist tape with

the Rolex around it I don't know why it tickles me but it does um let's let's do a question here we got a great question uh from watching as part of our live chat I want to thank everybody for showing up and hanging out with us here on a Sunday I know Alex is here and I know Donovius is here and uh of course we know errands here how about mouthpiece Murphy also chiming in I appreciate all you guys hanging out with us. See a couple of Michael's hanging out with us. Thanks everybody for there's Bobby, Bryant. The whole gang's here, man.

Appreciate you guys coming and hanging out. You could be a part of our live studio audience over to add free shows.com, but we got a handful of fun questions as we see Eddie admiring that watch as he makes his way around the ring. Aaron wants to know, what are Eric's thoughts on T&A coming back? Good idea? Or should it be left in the past? of course this is a topic because last weekend as we're recording this it was announced at the

Bound for Glory pay-per-view that impact wrestling is going back to their old name t and a is back uh would you make that announcement er you know it's interesting um time will tell whether it really makes any difference or not i suspect it won't it's not like the t and a brand had a substantial following in a loyal fan base and you know it was an emerging company from the get go um but we'll see. You know, I hated the T&A thing because it, you know, it was a Vince Rousseau play on tits and ass, and it just started out tacky. And although they tried to cover their ass by calling it total nonstop action, the idea of it being TNA was pretty well cemented when you had the girls dancing in cages at ringside and all that kind of crazy shit. So I don't know that it was that

strong of a brand ever to begin with. And therefore, I don't think it retained much equity, if any. So I think there'll be some interest in it. It's already created a buzz, right? People already talking about it. And we'll see if it has any impact overall on the growth of the future of the company. I don't think it will, but I could be wrong. Flair's going to make his way out here eventually. And we're going to see some singing and, or not singing, but some dancing and some kissing for him and Tori Wilson. And I guess she's going to like it. But all of these things are now going to start to be more and more part of the famed standards and practices. Rousseau had this to say in the Nitro book.

I knew I was going to have to deal with standards and practices, but I was cool with that. Moreover, upon his recommendation, WCW agreed to offer his writing partner, also working without a contract for McMahon, a two-year agreement of his own. Quote, I pitched Ed Ferrar in my first meeting with him. He was never originally part of the deal. DeVulges Russo, whose decision to support him, his collaborator paid immediate dividends.

After reading the fine print, Ferrar insisted on a pay or play clause for the two-sum, meaning that regardless of the circumstances, WCW would be obligated to pay the entire amount promised on each deal. When asked to elaborate on the eventual terms, Rousseau responds, I don't think discussing my salary is anybody's business but my own. I will say this.

I wouldn't have signed a two-year contract with WCW for less than $1 million over that time. he's talked about what he actually got paid in the in his own book before but uh standards and practices comes up quite a bit and it's mentioned there by russo and our old pal bryant in our group chat our live chat wants to know it was said standards and practices would be in the creative meetings for nitro but they have had any say during pay per view shows since they're not on their network probably not you know the idea with the paper reviews were that you could get away with things and do things that were not necessarily

copacetic for television. So I doubt, at least in my experience when I had, you know, my experience with standards and practices, a lady by the name of Terry Tingle. Now, that's a stripper name. Terry Tingle. Wow. But my initial, you know, work with her, she was more focused on a television product and nobody was really too concerned with what was going on on paper. At least not to the extent that they were on television. What was your experience for standards and practices? Like, can you think of any really egregious, silly things that they threw the flag on? Lots.

Well, maybe not a lot because it happened a while ago. But there were a couple, you know, I mean, my initial meeting with Terry Tingle, I didn't even, you know, Keep in mind, I had worked for WCW for six or seven years and had never heard of anything called standards and practices in Turner Broadcasting. Standards and practices never had any contact with WCW all the time I was there, either as a talent or executive producer or vice president, senior vice president, whatever. Up until the very end, I had never heard of standards and practices as being a part of Turner Broadcasting. Somehow, somebody decided that it was going to be important to introduce me to Terry Tingle. It happened at that big meeting when I've told you about before, when I got invited down to Techwood, the area where all the top Turner executives worked.

And I walked into this room when there were 16, 15, 16 people sitting around a table that I didn't even know. And Terry Tingle was one of them. She was introduced to me as the head of standards and practices. And the first meeting was just kind of acknowledging each other. and me becoming aware that she even existed. But shortly thereafter, I got an email or a phone call from her, one way or the other, and I was advised that going forward that I was going to have to supply scripts to Terry Tingle like 30 days in advance. And my first thought was, we don't do scripts.

We do formats. And I'm happy to supply a format to you. but those formats change throughout the week, sometimes day of, depending on a number of different variables that could occur. I'm happy to supply them to you. She wanted them like 30, she wanted television scripts 30 days in advance. And I had to tell her that we don't do television scripts. Most networks, all networks have standards and practices now. They have to. but television networks and executives in them are really familiar with looking at scripted entertainment where scripts are written six months in advance a year in advance in some cases

and yes they do change and modify along the way but I had to explain to her that this was kind of live action this isn't this isn't you know gone with the wind Terry I can't give you a script that far in advance it's just not possible And if I give you a format, it's going to have some detail in it, obviously. But there are going to be things that are said in the narrative that are not going to be a part of that script because it's live television. People were reacting to what's going on. And she couldn't understand that at all. And so we started budding heads right off the bat.

But the one that really stands out to me is a note that I got back once we did give her a format. Somebody was calling somebody stupid in a promo. Oh. And she flagged that. She says, you can't refer to someone as stupid because that's demeaning. I reacted as you might expect, you know, got on the phone with her and said, do you understand the nature of professional wrestling? It's kind of part of the narrative and part of the product that people degrade each other.

I mean, it was mind-boggling to me. but it was also a window into, you know, what was, what was about to come. That's just crazy when you really think about it, you know, that couldn't say stupid. My goodness. I mean, that's, you know, that's what happens when you get television networks and executives in them who have no understanding at all of the wrestling business. None. They have no experience in it. They don't watch it.

They don't follow it. They don't know what's history. They don't know why it works. They don't understand the audience. They're alien to the prime. property. But then you've got an executive who knows nothing about the product towards audience or its history making decisions creatively over what is said or what is done on the show. So it's it's it's it's an untenable situation. Let's put it. Okay. So for the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder. No phones allowed. Sir in the orange. Phone away, please. Um, my kidda smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app.

Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you. That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app.

And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay. Back to trivia. Oh, seriously, you and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe? Visit Kidda at KIDDE.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. When you're separating from the military, no one tells you how hard it can be to get your civilian life up to speed.

But with VA benefits, it doesn't have to be. From the VA home loan requiring no down payment to the GI Bill. covering tuition, books, and cost of living, to VA health care offering top-ranked low-cost care designed specifically for veterans. All the support you need is at VA. I'm here telling every veteran because I wish someone had told me. Get what you earned. Visit shoes.va.gov. Not all veterans are eligible for the type or amount of benefits mentioned here. You know, we would hear Russo talk about standards and practices quite a bit, but he'd also talk about politics. And we know his frustration with Hulk Hogan would

would bubble and boil over the novius smack who's watching along with us from ad free shows.com is a great question here. Do you think Russo tried to bring the same mentality he had the WWF to WCW and that's why it didn't work meaning he had way more seasoned vets in WCW that didn't want to budge? Do you think that was and I know that would be easy for you to sort of dissect but I want to make a football example. I think most people listening to this would degree, no matter what your football bias is. Nick Saban is one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. I'm not saying the, but he's certainly in the conversation.

Now, in the NFL, boy, it did not work. And a lot of people at the time were critical of his coaching style in the NFL and said, he doesn't know how to talk to young millionaires. He's used to screaming at kids right out of high school, but a 20-something year old millionaire, he's not going to respond the same way. I'm curious if you think perhaps just the structure or the approach that he thought he could just apply the same way, that's a fair question from Donovius, Mack. What do you think?

Yeah, thank you, Genovius. I appreciate the question. But I think in Russo's case, it wasn't really the difference in the talent and what they were willing to accept and not accept. I think it had a lot more to do with talent, especially seasoned talent, people that have around the block for a few minutes, probably recognized very, very early on that Rousseau was an empty suit and that he didn't really know what he was doing. Therefore, they weren't really willing to accept the kind of things that Rousseau wanted to do. Some of them did because some of them

just wanted to keep their job. They just wanted to keep that paycheck coming in every month. Some of them probably wanted to, you know, give Rousseau some time and allow him to get comfortable and the talent get to know Russo. That's fine too. That's, you're a professional. That's what you should do. But I think there were probably a number of talents that listened to Russo just like I did when they first started working with him and realizing that this guy is a fraud. There is nothing under the hood when it came to his original ideas. He just didn't really understand the product, despite the fact that he claimed that he wrote all WWE shows and Vince just took a look at it and cursory look and just signed off on it. I don't believe that shit at all.

I wasn't there, admittedly, so I can't say 100%, but I have never heard of Vince McMahon having a hands-off approach to his product. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And I just don't see, especially at that time, just keep in mind WCW had been kicking WWE's ass for quite some time until the latter part of 98, 99. I just don't buy the fact that, you know, Vince McMahon was hands off. I think there was a lot of reconstructive surgery done to some of Russo's ideas and plans. So I don't know. It just depends on what you want to believe. But I think more than anything, it was just a talent seeing through Vince's

bullshit. Let's, uh, let's not talk about bullshit. Let's talk about the ratings. I mean, that's what this was all about. That's what this company wanted. They are a television company. They're after those ratings. So let's run through some of the ratings.

September 6th, which is your last show, did a 4.1. It ran unopposed. Rawl would start at 11 p.m. Eastern due to the U.S. Open. So the next week on September 13, three days after you're sent home, one day after fall brawl, a 3.3. A week later, 3.1. On the 27th, a 3.0. the back and forth with Rousseau was on October 2nd, October 4th is a 2.9, October 11th is a 2.6.

And Rousseau's first official nitro was October 18th, just a handful of days before this pay-per-view. It did a 3.3. The difference at the time, Eric, between a 2.6 and a 3.3, what would you guess that would be? oh i have to break out the calculator but if a ratings point was worth roughly a million homes and it was i think the average was 1.5 people per home so you just take about 700,000 viewers i guess would be a guess we we're watching alongside here and we see rick flair just planted a big one on tori wilson she seems to like it he's dancing around and she's wondering, hey, what do I do next?

Double down with the two guys, but I think he got the kiss and he got the Rolex, so he's in good shape. Let's talk about the first ever Nitro under the Russo era, though. Meltzer had this to say. The new era of WCW TV began October 18th in Philadelphia with Russo and Ed Ferrara's first nitro. This was no mistaking the fingerprints,

even if viewers didn't have that fact drummed into their head early in the show. far more detailed work was done in scripting this show than any nitro in recent memory and possibly ever time will tell but after the first show my feeling was that when nitro was in its heyday with the good undercard wrestling climaxing with the star power matches on top it was a far better three-hour show than this was however this was better than the majority if not all of the recent nitro shows the throwing so many angles at people burns out the audience faster than wrestling matches do and by late in the show the crowd reactions were similar to Raw in that the crowd was dead for the wrestling

the show was very entertaining for the first hour and entertaining still for the second hour but by the third hour even though there was nothing wrong with the show it was evident this style of booking doesn't translate well into a three hour format fortunately it appears most likely a certainty that Nitro will be cut back to two hours in January so some criticism of the first Russo Nitro saying that, boy, it's a lot.

Maybe it doesn't work well with a three hour show. But as we've said pretty often here, three hours is a lot for any wrestling show. Is it not? Indeed it is. But it also provides a unique opportunity to thread your stories, meaning you can start a story or advance a story in most cases in the first 30 minutes or so of a show. If it's a main event story, perhaps right off the bat,

you can kind of set the hook or set, bait the hook, so to speak. You can follow it up later on, maybe in the second hour and set the hook in the second hour and then, of course, deliver the match and reel it in during the main event. And that's an opportunity that exists in a three-hour format. Not everybody takes advantage of it, unfortunately. I'd like to see stories kind of thread throughout the show and build and escalate and kind of build on the anticipation and deliver in the main event.

Don't really see that too often anymore. We used to see it all the time, but it doesn't happen as often anymore. It happens more in WWE, obviously, than some of the AEW shows I've seen, at least some of the earlier ones. But, yeah, three hours is a grind. It's hard to hold the audience's attention no matter what you do. But I think the crash TV concept of just throwing so much stuff at the audience so quickly, really you talk about audience fatigue. That'll do it because it's too hard to pay attention to. And you don't know what to pay attention to.

I think that's the bigger issue. So we saw backstage earlier in the show. We did a cutaway and we saw Goldberg arriving to the arena. We just saw one and he was on top of someone pounding away. It turns out it was Sid vicious. When Sid stood up, he was covered in blood. Chivani tries to reset and is shocked to hear Buff Bagwell's music. Buff makes his way into the ring and, uh, well, you got to listen to this.

You happen to tune in last Monday night. You see that Buff Daddy's got a little problem with the two new riders, the two new sheriffs from up north, that are going to save WCW. Well, not only that I got a problem with the two new writers, I got a problem with Jeff Jarrett swinging guitar in my head. So let me tell you something, Jared. If you can bring that camera right in these eyes, you want to talk about stroke? Stroke is showing up in Las Vegas, Nevada and being off the show and just making it happen

because I'm buffed and I'm the stuff. So with that said, big man, if you'll just bring your Hillbilly Tennessee ass out here, I'm going to shove this foot right up it. You can do it.

He'd it. Get on the set. send him out here play his music whatever Tony get it done all right here say no more with guitar in hand Jeff Jarrett is coming and thought that one's only twice well Jared never refuses a good fight either the fight is taking place on the outside not a part of Halloween heaven completely unannounced improv two wild rule that we have here well that's how Jared showed up last week no one knew he was in the building so they're going to have a bit of a bra here eric and lex luger's going to come join them uh as a reminder uh lex lugar is going to be upset

with jeff charit uh for knocking out elizabeth backstage at nitro because that's just fresh happened on tv jarrott hit elizabeth just like jarrott had been hitting ladies on the w w e show now he hit miss elizabeth with the guitar um I know we're going to have to break down what we just heard here, but Bagwell talking about the riders, the sheriffs from up north here to save WCW. I mean, I know this is supposed to be inside baseball,

but I don't know, dude, this feels like a miss to me. What do you think? That's a giant miss. And I'm glad you brought it up. I was going to, but I didn't want to come off as being bitter.

But that is, that was stupid. And that was an example of Russo and Ferrar, trying to establish themselves really as characters. Otherwise, why would you talk about the writers in a show? Look, people know, right? I'm not suggesting that people don't know that there's writers. Not that at all.

But you talk about taking people out of the product when you have talent in there talking about the writers was really just stupid. No other way to say it. It was self-serving and stupid. Yeah. it's uh i don't understand the upside or the point um but that would be you know one of the first times we would see people start really talking about let's listen so we were seeing eddie guerrero

or sid getting stitched up mike teney was doing a little commentary and then sid has had it with the doctor stands up yelling let it bleed let it bleed what a man maniac he was. And we see Eddie Guerrero in a stairwell. We've got a Batman angle shot. So that looks like maybe Jackie Crockett shot it. And, uh, and he's on a flip phone. He's on a cell phone. This show feels unlike any Halloween havoc in history. It's written just like a TV show. Is it not? Yeah. And again, that's that's a problem. Your, your pay-per-view should feel like a special event. It should be the culmination of your A story, perhaps. I say perhaps because you can continue that story in some cases. But all roads, meaning all television, should lead to the

resolution of conflict or the advancement of conflict and story in a paper view. It shouldn't feel like a free television show. It's just common sense. How can you expect people to spend 39, 49, 49, 59, 69, $79 on a pay-per-view when it feels just like a television show that you watch for free. And you're not getting that resolution of conflict. You're getting the continuation of it. That's what television is for. That's not what pay-per-view is for. And I'm not saying that it should never happen. You can have a storyline where what appears to be a resolution only continues to advance into the next pay-per-view because of something that happened or because the stakes have changed but to just produce a paper view that has the feel and the lack of

continuity that this does clearly um and make it feel just like another television show is man that's self-defeating well something you're going to enjoy because i know how what high regard you hold them in we see alex wright or berlin coming to the ring here he's seconded by the wall uh by the way when wd was recently in germany he went to the show show and posted a selfie of himself in the crowd, in the stands with the entrance set behind him. Uh, cool to see Alex right up and around and doing his thing in 20, 23, but I was saying all that to say he's on his way here to wrestle Brad Armstrong, who's already in the ring.

And this is actually going to be Brad Armstrong's last ever WCW pay for review. Um, you know, he would still stick around with the company a bit longer, but ultimately, uh, this is his last pay per view. man, you want to talk about a guy going way too soon. I don't know that anybody was more universally well liked than Brad Armstrong. And what an amazing challenge. And I have to say, I'm guilty of not recognizing that talent when I had the opportunity and worked with Brad.

But I think in today's environment, someone like Brad or if Brad were still with us and still physically capable, I think Brad Armstrong was an amazing talent. amazing talent, but I think he was ahead of his time a little bit. You know, he's, Brad had, you know, the majority of his career kind of took place when the larger than life characters were where the money was, or at least that's what everybody thought. Brad was an amazing, amazing talent ahead of his time. And I know a lot of people recognize that talent now, but at that time, he was so underappreciated

and underrated. Super fun, uh, to know that we're watching. his last paper review match here and against a very capable performer go out of your way to watch this one especially if you're a big Armstrong fan like we are just think the world of the whole family he got a quarter star in the observer um else would say it seemed like they were building a good match but the finish came out of nowhere the match had no heat uh let's talk about what we just saw with with buff bagwell because we heard what buff said and he's referencing the writers all that. But I want to add some context. A friend of mine is famous for saying

context is king. And back on the very first episode of Nistro that Russo had put together, here's what Dave wrote about it. Bagwell did an interview first proclaiming himself as the new superstar based on all the various internet interviews that Vince Russo had done talking up that point. Again, it's clear they're booking with the idea that the entire wrestling audience is on the internet. Russo's name was brought up early in the show as they're trying to get over the idea that this is a new WCW plus they need his name over for future angles on both shows and on the horizon. Bagwell then came out later in the show without his gimmick wearing an I'm doing a job face wrestling LaParka in a grudge match from Thursday and doing nothing on offense

and visibly showing he wasn't allowed to making Parker look like an idiot and then laying down for the pen getting right up and saying something to the effect of Russo did I do the job right they shot to backstage where the undercard wrestlers watching the monitor were popping seeing the bigger star having to lay down for the underused foreigner who gets no respect at this point Jared ran in and clocked bagwell with the guitar with Jared saying he's actually the chosen one because he's closest with the guy who has the stroke so we're so God, is that suck or what?

It's not good, man. And again, that's Rousseau's ego shining through. Rousseau from day one, when he walked into to WCW, in my opinion, he wanted to get himself over. He wanted to be Vince McMahon. He wanted to be the character that Eric Bischoff was. I mean, it's so obvious to me now, right? It probably wasn't as obvious to people then, but if you... right off the bat to establish yourself the writer as a character on the show,

he was establishing himself as the authority figure. Absolutely sucked. And he was willing to sacrifice the quality of the show in order to do it. Look, I'm not against somebody trying to get, I'm not against authority figures. You know, hats off to Nick Aldus. I think Nick's going to do a fantastic job in SmackDown. But you've got to get the,

talent over. You've got to get the story over first. And if you happen to get over along the way, fantastic. But this was a case of sacrificing the quality of the product in order to get yourself over because that's your fantasy play. It's so obvious. So obvious. Yeah. It's not the best time to be a WCW fan. It's no wonder I wasn't watching at this point. I don't blame me, man. I wasn't watching it either. Yeah. I was here in Wyoming catching. I lived in Arizona at the time, but I was out here and, you know, I still lived in Atlanta. Yeah, this is 99. I still lived in Atlanta. I was still out here catching fish. Fishing is awesome in October. Awesome. Well, maybe the creative could have been a

little more awesome. Meltzer would talk about this angle saying the angle was done in this manner to create the idea, but there's a booker who tells people to lose since the original plan was something along the lines of Hogan versus Sting with Hogan doing the same thing, trying to exercise his creative control in refusing to do the job for the match. Somehow Rousseau or whomever will play the Vince McMahon role will get his way at the end and Hogan will leave only to come back later as an anti-authority baby face a la Steve Austin or how Rousseau would have scripted a return of Brett Hart to the WVF

had he had the chance. Now that's interesting because this is written about in October of 99, well in advance of what we saw happen in July of 2000 at the bash at the beach it almost feels as if this has been an idea that storyline that we've talked about ogan refusing to do a job and then he's going to come back as this anti-authority baby face that was basically the framework of what was laid out in july of 2000 no but that wasn't rusa's idea you know the idea of Hulk you know getting frustrated and pissed off and taking the belt and leaving that had nothing to do with

vince russo that was all something that i worked on with hulk and we developed i think it's just a coincidence at this point i just find that fascinating that you know it's at least discussed here in the fall of 99 and then we know you know july 2000 what's going to happen but i think if if you watch the dark side of the ring i don't even remember what the title of the show was but it was essentially a WCW show with Vince Rousseau talking about what went wrong at at bash at the beach and Vince Rousseau had an entirely different plan going into the bash of the beach and he talked about it himself and the fact that we wouldn't go along with it is what created that conflict how about Rick Flair here let's track

the only I can look the way I've looked for 27 years the man the 14 time who world heavyweight champion the dirtiest player in the game Kidman, you and the filthy animals, you walked out on last Monday night thinking you were on, thinking you were ready to play in a big time. Tonight I walked back right here in Las Vegas. I took back my Rolex, and I took back my legacy. You guys don't like it. I'll be here all night long. I'll be in Phoenix tomorrow.

Come fight me. I'm Rick Flair, baby. Woo! Forever! We just saw Eddie Guerrero on the phone talking to Ray Mysterio and Conan. Obviously, in the minds of the filthy animals, they're still unfinished business. with you but at the same time you have the big strap match with ddp i got a big strap match with dp filthy animals know this you don't get to be what i've been in this

business or get to be where i've been or who i am by not being ready for anybody at any time bring it out boys who like i said diamonds are forever so is the nature boy and as far as page goes page tonight it's a strap match two men strapped each other two of the very best this sport has to strapped each other nowhere to go nowhere to hide let me tell you some diamond douse page last monday nine when i got through spanking your wife she looked at nature bow and eyes she went nature boy woo nature boy whoo nature boy who nature boy i've never been spank like that you were right i should have gotten that spanking who from my daddy a long time of go, Paige, that hurts. Kimberly went, woo, nature, woo, space spot. She said that. I heard her, Paige.

And tonight, brother, Tori tasted just a little bit, just a little bit. But the nature boy is all about Mike. Tori did mention, woo! She went, woo, nature boy. So Paige, when I'm done with him the end of the night, when I'm done with him the night, Mike, I'm going to give Kimberly, who, two time, two time two time the nature more one more time I don't know how we'll ever top that he was having a lot of fun

I think we need to take a time out I'm at 112 07 I want to stop it down at 112.15 so 1 112 15 there it is we'll press pause right now man Rick Flair was fired up you got to assume that's because he knew he was getting a little color later that day you see Rick is only happy when a razor cuts him.

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and our promo code is Eric. And we are indeed watching Halloween Havoc, 1999, together here. Hopefully you're tuned in with us. We are paused at one hour, 12 minutes, and 15 seconds. And one of the best parts about being a member of ad-free shows is you get to be a part of our live studio audience. And man, we've got a live studio audience with us today. You can actually appear on camera like Aaron was earlier and ask questions.

And we've got a ton of new great bonus content. Things like The Book. That's right. The Book. We're rocking the book. You're going to love the book. I'm telling you, come check it out. David Crockett is bringing the noise every single month on ad-freeshows.com.

We've also got an incredible series called the Haxon Hour Lex Express, Making the Towns with Blue Meaty. How about Monday mailbag? We've got one with Mike Kyoto. We've got another with Nick Patrick. About Tuesdays with the taskmaster, all this and so much more available now at ad-free shows.com. By the way, if your business targets men that are 25 to 54 years old, no better place to advertise than right here with us. You hear some of the same sponsors, weekend, week out, why is that? Because it really works. Find out how affordable it can be. It advertise witheric.com. I also want to mention if you've got a question for next week's episode,

you can ask it right now on social. That's easy to do. It's at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. That's at 83 weeks. And we want to hear from you. And next week is going to be a super fun episode. We're also gearing up for some Ask Eric Anything episodes. You don't want to miss any of those.

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I think it's one of the most underrated wrestling books of the modern era. So check out Grateful by Eric Bischoff. And hopefully you're locked and loved. with us in season 11 episode one Halloween havoc 1999 we're at one hour 12 minutes and 15 seconds I'll give us a countdown here we go in three two one play from the miss to the britainte canada and wcw world television chicken from chris quix talk about an interesting match up here it's going to be chrispinua against rick steiner

uh, obviously those guys are, um, known to work a little snug, work a little stiff, but probably different styles if I had to say, uh, but this will be fun because I don't remember ever watching this. Um, and I think it's fun that you never watch this at all. Uh, and I don't know why it's fun to watch things with you that you never saw, but it feels like it's rare that we find something in WCW you didn't see, but we found one here with Halloween havoc, 1999. Yeah, this is a little bit like seeing it live. You know, clearly it's not, as we look at Chris Ben-while, but it's, yeah, it is fun seeing it for the first time. And I've never even, I never even really followed up any of the news information or the coverage of this pay-per-view.

So it's all brand new to me. Okay, so for the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phones allowed. Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my kidda smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you.

That's a new one. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay. Back to trivia. Oh, seriously, you and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe?

Visit Kidda at KIDDE.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring, sold separately. When you're separating from the military, no one tells you how hard it can be to get your civilian life up to speed. But with VA benefits, it doesn't have to be. From the VA home loan requiring no down payment to the GI Bill. covering tuition, books, and cost of living, to VA health care offering top-ranked low-cost care designed specifically for veterans. All the support you need is at VA.

I'm here telling every veteran because I wish someone had told me. Get what you earned. Visit shoes.va.gov. Not all veterans are eligible for the type or amount of benefits mentioned here. You know, you talk about the contrast in styles, though, and certainly there would be, but given Rick Steiner's collegiate wrestling experience, pretty sure that Rick will be able to adapt. And Chris Benoit, obviously, you know, despite all the things that happened with Chris Benoit from a technical perspective, an in-ring

perspective, you can't take anything away from Chris Benoit. He was one of the best ever to do it inside of the ring. So I'm really interested in seeing this match. Because it all comes down to chemistry, right? You'd have two very, very talented people. But if they don't have the chemistry and really work hard to get each other over and put on the best dance they possibly can, it can be less than exciting. But this is going to be interesting. What's interesting to me is we've had the champs come out first twice. You know, Disco Inferno was the cruiserweight champ.

He was out before Lash LaRue, the Challenger. And now Chris Ben was the TV champ. He's out first before Rick Steinder the Challenger. I just realized that we got a tight shot of that Halloween Havoc logo hanging from the rafters. but I think I actually have a little piece of history from this show. It was gifted to me by a friend of ours named Tony Chivani, and he was gifted it by a friend of his named David Crockett. So I guess it's a wrestling memorabilia hand me down.

But check this out, Eric. I've got the mic flag from this show. That's awesome, brother. Good for you. I was like, wait a minute. I think that logo is over here on the shelf. and yeah so yeah we got a big match here and it's interesting i don't think enough people talk about uh rick steiner's facial hair at this point but we've seen hogan with the blind

and black facial hair for a while and we all know that the big bad booty daddy did it what do you think about the uh the skunk look here the blonde right down the middle for rick Steiner um i kind of dig it you know he might not have been the first one to do it but i kind of dig it but look at the shape that rick is in here i mean he looks awesome you know rick was never the the jacked up bodybuilder look that scott was he was just naturally a big strong dude and he looks he's lean as hell here he looks great uh the observer would talk about that first nitro with Rousseau. The backstage feeling appeared to be

mixed on this show, but it should be a far more competitive product once the show moves to two hours in January. The show will still be disorganized with a lot of wrestlers confused about things and not liking other things, but also realizing things were improving, the more people were going to be added to the mix, and stars will be

attempted to be created. Is it just me, or does it sound like Meltzer's kind of optimistic about Vince Rousseau here? It sure sounds that way. It sure sounds that way, given Vince Rousseau, although he did, you know, take a lot of credit for getting a lot of people over in WWE, I think there was some buy-in at this point. You know, from first-hand experience, I can tell you that Vince Rousseau never got anybody over that I went while I was working with them either in WCW or TNA. There was an attempt.

He put a lot of the younger guys in there and give them a lot of television time because that's one of the things that Rousseau did to kind of galvanized some backstage support and try to get the talent behind him and to support the things that he was trying to do. So, of course, he'd give younger talent and talent. To be honest, many of them not even ready for prime time, but he would give them those opportunities and kind of break the barrier that the old guard or the old guys, you know, that were having keeping them down for so long. We should have played into that to again galvanize some support backstage.

I want to also mention that there is some confusion backstage. The observer would write, wrestlers didn't know if they were supposed to be faces or heels in segments as witnessed by Flair thinking he was the heel against the filthy animals in their segment and the filthy animals thinking they were heel when they jumped Flair. It was also in a confused crowd which sided with Flair since they were four on one with him. Nobody could get straight answers on that segment apparently changed five different times during the course of the show.

Much of the non-wresting segments were done in pre-tape segments before the show even started with three crews working at a time, one headed by Ed Ferrara, another by Kevin Nash, and a third by Bill Banks, who's a former WWF magazine and website writer who left the WVF this past week and started with this show alongside the debuting Jeff Jarrett. There were scripts handed out far more detailed than anybody had in the past and nobody was doing interviews, not at least having an idea of what they were supposed to be saying, far different from the past where guys were sent out with no preparation and winging it and new characters. Most notably, Kimberly, Buffagwell, Jarrett, and the filthy animals, seemingly

in line for big pushes. So there's a lot changing. And I know that Rousseau has always been a proponent of shades of gray. And I know that when the WVF first started to take off, Vince went on TV in the fall of 97 and said something like we're no longer going to insult your intelligence good guys versus bad guys where do you stand on the whole hey i don't know if i'm a heel or a face and some people say that doesn't really apply anymore people cheer for stars where do you land on that i still disagree there's not a form of entertainment known to mankind kind that doesn't have antagonists and protagonists. It just doesn't, not for any length of time and not successfully, that is.

I don't believe it. I think it's an excuse for not knowing how to write great story. Vince McMahon may have bought into that conceptually for a minute, but are you going to tell me that Cody Rhodes, who's arguably one of the bigger stars in WWE, right now is not a baby face 100% are you going to tell me that LA night who's emerging to be one of the top stars in WWE doesn't know who his character is it's going to let the audience decide for him that is so much bullshit and I think that is absolutely a reflection of the fact

that Vince Russo doesn't know didn't know and never will know fuck all about storytelling It's so obvious to see for me from day one. And to maintain that philosophy, and that be your vision for for moving Nitro forward when you first come in is we're just going to let the audience decide. My God, if that wasn't a red flag, I don't know what a red flag looks like. You mentioned fuck all.

Was he a nice guy? Because I never got to meet him either. And I know you said Russo didn't know fuck all, but. was i never had the point i've met fuck all way too many times yeah i i know him pretty well nice guy nice guy oh man uh mousser was saying the wake of the departures of russo ferrara and jared vince mcman began ordering all employees not just talent whether under contract or not to sign a letter stating that upon leaving the w f for any reason including being fired

they could not work for WCW, or for that matter, any time warrant or company for the period of one year. Most but not all employees signed that contract. Whether this will hold up in court is questionable since WCW in its contracts with Darren Matthews, Paul White, and Chris Irvine had 90-day non-complete clauses at the end of their contracts, but WCW failed to enforce the clauses, and White and Irvine started with the WVF immediately upon the expiration of their WCW deals. The technical difference may be that Georgia, where WCW contracts are executed, is a right-to-work stake, right-to-work state. However, if WVE employees are living in Georgia, that same right-to-work standard could apply rendering the paper meaningless. Non-compete clauses aren't unusual in competitive industries of this type. Typically, for example, in major markets and broadcast news, there's a 90-day period from the time an on-air personality leaves a station to when they can appear on a competing station.

I know that still exists. I also know that most of the time they're not enforceable. They're not worth the paper they're written on unless you're some sort of high level executive and blah, blah, blah. Absolutely. But this whole idea that Vince is shook and going to everybody, employees included, saying sign this saying that when you leave for any reason, meaning I can still fire you, you can't work for anybody over there.

And that anybody over there thing is because he himself, once found that loophole when wcw gave lex luger a release said he couldn't go work for the wbf so vince hired him for the wbf and he appeared on rassalmania via satellite that year plugging and promoting the wbf so uh hey he's learned from his own mistakes right and says uh not even a tom warner company first you know going to non-compete and i'm obviously not an attorney but I've had many conversations with a variety of attorneys on this subject. And you can put language like that in an agreement and you can get people to sign it. But if anybody wants to challenge it, and that's really the question,

especially with WWE, do you want to go to an attorney and pay for an attorney to fight that out in court? It would cost you a fortune and it would be a protracted situation. situation, you know, you're not going to get in front of a judge immediately. It's very difficult to challenge something like this in court with somebody that has, legally speaking, very, very deep pockets, but it would not hold up. It certainly wouldn't hold up in California. No. Absolutely would not hold up in California. Now, if you're an executive, if you're an employee, that's different. There are some situations where it would hold up, but in the case that we're talking about here, anybody that would have wanted to challenge that and could afford to challenge it and had

the time to challenge it could have and would have won. I'm surprised it hasn't come up more in the past. But you know what's ironic about this is, you know, in making it seem like, you know, Vince Rousse was such an integral part of WWE that Vince McMahon reacted. Some would say overreacted by mandating that everybody signed this agreement, promising never to work for another company, especially Time Warner, WCW, you think that that would have come up when Lex Lugar jumps ship when everybody thought Lex Lugar was under contract, didn't realize that his contract had expired. You would think that that would come up then.

I don't know if it was because of Vince Rousseau or just Vince McMahon attempting to gain more and more control over things in WWE, but yeah, it would never hold up in court. We know it's incredibly stupid. incredibly stupid i feel embarrassed even bringing it up but it was said so often back then i feel like we should at least address because i know without me even talking about it with you before you've at least heard it when do you remember and do you remember who was first to float the idea to you that perhaps as silly as it sounds perhaps Vince McMahon sent Vince russo down to WCW to take it down from the inside because boy in an industry just wrought with paranoia

that one to me was a real head scratcher from the first time I heard yeah I don't buy that at all I don't I mean it's you know I get why people are particularly when we see you know Rousse's impact on WCW one could easily jump to that conclusion based on the evidence in front of you. But, no, I'm not buying that at all. It's just a silly juvenile wrestling conspiracy theory. We got a few more questions here, uh, riding shotgun with us today. We got, uh, Bobby, who wants to know, were you more in favor of champions taking the belt from town to town or having them transported? We've heard horror stories both ways. I think these days, a lot of the talent have a road belt and then they have the pristine

belt in a set of like moving lockers. They call the TV belt that go on the trucks. Did you have a preference back in the day, carry it with you or keep it on the TV truck? I didn't have a preference back in the day, but if I were to be in a position to have to make a decision about that subject now, I would definitely want to keep, keep the belt in the hands of the company. And not that I wouldn't necessarily didn't trust or wouldn't trust talent.

But shit happens. Yeah. Times if we heard, you know, people getting their car broken into and having shit stolen or, I mean, things happen. And you want to have as much control over that as you possibly can. And the only way I see it, the only way I see having as much control as you possibly can is for management or somebody assigned by management to maintain control of it. Here's one from Aaron. Was the goal, was Goldberg starting to hate the business at this point or was he still enjoying the,

the creative he was given. I know you're not here. We just saw swerve. Dean Malenko just hit Chris Benoit in the head with a chair. Swerve, bro. Bro, bro. It's a swear, bro. Before you left,

did Goldberg seem happy to you? Goldberg never seemed happy to be honest with you. He's just not a happy guy when he was around the wrestling business. He was easier to get along with and probably to a degree or another. happier in the very beginning. And why wouldn't he be? Because he was getting the push of a lifetime and wasn't challenged to expand his character or any of the things that we, you know, would require talent inside of the ring. But I think by this point, he was enjoying the professional wrestling much less than he was previously for sure.

well we enjoyed that match we saw uh rick steiner and crispinua hook it up little interference from dean malenko harry satin reveals himself um let's uh track the replay here coming off that top rope signer just threw that metal chair up in his face i thought i thought i thought moiko was going to waffle spiner here turns around parts the hair of benwa this was a conspiracy this was a conspiracy this was a plan. I don't think you're there to help. Didn't even defend himself. He didn't think you had to.

He was job big time. Your winner. Steiner. He was jobbed big time. They're getting ready for the next match. We are going to get ready for that next match as well. Firstly, though, we've got a promo here from Brett the Hitman Heart backstage with Mike tonight.

Let's take a listen. Not only the opportunity to win the world's heavyweight championship, but I understand severely injured your ankle as well, and doctors have even told you that you should not be in a wrestling ring tonight. How is this going to hinder you in your match against the total package? Well, it doesn't look good, especially if you're talking to the doctors, but doctors always seem to paint the worst picture. Let me just say this, it's not the first time I've wrestled her.

It's not the first time I've gone in the ring with Lex Lugar. And, you know, I'm taking this thing one step at a time, literally, and I can say this much. I think that the fans are behind me. I can feel the fans behind me, and that's all that counts. Lex Luger, you know, you've tried week after week after week to put me away with your baseball bat and everything else. But I can say one thing. You may have cost me the World Championship last week, but this week, no matter what, you will be excellently executed by the best there is,

the best it was, and the best there ever will be. And it's that simple. Injury or not. A great promo. A great promo. And how about this version of Lex Ligger? I want to get your opinion on this. Introduce he first, accompanied to the ring by Elizabeth.

He is from Chicago, Illinois, the total package. This is a different era for Lex Ligar. He's coming out in a tear-away tank top, some tear-away track pants. He's the total package. He's no longer even caught. himself Lex Lugar just the total package of course in real life the owner and proprietor of main event fitness but this is maybe as big as he ever was as far as the pounds uh i mean he looks like a professional bodybuilder here but what do you think of this version of his

character we've seen a few different versions of him of course the Vince McMahon's vision the red white and blue and of course Vince McMahon's vision the narcissist but we also had, you know, the young upstart Lex Lugar and then the heel with the horseman and then the baby face with Sting and the heel with Harley Race, the version of him that beat Hulk Hogan for the world title on Nitro and now this, this bodybuilding type showdown presentation himself and Miss Elizabeth. What did you think of this, I guess, final version of the Lex Lugar character? I mean, obviously he looks phenomenal in terms of his physique.

I don't like it. I just, I just don't like it. I mean, it's a subjective thing. I think, you know, coming out, wearing that tearaway sweatsuit or whatever it is, it looks like something that he'd wear to the gym or taking the garbage out or whatever. I think it makes him look like less of a star. And that's not taking anything away from his physique. Obviously, his physique is incredible here.

but he just to me he looks less than he doesn't look makes it look very casual he he's not dressed like a superstar no no it's it's definitely a less than impression on me i'm sure it was comfortable and i mean there's no denying that and goodness gracious when the gear came off he looked better than ever but we're going to get a singles match here with brett hart and lexlugar you see where we're recapping when we had brett versus sting Luger nails him with a bat, and that's the end of that. So now Brett's going to make his way out here. I think we should take a timeout.

I'm at 132.49. I'm going to stop it at 55. 132.55. There it is. We'll take a time out. This one is brought to you by Blue Chew. Bro. Bro.

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and important safety information and we want to thank blue chew for sponsoring today's podcast let's get back to it we got brett hart walking to the ring here at one hour 30 10 minutes and 55 seconds in three two one lay so brethart will come to the ring to face the total package two men who have three gone out of the floor and now it's extended a tear Brett Hart. A little bit of a lip there. Yeah, I think it's very noticeable for a wimp. Well, because he got hit in the fucking leg with a baseball bat, Bobby,

in the same calendar week. That's the reason he's limping. It's called selling. And I know you're just pointing it out for us, but thank you, sir. So Brett Hart slips through the ring and through the ropes here, wearing a Calgary hitman hockey jersey, not his trademark, uh, leather jacket. you see a hockey jersey in the crowd owen 99 of course we sadly lost um owen heart earlier the same year

in may of the same year fast forward a handful of months and here he is on pay-per-view against lex luger you know at this point you're almost two years into the brett hart era of his wcd ruin. Is he like perhaps the biggest do-over that you wish you had in all of WCW? 100%. Yeah. 100%.

No question about it. You know, and I've taken responsibility for not having a great plan for Brett. Hold out. Oh, my dog just walked in and blew all the light out. I've taken responsibility for that any number of times. And there's no question. about it you know if i had to do over i would have done it quite a bit differently but

you know they don't exist in real life too often but yeah i have to have to acknowledge that one is the one that i would want to have back melzer would say there's nothing much to this match heart came out selling a bad ankle from monday but he pounded on luger the entire match until the ankle went out and luger used a half crab for the submission nobody believed that as a finish. It's crazy to me to think that Rousseau was involved in getting Brett so hot and so focused and so featured. And this is what we're doing.

You think maybe somebody else had a hand in getting Brett over the way Brett got over? I mean, if you, if you buy Rousseau's bullshit that Vince wasn't really paying attention and was just signing off after taking cursory glances at our mat. That's not sure. Come on. I guess you could believe it. But I would imagine Vince McMahon had more to do with Brett getting over in WWE than Vince Rousseau did.

Aaron Sheen has a great question for us. He's watching along with us as part of our ad-free shows.com watch along. Aaron wants to know who has done more harm for the business, Russo or Meltzer? Meltzer. Meltzer for sure. He's been doing it longer. And like any disease or any cancer that metastasizes over long periods of time, it does more damage.

And clearly, I would throw Meltzer under that category. Adam wants to know, what was your take on how Vince Russo was portrayed as the heel authority figure during this time? Before he returned with you in April of 2000, his face was never shown on WCW TV. his segments were always shot with him sitting behind the desk directing orders where only his voice was heard to viewers did you find this very reminiscent of dr claw from inspector gadget i tell you adam i was watching at the time and i thought he was just borrowing from sinfeld the way they always presented steinbrenner it was larry david's voice and you just saw the back of steinbriner like the shadow outline you never actually saw him and that was sort of in this same era um would you think you think he's the heel authority figure but you never saw his face in this era not a fan not a fan at all uh i don't know what else to say about i just think it sucked i think russo sucked as a as an on-camera talent he he was okay cut a promo but he's one of those guys that really would have to limit the amount of time that you would expose him to the audience

because he'd wear thin very, very fast. And he wasn't, he didn't have the depth of character to be effective as a heel. He was just obnoxious and loud and smarmy. You've got to, you've got to have a little more depth to your character than that. Anybody can do that character. And of course, his New York accent, which by the way, you butcher the shit out of during that blue shoe spot, I hope I'd never hear you do a New York accent again for the rest of our relationship,

no matter how long that may be. but his New York accent was obnoxious enough to get him a little bit of heat but you just couldn't put him out there too much or give him too much to work with because he'd drive it right into the ground he'd overkill it and he shouldn't have been a character

he should have never been a character period um here's one this is from brad stanton there are a few grudge matches on this car do you think a grudge match should have a gimmick attached or should the build and story be good enough come on now kind of know the answer to that one build in story you know look there's there's a time in a place for certain quote unquote gimmick matches whether it be a cage match or you know Iron Man match or something to that effect, I can see if there's a build and a story leading to it, but a grudge match, which is nothing more than a different way of saying a match based

on personal issues, should be a story that is played out over weeks or months and build and escalate and then have a resolution. And whether there's a gimmick in it or not shouldn't really matter. If you have, in my opinion, again, just my opinion, if you have to rely on a gimmick in that personal difference of opinion or personality conflict, whatever you want to call it, if you have to include a gimmick in it, then you probably don't have much of a story. Unless, again, if it's a cage match or an Iron Man match

or something like that that allows the gimmick to have a personality or to be a threat in the resolution of conflict, then I think it can make sense. But again, you can't do it effectively without a good story leading up to it. We're going to try to get a lot of story with Sting and Hogan in just a moment. Let's do a few more questions here as we see Brett Hart trying to finish his match here with Lex Lugar. Drew Landry wants to know.

Eric, do you recall Sid not wanting to work with Goldberg or vice versa? Well, I don't, I don't recall ever having a conversation with either one of them where they expressed the idea that they didn't want to. work with one or the other not not during my time working with them at all here's a follow-up do you remember where you were mentally at this time so october 99 are you just fishing enjoying life i was enjoying the hell out of life at this point in time and to be honest you know i was dealing with the fact that i had the rug pulled out from under me underneath me to a degree it surprised me to be honest with you uh but after After about a week, man, I was good and I felt relieved, if anything else.

So my head was really on straight. I wasn't interested in what was going on in wrestling. I was ready to walk away from it. Like I said, I had plenty of time, you know, before I had to worry about things financially, two and a half years or so. So that wasn't an issue for me. It was really just me taking the time to get away from it all, clear my head and decide which direction I wanted to go. But mentally, emotionally, I was doing fine.

here's another one what did you think of working with ed ferrara and bill banks when you were in wcw you know i liked ed i i didn't i didn't have any issues with ed um had a fair amount of respect for ed um i didn't think he was a big idea guy but he could take ideas and help make them work for sure he was a deed you know he understood story he was a legitimate writer he understood story um bill banks you know nice guy, but he was put into a position that he should have never been put into. He didn't have the experience, the personality, the instinct. He didn't have anything going for him as a producer or to be a member of a writing staff. He was just, he was a friend of Vince's Rousseau's. That's

that was all of the credibility that I guess Rousseau needed. And he was a bit of a, you know, Vince Rousseau's sycophon. So Vince liked being surrounded by people that looked up to him, which probably explains Bill Banks. Again, not taking anything away from. from him as a person. He was a good person. I liked him. Nice guy, but way, way, way over his head. So we just saw a replay there of a single leg Boston crab that Lex Lugar applied to Brett Hart and Brett Hart tapped out. And the crowd went mild. It went mild. Is that what he said? Yes. That's funny. I think we've got a special little skit or segment here coming up. With all due respect, Bill Goldberg, do you feel that your actions of earlier tonight have made Sid vicious even more dangerous than ever before?

Let me tell you something today. You see that? You see that? I get paid to kick people's ass. And as far as Sid's concerned, when I get his ass in that ring later on tonight, I'm going to separate his head from the rest of his body. Wow, to say this intensity is picked up would be an understatement here. Say no more. Berg and sit if you think what you see is wild just wait it's all so there you see coming out in a bikini and she's got the nitro cologne with her and we saw a tight shot as we panned across the set one of those tombstones read crockett and here comes medusa uh with her plus twos along with her else would say this maduna came out with

the medusa came out with a bikini her body looks great for her age but you don't see a lot of 37 year old strippers and there's a reason why the implant is ridiculous but this is a business of excess she came out with nitro cologne we need to track some of this because you're not going to believe what we're trying to do to sell the cologne here i just want to just let the evidence speak for itself here she's making her way ringside with the bottle of cologne here we go Oh, like a men's room in the Newark Airport. Alright! She's standing on the announced desk, showing off the cologne to the crowd.

Who's gonna not wear that? That stuff smells horrible. That stink. So, gentlemen, what do you think about our new nitro polone? Nice, shapely bottle? bottle. Beautiful blue color matches my big. Beautiful. Blue eyes. Yes, they are beautiful. Yes. What do you think this is a pun? Do you think I enjoy coming out here in my X-Biniti, wimony bikini and modeling net? But you do what you're told. You have to.

Well, you can just tell those two higher echelons from New York, you know, the superpowers. The powers, yeah. That I think it's just, I think it's just absolutely bullshit. Oh, stop. So the way to sell W. Shobby's Colon is to tell everyone that it smells like the Newark Airport. men's room. It stinks. It's horrible. What? And that whole scene, everything that we just saw was designed to get Russo and head over. Yes. That's that was the only reason that that's

seen, that segment, whatever you want to call it existed. And oh, by the way, you're dumping all over a licensee. And maybe the nitro cologne was a really bad idea, but it's a licensee that is spending money and they promoted it they they did their best and even though we may never have done business with mitro cologne again the idea that other licensees would see that would see that and is this a company that i want to spend money with no un fucking believable and a just perfect reflection of who Vince russo really was it is fraud doesn't know anything about the television business. Let's let you catch up here with this storyline with Hulk Hogan and Sting.

So we just saw a little video package sort of recapping where we are, and we're hearing the music crank up. This is for the World Heavyweight title. By the way, I know what you're thinking. Is this the main event? No, this is match seven out of ten. There's three more matches after this. There's roughly an hour left in the pay-per-view.

total of four matches on the card. Let's take a listen. yeah so you're probably wondering what the hell's going on they're going on they're going to let the music play all the way through mounser would say they did the hogan's sting angle next so fans would boo it heavily and still have three more matches left in the show to forget about it Hogan at first didn't come out even though his music played finally he came out in street clothes whispered something to sting and laid down and sting covered him in the

ref counted three no bell sounded to start the match they immediately cut to a cliff of Goldberg with the abrupt cut designed to make people think that what happened wasn't supposed to the idea as this was designed would be stings later agreeing to wrestle after this fiasco showed he was a baby face all along and a fighting champion It wasn't made us clear to the fans what this was all about as it needed to be. And with no follow-up on TV the next day, it came off like a silly exercise and masturbation. The feeling from those in the building live is that nobody understood what this was about.

And because it was never referred to on television the next night, that was a Russo call, by now, nobody understands and few people even remember it amid the morass of angles they have to digest every week. So this is silly. uh what we're doing here and it is sort of the precursor to what we would eventually see a bash at the beach 2000 i just don't understand how this is on a wrestling paper view like the way that we think the business works is let's take our licensees and humiliate them and embarrass them and diminish their product and then let's get the fans hyped up and have them vote with their

wallet and come out of their pocket to buy a pay per view not just watch the show for free We're card out two of our biggest stars, really the two franchises of WCW, Sting and Hulk Hogan, and we'll pit them against each other. Crow Sting versus red and yellow classic Hulk Hogan, the dream match, if you will. We never saw this version. This was going to be our chance. And instead, swerve, bro. We're just going to have one guy lay down for another.

What are we doing? This is weird. Again, I didn't see it when it happened, and your recap of it certainly helps me feel better about my overall opinion about Vince Rousseau. But the fact that there was no follow-up tells me that this was never a story. This was never a plan. This was an idea in the moment. Crash TV booking, bro. That's what this was.

I can't wait to talk to Hulk again soon and just ask him about this like who's where did this come from was there a plan that just everybody decided not to follow up on or did you just show up and this was laid out for you and you just went along with it which is hard for me to believe but it's just bizarre I mean how would you even describe sting's facial expression there I mean, as he's holding the belt over his head in the ring after Hulk Hogan has been a no-show, he's sort of looking around like, what the hell's going on? And, uh, yeah. Trying that music again.

All right. We're going to get this one underway. Good job, David Pitts. Oh. like this is hard to even dissect i mean this is so bizarre that it's really hard to analyze and try to imagine what anybody was thinking clearly they're trying to make you assume that this isn't part of the plan and something must be going on and what's happening the idea of confusing the audience or somehow

trying to make trying to harness confusion to work in your favor and that's just look at hogan not running out smiling pointing to the crowd no knee braces and jeans tucked into his boots a denim shirt cut off sleeves black bandana street clothes hogan here i could tell by looking at his face this was not something that he was cool with i don't know why he went along with it, but this was not anything that he felt comfortable with. I'm going to call him. I may call him this afternoon. He's right here.

Playing games with him. He said he had that. What is he? He's just got that. I'm getting this. I just want to get this the fuck over with and get home. That's. What the hell is going on?

What? What the? Oh, God. You got me. I'm done, that hold on here. That was weird.

Now, I get it. I get it. I'm going to get the, yeah, but you did the finger poke of doom. There was a plan. It may have sucked. But there was. was a plan yes that was just fucking random so next up it's goldberg and sid vicious uh they immediately

cut to that package um melzer would say this about the show the new wcw direction became even more apparent with the halloween having pay per view show on the 24th from the mGM grand gardener rate in los vegas the direction is throwing a lot of angles and surprises at the fans with a lot of last minute card changes and concentrating a lot less on bell to bell or natural logical progression. For example, on the finishes, it seems more important to surprise fans with the results, like Brad Armstrong over Berlin is the best example, but also Lex Lugar over Brad Hart. Even if the reason fans would expect the loser to win was because it would make a more logical progression based on who was getting the immediate push.

The pushing of Russo and Ferrara, although to their credit, credit, the, they pushed the idea of themselves more than their names was evident throughout the show. The argument that WCW is swimming in negative momentum and needs a facelift is strong. But even on WWF, you wouldn't just get hit with the idea constantly during the shows regularly about the hot writers that were just hired. In many ways, from the formatting and pacing, this seems more like a WWF pay-per-view show with the crowd being dead for most of the show, unlike WCW, which often has hotter pay per view crowds, except with far lower production values, and they lack a strong 20-minute main event to generally make up for

the weak undercards. So Meltzer saying basically, hey, this took away all the good things about WCW, and we didn't add a whole lot, lots of swerves, less focus on what made WCWWWCW. How about this as an entrance, though? Sid Vish is coming to the ring, wearing his normal gear. the black leather vest, the body glove elbow pad, the black boots, the black trunks, the U.S. title, the three plater made by Joe Marshall, firmly around his waist, but the blood dried

on the top of his head. I like that look. He looks like a movie character. What a badass. I agree with you, brother. I think, you know, I'm not a big fan of blood, but this is an effective way of doing it. And he looked, he meaning Lex looks scary as hell. Like I, excuse me, I just called him Lex.

Cid, Sid, Sid looks scary as hell here. Unbelievable. I believe he's hot based on what we saw earlier. He would be. This is excellent. It's the only good thing I've seen on the show so far,

actually, was Sid walking out with dried blood on his face. You're going to see something else happen right as Goldberg's about to make his entrance here. his intro and the steamy for the unmistakable music of a man who will try to put it in all the talk about the millennia man all the talk about the street i mean there's a lot of goldberg signs in that crowd i was just about i didn't want to interrupt while we're tracking it but man he is still over here there's so many i mean the goldberg like

foam fingers the signs like look at the shirts people are really really with goldberg here at 99 more uh more life up to that character this is really the only thing i've seen the crowd get excited about so far in two hours and 11 minutes and 25 seconds uh he's he's still got it so here he comes out of the locker room we saw uh head of security there go ahead and uh and open him up and now he's walking to the ring with all the local lost Vegas police force you would see this a lot whenever like Mike Tyson or those type fights would happen I love Doug Dillinger being a part of this though let's track it here because I think something big is going to happen but the thing about this

man tonight that makes it different than any other is what happened before and how the incident that opened up the forehead of Sid Vichis has lit a fire under Sid Fiscius like we've never seen we can see it from our vantage way right here he's not down on one knee he's not sitting on that turnbuckle he's paced like a caged animal he's got about seven eight nine transcription that looks over that eye and he just paced back and forth back and port he wants Goldberg he wants him in the ring now tonight it's going to be great now again Mike today a lot of credit he asked a very difficult question about making a mistake and we know how multiple Goldberg has been since Monday and it would be very easy for Goldberg

just to step on today but They ask the right question, and Goldberg said, hey, I'm ready. I am more ready than I've ever been. And here they come, the police ushering in Goldberg. I don't think this town has enough police. He needs to be a party. I can walk sit from here. He's taking a couple more steps, walking to the road.

Walk him to me, Colbert. These two big men are ready to find. you know go back to believe for anybody look up the aisle there Eric look up the aisle there Eric oh oh oh this is got Scott Hall there oh So the outsiders are jumping Goldberg before he gets in the ring. And my question this entire time, Eric, was, what the fuck are the six police officers do? Don't ask logical questions, Conrad. You're not allowed to ask a logical question on a wrestling show, particularly one of the Vince

Rousseau book. But before we continue lambasting Rousseau for all that it's worth. Did Bill Goldberg not have the coolest freaking entrance? Oh, dude. It was amazing. It, I mean, it still gives me goosebumps when I see it.

He's a star. I mean, that's all there is to it. It was so perfect for him. Like, if an entrance could be a reflection of one's character, um, that entrance was really a reflection of Bill Goldberg's character.

Meltzer would say a match had a ton of heat. The only match that could make that distinction. Sid bled heavily. and mainly took punishment but would never quit the announcers really played up sid's guts and toughness until finally Mickey Jay stopped the match they gave Goldberg the belt who knows what the rules are regarding matches stopped on blood and titles changing hands nowadays since the rules change as they go along Goldberg acted like he didn't want the belt but eventually took it Rick

Steiner helped Sid to the back but he turned around and wanted more the announcers did a great job with this match two and a half stars You don't expect Dave Meltzer to be heaping praise on a Goldberg Sid Vicious match. He ethered these guys issue after issue just assured them. But man, he loved this one. And I think a lot of it was just the fans. The fans were with it. The fans view these guys as superstars.

Therefore, they are. And, uh, you know what vibe I get though, Conrad in watching this? Is that Bob Ryder's cousin in the front row? I'm listening. No, come on now. I get the impression that Sid was more into this match than anything I've seen Sid do in a long time.

It just felt natural for Sid here. He didn't feel like he was playing a character. You know, it's not any one thing, but I think you're right about the crowd. Obviously, there was a ton of energy for Goldberg here. And I think the setup for this. match earlier on in the show was a nice thread hats off credit where credit is due it was a nice thread to help set up this match it was done very very well it was believable it wasn't overdone uh the fact that sid came out would dry blood on his head still really nice touch

advanced the story or continued the story reminded the audience of what happened earlier in the show but i think all of those things combined you know just this is pretty freaking good i got it hats off man to both of these guys and the setup whoever was involved in the setup for they did a great job formatting it sit into the show like i said you know what all over him nice touch i mean he looks fantastic it looks really really badass uh speaking of badass we've got a member of our live studio audience who's going to join us here i understand denovius mac is going to join us here on 83 weeks and he has a question for you eric denobius welcome to the show what's your question for Mr. Bischoff?

Hey, good morning, guys. I've really had a question about the radicals, Eric. If you were still there instead of Vince Russo, do you think you would have persuaded them to stay as opposed to jumping ship to WWF? That's a hypothetical. You know, I really don't know how to answer that. I know I would have tried for sure.

I don't know that I would have been successful or not, but I certainly would have tried. I think I would have had much. more of a shot than Rousseau did. But again, I don't know, man. It's hard for me to answer that one. I can only answer and being honest and saying I certainly would have tried. Okay.

Thanks, guys. What are you up to today, MacDady? What's going on? Where are you driving to? I'm actually going to pick up Kaya. I just left the hospital. My mother-in-law had emergency surgery. She broke her in heaven.

And so she's fighting cancer, so, you know, trying to get her in good spirits. but yeah going to pick up you know kaya and then help my mother move so all right brother hang in there tell kaili said hi well i definitely will thank you guys thank you thanks for denovia smack taking time to join us here today we're still seeing uh the two gladiators slug it out here some blood from the head of sid vicious and it's starting to get on goldberg i mean this looks like a big time heavyweight title fight And this is probably as good of a place as any to follow Hogan's thing. Like if you're trying to get the crowd back, this is a way to do it right here.

Yeah. And it's, you know, I've, look, I've made the same mistake myself any number of times and others have pointed it out. But it's particularly interesting to me that both guys, big, jacked up, powerful, just beasts of men and they're both wearing black tights and black boots. It's just, I don't know. different and maybe it stands out so much to me because they're both so physically impressive there's like very little to distinguish the two of them other than sid had hair and bill didn't

yeah one's taller and has curly hair that's it uh ryan says i was there that night was legit pissed off at the sting hogan bullshit i wasn't the only one lots of us leaving the mgm grand that night we're talking shit about rousseau and his direction for me this was the end of WCW as far as being a regular watcher. I'm a firm believer. You do not advertise the main event world title match and then pull this shit. What do you think? You know,

doing a bait and switch on the advertised main event, pay per view, not TV. That's less than ideal, no? Yeah, it is. And again, you know, you're charging people money. You're giving them what is otherwise up until this match, actually, what is otherwise just a three-hour television show.

Yes. And then you're going to pull the main event out from underneath them after it's been advertised. Look, sometimes it happens because of an injury or whatever, but to intentionally do it, uh, a reflection indeed of Vince Russo's understanding of television and,

and the, the business of the wrestling business. Well, these guys are going to have a pretty fun match here. We mentioned they got a good rating in the observer. Um, unfortunately it's not enough. You know, business is trending a certain way Halloween Havoc 1998 had Goldberg and DDP on top

famously it went long maybe we didn't get enough satellite time everywhere underneath we had Warrior and Hogan maybe that's not famous maybe that's infamous either way it did 310,000 buys that was the last Halloween Havoc 1998 this one does 230,000 buys So we're down 80,000 buys, less than ideal. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty major falloff to go from 310 to 230.

That's a big fall off. And I don't remember what this pay-per-view, what they charged for this particular pay-per-view back then, but 50% of it would have been WCW revenue. So that's a massive financial hit as well. You figure $15. on the WCW side of things times 80,000. That's a lot of money. Yes, indeed.

Particularly at this point in time in 1999 where WCW needed that revenue. Definitely needed the revenue. The month before, we had Hogan versus Sting for the WCW title. That's where Sting will turn heel. We also had another Goldberg DDP match at Fall Brawl. That one only did 130,000. So we're up here, 100,000 buys,

but things are trending down. And we're up 100,000 buys because of the strength and the history of Halloween havoc. Yes. To be honest, not because of the card. Yes. The, uh, the next match here, because now we've, we've got a winner. It's been stopped because of blood loss.

You're going to see Mickey Jay go ahead and tell Sid kick bricks, kick rocks, get out of here. What's our time code right now, Conrad, if you, if I can, 208, 12, 13, 14, 14. 15, 16, 208, 17, 18, 19. So Mickey Jay indicating that Goldberg is our new U.S. champ, even if he is reluctant to be the U.S. champ. I mean, so far, what are you thinking of this show, Eric? Other than this match, it's the only thing up until this point that I found interesting at all.

The rest of it is just a confusing mess to me. Now, part of that is because, again, I wasn't there. I don't know the story. lines going into this, perhaps there were some. But if there were, in this paper view, was to be about the resolution, at least of some of those matchups, didn't deliver. Just really flat. And the audience was obviously flat for everything except for this match. So I don't know. On a scale of one to ten, I think I'd give it a three at this point. The promo is really the page and Kimberly promo, even the Rick Flair promo, I know it's hard for

flair to do a bad promo but for rick flair that was a bad promo yeah he was doing impressions of his family through there that i call uh extended family that i'll keep to the vest but um it's an interesting backstage phenomenon in this show because you've got these new writers people are optimistic they're hopeful we see goldberg still over maybe he's lost in the middle we see brad heart we're hoping he's going to do something but he lost Alex Lugar. The outsiders made their sole appearance on the show. They're not wrestling. It was just that one attack.

It's an interesting time. But behind the scenes, we've got all the stuff with Hogan and now the stuff with Flair. Meltzer would say, the plan is to temporarily finish up Flair on the pay-per-view. The role Flair isn't happy about at all. At press time, they were going

to change Flair versus Page to a strap match, which would end with Flair, taking such a beating, he'll be stretched out and hospitalized, and said to be injured to the extent he can never wrestle again. The idea Flair was told was that they would bring him back in a few months in the figurehead president role, presumably as a heel, and he would probably wrestle occasional matches in that role.

So Flair's career in WCW is scripted to basically end with him getting rolled and humiliated on Nitro, coming back being stretchered out by Page, and one of two people in the company, the other being Shane Douglas, for that other than personal reasons, he was having to put over. So I'm not really sure what to make of all this, but certainly it feels as if we're trying to force a youth movement. Here's a little skit here with Kimberly, and this is from what we saw on our show that they were alluding to earlier with Rick Flair, I believe, in the bathroom. Let's take a listen. Don't come out until I tell you to. We are going to have a lot of fun tonight.

A lot of fun. I love your enthusiasm. Oh, enthusiasm. This is gonna knock you out. Wow. Woo! Oh, right. It's the luck of Miss Kimberly in the flesh herself.

Honey, the boy couldn't meet, but space about good, live in that color. And tonight, honey, you were to get the 14 times spanking. So it's supposed to be David Flair. It's actually Rick Flair. That adds some context to what we saw earlier with these promos from both Rick Flair and DDP. Up next is the strap match.

Meltzer would say this turned out to be a lot more heated outside the ring. Flair was really upset all week with the plan to retire him and end his career with this match and against page of all people. This also blows the Flair-Bin-Wil plan program. Anyway, the company had to make a deal with standards and practices over the SID match because of showing blood so graphically on the show since it needed to be seen to justify the stoppage. That was supposed to be the only blood on the show.

Flair bladed and wound up bleeding far more than SID, making the SID stoppage make no sense since there was no stoppage here, not to mention freaking out the guy from standards and practices. To fans, this was a strap match with very disappointing heat. it wasn't any good, although they did whip each other hard with the straps. The only real props earned pops were crotch shots and the figure four. The finish would see Paige choke out flare with the strap and then give him the diamond cutter. Referee Charles Robinson would hold up his count at two and the bell rang anyway,

and it was supposed to be a pinfall. Please don't ask me why. Page then laid out Robinson with a diamond cutter and continued to choke flare with the belt. David Flair shows up with a crowbar to make the save, but he was beaten up by Kimberly. Page got the crowbar and destroyed Flair even more, finishing with a low blow with a crowbar. Flair was carried out by stretcher and backstage.

The filthy animals all jumped a helpless flare and a hopeless David, threw him in the back of the ambulance and drove away in the ambulance. It was funny seeing Conan in an arm sling, attacking Flair with the arm in the sling. So listen, this is a little silly, but we've got Sting out here cutting a promo. Let's take a listen.

for somebody anybody to show up here for a fight because it's show time folks that takes a lot of guts boy so sting is saying hey i'm a fighting champion i want to defend my title i didn't come here to not wrestle i want to give you guys a good show tonight it's show time who wants to wrestle for the world title so it's an open challenge we know it's going to be by Goldberg. Yeah. They did Goldberg and staying unannounced. Hey, Conrad, can we take a quick break right now? Because there's something really important I want to talk about. I'm going to shut down here too. I'm going to shut it down at 2.14.29. All right. We're at 21429. Eric's going to take a quick break. And we are to tell you how you need

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That's drinkag1.com slash 83 weeks. Check it out. Drinkag1.com. 83 weeks. And we also want to remind everybody that if you haven't already, you need to make plans to come see Eric live and in person at Russellcade. Russellcade weekend is a three-day family convention for both fans of wrestling and sports entertainment. It brings together more than 125 of your favorite wrestling stars from all eras featuring live pro wrestling paper views all three days. How about some meet and greets with some of your favorite wrestling

stars. There's even Q&A panels, live wrestling podcast, costume contests, wrestling related merch for sale, and so much more. It's all going down November 24th, 25th, and 26th at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Our very own Eric Bischoff will be on-site representing ad-free shows and be sure to check out a version of the Extreme Life of Matt Hardy. As Matt and John Albaugh will be on stage that Friday night

at 8.30 Eastern. Tickets are on sale now. Go see EZE. I'd be glad you did. It's wrestlecade.com. That's wrestlekade.com. And we're watching Halloween Havoc here from season 11, episode one. We're at two hours, 14 minutes, and 29 seconds, getting a wide shot from the top of the arena at two hours, 14 minutes, and 29 seconds. I'll count us back in here in three, two, one play. And now that, have you ever seen anything like that on a paper view of WCW? Never, never. Never. And you still stink.

You still ring. We're still burying the clone. But here we go. We know now we've got Sting defending the world title. So there's one more match after this match making their way to the ring right now. Kimberly right out front, follow closely behind Diamond Dallas page. This is our strap match. Man, talk about all the backstage maneuvering.

Rick Flair, not too happy and, well, it's a different era for WCW. Before we took our break, you said you had something you wanted to talk about that had been weighing on. Yeah, I do. You know, those of you who have been listening to 83 weeks here know that I love to grill. I love good quality meat. And a while back, my nephew, actually, Ben Pollock in Minnesota, he knew how much I loved to cook. He knew much how I love great quality meat. Turn me on to a company called River Bend Ranch.

Riverbend Ranch is based in Idaho. It's a family-owned cattle operation and processing plant. And they've been really perfecting the genetics of their beef and their cows and their bulls. For almost 27 years, really super analyzing up to 40 different kind of genetic factors that help produce the very best meat. So I tried it and absolutely loved it. Now, this is not someone who's paying us to be on the show. I actually reached out to the team over at River Bend Ranch. I said, I love this product so much.

I have to share it with our audience. You can order from River Bend Ranch. They deliver right to your home. There's different packages. But the quality of the meat is so good. And there's a couple of reasons for it. Number one, it's certified black Angus. The meat is marbled to perfection.

So it's tender. It's juicy. It has all the flavor that you would expect. and some of the finer restaurants in the country. The meat is aged, and that's the one thing that you don't get when you buy meat in the store, because processing plants can't afford to have meat hanging on a hook, aging for 30 days while they want to get it out,

because they want to get it out to the store, they want to get it on the shelf, they want to get it sold as quickly as possible. Not a River Bend ranch. They process their own, they grow their own meat, no antibiotics, nothing ever, no hormones, ever. They raise it, they process it, and they ship it right to you, the customer.

I'd like you to try it. I think you're going to agree with me. Go to getriverband.com. You'll get some information there. Someone will reach out to you, talk to you about all the different packages that are available, and they're also going to share with you how you can actually save quite a bit of money. And when you compare Riverbent's products to some of the other beef delivery companies that are out there, some of them that have advertised on this show,

you're going to be surprised at how much money you can save by the highest quality meat you can find anywhere, have it delivered to your home, pretty sure you're going to feel just like I do. It is one of the best opportunities out there to have a great quality product, delivered to your door, and save money in the process. Just go to getriverbend.com. Again, one more time, getriverbend.com. so in the ring the guys have hooked it up now flare and page both hooked up with the strap page on the outside of the ring flare and his signature red trunks and boots and tights and uh it's crazy to think that once again here we are five years after the first time he lost a retirement match at uh Halloween havoc that was back with Hogan in 1994 hey we want to retire you it feels like that was something that Rousseau was trying to do. Well,

Russo had this. Russo's thing was again, and some of this was just Russo trying to galvanize some support backstage. But Rousseau was dead set against the older talent. He just wanted to get them off the roster any way possible. And he was very transparent about it. I'll give him that.

He didn't try to hide it. He was transparent as hell, but it did not go over well with a lot of that talent. Well, something that, I mean, this whole paper views feels a little snake bit. We're seeing, you know, Flair and DDP have a match here. These are clearly two of the biggest stars in WCW, but we talked a little bit about the promo from page earlier and how neither one of us really liked it. I mean, you just straight up said it sucked.

I don't think anybody wanted to beat boo DDP. I mean, I know once upon a time, you know, talking 93, 94, 95, 96, certainly they wanted to boo dDP but by 97 on i feel like you know we we've decided he's our underdog he's one of us he's the working man he's the every man we want him he's us he's the people's champ and it's hard for us to just flip that on and off like i know some characters are better suited one way or another even though you know there is a lot about the ddp character that you could find annoying and say oh i don't like this or i don't like that or whatever different parts of his personality he would reveal on camera the character at this point i just feel like

is better suited as a baby face and you know why cut around i think we've talked about this before where certain characters are better playing kind of a dialed up version of themselves stone cold steve austin clearly being one of them to a lesser extent diamond dallas page but the same holds true with page in real life page is one of the nicest most generous caring people you'd ever meet and and we're seeing that now with you know ddp y yoga and everything that he's doing and all the help that he's tried to provide a lot of people over the last several years 10 years really he's just more comfortable as a baby face because that's who he really is and yes you can turn the volume up on that a little bit to make it interesting

for television, but I don't think Paige was ever good as a heel because he had to overcompensate so much for who he really was that it didn't come off authentic. And that's one of my biggest issues with it. Even listening to that promo that he did, that wasn't Paige. That was so forced. It's just, yeah. This is a long-winded way of me saying, I absolutely agree with you. He was way better as a baby face.

I'm just trying to put it into context why I think he was he was better as a baby face. Let's, uh, let's ask the question everybody at this point listening wants to know. Greg asked it. Did Eric ever wear the WCW Cologne? No, no, because I agreed with Bobby. It sucked. But I wouldn't have said it on TV while they were writing us checks. I would have kept it to myself.

Might have told my wife. But now it was, it was not a stuff. or product. Bryant had a great question. He's watching along with us from ad free shows.com. He says, do you think Goldberg would have benefited from having a mouthpiece? He never had any good promos and always seems uncomfortable talking. Yeah, I think a manager, a mouthpiece for him, that could have worked.

What's so you? It would have been fun to try. You know, I don't know about Bill's personality. I don't know that he would have wanted to. share the limelight and i'm not saying he was an egomaniac bill felt very comfortable in his role and i'm not sure we could have convinced bill to get comfortable with the manager and it would have to be the right manager it couldn't be somebody that came off like a clown or an over-the-top type of a manager you know but i think if you found the right person and you cast that person

male or female to be more more real more realistic of a character as an agent or manager as opposed to a traditional, you know, Jimmy Hart type manager, nothing against Jimmy Hart. It was great when Jimmy was doing it. But at this point in time, I don't think it would have worked. And it certainly would not have worked with Bill. But I think cast appropriately, perhaps it could have worked. And certainly it would have helped to take the pressure off Bill having to talk. Because if you gave him anything more than 15 or 30 seconds, it was a stretch. it's a bit of a stretch to think that uh flare is going to be in a grudge match like this

on paper view and not bleed i know the standards and practice people were promised one thing the continuity piece is what disappoints me like flare is an old school pro and i get when he's just looking at his match in a vacuum like this yes we need color but him maybe going against the grain and doing this on his own without really the full understanding that hey, we're going to have a blood stoppage finish earlier in the show. That's less than ideal. Less than ideal is putting it mildly. You know, that was really what that whole match between Sid and Goldberg was all about.

It started in that backstage segment and carried through into the match itself. And as you pointed out, a blood stoppage, which is very, very rare. And now we're going to have Rickler out here bleeding like a stuck pig. Eh, not good. not good indeed um let's do uh let's do a few more questions here we've got some questions from our live studio audience here uh this one comes to us from aaron has eric seen the clip on twitter of sit in the parking lot screaming for goldberg people think it was the worst acting ever in wrestling you ever seen that clip i don't think i have

or maybe i did have you know if it was as bad as it sounds like it was maybe i just put out of my mind. I do that sometimes. Something bothers me so much. I just vaporize it so that I never have to think about it again. Well, something that a lot of people are going to be thinking about is Saudi Arabia. This coming weekend, WWE is going to be bringing another super show over that way. And as you and I are recording this, just last night or I guess yesterday afternoon, we saw Vince McMahon with the undertaker at the Tyson Fury fight. and they sat Vince McMan next to Mike Tyson and Eminem, which I found hilarious. I watched the fight.

I thought Tyson lost on a decision. It wound up being a split majority decision. Two judges to one, Tyson Retains, Tyson Fury retains against Nagano. And yeah, I think these spectacle pay-per-views, that's probably the biggest one. I mean, they constructed a whole arena specifically for this fight. And now WWE is going to be there this weekend. They're pulling out all the stops. Of course, we know that a lot of the big stars, including John Cena,

are going to be on that card. It's still a controversial decision politically, but allegedly $100 million is the value of the current contract with Saudi Arabia. You got to assume they're looking to get a little more money. And that's why Vince McMahon was over that way. but also on that same day, as you and I are recording on Saturday, we saw a main event that a lot of people thought would have been reserved for a pay-per-view.

They announced on Wednesday's dynamite that MJF would be defending his world title against Kenny Omega. Kenny Omega going into this match was the longest reigning AEW heavyweight champion of all time. It was said that if MJF would get the win here, then he would, in fact, wind up being the person to break that record and become the longest reigning AEW champion in history. And somehow,

some way MJF got his hand raised and afterwards, Kenny Omega cut quite a promo for the live crowd saying that it was MJF's time now. I found that interesting. And of course, whenever people think about big time title matches on free TV, they always think about you, Hogan, and Goldberg. Saw some people saying,

why didn't they make this a pay-per-view? Obviously, times are a changing, but AEW still in the pay-per-view business. What did you think of the decision they made to put MJF and Kenny Omega on free TV? With no advanced promotion, no story, just announce it and do it. I'm not going to be critical of putting it on live TV for obvious reasons because AEW, Tony Con, has to service their client, their client, in addition to the audience, audience, their client is the network. But here's where I, I just have questions.

I'm not being critical. I promised myself a couple weeks ago, I was going to refrain from being critical as much as I could. But if you're going to put MJF and Omega on free TV, to do it up, number one, on a Saturday night, when you're up against game two of the World Series and college football, you know you're going to get your ass handed to you. And to make that match on a Saturday night against that kind of competition, when you know no matter what you do, you're going to get your ass handed to you,

that makes me question it even more. I mean, it's bad enough to put that match on television without any buildup, no storyline. Nobody in the world could answer the question, legitimately answer the question, why is this match happening? Other than making up some, you know, indie rific bullshit, it just makes no sense. And if you're going to do it on free TV and you're going to do it without a story and you're going to do it without any buildup, why do it on a Saturday night against game two? It's not like that was a surprise. That was scheduled.

You know you're up against college football. I don't know. I have questions. I'm hoping somebody will, you know, come up with a good answer that makes sense. I sure can. Well, I tell you what, I'm pretty excited to see how this all shakes out for both the WWE and AEW. It feels like there's going to be some changing of the guards. There's some big opportunities for some big swings coming up in the next handful of

months. And I'm curious to see how it all plays out. of course a lot of people have circled the survivor series which even though it was sold out immediately they put more tickets on sale they sold those out they've opened up even more seating i guess they keep changing the staging to fit more and more fans in there and someone asked see and punk you're going to be at survivor series and i thought he had a brilliant response i think it's sold out i've heard tickets are really tough to get uh of course that keeps coming up because that show is in Chicago

I know we've said it before but has your opinion changed if punk is going to WWE and another's been reports out there that oh they're not interested but what would you think they would want to say guys yes we'd love to have him like that ruins what wrestling

is if he shows up in WWE would you do it in Chicago and get that monster pop or do you wait have a little patience and hold it off for the Royal Rumble I would hold it off to the Royal Rumble. It's not like WWE's having a hard time getting great reactions.

No. It's if they weren't, I mean, if it was a year and a half ago, I would say, yeah, you might want to give that a shot. Or I would give it a shot if I was in a position to do it. But not now. And WWE's got so much momentum and the crowd is so much behind them. I just can't imagine. And punk's, if, if, and I just don't really think it's ever going to happen, but for the sake of

discussion, if punk were to show up in WWE, no matter where he does it, it's going to get a massive pop. And for a company, a massive reaction, and for a company that's not desperate for one right now, I wouldn't waste it. I would do it where it meant the most. And for me, and I think for the audience, because the format of Royal Rumble begs for an opportunity like that. It just makes so much more sense. But that's just me.

What do I know? I did the finger poke of doom. I know nothing. Are you saying that you don't believe, you said you don't think it's likely to happen. You don't believe seeing punk is going to show up in WWE at any point? I don't. I mean,

look, I'm not 100% convinced because it is all about business. And WWE historically is able and willing to, to get beyond issues, personal or otherwise. Warrior comes to mine. Cat named Eric Bischoff comes to mine. There's been a whole bunch of us where nobody would have ever imagined

that certain people would get back or get into a WW ring ever again, only to be surprised. So I'm not saying that I'm 100% sure, but my gut tells me now, and mostly because they just don't need them. There's no holes. Where's the holes in the WWE roster right now?

Where's the holes in the product? We're getting ready to step into the hottest time of the year. This is wrestling's version of the Super Bowl coming up here over the next month or two. All right. And leading up to it, I just don't feel the need for it right now. They're live event business off the charts. They're selling out 10, 11, 12,000 seed arenas for SmackDown and for raw. Merchandise is flying off the shelf.

There's just no holes in their game right now. And it's not going to be that way forever. You know, everything ebbs and flows. It's not going to, I mean, I hope it does. It would be rare. And maybe somewhere down the road I see it, but I certainly don't see it coming up anytime soon. What do you think? Come on.

What do you think? Here's what I think. When was the last time you had a haircut, you want to run it back? I'll bet your hair against my hair that CM Punk is in WWB in the next calendar year. Fuck it. Do it. Okay. Halloween,

one of us is getting a skit head next year. I'm looking forward to that. Now, I'm only going to take that bet if you give me your words. You don't have some inside information because that. I don't have any inside information. I swear. All right.

All right. clearly i don't either because nobody talks to me but let's do that bet well here's why i'm doing that bet and i'm just thinking thinking thinking thinking thinking thinking isn't w we're looking for a new deal for monday night raw sure they have about a year left on that sure i think they're going to do whatever they can to stack the deck and get people invested and they're going to do at least a couple Hail Marys. And I think one of them will be seeing punk. You could be right.

You could be right. I didn't think about the, you know, renewal. Yeah. Or looking for another home for Raw. Still doesn't change my opinion, though. I'm still, I still believe what I'm saying. They just don't need him. I just don't see the added value.

But like I said, I could be wrong. I'm not 100% could have some right. Well, I for one, am really excited that we're going to get to shave your head. again for chair we're going to have to do it different maybe we do it on this show maybe we do it on a podcast or we do it in front of people i don't care you clearly now i have no problem to shave my head i have no problem admitting i'm wrong i have no problem being honest about my successes my failures or shaving my head in public so i'll do it anywhere anytime i just love that we're going to get to shave your head twice for the same reason

saying see and punk ain't going to show up that pisses me off that would actually get me hot well we see eric bischoff or not eric bischoff rick flair being carted out here he's on a gurney they're going around the graveyard taking him around back and we know the filthy animals are going to attack him there so more silliness abound here but yeah just can't kill the nature boy if you're noticing the time it's 235 57 58 59 two hours and 36 minutes in there's only 10 minutes left in the show, and we've still got the main event. It's Goldberg and Sting. Meltzer would say in the height of what appeared to be disorganization, Goldberg Penn Sting, and was given the WCW Heavyweight title in three minutes and eight seconds. No referee showed up

and Sting seemed visibly upset by the lack of organization backstage. Finally, Robinson, who was beaten up in the previous match by Page, comes out showing no signs of bad awareness nor even with a hair out of place. Tony Chivani then announced this as a non-title match. The show was already running long by this point, so they had to rush and didn't have time to do much. Sting hit three stinger splashes, but Goldberg did a leapfrog into a spear, which looked good and then pinned him after a jackhammer. Goldberg was given the bell and announced as the new world champion. Go figure. Sting ended the show dropping poor Robinson with a scorpion death drop, half a star. The counselor would say to make up for

the fact they weren't going to deliver with the advertised made event. They added a Goldberg Sting match at the end, partially to begin a sting baby face turn, and they did the old Vern Ganya trick of sending fans home thinking they'd seen a world title change only to watch TV and find out it wasn't the case. And looking at Ganya's business and admittedly how fans react to the same angles two decades ago is not for the most part relevant to how they would act today because it's neither the same world nor the same business. It was okay in the short run, but eventually grew tiresome and hurt at the end. Now, this is all said because the next day,

Sting's going to come out on TV and say, hey, I never agreed to defend the title, and he brings J.J. Dillon down to the ring to explain. And Dylan's going to announce the title, the title is being vacated due to Sting's attack on referee Charles Robinson during the unsanctioned match and says there's going to be a tournament to crown the new champion.

Later that same night, which is the very next night, from what we're watching. Goldberg would lose his U.S. heavyweight championship to Brett Hart. It's just a convoluted mess. It's a one day. Did he win it? Did he lose it?

What the fuck's going on with Sting and the world title? This pay-per-view, I know the idea is we're trying to get them to watch the TV show. But if I had come out of my pocket 39-95 or 29-95 or whatever, I don't know that you'd get it again. This is not what I would have hoped for as a paying customer. No, and it's a back-asswards, that you think you're going to, you know, produce a pay-per-view so that people will watch the

television show? It's actually the opposite of that. They watch the television show and hopefully they'll buy the pay-per-view. But whatever. Whatever. Again, it's hard to really be critical of Rousseau without being so redundant because some of his things that I find so appalling about Vince Rousseau as a professional and as a person is that it's so obvious and it's just redundant. to keep talking about it. I just, he was a creative fraud. He was a good salesman.

He was a great salesman. He's charming as fuck. But he just didn't understand television, pure and simple. He didn't understand story. He's a writer that didn't understand what an arc was. He didn't, he didn't understand an arc or a three-act structure

until we ended up working together in TNA. And he resisted it. Now he's talking about it, you know he's always believed in it and and understands he doesn't and it's clear here it's obvious it's so obvious and it was clear in everything that he did which was why brad segal called me sometime around january february and asked me to come back despite the fact that they had just sent me home months before guaranteed me two two and a half years into my contract was which was worth well over a million dollars at the time and had to write me a brand new contract and

guarantee me a three movie deal with tn t that will tell you everything that you need to know about the confidence that Turner had in Vince Rousseau's understanding of television and or wrestling. I'll tell you this, it's not what we would hope for, but look at the crowd. Everybody's standing as you see Goldberg and Sting, both standing in their respective corners, Sting stepping out of the ring, walking around the outside. There's money involved too. A lot of things. You see a referee in here? We have a ref.

Well, I didn't even notice that. There is no referee. And Conrad, do you know when Sting turned heel? When did that happen? Do you remember? They were trying that a month prior because they had the red and yellow hole covered. Sting is that it never worked, did it? No.

No. It's the same situation with DDP. You know, it's just, man, it's oil and water. It's where a big ground hole. yeah duck that can't fly whatever whatever you want to say it just doesn't work i don't know why but uh duck that won't fly that that tickles me so here's charles robin and uh man they're going at it right here at the end uh by the way a little context to the hogan angle the hogan angle of which part two went down exactly i was scripted weeks ago is at this point supposed to lead to a hogan hiatus with the idea that he's not

getting along with management. Come back as anti-management, Steve Austin type figure, probably early next year. With the talk, he'll come back as a real person using the ring named Terry Belaya, as opposed to the caricature of Hulk Hogan he's become. That would never happen. To do shoot small promos. The negative of that is to make all this work. It has been made clear on TV that Rousseau and Ferrara ordered him to do the job,

and he refused since he has creative control. And this was the end result. at least it gives him time to rest his knee yeah i don't know that we would have ever seen a terry belaya no absolutely this was either russo or somebody on his behalf feeding shit stain dame melzer information that's where that came from because that would never ever ever happen garen fucking tia there's very few things i can guarantee but i can guarantee that already we're garing fucking tea and things on the show today um want to thank everybody for showing up and hanging out with us earlier today in our live uh watch along of this program you can get

all these shows that we're doing early and ad free over at ad free shows.com if you haven't already and that's one of the best parts getting to be a part of the live recording um how about the big spear oh there's the big kick from goldberg but thankful he didn't get the brett heart version of that thing. Ouch. Ooh, that was a pretty wicked kick. In martial arts, that would be considered, I think, a spin hook kick.

It looked like a hook kick. And that's a dangerous kick to throw as well when you're spinning around 360 degrees. That's a tough one. Not one, not two, but three stinger splashes. And he's going to be picking Goldberg up by the head. Let's take a listen here to the finish. What an accomplishment!

What an accomplishment! What a pay-per-view! Ladies and gentlemen, the winner! It's new Heavyweight champion of the world Goldberg But not really We'll announce tomorrow night

That it wasn't actually a sanctioned match And hell we should have known that There wasn't even a fucking referee I heard to start the thing But still Goldberg leaves with the physical possession of the belt Something Jay White knows a lot about But I'm sure this received its fair share criticism. I mean, you've made the analogy before that this was sort of WCWs

WrestleMania. And you think back a few years prior to this at WrestleMania 9, I remember asking my friend who got the pay-per-view, hey man, Brett Hart and Yokozuna, who's the champ? Hulk Hogan. No, no, Hulk Hogan was in a tag match with Brutus Barber against IRS and Ted DiBiase. I'm talking about the world title match. Like, who's the world champion? Was it our champion, Brett Hart, or was it the challenge of your? Yokozuna when it was all over. Who was the world champion? Yeah, Holkogan.

Sort of the same thing here. Fast forward. Hey, who won the world title match? Hulk Hogan or Sting, uh, Goldberg? What? It's a whole new era. It's the WCW Russo era. And, uh, this was the first pay-per-view.

This is the first time you've seen it. Uh, 24 years later. What did you think, Eric? With the exception of the Goldberg's Sid match and, This match, which was on, I advertised, I think it was the drizzling shits. No other way to say it. Give it a three on a scale of one to ten. The fact that, you know, the cameras worked and the lights were on and people showed up,

gives it a three, but beyond that, it was freaking horrible. And this is coming from a guy that's produced some pretty shitty pay-per-views in my career. This one was the shits. Well, we hope that we haven't been the shits. but we'd love to have your reviews leave us a five-star review if you think we've earned it speaking of five-star reviews before we get out of here eric i know that you're a big connoisseur of this sort of thing and i wanted to get your opinion because we haven't talked about it on the show but there's a film that's been released in theaters

and i feel like is right up your alley killers of the flower moon the martin-scorsese film with robert de Niro and leonardo decaprio did you have a chance to check it out what did you think you know i did And it is absolutely phenomenal. First of all, it's a true story. It's about the Osage Indian tribe in Oklahoma. We're going back to the early 1900s, 1910, 1920. And at one point in time, the Osage Indians were the richest group of people in America

because there was oil underneath the land that they were given by the federal government, the reservation. There were allotments, if you will. They had the mineral rights to those allotments. Anyway, without going into the premise of the story in any more detail, because it's a true story and it's based on history, I automatically, you know, I'm at a six at a scale of one to ten before I even buy my ticket because I just love those kinds of movies.

Martin Scorsese did an amazing, amazing job directing this. Leonardo DiCaprio, if he doesn't get an Academy Award for this, I don't know who would or why. it's a long movie so know that going in but it's a part of american history and it's accurate and it's so so interesting and the performances were amazing direction martin scusezi did a great job as well written movie was shot well just everything about it i absolutely loved i'll probably see it again to be honest with you it was that good be sure to eat before you go it's a three and a half hour movie so with the previews you're going to be there four hours but i too recommend it i think it's

over 90% on rotten tomatoes it's a great show and we hope you guys thought we had a great show today we'll be back next week talking about a little a w a little old school a little keeping up with the modern stuff in the meantime we've got a raw in the way a smackdown in the way a Saudi arabia event a dynamite a collision oh my see you this time next week right here on 8 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling

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