83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 303: The Best Of 83 Weeks

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

On this episode of 83 Weeks, we're taking you deep into the archives for some moments and stories you won't hear anywhere else. Eric shares his legendary career working alongside some of professional wrestlings most iconic and notorious entertainers in the industry. ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS FANATICS - When you - or someone you know - is shopping for the latest WWE gear, you can support 83 Weeks too simply by using our dedicated link! https://wwe-shop.sjv.io/c/5036600/1371040/16449 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

It's hard to describe it. It's really hard to describe the level of energy. And some of it was, you know, anxiety, because at this point, a psychosis is walking out here for the very first match. I am backstage, not entirely convinced yet that Hulk Hogan is going to actually do what we discussed doing. There was a lot of concern about that. And by this point, even, I had known Halt for several years and had gotten pretty close to him. I knew him on a different level than just as a professional and a peer, someone that I worked with.

I knew him pretty well personally, and I knew what he was influenced by. and I knew what his concerns were, and there was this concern, fear, whatever you want to call it, in the back of my mind that when it came down to it, there would be people around Hulk, specifically his family, that would possibly, you know, convince Hulk that making this move and turning heel and all of that that entails might not happen. So until Hulk Hogan showed up at the building, which was where halfway through this show, I wasn't 100% sure he was going to show up. So while I was excited about what could be, I was also, you know, thinking a lot about,

okay, if it goes south, I need to make a move. I can't wait to think about it until that point. I've got to have a solution in my back pocket. So between the fun and the excitement and the buildup and the way the story had been going and all of the positive energy, there was also a fair amount of concern of my part. Well, now, you said his family. I want to circle back to that.

And by the way, we're talking over a hell of a match, two of my very favorite WCW performers. Go out of your way to watch this one. I love everything Ray Mysterio and Zicosis ever did. This is not going to be an exception. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the family comment you made. I was, I'm paraphrasing. I was concerned that someone,

people close to him, specifically his family, might talk him out of this talking about the heel turn we're talking about linda right i mean because nick and brook are like five and eight years old so that's not it it's it's his family maybe his agent it's those type folks i mean his wife is agent those type folks not or i just want to elaborate have you elaborate there yeah i mean hawk's agent peter young who by the way is a great guy Whatever I'm about to say, I don't want to make it sound like I'm disparaging Peter Young. But look, Peter Young has a deep affection for Hulk Hogan. It still does.

Peter Young has been Hulk's manager probably since early WWF, right? And the bond between those two is very real and very close. And I respect that. And I will say that Peter Young, truly has Hulk's best interests at heart. So I don't want to make it sound like Peter was selfish or concerned about himself or anything like that. But Peter Young is one of those guys that's always afraid the sky is going to fall.

You know, he looks at my experience with him, at least in dealing with Hulk. I don't deal with Peter on other projects. But Peter was one of those guys that was all. always so fearful that something negative was going to happen based on something that Hulk would do, that I was pretty sure that he was that voice in Hulk's ear. Soing, and he didn't mean to do it, but because of his affection for Hulk and his role as Hulk's manager, I was pretty sure that Peter was in Hulk's year on a pretty consistent basis trying to talk him out of this in his own way. But Linda, I don't know. You know,

Linda was all about the money. She didn't give a shit. But she did. You know, she was obviously a strong influence. And she could wear you down. She had a strong personality. And if Linda thought that this would be a bad financial move for Hulk, because let's face it, heels don't sell merchandise, generally speaking. Clearly, that's not the case with regard to the NWO. They're still making money, as we heard from Scott Hall a couple weeks ago, still getting those fat six-figure royalty checks off of NWO merchandise. But at the time, we didn't know that. Hulk didn't know that. Certainly Linda wouldn't know that. Peter Young wouldn't have known that. Typically, you know, in the wrestling business, once you turn heel, your merchandise sales go down dramatically.

So I would imagine from, you know, Linda's perspective, that was a concern. But even though the kids were very young, that was one of Halt's primary concerns. When I had gone down to Hulk's house to talk to him the year before, eight months before, whatever it was, about the idea of turning Hulk, his primary concern was the effect that it would have on his kids. It's the first thing that he brought up. Man, I've got young kids that are in school. I live in a community where people, you know, are into the Hulk Hogan character, and I'm a positive influence, and I do a lot of things for charities. And at the time, I think he had made more make-a-wish appearances than anybody in history. You know, I think John Siena surpass that sense, but we're talking about 1996.

And Hulk was really aware that a lot of those opportunities to work within the community and to work with Make-A-Wish. and yes, to sell merchandise. All of it was, he was venturing into the unknown. And even though Hulks, you know, merchandising and things like that weren't as popular as it was back in a late 80s, early 90s, it was still significant. He was still getting a lot of commercial opportunities and endorsement opportunities. And he knew that Turning Heel would be waving goodbye to all of that. So there was a lot of, you know, genuine concern about some genuine issues. but the kids were a big part of it, even though they were very young,

Hulk was very concerned that turning heel would have some kind of an adverse effect on his kids. Oh, wow. The kids are kids just is what it is. I can't believe that's a real thing, but I never even thought of that, if I'm honest. So here is Maine Gene with the armed security guards backstage. Let's track it.

Right behind me here. I have security. If either one of these men would have the gall, the unmitigated gall to touch me, I would go right to a lawyer's office. They have done the damage already in World Championship wrestling. Tony, Dusty, certainly Bobby the Brain Heenan,

even you can empathize with what is going through the mind of Eric Bischoff. He's seen these two men. Apparently, anyone and everyone is fair game. Tonight, though, in my opinion, they are going to have their hands full. I was hoping to get one of the outsiders out here for some kind of an idea,

some kind of word, regarding who their third man is. I mean, we have had speculation in recent weeks on numerous people that could fill that particular position, the third man, to join these two big men. Right now, I have this shield here. That will not be the case out of the ring during our main event, the hostile takeover match. The electricity, even back here, is just absolutely so thick you could cut it with the night. Ladies and gentlemen, you are part of history, history in the making, here at the Bash of the Beasts. further thoughts let's go back to our broadcasting up new arena everybody i mean from the start of the show whether it's tony shivani or it's bobby heenan or it's dusty roads certainly mean jean

everyone has hyped up what a big historic night this is how many people knew i was just about to get into that i'm glad you brought that up i think one of the reasons why you know, we've talked about this from the beginning of the show. It just feels bigger. The energy is palpable, even watching it 25 years later, the intensity of it all. A big part of the reason for that is nobody knew who the third man was. And if there's ever an example of what I learned from Vernanya, I didn't make this shit up. I was just fortunate enough to be mentored in a way by Vernania and learned his strong,

view and believe of how wrestling should be produced and presented very Tony didn't know Bobby didn't know Jane didn't know none of the talent well I should say very few talents knew at this point now I think right around this time of the show Hogan may have arrived backstage and then anybody that was backstage probably was smart enough to put two and you together. But up until this night, Nash knew, Hall knew, Randy knew, Sting knew, because I had to keep him as a plan B all the way up until the time Hogan arrived. Sting knew. Luger. Luger knew. So everybody knew. No. Well, they didn't know until, well, Sting did, but, you know,

I trusted Sting. Sting. Sting, I wasn't worried about Sting, you know, telephone, telegraph, telewrestler. I wasn't worried about that with Sting. No. Sure. I'm sure, you know, people did know that I didn't think did, but they didn't know right up until that night. Because I didn't know right up until that night. Right. And certainly the announcers didn't, and the vast majority of the talent didn't know. So that was the reason it worked. That's why you're feeling the energy that you feel from Tony and Bobby and Gene early on. Now, they didn't know. And there's magic to not knowing as an announcer.

When I talk all the time, and I do, I just beat myself. I get sick of hearing my own voice sometimes when I talk about this, of wrestling being overproduced. One of the things that is one of the aspects of wrestling that is the most overproduced is the announcers. They don't know. they don't know how to make it feel real anymore. They're too busy being good at what they do and they're not good at

being real. I don't mean that as a criticism. It's a nature of the evolution of the business. It's not because they don't have the talent or the ability. In the case of Jim Ross, you know, he's left more talent in restaurants alongside of the road than I'll ever have

as a play-by-play announcer. But when you're overproduced because you know too much and you're trying to do too much based on all the information you have you're not bringing that genuine feel it's interesting to uh to take a look and think about how this all could have been different let's pick up the rest of the observer right up here however it didn't come without major risks hogan's name was still a factor in by rates largely believed to be coming from young children who wouldn't be as apt to beg their parents to buy the show to see a heel hulk hogan

whatever revenue wcw merchandise brings in was put at major risk as well as hogan was the top item seller and clearly those numbers should drop substantially for older and long-time fans seeing the biggest name in american wrestling do his first turn on a national scale is going to spark interest in a big way particularly short term w w officials knew that the hogan turn had to be done right or it wouldn't be worth the risks and it could only be done once in long-term term plans had to be finalized. There was legit fear, basically up until the last day that Hogan would change his mind at the last minute, as he's done in the past when it came to major angles that would leave him laying or doing jobs that would elevate others to a parity position. A plan B contingency idea was that Sting would do a heel turn and join the outsiders, largely due to the belief that too many people had speculated about Lugar turning,

which was the original plan. Oh, God, there you go. there's fact from Dave Meltzer himself was never a consideration sorry or savage turning but nobody had speculated on sting turning and the company wanted a shocking finish to the show so Luger had turned a lot in his career good guy bad guy good guy bad guy so I could see that sting at this point and I know we're going to get tweets he'd never been a heel on a major stage. I'm not saying that he wasn't a heel for Bill Watts or he wasn't a heel and okay, whatever. Since he's been big time badass surfer sting, the franchise player here for

WCW, he hasn't been a bad guy. The macho man had been a bad guy. Lugar had been a bad guy. Is that why Sting was the perfect plan B because he was the perennial baby face? It's not so much because he was a well, yes and no. It was primarily because Sting, you know, other than Rick Flair, Sting was the face of WCW. And that's why it took someone, had it not been for Hogan, it would take someone that no one would ever have expected to make that turn. And that's why it was Sting. Dave Meltzer couldn't even get this shit right after it was over, for God's sake.

Lugar was never, ever, ever part of a conversation. where that came from? Well, I know where it came from. It came from, what's his name is, you know, a figment of his imagination, I guess, like so much of everything else that he writes. But it was never part of it. Neither was Randy. Nobody else was. It was Sting and Hogan. Those were the only two. And it was primarily because, you know, no one would have seen Sting coming. The conversation, I didn't even, you know, pay attention to some of us. It's hard for me to pay attention to a lot. of Dave's comments when you read them to me. But, you know, any suggestion that, you know, merchandise sales was at risk. Fucking silly. There were no merchandise sales. It was insignificant. We made more money off of paper cups, our percentage of the paper cups that were sold to put Pepsi and beer in than we made off merchandise. So much of that is just so, it's a fantasy, you know, whatever. Oh, Instructed,

area. Gene O'Clo, let's wrap it on this. Could be good. I have been, I hate to say this, I've been eavesdropping, and behind these doors are the outsiders, and apparently they have been joined by a third man. Let's try to get out here. I must confide in you. This third man's voice sounds somewhat familiar, but it's muffled, and I can't really identify it. It rings in the back of my mind, but who it is, I really don't know. That's the question that people have been asking for a long, long time. Here at the Bash of the Beach, they are going to find out who will be joining these outsiders to meet. Lex Lugar, Sting, and the macho man, Randy Savage.

Tony, I said I wanted you to stand by all of this speculation, everything that we've heard in recent weeks, the chatter, the names that have popped up from time to time, from week to week, from day to day, from hour to hour. Tony, do you have any idea who might be the third man joining the outsiders tonight? Gene, I don't have an idea. Have you heard, let me ask you this. You've heard the voice. Give me a guess. Well, it's so muffled that I really can't identify it,

but it's something that springs in the subconscious. So it's somebody that we've seen, somebody that we've heard before. Gene, Bobby Heenan. Offer those, I'll offer the police there some cash. See if they'll talk. See if they saw who went in the door. Excuse me, officer. Did you see anybody?

Hey, wait a minute, Heenan. Don't get me involved in one of your scams. Gene, do you know anything about Eric Bishop? Not a thing. We have not heard anything. We haven't heard a word, not even a telephone call. I know you've requested a telephone call. If he could have seen the broadcast earlier tonight,

if he's watching the pay-per-view, you certainly think he would have got back to us, but absolutely nothing. Gene, ask him, bribe them. I'll offer them something. Hey, Heenan, knock it off, do you? Gene, we appreciate your work back there. I'm sorry about that.

I'll get up up. I could make him talk. All right, mean, Gene Ocullen, talking. About the way they added commercials. Go back there and do it here. I'm not going anywhere. Isn't that weird that they added commercials for PC? out it is weird so what did you think of that hey i can hear his voice that's a little muffled

yeah we could have done without that one yeah and i heard him it sounds from my ear but i don't know who it is well what the fuck you either did it you didn't take a guess we could have done without that didn't add anything to the show here's a replay and now it's time for our main event by the way let's uh we know what's coming but let's Let's talk a little bit about some of the moving and shaking going on. By the way, I do want to just add a little bit of context to what the readers of the observer were thinking at the time.

The show got 74.4% thumbs up, 12.6% thumbs down, and 13% in the middle. I'm not trying to be negative, but how the fuck 25% of fans thought this was anything other than a thumbs up is just crazy to me. No, it is here is exactly. what that was. The poll was taken amongst Dave Meltzer

readers. Well, I'm most those. And supporters. That is all the people need to know. Thank you, Baron Von Roshky. It's a poll amongst Dave Meltzer readers. That's why. Should be obvious. it's time the main event is here how nervous are you backstage at this moment not at all by this point i was nervous an hour before this by this point i've gone over the promo i've stolen larry zabisco's

reference to the new world order which we covered a great detail last week um i've gone through the promo with hulk we were kind of off in our own little office away from everybody else um Hulk was calm he was very confident he was excited but confident um a little more serious than i used to see Hulk you know he was Hulk was always so confident and you know he'd done it a million times he'd seen it a million times there was nothing really new and in Hulk Hogan's world when it came to be out there and you know in front of a large crowds wrestling in big matches so those kinds of things never really affected Hulk and the way he carried himself backstage but he was different this night. He was still very excited, but much more serious, much more focused.

That's the best way to say it, more focused than I had ever seen him. So by this time, I was up in the safety of my little seat, and I was 100% confident. Everything was going to go as planned. And now, just like everybody else, I was excited to see it go down. the original plan was to break up the wolf pack from the NWO in early 1990H, which would put Paula Nash in the top program working against Hogan and Savage, but Hogan nicks the plan, basically not letting them up to his level, saying it wasn't the time to do an internal NWO feud.

I can't wait. We wrap this up, and immediately after started the feud, but instead of bringing Savage back up to the top level and leave everyone else clearly in secondary issues. We've got a lot, as I can tell. I mean, that's, honestly, Cassio, there's so much diarrhea in that that I can't, I can't even see through it enough to respond to it. It's just from top to bottom nonsense.

Did Hulk nix it? No, that's it again. That's what you, I don't know if you've ever played poker, but yes. you know, if you've got to tell that everybody else can figure out, you're not going to last long in poker, right? Right. And if you're a dirt sheet subscriber, like if you're one of the suckers that are stupid and enough

to separate yourself from however much money a month, Dave Meltzer charges you to read his drek, then, hey, if that's what, if you like that, if you're entertained by it, you like to walk around thinking you know shit that isn't true, but you think it is, they have at it. But Dave Meltzer's tell usually occurs in the first three or four sentences of whatever is about to follow.

And because that's his shot. That's Dave Meltzer taking his shot because of his personal animus towards anyone individual or company. So when he comes out swinging right away at Hulk Hogan, because Halk Hogan exercise is right creatively and refuse. choose. That shot is what, it's the minute I heard it, the minute I knew everything else I was going to hear afterwards was bullshit. Dave is not right in his mind. Dave fantasizes or images certain things in his head and somehow between being able to form that picture in his

head and the time he reaches for his keyboard, he believes it's true. He's not right. And this is another example of him, you know, taking that shot at Hulk Hogan just to get, narrative across it and everything else that followed it was just there to support the bullshit that he said in the first two or three sentences. You said, of course, you know, a lot of ideas get thrown around at different times, but do you remember that being the original plan to break up the Wolfpack from the end of the earlier and early? Look, here's the original plan.

And there may have been kind of separate conversations along the way that were a part of that original plan. But the intent was at some point we knew we had to grow the NWO. We wanted the NWO to have its own show. We wanted WCW to have its own show. In order to accommodate that, you've got to figure out, okay, what are we going to do with this NWO thing to make it work if we're going to move forward with that plan. And that was the reason why we explored, and in some cases attempted a lot of different ideas internally within the NWO, the Wolfpack. It was an attempt to refresh it and expand it. That's all that it was.

And were there conversations that were a part of that goal? Many number of them creatively, of course there were. But I guarantee, fucking to you, Hulk Hogan never came forward and said, no, brother, I don't want to do that. I'm nixing that. never happened. Hulk Hogan used his creative control clause one time, one time. He never even hinted about using it at any other point in all the time that I worked with him. And Halk, and he didn't say, hey, remember, brother, I got creative control. That never happened to you. But

with regard to Starcade and Hulk Hogan is saying there was an issue. I've talked about it before. I'm not going to talk about it again. There was a an issue. Hulk felt less confident that he wanted to feel instinct at that moment. And I understood why. So I agreed. But it wasn't a combative situation. There was nobody throwing down, nobody threatening, nobody calling their attorneys. It was a natural conversation that led to Hulk deciding to change and finish. And I supported that change. Not because he had creative control, but because I could understand why Hulk felt the way he felt. at no other time, no other time did Hulk Hogan ever exercise creative control over

anything. It's not to say that Hulk didn't have ideas. That's not to say that Hulk Hogan didn't press for an idea that he felt really, really strongly about, just like anybody else on that roster. from the bottom of the card up. Some more than others, obviously. But he only used it one time. So when I hear Dave lying,

because Dave is a liar when he produces information like this and distributes it as fact, and this is what gets me hot, it's not his opinion. He stated a lie as a fact. He's a piece of shit. And he's a garbage writer.

He's not a journalist, nothing even close. He's just a waste of flesh, and he's lying to his readers and to anybody that hears him talk about this stuff because it's his own personal animus. So I have no respect for him, zero respect. I stepped in some shit on my way out here to the bunkhouse that I respect more than I do, Dave Meltzer. well this is going to be fun then in covering uncensored melzer would have this to say it's been more of the same with world championship wrestling filled with turmoil behind the scenes and setting records in front of the camera and at the box office the situation regarding six if anything got hotter over the past week with no explanation as to his firing other than eric bischoff was trying to send a message to kevin nash and scott hall walton

who had approximately 18 months left on a three-year contract was given his termination notice in a FedEx letter from WCW Vice President Nick Lambros on 3-9 and immediately his agent Barry Blune opened up negotiations with the World Wrestling Federation. We've kind of hit on that. Yeah, we have. All right, so he says,

were you worried at any point with Waltman's release, you would lose Scott or Kevin? Do you think that's an issue? Nope, I wasn't worried about it all They were locked up tighter than You weren't sending a message to them And I wasn't, I told you, I explained why I let them I wasn't sending, I don't send fucking messages

I don't use smoke signals I don't drop hints I don't use a fucking Ouija board I don't try to cast spells on people I just tell them right to their fucking face What I'm thinking and why Whether it's a good situation or bad I don't do hints

Hints are for gutless parasites I just lay it out. Meltzer continues as the week went on, there was no contact between the front office at WCW and Walman, although Waltman had been told by Nash that Bischoff had agreed to make everything right. That's not correct. Nope.

Many wrestlers. You know what, you know what? Let me say, Bill, if I may as a compromise, I may have suggested that if Sean Waltman wanted to come back under the terms of the deal that we had already agreed upon that I'd let him come back, but there was no renegotiating. Yeah, you had already led the terms, like you said, you're already working with those terms, so no need to change those terms.

Would I have let him come back under the terms of his original agreement? I probably would have, because I like Sean, and he was valuable. I would have done that, but I wouldn't have reneutral. negotiated. Many wrestlers, including some who would have been on the opposite side of the fence, as Waltman politically recognized the problem with firing a wrestler with a wife and two children who is rehabbing a broken neck, suffered in the ring, working for the company for no apparent reason other than his friends were in a political struggle with the boss.

And this was being done apparently to send the message to Nash and Hall, the latter of whom is in the midst of giving depositions in the WWF. versus WCW lawsuit. I think you've covered that, that that's all a pile of shit. Yep. Hall of Nash tried to rally the wrestlers together as a power base. The plan got to Bischoff in its early stages of formation.

There were a lot of other problems that got deeper. On 3-9, there was a showdown where reportedly Hogan brought up Nash, wanting him out of the company, and Nash told him point blank that he wanted his spot, and Hogan told him that he wasn't giving up his spot. Reportedly there have been some hypothetical talks where indications were given that Holland Ash could receive comparable money and WWF should they be able to get out of their contract.

But the idea of Bischoff releasing them is laughable because both at this time would be more valuable to Titan, which is sorely lacking in wrestlers that could challenge Steve Austin for the WWF title than they were at the peak of their Razor Ramon and Diesel Day. but that isn't going to happen where we get moved further uh let's talk about this do you remember this we did nash and scott did they tell them they were coming for a whole spot eric i doubt it they're power base together yeah i mean geez you know it's just seeing how much dave milzer doesn't cover the nonsense it's going on in a ew right now

least not, not to, because here he's making stuff up about things that are going on backstage in AEW, or in WCW, whereas the things that are really going on in AEW, he tries to mitigate it as best he could while still covering it. The narrative is completely different. To suggest that, I mean, I can't even respond to it. It's so stupid. I really can. It's just ridiculous. You don't remember busting them in their early. stages of a I mean it's not so interesting the way it was laid down is like wow

was it really that much drama going I mean there was drama don't get me wrong but it wasn't that well organized it was just fucking chaos he was right that it was laughable that you would release him that's the only thing you got right that would be laughable yeah that would be laugh at you

do you uh do you ever get a burr under your saddle that all these years later Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and all these guys are making a small fortune off of the NWO. But the guy who created the doggone thing, I don't think you participate in those royalties, right? No, I do not. But, you know, it doesn't, look, I've made some really great decisions that have benefited my family. I've made some decisions that weren't so great that didn't benefit my family.

And I made those decisions. I've made choices and I live with them and I don't regret them learn from them try to make sure that kind of thing never happens again

but I don't sweat it I'm grateful I'm happy for the other guys including WWE that's making money off it makes me feel good when I see merch on TV

it makes me kind of chuckle of myself a little bit and if that's all I get out of it I'm cool with that because I put myself in the position and made the choices I made to be right where I'm at And I'm don't regret any of them.

Let me let's remove you from the equation. Do you think that that system needs to be rectified for other folks? Is there advice you would give to someone or is there a commentary you can add? Just to the the, as I said, the system that the guys who really create a lot of this. I mean, when you think about professional wrestling in the context of it being like really any other form of entertainment, you know, a TV show is going to go off the air, a movie's going to finish up. There's going to be a role of credits at the end. That doesn't happen. professional wrestling and a lot of people have not talked about that and given it enough

conversation and i can't think of many people who have been on the uh maybe the short end of that stick more than you specifically with regard to the NWO concept and brand and licensing etc etc but again i want to have this conversation where it doesn't feel like oh whoa is me because that ain't really your bag baby so chat me up from just uh removing yourself from the situation and having some commentary on the way wrestling handles that right now and whether or not it should change. Happy to do that. And this is why I don't get a burr under my saddle

because of what I'm about to kind of, I guess, share in terms of my perspective. But here are a couple facts that, you know, people that think about this and talk about this need to kind of keep in mind as you're evaluating the situations of the situation. speak. Number one, when I created the NWL, when I was president of WCW, I was an employee. I was an officer of the company. I wasn't talent, although I was on camera. There was no part of my contract that treated me separately as a talent. So I didn't have a lot of the benefits that talent had in terms of sharing in merchandise revenue.

Number one, just like talent didn't have benefits, they didn't have stock options. By the way, I cashed you over a million dollars with the stock options at one point. Talent didn't get that, just like I don't get merchandise royalties. But you can't be an officer, especially of a public company,

and benefit. benefit and with all the things that come with it. You know, I was probably, you know, I can't qualify this, so I'm making a general statement here, but I was probably one of the higher paid executives at Turner, relatively speaking, in terms of being a president of a small division of the company. My salary was significant from a corporate perspective, not from a talent perspective, it wasn't. I didn't get paid as a talent. Now, here comes the choice. Here's the fork in the road. Was there a point in time when I went from the announcer to the executive producer to a vice president to a

senior vice president to an executive vice president to a president? Because I covered all those bases over the course of a couple years. Was there a point in there? What I could have said, well, pump the brakes. I think I'm going to be a consultant. in a talent and benefit from that relationship because that would have provided me the opportunity to participate in royalties and things like that. Could I have done that? Sure, I could have. I don't know if I would have been successful or not,

but I could have taken that position. I chose not to. That was my choice. Was there a point when we were at our very peak and I was renegotiating the last contract, not the last one to come back, but the one previous, is. Could I have negotiated for some participation in the NWO? I sure could have. Would I have been successful? It would have been unprecedented, I think, within Turner corporate to have an officer of the company with all the benefits that come with it to also participate in a talent pool stream

of revenue. It would have been unprecedented, but I probably, I would say I'd have a 60, 40, 70, 30 shot at making that happen. And I did think about it because I was spending so much time on camera. And at first, to me, it was all incidental. It was all, well, that's just part of the job. I've always been on camera. I was an officer to come. I was an executive vice president or a president when I was doing play by play.

And this is just another version of that. That was my point of view. But there was a time when I went, hmm, I wonder if I could get a piece of this action. But I chose not to. not because I lacked the confidence to go in and ask for it, not for any other reason other than I didn't want to put myself in a position in a negotiation where I was negotiating for an unprecedented kind of benefit. It's just not who I am.

I'm and I guess you could argue that maybe I should be and maybe that's a flaw in my career arc. but I'm good with it. I just don't want to be that guy. I've never wanted to feel greedy. I've always believed, you know, I think the first person I heard this from was Jason Hervey, and I think he got it from his uncle.

Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. And I'm good being a pig. I just don't want to get slaughtered. So I've always been a little conservative when it came, to what I asked for and how hard I push for things. I don't know. It's just interesting that the guys who come up with the ideas don't participate in their creations, but the guys who play it out on camera do.

It just feels weird. But again, but again, those same guys that played out on camera, they don't have, they don't have a lot of the benefits that I did that they would have like to have had, by the way. Any one of them would have probably like to have had. had, you know, the stock options that I had. Well, no, I'm with you, but I'm, but they didn't get that either.

So it's, it's a balance. It's a tradeoff, man. I'm not arguing any of that. I'm just saying if this was, uh, if this was a Hollywood production and this is all through the, the screen actors guild and there's unions involved, etc, etc. It would have been positioned differently. And I'm not trying to have a union conversation. I'm just saying it's interesting to me that, uh, wrestling has handled.

Not really, not really, man. When, when you sell it, when, I know, I've done. through this dozens of times when hervey and i created a show and it often times it was like an idea pops out of your head and makes its way to your mouth and it's out there and you start building on just an idea and you keep building it and keep building it and keep building it till it can become a tangible presentation that you make to a network and you go in and you sell that idea to a network. You sell that idea to a network. Once a network buys said idea, guess who owns all of the rights, including merchandising? So it's the same thing. Now, if you're a network

executive, you're not benefiting. There's nothing in your contract that says you get a percentage of royalties from brands and programs and characters and so forth that you create. Now, if you're a network executive. Now, if you're a writer or you're a director, depending on your level of success in the industry and the amount of stroke you've got, quite honestly, you can negotiate for those things, but you're not being paid as an employee of a studio or a network. They're just two different worlds. And I guess I'm not trying to justify or take a position. It's just that's kind of the way the entertainment world works. If you're an actor, sure, you get a piece, you get a piece of a lot of things.

And often those big pieces or small pieces of a lot of things end up being absolutely nothing if it's a flop, you know, but those are the risks you take and the choices you make when you get involved in the entertainment industry. I just don't think it's fair to say if this were any other form of entertainment, you know, someone like me in the position I was in, would be able to benefit. in ways that I didn't because it's, you know, when Jason and I sold the show, you know, you would, you, there was a little clause at the end of the agreement that talked about backend and everybody, nobody spent a lot of time negotiating that because everybody knew

it was a figment of your imagination. It was never going to be any back end. No matter how successful something was, it wasn't, there was not going to be back end. And that's just the way it does. You take an idea, you take a concept, you create it, you sell it. In my case, I sold my services that included an idea, but once you sell it, you sold it. You know, you can't sell your house, take a check, and then come back 15 years later and say, hey, you sold your house for 200% more than, you know, you bought it for.

I want a percentage of that. You sold it. It's over. Say goodbye. Move on. Let my family save your family some cash. You don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of business.

your pocket but we will save you money it's not a matter if it's a matter of how much save with conrad dot com so eric i don't know what i expected man but kevin nash proves once again he is uh one of the coolest dudes to ever get into professional wrestling you know you and i talk about that sometimes that there's just certain guys in wrestling that are cool guys like conan and kevin nash and man it doesn't feel like cool ever gets old right no it doesn't and it doesn't change in their case you know, Kevin is much, he's very much today like he was 25 years ago. This is not a new Kevin Ash. This is, this is the Kevin Ash that I've known since the first day that I met Kevin back in

1991. It's just he is what he is, baby. Well, it was great to, uh, to spend some time today talking about the good old days of the NWO. And of course, we touched on some not so great days, but by and large, man, the, uh, the imprint and the impression that the NWO has left on professional wrestling. I just don't think, man, I don't see that phasing out. I don't see it getting old.

I don't see it fading away. I mean, it stood the test of time. And here we are 25 years later. Those shows still hold up. The merch is still flying off the shelves. There's no end in sight for the NWO. It turns out as cliche as it is, that shit really was for life. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

I woke up this morning to do this, uh, this additional podcast work with you. And I'm going through my social media and I'm seeing pictures. pictures of Rick Flair and Hulk Hogan at the big collectible card show in Chicago over the weekend. And, of course, Hulk's wearing his NWO merch. He's not wearing Hulkomania merch. He's not wearing the Hulkster merch. He's wearing NWO merch. It is still very much alive.

And of course, you watch SmackDown or Raw or AEW, and you're still going to see that merch out there. So, yeah, it evidently, it is for life, at least in terms of revenue. It's still, still churning. David Wright, sir, has said, there was a lot of hatred and a lot of of people got so pissed off i remember telling one wrestler and i'm not sure who it was it wasn't bam ben bigelow but it was someone who hadn't ever been the champion before and he was just so pissed i was like i don't know what to say man you know that was my first inkling of sort of how upset people were going to get and obviously i get it these people dedicate their lives and i have

nothing but respect for wrestlers to this day i haven't taken a dime for wrestling i get it i've just been training for a little over a month now and i get it it's painful it's a intense it's a ton of hard work these people go in and every in and out every day working on themselves and working on their craft so i get it i've always respected the business and i just sort of had an opportunity that i think a lot of people would have made the same decision if they were in that situation it's sort of a dream come true for me so i was like yeah this is amazing do you remember the reaction from other wrestlers maybe being upset not really and and i think that's largely because nobody, from a talent and even from an employee's point, you know,

and WCW employee point of view, nobody was really quite sure of what my role was. I mean, it wasn't really made clear. Brett Siegel didn't come in and, you know, prior to me coming back to WCW and say, okay, this is Eric Bishop's new role. So, you know, I don't know what, six months maybe had gone by since the time I had left. to the time I had come back, there wasn't a clear communication as to what my new role was and how I was really working within WCW. So people were off balance.

They weren't really quite sure. Was I coming, I think in the minds of many people, I was coming back to run the company because that's what they were used to. I'd been doing it since 1994. And to have me back, they either consciously or subconsciously assumed that I was the guy again. And I wasn't. I wasn't calling shots. I was making recommendations.

I was trying to manage Rousseau's creative process. I was trying to work with bread and people within Turner broadcasting at a higher level to make things all fit together and work at a synergistic basis, which was the mission at the time, the mission de jour, if you will. But I wasn't calling the shots. but the talent didn't know that. Wrestlers didn't know that. I mean, if the employees didn't know it, certainly people that would show up, you know, once a week or maybe twice a week

if they were on Nitro and Thunder, they certainly wouldn't know it because they were so far removed from the inner workings of Turner Broadcasting. They couldn't have found the cafeteria. They couldn't have found a cup of coffee in the CNN Center, more or less understand what was really going on inside the walls.

So there was just a lot of a lot of people that just weren't sure what my role is. And as a result of that, people were a little reluctant to express their opinions to me. That doesn't mean that they didn't express them to each other or to David or to others. But when I would walk in a room, they would usually sanitize their thoughts and words to the extent that I had a hard time reading them, but I never sensed it.

I'll tell you what, and people can rewrite here. history all they want. They can remember things the way they choose to remember them to make themselves feel better or smarter or clairvoyant, whatever it is people need to do to get through their days. But there was a general sense, at least around me, of enthusiasm when it was all over. But if there was people that were pissed off, whether it was Bam Bam Bigelow or somebody like of his stature backstage with regard to David, I wouldn't have seen it. I would have wasn't aware of it even though a lot of people hated this david seemed to be embraced by rick flair david would recall rick flier at one point put his arms around me and said hey guys he's one of us

and that made me feel really great our kit learned about winning the title the afternoon of the thunder show when the idea was first formulated and at the time was asked to keep it through the paper view in an alex barvez interview he said about the offer i said i felt all right but it did feel kind of weird. Obviously, I don't deserve it. These guys are so skilled and it takes so much athleticism and gymnastics strength, not to mention all the acting and stuff that goes into it. It's just really hard. And Arquette would acknowledge that he learned wrestling from Canyon, DDP, and Shane Helms in a ring at the warehouse where they were practicing for the movie ready to rumble. And he said he messed around when the ring was up while they were doing the movie.

And after the Syracuse show where he won the title, he was buying food and drinks at the bar for everyone, not just the wrestlers, but fans and hangers on. And unlike other celebrities who've been involved, he's very well liked by the wrestlers, even the ones who didn't think using him in that way was a smart idea. It's also written that Arquette was splitting his earnings from doing pro wrestling to the family of Owen Hart, Brian Pilman, and Darren Drozdof, and I think that's something that sort of flies under the radar. But whatever WCW was paying him for all of this, he kept none of it. Does that not speak a lot to the character of David Arquette?

It certainly does. And for our listeners, I'm going to be doing a interview with David Arquette for ad-freeshows.com slash Patreon, our paywall counterpart for this show. And it's going to be a video interview, so we couldn't do it on this podcast, obviously. But I'm going to spend an hour to hearing from David his perspective and what, what he was really thinking and what he really went through. But I think it's important, and we'll get into it more on ad-freeshows.com. I'm actually going to do the, I'm going to record the interview later on this afternoon.

But I really want to dig into that because one of the things that I learned about David subsequent to all of this. And I've stayed in contact with David over the years. We're good friends and, you know, we do stay in touch. David truly loves wrestling and not only loves it from a fan's perspective a lot of people love it from a fan's perspective David has a sincere respect for it and I think it comes from being

as an actor being able to recognize just how much talent has to put into their characters and how much of a challenge it is to perform in front of a live audience. And he's not shy about talking about it. So we'll dig into that more.

But I think it does reflect a tremendous amount of respect that David has always had for the industry and still does to this day. David pins you for the title. Do you ever think about doing what Rousseau did and making yourself champ sometime? No. No. Look, I didn't have nearly as much heat in 2000 as I had in 96 and 97 and 98, but I still had some. I probably had half the amount of heat. And it was probably kind of a Pavlov's dog reaction more than it was real heat. And I recognize that then. And I certainly recognize it now, maybe more so now. But I was the most likely candidate to do, to, to do the job had it been you know page or anybody else doing the job that that would have been too far in my opinion but what is the harm in pinning a figurehead what what's the harm there is none in people that want to kind of fabricate this as they've said the most prestigious title in our

first of all sound a sport motherfucker and scripted entertainment so right off the bat you lose me title in our sport. It's interesting how guys like that will all of a sudden revert to that very traditional total respect for the sport, for the industry when it's convenient. But at the same time, we'll give away finishes. We'll talk about, you know, the internal workings of a business they know nothing about and will expose the industry in every other way. But God, if you do something and they disagree with creatively, though they'll immediately latch on to the traditions of our sport and the most respected title.

Well, look, it's a, it is, the world title is a prop. It's probably the only thing that I agree with Vince Rousseau on. It is a tool. It is a device. It is a state. It is something to aspire to that's used as a device in the creative process to create conflict. That's what it is. It doesn't represent actual athletic,

supremacy or skill set supremacy. Now, I'm not saying that when Drew McIntyre, you know, became the WWE champion that he didn't deserve that. I'm not saying that at all. He did deserve it because of his work ethic, because of his ability to connect to the audience, because of all of the skill sets that he's developed and the commitment that he's made. And probably I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the company has confidence in Drew to represent the WWWE on a commercial basis at a very high level. That is a tremendous amount of respect. It's worthy of a tremendous amount of respect, I should say,

and it is an amazing accomplishment. But it doesn't necessarily mean that Drew McIntyre could beat Brock Lesnar in one-on-one. It doesn't. And you kind of have to remember that the goal of The WWE, the goal in AEW, the goal in Ring of Honor, the goal in Impact Wrestling, the goal in NWA is to create entertainment that people enjoy and will come back and watch. And sometimes you have to do things that are different than what a traditional wrestling fan would expect or a writer would want to write about. So, you know, I take exception to some of this, not on a personal basis.

Putting the title on David Arquette was Tony Chavani's idea, as I just found out. The rest of the world maybe knew it, but I didn't until this podcast. And it was, you know, and I went along with it. I'm not saying I didn't have anything to do with it. I did. I approved it. In the role that I was in at that particular time was to oversee, to act as a filter, to act as the liaison between.

Turner Broadcasting and WCW. And putting the title on David would not have happened had I not allowed it to happen. But nevertheless, yeah, as untraditional as it was, he beat a fucking 48-year-old fat guy that wasn't a wrestler. Who cares? Who the fuck cares? Did it diminish the title? I guess in the eyes of some fans? It probably did.

did it make people, you know, so disgusted that they were going to quit watching wrestling or quit watching WCW? Maybe some of them did for a while. But we were losing audience anyway, and we had to roll the dice. We had to do something to kind of re-energize WCW. And mainstream media was one of the go-to formulas that we had used successfully in the past to help do that. So whatever.

I just, I really don't. understand the indignation of somebody like David Arquette beating someone like me for the world title. I would get it if he beat Haku or he beat Bill Goldberg or he beat Rick Flair. Or shit. Or tank Abbott. Or tank Abbott. Well, no, but take what? No. I'll, I had two different things. But half of the people that bought a ticket to watch the show in that arena could have beat me in a real flight at that point in my life. wasn't that big a deal let's talk about what happens the next night on nitro you come out with new blood and arquette and he said page uh are you oh this is going to be good whoa way to set me up for the fall

okay come on we want bring it on big man bring it on and sinker just like all these morons in the arena and all the internet wrestling experts who thought it was such a disgrace to put the wcd World Heavyweight title on Mr. David Arquette, and I did it for one reason only to screw you royally. Of course, Page ends up coming out and hits David with the diamond cutter. And in the Nitro book, there's some quotes from guys about the title win. DDP would say, putting the belt on David Arquette's stupidest thing ever. I've never taken more shit from anything than that. Eric had just come back in, and I know he was trying to work with Rousseau.

I love Vince now. me and him are buddies again because we let shit go there's no use to holding on to it but that was Vince's idea and it was a bad one really bad it is what it is tony shivani's idea we got a call page and tell him i had plenty of ideas that weren't great ideas but none as bad as this one though whenever i hear those guys who bust david's balls i tell him david only made 10 grand on that payoff and he gave it all to pilman's widow he gave it all to her and that changes people's viewpoint on it so i tell people if it was you you wouldn't have done it fuck you you would have cut your buddy's throat to get that spot. David was just one of the guys who got that

spot. It was really stupid though. Kevin Sullivan says when we were in Florida 80 Graham had two rules. One was that the faces and heels couldn't be seen together and the second was if you lost the fight in any public place you were fired. Guys that wanted to be wrestlers used to get beaten up by the pros. Guys used to leave with broken noses and broken faces and one time they beat a hopeful so bad. They stripped him of his clothes. I'm not condone. zoning, but David Arquette winning the world title. Boy, Scott Hall never even won the title. Scott Hall never won the World Heavyweight Championship, but David Arquette did. Can you tell me what's wrong with that? Was that a question to me or is that just a, that's a hypothetical from him.

Russo, of course, defends it. He says one of the first things that got the WVF over was the unpredictability of it because things were starting to happen that you would never in a million years think would happen. So basically on a week to week basis, you had to tune in in order to see what was happening. To me, David Arquette was one of those instances. Number one, it is a big part of the story. The David Arquette thing is somewhere, and Eric and I knew that from day one.

And number two, it got people talking about WCW. Negative or positive. They were talking about WCW again, and that's exactly what we needed people to do. Nobody has mentioned this, but before Nitro, someone who hands me a USA Today, and there it is. Right on the cover of the entertainment section,

it says David Arquette winning the WCW title with a plug for nitro tonight at 8 p.m. Well, that kind of exposure would have never happened without the angle. Sid Vicious, who was in Ready to Rumble, said he didn't see the problem with David being the champion that everyone else does. Sid said the territory was already on his ass and he didn't think this could make it worse. He didn't think it was that bad of an idea. He said by that time, Russo and Ferrar had already made a joke out of everyone else. So what's one more jerk going to hurt?

Scott Steiner thought it was a slap in the face to the wrestling business and fans. Flair wrote in his book, How did I feel about Arquette as a champion? He had a hell of a lot more character than some other guys who wore that belt. And Bobby Heenan said in Flair's book, when I found out they were putting the belt on David Arquette, I replied, is Jaja Gabor sick this week?

That's the way it was in WCW. This is a company that had Buff Bagwell team with his own mother. It's like he hawed down there. They might as well have had Buck Owens picking at his guitar while wrestlers jumped out of corn. No, that's funny. that's who wrote that bobby heenan god damn that's funny i miss bobby heenan let's talk about something that i found interesting and significant and that's the savings i found with rocket money

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by going to rocketmoney dot com slash 83 weeks that's rocket money dot com slash 83 weeks rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks and man do we have a lot to unpack today we're going to get in our way back machine and talk about a show that happened 20 years ago and this i believe is an interesting show to talk about because it's one that you were watching from the outside looking in just before you came back into the company of course we're talking about super brawl 2000 it went down on february 20th at the cow palace and san francisco i guess you guess this is technically Super Brawl 10 somewhere along the way you guys decided to stop numbering them like that and this one is Super Brawl 2000 and this is much different than the

super brawes we've seen before for starters it drew 5,538 paid 3,031 comps the cow palace gate here is 177 grand and only 38,000 in merchandise these numbers are a stark contrast from when the NWO was up and running hot and heavy just a few years before. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I looked at the crowd. Of course, the Kyle Palace is an older building, so it's easy to make it look pretty decent, just the way the building is configured and the lighting and so forth. The crowd looked pretty good, but that's a pretty soft number, you know,

going into this Super Bowl, no doubt about it, it's a very soft number. Well, and WCW is reeling in a lot of ways at this time, you know, both creative and attendance well ratings i mean pretty much every way a wrestling company could be hurting that is what is going to describe wcw as we headed into the year 2000 here the monday night war while still technically ongoing it's really been over for well over a year at this point with the w f firmly establishing their dominance uh but one of the biggest hits came just a few weeks prior to this event when the radicals walked out of course eddie guerrero dean malinko perry saturn and the newly crowned world champion, Chris Pinot, all left WCW for the WWF.

And when that happened, you weren't there, you were home. What did you think about all these guys taking a stand and making a mass exodus like this? Really the first time that we would see, not one guy jump, but a lot of guys jump, multiple guys jump. Yeah, and I was trying when I, you know, I knew we were going to do this show before I left for Qatar and tried to, you know, Patch worked together a timeline in my memory of exactly, you know, when I had left. Of course, I knew when I had left, but when I had come back and more importantly, as it relates to this show, when I first really started talking seriously to Brad Siegel about possibly coming back to WCW after I was technically called paid or played, which is a legal term within the

contract. But once, you know, once if someone is under contract and there's a. pay or play provision in that contract, once they are deemed to be paid, they don't have to play you, but you can only pull that trigger once. It's not like they could send me home, say, okay, we're going to exercise the pay or play option in your agreement. And then once that option is exercised, they can say, no, I changed my mind. We're going to bring you back to work. It was one and done. So I was technically still under, well, not technically, I was legally still under contract to WCW when I got that call from Brad Siegel.

And in terms of the timing and referencing to your question and context, I was on my way home to Atlanta, actually, from Wyoming. I had my own plane at the time. And I had flown, Lori and I flew up from Atlanta, picked up my brother and sister in Minneapolis and then we all flew together to Wyoming to watch the Super Bowl. And when I returned on that flight to Minneapolis to drop off my brother and sister, Lori and I decided to just spend the night in Minneapolis. And we went to an apple bees or chilies, whatever it was, near the hotel where we were staying.

And they had nitro on, it was a Monday night. They had Nitro on, excuse me, Monday Night Raw on in the restaurant where we were eating. And, you know, I couldn't hear anything, but I was kind of watching. it out of the corner of my eye and not kind of paying attention, but not really paying attention that television monitors were far enough away where I couldn't really tell ideally what was going on anyway.

And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw the reveal when the radicals showed up and I stared at the television and it was weird, you know, it was just, I don't know how to describe it, I guess it would be like, you know, you're seeing your ex-girlfriend out with her new

boyfriend, you know, for the very first time in public or something like that. It was kind of, it was strange, you know. And I must have been staring at the TV long enough that Lori said to me, she goes, what are you staring at? And I said, look at that. And of course, Lori did, she didn't know what was really going on. She wasn't paying close attention. And I told her, she said, what are you thinking? And I said, I'll be getting a phone call soon. And I, I, the words just rolled off my tongue. I hadn't thought about it. I didn't want to get a phone call from Turner. I was in my rear room here. I had two or two and a half years left on my contract.

I was good. You know, I wasn't thinking about anything. But the words just rolled off my tongue in an instant. And literally we got back to Atlanta probably a day or two days later. We took our time getting home. And sure enough, after being home for about two or three days, I got the phone call. And premonition or whatever, Brad, it was. Brad Siegel asked me, you know, in a very casual way, what are you up to? What are you

been thinking about? What are your plans for the video? In a roundabout way, you know, trying to feel me out to see if I'd be willing to come back. So that was that period of time between whenever the Super Bowl was in 2000 and probably, oh, 10 days later, week later is when I probably had my first serious conversation with Brad about the possibility of coming back. So I wasn't here. I wasn't in WC I shouldn't say here. I wasn't in WCW for this pay-per-view. I wasn't really a part of the build-up or anything, but there were some conversations taking place right around this time. The Super Bowl in 2000 went down on January 30th from the Georgia Dome. So everybody in Atlanta was probably on the hype train for that. But you somewhere at a casual dining restaurant knew what

was coming. We should also mention. that you're going to wind up landing back officially, at least on camera in April. It's good to know that you had at least been talking about them. Let's talk a little bit about where the business had been and all of that in more recent years. We're here in January. Your average attendance in 99, in January of 99 was 8,661 fans. In February, it's 8,814 fans. Just a year later here for the pay-per-view, it's 5,000.

538 paid so a big decrease here in a major way most of the decrease of course happened in the second half of the year the nitro rating would decrease from a 4.47 average in 98 where it actually beat the WWF on average for the year to a 3.66 so an 18% drop but then the the real serious drop happened in 99 where you fall an average of 0.93 to a 0.55. I'm sorry, that's with buy rates. So buy rates are going to go down 41% major, major dip. Also, the house show business down as well. You're selling out 15% of your house shows in 1999.

When you compare that to 1998, roughly half, 49% were sold out. Just everywhere you look, it feels like this business is circling the drain a little bit. So it makes sense to me that the brass said, hey, who was running this thing when it was at its peak? And can we get him back? we've talked a little bit about how you knew it was coming but lorry had a unique perspective mrs b because she was there to see you during the good times and during the bad times and just how stressed out you were and how not fun it was and how it had to affect you personally what did she think when you got the call was she happy was it vindication or was she dreading that oh man

you're going to get back into that rat race it was it certainly wasn't vindication she wasn't happy And neither one of us are kind of built that way. You know, Lori's always been really supportive of anything and everything I've ever attempted to do. But she was concerned also. She did see a lot in terms of what I went through starting in late 1998 and certainly through 99 until I left the company in September of 99. And it was ugly. You know, it was not a pretty sight. And I think she was relieved when I finally left Turner.

I know I was. So I'm certain she was as well. And I think the prospect of going back was probably, I don't know, I never really talked to her about it, to be honest. But I could tell by the way she reacted to the news that I had been on the phone with Brad and so forth, that she was concerned, I think more than anything, you know, hoping that I made the right decision. Here's an interesting question from Trey. Had WBE went out of business instead of WCW, what Eric has brought in Vince McMahon to be an on-screen character, and if so, how would he have been booked?

Great question. And interesting in the sense that the very first conversation I had with Vince when he called me, and I guess it was 2002, about coming to WWE as a character. One of the very first things that he said to me when I, when I answered the call and we started getting into it, was, and I'm paraphrasing this, I don't remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect of, gee, Eric, you know, things turned out the way they turned out. And I, this was Vince now, I would like to think that had it turned out differently, that you would have reached out to me at some point with an opportunity to get back into business. and it was one of the things he said to me right off the bat and it was probably in that moment

after hearing him say that in my mind although I wasn't thinking it consciously but subconsciously I probably already made up my mind I was going to go to work for him because it was such an elegant and professional way to approach the situation that it made me respect the health a lot of them instantly.

And after I got done with that phone call and I, you know, I knew I was going to go to work for him, I actually thought about that for a little while. And I asked myself, what would I have done? You know, and it's hard for me to live in that kind of frame of mind. You know, I don't spend it, as you know, we've talked about this before. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the past, which is one of the reasons sometimes I have a hard time remembering details. of it because it's just you know once i live a day and it's it's over i'm i'm thinking about the

next day i'm not thinking about the one that just passed but you know occasionally i think about wow what if this would have happened or that would have happened in i would like to think i can't honestly say to be truthful with myself i can't honestly say that i would have you know made it a point to cut to try to come up with an opportunity to reach out to Vince and make him an offer similar learned to the one that he made me in 2002, but I would like to think I would. I would like to think if the situation would have presented itself and there would have been a great idea and there would have been something that we all believed in as an opportunity that would have been good for our business at WCW, probably not unlike the way the discussions probably occurred in

WWE when they were debating whether or not to pick up the phone and call me. At some point, I'm guessing, I wasn't in the room, obviously. I'm guessing somebody said, yeah, I've passed is the past. Let's give the guy a call because this is something that could work out and could make money for us because there was an opportunity that presented itself. And I would like to think that I would have been mature enough and professional enough and elegant enough to at least pick up the phone and make that phone call the way that Vince McMahon made it to me. Now, would I have done it? I don't know. If I'm totally honest about it, I don't know if I would have or not yeah i would just like i would like to think it the eric bischoff that was leaving

you know braggie voicemails he's booking that dude to come get thrown into a trash can i mean or a dumpster or you know have a drinking contest with one of the talents and vomit on tv and make out with lorry and all the stuff that you had to do right maybe not dude you just cross the line now here's a funny part of that you know i like getting thrown in the in the garbage truck that was my idea no i know i'm just busting balls about how silly some of your on-screen stuff was and i know you know in a room of ideas there's no such thing as a bad idea and eventually everybody landed on some pretty entertaining creative but when you really look through the the the rigors he put you through on TV it's pretty fucking hysterical to think

about the opposite of that happening on noctro I you know as you were given you know and going through that list of crazy shit that I did when you said you don't have Vince McMahon making out with your wife Lori that I'm now I'm trying to picture that I'm trying to picture the look on my wife's face when I said hey Lori I've got an idea right I'm going to have Vince McMahon break into our house in Arizona sneak into the back door and he's going to he's going to find alone in your office and he's going to hold your arm behind your back and he's going to kind of make it look like he's

threatening you and then he's going to lay a big one on you and you're going to embrace him and pretend you like it maybe not a little bit of hard call it's just we sometimes forget the silliness that happens in wrestling sometimes

you know this show is always so serious but then when you look back on some of that stuff it was a good time it was you know and I got to say that you know you and I again perception is a funny thing but you know so many people thought oh they're just bringing Eric back they're going to humiliate him and get embarrassed them they're going to do this to them we're going to do that to them and they put me in a lot of situations where I guess if from the outside one might think I was embarrassed but to if anybody thinks that I was embarrassed to you know play a character on TV that was getting into a drinking contest with Stone Cold Steve Austin and ended up drinking

so much beer that I threw up. If anybody thinks that I thought that was embarrassing, let me be really fucking clear to you right now on this show. I had a blast. I love doing that stuff. If anybody thinks that, you know, me being thrown in a garbage truck, you know, my last night on the show was embarrassing for me, let me correct your thinking. I love that idea. I thought it was a great way to go out, no pun intended. So a lot of that stuff that people think was designed to embarrass me didn't. I had a blast doing it. I would have written it had I had the opportunity. That's fun stuff. And wrestling should be fun. This product should be entertaining. It should make you laugh. It should make you go, holy crap, I can't believe they're

doing this stuff. I mean, look at the silly stuff that Vince made his own daughter do. made her take a stink face for crying out loud from akishi come on look at the stuff that vince did to himself and he wrote the stuff you know he wet his pants on national television for crying out loud because stone cold steve austin put a toy gun to his head pulled the trigger and a little flight came out and said bang come on it's just it's stuff that yeah he he did that he asked me to do those things but he also asked his family to do some of those he asked his wife to make out with me. I'm sure she wasn't thrilled about it either. Or his daughter. I don't know why this is funny, but it is. Oh, it should be fun. It should be funny. Well, and that's the thing like,

you know, behind the scenes, as maybe some of that stuff sounds humiliating, actually coming up with the idea and going through it and filming it and pulling it together, that's got to be a fucking blast to do. Like, that just seems like something everybody would have enjoyed. But it is fun to think about Vince McMahon on Nitro. Josh Coon was to know. How would Eric describe his relationship with Vince McMahon, and did he ever think at the height of WCW? He would have

any sort of relationship of any kind with Vince. That's a great question. And I mean, my relationship now, I have to say this. And I know this is going to sound like I'm pandering and, you know, because I work here and I work with Vince. And I know how this is going to sound, but I'm just going to be

honest, and I'm going to say it anyway. You know, in WCW, I had so many people that would come over from WWE. And, of course, everybody that came over, and this is just human nature, right? They would come over and they would tell me basically what they thought I wanted to hear. And they would, you know, which means there was a lot of negative things that people would say about, you know, Vince or what was the WWF at the time and all that kind of thing. And I always took it with a grain of salt because I knew what it was. These are people that are coming in and they want to kind of ingratiate themselves into the new company and develop a great relationship with me and the other people on the staff and so forth. So, of course, they would come over and they would tell you all the negative things they think or they thought that we wanted to hear.

But even with all of that, you know, one of the things that I would hear consistently was, yeah, you know, Vince McMahon is this, he's that, he's this, he's that, all the negative. of things they think I wanted to hear, like I said, but they would always kind of end it, but he is kind of a genius. And I thought, well, you know, come on. These are just guys that are trying to keep the door open in case they've got to go back, you know, or I would read oftentimes things that people would say about Vince and talk about what a genius he was and that type of thing. And again, I would just always take it with a grain of salt and think, well, these are guys who are just trying to keep the door open, which is, you know, good business. I get it. And now that, you know, and when I work with W.

as a talent, I never really worked closely at all with Vince. Occasionally, if we had, you know, scenes to do together and things like that, but I had very few, you know, one-on-one type of conversations with Vince, just a small handful, to be honest about it. Now that I'm working here, and I've been here for a couple months now, and I'm working fairly closely with him, he is one of the most fascinating people I've ever worked with. and I don't throw the term genius around lightly because that means different things to different people

but I think Vince in his own way is definitely a genius of sorts however you want to define that and that doesn't mean that he has all the answers in my opinion he doesn't have all the right answers to every situation I think even Vince would recognize that he's made some bad decisions creatively or otherwise throughout his career But there are times, honestly, you know, in the middle of a meeting, he'll say something or he'll look at a story or he'll look at a character and he'll pick out something that seems so small, a detail, either in a story or a character or a way of presenting a character that seems so small when you first hear it. But then as you think about it and you start expanding on that, you realize that it makes all the difference in the world.

And I find him to be, like I said, I hate to throw the word genius around because it means different things to different people. But I think he is one of the most fascinating people I've ever had the opportunity to work with. I like the fact that he's very direct. You know, you know where you stand with Vance. I've always appreciated that in anybody. You know, Harvey Schiller was much the same way. You know, you always know, you knew where you stood with Harvey. And Vince McMahon is very similar in that respect.

There's no ambiguity when it comes to today. dealing with him. And sometimes it's uncomfortable. And most of the time for someone like me, I respected and appreciated it. So that's kind of the contrast, I guess, if you will, what I thought Vince McMahon was like versus what having worked with him now for a couple months has led me to see or to believe. And in terms of, you know, did I ever think in WCW, I'd have any kind of a working relationship? Oh, hell, no. Come on. You know, I would have probably bet that at some point in time. If he had the opportunity, he'd run me over if he saw me on the street or have somebody else do it. But I certainly never thought I'd have a working relationship with him, especially

one that I enjoy as much as I do right now. Another great question. Interesting question here that I don't think we've ever talked about from elegantly wasted. He says, is it true that during the nitro winning street, you used to leave gloating messages on Vince's answering machine on Tuesday mornings after the ratings came out i didn't do it on a regular basis i think i may have done once or twice i'll give me an example of what you think you might have said oh god i can't i i'd be making shit up off the top of my head and i'm too beat up to do that right now but i do i think i recall doing it once or twice that is maybe the most eric bischoff thing we've ever talked about here on the show.

Well, you know, it wasn't, and this is just the way I think, okay, or the way I used to think, I should say. It wasn't because I was gloating. It was because I wanted to get under his skin. And I knew that, I believed, I shouldn't say I knew, because I didn't know Vince at the time, but based on things that I had heard about Vince. Hang on, in the background, is that Scott Steiner making an entrance into your room right now? Oh, no, I'm in downtown Los Angeles, and I think there's either a parade or

Grand Theft Auto, 17. Yeah, Grand Theft Auto. There may be a police chase going on outside my hotel room. But I'd always, you know, heard that, you know, Vince was, you know, volatile and had a heck of a temper and all that kind of thing. And I thought, well, you know, what better way to keep him off his game than by driving him crazy with this kind of stupid shit, whether it was giving away finishes or, you know, leaving those kinds of messages on this.

And like I said, I think I did it once or twice, that I recall, at least. You know, there was other things that I think I did. You know, we put up a billboard, you know, advertising a pay-per-view and did it very close to the Titan Towers so that when everybody drove to work every morning, they could look at the advertisement for our pay-per-view. We didn't really think that that billboard would necessarily drive any pay-per-view business, but I thought, yeah, it's a good way to get under the guy's skin. And it was really all just to keep him off balance. I figured the more irritated I could keep him and the more off balance I could get him,

the less likely it was that he'd come up with some good ideas to come back after me. Now, little did I know all I was really doing was poking the bear and making him more determined than ever to come back and kick our ass, which is ultimately what happened. But at the time, you know, it was kind of like a Sun Tzu Art of War thing in my mind where I was just coming to do everything I can to keep him off of his best game. And that's really why I did it. I don't know why that's funny to me, but it is.

It's such an Eric Bischoff thing. Another question here. Mike Whitaker wants to know, when you were in charge of WCW, if WWE had proposed doing a split pay-per-view, would you have considered it? Oh, I think so for sure. Now, a lot of that depends on the timing. Early on when I was running WCW before Nitro, and even probably after night. or before the NWO, I certainly would have entertained that.

Who, you know, would have been silly not to entertain it. It would have been a great opportunity. But I think after we kind of gained the traction that we gained in 96, 97, in particular, early 98, it probably wouldn't have been very interesting at that point. But certainly in, you know, 94, 95, early 96, absolutely would have considered it. So the answer is, if you were winning, maybe not. But if you were playing ketchup ball, heck yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, I'm set another way, sure. All right, listen up. We've got great news. We're excited to announce a new affiliate partnership with fanatics and the WWB shop. It's an easy way to support your favorite podcast. Shop official WW gear and apparel by using our special URL, shopwrestlingmerch.com. That's shop wrestlingmerch.com.

Or if you're watching along with us, on YouTube, just hit that QR code that's up on the screen right now and check out the description below for the link. We'll have it up on all of our socials as well. But you can shop with confidence for your favorite WWE superstar teas, hoodies, caps, championship belts and more with the WWE shop. And don't forget to use our special link, shop wrestlingmerch.com. Not only we get some great deals and some great swag, but it's also an easy way to support the show. That shop wrestlingmerch.com. Let's agree to come back to some of the overarching stuff.

And let's dig into the news and notes leading to the show and then we'll put a bow on it at the end. Meltzer reported at the time of Vince Rousseau, and he was sounding fairly desperate in the process, according to Meltzer, lashed out at criticism of his booking and blamed WCW standards and practices for the fact that the ratings haven't improved since he arrived.

He did all of this on an appearance on WCW Live and you and I recently discovered together or got the bad news together that Bob Ryder recently passed away. Ryder was a pioneer in a lot of ways for wrestling on the internet. And WCW Live was one of those innovations. He and Jeremy Vorash did a phenomenal job there. He's got Russo on as a guest and he says Russo claims that the ratings haven't fallen and that everything to this point was to put things in place for a big angle at Starcade

and the next night with the recreation of the NWO. Russo blamed standards and practices for not allowing him to have Roddy Piper call Rhonda Singh fat no longer allowing Ed to mimic Jim Ross's Bell's palsy and not even allowing Buzzkill to burn incense on the air. Meltzer would say none of which one way or the other would have meant even a blip when it comes to the ratings.

Rousseau says that WCW has to decide if they want a squeaky clean show or ratings, but they can't have both. And he said he was promised certain leeway when he came in, and for the first six weeks everything was fine. But once the heat came from sponsors, the rules changed. He said people in WCW have been trying to stab him in the back. They claimed people in the company are saying that the problem is at standards and practices. It's just that the shows he's been writing hasn't.

haven't been very good and he claimed that those people were doing the same thing that Jim Ross, Jim Cornett and Bruce Pritcher did to him in the WWF. He lashed out at all the critics, Meltzer in particular, with name calling and a lot of people would assume that he's working an angle here. Rousseau says he's going to gauge his success by internet feedback and crowd response. And, uh, among the ideas that he talked about on the show. where to bring Lenny Lane and Lodi back under the name of standards and practices with crew cuts and glasses and have them play nerdy characters.

He also talked about bringing back Jim Hellwig as a full-timer. And he says he's even talking with Bruno Samartino. And maybe he could join Zavisco, Orndorff, Anderson, and the Piper team to feud with Rousseau as the traditionalists who hate what Rousseau's done to wrestling. He talked about wanting to bring back Randy Savage but said there's a contract situation that's out of his hands

and he talks about how Jeff Jarrett will be a main eventer starting early in the year. And he also claims if he left or was let go by WCW, he would never go back to the WWF because he could never work with Vince McMahon for another day. A lot to unpack from his appearance here on WCW Live. Let's try to break it down bit by bit. People saying, you know, hey, uh,

the writing hasn't been very good. And he thinks those people are stabbing him in the back, much like Ross, Cornett, and Bruce did. How does that read to you as someone who self-admits, you weren't the biggest Russo fan? I mean, you have to know Vince Russo in order to appreciate the depths of his delusion.

If you don't know Vince Russo, you can't possibly begin to understand how twisted, and in his own way, narcissistic, he is. He's like the fucking Andrew Como professional wrestling. I don't know what to say. Was standards and practices an issue? It was for me. I never even heard of standards and practices.

and Terry Tingle until sometime in 1998. And I've talked about it before, you know. I remember her coming. I think we talked about it in the last show we did. I talked about Terry Tingle coming into my office and telling me that one wrestler can't call another wrestler stupid because it may be offensive to some people with learning disabilities. I get that.

That's life. You know, I don't like it necessarily. I think, you know, what always became frustrating for me, and I promise I'll stay on track. What became frustrating for me, and in a way still is, is the kind of double standard that exists, you know, in entertainment. You know, you can do things in a scripted environment. You can call someone stupid.

You can call someone ugly. You can call someone fat. You can call someone, whatever you want to call them, as a part of a story and a script and building your character. But wrestling, for whatever reason, was always in this kind of funky gray area. even though it was scripted, even it was all performance-based. It wasn't reality. It wasn't a sport.

But for whatever reason, people, especially in Turner, at this point, now this is Time Warner, AOL. This wasn't Turner broadcasting, you know, pre-AOL, pre-Time Warner. This was Time Warner and even more so AOL, set this new kind of bar or this new standard where professional wrestling had to be much more politically correct before politically correct was the thing, than any other form of entertainment. You know, you could have flamboyantly gay people in a sitcom. That's okay.

But if you had somebody that was flamboyantly gay and you pointed out and made fun of it or used it as a basis for humor, even if it was self-deprecating humor, you know, from the character that was portraying a flamboyantly gay person, well, that way you could do that. You could do it on sitcom. You could do it in a drama. She couldn't do it in wrestling. You know, things that were okay. in other forms of entertainment, we're not okay in wrestling. And that was a very hard thing for me to

try to adjust to. And I still think it's unfair in some respects. I watch scripted television now, and I think, could you possibly get away with that story or a version of that story in professional wrestling? And the answer is no. Because even today, professional wrestling, for whatever reason, I still don't understand. And I'm sure there is one. But for whatever reason I haven't been, you know, privy to or nobody's explained to me there is a still a double standard today and it was true and I'm sure that was frustrating for for Russo to a degree but let's be honest let's look back at some of the things that Russo did from the time he was hired in September I think or October and and the things that we're seeing even on this show Russo got away with a lot more in in terms of the

overtly sexual kind of silliness, and in this case, we saw a lot of, you know, mixed match, you know, mixed sex matches and physicality on women and things like that that I, you know, could not have gotten away with. You might have been able to get a bump in or two, but matches. That would have never happened under my watch, not because I necessarily wouldn't want it to do it, but because it wouldn't have been allowed. By 1998, that wouldn't have been allowed. So Rousseau got away with a lot more during this time period than I was able to get away with in 98 or 99. So I'm sorry I don't buy it. And while some of Rousseau's claims during that interview that you read back to me, I can kind of relate to with regard to, you know,

what Turner at that point, AOL, Time Warner, what they, Tom Warner, really, what they wanted out of a wrestling show, I can understand why Rousseau was very frustrated. Coming from the WWE, where, you know, you only had one guy to answer to, and, you know, he was

walking women around on, fucking, in a dog collar, you know, in your underwear, and bra and panting matches were, you know, the match of the week. And coming to AOL, Tom Warner, that he couldn't get away with that. So I understand his frustration.

But anybody, look, if you're a Vince Rousseau supporter, if anybody is listening to this, and I know there are a few, because they reach out to me in social media sometimes. All you need to do is go back and look at this show. This show, this is when Rousseau still had quite a bit of latitude. This show is all Vince Rousseau. This is out of the mind of Vince Rousseau.

and Ed Ferrara. And if any of you who still support and buy into, you know, the Vince Rousseau story, if you can go back and watch the show and find any socially redeeming value, the same standard that is used to determine the undeterminable, undeterminable, which is, what is porn? Well, porn is anything that doesn't have socially redeeming value, sexual material. If you can go back and look at this show and find anything that has any, from a wrestling perspective, socially redeeming value, i.e. entertainment, then I want to hear about it. One thing. One thing. Even by accident, usually the talent is good enough to be able to even figure out a way to make something entertaining and worthwhile.

spite of a bad head of creative. In this case, despite the fact that there were some massively talented people on this show, and some that weren't, that were Vince Russo protégés that were drinking his Kool-Aid and were only on the show because they kissed his ass. And Vince Russo was trying to, you know, build his power base within WCW by being the guy that was going to give all the underdogs a shot, all those talented, young, fresh talent. How many things? How many times have you heard that bullshit. All this young, fresh talent that were being held down by the, you know, the veterans and the guys like Hogan and Savage and Sting and Lugar and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Vince Rousseau was going to be the Piper that we're going to lead all this young,

fresh, exciting talent to the promised land. Well, the young fresh promising talent didn't have it. but by surrounding himself with that lack of talent and look these people were nice people that I'm sure they had goals and dreams and aspirations and I'm sure they worked hard to get at least attention enough to be able to put on a show I'm not taking anything away from the talent although it probably sounds like I am I'm not but they weren't ready for prime time and this entire show aside from the fact that some of the right some of the creative and the real matchmaking process, not just the storytelling, but, you know, to see a guy like Dean Malenko, Dean Malenko, trying to have a match with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who was in his 40-pound

janitor suit. It was just criminal. I wanted to call Dean Malenko and apologize to him this morning for not having the experience and the strength of character or the vision or whatever it is I didn't have or the combination thereof to kind of find a solution to the problems that I was having in 1998-99 instead of drawing a line and saying a pick and fight with people that were way up the food chain for me, hoping that it would come out well, it was just horrifying. Who would think that? Who would think that was a good idea? Putting Dean Malinko in Oh, let's try. I know, let's resurrect another faction because, well, the NWO works so I can do it too.

It sucked. It sucked. Dean Malenko, oh, no, by the way, what did we have in a cruiserweight match that opened the show? Evan Courageous and Medusa. Hello, Medusa. She's a long-time family friend. I've known Medusa and I've been friends with her since 1987. I respect her husband and like her husband.

I respect Medusa and like Medusa, but that match was fucking horrible. Well, why would you have a Cruiserweight opening cruiserweight match with Evan Courageous and Medusa? Oh, I know why. Because Dean Malenko was trying to have a match with Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Piss me off. It is worth mentioning, you know, in the heyday of the cruiserweight division, you know, normally if you're oh man it's starcade they're opening up with a cruiserweight match

i mean do you do you remember what the opening match for starcade nineteen ninety six was i do not well it's ultimo dragon and dean malenco that was that was for the cruiserweight title starcade 97 it's eddie guerrero and dean malenco now it's evan courageous and medica fucking rousseau if he was closer i'd drive to his house and kick him right in a fucking teeth well honest to god and at this advanced stage in my life i'd have to make sure he was sitting down before i tried to kick him in the teeth but i'd get him there this is that's self-deprecating humor boys and girls and it ain't gonna be no jean claude van dom shit going on in my life but man oh wait a minute you know when uh let's go back to russes

his appearance here on WCW Live. I don't know how to respond to this report that he's blaming standards and practices for the low ratings by saying, well, we couldn't call Ron to sing fat. And Ed Farrar couldn't mimic J.R.'s Bell's Pawsy anymore. And we didn't even have Buzzkill burn incense. Do you think those would have been? major moments for nitro to i mean if roddy would have called ronda sing fat i mean everybody would have changed a channel from raw that switched over to this and if buzzkill lit that incense

dude i mean that that was a t-shirt opportunity that was a watershed moment for wcdb that's lost forever now yeah and it certainly had those were the important things that rousseau wanted to do that he wasn't able to do which is why he specified them and made a point of talking about them And to your point, ludicrous, just insane, delusional. That's the word delusional. And again, unless you know Vince Rousseau, unless you've been forced to work with Vince Rousseau and have the misfortune of working with him, the depth of his delusion is something that will escape the average person.

You cannot imagine it. But this is a perfect example. Forget about the fact that there's no story to anything that he's doing on this. particular pay-per-view. Well, with the exception of Brett Hart and Bill Goldberg, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll give that. But the rest of this was a, just a disaster of a creative effort. That's what was killing WCW even more after I left. Why do you, here's the other thing, you know, kind of, you hear me say this sometimes offline, you know, when we're not doing a podcast. You know, I'm fascinated as to, you know, why? What's the motivation? What were, what?

was the thought process? What motivated somebody to take a certain action, whatever it may be? And after watching this show and, you know, waiting, you know, to connect with you and Stan for this podcast, I was outside of my driveway with my dog, kind of looking out over the lake. And I was thinking to myself, why, why did Brad Siegel call me back? After firing me, but it wasn't Brad that did it. But you know what I mean? Why did Turner bring me back? Tam Warner. Why do they bring me back? Now I know. I didn't know as much. I mean, I had an idea. But after watching this, I'm surprised it took him to the middle or end of January to pick up the phone and make the call. Because this was, this show is Vince Rousseau. For all of you

supporters out there, you people, you're 12 people that listen to whatever the fuck he does on his podcast. I don't think he can even podcast because I don't think anybody will actually carry a show. It's that bad. And he's that bad. But if he does have some sort of platform out there and you watch it, you think he's actually a talented dude and you believe, you know, any percentage of his delusional bullshit, just go watch this show. This is Vince Rousseau. This is peak Vince Rousseau. Peak performance. He does still have, and I know, I know part of this is just you trying to be entertaining and I appreciate that, but he does have a real following. I mean, he has, he has, he has fans.

He has a platform. He has idiots. He has people that don't know any better. He has people that love to drink the Vince Russo Kool-Aid. And he is a charming guy. He can sell his ass off. And if you're the type of person who has no perspective, no real understanding of anything,

no willingness to understand anything, no willingness to be critical, then you're going to be a fan of Vince Rousseau's. You know, because he can be an entertaining, charming dude. But he's a fraud. from at the deepest core of who he is, he's a fraud. Everything about him is a fraud. It's just, you know, whatever.

You know, if you're a supporter of Vince Rousseau, God bless you. You know, I would be careful about driving a car by yourself or engaging in anything that requires any level of thought or analysis because clearly you're not capable of functioning in a real world. But sitting around listening to Vince Rousseau's take on life or wrestling is your cup of tea that just, you know, God bless you. You know, it's clear now, uh, the direction of the show today. I guess we're going to, we're going to be beating up on Vince a little bit.

I want to state clearly for the record, I've always had great interactions with Vince. And to your point, he is a charming guy and he is a likable guy. But also to your point, I never worked with him. So I don't know, you know, what those challenges must be like and how that dynamic might, change but just as a casual in passing friendship relationship hey how are you buddy an acquaintance if you will he could not have been more pleasant to me yeah a lot of con artists who like that okay i say all that to say this some the thing that jumped out at me the most in this whole report from wcw live and yes i was having a little fun with no one gave a shit about any of those

things that were cut. He was just complaining and wanted something to complain about. And I get that. And by the way, we've all done that. I've done that. You've done that on this show. Sometimes you feel like you get painted into a corner and hey, this isn't all my fault. And certainly he didn't come into a good situation. He came into a bad situation, was asked to pull the nose up. And by that point, a lot of people would say it was too far gone. And I'm sure that's what Russo defenders are going to say. That's maybe a talk for another day. But when I read this, thought he just he doesn't get it he said he promised he was promised certainly way when he came in for the first six weeks everything was fine but once the heat came from sponsors the rules changed

and the idea that he felt like now bro you promised me you gave me your word this is a business and the business here is selling tickets or selling pay-per-views but that's all secondary because that's old school rassling that's all secondary to we got to have a television product this is a television company how does a television company make money some people would say ratings but if your ratings go up or down what does that matter without sponsors we've got to be able to sell it to somebody so the reason you want more people watching is so you have more revenue coming in from sponsorship i can't sell the show if the sponsors are pissed off So even if you have great ratings, if you've alienated all of the sponsors, which at times

WWE did, where they had, you know, enough sponsor or enough eyeballs to, in theory, have a beer sponsor or a car sponsor. They never came around because they were turned off. WCW wants to avoid that. They understand first and foremost, television is not a line item for us. We are a television company. The idea that he didn't know he couldn't piss off the sponsors is like, like, what? It's a TV company. That's because he doesn't know anything about the television

business. Look, I mean, there's, he never has. He's never understood. You know, this was, Vince Rousseau looked at WCW and the opportunity that he conned himself into. He looked at WCW as his own little personal playpen. It was his, he could live out his fantasy of, of, of what he thought wrestling should be. That's what he thought he was going to be able to do. do. And look, the product is what the product, or the product was what the product was. And you can argue all day long that WCW was already in a downhill trajectory. And I would agree with that, by the way. I wouldn't, I wouldn't defend or try to argue that point. I would agree with that point. It was for a lot of, a lot of reasons. But when Vince Russo came in and convinced Brad

Siegel and Bill Bush that he was, he was the guy who was really being. behind, you know, turning W.W.E. around. It was Vince Rousseau. It wasn't, you know, Vince McMahon. It wasn't anybody else. It was Vince Rousseau. He convinced people that needed, that wanted to be convinced, that were desperate to be convinced. That's what good con artists do. They take advantage of people who are at a disadvantage. And Brad Siegel and Turner Broadcasting was a disadvantage. What do we try to do? Oh, I know, we'll hire the guy who says he was responsible for turning WWE around. That seems like an easy solution.

But Vince Rousseau had no skill. He had no talent. Now, maybe, maybe, and I'm going to, I'm going to cut Rousseau a little slack here. Maybe when he was part of a broader, bigger team who could compensate for some of the idiocy and lack of real creative skill and instincts, maybe he would, is a functional part of a bigger team and worked well in that environment by being that voice that would kind of bring up some of the absurd. And you may have to shit can, you know, 49 of those absurd ideas in order to find some redeeming quality. And I'll give you an example

on this particular show. There was one moment in this show. Forget about the main event. We'll talk about that more later. But there was one moment, one moment outside of the main event that I went, hmm, that's pretty good. And that was the moment when, and, it was good for me, subjective, matter of opinion. For me, I found it to be really kind of smart, creatively, regardless of whether it was Vince Rousseau's idea or somebody else's, where Sting and Liz were backstage and, you know, Liz was, you know, I'll say soliciting, but, you know, convincing Sting that, you know, she was trying to get away from Lex and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she had a can of

mace to protect herself, and Sting said, no, take this one, this is the good stuff. And it was a, it was a can of string. So when, because he knew, Sting knew within the context of the story that Liz was likely going to turn on him. He didn't really trust her. And when that moment came, she picked up her mace thinking it was the high test stuff. Yeah. And sprayed sting in the face and it was silly string. I thought, well, you know what?

That was pretty creative because it was a seed that was planted and it was almost subtle. It was a very nuanced thing. But it was obvious to, it was a really good balance of a, of a. subtle story seed, but yet making sure the audience saw it. And then it played out at a critical moment in the match. That was good storytelling. And if that was Vince Rousseau's idea, then that was one example of a pretty good idea, if not a great idea, surrounded by 99 horrible ones.

But I don't know. Next question. I'm sorry. I went off into the weeds. I forgot where I was. No, I like when you do that. Did you put Christmas on a credit card? Don't stress out about that extra holiday spending.

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