83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 301: WCW & New Japan

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad discuss the evolution of the WCW relationship between New Japan Pro Wrestling. Eric shares stories of working with their talent, discovering the magic of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, and the partnership that led to the historic Collision In Korea. All that plus, Eric shares his thought behind some comments made by AEW owner Tony Khan during the ROH media scrum and other major news in professional wrestling. SIGNOS - Signos removes the guesswork out of weight loss and provides the tools to develop healthier habits. Go to signos.com and get 20% off select plans by using code 83WEEKS. KUDO - Get 25% off KUDO Popcorn with the code 83WEEKS at KUDOsnacks.com  CROWDHEALTH - CrowdHealth was created to get rid of the headaches of health insurance. Visit JoinCrowdHealth.com and use Code WRESTLE to get started today for just $99 per month for the first three months. ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS 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. 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. BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s BlueChew.com, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE AG1 - Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. That’s drinkAG1.com/83WEEKS. 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, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? Just grooving, my man. Just grooving. Well, I'm so excited to be back with you here today. We are going to have a fun show today talking about your relationship. with New Japan Pro Wrestling, of course, years before there was a quote-unquote

forbidden door. You were doing this sort of thing, co-promoting with one of the big boys over in Japan. So we're going to talk about that today. And of course, before we get going, we'll talk about all the news and notes that are going around and professional wrestling. I guess we should start at the top of the show by wishing our great close personal friend Bruce Pritchard, a speedy recovery. I don't know that it's all the way out there officially, but he's, uh, he's

down for the count with a little bit of a shoulder surgery, but he's on the end. And I for one am hoping he's better sooner rather than later. Have you ever had a major surgery like that before besides your little mishap next last year? No, I never have. I had, you know, arthroscopic surgery on my knee, which is kind of like almost not having any surgery at all. To be honest, it's a, it's such a minimally invasive surgery that it doesn't shouldn't even really count. And I've had to have each one of my hands operated on over the last year, but again, a very simple surgery.

Shoulder surgeries, from what I've been told by friends of mine, including Hulk and others who have had shoulder surgeries, tell me that they are the absolute worst in terms of rehabbing and discomfort and the time it takes to get back. So that's, it's, it doesn't sound like a big. deal. You don't hear much about shoulder surgeries, but they're brutal from what I've been told. This is his second one. The other shoulder he said was no big deal, but I believe his quote to me was F this one. So we're pulling for Bruce and hope he's feeling better sooner rather than later. Some good news from our friend circle. J.R. is on the end. We're going to be talking a little

bit about how you can maybe get in front of some things, but J.R. recently discovered he had a blood sugar issue. And that's the reason that wound on his leg hadn't been healing from all those cancer treatments, but he's got it under control. And he's seeing just a whole bunch of new changes in his life pay off in big ways. He's several months now from his last drink. And I think the combination of no alcohol and getting the blood sugar under control, he's feeling better than ever. As I understand it, he's actually going to be in Oklahoma City this Wednesday, because he's home for the holidays. And that's where AEW is going to be. So shout out to jr getting better his voice is stronger than ever but that brings up an interesting discussion he revealed

on his podcast last week that his contract is come and due uh fairly soon in the next few months i guess next couple months maybe and sting's last match of course right around the corner we're going to talk about that and i sort of put two and two together man i really want jim ross and tony shivani to call stings last match in greensboro much like they called that first clash of the champions that put him on the map in Greensboro against Rick Flair all those years ago, but JR somebody you and I haven't talked about and all the different moving and shaking and all that. Like we've seen some pretty big, uh, I don't, I wouldn't say defections, but you know, they're jumping ship or switching brands or whatever you want to call it. C.M. Punk and Cody Rhodes. They're over

on the WWE side of things. Could you imagine? Jay Cargill. Could you imagine a scenario where Jim Ross is in play. That feels like that would be a major loss. I hope he sticks with AEW. I mean, I want him to be at Sting's last match, but you and I haven't really discussed that. What do you think about the possibility of,

is that even a real possibility, do you think? Would you let J.R. slip through your fingers if you were Tony Con? You know, no, no, absolutely not. And I think J.R. has been, I don't think J.R. has been put in the best possible position at AEW. And part of that is Jim. Look, we all have to take responsibility

for our own successes and our own lack of success from time to time. But I would have liked to have seen JR right from the beginning be more of a special event announcer. I would have put him on a different level of pedestal.

Not that he's better than Tony or better than anybody else, but he's different than everybody else. And I would have taken advantage of that kind of enhanced and built on that perception of Jim being the legend in wrestling broadcasting that he really is. But by putting him on a pedestal and showcasing it and maintaining that separation from the day-to-day work, so to speak, puts him in a different level.

You know, and I wish they would have done that from the get-go. But look, JR's got that voice, man. When you hear that voice, it's like comfort food for my ears, man. And it's like macaroni and cheese for my ears when I hear Jim's voice. It's interesting too, because he's coming up on his 50th year in professional wrestling. He's actually got a brand new book he's been working on. It's available for pre-order now over at jrbook 50.com. That's jr book 50.com.

And the name of the book is business is about to pick up. But as we take a look at just the wrestling landscape, you know, if his contract is up before a WrestleMania, that feels like that would be a huge time for him to come back and a nice button on a career if that's what he wanted to do. Call a big match. And considering all the rumor and innuendo about television contracts, which I know we're going to get into, I think JR could be more valuable than ever. So for that reason, I just don't see any of that happening. I think Tony con extends or works out some sort of new contract with Jim Ross. And I for one, hope we get to hear him on the call for Sting's last match, but I mean, I mean, that's interrupt you,

but that's an interesting point because if you look at AEW over the last 12 months between the punk drama that ended up in, in punk moving over to WWE, which is still mind-boggling to me, to be honest, every time I say it, I just shake my head. Losing Jake Cargo, obviously a big move. I don't know that if I, or Tony, I would want to lose any more brand value. And JR has 50 years as a broadcaster. JR is embedded in the culture of professional wrestling and amongst fans.

So to lose another brand like that, I think the timing would be really bad. Tony's got to hold it together. He's got to bring that ship together. He's got to tighten it up. He's got to lock down the brand talent that he has, the names that he has, obviously MJF. being crucial at this point. But guys like JR, Tony Shavani, those people that have equity in their names.

And every wrestling fan knows who they are and has known who they are most of their lives. Those talents you need to lock down while you're trying to reestablish yourself. And I think AEW in many ways is, believe it or not, in a rebuilding mode because the bottom has just fallen out. So much so over the last few months that they're scrambling to rebuild. it's interesting to hear you say that because I do have a different perspective on where AEW is and I know for certain that the Tony Kahn does and we actually have some clips from his media scrum the other day that I actually want to play for you at some point during today's show but oh god you know I'm just wondering like it's too early in a morning for me to

start drinking I have to drink to prepare for that nonsense the rumor in innuendo once upon a time when when AEW was just an idea and when it was just a concept when it was just a pitch on paper. When they were trying to get a television deal, the rumor and innuendo is that a natural question that would be asked in that dialogue and discourse would be, hey, well, what's this show going to look like and feel like? And I would think you would go to the well and say,

well, we've got Keith Mitchell to make sure the show is going to look like something wrestling fans are familiar with and are comfortable with. And we've got the voice of wrestling as the, the voice of our show. I mean, this is a W.B. Hall of Famer and maybe the most iconic voice in wrestling and that black hat is just, I mean, when, when J.R. puts on the black hat, it's almost like Clark Kent putting on the Superman cape. It's like, oh, that's J.R. Like, I think J.R. could probably mill about in his regular life and not get too bogged down. But man, he puts on the cowboy hat and all of a sudden it turns into a doggone meet and greet. I mean, he's synonymous

with that. And I, I just can't imagine. If the. the rumors are true, and I don't know, and maybe you have some insight, but if the rumors are true that WB.E's talking to Warner Brothers Discovery, if these are the same people who allegedly gave AEW a second show if they got contingent on them securing CM Punk, and at the same time gave them the first show, in part because they had Jim Ross on board, it feels like the timing of locking down jr is going to be more important than maybe some people are paying attention to at least in my view yeah and when i say you know tightening things up and and locking down talent locking down your resources that's kind of what i'm referring to i wasn't referring specifically

to the point that you made but in general this is not the time to appear to have wobbly wheels right you you want you're going into a negotiation let's be just really honest about it not sugarcoat bullshit, or at least I will, is the optics for T&A and the data from TNA is not good. Ratings are down. You said TNA, you mean AEW? AEW, yes, I'm sorry, AEW. The optics for AEW are not good. If you look at the television ratings, they are continuing to deteriorate, and they have been

over the last two years, flat at best, losing audience. more often than not, week over week. If you look at the year over year ratings, there has been, and now it's not been a lot. It's not like they lost 40%, but they're losing audience. WWE is gaining audience. What does that tell you? It's not a good thing.

And you've got especially punk. And I think in many ways, Jay Cargill was... long-term, I think even more of a loss, really, for AEW in terms of potential. You know, punk certainly in WWE is going to have a fantastic year, probably two, quite possibly three, as long as he can keep his head on his shoulders and not go fucking squirly again and get all up in his head and act the fool. but if he can stay a pro and WWE's got the machine behind it, they've got the creative to tell the stories,

the talent, the backstories, there is no doubt in my mind that provided Phil Brooks can keep his head on the shoulders and stays a pro. The next two or three years for Phil Brooks and CM Punk and WWA are going to be incredibly successful. But I think Jay Cargill represents 10 to 15 years of future growth. She's going to be a star long after Phil Brooks is going to be able to put a period at the end of a very great story in terms of his comeback.

Jake Cargo will be around a decade or more after that. That's where the future lies. I think that was a bigger loss. And I think, you know, forget about the, you know, snagletooth wrestling fans that are just hardcore internet wrestling geeks and hanging on every word of the Dave Meltzer. dirt shit cult almost a dirt shit it's probably more accurate forget about that part of the audience we're talking about business we're talking about program executives we're talking about

executives that work in programming long-term strategy and you look at t and a what the potential was based on the pitch and what it's become it's not up-and-coming talent so much other than MJF, I'm sorry, there's no potential stars on the horizon right now. Not that there couldn't be. It's not a talent issue. It's, it's beyond that. So to your point, all that being said, don't lose JR right now. Put them on a one year deal.

Yes. On a two year deal. But to make a move with a JR or a Tony Chivani or anybody else that's on camera that's got more than five minutes of equity with the audience batting down the hatches brother i totally agree you know it does feel like you know with with as you said there's been three names now you know cody jade and and punk momentum is uh is a funny thing and it's a very real thing but sometimes perception is reality and so even if you're having some success with your ratings and and we'll talk about that because we do have some clips from tony con on

to play that at some i think well-needed context because you know twitter is uh is a wild space i'm saying all that to say i do think that locking down jr is what's best for business uh and you need to lock down his book that's jr book 50.com business is about to pick up get that pre-order and uh man i'm sure one day when he tells the story of you know this last chapter of his career he's probably got some stories to tell too and one of the stories he's been telling lately is about how important monitoring his blood sugar was and he'd been telling me that off air for a while that he saw how high it was and maybe that's the reason his wound wasn't healing and maybe his voice was strained he just didn't feel like himself but he never even thought

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Imagine if we'd given this to JR like two years ago. I mean, legitimately, he's been going every Tuesday and having this wound worked on week after week, month after month for almost two years now, and it's not getting any better. And the culprit, he wasn't monitoring his blood sugar right. What do you have going on in your? your life. Signos could be exactly what you're looking for. Signos has removed the guesswork of weight loss and provided me with the tools and knowledge I need to develop better

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for this or that. Signos is like a life hack in that regard, is it not? I could go on for maybe an hour or so just talking about blood sugar and glucose and how important it is to monitor it. I'm not going to do that because that's not why people tune in here. But this is a rabbit hole that I spend a lot of time in is nutrition and alternative kind of nutritional information. and I'm not going to bust out, I'm not going to bust anybody's doctors, and I'm not going to speak out against anything. However, I will tell you that there is so much information available out there that suggests that your blood sugar is so vitally important. And the reason it is is because as Americans, and you hardly have any choice, unless you make a very, very committed effort, You have hardly any choice but to eat ultra-processed foods, and sugar is in everything.

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Go to Cygnos.com. Use our promo code 83 weeks. So listen, man, we talked a little bit about J.R. I do want to talk about the Ring of Honor pay-per-view this past weekend. And I want to talk about A.J. Stiles coming back. And I want to talk about Charlotte's surgery or it looks like there's going to be a pending surgery. I don't know. It looks like she's out for a bit. But I wanted to ask you because I saw some of strictly business with you and John Alba. And man, you seem to be of the belief that there's

there's fire to the smoke about this AEW Warner Brothers Discovery series of conversations what have you heard if anything Eric that maybe some of our listeners don't know you know I haven't heard anything I'm not speaking to anybody that that is on the inside that has first-hand knowledge so I really don't know a lot more than probably everybody else that's been reading about this I have a strong opinion based on what we've read that I think is credible. It's not like Dave Meltz

or dirt sheet hack shit. It's real. But it shouldn't surprise anybody for the last two years. I've been talking about where AEW is falling down and I've been, you know, classified by the peripheral wrestling media

as someone who just regularly bashes Tony Khan. And it's not that I'm bashing anybody as I'm pointing out what I consider to be as someone who spent 30 years in the industry. and learned a few things and did a few things, what I see is false in today's television environment. Of course, you've got surrogates like Dave Beltzer

and, of course, the hardcore AEW wrestling fans that live out on the internet. But I've been talking about lack of growth. I've been talking about ratings not growing. I've been talking about how show, or excuse me, ticket sales for the TV tapings deteriorating week after week after week. The lack of story, the lack of care. character development, the lack of vision. These are all things I've been talking about,

telling Tony Kahn to shut up and wrestle and quit trying to pick a fight with WWE. It's like standing on the sidelines in a foot, no, it's not even like standing on the sidelines. You're not even on the football field. You're sitting in the bleachers yelling at your quarterback or your opposing team because you don't have a team to get on the field and play against your opponent with. It's stupid. It's childish. Quit talking about WWE. You're not a competitor. I don't care how you spit it, turn it. You're competing for contract. Bullshit. You're just in the same business. But because Tony's been so focused on satisfying the internet wrestling community and winning the Dave Meltzer Booker of the

year award two years in a row and catering to the smallest, smallest portion of what has become a very broad audience for professional wrestling, he's made himself unattractive, in my opinion, or less attractive at least, to potential television buyers, including his current television partner. It all comes down to math. It was like a year ago,

two years ago, Dave Meltzer and the rest of his idiots and people like him. Oh, no, AEW is going to triple their licensing fees. Look at their ratings based on the NHHL. Are you fucking kidding me? Is there anything that reflects a lack of understanding, experience, and knowledge, okay, ignorance, then somebody like Dave Meltzer

talking, extrapolating potential licensing fees based on a comparison that is silly and childish. It's incredible. The blood, the types of content, how many times have you heard me say over the last two years? This is ridiculous. The blood, the excessive amount of blooded shit sticking out of people's forehead and fucking pizza cutters in front of a pizza hut. All that stuff is like a death by a thousand cuts, no pun intended, not talking about a hardcore match,

although that will probably be the name of the next gimmick match in WWE death by a thousand cuts. Oh my God, people are going to love it. It's churning off advertisers. Why is WW, excuse me, why is AEW even vulnerable at this point? Because they haven't grown their audience, because they've got a television product that advertisers do not want to be seen in. Therefore, it's remnant excess inventory.

They're doing make goods with their commercial inventory because they can't sell it. Well, when you can't sell your commercial inventory, as I've said on the show so many times, I get sick of hearing myself say it. If you can't sell the commercial inventory inside of your show, I don't give a flying fuck how many viewers you get. It's a black hole in terms of advertising. And that's where they're at. And now you've got Warner Brothers Discovery, who I believe made a play to acquire WWE when that opportunity availed itself a little over a year ago or whatever it was. They made their move them.

They showed their interest in a long term then. And if Warner Brothers Discovery is interested in sports entertainment and wrestling on their network long term, where are you going to look at what you've seen happen over the last year or at WWE that's where they're at now we don't know it may never happen this thing may all be a smokescreen but if it happens anybody that wants to know why it happened just needs to listen to the last two years of this show I guess we should also say you know I mean because listen the reports are out there that WWE met with them on at least two occasions and there's lots of rumor in any window as to how you know Warner brothers felt about CM Punk and how critical he may

be and it is pretty coincidental the style of the promos he's done and that he's found himself on raw the show that happens to be looking for a new home but listen you might be just you know we're trying to we're trying to do wrestling math and two plus two and you know who knows but let me just say this i do find it interesting that whenever anything about AEW potentially not being back on Warner comes up, we always hear the whole, well, we hear they have equity stake. Why would they let go of something that they own part of? And I think the internet wrestling community at large has really probably forgotten why a deal like that would be in place to begin with. And you don't have to look very far. You can just take a look at the

UFC. I think a lot of our listeners, at least those who paid attention to MMA, recall that the UFC was a money losing effort man they had lost tens of millions of dollars just flushed it right down the toilet and then they self-funded a show called the ultimate fighter and got it on spike and the thing turned around it turned around the UFC the UFC went from something they were considering cutting their losses the frittitas were considering cutting their losses with and selling off just to get some of their money back to the juggernaut that we know now and the crossroads, the tipping point, was having a national television audience on Spike. Well, fast forward when that contract was up, UFC ran off to Fox and Spike was left with

nothing. I would contend that if this equity stake that we've all heard the rumors of, but none of us really know for sure, I mean, I've heard some people say, oh, it's definitely 30% that Warner Brothers owns 30% of AW. I've heard those are say, that's not real. 10%. I don't know what's real. But what I do know, or I shouldn't say I know, but what I believe to be true is that if something like that is in place, Eric, it's not to make sure that they don't leave and go somewhere else. It's to make sure that if this thing blows up, we get a piece

of it. We can't, we can't repeat what happened with the UFC and Spike. And let's not forget when you take a look at a company like Bellator, man, Paramount just bought the whole thing. and said you know what we're not going to let this happen we're going to own the whole thing it's our thing and and guess what eventually they scrapped that whole thing i'm not saying that's going to happen with a w but the idea that a w can't possibly be on another network because warner has a piece well if you watch wrestlenomics or you follow them on twitter they're saying a w still not cash flowing a w still operating in the red they're not profitable so whether you own 10% or you own 30% you're not really making any money if it's in the red what do you

make of my assertation that it's less about we don't want you going anywhere else as opposed to we want an insurance policy in case this thing blows up because it blew up on our network I think you're absolutely right and that was one of the reasons why back when I was at TNA and right after the the UFC left spike okay left Viacom Bellator became a move I went to management of T&A and said that now is the time. Now is the time to take on Spike, Viacom, as your television partner to help ensure your long-term viability. And of course, T&A didn't want to do that. And I think there was probably, and I don't know this, I'd never had a conversation.

Nobody told me why they didn't want to do it. They just didn't want to do it. I suspect part of that is because then Biacom, Spike would have access to the books. Hmm. Right. So now you can monitor it from an upside and a downside. So yeah, you're not only, and I agree with you 100%. I think it's an insurance policy, so to speak. Yes. You know, Warner Brothers discovery was taking a risk to making a bet on AEW and to cover that bet in case they were right and it was going to blow up. Yeah, they want some equity. They want to they want an upside in that because they're helping to build it. But it also gives them visibility into the book. And that's where I think AEW is probably pretty vulnerable right now. And I say that because so much, and again, you listen to the surrogates, right? And people can argue this all they want. Dave Belzer will argue it until he's blue in the face.

But he's a mouthpiece for AEW. Now, he'll balance it. He'll try to counter it because he doesn't want it to be too obvious, right? But he's a mouthpiece. all you ever hear out of AEW is gross. We gross this much. We gross this many. Look at the ticket sales.

We did over a million dollars in tickets. Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross. Nobody's talking about net. Nobody's talking, nobody has ever mentioned a word about how profitable AEW is in terms of a number because it's not. They're losing money. I suspect they're losing somewhere between 25 and 60 million a year at this point. How about that video game? How much money was invested in that video game?

How's that doing, by the way? What video game? You're right. What video game? That's exactly my point. There's just, it's not, there's no there. Not yet. And with Warner Brothers Discovery,

looking at opportunity and growth, because if you're not growing, you are dying in the entertainment business. They're looking at AEW and probably making an analysis. Where can we grow our audience? best over here with WWE or should we stick it out with AEW because after all they've well they've fallen on their ass for the last two years listen I I hate that um I hate the negative discourse that happens online about AEW because I think we all agree

that AEW existing is a good thing and I think sometimes when you're trying to just preach from your pulpit here on 83 weeks, Eric, your words sort of get misconstrued. Like you are one of the quote unquote trolls online wishing for AEW to close. That is not the case. I don't speak for Eric, but I think I understand that Eric doesn't think that the wrestling business would be better without AEW. He's simply seen it done the right way and unfortunately learned some lessons about what happens when it's done the wrong way, too. Yeah, I mean, look, not only, you know, it's one of the reasons I get so animated, I think, and wired and I say some of the things I say that probably makes it sound like I hate AEW or Tony, which is absolutely not true. Right.

But I've seen it. Not only the mistakes I have made, the choices I've made, the decisions I made that I know could have been bad. better decisions had I had more experience, probably surrounded by people who had different perspectives than me that were engaged. But I saw it at T&A. I saw a massive opportunity just evaporate because of poor choices and poor decisions. Lack of vision, lack of leadership. and I'm seeing it again, different version.

And it frustrates me because I want it to succeed. I want AEW to succeed. I wanted when I, my first episode, the very first episode I watched was the premier episode of Dynamite. I watched it in the WWE writers room in Stanford, Connecticut, along with six or seven writers on my team. And we were all wanting it to work. Why would we want it to work?

Because that energy, that real competition, not cosplay, not the Tony Con cosplay competition, right? I'm talking about real combination, real competition, elevates the game. It just does. And I'm not just talking about with wrestling fans. I'm talking about the business to business community. when programmers, when executives, when studios, when networks, sit back and go, wow, look at this thing growing, not look at WWE growing, that's great, but when this thing, this category, is growing, that's where the real opportunities come.

Not when just one company is successful. When you've got two companies, God, maybe even three companies successful, all that does is speak to the people who are not wrestling fans who've never been in the business with the wrestling company, who've never even thought about wrestling programming on their networks. All it does is give them confidence and interest and curiosity. That's the good thing. But I'll disagree with you. An unsuccessful wrestling company, one that has been given a tremendous amount of opportunities in prime time with a lot of television support, when that company is not successful or has challenges that are playing out very, very publicly for the world to see,

a la C. M. Punk and Tony Khan, that's not good for the business. That makes people, executives, others in the industry, ad salespeople, all of the people that keep this thing that we love called professional wrestling going by feeding it and by being in business with it and advertising on it and strategically partnering with it. All of that energy is the lifeblood of the business. And when you have a company that constantly shoots itself in the foot and represents kind of the bad image of what wrestling probably is in the minds of most people that have never really worked with in it, it's not good for the business.

Here's a point, Conrad. If Tony, if this deal, if what happens, if Warner Brothers Discovery makes a move, moves over to WWE. AEW, my opinion, is going to flounder. It'll exist because Tony can keep feeding it because he's got, you know, access to a billion dollars of his dad's money, whatever. He'll keep feeding it. Keep it alive, but it's dead.

It will be dead. And what does that message say to other potential future programmers or networks? I ain't tried it. Well. A guy that owns the Jacksonville Jaguars had $100 million. He had all the money in the world. Wasn't accountable to money. and he still couldn't make your work.

It's not good, man. Not good. Well, I mean, respectfully, Eric, it ain't never going to happen again. Like this is it. WW is never going to have another competitor at this level. So when you're saying it's bad for other programmers, I would say AW going out of business would be disastrous for the wrestling industry and the performers in it. Now, I don't buy into the narrative that the creative is better on WWE because of AEW.

I think if the creative, the creative has changed just because there's been a change at the top and everybody's picking up what I'm putting down there. But I'm talking about the contracts and the talent within like you talk about leverage evaporating. If AEW is no longer a thing, like a lot of people are making more money than ever in WWB, not because WWE is making more money than ever, but because that's what it took to keep them from jumping ship and going somewhere else.

You disagree? I would I would zero in on a lot of people I don't know that a lot of people that okay there's a handful of talent who got big raises right and there's other rumors about people who were having conversations and they're not having conversations now we're not in the business of giving spoilers here but let me just say this boys and girls get your popcorn ready because we're going to be playing some clips from tony con's media scrum after ring of honor I know for a fact Eric Bischoff has not heard a couple of comments in there that I think Eric needs to hear.

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Kudosnacks.com, K-U-D-O-S-Snacks.com, 25% off with our code 83 weeks. So listen, Eric, this Ring of Honor show, which you could have watched over at watch R-O-H.com, it was an incredibly long pay-per-view. They had an hour pre-show, then they had the four-hour show. So all told you had five hours of really good matches, some incredible spectacles that, I mean, what we saw with Brian Danielson and that big brawl with the Blackpool Combat Club and the briskos and FTR was unbelievable. So proud to see the growth of Billy Stark, somebody that I watched on the Independence,

who just recently think, I think had had their 19th birthday, like really, really fun show. And then a great spectacle with stuff like, by Kingo and Black Taurus. It was like 10 bucks. So it was a great value. I more than got my money's worth. But the real fireworks were at the press conference. He had a whole bunch of talent up there.

But then when he had the microphone to himself, well, the first question out of the gate, Eric, was about Warner Brothers Discovery. I want to play. It's an extended clip here. I'm going to run the tape just like we have on Eric Fires Back. And then you throw the. flag when you want me to pause and you'll respond how's that sound oh god all right

there we go take some of your questions here uh while we're together tony first of all great show thank you stew um there have been a lot of rumors regarding warner brothers discovery what they plan to do in the pro wrestling world involves of course AEW ring of honor and maybe another company or two as well. Just give me your thoughts on the relationship. Can you give us any type of insight as to what, you know, discussions are looking like now as far as AEW Ring of Honor and Warner Brothers Discovery?

Ring of Honor, we haven't had recently as many, but we've had really good conversations about AEW, even in recent days. I've had really good talks with Warner Brothers Discovery. You know, we've been with them for several years. It's a really exciting time for AEW. We were the number one show on cable on Wednesday in really what are considered both of the key demographics in TV, which are 18 to 49 and 25 to 54. So it was a great week for AEW. I think we've been putting out some of the best shows we've ever done.

Right now we're on this incredible run. You know, tonight was a great episode of Rampage in addition to the great wrestling here on ROH Final Battle. The last few episodes of collision have been tremendous. I think some of the best in the history of that show. And also Dynamite has been on a great role in recent weeks. I think there's so many great things happening in AEW. So it was great to come in and have the number one rating and be the number one show on cable, which we've done so many times.

We've performed incredibly well for Warner Brothers Discovery. And we're very, very strong relationship. I think with meteorites and all the things coming up, everyone has to do their due diligence. It's just part of the TV business. But I think where we stand, we stand in a position for ADW to have a huge growth here in 2024. There's a lot of really exciting things happening that I know Warner Brothers is really excited about that we've talked about. The advance for all in, just being a massive success as we're approaching a $5 million gate for a show that is eight and a half months away. And, you know, we're so far ahead of where we

were. We didn't put the tickets on sale last year until spring. And now getting on sale ahead of the holiday season. I mean, it's been a huge success. That's going to be tremendous. And one of the biggest wrestling shows in the history of the world following up on the biggest wrestling show in the history of the world just months ago. We've done great show after great show. It's been a great year for us. We started out with some great wrestling to start through your great matches. And then we went to Revolution in San Francisco and blew it out. I can't take any more. I can't take any more.

Jeez. This guy's got diarrhea of the mind. It's just, hey, we got a great year. We make so much progress and everybody's so excited. We have a great relationship. Oh, this event and that event, now this event over in the UK, which, oh, we sold $5 million. Oh, my gosh, we're so far. This is like a, oh, how about answering the question?

What's the relationship currently? Are you concerned? First of all, it wasn't a very good question because whoever asked it was dancing around. Didn't want to say AEW because he was afraid that he might not get called upon again. You mean WW. We can confront Tony Kahn and say, hey, Tony, what's the deal about WWE and Warner Brothers? Any insight? But instead, he danced around it.

Didn't even name WWE. He said, oh, a couple different companies. Come on, grow up. Get a set of balls. If you're going to take that job, you're going to be there and ask questions, grab your nut sack hold on tight and ask a real question don't be a bitch in fairness uh the rumor in innuendo is that impact was asked to send in a pitch and a real whatever months ago they name it they name it right just don't be a bitch so just ask a question it's not tough

that's number one the rest of it you heard tony it's just oh we have a great relationship and we're number one programming cable by the way tony try to be honest accurate. You may have, occasionally have the number one show on cable on Wednesday nights. You are not the number one show on cable. You have never been the number one show on cable. Your show on cable doesn't hold a candle to WWE's shows on cable. In fact, I think if you took your prime time numbers for dynamite collision or whatever the other one was, dynamite collision and rampage, add them together, they probably don't equal Monday Night Raw when Monday Night Raw is going head to head against the NFL. So quit bullshitting your audience.

Eric, you're gaslighting them. What's he supposed to say, Eric? He's a polluter. How about being honest? How about, yes, we're in a middle of a negotiation. It's our understanding that so is WWE, and we're going to fight. We're going to dig in. Whoa, whoa, whoa, we get there. This is a better opportunity. He gets there. I know it's painful for you, but let's pick up where we left off.

He's going to get there. Ring of Honor. I think all three of the major Ring of Honor events have been tremendous this year, including tonight, which is one of my favorite shows of the year, along with Supercard and Death Before Dishonor. I think the Ring of Honor shows have been excellent. But in particular, focusing on the Warner Brothers Discovery relationship that you asked about, we've just gone out and crushed it time after time.

And this has been a great year for us. And the really all in. is the biggest thing we've ever done. I think it's one of the biggest things anybody's ever done in wrestling. But you have to also look at all the other huge events we've had recently month after month. You know, All In was a great show.

But really since collision started, I think we've been able to do so much with five hours of television. So this was a big year for us with Warner Brothers Discovery. They came to us and asked us to go from doing three hours of TV a week on TBS and TNT,

expanded it to five hours. And that's been very, very successful. Collision did a great audience this past weekend. It's been up the last couple weeks, and also the shows have been as good as ever, really strong shows. I was really proud in particular the last few weeks. The Continental Classic, I think, has been something really special. So it's a great relationship, and it's going very, very well for us. And I think part of the TV business for both sides is going to be doing their due diligence.

And that's just a part of sports and television, really. And being a part of the NFL and the Premier League, you know, I've seen that process play out with certainly different TV networks. looking at different sports and the sports themselves looking at different TV networks. We've been a part of this multiple times in the NFL. I'm part of the NFL's fan engagement and major events committee. So I sit in a select group of people in the NFL looking at our different fan metrics, looking at how we're engaged with the fans digitally and in real time and also planning major events and looking at those trends.

And I've been able to take a lot of the things I've learned in the world of professional sports working in the two biggest sports leagues in the world and being around some of the biggest rights fees in the history of sporting with the Premier League and in particular the NFL, which is the biggest media superpower in the entire planet. All right. I have a question, Mr. Con. Can I interrupt you, Mr. Con? I have a question.

Mr. Con, I understand everything that you're saying and everything is going so wonderfully well. And these are the best shows in the history of AEW and the Continental Classic and you're doing really well and everybody's really excited. and AEW and TBS have a great working relationship. So let me ask you, why is it or how is it that you can explain that you can't sell more than 5,000 tickets to a typical dynamite TV taping or production? I'm so glad. Why is it that your ticket, why is it that your live ticket sales have deteriorated so

dramatically over the past 12 months if everything is going so well and you're producing all of these fantastic shows? Is there a reason for that, Mr. Kahn? man i know you didn't see this press conference but it's like you did because he's going to get there and uh i don't think you're going to like the response hotter and hotter every year and defying gravity and so for what we're doing here and my experiences in the tv business we stand to be in a really good position going into 2024 and ring of honor is a different company than aew but it is under my promotional umbrella and it's under the

umbrella of the Challenger brand, which is AEW. And what we've created in this family of AEW that now includes Ring of Honor, we have great partners that we work with in international pro wrestling. New Japan Pro Wrestling has been a great partner to us. Now we're working with some of the great Lucha Libre promotions as well and other companies all over the world. I like doing things with Andy at RevPro in England in particular. There's a lot of great companies around the world.

but for AEW and I think Ring of Honor because it falls under my ownership to be AEW is to be under constant attack you do a great show in the next day somebody saying something negative you do five great shows in a row somebody says something negative you break the ticket record for the most tickets ever sold

for any wrestling show in the history of the world and somebody has something bad to say about it I just at this point I don't worry about it we just need to go out and do great shows week after week like we did we were the number one show on cable this week on Wednesday. We beat every single show on TV on Wednesday out of hundreds and hundreds of shows across hundreds of networks. And we continue doing it and everybody works here is going to be in good position. Let's just pause right there. He says being AWW is being under

constant attack. You got to, I mean, you got to agree with that. Like it does feel like he's got, I mean, there's critics around the corner no matter what he does. Yeah, you're looking at one of them right now. You're listening to one of them if you're listening to the show. I am critical of the product when it deserves to be criticized. I've also been supportive of the product when it's deserved it. Unfortunately, those are few and far between, but Tony's full of shit. Tony is out there selling his ass off because he knows he's in trouble. Yes, guess what? You're under attack, Tony. Why are you under attack? Because you and your roster went out every week when you launch and started tearing down your competition.

Who, by the way, compared to your competition, you're a pimple on a hamster's ass. But nonetheless, even though you weren't willing to engage and really fight and really compete, you talked and picked fights and ran your mouth like you were. Tony, you did that. So many people on your roster did that. They took your cue,

and it was every opportunity you had to criticize WWE and their fan base. And now you're whining like a little bitch because it comes back to haunt you and people respond to you. You created that back two years ago, October, two years ago in October, when I said, Tony, shut up and wrestle, quit talking about the WWE. It was for that very reason because by criticizing WWE, criticizing that audience, when you're not even really competitive

and not willing to go head to head, makes you vulnerable. And if you don't come on real strong and you don't win, that audience is going to turn against you and you're going to lose that good will. And that's what Tony's referring to. He has lost goodwill with the audience. He is under attack because he hasn't delivered on his earth-shattering announcements and this is going to change the world and this is the best event in history. And this is, it's so much hype and so little substance that he's lost credibility with the audience. And they are voting with their remote. that's it it's not like oh he's a little engine he couldn't everybody's picking on him

everybody's picking on because he deserves to be picked on i think it's challenging because i've never seen when your mouth pay the price a couple minutes left in this one you know anything quite like wrestling when it comes to such a large percentage of the business spending such a large percentage of their time on one platform which is x you know formerly twitter it's amazing how many people in the wrestling business are on Twitter all the time. And to be honest, I understand it because it's good reason because it's engagement because there's such a large percentage of the wrestling fans and you, the wrestling media and opinion makers and the wrestlers themselves and the companies, so many people are on this one platform. It's pretty unique because in other

sports, it's more evenly distributed. Like to be honest, in the NFL, the biggest platform. And there's all these, you know, there's so much engagement across all these platforms. There's been so much growth in TikTok. We're up 300% year-over-year NFL in TikTok. And the amount of football being consumed in TikTok is insane. But that also, I don't want to down. I mean, what the NFL does on Instagram and Twitter X, it's incredible. But in wrestling in particular, this one platform X, it is amazing how much time is spent

in the industry on it. And it sometimes becomes what I've seen is sometimes a bit of an echo chamber. And also, there's a lot of bad faith. there's a lot of bad faith posting on it and you can have a great day in the business like do the number one show and people try and tell you you didn't do something great or you can break the world record for the most tickets ever sold to any wrestling show ever and have this massive huge success on pay-per-view and just hit a home run and the wrestling's great and everything's great and still people are trying to tell you there's some problem with it or some detrimental I have news for you when people the drop count of the show when people posted the number of people that go through the turnstiles. I've never heard of somebody posting a turnstile count, which is like there's so many ways to get into a show. And there's so many people I talked to that were that bought tickets that did not have to go through the turnstiles. But take that aside for a second. The turnstile count, that is so normal for North American pro sports, even if it was 73 out of 81, that would be

over the average of show rate for North American pro sports. So if you take the average like big four pro sports game in America versus like the tickets purchased and then the people who actually go through the gate people would talk like that was abnormal or it's like and so again to be aEW no matter how good you do there will be people coming for you gunning for you because that's what this is there's a reason that every single person who stepped into my position until now has gone out of business I'm the only one left everybody who was stepped up and put millions of dollars into this and done it week after week and there's no off season you do it 52 weeks a year it's a fight and and that's a credit to the fans i know what it is to be a wrestling fan 52 weeks a year it's hard and

like but it's also the most rewarding thing that's why you can't get away from it for too long that's why we always come back to it we're addicted and it's worth the fight and i love the fight and i'm never going to stop fighting it no matter what happens uh no matter how things change it's worth it it's the fight jim crockett fought and verne ganier and uh ted turner and so many other people that have tried and god bless them all and uh i'm doing this for all of you and i know uh all of you are here in spirit so uh thank you very much so there you go he's not going to oh come on now eric what i'm sorry i'm sorry i like him saying he's not going to give up i mean the answer or the question was hey there's been discussion over warner brother's

conversation with someone else and that was the response and eventually he put a button on it with everyone who's tried before me has failed and gone out of business and i'm here continuing the fight i mean i like the idea that that was actually that was conrad i don't mean to cut you up that was actually a great that that part of what he his answer yes if he would have kept it to that. Yes. I would have given him a standing ovation. Yes. But instead, it's more of the Tony con gaga bullshit that doesn't matter and didn't answer the question. It was him standing on the street corner selling himself and his company AEW to the next network that hopefully is going to be interested. And all the reasons why he's optimistic. Well, guess what? None of it

freaking matters, because if you look at the numbers, the only thing that matters is math. The only thing that matters is math. The rest of that is all just a circle jerk of bullshit and hype. It doesn't matter. Math matters. We'll see where the math goes. The math may work in his favor. AEW or excuse me, Warner Brothers Discovery may look at AEW and go, you know what?

wwe big opportunity big audience a lot of good things can happen but it's really freaking expensive so let's just roll the dice and hope that AEW is going to improve i'm sorry i can't even say that with a straight face because there's no indication that that would ever happen but maybe somebody believes that maybe tony can go in there with all of his hyperbole and spin and dixie conisms and go in there and convince somebody at wait wait wait wait wait did you just say dixie conness yeah biggest in history the best it's ever seen going to change the wrestling business forever all those all that kind of super hyperbolic bullshit spin that's what i mean by dixie conism but they're not the same i mean dixie didn't grow up a huge wrestling fan like tony con did i mean

she knew how to sell her ass off well she knew hyperbole she knew spin that's what tony's doing it is going to come down to math. I agree with you. Because, and I think this is worth discussing. Like, there's, I would, I would put the chances or the odds at near zero that W.W would be interested in taking a pay cut on that meteorite steel. They're going to be looking for a bump. They're trying to deliver shareholder value. And what AEW has been paid based on the rumor and innuendo is not nearly what WWE is going to be looking for. So I don't know that it's all that comparable. It is going to come down to math. And sometimes you might think about your health insurance and say, hey, that math ain't mathen. Well, stop sending money to big insurance

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I did find it interesting that he like Vince McMahon before him listed Ted Turner, not you, and maybe it would be because he would say, well, the differentiator is we're using our money, you know, not an employee and all that sort of thing. But still, I for one am hopeful that AEW is going to. pull the nose up on this thing but but you know better no I'm deep down inside deep down inside come on Conrad I do think it would take um some changes you know I mean here's the thing he's been changing this is worth mentioning there's been a lot of change behind the scenes so when you're saying you know you don't expect anything to change I don't know how that's possible

if we're seeing some big stars leave but that's on camera I'm talking about behind the scenes Keith Mitchell's gone and Kevin Sullivan's gone and QT Marshall's gone and there's rumor and innuendo that there's there's others on that list it's not for our place to break it but there's lots of talk in that regard so it does feel like the winds of change are here and and that's necessary if we're going to pull the nose up so I'm going to be that depends are those people leaving out of frustration because they realize that the future is so bleak? Or are they leaving? Because Tony wants him to leave and he's got a plan to bring in higher caliber, more experienced, better qualified people. That's the part of the

equation. We don't know. We know who's leaving. Who's coming in? Well, that's fair. I don't know anybody of any substantial abilities, experience, contribution, and equity that would go, oh, man, I can't wait to go to work for T and or excuse me I can't wait to go to work for AEW well maybe I'm not going to say I know who's coming in but I will say I think you and I both think a lot of Kevin Sullivan and and I know behind the scenes he was well regarded and and a beloved figure so it does feel like for him to be sort of shown the door because that was not a resignation as I understand it he was released and if that was the case it does feel like there is a plan somewhere so we'll see But the other thing I wanted to do, and I'm glad you're getting a big chug of your water there

because I don't want you to do a spit take in the middle of this, but I've got a little bit more of this Tony Cohen presser. I want to be over with. He makes an analogy that I think you're going to want to hear, and I think it's important. And we were able to, you know, get Ring of Honor in front of for their standards going into my ownership. And, you know, this is very consistent with the kind of crowds we've had for the Ring of Honor a couple thousand people's a good ring of honor crowd and that's you know there before i took

over you could count on in 21 years how many times ring of honor had a couple thousand people in the building so i'm pretty happy with it and also a tv this year the attendance is up your over year for q4 so i think do you know adam and john have done a great job i think and frankly uh i will say like i shook the tree a little bit when they came in to say like you guys need to get into the markets with the wrestlers and they've done fantastic and responded really well and i think Whether you look at Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a bunch of the cities we've done in the last several months, the walkups have been outstanding. And actually, we've done, and there was another one I'm forgetting too, but we did like four of the top seven walkups. Oh, Grand Slam was you, Grand Slam was the number one, and Grand Slam.

And then Grand Slam, Houston, Philly, Chicago were like four of the top seven or eight walkups in the history of the company for TV. and then the pay-per-view walk-ups also outstanding. The L.A. was the biggest walk. L.A. pay-per-view was the biggest walk-up in the history of the company. So we've actually been having, like, you know, these last few months really, really good success. These guys have really done a great job. The PR team and Mandy and, you know, Danny and everybody done a great job along with John and Adam. And I think them working with the live events team, they've stepped up.

So we've seen a good boost. So you're over, your Q4, we're up, which is great. And so I want to keep growing. I think, I don't know if you saw this study. I is from questions I had asked. Here we know. And it came out favorably. And there's a reason I asked because my gut said it was true.

And it was, you know, the numbers we're doing for our tickets are not only comparable to what WCW was doing in the mid-90s, but in many cases better. Like our numbers are better per show than WCW in 94. And I think right on 96 and 95, like right there. And I think we're ahead of one year and right behind the other, like right kind of there. Russell ticks estimates. And I'm not sure, you know, the wrestle ticks, that's their estimate usually looks like it's pretty close. There's times where I think is like a couple hundred, you know, if it's several thousand tickets at, they might be off by a couple hundred, which is a lot on one hand.

But on the other hand, it's like, you know, sometimes it's five to 10 percent of the whole thing. So they are usually within a pretty good margin of error by the way he counts them. And when they did that study with WCW, I think. that's a good comparison. And to be a challenger brand, there hasn't been a company like AEW that had this big of a market share since the 90s. It's really cool. And like I said, I think the juggernaut is, in many ways that we're up against, is bigger than ever and more imposing than ever. And in a digital era, when you're facing that kind of juggernaut, it's constant pressure. And I think this year we've delivered with more great shows than ever before. And it's a great time to be AEW. And

So I'm really excited about what we're doing. I think certainly when you talk about tickets, some of our most exciting momentum we've ever had. You know, the Greensboro, we talked about it on the show tonight, but today was the first day of tickets for a revolution. And now over 11,000 tickets sold for a show on the first day. So that's our biggest, for any non-first-time event, I think that's going to be up there with like the first double or nothing,

the first grand slam. That's one of our biggest first days we've ever. My fucking head's going to explode. I've never heard so much meaningless bullshit in a press conference in my entire life. This is not a press conference. This is let me get up and talk about how great I am and how great this company is and try to blow smoke up. Everybody's ass.

And hey, the hardcore AEW Twitter X fan base is going to suck it up. And they're going to be repeating it word for word. The problem is there's nothing but air. in all of those comments. It's nonsense. Trying to compare dynamite or AEW ticket sales to WCW in 96. Are you freaking high? Every week we do this show.

We're covering 96, 97, 98. We're putting 18,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 people for a TV show. Dynamite is lucky to do. They're putting, they're scaling 10,000 seat arenas. for 5,000 people and praying to God there's a walk-up, otherwise they're not going to sell out. How can you make those statements and expect anybody to think you have any credibility whatsoever? Are you looking at one or two isolated situations and extrapolating a scenario or a picture or projection based on that? It's misleading as hell. It's untrue. It's dishonest.

And you know what? It's delusional. And I think Tony's deluding himself and hopefully and hoping. I should say, that he's able to delude other people along with him into believing in this thing. There's nothing more than a very, very, very expensive vanity project. Well, I knew you'd get it hot about the comparison. I'm not hot. It's just frustrating. It's so what a great opportunity Tony has. I noticed I didn't say had.

Has. What a great opportunity he has. But if you can't be real, if you can't be honest with yourself. and look at the things that are not working and address them, then you're just, you're deluding yourself. And he'll be able to keep on doing it because, well,

he's got his dad's money and he's not accountable and he can keep doing it as long as he wants to do it. Good for Tony Kahn, but not so good for the business. If this doesn't work, if WD makes that move to WWE, which could happen, we don't know if it will,

maybe maybe not if it doesn't happen and AEW stays in WBD then forget all this hyperbole Tony look at reality and fix the shit that needs to be fixed and until you do that you're just going to be the brunt of a joke your punchline well I would disagree with that but I do know that it's no joke that Charlotte Flair is on the sidelines WWE put a tweet out over the weekend that said that she's expected to miss like nine months we saw a pretty scary clip from social last weekend where she was grasping her knee saying my knee my knee and lots of different conflicting reports out there and it's not my place to necessarily share anything and everything here but the report is nine months man wow that's a long that's

nine months is a lifetime in the industry right so much can happen and so much can change over the course of nine months it's scary it's crazy to think though when w w is just getting at their hottest it feels like some of our top guys are are moving around and now we know that unfortunately charlotte's going to miss russomania but back in time for rasselmania cm punk randy orton and now a j styles a j styles back at the end of smackdown on the randy that awesome or what on the randy orton diet looking like an action figure this is the biggest most jacked a j styles has ever been he comes in to make the save in the middle of uh this big feud and brawl with the bloodline who has clearly outnumbered randy orton

in l a night who ran in to be helpful to randy orton so a j styles makes his return levels the playing field in that fight and then immediately attacks L.A. 9. So it looks like we're going to be getting some L.A. 9 versus A.J. Stiles. Man, this W.W.E. roster, you kind of forget how many headliners they had who weren't on TV like Randy Orton and now like AJ Stiles. What do you expect? This is an exciting time for A.J. and W.W.E. Oh, absolutely. And I'll tell you what, I watched, I watched that map. and the finish of it was so good. That match, you talk about Sarsa,

story, backstory, anticipation, reality, surprise, action. Now, this is not complete yet, right? But there were a lot of boxes checked. We know their story. There's inherent story right there. But the drama, people talk about the story in the ring or the story in the match. I want to beat you, you want to beat me.

Okay, we got the story. But when you look at the drama that played out as a part of the story, the facial expressions, the timing, the timing in that finish was so perfect. I saw one hiccup, one minor, minor hiccup that took me out of the game, took me out of the moment, I should say, for a fraction of a second. And that was when, who was it? It was Roman Raines and maybe Randy were exchanging blows in the center of the ring. And they were back and forth, back and forth, boom, boom, boom.

And then there was a little hiccup right in the middle. I don't know who was off, whether it was Randy or Roman. One of them just was a little bit off and it kind of, oh, it was like that microphone in the frame drop, you know, kind of moment for me. It's like when you go to a movie and you're all into the scene and all of a sudden you see a boom can. camera come to our boom mic come down in the camera frame just go what the hell is that there for that's what i mean by a boom mic moment but that little hiccup was the only thing that i saw everything else was as flawless i think as flawless could be now i watched that man specifically because i wanted to see randy i'm a huge randy orton fan make that if nobody's aware of that yet you're aware now

Huge Randy Orton fan. But when AJ came completely out of nowhere, the value of real surprise, right? The value of surprise. If they would have announced, you know, AJ is going to be in the main event. If there would have been some other form of tease or a backstage segment or something like that, that would have tipped the hat in a way that would have diminished that moment, AJ style's got a hero's return reaction in the middle of what was all. already a pretty amazing main event and story.

I think it's going to be fantastic. Look for Randy and AJ to end up teaming up somewhere down the road. I think that's going to be a fantastic combination that compliment each other very, very well. Um, I loved every second of it. I, um, I loved it too. I'm a huge AJ fan. I'm excited to see him back.

Him and Randy Orton coming back bigger and better than ever is, uh, man, it's peaking. curiosity for WWE in a way that it hasn't been there in quite a while. And, you know, I was having a conversation with a Cowboys friend of mine. He's a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL. There's lots of debate this year, you know, about who the best team in the league is and some are saying the 40 honors and others say in the Eagles. And of course, my buddies believe that, oh, it's the Dallas Cowboys. And my pal said, I just hope we're not getting hot at the wrong time. Because that's a real thing in sports. And it feels like WWE has been able to

manufacture that heat as we get to Royal Rumble and then we just cruise control right into WrestleMania. It's going to be money, this Q1 for WWE. Speaking of money, we got to talk about Rocket Money, one of our favorite sponsors here on the show. We love saving money. We've talked about that since day one here on the program. We spend a lot of time talking about the business of the wrestling business, but you need to get your household business in between the ditches. And I got to admit, I thought I had a pretty cool handle on things until I signed up for Rocket Money.com. I went to RocketMoney.com slash 83 weeks, and then I found out, oh, no, I've been leaking, and I didn't realize it. Both my wife and I were paying for streaming apps, the same one,

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and what's the latest and greatest with television and AEW in comparisons to WCW and Charlotte and AJ Styles. And now it's time to talk to our topic, maybe our longest intro we've ever done, but we're going to be talking about your relationship with New Japan because this is really the beginning of the forbidden door. Back before you were in charge of WCW, I guess there was a New Japan relationship with WCW going back to the early 90s. That was the whole traditional January 4th, Tokyo Dome show.

Of course, these days we call it wrestle kingdom. But when you first get into what we'll call the big seat in WCW, what did you believe the relationship to be like between wcw and japan well i had a i had inside track because brad riggins who have talked about many times uh red ringins amateur wrestler great amateur i think he made the olympic team in 80 perhaps whenever uh jimmy carter decided we weren't going to compete in the olympics brad had i think made the olympic team I mean, Greco-Roman as a heavyweight a year. Could be wrong on that.

I'll double check. But Brad was very, and I knew Brad since high school. Brad was obviously a very, very good high school wrestler. And he was, I think he wrestled at 180 in high school. We had a wrestler, the captain of our team wrestled at 180. His name was Mark Christensen. And they battled it out. And of course, Brad won.

So I, you know, I kind of held Brad up there on a pedestal as an amateur wrestler for a long time. And we ended up becoming friends and had a lot of mutual friends long before either one of us ever got into professional wrestling. Brad, of course, went on to, he trained a lot of the wrestlers for Vern Ganya in Vern's camp. That's where Brad trained. Brad trained guys like Leon White, Van Vader, and a lot of others, too many to mention here. Big names, obviously. But Brad went on to be a liaison between New Japan Pro Wrestling. Oh, and Brad spent time in WWE.

well as a performer early on. But Brad really moved on. It became a liaison between the New Japan office. It worked primarily with Masa Saito and Mr. Bisho. Bisho was the business side, right? He didn't get involved in booking and creative. And Mr. Bisho was really the, just the numbers guy, right? But a very important person, obviously. Because of my relationship with Bradson, and in my new position, I had a firsthand perspective of New Japan's feelings towards WCW, and it was not good. The relationship in your right, it pre-existed me, obviously.

There was business transactions between WCW early in the 90s, long before I got there and after I got there as a talent. But Bill Watts, during the time that Bill Watts was there, And I don't know what happened. I never really asked details. But there was a financial arrangement between WCW and New Japan that the New Japan office believed they were shortchanged on. They believed that Bill Watts or WCW was less than honorable and honest in the way that they did business. And I'm putting that mildly because I don't know the details.

It made it really hard for me. to re-engage with New Japan because they didn't know me. Now, Brad knew me. Masasaito knew me because I used to work in AWA when Masa Sayido was there. And, you know, I interacted with him and interviewed him and all that kind of stuff. But he didn't know me, know me. He didn't know my personality. I had to prove that this was a different regime, that under me,

things would be different as it related to the relationship with New Japan. And I had to earn their respect. It didn't happen overnight. It took time. But it was really because of Brad that I was able to do that and establish a good working relationship with Mr. Baisho, you know, and people other than Mr. Saita or Masa Saito. So Brad, Brad, in Sunny, obviously really helped with that because, you know, as an American, you go over to Japan and the culture is so deep.

different. Now, you can see it immediately as a tourist, but what's less obvious is the cultural differences between business associates in Japan and business, the business culture in America. The two business cultures are so opposite in so many ways that Sunny was able to help me navigate that. He helped me understand the Japanese culture, the business culture, and the way to conduct business in Japan. And that was instrumental. It really, really was. And again, unless you've done extensive business in Japan, and I don't mean doing extensive business with a Japanese person or a group of people. But I mean, unless you are taking meetings in Japan, you don't really get a sense for the difference in those cultures because the

Japanese are very reserved, very polite, very respectful. Even if they don't have any respect for you, they will be very respectful in the process. And one of the things that I had a challenge with, aside from the fact that the perception of WCW and Turner Broadcasting was so negative because of the results of what happened with Bill Watson, New Japan, prior to me getting the big seat, so to speak. And top it off with, I was young. In Japan, then, in the 90s, perhaps it's changed. I kind of doubt it. Your senior executives, the most honored and respected executives in the room were always the oldest. The youngest executives in a room were to learn. So now you've got this American kid in terms of the executives in Japan that I

was doing. And I'm talking about television network executives. I took meetings with TV Asahi. I took different meetings with different television networks in Japan along with the Japanese. I was like the punk on the block because it's just the culture. So we had a lot of things to overcome. Bad reputation. The fact that I was this unknown entity in the world of professional wrestling for the most part. And the fact that I was, by Japanese standards, really, really young to be the president of the company. And that was a lot to overcome. But it was such a great challenge. I really enjoyed every bit of it. Why did you feel like the New Japan relationship was important to WCW? Well, there was a,

there was a number of talent, and I'm going to say a lot, but there was, you know, quite a few talents that were working in WCW that also had a good relationship and wanted to work in Japan. So my initial thought was, look, if I want to keep providing this opportunity, because it was a way for WCW. Now, again, we're going back to 94, 95, right? Especially in 94, I'm looking for all the ways to save money that I can. So if I can improve my relationship, ship with New Japan and send more of my talent over to Japan on a more regular basis, the end result of that math is that it helps defer or mitigate my talent expenses. So if my talent budget was, for example, $75,000 in 1994, which is probably pretty close,

$75,000 in 1994, if I could generate $20,000 or $25,000 in additional booking fees over in Japan, that helps mitigate my overall talent budget. So that was the initial reason. I wanted a free flow of talent in as efficient way. I didn't want to hurt my own product, right? But I wanted to create as an efficient talent exchange as possible to maximize my ability to mitigate some of my talent expense. That was number one.

But after being over there a few times, I saw different opportunities. Number one, I saw an opportunity to learn. Keep in mind when I first started going over there, 93, 94, the WWE house show business was not doing great. They were spending a lot of time in Europe, let's put it that way, because they had kind of burned out the domestic market in terms of live events. So they were spending a lot of time over there.

But the domestic WWB live event business was kind of, sheds. WCW's was worse. It was anemic. All right. And I'd go over to Japan and there's 80,000 people in the Tokyo dome. And the average ticket price back then was somewhere around $9,200 bucks. Back here in the States, W.WE was struggling. WCW was almost non-existent. Right? So I go, okay, there's something here to learn. What can I learn from? The presentation. Not as Dave Meltzer and the rest of the dirt sheet scumbags and fan base, like to suggest, oh, he stole the NWO idea. I never studied their creative.

I didn't know anything about their takeovers or their invasions. Those conversations never came up. I wasn't studying the creative. I was studying the overall presentation. Why do people in Japan believe that wrestling is real? and why do people in the United States think it's a joke? That's what I was looking for. And that experience in going to Japan with the perspective of what can I learn here?

Because not everything, you can't export everything from Japan that works, right? The cultures are different. The way media treats wrestling is different in Japan, or at least it was. I don't know what it's like now. There were so many variables that we here in the States don't have any control of. over. So you can't export every kind of methodology or everything that you see and bring it back. But there were some things that you could. And I think just making wrestling more believable, which by the way was consistent with the way I came up through Vernana. He always believed.

You've got to make people believe. So I was seeing kind of what I was first exposed to with Vern manifest over in Japan, and the result of it was 80,000 people that would, you know, the men would show up wearing suits and ties. Women were dressed up like they're going out for dinner. They're spending $100 some odd dollars for ringside seats, more than that. And a place is full. Why is that? Why does the audience feel so differently about the product in Japan than they do in the

United States, and part of it is the presentation? wanted to make it feel more believable. Well, guess what was born out of that? Everybody's going to say, oh, the end of you. No, not the end of you. What was born out of that first was the Cruiserweight Division. The Cruiserweight Division was the first real manifestation of the time that I spent to Japan trying to import from Japan some of the elements of the presentation that made wrestling,

made WCW, I should say, look. more believable. She wrote in your book. I went over to Japan in 1994 to meet with representatives of the New Japan Pro Wrestling Promotion. I went originally to find out how we could work more closely together. But the trip did much more than that. It fundamentally changed the way I thought about wrestling.

Wrestling isn't just popular in the United States. They're wrestling fans all over the world. American wrestlers can find themselves more popular overseas than in the States. Besides touring on our own in Europe, WCW had arrangements with Japanese promotions to capitalize on that opportunity. I like that, you know, this is really an eye-opening thing for you where you sort of take the blinders off and realize, wow, not only is this a way to do some cost cutting, but there might be money in them their heels.

I mean, as a promoter, you're always looking for where can we get bigger audiences and make no mistake in 94, you're still battling that conversation about MGM and Disney and house shows and all of that sort of swirling in your mind. And then you see this Japan opportunity for what it really is. Did you have, do you remember now with the benefit of hindsight? I realize I'm asking you to think about something that was 30 years ago. Was there that Eureka light bulb moment? And, and what was the circumstance? Like, were you at the table with someone? Are you seeing posters as you're going up and down the road? Or what, what was that moment where it clicked for you? I don't know if this was.

the first moment or not, but the most impactful moment I had was, and I believe it was in 94, again, dates are, you know, I may be off by year, but I had gone over for the big super show, New Year's Eve, got up the next morning, you know, fantastic show, unbelievable, sold out Tokyo Dome, and just the whole experience, because New Year's Eve is kind of a different holiday in Japan than it is here in the States. It's many ways somewhat similar, but it's a, I don't want to say it's a bigger deal. It's just a different deal. But I got up the next morning and there's on the front page of the Tokyo Sports or Tokyo News,

whatever the newspaper is called there, front page of the sports section, coverage of Japan Pro Wrestling and treating it in, no, obviously I couldn't read it, but I had Sunny read it to me, but treating it like a Super Bowl game. and and that was when I went, huh, okay, it's, it's the presentation in the end. It's the presentation. If you present it as real, people will react to it as if it's real. If you treat it like a carnival and a clown show, people react to it like a carnival and a clown show. That was it for me. that that that that probably was the catalyst of my journey to make wrestling feel more

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international champion, what I guess really represents the NWA lineage, the lineage. You had that issue with the NWA and we can't call it that anymore. So the big gold belt was called the international championship. But it is the big gold belt. and you're going to send that championship to be defended over in Japan, Rick Rude is going to lose that title to Hiroshi Hase and drop the title. This feels like something that would have been a political issue. How big of a deal was it to transfer this belt that you've seen on WCW programming,

the iconic big gold belt that so many fans are familiar with, and now there's a new Japan wrestler with that around his waist. Was that a sign of good faith to the promotion? because the legacy behind that belt was incredible. That's exactly what it was. You had to rebuild trust. Yes. Had I had, you know, and again, I don't know the details.

I don't know what happened. It was never important to me to get to the bottom of it because there was nothing I could do about it. I'm talking about the, the, whatever happened between Bill Watts and WCW and New Japan. I don't, don't know the details. The only thing that I knew is I had to fix it. And the issue was faith, trust. So I had to take, I had to make the first move. And that was it.

Sonny stated in interviews and in Guy Evans Nitro book that when he first went with you to Japan, he thought it was to pitch a show. And ultimately, we know that you're going to be sort of the liaison between, or he's going to be rather, your liaison to New Japan. what was the show he thought you were going to pitch? I don't know that there was a show. I can't speak for Sonny on that. I don't recall ever.

No, perhaps it was a pay-per-view where I wanted a significant contingent from New Japan. Maybe I wanted to do a New Japan WCW thing. I don't recall. I don't remember. But my reason for going over there was primarily to reestablish the relationship. If Sonny remembers something different, Perhaps a conversation was a part of that about doing a pay-per-view or something, but I don't recall it. We talked about Rick Rood dropping the title over here in Japan.

In May of 94, he's going to wrestle his last match against Sting in Japan. We all know that this is where he injures his back during the match. Man, this is, uh, I don't know, man, what a legendary performer Rick Rood was. And to think that he has this big moment where he gets to drop the big gold belt, he has another big featured match with Sting in a New Japan show. And then to take that move, fall off the platform, and then that back sort of be half on the platform, half off. That's all she wrote for his career.

And we know that he did thankfully have, as luck would have it, that Lloyd's a London insurance policy. Do you remember this being, I mean, what can you tell us about the record injury? What do you remember about that? Not a lot of detail. I don't think it was obvious after the injury that it was as serious as it ended up being. Not immediately it wasn't. So it was like, oh my gosh, it's the end of Rick's career.

We didn't know it was over immediately. I think it was the injury occurred and it was weeks or perhaps months later that we found out that it was really a career-ending situation. It's a real shame that he sees his career end like this. So we know he's still going to have a presence on television, you know, as a heater, if you will, but man, what a performer. Eventually, though, this talent exchange that we've seen with you sending bona fide big stars.

I mean, make no mistake, Rick Rood was a huge international star, as was Sting. So while it did cost Rick Rood his career, unfortunately, it's also furthering your relationship with New Japan. you're not just sending no disrespect but mid carters you're sending your top talent you're letting one of their guys wear your belt so this challenge exchange starts to become more of a two-way street you're seeing more talent coming back and forth when that sort of thing happens does that go through brad or sunny it was you know it would start with brad to me you know i didn't need Sonny to translate with Brad and I.

So that part was that part was easy. Sonny was more instrumental in the more in-depth conversations that took place in Japan. So a lot of the just, I'll call it day to day, Brad was the liaison and I spoke directly. But when it came to meetings, like I said, with even Masa Saido, you know, understood perfectly good English. and he could speak, you know, once I got used to being around him and I, you know,

heard his accent and the way he spoke, his patterns, I had no problem understanding Masa after a day or two. It took a little bit. But Masa's wife, Michi, spoke fluent English. But Sonny was really instrumental when it came to the bigger meetings with Inoki, Bisho, any number of other executives within New Japan, because it wasn't just Masa Saido. He was the talent guy, but there was also, like I said, there was a no key and he was involved in a lot of those discussions and by showing a number of other people. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, as we're, we're moving back and forth here with all the different talent because we're going to see some pretty heavy hitting talent,

maybe the biggest come over to work with WCW. Do you recall there being anyone who sort of dug their heels in and said they did not want to go to Japan or work new Japan on the WCW side? out of things. No, it was the opposite, really. Most talent loved going over to Japan, loved it. Hogan wasn't going to Japan. He'd been there enough.

He'd been there and done that. He built a lot of his career in Japan and had all the fun that he wanted to have and wasn't as interested in 20-hour flights as the rest of the talent was. But beyond Hulk, no, everybody was excited. it. I never had anybody balk about going over there. You know, before he signs with you at 94, there was that moment where he's got the big belt in 93 for the WWF. And he's talking about he's wrestling for New Japan. And he's talking about the value of that championship and that it means more than the WWB championship.

So for you to say he's not interested in going back over, it feels like an about face. But if you, if you believe everything that you've heard about Hogan or read about Hogan, He was a political animal and he understood, you know, his WWE time was coming to an end soon and he wanted to increase some leverage. Did New Japan have an interest in working more with Hogan? And he just told you that doesn't work for me, brother. I mean, look, had I brought up Hogan's name as a potential for a big show, absolutely. I think everybody would have done backflips, including Inoki. who was the president of the company at the time.

But I think most people also recognize that Hulk was, for the most part, done with Japan. And if he did come over, it would be a very special occasion for one match. He wasn't going to go over there and tour like the nasty boys did, or Eddie Guerrero, or Chris Benoit, or Dean Malenko, or Sting, or any of the other talent that would go over would tour. They weren't going over for one shot. I think everybody at New Japan would have been excited about it, but I think everybody in New Japan knew there was probably unlikely going to happen. It would have been very, very expensive, too.

Look, Hulk loved working in Japan. If you sit down and talk to Hulk Hogan and you get him to open up about his experiences in Japan, and I think there would have been a scenario back in the day when Hulk could have been convinced to stay in Japan. He loved it. Absolutely loved it. But like a lot of things in life, you love it to the point where, okay, next, don't need to do that anymore. And the travel was hard, you know, O'Cogun spent, you know, a long time.

He was the original World Warrior when it comes to schedule. Vince McMahon worked him to death early in the 80s. And I think when Hulk finally got to the point where financially he was secure and had experience so much, he was a lot more picky about where he worked and how often he earned that right no doubt he spent a lot of time over there even through 85 he would make one trip in 1990 two trips in 1991 uh and it looks like three trips in 1993 but maybe most famously or at least when i think about that era i think about his stuff with muda and then he did work that big new japan show January 4th, 1994, before he's even signed with you.

He's working that New Japan show. And by August the 94, since we've had some of our biggest American talent go over there with guys like Sting and Rick Rood, you're going to have arguably the biggest, the man behind New Japan. Antonio Anoki is going to come to the United States. He's going to wrestle a clash of the champions in August the 94. His opponent will be Lord Stephen Regal. this is, I mean, it feels like how did this happen? It feels like a fever dream. One of the largest

draws in the history of New Japan, one of their biggest, most important, most iconic stars finds himself here in a WCW ring on free TV, a clash of the champion special. How does that come together? Was it their request? Was it your request? And how do we land on Regal as the perfect opponent? I don't recall the details of the the conversation. I do know that Inoki really respected Stephen Regal. Steve had the kind of style and experience that Anoki respected. I think Inoki was excited to wrestle with Regal because of Regal style. That was what it was all about. And I'm pretty sure Steve was excited as well. Well, I'm sure after you had a big star like Antonio

Onoki here, if I know anything about the Japanese culture from having some of these talent here at Starcast over the years through Sonny Ono, is that there's going to be a little celebration afterwards. And if you're going to be celebrating with the holidays right around the corner, whether it's Christmas or its New Year's or its championship games or bowl games or you know why all the excuses we use to get together. Can I recommend Zybiotics? It should be your first drink. This has been a game championship. for Eric and I, we really believe it because we really use it. And if you hate feeling miserable the day after drinks, well, I can't wait to introduce you to a game-changing product called

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and zbiotics will keep you on your game yeah the the big game over on the NFL side of things that's always on a Sunday they call it super sunday if you don't want to crumb me Monday would zibiotics be your hot tag uh so listen you wrote this in your book the japanese audiences also believe that the things happening in the ring were real i couldn't take that change back to the united states either there was no way I could take audiences back to 1940 or 1950, but there was a psychology to the Japanese style that could be brought back and applied to our creative formula. Americans might not be willing to believe, might not be willing to believe that everything about the match was real,

but there might be a point where they were willing to suspend their disbelief, much as they would go see a play or a movie and get caught up in the moment. If they were allowed to believe, just for a moment or two, they were allowed to believe just for a moment or two, they would enjoy the show more completely and that would be a key to the success now of course we're talking about changing some of the style over the years you know we uh we occasionally had some three stooges in american prayer wrestling and i don't judge that i think that's fun i think there's a place for everything i've heard a quote from dusty before where he says a wrestling show should be like the circus or a buffet there's something for everybody so i get that but before we

were calling it quote unquote strong style is that what you're talking about here um perhaps you know i didn't hear the term strong style or perhaps it was around but i just didn't pay attention to it or recognize it um until much after but japanese this japanese now look you know it's funny is because you had jushin thunder liger you had very animated almost human cartoon type characters but their delivery in the ring their presentation in the ring was very believable very credible um i i i i i'm trying to find a way to articulate it there was still enough showbiz in the japan presentation japanese presentation that i saw especially at the big shows you know coming to the ring and a big crane and being lowered down into the

ring. There was drama and pageantry. But once the bell rang, the action in the ring looked and felt believable. Was there some high flying? Again, I'm going to go back to Jusia Thunder Lager, one of the smaller, faster, more high flying Japanese performers at that time that I was familiar with. Okay. So there was still that very dynamic, athletic presentation, but it was balanced significantly by just a more ground and pound, harder hitting, much more believable presentation. And when I would go, much like when I would go to a big wrestling event in the United States, I didn't watch what was going on in the ring as much as I watched what was going on outside

of the ring. What are the fans doing? How are they reacting to what they're seeing? I would pay attention to what was going on only as it related to the reaction that I was seeing or not seeing in the audience. Now, here's where it gets a little tricky with the Japanese audience. Again, just two different cultures. So different, really. It's not like when you go to Europe. When you go to Europe, it's kind of like a Western, it's like being in the United States with different languages and street signs. It's, yeah, everything's pretty much the same for the most

part. In Japan, it's like going to a different planet. Everything is different. And the Japanese audience are very reserved. They're very polite. They're not going to boo. They're not going to throw. Now, this was back then. This is for the New Japan promotion. I'm sure there are other types of promotions that have a different type of audience.

But we're talking about New Japan back in the 90s, and these events that I would go to, they were very sophisticated audience, but they weren't animated like the American audience. So it was a little harder to read what was working and it was not working. But at the end of those events or the next day, when I look at the newspapers and the magazines,

it was treated with credibility and respect. And I think that just had a lot to do with the overall presentation in the ring. So I tried to bring back as much of that or elements of that as I possibly could. And like I said, that's what brought me to the Cruiserweight Division. That's eventually what helped form the idea, of the NWO, which is something more believable and credible and less teen and preteenish. Well, you announced at the 1995 New Japan Tokyo Dome show.

So that would have been January 4th, 95, that your relationship with WCW and New Japan is going to expand. And in the Nitro book, it would be written that Sonny Ono, who's sort of the contact person in this partnership, would eventually secure a million dollars in annual revenue from this New Japan relationship, but that you felt like the first year was really just making up for money you accepted in the past. But once it becomes obvious that this is going to be a fruitful relationship, you know you can rely on them more in the Nitro era. Because let's remember, Nitro starts, you know, Labor Day, so August, September of 1995. Here you are in January 95 saying, we're going to march through this together.

since you're at their big show, is that the reason you thought, hey, we should reciprocate and in our big show? And you sort of had an international flavor at that Starcade, where it was WCW versus New Japan in many ways. Was that part of the agreement and understanding from the get go? I mean, there was no formal discussion or understanding of it. It was clear to, to New Japan, that I wanted more engagement. I wanted more talent back and forth. I wanted more visibility of the New Japan product and style to be a part of WCW because I wanted, you know, especially back with a nitro, you know, talked about it before. I sat in a room and said, okay, I can't be better than them.

I don't want to be less than them. How could I be different than WWE? And part of being different was being a more consistently international presentation, luchador's Japanese. I wanted to feel more like a world. a brand of the world as opposed to a domestic U.S. brand. I wanted WCW to be perceived as the global wrestling brand, not just the big one in the United States or a big one in the United States.

So not only are you going to get some revenue from this New Japan relationship, but you also get access to the talent. Eventually, you're going to bring guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Ultimo Dragon, and Chris Jericho, all into WCW. Now, some of those names, people are going to hear and say, oh, no, he got that from ECW. But you've said on this show, you didn't watch ECW.

And I know that other guys on your team like Kevin Sullivan would. Your first introduction to a lot of these guys, though, is going to be their personas in New Japan, right? Not so much Jericho, but definitely, Chris Benoit, Eddie Groreau, Jim Malenko. I don't want to say I'd never heard of him. Eddie, I think I had actually even worked with for 45 seconds when I was in aWA at Superclash.

I think he might have been on that card, possibly. But I certainly knew the Guerrero family. But my first real exposure to Eddie was as Black Cat over Japan. Same with DiMaliko, Chris Benoit. My first exposure to them was in New Japan, not an ECW. And the reason that they, and I've talked about this before, the reason that those three in particular I had so much interest in is because Masa came to be and said,

look, we want to book these guys more often. It would be easier for us to be able to do so if they were a part of the WCW roster. So it was really strategic. It was kind of a two-pronged strategic approach to bringing those three in. One was, I'm helping to facilitate. something that my partner in New Japan was hoping to facilitate, hoping I would help facilitate. New Japan couldn't bring those, and they weren't interested, I don't think, in working

365 days a year of Japan. I don't think they wanted to move there. But if New Japan knew that Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko were in the WCW roster, that it would be easier to coordinate and facilitate that exchange than if they were working independently or for ECW with whom the Japan had no relationship to my knowledge. So it was really, it was partly tactical and partly strategic.

The strategic part came in when, again, I'd already had the desire to create more of a new Japan-esque presentation. That's what the cruiserweight was designed to do. That's the exact conversation I had with Eddie and Chris and Dean. when I brought all three of them in for the very first time as a meeting, explained exactly the New Japan scenario. I explained exactly how I would want them to be used inside of WCW. And I explained it, and we discussed it in pretty graphic detail,

graphic in the sense of beyond just superficial conversation, wanted it to be a more believable presentation. I wanted faster-paced, more intense action that these guys were doing in Japan that I couldn't really get out of too many people on, on the WCW roster at that time. So it's just all dovetailed and fit together. Let's take a break and talk about the UWFI story. There's been a lot of chatter over the years and I'm sure you still see it to this day that you saw the UWFI New Japan invasion angle. And that was your idea for the NWO. Like when people discounted,

count your contributions to wrestling and your success and your value to the whole boom that we got in the 90s, which is still, you know, the high watermark for professional wrestling to this day, like when people talk about their peak fandom, I understand WWE is generating more revenue now, but I'm just saying when it was a bigger part of pop culture in the mainstream than it ever has been before, in my opinion, a lot of people say, well, he just stole that idea from Japan. Oh, he just, he took a trip to Japan and he just saw what they were doing. And then, but if that was true, why are we still not wearing shirts and talking about that storyline to this day? Like that's it, the whole thing is a joke. I mean, I don't know where

it started. My guess is it started with some Dave Meltzer or Dave Meltzer want to be some dirt sheet, Reddit geek that has absolutely no understanding, no knowledge, no knowledge, experience, just emotion and digital vomit that they spew on a regular basis. But I don't even know who I didn't even know who you FWI was. I wasn't paying attention to storylines. I didn't sit down with with Masa or with Baisho or with Anoki and say, okay, explain what is this arc? What is the story that you're pretty?

And I clearly don't understand Japanese color and play by play. you know, to suggest that I watch something over there and it went, oh, there's a storyline I'm going to bring over here, it's, it's as ignorant and stupid as the people that regurgitate it. It just makes it's, it's laughable. And it's the, there are people that are always going to resent someone else's success. There are people to this day who were so critical of me and predicted my failure, with Nitro and in WCW and predict, oh, Eric Bishop doesn't know anything about the wrestling business.

He's never been in the wrestling business. It's going to fail. It's a joke. And all of a sudden, you know, we're stuffing success down in your throat and making them gag on it every day for years. Those people are going to resent it. They're not going to give credit.

They're not going to say, I guess we're wrong about him. No. Oh, he stole that idea. Oh, he only was able to a couple of, He said because he had Ted Turner's money. Oh, he's AT American. Oh, he took WWE's talent. If he wouldn't have stole all over it,

which, by the way, I never stole anybody. But if he wouldn't have stole all over town, he would have never been able to do that. I mean, Vincewick band's the same way. Well, it used to be. He's a little different now. We had a little conversation at Hall of Fame. But up until that conversation, you know,

it's always been Ted Turner's money. Oh, he stole the idea from Japan. I get it. weak people say stupid shit common and you can't tell me you had that conversation with vince at hall of fame i may not follow up can you share any context to that conversation nope well thanks for fucking nothing it was a very honest conversation that i keep between us sunny's role in this relationship you've sort of laid out was you sort of learning the new japan or just the japanese businessman way of

of doing business and I think that's invaluable but we would see sunny start to appear as the mouthpiece for a lot of that talent I got to ask because it's the wrestling business is that a new japan request or do you think that's sunny saying hey here's my chance to get on tv it was more me you know sunny speaks english yes sunny and i've been friends since It's 1976, believe it or not. That's a long time. It is a long time. Holy smokes.

We first got to know each other through martial arts. And I traveled a lot with Sunny, partied a lot with Sunny, had a lot of fun with Sunny. But because Sonny could speak English and he was Japanese and he really enjoyed the process and he was integral in the process, he understood a lot of the stuff that was going on. he acted as a translator for a lot of the talent who didn't speak English. Well, if you want to bring talent over that doesn't speak English, but you want them to get over with a wrestling audience, you want them to be an integral part of a story.

You have to have a narrative to go along with that. It can't just be what you see in the ring. There has to be a narrative surrounding the action in the ring to help build the story and get people interested. And because Sonny could speak fluent English and he was native Japanese, it just kind of made a little bit of sense. It was a natural, natural solution to a problem, really. The problem was, how do you bring Japanese talent over here and do interviews with them?

Why do you have to do interviews? You have to do interviews if you want the American audience to relate to the character. Well, if the Japanese that you're bringing over can't speak English and you want the audience to relate to them as a character, and you've got a solution over here by the name of Sonny Ono, why wouldn't you do it? That's exactly how that happened. we should mention this deal that you did with new japan eventually becomes a pretty historic monumental show the collision in korea we've talked about this in our archives the guys over at dark side of the ring actually did a whole episode about this i think it goes without saying

that without you repairing this relationship with new japan the biggest wrestling show in history doesn't happen. Not taking anything away from Tony Con, of course, those were different circumstances, all these people attending this show in Korea, but still when you really think about that, is that of all the stuff

you've done in wrestling that we wrestling fans think is cool. When you step out of the wrestling bubble and sort of take your wrestling hat off and stop using your wrestling brain for a minute, doing a show in front of that many people in Korea, that's got to be the strangest thing you were ever involved with, right? No doubt.

And it's the thing I don't want to say I'm most proud of, but it's a thing I think one of the things, not the one of the things I'm most grateful for because, look, money comes and money goes. I've been fortunate throughout my life to be able to make a great deal of money. I've been also unfortunate in life in terms of my ability to manage it from time to time. But making money has never been a challenge for me.

Traveling is something that I've been able to do throughout my life. So many things I've been able to do that I'm grateful for. It's hard to count them all. But nothing compares to jumping on a North Korean military, military transport plane that was built probably in the 40s or 50s. With a crew full of WCW wrestlers that work for me, while I'm sitting next to Muhammad Ali, listening to Muhammad Ali tell me stories about when he was a kid and he would go to Louisville and watch wrestling and how that impacted his life.

while we're on our way to Pyongyang, North Korea, which is off-limits to Americans. And I found out subsequently I was the only, I was only the seventh American who wasn't part of a news group who had been in Korea that hadn't been shut down and or captured. That's an experience of a lifetime.

How many people walking around this planet get to say that? Right. Not man. many. And in fact, no one is, is able to have the experience that I had. When you take it all together, I mean, I'm over in Japan. I'm doing business with Japanese. And as a result of that deal, I'm going to be flying to North Korea, of all places, with a bunch of talent, friends. Oh, and I'm sitting next to Muhammad Ali. And he and I are becoming friends. And we became friends on that trip and stayed friends long after.

And then I get to step foot in this isolated communist dictatorship that was off limits to Americans. And I get to see it firsthand, not in a documentary, not reading about it in a book, not listening to someone else who'd been there. I get to go there and look into the eyes of people who are so different than me. who believe so differently than I believe, who have been brought up slash brainwashed to believe so differently than me. And to be able to go there and be in this arena.

And I wish I could just, I wish I could articulate what it felt like to be in that arena. Because the crowd, whatever it was, 180, 185,000 people, the North Koreans put out a spectacle of, like I've never seen, ever seen. Maybe in Olympic events, you get a look at it once in a while. But the presentation of that event was so magnificent. And sitting two seats behind me as the leader of North Korea.

And I'm in this VIP box looking down. It's just unbelievable. And my little jaunt, because I was running a lot back in the day and I got up early in the morning, like I still do, I was up at 4 o'clock this morning. morning, getting ready to go sauna, you know, and I got up early in the morning, throw my ridiculous sweat, clothes, didn't even think about bright red pants, bright yellow shirt, whatever it was, green. And I go running in the dark downtown Pyongyang, North Korea, running in the dark in downtown Pyongyang, North Korea before anybody else was

awake. And then to have the sun coming up and the people filling the streets and looking at me like I was freaking Godzilla, I looked like, a monster to them. Not because I was big. I was like 5, 10, 190 pounds. But well, compared to them, I was like a monster. But I was an American. They had lived their entire lives. Most of the people that I came into contact with on the street that morning were all going to work. They were all dressed in suits, black suits, dark blue suits, gray suits, dark gray suits. And they were almost all men, all going to work in butcher shops or wherever they work, factories, where they would go, they would take off their suits, put on their factory clothes, work in a factory, and then at the

end of the day, they'd put their suits back on to walk home with. Is that wild? But I'm, I'm there running, sweating like a pig in the middle of all these people who are walking to work, because there's no cars, there's no buses. The economy there, it's so desolate. There's not even any birds. they ate them. You wouldn't see squirrels. They ate them. The country was starving. Literally in the outskirts, in the outlying parts of North Korea at that time, they were eating their dead. When families who lived together and some would pass away, they'd be forced to eat them. That's how badly they were starving. Because of an extended drought that had been taking place for years and years and years. And because North Korea was so isolated,

Here I am running in the middle of Pyongyang as these people are coming to the streets to go to work and you're looking at me with nothing but the most palatable fear I've ever experienced. The fear in their eyes was something I've never, ever experienced. So when people today, not to go off on a political tangent, it's going to sound that way I don't mean it to be because it's true for all of us. There's no blue, red in this, what I'm about to say. We are being conditioned for propaganda.

We are all becoming victims of propaganda in government control of media. And if I am exceptionally outspoken against it, I try not to with social media. I try not to be controversial in that respect because I know it's just. there's no upside, but I hope people understand how dangerous propaganda in group think is and how important critical thinking is. Because I looked into the eyes of North Koreans who were convinced that I was there to eat their children and rape their wives. And I'm not exaggerating.

That's what they're taught. I had a one of the, I'm going to say a head, but a member of the North Korean security, which is their version of the CIA with me, who explained to Sonny and I, when we first got in the car, when they picked us up at the airport, we were given our rules to behave by. One of them was to leave their women and children alone. Because every citizen of Japan, was taught that Americans, one of the reasons we don't want anything to do with Americans,

is because they will literally kill and eat your children and rape your wives. Is that fucking crazy? Unbelievable. And the reason I'm so grateful that is you get to see, you see that when you see a culture that has been brainwashed where the government has force fed them, everything, and there were people that I would never forget this, sonny and i were part of a tour now they would they split us up you know they were in different groups of us at different times they would split us up in smaller groups and they would take us on tours and different historical sites and things like that and i remember sunny and i were on one

and there was like movie cameras the local news crew state no local news like we know local news state sponsored news was there and they've got these cameras that went they think they They take, like, back in the 60s, right? Not like modern shit. And you're filming us our every move. And, of course, we had a tour guide that was there to explain all the different sites to us. They took us to one. It was a monument that looked like the, I don't want to say it wrong because my French sucks,

but it's like the Arch de Triumph, right? Let's get that arched monument in Paris. They built a replica of that in Pyongyang. but they dedicated it to the tens of thousands of North Koreans who were incinerated by American bombers. Now, I've got a tour guide explaining all of this to me and asking me how I felt, now that I'm standing in front of a monument that is dedicated to tens of thousands of people who were incinerated by American bombs, which, by the way, didn't happen. and they want my reaction.

That's what happens when an entire population of people are controlled by the federal government. This same person explained to me during this tour that if it were not for the great leader of North Korea, the Japanese would have won World War II. It was the North Koreans who defeated Japan. that ended World War II. Every North Korean citizen believes it, like religion believes it. So when you ask me of all the things that I've done and all the things that I've seen and was exposed to, the things that mean the most of me,

how could I not be grateful for an opportunity to get a snapshot into the real world of such an isolated country and to see the different? between what we have, not what we have, what we have in a sense of freedom and the ability to travel and just do what you want to do compared to a communist dictatorship like I saw firsthand. It's amazing. I still have a hard time believing I did it. It seems like another world to me. Well, if you're ready for another world just in time for the holidays, maybe you're not sure exactly what to get your spouse.

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I don't know that that even would have been possible without Nitro. And the very first Nitro, the very first Nitro match of all time, Juschen Liger versus Brian Pilman. Here we are taking the greatest risk of all, going head to head with the big show on the other channel but we know that this first night

they're preempted so we can really show everybody what to expect on this program and I know that a lot has been made about the importance of the main event and everyone listening to this knows how important the main event is when you're promoting a card but I think a lot of promoters would agree that that

first look the opening segment the opening match an opening quarter hour, the first match. Man, it creates so much pace and anticipation. It sort of sets a precedent for everything that follows. And when you took a look at your roster, you decided to say, you know what? These guys had a fantastic match a few years prior at Super Brawl.

This New Japan relationship is important to us. I bet a lot of people watching Monday Night Raw have never seen anything like Jus and Thunder Liger. So you leverage that. and it's Liger and Pilman in the first ever Nitro match. This is a big doggone deal and another step in this New Japan relationship, no? Absolutely right. You know, you say a lot of wrestling promoters and producers would agree.

They would agree now. Yes. Didn't agree back then because Nitro was really one of the first shows that did it. I was one of the first people that really put on hot, fast pace, credible wrestling to open up shows or to even open up paper views. It became kind of a standard format for us for quite a while. And it certainly was here. Again, you know, I keep going back to it, sat in a room, got to be different than. How can I be different than WWE?

Oh, I know. We'll try this. I wanted WC, I wanted a night show and I wanted WCW to have a more international credibility and vibe to it. Hmm. Jush and Thunder like a Brian Pillman. So it was, I think it was the first really important match. I think it set the tone, but it also set the tone for what we were going to, to do with nitro and wcd going forward well into the future in terms of formats start off hot

give them something special giving some give them something to get genuinely excited about that feels different than what they've been seeing each and every week was you should thunder lager the talent i mean when you when you're deciding who you want to feature and how you want a feature obviously you're thinking about a great match and you know these guys can do it And you know, they're familiar with each other, et cetera, et cetera. But was Jus and Thunderlager like the first New Japan talent that you were really, really high on that you remember being excited about having the opportunity to work with on a more regular basis?

No, not the first, not the only. Certainly, I really enjoyed Muda's work a lot. But I wanted that fast-paced match. I wanted something, I wanted a cruiserweight match before I knew what a cruiser weight was or what I wanted it to be. well we know that we're going to see the Starcade 95 we talked about that a little bit ago it's going to feature what we called the World Cup of wrestling and it's going to largely be a bunch of new Japan talent against a bunch of WCW talent and you start to see more and more of their talent

appearing on nitro and your major pay-per-views you even see kensuki sasaki when the united States Championship, I mean, he's going to, I think, uh, actually win that from Sting and at that World Cup of wrestling and Starcade is when we would see him drop that title to the one man gang. But nonetheless, this new Japan relationship, you know, you're setting records over in Korea. You're featuring some of their talent on your very first nitro. What a lot of people believe to be your granddaddy of them all, your big show is Starcade. You've got a bunch of their talent on there. Did you ever, it seems like this is going swimmingly, but did you ever hear from anyone on the New Japan side, or maybe they were unhappy with how some of their talent had been portrayed on American TV?

Absolutely not. I didn't. Not during my, not during my relationship with New Japan. Absolutely not. It's quite the opposite. That, that part of our business was the easiest part of our business, the creative part. Masa Sayido, myself, Brad Riggins, Sonny, as needed. The communication was very, very solid.

And the trust was there. So it, there was never any, any significant questions, issues, frustrations of any kind. I want to talk about the NWO in Japan. But before we do, I want to ask you, you've told the story before about a great relationship you had with your family. And I think you actually. we were fortunate enough to take the family on a trip to Japan. When did you make that trip over?

Do you remember the year? I think it was 97. Okay. So that would have been in the NWO era. Oh, yeah. Sonny Ono had this to say about the NWO. The NWJapan angle for New Japan made an amazing amount of money for that company. In the summer of 98, we sold upwards of $5 million worth of T-shirts.

It was amazing. I'm sure the wrestlers didn't see any of that money, but the company definitely made money. The NW. Japan was Chono and Muda. They were like the Kevin Nash of NW. Japan. Chono double crosses me on Nitro, and the next week I bring Muda to avenge me, and Muda turns on me.

In retrospect, I'm so glad I paid a part in the birth of NWO Japan, and if you look at history 15 or 16 years ago and how it all developed. I'm so grateful to have just been a part of the height of viewership in American pro wrestling and the height of popularity in Japanese pre-Ressling, wrestling. So this whole NWO idea is not only hot here in America. We see there's an opportunity to sell some merch over there. And I think that sort of gets glossed over. Five million dollars

in the summer and one summer for t-shirts. That's unbelievable. Eric. Yeah. I'll never forget. Somebody asked me a story or asked me a question during an interview for a larger story. You know, when did you know that the NWO was really going to be a big hit, you know? So I didn't know it when we crafted the idea and the idea as it developed and evolved and morphed because, you know, the original idea was one thing, but it became a collaborative affair after a period of time and the collaboration ended up being much different than the initial thought, really. But I'll never forget, Sunny and I were over in Japan.

This was early. before the NWO merchant, before we had an official NWO merchandise deal in Japan, right? It was a Saturday afternoon. We were off. We didn't have any meeting scheduled that day. I think we were leaving the following Tuesday or Wednesday. So we're walking around an area called Kabukshu.

Kabukshu was near the hotel, but it's kind of a, kabook show is kind of a, it's a seedyer, kind of edgier, slightly more dangerous part of Tokyo. but that's saying that in context to the Japanese culture in the United States would be the safest neighborhood of the world. But there, you know, Kabukshio was regarded as the kind of place where you didn't

really want to be seen down there. It was a little sketchy. I loved it. I love, Sunday and I would go there at night when it got really kind of seedy and sketchy because it was just cool as shit. But we were walking around Kabukshio on a Saturday after. It was like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So it was just people out shopping, right, underway, train stations, going to and from places.

And we see two kids, I say kids are probably in their 20s, and they're each wearing NWO shirts. Now, we weren't near a wrestling event. We weren't, I don't even think WCW was going to be there for any event. We were there on just other business, not event-related business. And we looked at each other's, my God, there's NWO shirts and tell you. Tokyo. They must have somehow gotten them here in the United States and got them back. And that's when I, it's when Sunday and I both went, whoa, maybe we should be doing some licensing over here in Japan. But that's, it was amazing. Yeah. And it's funny about two years ago, three years ago, I was over there. There was a memorial for Masa Sayu, who has obviously passed away. And I was invited by Masa's wife to come and speak. And I did because us and I and his wife, Mici, and Sunny, we're all very close. Our families were close. and become close and

after that event was over the next day two writers from Tokyo press came and were interviewing me and they're telling me through Sunny because I didn't speak don't speak Japanese obviously and they didn't speak English

just how big the NWO merchandise was they had done their research and it was staggering the amount of money and these reporters were telling me that New Japan's success with the NWO, both in terms of arena ticket sales and merchandising, has never been matched. The NWO was the most successful storyline, according

to these writers. I'm not saying it was or it wasn't, but according to these two writers who did their research, the NWO storyline and the merchandise that came with it was the most financially successful experienced New Japan had experienced. that's saying a lot that's a lot do you remember there being a request from new japan for something they wanted that you had to say no to whether it was talent or gimmicks or ideas need that ring a bell no and i don'tke wanted holkogen to for pyeongyang north korea yeah that didn't work for me brother uh

almost verbatim yeah if you just wrote your your beard said that i'll do again that doesn't work for me brother i'll be on the boat there you go you got it you nailed it and by the way who could blame him for that one um was there anything else you remember being requested where you know you just couldn't do it couldn't pull it together no but there's very little that i can't do if i want to do and put my mind to do it but they never asked for anything that I couldn't do. Masachona, why is he the first guy chosen to join the NWO? Just look at him, man.

He's right up for fuck. He looks like it. Yeah. He just looks like some nasty ass yakas of fucking hit man, doesn't he? Did you ever, you know, these days, you know, we taught, we started the show today with like an hour long conversation about AW and television and who owns what and yada, yada, yada. When you're really rolling, did, was there ever a discussion about a, expanding and buying a part of New Japan before you laugh as a listener to this just want to remind

everybody Ted Turner had such a vision he understood that this 24-7 news network is going to be a global property he got so focused his organization got so focused on global growth once upon a time WCW announcers were no longer allowed to say foreign object stupidly they had to say international object. I'm just saying Ted Turner and his organization very clearly understood, hey, we're trying to be a global citizen here and business doesn't just happen within the confines of the east and west coast of the United States. Was there ever a discussion as hot as you got as to say, hey, maybe we should get part of that over there? Because if you did have some ownership stake in New Japan, maybe that could

create new revenues for WCW, or was that never even seriously considered? Not seriously, not seriously considered, because again, I'm going to go back to the culture for an American company to own a minority of a Japanese company. There'd have to be some really, really, really interesting strategic reasons for that. I got you. It would be so complicated. that, no, I was more interested in just having a great relationship that there was a tremendous amount of trust and goodwill as a foundation.

Because if you've got a great relationship with the company and you can both make money in that relationship, there's no need to complicate it with equity. and because that can get tricky that can get very tricky and i wasn't i wasn't interested in and complicating a relationship that was already working as well as i had ever hoped it could we uh have heard the rumor in innuendo it's certainly been reported that the new japan relationship with wcw ended around the same time that vince russo comes in now a lot of people would say Oh, that's another thing to blame Rousseau for. Other people would say, well, was it Rousseau coming in or was it Eric going out?

Because we know you got sent home just before Rousseau comes in. What was the reason that the New Japan WCW relationship started to dwindle here or came to a more official end? There's probably both. I think the trust and the goodwill that existed. I mean, again, New Japan would fly me. and my wife and my children over to Japan for big shows. And when the show was over, we would all travel with Masa Saito, Michi, Sonny,

and Sonny's wife, Julie, and my entire family would jump on a bullet train and go to Mount Fuji and stay at an ancient Japanese onsen. Onsen is like a mineral hot bath. It's up in the mountains that the samurai used to train at and heal in and all. I mean, it's just amazing experiences that we had as friends. So, yeah, when I left, that created a challenge. Add to that, it was Vince Rousseau, who famously came out and said shortly after he got there,

American audience don't want to watch no Japanese. They want to watch Americans. He got sued for that, by the way. Discrimination. because he let a lot of people go that weren't Americans unbelievable but that that had a lot to do with it

we should ask did you have any communication with anyone from New Japan once you left or was wrestling just all in your ruby mirror no I mean look you know me Conrad I'm not a phone guy I don't I don't call just a chat with anybody, not my brother and my sister

who I love dearly or any of my close friends who I love. I just I'm not that guy. So I didn't call just to chat with Masa or Michi. But we stayed in touch. Definitely stayed in touch. Still, I know I haven't talked to Michi in about a year. But no, I think for the most part, I went

dark. I just I went dark. I don't think I stayed in touch with too many people during that. period of time. I want to ask you about some of the biggest surprises in the relationship, but first I want to tell you some of the biggest surprises I've had since I started using AG1. I started using it back at the beginning of the pandemic because my wife convinced me this is good for our immune system. In reality, she had been using it for years. You see, AG1's been around since like 2010. And man, it's just the real deal. They've constantly

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That's it. And you're going to set yourself up for success with these 70s. different high quality ingredients they're really going to help support your energy your focus your strength your clarity it's going to help your immune system your digestion and so much more eric and i really believe in it we've been using it for years we think you should try it as well you're going to cover all your bases with just one scoop and a cup of water and if a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine then try ag1 and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase.

Just go to drinkag1.com slash 83 weeks. That's drinkag1.com slash 83 weeks. Check it out. You'll be glad you did. So Eric, one of the biggest surprises you had in working with New Japan that you haven't told us about. Can you think of one? Were there any surprises, things that you didn't expect?

I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Right. I didn't expect to fall in love with the Japanese culture as much as I did. I, I, beyond that, I can't think of anything, really.

Were you surprised that a company like AEW sought out a relationship with New Japan? And conversely, are you surprised that WWE hasn't done more with New Japan? I mean, WWE's been a good citizen to New Japan. They let Shinske and Nakamura go, have some fun not too long ago and and obviously we've seen with maybe hunter with his hands

on the steering wheel a little more maybe he has a better idea of how to maybe he gets shinska better we saw the way he was produced and presented in nxte and i'm just curious are you surprised that w w didn't do more that a ew has it and do you think that could be something that's discussed in the future uh you know i'll address w to First, going back to the reasons why I wanted to do business with New Japan, and part of the was the reason why was I wanted WCW to feel different than WWE. I don't think WWE wants to feel different than WWE. I don't think WWE has the same needs or same goals as I did in WCW back in 1994 and

1995 because we were trying to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We were trying to be different than. That was my motivation, and it worked. But I don't think WWE has the same need, right? So it makes sense that they wouldn't necessarily share screen time with talent who aren't under their control, who they aren't making money with 365 days a year. or potentially making money with 365 D's years.

So that makes sense from a WWE position and why they wouldn't. I think AEW is probably trying. First of all, New Japan ProRosing is not the same company as it was back in the 90s. It is a fraction of a fraction of the company it was back in the mid-90s. It's an entirely different management, entirely different management. It's not the same company. And I still think there's value for AEW and consistently bringing over Japanese and making them a part of their programming and building story similar to what we did with the NWO Japan and the NWO United States. There's the ability there.

And I think if it's pursued and done well that there's still a big upside for a company. like AEW. But I don't see that same upside for WWE. Really inside baseball question here from Josh. He wants to know who was responsible for travel expenses to and from Japan when the talent traveled to Japan. I asked this, Eric,

because I know the way it works in independent wrestling, you know, and but the way it used to work way back when with, uh, the different territory promoters, you know, like the promoter who's bringing him in gets that one, leg and the next promoter gets another leg.

Did WCW and New Japan sort of split those costs? Is that the way it worked? No. If New Japan wanted six WCW talents and we were able to make sure that they were available, New Japan flew them over and flew them home. Conversely, if I wanted Japanese sailing on my show, I'd fly them over and I'd fly them home. Got it. well listen i uh i wanted to end our show today as we're talking about all things new japan

and the way wrestling was with a couple other pieces of news uh there are a little more current over the weekend unfortunately we heard the news that live morgan was arrested down in florida and the i guess there was uh a charge that there was marijuana in the car the rumor in innuendo is that it was actually a vape that was owned by someone else who was in the vehicle as I understand it I have friends who live in Florida full time and they tell me for $200

they'll go about anybody a card down there so if you happen to be in that state and in that circumstance maybe that's not a terrible idea but I'm glad to hear according to the rumor and innuendo that we've read online

from guys like Sean Ross Sapp and Fightful I believe is the source that broke this absolutely no heat on Liv Morgan for that arrest I don't mean to make this a political issue but I think most of our listeners know that a huge portion of the states have legalized marijuana

and I can't help but think about how maybe the wrestling approach to marijuana has changed this becomes a bigger conversation because guys like Brett Hart would say hey the pill problem really only became a thing in wrestling once the WWF started drug testing for marijuana guys had to look to other places Of course, at the time,

WWE was just following the letter of the law. Those prescription drugs, well, they were legal or were supposed to be legally prescribed, whereas marijuana was illegal. I know you're not exactly a, I mean, we're not here to do a political show, but I'm glad that WWE seemingly has no heat with Liv Morgan about this arrest, aren't you?

I know. I said people that listen to me and think, oh, he's so, such a hardcore conservative. and it's just absolutely not the case. Very conservative about some things, but I'm very socially liberal about others. And I think the whole marijuana thing is a joke. I think the fact that she got a ticket

because there was a vape pen in her car is a just silly-ass joke. I don't get that. There must have been something, that cop must have been having a really bad day. Or maybe it was his or her first day on the job. I don't know. But that's just silly. And I'm glad there's no heat, by the way, I feel whatever.

I'm not going to get into how I feel about legalizing marijuana. But let me just sum it up by saying, I'm really, really glad there's no heat on this one because it's silly. It's silly. Totally agree. I've seen people do so, including yours truly, by the way, do so much stupid shit as a result of alcohol that. let me put it to you this way i have a friend of mine that's a cop here in wyoming super conservative state there's like two democrats in the entire state and they won't tell you who they are because they don't want anybody to know it but my friend who is a cop and very conservative on this subject

i asked him one day how do you feel about marijuana and he said look let me put it to you this way I get called out four or five days a week on domestic disturbances. And out of 10 of those cases, alcohol is involved in eight of them. I've never been to a domestic disturbance because there was a marijuana involvement. And when he said that, I went, you know what? That's how I feel. That pretty much sums it up. I don't think, look, I don't think anything's, you know,

It's better not to do anything, ultimately. But I think the least dangerous thing in the world is marijuana. And I know that's some people, oh, yeah, but it's a gateway drug, whatever. I think watching television is a gateway drug. If you look at the pharmaceuticals being pounded down your throat, every time you watch television, I'm much more concerned about the pharmaceutical industry that I am about somebody getting pulled over with a vape pen in their car. well let's talk about somebody else who maybe has been pulled over by the Twitter police Mr. Disco Inferno he quote tweeted over the weekend uh Tony con Tony con Tony con said

AEW fans how are you feeling hashtag AEW collision on T&T drama and the real life Glenn Gilberty the former disco inferno quote tweeted it and said like the show needs a reset Tony con ratioed his ass with the quote tweet the belief that you're an irrelevant parasite unites the entire pro wrestling community hashtag AEW collusion collision not collusion and disco actually quote tweeted that and said thanks for the content so I'm sure him and conan are going to have fun talking about that this week but what do you make of Tony conne responding to disco that feels like a I don't know why would you respond to that Because Tony Kahn thinks the Twitter universe is the end-all be-all. Tony's into Twix. Twitter, X, Twix. He's a twixer. It's funny.

It's sad in a way, but funny. And I think the fact that he produces his show for the Twitter wrestling audience and the dirt sheet wrestling audience. are you surprised i'm not well i uh i was a little surprised with the quote that we saw from tony con over the weekend uh we've got that here for us it's worth the fight and i love the fight i'm never going to stop fighting no matter what happens no matter how things change it's the fight jim crockett fault verangana ted turner and so many other people that tried we played the clip at the top of the show you really liked it and i think that is uh

for all the alarmists who were concerned about what's going to happen with w v e and warner brothers tony's going to keep the fight going i think that's good for wrestling and i think it is too i just wish tony would learn how to fight a lot of people like to fight only a few people know how to do it well tony needs to learn how to fight Well, we're going to try to learn something new next week here on 83 weeks. We're going to do a monthly episode here on 83 weeks, once a month, where we hope that's the plan, monthly. We're going to call it timeline.

We're going to watch back a progression of a story, a character, or a certain time frame, and we'll dig into it on a special edition talking about the rise of Goldberg. We'll be talking about his first match on TV in Salt Lake and September of 97. we'll go all the way back up to Goldberg becoming the United States champion. He was really one of the great stars of the era. I mean, when he was as hot as he was in 98, I don't think we saw many stars that hot. Of course, on the other channel, Austin was hotter than ever. But Austin had been in the game for a while.

Goldberg seemingly came out of nowhere. As Tony Chivani tells the story, he didn't even know what to call him on TV until he was once he was already in the ring. And we're going to talk about the rise of Goldberg here in the coming weeks here as we do this new timeline series and we'll start highlighting some of the 83 best moments in Nitro history.

We would love to hear your suggestions for what you would like for us to celebrate about Nitro's history on Twitter. It's at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. You can also interact with us individually. Eric is very active on Twitter. At E. Bischoff, he's at the real Eric Bischoff over on Instagram.

I am at. Hey, by the way, by the way, then you bring that up. The real Eric Bischoff on the Instagram, I am working hard. I want to get that sucker up. I've just neglected it.

I signed up for it. I don't do much on it. Post some pictures every now and then, a lot of family stuff. I'm about to fire that mucker further up. I start doing some good content over there. So go over to Instagram, the real Eric Bischoff.

We're going to start having some fun over there in a weekly basis. How about that? And you can join an. our fun every week on YouTube. It's one thing to hear the show. It's another to watch Eric loses mine. That's 83 weeks on YouTube.com. And by the way, you've heard some of the same sponsors on our program week after week year after year. Why is that? Well, because it really works. Find out how affordable it can be for us to talk about your product here on the show at advertise with Eric.com. A little spoiler. If you're looking for dudes 25 to 54, we got them.

We've also got a fun, a new, a lot of new fun swag and merch. We got hoodies and t-shirts and tumblers oh my hats and stickers and everything else you need and 83 weeks we're going to get our ninja star wars t-shirt up and available for sale here that's there's there's a reason why i want to get that shirt up and out there okay expose it right now it's a secret okay it'll be a big surprise it'll be a fun surprise one that you will not see coming but there it is right there that is the image of the original ninja star wars box the game that's Sonny created. I was involved in. We got it up. We manufactured a shit ton of them. It was the very game that got me a meeting with Vern Ganya. And the reason that I was hired

and had my first day in the professional wrestling industry. So so much about what we're talking about is tied to that very logo and that T-shirt. So get it. Ninja Star Wars. It's going to be a collector's item. You'll find out why soon. I also want to mention, you can pick that shirt up right now, 83 weeksmerch.com. And if you're like a lot of folks and you put Christmas on a credit card, let me recommend you check out savewithconrad.com. I don't know if you've seen, but over the last few weeks, all the sudden interest rates are lower than they've been in many, many months.

And if you put Christmas on a credit card, there's never been a better time to get rid of that credit card debt than right now. Don't wait and make it a New Year's resolution to save money. start saving money today at save withconrad.com. You can get rid of all your credit card debt just like that and at the same time get a much lower monthly payment. As if that wasn't enough, you can skip your next two house payments. We're talking no house payments in January or February.

You're done until merch. How about a little spring break or Christmas break from house payments? Save withconrad.com. Eric, I had a lot of fun today. This was super fun talking about the good old days of the new. Japan relationship trying to forecast, you know, what's next for AEW, what's next for WWE, what's next for the talent involved. And, uh, I have a feeling that the story is, uh, just going to get hotter and hotter in the coming weeks. If the rumors are true,

when do you think we would hear an announcement of a new raw television deal? Would they do something by the end of the year? Would they do something around Royal Rumble season? Would it happened the day after WrestleMania at the end of Q1. Like, I know this is all going to be tied to shareholder value and how they can get the most bang for their buck. But if you do a look back, we saw the TKO announcement was done the day after WrestleMania. If there's a new raw television deal on the horizon, do you ever prediction as to

when that could come out? I don't have a prediction, but I think the two most likely times in my mind at least are end of first quarter right before upfronts, right? There's a strategic or tactical reason why that would make sense. Right after WrestleMania would be a strategic reason. It's a great strategy to make an announcement like that off the amazing buzz and the news coverage and all the other coverage you're going to have to tag that announcement along with it would make a great deal of sense in that regard.

I could also see it in the first quarter right before the upfronts. Wow, it's going to be a fun year. Buckle up, boys and girls. 2024 is on deck, but we'll be back next week with a very special Christmas edition of 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen.

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