83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 296: Ted Turner

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad discuss the incredible impact and career of television pioneer, Ted Turner. Eric shares stories of his time working for Turner, the first time he met him, and his admiration for the man that helped make WCW a household name. GAMETIME - Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. PRIZE PICKS - MANSCAPED - Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at Manscaped.com.  SPIIDERGRIIP - SpiiderGriip is the best phone grip around. Visit SPIIDERGRIIP.com. Use discount code 83WEEKS at checkout and receive 30% off and Free Shipping! 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. MIRACLE MADE - Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to TryMiracle.com/83WEEKS and use the code 83WEEKS to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF. 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

Hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish Off, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It is, though. It's a beautiful day. This is a fun time of year for us, because I'm I know we're both big holiday season fans. We get to spend time with family and all that. And we're right around the corner from Thanksgiving.

It's next week. So of course, we're going to be talking about some things that we're thankful for here on the program. Mostly today where we'll be celebrating the life and times of Mr. Ted Turner and all the time that Eric spent with him. We've gotten lots of requests for this show. We've always been kind of hesitant to do it. But today we're going to do our best to pay great tribute to a great man.

but before we do that we should talk about that great photo behind you hopefully you're watching with us 83 weeks over on youtube but man check that out from paintyourlife.com eric christmas came early at your household it did indeed and I'm so happy because you know you've been looking at my tree house here that I call a studio it's actually out in the bunk house but um you know it's kind of a lot of wood not a lot of color so now it pops and I've never kept it very few things that I keep as wrestling related memorabilia up over what is my right shoulder you can see the plaques that I got there from WWE when I was inducted the Hall of Fame and a couple pictures of Muhammad Ali and one up there that you can't see a Jay Leno

that's the extent really of my collectible so now I've got a right there smack dab in the middle I've got a piece of history in oil, an oil framed painting of one of the most, I don't, I think it's significant, not the most, but certainly in the top five. Oh, it's got to be the most significant of your career, right? No, my career, but I'm thinking about the wrestling industry as a whole because so much changed as a result of the Monday Night Wars and the competition between the two companies and, you know, just the elevation of the product across the boards, you know, it changed.

I think a big reason that WWE was able to go public and eventually sell to endeavor is largely because of the attitude era, the Monday night wars, the competitive nature of it, and how everybody's ratings went up. And ultimately, WWE ended up winning that war. But the process of fighting it over the couple, three, four years is one of the things that I think elevated the industry so much. And it kind of started with that moment.

It really is a piece of history. You could dissect it and look at it a million different ways. But, you know, other than Vince McMahon kind of deciding he was going to evaporate the territories and snag all the top talent, you know, regionally and create this national promotion consistent with the expansion of cable television, that was, in my mind, as far as things that really changed the business, that's number one. But this has got to be close. brother. It's got to be close.

Of course, we're talking about the fabulous painting that we ordered from Paint Your Life.com. And we revealed it on social media this past week. You can get one just in time for Christmas. Just text the word gift to 87204. That's gift, GIFT, to 87204. Get your free shipping and 20% off. And I don't mean to jump you there, kind of, but the thing that still amazes me, like when I first came out of here this morning to get everything set up and make sure all my stuff was working, I looked at the painting and I know Dave Silva just showed us some of the close-ups of it, but the detail in that picture, I mean, look at Scott Hall's face.

I mean, that's Scott Hall and Kevin and Hulk. I mean, just the detail in this. I don't know. It's so cool. I'm turning into an art fit. I've never been interested in oil paintings and all of a sudden I am. Well, listen, it's a great gift, but, uh, Eric, I, uh, I don't know to tell you this, but I didn't kind of anticipate you hanging this up in the bunkhouse.

You didn't anticipate me hanging it up in the bunk house? No, I was kind of thinking maybe we could, you know, do something for a great cause with that painting. Because like collectors like me, they'd probably pay a lot of money for that. And I thought maybe we could just raise some money for St. Jude's or something. And maybe you get Kevin Nash to sign it and you sign it and you get Hulk Hogan to sign it because I think you're going to be down in Florida at the beginning of next year for our top guy rumble. I don't know, just thinking maybe we could do something nice

for somebody and, but you sort of hung that one up already. Can we? Oh, it was mine. Isn't that the best gift, the gift of giving? I mean, it's St. Jude's. You really going to deprive those kids of that opportunity?

You nail me with St. Jude's. You got me to shave. my head for St. That's like your thing. You know, you know, all I got to do is hit the St. Jude's button.

He's going to do whatever I ask him to do. Kryptonite Jones. All right. Let's do it. Okay. All right. So next week, we'll have all the information about how you can own that painting.

Let's get a wide shot of that again. So I know you've got a full picture shot. This was hand done and it's framed and ready to go. Oh, wow. And the rumor in innuendo is Eric's going to be in Florida. over the holidays anyway so maybe we can snag a couple of signatures but we know for sure we can get easy e on there but this is one-to-one man and we're going to be raising some money for st jude so stay tuned next week but eric don't worry i'm not done with you eric bischoff this is your life

part two coming up this week on social media check it out at 83 weeks you planned this well this wasn't just a random gift showing up at my door which is what i thought it was this is now this is a Conrad Thompson strategy. Yeah, a little bit. Eric Bischoff, this is your life. Stay tuned to social media this week at 83 weeks. And if you want to get something like that for your family,

be sure to use the promo code gift. Just text the word gift to 87204. Get you 20% off and free shipping just in time for the holidays. Of course, somebody is not going to need any discounts because they're cashing in big. The news went. pretty wide this past week that, uh, well, there was a statement that everybody started to post again from the most recent filings report from the WWE that they basically said that we

recognize that Vince McMahon being part of our organization is a potential threat to our company. And he turned around and sold like eight million shares or announced his intention to sell like eight million shares. So, uh, Vinnie Mack going to be pocketing like $700 million dollars here just any day now what do you make yeah but is that before after taxes well you got to assume it's going into some sort of trust right like these guys aren't just pulling cash out and it's not going into checking account i'll tell you that what do you think of this news that vince is uh converting a little cash you know i don't know if it's just the way you presented the facts because you just you didn't editorialize you didn't you didn't it was no intonate

that somehow you were trying to make a point subtly. But just in terms of timing, it was announced that Vince McMahon is a risk, and then he sells whatever it is, 8 million shares. Do you think that that was a response? Do you think that was a, oh, I'm a risk, am I? Well, screw you. I'm going to dump a ton of stock in the market

and see how you feel about that. Is that the way you took it? It's just a thought. I don't know that Vince is. is bitter that way, but timing was interesting. That's a lot of money just to make a point, you know, but you can't, you know, he's still human, you know, he's still flawed. I could get that much money. Maybe it's a good, uh, maybe it's a good fuck you. I don't know. Of course, a couple of weeks ago, we saw prior to the

Saudi Arabian show, we saw Vince McMahon with the undertaker at the Tyson Fury fight and he actually did a little media. And during that interview, he referenced the new venue that had been built for the Tyson Fury fight as being the new home of WWE. And a lot of people took that to mean the home of WWE in Saudi Arabia. This is where we're going to run our shows when we're over here. And other people said, no, he meant they're going to try to do more business there. They're going to try to make an effort to grow WWE there in Saudi Arabia. That the new home. Now, of course, we know at the same time, they just opened up their brand new office and brand new building. And I think they even, uh, the day before Veterans Day erected that

3,000 square foot flag, which is unbelievable. The largest American flag now waves over the new WWE corporate headquarters in Stanford, Connecticut. What do you think? Do you think, because listen, when Vince sold that, just a couple of that amount of stock, just a couple weeks removed from that interview where he said, this is the new home of WWE. A lot of conspiracy theorists, a lot of people wearing some tinfoil hats are saying, maybe Vince is going to try to do something else with the Saudi Arabians outside of WWV. And I say, that's crazy talk. What say you? I say it's crazy simply because I'm sure there are terms within Vince's agreement that would

prevent him from competing in any meaningful way. Um, so yeah. And at this stage of his life, Vince is going to move to Saudi Arabia or be there on a regular basis. I can't see that either. But dude is a wild card. Yeah, nothing, when it comes to Vince McMahon, nothing surprises me. Yeah. Nothing. And I know, you know, we're here to talk about Ted Turner.

And one of the things that I want to talk about is we dig into. Ted a little bit, but I'll, I'll set the tone here for a moment, is the similarities between Ted Turner and Vince McMahon. I've never thought about it until Derek Sabato reached out and said, oh, here's the notes. And I'm looking through the notes and I'm flashing back to a book that I read a long time ago. And I tried to find it so I could bone up on it and read it again before this interview. I think the name of the book is called it ain't as easy as it looks by an author by the name of Porter Bibb. Now, there's been several biographies written about Ted Turner over the years,

the most recent one by Bill Burke, who used to be the president of TBS when I was there and I worked closely with Bill. But Porter Bibb was someone who was close to Ted. I think he was a good friend of Ted's. But regardless of that, wrote the first biography. And it did such a fascinating job of describing Vince's, excuse me, Ted's upbringing. And then, There's, there begins a lot of similarities, you know, troubled kids, really fractured relationship, at least with his father, his father was an alcoholic, beat him regularly, tough on him, sent him the military school. And of course, you know, we know Vince's background a little bit different, but it's kind

of the same type of youth and fractured relationship with the father and all that. But Ted was an amazing visionary and so is Vince. Now, I can't really put them side by side and say they're equal because I don't think anybody as an entrepreneur. You look at the things that Ted Turner did. And again, we'll talk about it more in a few moments. But in terms of professional wrestling, I think it's hard to deny that Vince McMahon is without question a visionary. And as a visionary and an entrepreneur and a guy who we feel. refuses to be his age, with a lot of money on his hands, maybe he's going to do something

different. Maybe it's not wrestling per se, but something different that's based in Saudi, or at least the operations are and Vince will be a big part of that. That I could see because there's so much potential there. Look what's going on with the Saudis in their investment in sports and perhaps Vince sees an opportunity there to spit off into another form of sports entertainment or another business completely and uh and do it over in saudi because he's got the money to do it with got the time and he thinks he's 24 so who knows maybe i'm with you i think he could be doing something i just don't think it'll be a competitive space for wb i mean we saw what dana white did with power slap and i know that was not without controversy and certainly a lot

of people have been critical of it and i think a lot of that criticism is fair however he did an interview over the weekend where he said, hey, I've never revealed this publicly, but it's a $450 million company. And that was the first time we heard that. And that is Dana White's spinoff, if you will, from the UFC. I could see, I mean, we've seen Vince try this before with the WBF, with the XFL. Like, what is this next thing going to be for Vince? You got to assume if he's converting stock, he's either doing it to be in a pissing contest or he's getting ready for his next play. Let me ask you a question because I'm a little murky, mostly because I don't follow it closely enough. But not too long ago, we're talking maybe six, eight weeks ago. It was

announced that Saudi was going to invest in a competitive MMA league. That's right. Correct? Yep. Now just within weeks, we've seen, and I've read and listened to Dana White talking about how Vince McMahon was a key element to arranging business between UFC and Saudi, right? Yep. That's interesting, isn't it? It is interesting. Because one would think that if Saudi was interested in launching their own MMA company, that that would preclude, or exclude, I should say, UFC from doing any business with them,

because why would you spend hundreds of millions of dollars bringing in your competition? Maybe Vince's position here in this mystery is that he is going to be somehow involved in the relationship that involves Saudi and the expansion of UFC in Saudi. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see what's happening there. I know everybody is sort of rubbing their hands together, like waiting on the other shooter drop, whatever that looks like with Vince McGowan and WWE. And I feel like they're also doing that about seeing punk.

There's been a lot more stories that have started to come to the forefront where people are bringing around all these different theories. Of course, we are just days away from the big AEW pay-per-view. And that's happening this weekend at the forum in Los Angeles. It's a Saturday night pay-per-view. and I guess the suggestion is with MJF once again defending the Ring of Honor tag team titles on the pregame show this time against the guns and he's looking for a partner as we're recording this in the main event he's with the title with Jay White lots of people have started to speculate who is under that devil mask is it Jack Perry is it Tony Cohn please no is it C punk who is it and then there's other people who say oh no see and punk can't be at that show because he's at the pay-per-view the following weekend the Saturday after Thanksgiving he's going to be at Survivor Series doing war games and they just announced that they are indeed bringing war games back I personally think that's super cool that Cody Rhodes is finally going to get to wrestle in a match that was maybe made famous and created by his own father first time I think Cody's been in a war game so I'm pretty excited about that but a lot of people are saying

Seampunk's going to be there because it's Chicago. Has your opinion about where C and Punk lands changed it all? Well, I still think it's a remote possibility. I've never come out and said there's no way it'll ever happen. I know better than that for crying out loud. I've been involved in too many things that everybody thought wouldn't never happen. Right. So, but I do feel.

that it's extremely remote. One just because, logically, WWE doesn't need them. Their business is strong. They're selling out everywhere they go for TV. Their finances are, each time they present them, their records. So I don't know where the need would be.

I certainly don't believe it would be in Chicago this weekend. I just don't. Because there's definitely no need there. Today's already sold out. Why do it? Obviously, there's a much bigger audience than just that audience in Chicago, but again, I'll go back to what I just stated. They don't really need it.

Oh, my dog, just came in and blew me out. They just, WWU doesn't need it. Now, Royal Rumble? Going into WrestleMania, I could buy that as a possibility, because it makes sense. Even though they don't need punk, by any stretch of imagination, there is absolutely zero need for him.

However, getting that surge of momentum and that reaction that you know you would get, especially because of the nature of Royal Rebel, it's just built for that kind of thing. The buzz going into WrestleMania, that's a period of time when you want every, get a buzz you can get. I can see that happening, but I just don't see it happening in Chicago.

Now watch, it'll fucking happen in Chicago. I'll take my average down to below 80% again. I hate that. Well, I don't know about that. Here's what I do know. If you're wanting to go to the forum this weekend, or if you're wanting to go to Chicago for the war games next weekend, you got to check out our friends at game time. I've told the story before, but my daughter hit me up just a few months ago.

and she was just hours before the show and asked if I could get her tickets to a big concert here in town and I thought no problem I bought so much radio and TV over the years here I can just make a couple of calls I can get some cops totally sold out

absolutely no chance of tickets the fastest sell out in the history of the venue for Lana Del Rey I didn't even know who that was and I'm like wait how did this happen and then I remembered aha the GameTime app

not only did dad come through she got front row tickets and it was cheaper that i could find last row tickets online okay that's not exactly as yours 20 dollars more but for 20 dollars more instead of sitting on the absolute last row she got to sit front row i was super dad i took more pride in that moment than i can remember i mean what a what a great way to make someone's day they're asking for tickets and you can come through with primo tickets game time was my secret ingredient they will be for you to use this for a date for a spouse for a gift for a gift uh for a father-in-law or whoever this is a home run you get last minute tickets you get flash deals you get zone deals and they just eliminate all the guesswork with the game time app you can get a

pov shot of what your ticket's going to look like what i mean is we've all seen a seat map before and we're like okay that looks like a good ticket but is it well from here you get the perspective of okay this is what my view will be like that eliminates all the risk speaking of that let's talk about the peace of mind you get with game time they've got a game time guarantee where it means they guarantee you'll always get the best price here's how it works if you find tickets in the same section in row for less money game time will credit you 110 of the difference not a hundred percent to make sure you got the best deal they're going to get you the best deal by 10 percent. They credit you a hundred and ten percent of the difference. It's unbelievable. I highly

recommend it. And it's last minute. So if you missed it. Oh, it's tonight. No problem. Game time's got you. Well, it says it's sold out. No problem. Game time's got you. Well, I don't want to overpay. No problem. Game time's got you for football, for basketball, for baseball, for for concerts, for comedy, for theater. Just take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time. Here's what you do. You download the game time app. You create an account and you use use the code weeks, we'll get you $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem the code weeks.

That's WEEKS for $20 off. Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. So, Eric, let's talk about some other news and notes. We've got the big AEW paper review coming up this weekend. They've built a really nice card for that. We've also seen an announcement that there is a Sega co-promotion with Dynamo. we saw not too long ago the Texas chainsaw massacre death match with Jeff Hardy and

Jeff Jarrett and a lot of people panned it online and were critical of it but I think what they forget was Tony donated not only the entire gate that weekend to charity for that show but he donated all of the money that was brought in for that partnership for the video game now we've got another one here a video game co-op with Sega I like the idea that we're seeing more tie-ins with matches as a as a advertiser these are the type ads I would want I want to be sort of in game I want to be in show content I don't want to be you know somewhere in a stop set

in a commercial break make me part of the program is this the new the new way of doing business and making money in the wrestling business do you think It sure seems that way, doesn't it? And it makes sense. You know, it's product placement. Private placement has been around since forever. Yeah.

It became really financially, it created its own market back around the early 2000s when reality programming became a thing. And it started to explode. Part of that was because of the writer's strike, of course. Part of that was because it was new and it was different. You know, reality television, unscripted television was very popular in Europe, Australia, long before it became popular in the United States. It kind of migrated here, really, you know, not any one person, but Mark Burnett had a lot to do with it. Real World was one of the first reality shows, but financially insignificant, where if you look at what Survivor did, that was an entirely new business model and really changed the industry, the television industry. And part of that was product placement because as a reality unscripted television producer,

you just had a lot more leeway to include products in shots in ways that, as opposed to just have a, you know, a bottle of whiskey with a, you know, a label that everybody recommends kind of position on the bar and a shot in nonscripted programming, you can make it a part of the show and in a very organic way that certainly. connects with viewers much differently than an advertisement. We're all trained, conditioned, consciously even, to tune out commercials. Our brains just automatically start tuning stuff out unless it's a very, very good commercial. This is a great way. And if wrestling is finding ways, if Tony's finding ways and WWE as we've seen has found ways, I just think that makes one more thing that makes that genre so much more valuable than scripted programming. And in some respects, even more so than sports programming, because you

don't have that latitude in sports. It's a much different environment. So I hope we see more of it. You know, the key, I think Conrad is going to be doing it in a tasteful way that has a positive impact on the advertiser without overdoing it so much that it becomes too obvious. And the viewer start pushing back. But I think that, you know, we're used to seeing. you know product placement and so many other things I think it's unless it's really egregious on the part of the producer there's a lot of room to do product placement and make it feel like it's part of the programming which is really it's great opportunity I really look forward to these type things I like it I do think it's the future I think I would rather see

these type environments for this sort of thing like I remember a few years ago maybe it wasn't even that long ago. Ms. was taken over and eaten by zombies as a part of the walking dead. And I understand the walking dead just paid an absolute mint for that. So I'm happy for that. But like I can't help but think about like that Nick Gage Chris Jericho match where he starts using a pizza cutter and they immediately go to a Domino's thing.

And that was an accidental thing. But if I was Domino's rather than running from that, I would have been excited about that. Like you're making me part of the program. And like when you and I go back and we do a watch along. And we're watching like an old nitro, and we're hearing from Lee Marshall, we see that 1,800 collect thing right on, right on screen or that call ATT, whatever it is. But we would do the same thing with like the Valvaline replay. Like that in program content is still on the network.

Long after that check's been cashed to another company, it's still there. So having that sort of forward thinking to make yourself a part of the content, I think is really a good play and a good value for the advertiser as well. So I'm excited to see more of it. And especially at a time, Conrad, when the world, you know, advertising is is a more difficult industry now than it's probably ever been with regard to television because because of streaming, because of the decline in network, because, you know, the deterioration and cable for that matter, all of a sudden now, you know, your digital advertising budgets are increasing, your linear television budgets are decreasing. So if you're still advertising on

television, or you're producing, or you're a network, you've got to do whatever you can to make your commercials or advertising within your shows as attractive as it can be. And again, wrestling is the one program where you can really find a lot of creative ways to do it. And I'm with you. I think it's an exciting development in the business of the wrestling business. well let's talk about the business of the wrestling business um but before we do i think we should talk a little bit about football because football season's here i'm having such a great time with football season i'm having a lot of fun busting jeffat's balls about his hapless tennessee volunteers having a lot of fun busting tony's balls about being an all of a sudden jaguars fan

but what i really enjoy is being able to play daily fantasy sports not just a against strangers, but against myself. I'm talking about our friends at prize picks. This has been a new hobby of mine this off season. I think this is the most fun I've had playing daily fantasy sports because I'm not playing other people. I'm just playing against the numbers. Let me explain. Instead of battling pros and sharks because that's who's in those other leagues, I'm just picking more than or less than on a couple of different player stat projections and watching the money roll in. Prospects and even help you win 25 extra money this football season and now you can

even play basketball. You just select two or more players and then pick more than or less than on their projected stats and place your entry. It really is that easy. For example, is Joe Burrow going to throw for more than two passing touchdowns? Is Travis Kelsey going to have more than 75 receiving yards? That's it. You pick more than or less than. Like Christian McCaffrey. Is he going to have more than or less than 75 rushing yards? What about your boy Patrick Mahomes? Is he going to have more than two passing touchdowns? Was he going to have less than? And over in basketball, what about Stefan Curry? 29 points? More than or less than? See, it's that simple. I absolutely love this. I think you will too. They've even got a reboot policy

so your entries stay in play even if one of your players get injured. So like for football and basketball games. Let's see you have a player who exits the game in the first half and doesn't come back in the second. Well, that player is rebooted. As far as I know, prize picks is the only daily fantasy sports platform that has that injury insurance policy. I think it's really cool. And they've even got lots of fun folks who are playing this game now with prize picks. We're talking about guys like Meek Mill, one of my favorite rappers, one of my favorite comedians, Andrew Schultz. He's on it too. You can even find community plays under the promos tab of the app to view some of the entries from some of the bigger names and entertainment everybody

is playing price picks you will be too test your skills find out how easy it is if you got the skills man turn 10 bucks at a 250 bucks and they make it so easy you make your picks and get them submitted in less than 60 seconds they got quick withdrawals dude they're even doing apple pay now so they make it super easy to make your deposits oh and they're running promotions how about taco tuesday day. They discount player selection projections up to 25% to provide even more value. There's a reason prize picks is the number one daily fantasy sports app, and we want you to try it. Go right now to prizepicks.com slash 83 weeks. Use our code 83 weeks for a first deposit match of up to $100. That's prizepicks.com slash $83 weeks. Use the code 83 weeks for a first deposit match

up to $100. That's prizepix.com slash $83 weeks. Use the code 803 weeks. Use the code 803 weeks. three weeks. You're going to love prospects. Daily fantasy sports made easy. Let's talk about the wrestling business. Then we're going to talk about Ted Turner. Boy, there was a lot of news going around this last week. Now, we sort of had part one of the news last week where Billy Corgan, I guess, pushed for and advocated for, according to the story, as the legend goes, a cocaine spot on the most recent NWA pay-per-view. He does this on the heels of announcing that he's got not one but two shows with a top 20 cable network but he will not reveal who it is but the internet figured out oh it's the c w so everyone starts

reporting it's the c w i don't think it's ever formally or officially announced by billy corgan but on the heels of that quote unquote cocaine spot lots of speculation that folks at c w were not thrilled with that and in fact the tv opportunity maybe in jeopardy maybe now it's just going to become a streaming show and a couple of days later they announced that nxte's new home is the cw so once upon a time i know behind the scenes there were a couple of folks working on bringing wrestling to the cw i guess at the last minute it looked like to-da nope billy corgan got it and then the big announcement heard of expression an old man told me a long time ago money always goes where it belongs. Well, it belongs with NXT and WWE. CW has this opportunity

now. What did you make of this news? And did you see Billy Corrigan's response where he says he can't reveal, but there's been lots of speculation and lots of misinformation and it's not true. Everything he said is true and we'll see soon enough. What do you make of this? It's, it's funky. Funky like a monkey baby. It's funky. So, I, on Strictly Business, last week, we had a chance to, John Albin, I had a chance to talk to Mike Johnson from PW Insider. Mike Johnson, by the way, is the person who broke the news before anybody else on NXT going to CW. And Mike had been following things going on at CW for quite some time. And I don't want to put words in Mike's mouth.

I encourage people to go to Strictly Business and hear the interview because it was a very interesting interview. But I believe Mike has some great sources within CW. And the whole Corrigan moving NWA to, again, according to Mike Johnson now, it was never a conversation. It was never in play. The conversation that was in play between CW and Corrigan was for a self-funded, self-funded, non-scripted series about Billy and his life. and I'm sure wrestling was in the background.

That was a discussion. Uh-huh. There was never a discussion about NWA. So in typical internet wrestling community fashion, you know, Mike Johnson, who sat on a lot of the stuff that he had until he was absolutely sure, everybody else, the day balcers of the world all run and start spewing forth all kinds of garbage about CW and NWA and all the cocaine spot cratered the opportunity.

the fucking opportunity never existed in the first place. So the spot didn't create anything or destroy any opportunity because it wasn't there in the first place. It wasn't a topic of conversation. There was not a negotiation. There wasn't a deal pending. It's a figment of the internet wrestling community imagination. And the fun that everybody has taking a little kernel of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of truth or fact. and then building him Taj Mahal of bullshit on top of it.

So that's what I think about that. As far as Billy teasing a top 20 network, whatever. I don't know Billy well enough. I've seen nothing against Billy at all. I don't know him well enough to read him or try to. But I'm throwing a flag on that. I just, yeah, he can probably be talking to top 20 network. He's probably going to pay for the show.

It's going to be a buy-on. That doesn't take it. particular talent. It certainly doesn't make your brand worth anything. You're just another fishing show. Take out the fish in the boat and put in wrestlers and there's your business model. It's been around forever. So who knows? We'll see. I hope for the best. I don't know I sound like I'm taking shots of Billy. I don't mean to, but I am taking shots at this kind of bullshit, cloudy, murky. I guess it's promotion. I don't really even feel like it's promotion, but it's just I guess Billy's way of proving that there's still a pulse at NWA and he's still

pursuing it and I guess there's nothing wrong with that but don't be so murky in the process Billy be straightforward you're straight shooting guy just keep doing that there's a lot of talented people who work there uh in the NWA I mean you go back a few years and man they had thunder Rosa on that show and they had LA night on that show and they had Eddie Kingston on that show and homicide and Ricky Starks and so much other great talent. And I know that's a we're a few years removed from that. But still, you know, this is another guy like Dixie Carter before him and Tony Con, after him, I suppose, who is a man who's had a lot of, a person who's had a lot of success and has the financial capacity and has a vision and, and he's trying

his best to put his money where his mouth is. But it feels like since the pandemic, man, they've really struggled to get momentum going again. And of course, there was the, I don't know, maybe ugly, we might call it, departure of Nick Aldis. And a lot of people thought he was sort of synonymous with that brand. And now we see him as the GM on Smackdown. What if anything do you think Billy Corrigan can do to pull the nose up on this thing and get some positive momentum going for the NWA? Because him being successful there would be great for the entire industry. The only thing that Billy Corgan could do was to sit down with his financial team and determine how much money he personally has invested in NWA at this point. Maybe add to

that a little bit, throw a couple million more in, have enough of your own skin in the game, and then go out and raise a boatload of money. Because until and unless he takes that show on the road and you create the live event, which is where the rights fees are, it's just right in your face. It's not, there's no question about it. WWE is getting the money that they're getting. AEW potentially is going to get whatever money they're going to get it because they've established themselves as a live action destination with a significant audience each and every week.

That's what Billy needs to do. Billy could bring in all the talent in the world he wants to. it's not a talent issue. It's a scale issue. As long as NWA is produced in these little tiny venues with little tiny audiences, you're never going to be able to have an adult conversation

with someone in programming or some executive studio or network about making this a real thing. It's got a tour. And it's expensive. That's where the investment is. The investment, TNA learned it. I mean, TNA could have and should have been in business to this very day.

They wouldn't make the move. They wouldn't make the move to invest long term in touring the television show and establishing the fact that this was a live action attraction each and every week in prime time. Had they done that with Spike TV, now Biacom, it would be a different world today. but they refused to do it for whatever their reasons were. And that's what NW. That's what Corgan has to do. He has to be able to put together a group of an investors and they're out there, folks.

They are out there. This would not be, you know, I wouldn't want to be doing it at this stage of my life, but if I was 20 years younger and I was looking at the state of the industry the way it is right now and the opportunities that still exist as a result of it, I would find a way to raise $100 million or more knowing that it's going to take five to seven years to get a return on that investment, but the return on that investment would be substantial.

And I would go out there and become a legitimate number two or three. Because Tony Kahn's vulnerable. AEW as content is vulnerable. And if somebody were to come out and put together a program that you could produce in front of three or four thousand people, because that's all Tony Kahn's doing, they're lucky to get 4,000 people at a live dynamite and even less for collision or rampage. So it's not like it can't be done, but you have to have the balls and the money and the patience to do it. other than that it's a vanity project for billy corgan and he's going to continue spitting his he's going to have fun in his little hamster wheel until he's not having fun and it'll go away but it's never going to be worth anything unless it scales up i'm pulling for him i uh i appreciate

when a guy has a vision and puts his money where his mouth is and goes out of his way to try to create jobs and opportunities and i know there's been a lot of people who've taken a lot of, uh, joy and dunking on the perceived loss of this television deal and, and the perceived L for the NWA. I'm not one of them. I don't, I don't think that's good for wrestling. I think, you know, I want every promotion to do better and better. Um, I am curious what's next for the NWA though, because if, if they're not going to be doing the CW thing, I kind of thought, man, that's, that's the break they were looking for and like we've seen you know MLW certainly and I guess they have got a lawsuit with

w to be about it because I guess they had a a show and then allegedly reportedly there's evidence that maybe WWE put the kibosh on that but it feels like this is sort of the same thing but you're saying in your conversation with Mike Johnson over on strictly business that was never the case and this is just right time right place for WW and CW right yeah I know I it's a Apparently, because this is the first time I've heard CW within the context of a professional wrestling conversation, but apparently if, again, I read it, I don't know if it's true. And I can't even credit where I heard it. I typically would do that or where I read it. But evidently, uh, CW approached Tony Kahn a while back.

I've heard that about positive. I'm sorry? I heard that. And I heard it was true that they were interested in Ring of Honor. Isn't that funny? And I guess, you know, I mean, I know some folks who were working on a show that they had a whole plan and it was a good plan. And I got excited about the plan about doing a weekly show live on CW. I shouldn't share any more details, but like it was pretty far down the road. And then I think that sort of went cold on them a little bit. And maybe it was because Billy had heard. So maybe Billy made a play. That's certainly what a lot of tinfoil hat wearing folks were thinking. And. And I guess this whole announcement of NXT now looking for a home bubble to the surface. But I guess, yeah, somewhere along the way, there was at least an interest with Tony Kyn about or an interest on the CW side about getting Ring of Honor television on CW.

And I guess Tony felt like he needed that card to up the rights value of the A.W deal. What do you think of that strategy? Like, yes, we could use our B property, Ring of Honor, and go get them a, a. much better viable opportunity with CW, or we could use that as maybe a chess piece and bringing out when we need to for our bigger opportunity, the AEW deal. I can see both sides of that. You know, part of me, part of me would probably lean towards diversifying and using a show to get on CW because you just don't want to be in a position,

trust me what I tell you where all of your eggs are in one basket in anything, whether it be stocks or real estate holdings or licensing deals with television studios. You know, you want to, or networks, you want as much diversification as you could get. And, you know, that's one of the things, again, on Strictly business we talked about at length was how you look at WWE now and they've got an XT lined up on a network. you've got Smackdown lined up on cable and potentially raw lined up on a streaming platform. It makes more sense now than it ever has for that very reason, because now you're diversified. You're not putting all of your eggs in one basket or even two.

Now you're spread across three opportunities. And if you're Nick Khan and you've been led to believe, or you just believe, that CW is making an attempt to grow their audience. There's nothing wrong with being a big fish in a small pod, especially if that big fish is Nxte, which is your third string brand. And now you've got a foothold in network. It's pretty smart.

And I, if I were Tony in that position that he theoretically was in or supposedly was in with CW, I think I would have planted a flag just for the diversification and because it gives you leverage in future negotiations because TBS would know that you have other opportunities, viable ones. I think that would have been a smart move, but I also understand the play that he would make and want to have as much leverage with his television partner as he could have

going into negotiations. So I see it both ways, but if I would have had to make a decision in Tony's shoes, I would have diversified. I think I would have two, you know, that's, um, but you know, he's a billionaire and we're not. So, yeah, but he didn't make that billion dollars. Oh, come on. I'm no, no, no, but that's, we're talking about business. You don't think he consults his dad. Yeah, but he's a billionaire then implies that he has the vision and the experience and the entrepreneurial qualities and all of the things that it takes to become a billionaire. Tony inherited,

Tony inherited his money. He didn't make his money. And that's important when you're talking about a judgment like we were just talking about in context. You think he doesn't communicate with his dad? It's not the same thing, brother. Okay. Let's talk about manscaped. Eric Bischoff has grotesque dick hair or he did.

But it was so much. it was like he had a werewolf and a head scissor down there. It was bad. Just gray hair as far as you can see. I mean, it was sticking out of his shorts. He came swimming over the summer here at the Conradison. And I told him I wouldn't tell anybody and I'm betraying confidences because I'm a whore.

And he came over and it looked like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. You know how the straw just stuck out. Well, that's what it was in his banana hammock. He never got the memo. You're not wearing banana hammocks anymore. He thought he was on the bruise cruise cruise. circa 95 and uh well we we got it tackled we held that rascal down and mrs b went to business with the manscape lawnmore 5.0 ultra and now it's the unsung hero or the holiday season

it's time to go cold turkey on your old razor and take care of your own turkey leg with the lawnmore 5.0 ultra visit manscape.com use our promo code 83 weeks we'll get you 20% off and free shipping and you can enjoy Thanksgiving and style at the lawnmore 5.0 Ultra. Gobble, gobble, boys. Now, listen, this is the present you want to give.

Now, you want to trim yourself up, okay, in time for the Thanksgiving. Nobody wants to show up to the dinner table with a big old hairy dick. Nobody. Now, when it comes time around for Christmas,

and you've already gifted your father, your father-in-law, your brother, your uncle, this is the ultimate gift for the guy for you to give. Because they're going to use it. they're going to thank you for it their spouse is really going to thank you for it but this is the type of thanksgiving holiday meal dinner you can conversation you can have how's that dick hair

looking uncle eric don't let your poor grooming be the topic of the dinner conversation this year with the lawnmore 510 ultra you'll be the talk of the table show them that turkey leg it's waterproof you can groom it wet or dry let's face it we want to look our best when we're carving that bird You don't want to have a beautiful bird and a sad sack, literally. Plus, the LED spotlight ensures you don't miss a spot, even in low light situations. And I have on good authority, there's parts of Dave Silva that have never seen the light. Speaking of carving, the dual skin safe blade heads are your best two tag team partners. The trimmer blade takes care of business.

The foil blade gives you that irresistibly sleek finish. Think of them as like the midnight express of your ball hair. Like a winning touchdown at the Thanksgiving table. by the way everybody goes back for seconds on thanksgiving and your spouse will be too thanks to this performance package 5.0 ultra you've also got the lawnmore 5.0 ultra in the package and how about the weed whacker 2.0 ear and nose hair trimmer all the liquid formulations plus two free gifts seriously you're going to smell like royalty with the crop soother after shave lotion the crop preserver anti-chafe ball deodorant everybody needs those jingle balls come on now the gift

of Manscape doesn't stop there. The free gifts, man. The underwear and the shed 2.0 toiletry bag. J.R. Seriously, if you find him at an AEW show, ask him about his shed travel bag. He's got his deodorant in there. He's got his aftershave in there. He's got his vape pen and I've said too much. Listen, get 20% off and free shipping with the code 83 weeks at Manscape.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at Manscape.com. Be sure to use our code 83 weeks. be thankful this holiday season for the best gift of all for Manscaped.

Your balls will thank you. Those are, every time you go into a Manscape ad, I just correct. Listen, we get to. And by the way, I love the headlight

on the lawnmower. Yeah. That headlight is so cool. I just dig it. And that thing is powerful. How's your dick here? Pretty sleek, brother. That's what I like to hear.

That's what I like to hear. uh so listen our topic today is not tony con it's not billy corkin it's not even vincent man it's ted turner ted turner is an icon of business and if you're not necessarily a uh type of person who reads books about business and i happen to be one of those unfortunately you might not know a lot about ted we're going to do our best to drop some knowledge on you i know everybody listening to this knows about his wrestling life and we're going to talk about that too but when i say i mean having read about him worked with him around him been in his part of his empire once upon a time when i say ted turner to you what do you immediately think

of like if we were doing word association with ted turner what would you think of entrepreneur yeah that's that's that's that's at the core of who ted turner is we uh we're going to talk a little bit about his journey here he begins in his family business turner advertising his father commits suicide in march of 1963 and ted starts to turn that firm into a global enterprise that sound familiar Vince McMahon taken over that's what I mean man the parallels if you just think about them the parallels are pretty amazing and you know Turner advertising was essentially a billboard company yes that's that's what it was they

They weren't selling advertising in the television industry or things like that. They were a billboard outdoor advertising company. Do you know, have you ever heard or I mean, this is what I heard. I'm going to ask you. Do you know what like Ted's big innovation was in the billboard business? I do not. So and these days, of course, we've all seen a digital billboard. That's pretty common now.

But that wasn't always the case. So think about it. like on some level if you just strip away everything you know about what we're talking about right now if you're going to sell a billboard like if you had to describe that to someone it would be it's a it's space you're selling space on the side of a road so think of it if it was a magazine you're selling space in a magazine right or for television show you're selling space inside a program or for a billboard it's just a couple of a poll or two and there's this giant sign and you're just selling space on the side of the road? Well, the trouble is in order to make more money,

you have to charge more money for that billboard, which is hard to do. Go open your customer's pricing, but you can do it incrementally. Or you've got to go get more land leases or buy more land and build more billboards. That's kind of cost prohibitive. Then you're going to negotiate with a bunch of different people, work out all these different terms. Or what if you could sell the same billboard over and over and over and over at the same time? So back in the day there was the billboards that turned eric so it would say one thing and then the billboard would turn so individual slats on the billboard would spend that's a ted turner innovation i did not know that so you could sell that you set up one billboard that could spin a few times

and show a few different things this is long before you could do digital billboards well that's how ted turner was able to scale and get so much market share and built so much wealth all of his competitors were selling just one fixture of a billboard he's able to sell multiple advertisers the exact same board at the exact same time. So that sort of innovation is what helped propel Ted Turner's success. And he decides, let's take what we've been doing with advertising and let's start buying radio stations in the South. Now, of course, he's in the South and he's going to start to buy radio stations in his neck of the woods because, again, it's one thing to sell the advertising. It's another thing to own the air,

to own the billboards so he's just continuing to expand and uh the book that we referenced it ain't as easy as it looks um long before he starts to build this television empire and gathering up the rights to things like the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks we know who'd eventually purchase those teams but he starts by I got to get those rights but to see that that's the long-term play when he starts with billboards and then radio stations and then television stations and then the rights to air the teams and then own the teams I mean this is I hate to use buzzwords like this and you and I both hate this word we've said it to each other independently you want to talk about vertical integration Ted Turner

was doing that shit way back when right he invented it he did he invented it And, you know, you're right. I mean, he bought Channel 17, I think it was WTCG in 1970, is when he purchased a little UHF station, purchased the Braves, I believe, in 76, the Hawks shortly thereafter, launched CNN, the first 24-hour worldwide cable news outlet. I mean, when people say someone is a visionary, you know, there are degrees. levels, I think Ted Turner in his era was, he was the Elon Musk of his era. He really, really was. And when you think about the impact that Ted Turner had on cable television in general, I know I'm digging a little bit here, I'm getting a little weedy. Do it.

But if you look at the first. financials of all the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. If you look at their financials, they are primarily, especially NBC, CBS and ABC, primarily being kept afloat because of the profitability of their news divisions. Right. A lot of the other areas of those networks are hemorrhaging cash. they're only being kept afloat because of the strength of their news divisions. By the way, their news divisions are only really capable of growing and sustaining because of cable news.

Not because of network news at night, cable news is the most profitable part, I believe. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty certain when I say cable news is the financial bedrock. of the major networks. That wouldn't be true. Were it not for Ted Turner in 1980 when he created CNN? Because as soon as he created CNN, Rupert Murdoch was right on his ass,

which is why he had to go and ask permission from Ted to do business with Fox because it was such a competitive situation between Rupert and Ted at that time. And they were, you know, badmouting each other in the press. and taking shots at each other and all kinds of shit. It was a little bit like me and Vince back in the early 90s or mid-90s.

But if you can imagine what the world would look like right now if 24-hour cable news didn't exist because networks probably wouldn't exist. I mean, so many things changed because of Ted Turner in the footprint and the legacy that he's created. And I don't know, other than Elon Musk, if you can point to another. contemporary visionary today that is on the same level as Ted Turner. I mean, I know we're going to be skipping around here, but let's just talk about what you, what you said there, because I agree with you, but I don't know that I ever would

have thought to compare him and Elon, and I realize Elon's polarizing these days for a variety of reasons, but digital billboards, well, Ted was doing that first, cable TV, Ted was doing that first, 24 hour news stations, Ted was doing that first, owning multiple teams. of people owned multiple teams in different sports. Ted was doing that. I mean, he got ahead of so much. And even like these days, you look at the success of a streaming network, like a Netflix and all the investments they make and securing the rights to movies and things and production. Ted was doing movies for TV. Ted was going back and buying the classics and colorizing. He saw value in owning those movies. The whole television rights thing in

large part is because of Ted Turner. I mean, cable TV is a thing because of Ted Turner. And so when we as wrestling fans think about Ted Turner, we think about, oh, and then he bought Jim Crockett promotions. I am literally the world's biggest fucking Jim Crockett promotions mark. I have a set recreated in my warehouse right now for Rick Flair's last match. Like, it's a, it was a love letter to my childhood and pro wrestling. I absolutely loved it. However, CNN. cable tbs the braves the hawks in the scheme of things cockat promotions probably wouldn't make top 10 of the conversation of ted turner but that's what we know him for and we've also known

that he was a maverick this was the type of guy who allegedly eric wore cowboy boots and suits right he did you know one of the there's certain things that i remember about 10 i want to be really clear. I didn't have, like Ted and I didn't hang out, obviously, but I didn't even have a direct relationship or direct report to Ted. I reported either to Bill Shaw, who reported to Ted, or I reported the Harvey Schiller, who reported to Ted. I interface with Ted, famously about Nitro. The rest of the time, it was phone calls that I got, usually on Tuesday afternoons, congratulating me, listening to him laugh, talking about the ratings. And I would see him at company events a couple times a year.

I did get invited to a couple of Christmas parties at Terry McGurck's house, very small, modest home for president of TBS and, you know, would see Ted there along with other executives. But I didn't have much interface with Ted at all. But yeah, you talk about an entrepreneur in a visionary. I don't know where we left off or what led me into making that comment, but fascinating, fascinating individual. People always say, you know, what was it like to work for Ted Turner?

My response is always the same. If Ted called me on the phone right now and said, Eric, I'll make you a deal. If you cut off two fingers off your left hand, I got a gig for you, I'd do it myself. I mean, he was such a, so much fun to work for it. And again, not because I had so much interaction with him, but Ted set the tone in Turner broadcasting. Ted was an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. One of the first pictures that Dave Silva put up there had a little plaque in front of it. It's a lead follower, get out of the way. A lot of people have that poster, plaque or whatever, you know, in your office. Ted lived

by it. Ted lived by it. As long as you were trying, as long as you had a vision, as long as you were doing something different than everybody else was doing, you'd get a lot of rope in Turner Broadcasting. Ted really supported entrepreneurs and visionaries, and it wasn't so much that you would be successful or unsuccessful as it was how much you were thinking outside of the box, how much of an entrepreneur you were. And Ted rewarded entrepreneurs. If he didn't, WCW would have never lasted two years. It would have never lasted two years because immediately there were executives in Turner Broadcasting that wanted to pull the plug on WCW.

I've talked about that a million times. So was other people, I'm sure. But it was true. Ted stuck with it. And he let WCW fail any number of times before I took over and bounce off the bottom, many number of times before I took over. And he stuck with it. Because he had a vision for it.

And, man, to be able to work for somebody like that that rewards risk-taking, as opposed to, I think, in most corporate environments today, everybody is so risk-adverse that you're walking on eggshells constantly. It's business-wise. It's just a different world today than it was when Ted was running Turner Broadcasting. you know, pre AOL time Warner merger because then it became something completely different. What I appreciated most about Ted is the idea that he, uh, he had no problem facing adversity or a challenge. He liked to compete. He didn't run from it. There's that famous story where he

closes on the acquisition of Jim Crockett promotions. And of course, Jim Crockett had been the last remaining territory, if you will, the last rival to Vince McMahon's WWF. And, you know, the 80s were, we're certainly all about Vince McMahon and his expansion. But tries they might, the Crockett's tried to keep up with Sarkade and 83. And then they can, they started to spin off other pay per views, you know, once the paper review era came around and tried to compete with WrestleMania and they would try to do some licensing deals and things like that. But eventually Vince McMahon and his.

new approach and his he was not risk averse let's just say that eventually uh they just outmanned and outmaned and outmaneuvered crocket promotions and it had been such a big part of ted's presentation and his lineup on tbS going back to the georgia championship wrestling days i mean once upon a time he had three different shows on the air three different wrestling shows on tbs and famously you know he even had vince his show the whole Black Saturday thing. So he's familiar with Vince, knows Vince,

and as the rumor and innuendo goes, Eric, he picks up the phone and calls Vince McMahon and says something like, Vince, I just want to let you know, I'm in the wrestling business. And of course, Vince,

as the story goes, allegedly says, well, we're in the sports entertainment business. What, do you, did you, had you heard that story before or is that just a piece of wrestling

lore that, Ted just picked up the phone and called Vance. I've heard this story before. I don't know if it's true or not. I like to believe it is because it sounds like something Ted would do. It does. I mean, he was, you know, they call him the mouth of the south, you know, all their respect to Jimmy Hark.

Or Captain Outrageous. You know, let's not forget, he was a world-class yachtsman that loved to compete in whatever the biggest boat race in the world was, once a year. Look at that. I mean, if you're watching us on YouTube here, following with us, you know, just a wall full of trophies as a sailor,

competitive sailor. And that's a, that's a, I saw a documentary once, years and years and years ago, about Ted and competing. And it's, it's a crazy sport,

by the way. You're not just out there floating around with a couple hot chicks on the boat gets and raised, man, it's a, it's a very dangerous sport. But Ted was,

obsessed with it when the America's come as a result the story's talking about him being so drunk he couldn't do an interview he was celebrating so much and got hammered and they had to wake him up to try to get an interview out of him and he did it

and he was criticized largely because of it because that's you know yachting is a very it's like golf you don't just don't do that stuff that didn't give a shit he's an amazing guy but i believe that's true i believe that's true you know i didn't hear a lot about the interaction between vince and ted until i don't maybe a couple years ago you know i i didn't even realize the history between wwe or w f in the time and turner prior to me

before prior to be getting there i wasn't even aware of that until recently oh wow it's kind of fascinating well something i wasn't aware of that you smarting me up to is something you're using in your everyday life. Why don't you hold your phone up to the camera? Show everybody what you got on your phone. Oh. This is real, folks. That right there is a spider grip. Spider grip keeps your phone on your hand where it belongs. It's the phone grip that won't slip. Spider grip props up as a stand, rotates 360 degrees, and lays flat, locked in place easily. Fitting into your pockets or your purse, spider grip is comfortable, durable, and functional, and appeals to anyone who has a phone. No more unfortunate drops in all

the wrong places, no more missed opportunities on great pictures and video, no more hand pain due to balancing your phone with your pinky finger. Why? Well, because spider grips allow you to hold your phone in the most natural and comfortable way. As unique and exciting as spider grip is, their team is as well. Co-founded. and invented by recording on art artists and entrepreneur David Britt. Spider Grip is also co-founded and co-owned by actress and producer Kate Bosworth, along with Mr. Worldwide himself, Grammy Award-winning artist Pitbull. Spider-Grip has been featured on live national television as the first ever presenter

on America's Big Deal, which aired on the USA Network. Spider-Gripp's inventor, David Britt, along with a special guest of pro wrestling duo, the Swant, the Dawson's, rather. pitched the product to the American public and sold out in two minutes and 30 seconds. It's also been on HSN. Spider grip is the best phone grip around. It's made right here in the USA. It's headquartered in Charlotte, North Kakalaki, which is the old stomping grounds and, of course, the glory days of Jim Crockett promotions.

Spider grip is also used by several pro wrestling stars today, including Eric Bischoff. Get us today at spidergrip.com. That's spidergrip.com. There's two eyes and spider and two eyesing. grip i'll spell it for you it's sp i i d er g r g r i i p dot com that's spider grip dot com use our code 83 weeks at checkout you get 30% off and free shipping grip the freedom eric my wife loves hers uh she finds it comes in handy when she's at the gym we saw you do a live demonstration here clearly you love yours too i do it's one of the you know it's every so often you know we get products

to try before we promote them And, you know, sometimes I get stuff and I look at it, I don't know if I'd ever use that. So I threw this on my phone, and I haven't taken it off since. It does, you know, you and I talk before the air. I don't carry a wallet because I don't like having things in my pocket. I don't like bulk and weight in my pocket. I like to be sleek, aerodynamic. And I thought, man, if I put this thing on my phone,

it's going to be too hard or uncomfortable to get in and out of my pocket. it wrong it's easy and the thing i love again because you know how many phones i've dropped know how many screens i've shattered i don't even have a case on my phone there's no case here i don't need it because i don't drop my shit anymore it stays right here i walk around with it it's on my hand looks like it's connected to my to my body it's awesome my wife hates it because my phone is always in my hand she freaking hates it are you ever going to put your phone down would you look at me in the eyes when you talk to me, please. We're eating dinner and you're eating dinner with your right hand and looking at

your phone on your left. Stop it. But it's hard to put it down because it's just so comfortable. Look at that. I can do anything. Who stays with me. Throw it like a frisbee. Nope.

Won't go anywhere. Sto's with you. Love it. Spidergrip.com. There's two eyes in spider. There's two eyes in grip. And you'll get a big chunk of savings when you use our promo code, 83 weeks. uh so listen we know that ted is going to go ahead and purchase jim crockett promotions that happens in late

1988 um and then there's the big phone call that happens now technically the a w a is still hanging around so verne gania is still there and the rumor and innuendo is a ted turner paid nine million bucks for jim crockett promotions that's a pretty landmark deal you see this article that was in one of the after mags you see jim Crockett on the right, who unfortunately is no longer with us. Going left, there's Jim Hurd, there's Jack Petrick, and then on the left, the man, Ted Turner. And of course, he didn't technically buy the NWA, but that is the way it was positioned

because for all intents and purposes, Jim Crockett Promotions was the NWA. It's still a territory, but, you know, they were promoting the NWA world champion and all their shows were presented as if they were part of the NWA, but didn't technically buy the NWA, but that is a fun, what if type scenario to think what if he would have bought the actual NWA, not Jim Crockett promotions, because technically that would now be owned by Vince McMahon. Isn't that crazy to think about? It is. You know, one little, and how easily could that have happened?

Very easy. I mean, it's, I'm surprised that it didn't. That's how easily it could have happened. I'm shocked that it didn't. Frankly, because Jim Crockett Promotions wasn't really a brand and NWA was. Right. And Ted, obviously, was smart enough to recognize that. So there must have been a reason for it.

And I think Crockett Promotions was in bankruptcy and Ted bought them out of bankruptcy so that $9 million, I'm guessing, went to pay off a lot of debt. No, they didn't actually file bankruptcy. He saved them from bankruptcy. Yeah. Okay. Well, then either case, that $9 million probably went to pay off a lot of debt. um that have been acquired by Jim Crockett promotions but I think there was hurt feelings there to do I don't mean to cut you off but I think there were hurt feelings there I get the vibe

been talking to David Crockett that Jim cut a deal and David did not want to do this deal and I guess their mother sort of intervened and said hey this is what we got to do and Jim was honest when we interviewed him years ago and he said that he had been drinking too much and he had some marital trouble and he had moved out to Texas and he didn't want to be around Charlotte anymore. He needed to get out of Charlotte. He didn't even want to show his face there. So he's clearly going through a tough patch and now some of these to your point. There are some bills that are mounting up. But allegedly Jim made the deal and I guess there's some hurt feelings and maybe as I understand it reading between the lines. Some of the family doesn't speak well with each other

or interface much at all like for an extended period of time based on the way this distribution went down the the impression i got is that perhaps jimmy looked out for himself first and everybody else kind of got the leftovers that's the vibe nobody's ever told me that but that's the vibe i get um it's just a shame because so many people identify so fondly great memories with that promotion and for it to go down like this is a shame. But I'm glad that, you know, it lived on. And we got Ted Turner in the race one way or another. We did.

He jumped in with both feet, you know, eight years after CNN became a thing, Ted Turner acquires crack of promotions. However, he did it. He acquired it and changed the name to WCW and off we go. And that's so amazing too, because you hear the stories about what WWE paid for WCW. And it was even less than what Ted Turner paid the Crockett's in, in 1988.

And Dave Meltzer, your great close personal friend, uh, he went out of his way a few years ago when talking about the Observer Wrestling Hall of Fame, which by the way, I got a ballot for and I voted once again. Uh, he wrote, Hey, it's great stuff. Come on now. He wrote, quote, Turner spent a little time in his life thinking about wrestling and never worked directly in wrestling. yet in the United States wrestling business over the last 50 years very few have been more important

that's pretty pretty well said by Dave no go on that's it that's the whole quote oh that's a compliment that's a good thing no it's true what he said was true happens occasionally but it's true that's what I wanted to ask you because I feel like we've seen and we've talked about it earlier today, you know, I referenced Dixie Carter and we reference Billy Corgan and now these days, we know we've got Tony Kahn. We've got these independently wealthy, successful people who like wrestling and can identify the opportunity of the wrestling business and say, you know what, I think I want to dry my hand at that business. And then they go forth and they do. I think the difference in Ted Turner and almost all those other folks

is Ted Turner was sort of hands off in the wrestling business comparatively, compared to a Dixie or a Billy or a Tony. Would you agree with that? Not even comparatively. He had, well, in my experience, at least, almost no direct connect. Probably had more direct connect with me than he did with anybody that preceded me, with the exception of maybe Jack Petrick and Jim Hurd initially. Do you think that's because of his success as an entrepreneur he had gotten comfortable with and understood that in order to really scale a business, whether you're trying to grow, you know, up or out or in whatever direction, you're going to have to delegate. So he was just more inclined to be hands off. He had to be. Ted didn't, I mean,

if you, if you look at just everything that Ted accomplished between 1980 with the debut of CNN, forget about everything that happened. By the way, he created the first super station. You know, that was another first, you know, Chicago, W, uh, G, G.N. came a superstation shortly thereafter, but Bill, or excuse me, Ted pretty much created the model methodology. But if you look at, you know, he owned New Line, you know, Castle Rock, he on Hannah Barbera, he, you know, the acquisition of the MGM film library, the creation of all the various networks, cartoon network, for example, all the various networks that are now under the, or were under the brand of Turner Broadcasting, now Warner Brothers Discovery.

Ted didn't have time to manage a wrestling business. Ted didn't have time to manage a lot of the businesses that he built so rapidly. You're not talking about 100 years of growth here. You're talking about 20. If you look at where Turner Broadcasting was in 1980, premier of CNN, to 2000. Within a 20-year period, but he built a media empire,

he certainly wasn't going to have time to run any individual business of it. Now, he was more interested in the Braves than he was in probably some of the other businesses because of his affection for the team and baseball in general. I think he may have gotten a little bit more involved in the Braves from an operational point of view.

In fact, I think he actually played in a game. at one point. I remember hearing a story where this is when nobody was watching the Braves and he decided he was going to create some kind of a stunt and I think he ran some bases or something crazy. But, I mean, that was Ted.

You know, Ted was crazy. Much like Vince McMahon was crazy. I had a little touch of crazy now and then myself. There's not comparing me to either Vince or Ted, but there's a common theme there where you're just not afraid to put yourself out there and do crazy shit to get the right attention. And maybe that's being an entrepreneur.

I don't know. But you look at everything that Ted accomplished in that 20-year window, which is a minute. It's like 64 seconds in real life. Yeah, he didn't have time to operate anything. Maybe things would have been different had he, but he, Ted wanted, even when I was there early, when I was there before I got into the management, it was discussed and kind of well-known. It was no secret.

Ted wanted, he was trying to buy CBS. he wanted to buy a legacy network. He wanted to buy NBC. I believe he took a run at it once or twice and failed, which is one of the reasons why when the AOL Time Warner thing came along and it looked to Ted at that moment in that snapshot, it looked like this was his opportunity to own a media empire that eclipsed NBC or CBS.

That's why Ted was so motivated and why he gave up so much. including his own position of the company. But no, Ted, Ted had very, very, very minimal contact with WCW. Very minimal contact. Well, it's been said over and over and over that Ted was all for buying WCW, but perhaps a lot of the Turner Brass was not.

Dave Meltzer would write this on the observer. There were times between 89 and 94 when the Turner executives would note the wrestling losses and want to close down the company. And one such means, meeting where basically every one of the execs underneath were in agreement to shut down the wrestling part of the company due to the losses. Ted Turner at a meeting pointed out that wrestling has been a key part of TBS had helped build the station and that wrestling was a cyclical business and no one is to ever bring up shutting down WCW ever again. Do you remember? Can I jump in

there? Please interrupt. First of all, you know, good, good point by Dave. Rare but good. True. Very true. But going back to CW, you know, Ted, Ted, when he launched the superstation and was in desperate need of advertisers, but he didn't have a big budget. He couldn't go out and buy first run syndication or first run movies or forget about originals. It just didn't have the budget. So Ted's budget was Andy Mayberry, you know, the Braves, obviously, professional wrestling. A lot of the older reruns classic television before classic television became a thing in addition to wrestling. Ted believed, and I think I read this in Porter Bibbs book, that's why I was desperate.

I want to get a copy of it downloaded before I did this. But if I remember correctly in reading that book, Ted believed that while professional wrestling certainly didn't maintain the advertising revenue of some of the other programs he would have preferred to have and program on his network. network. It had a large and loyal and consistent audience. And Ted believed that by having professional wrestling, even if it lost money, by attracting those eyeballs to the network, it would allow him to promote some of his other programming that did get better CPMs or cost per thousands. Why do I bring that up in the context of CW? If I'm, like I said earlier, if I'm Nick Con and I'm looking at CW and going, you know what, they're making moves. They made a move with LiveGolf.

On its own, not very significant, but they keep making these moves to suggest that they want to build a viable network platform. And they're at the bottom. They've got nowhere to go, but up. NXC already delivers ratings that exceed the highest rate of programs in prime time on CW. But they've got a younger demo. it makes perfectly good sense for Nick Kahn to look at this opportunity, especially with NXT because it's not one of the top two brands, to position it in a network.

The network, it makes sense because they're going to use NXT and WWE to help build their audience so they can promote into other forms of entertainment, other programming, much the same as Ted Turner looked at WCW or Crockett Promotions back in 1988. let's yeah it doesn't get great ratings the advertising's hard to sell but we're bringing bodies to the dance and if long as we the more bodies we get to the dance the more music will be able to to provide the the higher value that we'll have as a network it's very interesting how this move to c w all these years later has a lot of the same tones and some of the same tenor is that that Ted Turner believed in terms of what wrestling could bring to the network way back when.

Well said, Eric, when did you first meet Ted Turner? Is this when you were the C level announcer? Do you remember when you first met him? Yeah, I think so. You know, Turner, you know, Christmas day event or holiday event of some kind of me and, you know, 3,500 other of my closest friends, you know, would be there. We'd see him on stage. Ted would, you know, he would mingle.

He'd walk through. He'd shake hands and say hi. I think he came over to WCW once or twice when I was an announcer and mingled and took pictures of some of the talents and things like that. So he would, Ted Turner actually came to a, uh, an episode. Uh, he brought Jane with him actually. Uh, yeah, this was late. This is under my watch.

Um, not sure when that it would have been. Leon was still there, probably 95. We're looking at a photo, uh, if you're not watching, watching along with us on YouTube when Eric just started saying this is he's referencing a photo that's up on YouTube right now you can watch a long yeah I'm sorry yeah it was probably 93 94 is my guess but Ted would come in and you know he and he's so down to earth he's just you wouldn't imagine you were talking to somebody of his stature of the business world media in particular at that point time it's just very very down to earth when I first got to

Turner uh Bill Shaw told me that uh right after I first got there You know, Ted, Ted would come to work. He drove a Ford Taurus. He drove a Ford Taurus. He's worth billions of dollars. He drove a Ford Tore. Drove himself to work. Didn't have a chauffeur.

He drove, you know, I remember it was blue. One time I parked my Harley, I drove my Harley to work. And I had a parking space up on an executive level of the Turner parking deck. And I pulled my Harley in. And it was a chopper, too. It wasn't just a, you know, regular Harley. I pulled in and, you know, I'm four parking spaces down from Ted Turner that particular day. And there's Ted's Taurus.

It's kind of funny. It is pretty funny. I didn't know that he drove before Taurus. That's a very Warren Buffett like. Very much so. Bill Watts, of course, is going to be a predecessor before you really take over things. He's going to be running things for WCW. We know that he does an interview and has some comments about Hank Aaron and

are some comments that don't make Hank Aaron very happy. Uh, so, uh, we know that, that that's the end of Bill Watts and WCW. I kind of feel like the hard charging tough nose thing could have worked for Ted. Ultimately, we know it didn't work out long term for Bill. What can you tell us about your interaction with Ted as far as once you get the big seat and whether expectations good or bad that he placed upon you? You know, I didn't really have any, uh,

You know, I was, Bill Shaw made me the executive producer, whatever it was, 1993. 94, I brought Hogan in. And I, I didn't even communicate with Ted about that. I kind of brokered that deal, or Bill Shaw, brokered that deal between Ted and WCW. So I didn't even interface with Ted at all during the Hogan acquisition. It really wasn't, in terms of one-on-one, again, I saw him at a event. and functions. But I didn't really have any one-on-one conversations at all with Ted until the day I went into his office to present the opportunity to do international

distribution through one of Rupert Murdox companies called Star TV in Asia. It was owned by Murdoch. So I had to go to Ted to get permission to do the deal. Even though that deal, because we were so close to being profitable at that time, that deal would have based on the financials we currently had and what our projections that were very sound projections were going to be. That deal with Rupert Murdoch would have definitely put WCW in the black by a wide margin. But I couldn't do the deal because it was Rupert Murdoch. So I had to go talk to Ted. So my very first interaction was to pitch him something that I should have been afraid to pitch him, to be honest, because Ted hated Rupert at that time.

They're cool now, but at that time, he was like, if Vince, if Ted Turner was Vince McMahon, Rupert Murdoch was Eric Bischoff in 1996, that's, that's where that relationship was. And I'm going in and going, hey, I got an idea, Ted, let's do some business with Rupert Murdoch. Silly, but it worked, I guess. Talk to me about Jim Barnett. it's been said over the years that he had a relationship that would even predate yours with Ted Turner. Did you ever hear about that? Yeah. Yep. Yep. I could never put a finger on

it. You know, Jim, Jim was a great storyteller. Um, and I never dug into it, you know, to try to find out what was true wasn't true. But here's what I do know, you know, Jim Crock, or excuse me, um, Jim came over with, Jim was a part of the Jack Petrick. Jim Hurd, original configuration. Jim Barnett was right there central to it. I think Jim Barnett kind of acted as a consultant with Ted, perhaps pre-acquisition of Crockett promotions. So Jim was there,

but he was never in a defined role. It's like Ted went, all right, Jim helped me put this deal together. He's getting on. I'm going to give him a job, make him comfortable, not going to require too much of him. He's just going to be there as a resource. That's really what Jim Barnett was, I think, for the longest time. And Jim Barnett was really good at playing that.

Like, because Jim, Barnett loved, Barnett and Gary Juster both. They were cut out of the same cloth in that respect. They just love the political corporate intrigue. And there was a lot of it to love back to that. It was a mess, to be honest. But Jim was, everybody, you know, when Bill Watts came in, he had his opinions about Jim Barnett and his value to WCW, but he didn't cross him. Right.

She never knew where Jim's, you know, relationships were with regard to Ted. So Jim was able to exist in this little world, all of his own, and just watch everybody play their roles in this big stage play called WCW for a couple of years, several years. Randy Booth was interviewed for Guy Evans' fabulous book, The Rise and Fall. You got to go check that out. We've pushed it and promoted it a lot here. We love Guy's book. I think you will too.

But he's reporting in the book here that Randy Booth is going to tell everybody that they've received an offer to purchase WCW. And at the time, as we mentioned, a lot of the Turner Brass thought it was that the pro wrestling outfit was a quote notoriously inept money loser and that wcw had never made a single profit when they're talking about this meeting here in may of 95 so when they first purchased the thing seven years ago in 1988 they've yet to turn a profit and scott sassa is going to leap to his feet high-fiving terry mcgirk everybody's fired up hey we got an offer According to the Randy Booth interview, here's, you've now got wrestling.

And then Ted stops him and says, you've now got wrestling on T&T in prime time. And the big celebration amongst the Turner Brass pauses and disbelief. And this is an exact contradiction to what they wanted. They wanted to unask the thing, not put it in prime time. Now, you've told the famous story many times here on the program about how Nitro was really born. Do you think Randy Booth is just combining both of these stories, two separate meetings and turning it into one story accidentally? I don't know. I mean, there's, there are a number of things that I read in, in guys' book that surprised me that would, you know, with regard to executives

that were, you know, far above me on the Turner corporate food chain, that had impact, made decisions, or had influence on WCW that I never even knew about even while I was there. So I guess, I guess, you know, if you want to, here's what I do know. I know that I worked on a presentation to go pitch Ted for probably two weeks before I actually had my meeting with Ted. I briefed Harvey Schiller on it. Schiller would have input on my presentation. Schiller understood it.

Schiller supported it because it would have turned WCW into a profit center earlier than it eventually became. Schiller never mentioned once to me that there was, in Ted's mind, he saw a home for NITR, saw a home for WCW on TNT. In the 10 days or two weeks of me working on this proposal and interfacing with Schiller in preparation, for because Schiller had to know what I was pitching. He was my boss. He didn't want to sit in front of Ted and have Ted asked Schiller a question that Ted didn't know the answer to. So I, or that

Harvey didn't know the answer to. So I had to brief Harvey on every aspect of it. And we ran it through legal. We ran it through financial. You know, we had it analyzed. It wasn't just me going, hey, boss, I got an idea. It was a very well-veted opportunity that I never got more than two minutes into. So perhaps Ted had already made up his mind per rarity booth in advance of my meeting with him, there was just no indication of it to me, certainly, and not to Harvey Schiller. And Scott Sasseh acted a little shocked. Sassa was in the room right next to Harvey. I'm center. I'm right across from Ted. Harvey's to my right. Sass is to his right in kind of a semicircle within four feet of each other. And I'm pretty good read of people. I don't

think Sassas saw that one coming. And the first thing Sassas said, he said, well, Brad Siegel's not here. What, shouldn't we wait until Brad gets here? And Ted said, he's a smart guy. He'll figure it out. That was the end of that conversation. You know, because normally the head of a network would be in a meeting where a decision is made of something of that significance.

You don't want the head of the network to show up and go get a memo. Oh, by the way, in your absence, we reprogramed your prime time. that's not usually how that stuff goes that's how that went so i don't know man maybe randy booth is conflating two things or maybe maybe ted had made the decision and didn't really give a shit what i wanted to talk about was just brought me to his office to tell me to go do a show for tn t anything's possible i don't know well we know it was a huge celebration afterwards and i only wish i could go back in time and hand you a bottle of zbiotics because I know you went right down to jocks and jills

and you started chug-a-lugging to celebrate we've all done that but now as we get a little older we start to say man is this worth it I'm gonna feel miserable the day after these drinks now you can do both thanks to a game-changing product that Eric and I really believe in called

Z-biotics Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic it was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking here's how it works when you drink alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut it's this byproduct not dehydration that's to blame for your rough next day zbiotics produces an enzyme

to break this byproduct down you see it's designed to work like your liver but in your gut where you need it most so drink zibiotics before drinking drink responsibly and then enjoy the night with confidence and we've told this story before eric and i first tried this years ago when we were going to be speaking a podcast movement but we wanted to celebrate our success after a long day of meeting with agencies. So we met at the bar, bellied up and Eric greaches into his bag and slides out Zbiotics. We closed the bar down that night and we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on stage the next day. First thing in the morning like nothing happened, Zbiotics made it possible. We're real believers in it. I have to admit,

I was skeptical at first, but now I've tried it. And before I'm doing my vodka waters, I'm darn sure doing a little Z biotics. And I think you should do it too, especially right here around the holidays, you're going to have people over for Thanksgiving or Christmas and your friends, your family, they will thank you. Savor the moment. Let Zbiotics do the rest. Go to Zbiotics.com slash 83 weeks. Get 15% off your first order.

When you use 83 weeks at checkout, Zibiotics is backed with 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, refund your money, no questions asked. Remember, head right now to zbiotics.com slash 83 weeks. use the code 83 weeks to check out you'll get 15% off we thank Zbiotics for sponsoring this episode and a heck of a lot of good times

so listen you uh you wrote in your book that you knew Ted valued content over dollars he knew the long term play was content that's going to get you those long term dollars he saw this maybe before anybody else and uh you even wrote this after that meeting where nitro was greenlit

the impression I have of Ted Turner is that he's a genius in a lot of ways and he's extremely competitive he believed in WCW and I think we had gained enough momentum that we were beginning to validate his beliefs so when he started thinking about what it would take to get to the next level going head to head with Vince was an obvious next step I think he said to himself we've built this product we're ready to compete let's compete I think it was really that simple. Man, I like when sometimes we don't overthink things. Hey, if we've got a product that can be competitive, let's go compete. That works for me. And clearly it worked for WCW. Yeah. You know, and there's this narrative that all Eric Bishop did was spend 10 Turner's money. Like Ted Turner just

decided to, you know, pull a truck up and unload hundreds of millions of dollars into WCW that I could go and do anything I wanted to do with. And nothing is farther from the truth. I won't go into a great deal of detail here, but to kind of contextualize it in this conversation, WCW, as we covered here, had been losing money every year. Everybody expected it to lose money.

When I got to WCW, one of the first things that someone said to me is, look, as long as those shows getting ratings, we've got jobs for lives. Just keep your head, Larry's Obiscoe. Keep your head down. You get a check for the rest of you. your life as long as we keep delivering an audience to TBS, which we were. But we were losing

so much money in the process. When I, when Bill Shaw, and we've covered this, when Bill Shaw basically came to WCW after Watts got let go, Bill Shaw said, this is it. Ted has made up his mind that unless we can turn this company around, because you all know, know, Bill Shaw said, every executive in this company underneath Ted wants to pull the plug. Well, now Ted is ready to pull the plug unless this company can turn itself around. That was a hell of a statement. Fast forward, like it made executive producer, I become senior vice president, whatever. Along the way, we were under such tight financial constraints.

We managed every nickel in that budget. I won't tell the pencil story again, but travel was something that I was really hyper-focused on because it became apparent to me when I was a C-Scott talent that nobody was afraid of, that there was a tremendous amount of fraud taking place within the travel area. Not so much by the people in Turner Broadcasting who were issuing travel, but by the talent had figured out a way to maximize an opportunity, and they did. Cost Turner probably millions of dollars a year. in the long run.

So we started hacking and slashing and finding every way we could to manage all of our expenses. One of the reasons that I had, you know, Paul Levick tells the story where I, you know, Paul won, he lived up in Boston or somewhere up in the northeast and, you know, we were talking about him maybe coming down. I think Terry Taylor wanted to bring him in, you know, to WCW. Paul was fresh out of Killer Kowalski's wrestling school, but he lived in the up, in Northeast. And I told Paul, you were geographically undesirable. As Paul Levec told the story later on, much later on, I called him a gud geographically undesirable because I couldn't afford

to transport them. And I said, if you want to move here, we would love to hire you, but I can't fly you back and forth from the East Coast. Those days are over because that's what had been taking place. So, I mean, travel was the thing I focused on. Then it was production. When we made the move to Disney as controversial as that was with wrestling fan controversial they're just bitching in a line wrestling fans david belts heard fans i can't believe you shoot this wrestling show on a soundstage oh it looks so phony oh fake cheers fake booze they're not even a real wrestling audience every critique you could possibly find but it worked on a business level because there was an economy of scale there with regard to our costs now it wasn't significant but it was

but more importantly, the show looked better. Even though it wasn't a real audience, it sure looked better than putting on a show somewhere in some small town in Rome, Georgia with 300 people there and half of them got in for free and we had to turn the lights down and nobody really gave a shit anyway, right? That's what we had been doing.

So you move the show to Disney and all the wrestling fans in the internet, what became the internet wrestling community, hate the dirt sheet community hated it it served several purposes again kind of me of scale saved a little bit of money made the show look better all of a sudden we became a little bit more appealing to advertisers which is the reason why when i went to bill shaw and said hey i'm thinking about hall kogan what do you think we got an idea what the cost would be bill shaw wouldn't pitch it to ted i didn't but because wcd now this is the story that bill shaw told me by the way

This isn't just my interpretation of things, but because of the incremental improvements that we had made in WCW in terms of managing expenses in improving the quality of the product at the same time, it gave Ted the confidence to your point to go, you know what, let's see if a Hulk Hogan can do it for WCW. had it had my WCW in 1994 been the same WCW in 1992 or 1993 in terms of its business and everything about it, Ted wouldn't have sprung for Hulk. We gave him confidence. We were at least moving in the right direction. We weren't profitable at that point, but we were heading in the right direction because of simple basic fundamental business operations, focusing on expenses. once Hogan came in and all of a sudden different advertisers were now talking to Turner ad sales

and they were making some progress and we had something we could actually market with, I got a little more money to work with. 95. I got Nitro to work with. But those were incremental moves that took place over a period of about two and a half or three years that nobody thinks about when they write about wrestling or WCW at that time. they just think i woke up one day and went look at this ted dropped off a hundred million dollars aren't i a lucky son of a bitch what can i go by it's exactly the opposite of that

ted was smart though and he he was competitive and he did have a bigger vision for wcd than my predecessors had for it let's talk about the billionaire ted skats you know when the monday night wars start to really get cooking in 1996 uh they start running huckster not show man and billionaire ted skits they pay it off before uh russomania 12 there in anahom in 96 do you think clearly he knew about it do you think he ever oh i know about it do you think he ever saw one anybody ever get him a type of it you know i wasn't there i'm trying to adjust my cameras we go here guys dave just asked me to do it it keeps popping up just to struggle with it for this episode um bill shaw took those

a couple of those skits to Ted to make him aware. I wasn't in the room, but Bill's always been straight up with me. And he basically said Ted laughed his ass off. I thought it was hilarious. Yeah. But I wasn't there. So I don't know.

You were also right that during the 83 week streak, you'd hear from Ted maybe like monthly. And he'd just sort of briefly congratulates you on how things were going. And sometimes you'd get those high five calls on a Tuesday afternoon when the ratings were coming in. Any of those particular phone call stand out that you want to share with us? Well, they all stand up because, again, I didn't have that direct relationship with Ted. So for me to be sitting in my office on Tuesday afternoon, you know, essentially waiting for those numbers to come out.

And then 20 minutes after they come out, I'm getting a phone call. And Janie Engel says Eric Ted Turner's on the line. That's kind of a big damn deal. Yeah, it is. Every one of them was a big damn deal to me. And it was Ted and Brad Siegel that were on the line. And the fun part was Ted was like a little kid. Ted was more excited than I was.

And I was pretty excited. Ted was like a little kid. And I think that's probably why I wrote in that book is that WCW validated Ted Turner's belief in WCW for years while everybody around Ted wanted to pull the plug on it. And Ted was steadfast. And he said, no. And he said, why? And then here we are outperforming WWE and becoming profitable within a year and a half

or two years of me getting in charge, becoming in charge. It just was a fun time. And it happened, I don't want to say it happened every week. It happened almost every week. If I said to the book once a month, I don't know what I was thinking, but it happened almost every week for the first six or eight months. it tapered off after that it became kind of like more commonplace yeah but for the first few months it was like every every tuesday afternoon was a surprise party you know it was great

talk to me about actually attending the events how many do you recall off the top of your head like was it a special occasion when he would come to a show i mean are you guys changing backstage like we got to roll out the red carpet the big boss that's coming or is there a moment or a big show you remember him attending and you know if there's something special that we wanted to promote or if it was an event that was special if we asked ted and he was in town he would come and it was really just all about his availability but we didn't go to that well very often i again i didn't go to the well bill shaw would have gone to the well especially with regard to to hulk but that would have been easy and we see uh if you're looking at it with us

there looks like it's bred see no that's bill shaw bill shaw up over uh rick flair's head if you're watching with us along on youtube or over to add free shows. But we wouldn't go to that well very often. And it was Bill Shaw that would do it at me. So we know that we didn't roll out the right carpet, by the way. I mean, that shot that you had up earlier with, with Ted and Jane, that was at center stage. Yeah.

I mean, that was like the least cool venue in the history of venues. Yeah. It was, and this was before it was remodeled and redone. It was kind of grungy at the time. But no, nothing special for it. pretend he didn't have any security he just showed up him and jane had fun high-fived everybody told us he loved us and left it was awesome and clearly he had confidence in wcw and the expansion effort thunder which we've talked about before we know he's going to green light

that's not really the right word but yeah he's going to mandate it yeah yeah that was a do it or else. Yeah. Let's talk about something else you wrote that I've always been curious about. You wrote the Atlanta Thrashers, which would have been the, uh, one of the first forays in the hockey there in the Atlanta market for the NHL. You wrote that when they became part of this operation, it was really a low note for a lot of the staff.

Why was that? For WCW staff. Well, just the Turner staff. I mean, were people not on board? with hockey, did they start to view that as maybe this is the new wrestling, do you think? No, I don't know, you know, I'd have to go back and read exactly what I, what I wrote or the context in which I wrote it in. But I think the thrashers were a definite, a definite downer for WCW because it took all of Harvey Schiller's focus. I see. Okay, that makes sense.

Schiller was very interested, very supportive, had a lot of time for WCW. Once the Thrasher's became, it's one of the reasons WCW got moved out of the CNN Senate. which was, I didn't realize it at the time, but a pretty demoralizing move. Here we are enjoying phenomenal success, prove Ted Wright. We're really one of the success stories of Turner Broadcasting, not in terms of scale, but in terms of success and turnaround and the amount of mainstream publicity we were getting and prestige that all of a sudden the company had. This was a company that, you know, in 1992, 1993, even 1994, any Turner,

executive that wanted to progress in Turner Broadcasting State as far away from anything that had a WCW logo on it as possible. They just looked down their nose at it. You know, we all felt like, you know, the red-headed stepchildren of Turner Broadcasting, you know, they acknowledge us, but didn't want us to come to the family dinner kind of thing. Now all of a sudden, you know, that's changed. But it was, it took time. Took time.

We've talked a little bit about the NBC deal in 1999 when that opportunity. Let me back up. Let me back up. I forgot what I say. So now we're at the peak. We're growing. We've proven ourselves. Morrell's great.

Thrashers come on board. We get an email from Harvey or it might have been a phone call. It was probably between Harvey and Nick initially that, oh, we're going to look for space outside of the CNN or CNN center for you. Do you know how that was received? in the office, it was like, wow, we really are right-head stepchildren. It has nothing to do with how successful we are. Right. They don't want us in the building. It was, it was a blow. It, it was. And I, I was too deep into things at the time to recognize it and understand the impact,

ultimately that it would have. But they moved us into a shitty part of town into a warehouse where even after it was all remodeled, the sewer systems were so bad that half of that building smelled horrible half of the time, like whenever it would rain. It would smell like you're in a, you know, outhouse for crying out loud. That was pretty demoralizing when in fact we had turned a corner and become so successful. By the way, the thrashers played their first game, October of 99. So the wheels are just totally coming off by that point in WCW2. But we talked to a little bit about the NBC deal in 1999.

Um, that was a big opportunity for WCW. Do you think if Ted was in total control and there was less of a Tom Warner focus, would he have been a bigger advocate for that? 1,000 percent. That's why I was so shocked. You know, because Harvey couldn't make the call. Again, I didn't understand the political dynamics that existed in 1999. I just didn't.

I was naive. I thought things were pretty much the status quo, the way they'd been for years. And Ted was still the guy that was going to call the final shot. So when I brought it to Harvey and Harvey said, we've got to run this up the flight ball. I mean, cool. I knew what Ted was going to do. I believe that. It didn't get to Ted.

Well, I got to Joe Yuba. Joe Yuba was ahead. It ended up becoming a very powerful person in the world of television. and Joe Yuva got a hold of it because he was head of ad sales at the time. And Joe, Joe Yuba said, no, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to turn a property on NBC. What? Yeah, that sucked. Do you think a lot is written about the bookkeeping of WCW and Guy Evans book? Do you think that Ted got involved with the business enough to know how all that was going down or no? You know,

Dick Cheatham, our friend, Dick, would really be the one that could speak to that the most. But what I've been told just recently, like within a last year or two, and some of it from Dick was that it was all cash flow with Ted. There's very little equity. It was all cash flow in debt. so I don't know I can't answer that I think Ted because I've known people like Ted quite a few of them actually I think Ted was very top line focused yeah but I don't think he was financially prone to be analytical I think he had a strong instinct as an entrepreneur and I think he was top line focused and I doubt

other than the headlines that Ted was really that familiar with the financials of any of his divisions. Let's talk a little bit about when you're going to take a bit of a sabbatical, we'll call it, in 1999. Do you pick up the phone and call Ted? No. Did it cross your mind? Nope.

I would have never done that. You wrote in your book that he was a personal reference for you in helping secure a deal with one of the biggest names of NASCAR. Can you tell us about that? Gosh, I forgot all about that until you just said that. Yeah, I'm going to put a date out of it. I'm going to call it 2002, maybe three. My them business partner, Jason Hervey and I had an idea to do a non-scripted,

competitive NASCAR reality project where, you know, we'd follow a, a driver event, event, event, but really what we were focusing on, the story aspect of that idea, because we knew we couldn't cover the race. There was too many, too many reasons why that wasn't possible, but we could be on the track and we could be in the pit. So I wanted to do a deal we, I shouldn't say I, we, Jason and I want to do a deal with Jeff Gordon or somebody of his stature. We were working with a guy by the name of Paul Bucciary. Paul Bucciary, then was an executive at Fox. He has since moved on. I think he's still the top executive in A&E. At least he was a couple years ago when I spoke to him last. Very high up and I don't

think you can get any higher in A&E. But Paul was young at that time and somebody that we had worked with. We worked with Paul on the Endemol show at Hilton, one of the first non-scripted shows that Jason and I produced. We produced through Endemol. Paul Bucciary was the executive then at Endemol and then had since moved to Fox. So we went to Paul because he was one of us, you know, young guy, entrepreneurial, just in a very good friend, primarily of Jason's more so than mine. And we went to Paul and said, hey, what do you think about a NASCAR reality project? Paul went, wow, yeah, I think, you know, Fox was very interested in NASCAR at the time and said, yeah, see if he could make something happen so okay we have an idea basic idea what that reality show is look like is going to look

like now we need we need a driver somebody that everybody knows and it was like jeff gordon was the guy at that point in time even people that weren't necessarily big time nascar fans knew who jeff gordon was so we set about trying to figure out how to get to jeff gordon And while I found out through just friends of friends that have friends in NASCAR, Jeff Gordon's stepfather, for the life of me, I can't remember his name right now. Maybe Dave Silva can look it up while we're telling his story. Jeff Gordon's stepfather handled all of Jeff's business. Whatever is endorsements, sponsorships, whatever, it all came through.

Jeff's stepfather. John Bigford. John Bigford. Thank you very much. So I thought, well, I'm going to, I can't call Jeff Gordon. He'll never pick up the phone, but I'll call John Bigford. Why not? So I called John and had never met him before. We got along, you know, down to earth, southern guy, you know, NASCAR guy, no pretentious bullshit. You know, we got along on the phone. He said, sure, come on out to Charlotte. I'll show you around. So, James, Jason and I flew out to Charlotte and John showed you a very super nice guy, super nice guy, like I said, very unpretentious. We sat down to talk business.

He showed us around, showed us around the shop and all the Jeff stuff and all that kind of stuff. Jeff wasn't there. And we sat down and did business and he says, oh, you know, you used to work in turn of broadcasting. I said, yeah, he goes, WCW, huh? Yeah, he goes, yeah, I've seen that. Wrestling's popular. I liked it grew up watching whatever he told me grew up watching he goes so you work for Ted Turner and I said well yes you know not directly but yes goes I think he'd give you a

reference I looked at Jason it's like now what do I do I said well I don't know John I'll I'll reach out and see and Jason and I left the meeting and Jason says what are you going to do now I said well we call Ted all he can all he can do is say no right it's not not going to cause me anything. I didn't call Ted directly. I have too much respect. I had too much respect for him. Still do, but I don't have his number any longer. I used to have his number then. But I said, I'm going to call Bill. In fact, I just talked to Bill Shaw a month or so ago. And I think last week was Ted's 85th birthday. And Bill Shaw was one of the few because Ted's, Ted's dealing with some issues. So the group of people that get invited to his party get

smaller and smaller and smaller every year and Bill is still one of those people. But I called Bill and I said, hey, Bill, you know, this is long after, you know, I've been gone from WCW now for a while. I called Bill and I said, Bill, I need a, Bill was still there. I said, Bill, I need a favor. I got this deal and Jeff Gordon's dad and he said, if I could get a job reference or performance reference that I do the deal. And Bill said, let me call you right back.

20 minutes later. he said yep give uh whoever you're to give job begford whoever you're talking to he said give whoever you're talking to this email address and we'll take it from there and did ted gave me a great reference and we ended up doing the deal with chef cordon so eric we got tons of questions about ted turner um i guess one of the first ones would be do you think do you think somewhere ted's happy wrestling still on tbs and t and t i'd like to think so, but I honestly think that Ted, again, I think this because of things, bits and pieces of things that I've heard from people who are closer to Ted. I think he's just so disappointed

in the way everything went, and embarrassed in some respects because of what's happened, especially to CNN. CNN is my prediction, and you know how I am on predictions. I am so on the money. It's almost ridiculous. I'm like Nostra fucking Damas sometimes when it comes to wrestling at least. I think he's embarrassed. CNN's going to get sold off for parts. It's going to get broken up into little pieces. It just moved out of the CNN Center recently, and it's going to be sold off for parts.

And I think Ted is, and I don't know about now because Ted is dealing with some age-related issues. I don't know what he thinks about anything, but I do know at one point in the last 10 years, he was so disappointed at everything that I doubt that he pays any attention. What's your fondest memory at TED? That meeting in 95.

When you got nice to go. I went there for one conversation and ended up having another one and walked out the door and went, now what the fuck do I do? That was magic. If I could have that moment back, just for a minute, it would be awesome. Not the meeting. Yeah. But when I walked out of that office,

before I even got back to my own office on the other side of the CNN Center, I was on the atrium there. And I had to stop. I just, I can't go back to the office because somebody's going to ask me a question. And I mean, I'm not even going to know how to respond. But I stopped on that atrium.

But I was looking down in the CNN Center at the time. I don't know what it looks like now. But on that particular atrium that connected the North Tower from the South Tower. you would look down and you'd see the CNN shop, CNN store and look up and all you'd see was, you know, 14 stories of CNN center glass walls. So you could see all the people working inside of the CNN center. And I just remember that moment, call, what in the world am I going to do now? And looking back, that was such a magical moment. I love to have that back.

But it was that. You know, I think it was those phone calls with Ted. had listening to a, dare I say childlike in his enthusiasm, Ted Turner, you know, putting over WCW and that was pretty cool. Fun question here from James. He wants to know, did Ted attend StarCade 97 or the Georgia Dome Nitro where Goldberg won the title? I don't think so.

I don't think so. Scott Norris wants to know. Did you ever approach Ted about being on Nitro in a storyline? Uh, no, because I understood that Ted wasn't interested in being in a storyline. He had no problem showing up and showing support, being very public in his support, but he didn't want to be included or involved in any kind of a storyline. Instagram, a wrestling historian wants to know. Did Ted ever pitch ideas or storylines?

No. I wish. I think that could have been crazy fun. Ted was out there and he was fearless that's fun a creatively fearless

person who loves wrestling who has a vision and is an entrepreneur yeah baby it would have been fun I don't know what it would have come out of it but it would have been fun what was he like as a leader

I don't think there's been one like him since he led by example dead failed at a lot of shit yeah he kept trying he he he led by example that's one of the things and i think i talked about it in guy evans's book you know we were all led to believe that the the initial merger time Warner and Turner was going to be this great merger between this old legacy media company time Warner had been around forever it was so powerful and had such deep roots and i'll never forget man i was

a Terry McGurge's house, Christmas party, standing four feet away from Joe Levin, and who's the AOL guy, the tall guy? Steve, whatever's name was. I can't remember his name. That's where AOL is. But listening to them talk about, you know, this is going to be the greatest merger in a history of mergers. You've got the strength and the foundational strength of Time Warner and its deep root. in Hollywood and libraries, and you've got the entrepreneurial instinct of Ted Turner and the entire Turner organization. That part was true because the people underneath Ted, Scott Sasser was a wild man. He was a genius, but he was crazy. He was not cut out of a corporate cloth at all. He was smart enough to play in that space, but he was an entrepreneur's

entrepreneur and a creative one at that with vision. That's why he was Ted. Ted's number two. He was probably only 30-something at the time, but he was Ted Turner's number two. He was the heir apparent. Everybody that Ted surrounded himself were entrepreneurs and risk takers. Where do you find that today? I don't know. What I hear, because I'm not in the world, but a little bit of, you know, even when I was pitching shows with Jason Hervey, and I'm pitching to people who are now in that corporate environment, even in the the entertainment business, which historically was still kind of like the wild wild wild west of corporate environments.

But even when I was pitching shows, you know, Jason and I would always say, you're not you're pitching to people who are job scared. They only make fears based out of, they only make decisions based on fear. Fear of loss, you know, they'll buy something. If they're afraid if they don't, somebody else will, they'll buy it. But if they're afraid, but if they buy it, they're, and if they're afraid they're going to be judged by it, they get wishy-washy. And today's, it's why I'm so glad I'm out of the television business, so glad I'm out of it, because it's become so risk-adverse. It's like working for a bank.

It's not fun anymore. And it hasn't been fun for about 10 years, really, eight or 10 years. It's becoming less, and I talk to people that are in the business every single day. I mean, I don't talk to them every day, but they're in the business. the business every single day and some of them are friends of mine that I talk to frequently and they hate it. They absolutely hate it. It's not fun anymore. If you're a creative person and you're in the television business, unless you're at the very top, if you're, you know, the top one half of one percent, you're fucking miserable. Did you ever see, uh, we've heard a lot, you know, we sort of compared and contrasted at least for a moment, him and Vince, him being Ted.

We've heard about Vince McMahon flipouts and freakouts and dress and people down and you ever see ted get emotional in a management circumstance like that well i certainly didn't see it but i've never heard of it either yeah i've never heard never heard about him having an emotional outburst yeah ever what's one of the biggest uh character traits of ted's that you tried to emulate do you think in your approach to business to be fearless yeah to not be afraid to fail you know it's interesting we're you know again this is a wrestling show or at least my involvement in the wrestling business big way yeah but wcb you failed but man i first of i don't know that it failed to be honest with you but i don't believe it did actually but to work for a guy

like ted churner who your biggest sin was not trying your biggest sin wasn't failing as long as you learned something in the process so you could apply it move along young man keep going come up with something better where do you get to work for someone like that anymore i don't i don't know that it exists unless you're self-employed or you're running your own shop uh michael wants to know if you've ever been to ted's montana grill once you thought about it yes yes yes um there's one in Bozeman, Montana. And Lori and I went up there two or three years ago. We go up to Bozeman once a year, once every two years just to hang out.

Bozman used to be a pretty cool town. It's gotten kind of like to be a suburb of L.A. now. So it's not quite as charming as it used to be. But there's some really good restaurants. And one of them is Ted Turner's our grill. And Ted lives outside of Bozeman, has got a ranch outside of Bozeman. So Laura and I went in there. And I hadn't talked to Bill Shaw.

this was several years ago now. I hadn't talked to Bill Shaw in a long time. So I wasn't aware of Ted's condition. It's not dementia and it's not Alzheimer's, but it's something kind of like both of them. Ted doesn't get out much anymore. It doesn't get out at all anymore. The people around him are very selective about who gets to see Ted

and what situation they see Ted in. Am I pronouncing all right, Louie body dementia? Yes. called. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't do interviews anymore or anything like that. But I didn't know all that a couple of years ago. So Lori and I go up there and I get to chatting with the bartender and the lady looks to be about 40 or so. And we're, you know, three of us having a great conversation. And I say, just out of curiosity, do you ever see Ted or Teddy Jr. was one of Ted sons who I was

friends with, pretty friendly with. I said, do you ever see Ted or Teddy? You know, they ever come in anymore and and she said last she had seen ted about five years previous to that and it was pretty clear that ted was having a hard time you know just being out in public and she said he hasn't been in the sense and it made me kind of sad but you know i still whenever i whenever i'm somewhere and i see a ted turner bar and grill i'll go in and have a bearer bison burger only bison you know ted turner still owns the largest buffalo herd in america 45000 in Buffalo he currently owns. I didn't know that.

Yeah, he's one of the single largest landowners in United States. And actually, my wife, Lori, Mrs. B, has a client who is a version of Elon Musk. He actually is, he's building rockets. He is a rocket scientist. And about a year ago, he called me and said, hey, I know you used to work for Ted. Ted's got some property down in New Mexico that would make an ideal location for me to launch my next rocket. Do you think you can get to Ted and see if you can get permission for me or how I go about getting permission? They go, okay, this is going to be a challenge.

Hey, Ted, I got a friend, fires off rockets, you know, and Ted is very much of an environmentalist. If you read anything about, you know, a lot of his initiatives, very, very much. of an environmentalist. And by that time, when I got that call last year, whatever it was, eight months ago, I knew I wasn't going to be having a conversation with Ted. So I called Bill Shaw, and I said, who's in charge of all of Ted's properties?

And he gave me the guy's name. And I called the guy. He goes, hey, I know who you are. He'd evidently worked with Turner for a long time. And he knew who I was, and he was a fan of WCW at the time. And he's now in charge of all Turner's properties. So I explained the situation to him.

And he said, yeah, give me your guys an email address and I'll connect with him. And then I put the deal together. I didn't put the deal together. He put the deal together. But I, I facilitated the meeting. And I guess the guy ended up fired off a rocket on a tent's property down to New Mexico. A quick Google search says that Ted Turner is the fourth largest landowner in the United States.

He owns over two million acres. Number three owns 2.1. Number two owns 2.2. And number one owns 2.33. But still, Ted Turner. owns land in South Dakota, New Mexico, Nebraska, Montana, Kansas, two million acres. And a lot of that land that Ted bought was because Ted really wanted to bring back bison and bring them back as a commercial food source, which is one of the reasons why

he built Ted's Montana grill. Yeah. Because he sourced his own product and created a market for it. But all that land that Ted owns, the fast. majority of it. He also some land down in the south, too, like where he used to. But he used to own that land recreationally because he liked to quail hunt and ride horses and things like that. But all of his land out west are in prime bison, bison areas. We, uh, we got to at least talk about it. One last, uh, or I guess we'll do two more questions.

Uh, there's a pretty, we all know that Vince really took his jabs at Ted Turner. He was punching up at Ted. He wasn't really talking about you. You weren't really. uh someone who was acknowledged a lot by Vince McMahon even though it's actually you pulling all these levers against him not Ted but still maybe one of the most famous pieces of business is when Vince took out an ad in the newspaper talking about the Turner merger and you know saying that shareholders should ask questions and it's really amazing to see Vince sell for lack of a better word like this for Ted and go after him in like this in the newspaper what'd you think of that we're showing the ad right now if you've never seen it over on youtube it says

attention tb s stockholders it's got what looks like a police sketch of ted turner does ted turner have a personal vendetta against the wf tom warner beware so clearly vince is trying to do what he can what did you think of that and what do you think ted thought of that that he had Vince on his heels like this? You know, I can imagine what Ted was thinking other than probably chuckled. It was pretty juvenile, I guess. But I also understand Vince's side of it because if you're Vince McMahon and you've been getting your ass kick for a couple of years now by Turner Broadcasting and now, at least on

paper, Turner Broadcasting was going to become even more powerful than it already was. Yeah, it would be a cause for concern. That's probably why Vince did it is he was fearful. He was reacting to what appeared to be even a more, more powerful Ted Turner. And that's the last thing that it's probably wanted in that moment. But it was childish in the sense that it would have any impact. It was selling. He sold his ass off.

What can you tell us about Ted Turner the person? We've talked a lot about Ted Turner, the businessman today. Like, did Ted Turner like to have a cocktail? Did he enjoy the chase? Did he have some fun in his day? From what I've been told, not experienced, he loved to drink.

He loved to party. And he wasn't afraid to get to know a woman or two. Well, roll tight on that. Next week we're going to be talking about Halloween havoc 1998. We're coming off the disastrous Halloween havoc. pay-per-view. It was an amazing show, but it went off the air too soon for a lot of the folks who bought that pay-per-view. So we'll talk about the fallout from Halloween Havoc, and then we'll get cooking on all things, World War III, 1998. We've also got Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.

We're starting to do a square off one-on-one. We know eventually we're going to get to that big three-ring battle royale. But it's an interesting show. There's no Goldberg. There's no Hulk Hogan. DDP's taken on Brett Hart in the main event. it's an interesting time in WCW. So we'll be talking about that next week. Love to have your questions about it here on the program. If you've got a question, you can ask it pretty easily. It's at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

The cheapest, easiest best way to support the show is to like us and hit that subscribe button over on YouTube. It's 83 weeks on YouTube.com. Lots of fun swag available for you now at 83 weeks merch.com. Really, really, really fun stuff, including a new Ted Turner inspired t-shirt that I think you'll dig either lead follow or get out of the way of all available now 83 weeks merch dot com also want to mention if your business is looking to target men that are 25 to 54 years old boy we got them here some of the same sponsors weekend week out for years why is that

well because it really works find out how affordable it is to get your message in front of those dudes at advertise with eric.com man i never know what to expect when we sit down to click report record but i had a great time talking about the current state of wrestling and even more fun paying tribute to Ted Turner. I want to thank everybody who showed up as a part of our live studio audience. Shout out to Adrian who's in the group chat and Timothy and Nathan and the king was here and man, we had a lot of fun folks in here today.

Some new names. Rusty was hanging out. Little Jimmy Sorensen's here. Greatly appreciate all of you guys showing up and showing out for us on a Sunday. Eric, this was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to next week and I guess I want to know, you're going to watch full gear next weekend i'm watching full gear are you watching full gear no okay well no unless look unless something happens to give me a reason to expect that

something is going to change i'm just not really interested i'm really not i'm interested in the business of the wrestling business not as interested in what happens inside of the ring and i just don't see anything really changing on the AEW side so it's it's hard for me. You know, I was sitting around and the weather was lousy and I didn't feel well and I knew I wasn't going to do anything other than to sit the couch. Maybe, but I wouldn't go out of my way. Not yet, not at this point. Well, I'm going out of my way. I'm going to watch it. And if something crazy happens, it'll happen on Saturday night. This Saturday night, you and I will be discussing it next Sunday morning and you'll hear it all next Monday right here on

83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-freeshows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts every single week, starting at just nine bucks. That's less than 20 cents an episode each month. And yes, you can

listen to them all directly through Apple Podcasts or your regular podcast apps. How easy is that? Ad-free shows also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content and docuseries like title chase, Eric Fires Bank, conversations with Conrad, and the

Insiders. Plus new series like The Book with David Crockett, Monday Mailbags with Mike Keota and Nick Patrick, and a whole lot more. And you want to talk about early, you can't get any earlier than listening to the shows live. You can be a part of the live studio audience as we record the podcast. Plus ride shotgun alongside your favorite childhood heroes for live watch-alongs, Q&As, and other interactive experiences every single month. Come on now, see for yourself what thousands of other wrestling fans from around the world have discovered that adfreeshows.com is the best value in wrestling. Check it out today. And hey, when you do, the first week is completely free adfreeshows.com.