83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 304: Ask Eric Anything

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric is joined by guest host Casio to answer all your burning questions on this special Ask Eric Anything! The guys discuss all the current happenings in the professional wrestling world before they dive into listener questions such as The Rock's return, Dolph Zigler showing up in NJPW, and Road Dogg claiming he was a better entertainer than MJF. All that plus so much more on this 2024 kickoff edition of 83Weeks with Eric Bischoff. MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code 83WEEKS at ShopMando.com! #mandopod SIGNOS - Signos removes the guesswork out of weight loss and provides the tools to develop healthier habits. Go to signos.com and get 25% off select plans by using code 83WEEKS. BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s BlueChew.com, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE FANATICS - An easy way to support your favorite podcasts! Shop official WWE gear and apparel by using our special URL: ShopWrestlingMerch.com SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial today at AdFreeShows.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the show. Well, I was about to do my road dog intro, but it is me and the man, the myth, the legend. It is 83 weeks with Mr. Eric Bischoff. Eric, how are you, and happy New Year, sir. Happy New Year to you, Cassiel. I am doing fan-frientastic. That's how I'm doing. I'm excited to hear you're on the carnivore diet.

I am. Last time we talked, you were just coming off fasting. Now you're full-blown in the carnivore diet. I actually, Cassio, I'm starting my second five-day fast today. So there's something about you and I. It's like whenever you and I do a show together, don't eat for five days. Don't take it personal. You see my face and you're like, I've lost my appetite for a while. No, I kind of made a commitment to fast once a month for five days. And

there's a, there's reasons behind it. I don't necessarily need to go into all of it. But it's very, very healthy. And it regenerates a lot of the cells in your, in your organs and your heart and your lungs and your stomach and your liver and your intestines and all that good stuff. And I figured I need a good clean out every at least once a month. So I am water fasting, but I have been on the carnivore diet since you and I spoke last. Last night was my last meal for the next five days. And I'm telling you, man, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I did it as an experiment because I read a lot about it. So Dr. Sean Baker on Joe Rogan and really caught my interest.

And I love experimenting with nutrition. You know, some people work on their cars to try to make them faster. I work on my metabolism to try to make it faster and be healthier. So I, you know, heard a little bit about this carnivore diet and I thought, you know, I'm going to give this a try. I didn't do it for weight loss. That wasn't my game. But I just wanted to see how it made me feel. I had read about the mental clarity and the energy.

and the focus and all of that. And I thought, you don't know, why not? I'll try it for a month. I like it. If I don't, I like meat, no big deal. I'll never go back. Wow. You'll, you'll, and I love my salads and my greens.

I mean, I ate fairly healthy anyway, healthy by, you know, most people's standards. But I feel 100% better. And I felt pretty good then. So I'm, I'm a believer, man. And I'm doing it with River Bend Ranch meats, River Bend Ranch, Black Label Meets. It's all of their beef, and I guess they've been working on breeding this herd for like 27 years to get the perfect breeding in place. So you get the best quality meat and marbled and all of that. But River Bend Ranch, they not only raise their own cattle, they do it high up in the mountains,

real high altitude where the grass is really lush, so the cows are really healthy and live out. there in a mountains, but they also have their own processing plant, which is a really big deal to me, because 80% of the meat is processed in this country, whatever you buy in a grocery store, by one of three basic processors. It's kind of like the big three. Well, River Bend Ranch, they have their own processing plant. And what makes that even cooler, no pun intended, is they have an aging cooler, where they age all of their beef, I believe it's 28 days at 30 degrees. And the end result is the quality of the meat is unbelievable. So that's what I'm living off of.

I love it. If you want to check it out, if you check their prices, I'll give you a thing here, and you can check their prices and compare Riverbent Ranch Meets to some of the more nationally recognized, you know, box meat delivery systems,

you'll find that not only is Riverbent Ranch, you know, they grow their own, they process their own, they age their own, they deliver to your own, unlike anybody else, but it's less expensive.

So go to getriverbend.com. That's getriverbend.com. You'll see all the information you need and you two. Whether you go on a carnivore diet or not, at least enjoy the highest quality meat. You can find anywhere. Unless you're in like a steakhouse in New York or Chicago, dropping 85 big ones on the steak,

you will not find a steak as good as this anywhere. So check it out. Getriverbend.com. Get it. Give me an example of like what was, your last meal last night. What were we eating last night? Ribby. No sides? No sides. Just a big ribeye. Just a big ass ribeye. Now I did, guess what I had for dessert? What? Three hard boiled eggs. This is my life. Pie or three hard boiled eggs. That's

a hard, hard choice. Yeah, that was my, that was my dessert. But no, I love it. Like I said, I will, I hate to be coming off like some kind of an evangelist and trying to convince people to change their lives. I'm not doing that. All I'm telling you is get this. You'll dig this. And so will your wife, by the way, she should look into this. Have her Google Dr. Sean, S-H-A-W-N-Baker. He wrote a book called The Carnarboard Diet. If Judy were to read this book, given what she's doing, intense bodybuilding and all that, she should take a quick look at this. Sean Baker. Sean Baker, S-H-A-W-N-Baker-M-D. You'd find him on Twitter. He was on Joe Rode.

good and he's got his own podcast. He's a, first of all, he's an orthopedic surgeon. He's been on the carnivore diet for eight years. So it's not like, not like he's just some tin foil fat, tinfoil hat, you know, Goober coming up with new ideas and publishing him. This guy is, he's an orthopedic surgeon. He's been on the carnivore diet for eight years. And the guy's like 65-260.

He's, he's establishing world records. He's 57 years old. establishing world records in rowing, which is not an easy thing to do. Rowing, yeah, he's a competitive rower. But check it out. You'll, if nothing else, you'll get some great information. All right, here we go.

Let's go. Let's get on the carnivore diet. This sounds like my kind of deal right here. Dude, you get up in the morning and have a half a pound of bacon for breakfast every day. And you're doing the right thing. There we go. Let's check it out. All right.

But this is a Ask Eric anything episode, which are always fun to get to pick your brain from whatever avenue they want to drive down. But before we get to the fan questions, Eric, I want to hit some topics that are trending. And first, you've discussed at length over on Strictly Business with John Alba. Great show. Y'all should go check that out if you did not hear. You recently documented at length, The Rock's Return to the WWE and your thoughts on it. And for those who haven't heard, maybe the cliff notes, what can you share us about the great ones return? Well, I mean, I really don't have much of a perspective.

I don't know other than probably everybody else's, which is, holy crap, I can't believe this is happening. He's back. I didn't think that would happen. But it is. And I think what's really exciting is what are the options, you know, creatively? What's going to happen, right? That's why they're doing it. And there's some options there.

And I think both Alba and I agreed, this doesn't happen too often. but Elbe and I agreed that it makes most sense to us at least to have Rock show up at Oh gosh, oh gosh, Australia, Perth. Yes, Elimination Chamber. Amazing. I actually created the concept, Elimination Chamber. I introduced it to the world

and I can't remember the name of it. We should tell you everything you need to know about whether or not I really came up with that concept or whether it was Triple H, but whatever. But, yeah, I mean, you know, WrestleMania is like the Super Bowl, right? Well, why not have two Super Bowls, if you can? And certainly with Rock there in Perth, it sets the stage for future international growth. And I think that's, I'm guessing a big part of the strategy.

If you look at the dots and connect a few of them since Nick Con has come on board and is steering the ship, a lot of emphasis placed on international. PLEs or pay-per-views. And I think that this is a great way to do that. So I think we're, I'd like to see Rock Roman in, in Perth. I'd like to see Roman beat Rock because it makes the most sense to me. And then set up a monster of a pay-per-view with Cody and Roman for all the marbles. That's what I'm hoping is going to happen.

Well, let's talk about the international events, because they announced, announced four international premium live events in 2024. Money in the bank is going to be taking place in Toronto, Ontario, Elimination Chamber, like we mentioned in Perth, Australia. Backlashes from France and the bash in Berlin, Germany. Talk about from a company perspective, the WWE's expansion into international waters. This is a big step for the company, is it not? Well, it is a big step.

And it comes to the price because it's, it's different. I mean, you've got the time difference, number one. And I think with people becoming more accustomed to getting things on demand, that's probably less of an issue than it would have been, say, 20 years ago, when you've got a pay-per-view going on in prime time over in the UK and it's at whatever time here, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning here in the States or whatever. That makes it difficult. But now I think with on-demand, people become more accustomed to getting their,

their content in that regard and probably don't mind the fact that it's not live quite as much for big events like this, especially international ones. But I think the real money is, you know, just like we've seen here in the United States, where, you know, major markets are competing and bidding for the rights to host a WWE preview of live event. And if you're able to expand that business model and that revenue stream internationally, the growth potential in terms of revenue is pretty freaking interesting. And it appears to me, again, just on the outside looking in,

that that's what the strategy is and why Perth and possibly why Rock, hopefully in Perth. Yeah, it reminds me of NFL announcing all these games overseas. And at first, you know, playing in London one time was not a big deal. They complained about the travel. and now there's some of them we're going for two weeks. Now we're about to get Mexico. We've already did one in Germany. And they're going to add more next year.

It's just, it's a business. They've always got to figure out how to grow. And that's the point right there. And I've gotten criticized, particularly as strictly business and here on 83 weeks, when I talk about, you know, one of my critiques I have of AEW and observations, this is just not growing. There's no metric that you could point to that say, It's growing.

You can point to ticket sales in the UK and go, oh, yeah, but they did that. Well, okay, that's a one-off. In the meantime, they're having a hard time selling 4,000, 5,000 tickets to a dynamite production here in the state. So when I say it's a one-off, it really isn't an outlier more than it is representative of a pattern. You have patterns in my thing. But in WWE's case, I would say there's. an argument in some respects, strictly from a business point, that they're kind of maxed out. I mean, how much more growth can you see with WWE here in the United States?

Can we see a fourth show in prime time? I don't think so. It doesn't make sense. It's over saturation. Can we see more volume, more numbers of PLEs? instead of doing 12 or whatever it is they do, I don't even know. Add 20%, add 30%, again, I think you're approaching saturation at that point and interest. Live events, we know that the live event business has changed. Yes, you can go to more larger markets, but the smaller

market pay-per-views, or excuse me, live events, non-televised live events, are difficult to make money in, so you're not going to see expansion there. It's a little bit like the NFL. Where is the NFL going to expand here in the United States? Arguably, they have 100% of the potential market for their product. Anybody that's interested in watching the NFL is watching the NFL. Right. But the opportunity for growth in the NFL clearly is outside domestic U.S. borders. And I think that's what we've been seeing with the NFL. And I think that's what we're beginning to see. strategically with WWE.

Let's talk about somebody who recently retired from WW January 1st, Mr. Kevin Dunn. What's your thoughts on him moving from the company? I'd love to hear any fun memories you have personally with your run in WW with him. And then what do you think his legacy will be?

Unfortunately, I think his legacy within the internet wrestling community will probably not be that positive, but that's because the majority of the people in the internet wrestling community have no idea how important Kevin Dunn has been to the growth of the industry.

Kevin is not a people person. You've got to really get to know Kevin, and he's got to get to know you before you really see his personality. He's a funny guy. I enjoy hanging with him. The last time I saw Kevin was about a year and a half or two years ago and it was after a show and he and i and michael hay sat down

and had a beverage or more and i i've always liked kevin he's not the kind of guy that you're going to go hang with necessarily and just have a blast with he's a very serious cat and i think if you look at the wwe product over the last 20 or 30 years the production values of WWE are second to no one from a live event production standpoint. When you look at just how far the production of professional wrestling, particularly in WWE's case, has evolved and has set a standard, quite frankly, there is nobody around today that can produce a live event like Kevin Dunn. Now, Kevin, I think, has been good at building a team underneath them,

and I think it'll be a seamless transition. I don't think we're going to see any massive changes necessarily because it is such a finely tuned part of the company. But Kevin is responsible for the growth of this product of professional wrestling. It's almost anybody in the company. The fact that he's been there as long as he has, he's seen it all, he's done it all, he's been right in the middle of it. He'll never tell his story, I don't think, because that's just not Kevin.

But what an amazing story he has. has. Hats off to him, I think, a little bit. Let's talk about this. In a clinical study, Eric, men who showered with soap and used Mando, whole body deodorant in their pits had an odor score of zero out of 10 after 12 hours. That's no odor. So when we tell you, you can smell like a zero. It's because our friends over at Mando want to help you out. Men who showered with soap alone had an armpit odor score of 8 out of 10 after 12 hours. That's some big odor.

And Mando is clinically proven to control odor for 72 hours. Wherever you stink, your pits, your package, your feet, and more. Make that switch to Mando whole body deodorant and smell like a zero every day. Plus, special offer for 83 weeks customers. Your new customer, you get a $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code and link. That's code 83 weeks at shopmando.com. That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O.com. Eric, you've been to many wrestling events, conventions, and shows,

and the running joke is always, guys, wrestling fans, use deodorant, quit stinking. But this is just a, look, my dad always told me. He had one of his main advice he ever told me. He said, wash your ass and don't be an ass. and you'll go for in life. First impressions are a lot. And if you walk up to somebody and you're already stinking,

they're not going to want to be around you at all. This is where our friends over at Mando are going to take care of. I absolutely love this product. And I'm not just talking about it like this because they're a sponsor. And I hope that they stay a sponsor for a long time. But this product is off the charts, awesome. And I've tested it. you know i i use that stuff everywhere you know what i like about it like for the deodorant i put

a little dab on my finger it's it's oil and you and you rub it in and then when you put your shirt on you don't have that deodorant you know mark on your shirt right under me you know when you take your shirt off and the pits are all you know covered in the deodorant and crap like that zero it absorbs into your skin and i'm telling you absolutely believe the 72 hour giving me and I've gone to the I've gone to the gem and I use it on my junk put up my ass crack everything and you go to the gym you get done working out sitting the sauna sweat and you still don't stink it's pretty amazing this product is everything they say it isn't more I'll always use money

plus you were talking about how much research you do when you dive into a product or a diet or whatever it may be in your life you just want to know what's behind it this was created by a doctor who first hand saw how normal B.O. was being misdiagnosed and mistreated. So this is baking soda-free, harribun-free, pH balance for safe use below the belt, plus clinically proven, like you said, to control odor for at least 72 hours. That's 12 hours after a shower, the average man's grundle odor was about 5 out of 10. With Amanda, the average grundle odor level is zero out of 10. So who's grundle anyway?

This poor bastard had to run around smelling people's pets. Everybody turned around. I'm going to get into that ass crack to see if I can get a whiff. Come on now. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to smell your grundle after a normal day. Now we're going to rub this on you and you come back and let us smell you. Poor Mr. Grunder woke up one day and said, how the hell did I end up here?

That's the way. I'm in. Count me in, my friend. mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers it comes with a solid stick deodorant cream tube deodorant two free products of your choice that's like the mini body wash and the deodorant wipes and free shipping that's right right and there's a special offer for 83 weeks listeners new customers give $5 off a mando starter pack with code 83 weeks at shopmando dot com that equates to over 40% off your starter pack And when you visit shopmando.com and use code 83 weeks, boom, they're going to get you booked up. Thank you, Mando, for all you do for our grundles and for supporting 83 weeks. Woo, nothing like smelling good, my friend. Oh, it's awesome.

All right, let's talk about, we talked about Mr. Kevin Dunn, and he's kind of a serious guy. On the other hand, another person who just left the WIB, one of my favorites, but a super, fun guy. Mr. Dolf Ziegler has left and recently showed up in New Japan at their big Tokyo Dome show. What do you think Dolf can accomplish outside the WW umbrella after being there almost 20 years? Whatever he was. He's that talented. He's in excellent shape. I've always, for the last five, six years I've been doing this show when people ask me, you know, if you had to rebuild the NWO or introduce a new NWO, what are three guys would, whatever the question is that's posed to me in terms of a fantasy booking situation.

You know, Dolph has been one of my go-toes. I think he's been so underrated and underappreciated for so long. But if you just look at him physically, you get guys in an amazing shape. He looks like a world-class athlete. He has, he's like Kurt Engel in a way in that. And obviously, they both have great amateur backgrounds. Kurt being, you know, kind of on a different level. but nonetheless, Adolf has a great collegiate amateur wrestling background.

But he's like, to me, he's like, Kurt, in the sense that if you're head of creative and you sit down with Kurt and say, okay, Kurt, I need you to be a comedic heel or commit, not a comedic heel, a comedic baby face. I need you to make us laugh. I need you, I need you, Kurt, to put smart. miles on these people's faces. How? Kirk can do that.

I mean, he's got, and you will appreciate this, he's just got timing and he's fearless, perhaps because he's a killer, and he doesn't have any reason to be afraid, but he's fearless. He'll put himself out there. He'll make an ass of himself. He'll have fun making fun of himself, right? Not a lot of people are comfortable doing that. Kurt is extremely comfortable. I mean, he's a funny guy by nature.

And he can go out and be that comedic baby face. He'd come out with a little tiny cowboy hat on, like in Toy Story or some bullshit. And then you come back the following Monday and go, Ah, Kurt. Oh, that bad. I thought it was a great idea. I need you to be a killer.

I want people to be afraid of the very thought of stepping into the ring with you. He can do that in a believable way. The guy can go from a stand-up comedian-esque-type professional wrestler to being a legitimate, you know, man killer. And he can do it on a flip a coin. Which one do you want? Do you want funny Kurt? Do you want killer Kurt?

Which one do you want? You can have either one of them, and he does them both equally well. Dolph reminds me of that. You know, I haven't seen as much of it out of Dolph as we have over the years out of Kurt, obviously. But he has that ability. And I think, I would imagine he's extremely well off financially. Dolf has been in the business at a pretty high level. He may not be top of the card, you know, you're in and you're out. But he's been making serious money for what, 15 years? Yeah, yeah, almost 20, yeah. 20 years. So I don't think he's money,

motivated. I think especially if he's doing stuff for New Japan and on the indie scene, he's doing it up for the passion and the fun. And when you take somebody as talented as Dolph is, and they're physically able to still

go out and perform at the level that Dolph is physically able to perform at, but they're not doing it for politics. They're not doing it for notoriety. They're not doing it for the money. They're doing it for the fun. Pure passion. that is something that I'm going to make sure that I watch out and enjoy

because I think I think we're going to see a lot more of it. And I think we'll see more of them having fun. Dolf debuted in 2008, by the way. He is one of those guys, basically like you said, that if he's in the ring, I know I'm going to get a good match out of him. And if he grabs a mic,

he's one of those guys, you go, hang on, we got to watch this. Because you don't know what he's about to say. And most of the time, it's awesome. Whatever the case may be, like you said, whatever his character is supposed to live or he is there. So interesting to see what he does over there. Also, changing companies,

it is rumored and speculated that Sasha Banks will be signing in AEW. What do you think that does for AEW? Nothing. I mean, how many times have we seen big names come from, from WWE to AEW and people speculating about how it's going to impact the business and what's going to happen. And nothing happens. It doesn't matter who you bring in there. And I made a comment. I'm going to make it again. AEW is quickly becoming TNA. And I got nearly a million views on that comment. And out of the probably half million responses, everybody, you know,

buried my comment and me along with it. But there's a million. But there's, This is a perfect example of what I meant. We've seen so many big names come into AEW. Pick one. Let's put CM Punk off to the side. Pick any other one. And the net net impact on the growth of the business, other than selling T-shirts, has been zip.

Nata. The television audience continues to deteriorate. While WWEs continues to grow, you look at their ticket sales outside of anomalies or outliers, I should say, like the U.K. And they're not doing nearly as well as they were in the past. You look at their dynamite shows. Just check out Russell Ticks on social media. And you can see their ticket sales. And, you know, they're playing in 10,000, 15,000 seat venues, but they're scaling them down to 4,000.

And a week before the event, they haven't sold out yet. So it doesn't matter. And I used to tell Dixie all the time, but she'd want to bring in big names. I know I get busted for that. It's like, oh, yeah, but look at all the WWE guys you brought into TNA. I didn't bring them in. I didn't even bring me in. I didn't even really want the job.

That was, you know, Dixie Carter had brought in McFoly and Sting and Kurt Angle and, you know, I mean, Christian Cage and so many others before I ever got there with the idea that you're bringing in these big WWE names, it's going to move the needle. And I would always tell Dixie, and she hated me for this, I think. She didn't hate me, but she would get frustrated. Because I said, and I think word for word, I said to her one day, I said, Dixie, it doesn't matter. if you brought Undertaker and you dropped him from the ceiling as a surprise into the middle of the T&A ring and then John Sina, this was when they were both, you know, obviously at the top of WWE years ago,

and then you have John Sina run to the T&A ring and you shoot an angle. It won't matter. It just doesn't because the brand, the perception of it, the scale, the scale, of it is so small that it won't get over. And that's the problem that I think AEW has, is they don't know how to use those big names in a way that grows their business. It just grows their budget, but it doesn't grow their business. Not yet. It hasn't. And if anybody can prove to me, not outliers, but show me what's happened when big names have come in. to television ratings, to buy rates.

Show me a pattern. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but I won't be. Because I watch that stuff. I look at it. It interests me. Let's talk about one more piece that is transitioning to a different company. Andrade recently announced that he would be moving on from AEW. You project him back in the WWE.

Oh, yeah. It's an amazing talent. incredible I'm surprised that they let him go in the first place amazing talent I'm glad he's coming back if indeed that's true I'm glad he's coming back because we'll see more of him how many times I'm trying to wrestle than AEWs well as he been there a year and a half two years not enough I how many times have we seen him wrestle half a dozen yeah maybe he's in the witness protection program

uh well I hope he's back because I'm like you I want to see him on the TV every time I can get a chance to see him. So we'll see where he lands. And last but not least, since you brought up in the podcasting world, what I saw trending the most was two things in the past week.

And one was you and TNA compared to AEW. And the second, I would love to get your thoughts on because you like to tell it like it is. My co-host on, oh, you didn't know, Mr. Road Dog, Brian James, he got his trending because he claimed he is a better sports entertainer than MJF.

What say you, Mr. Eric Mitchell? I think it's undeniable. I don't have any issue with it. I think MJF is relatively new to the business. He's only been in the, I hate this fucking word so much, but I'm going to use it, zeitgeist. I just wanted to. It is about, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago in Hollywood, right?

Everything was zeitgeist, this, zeitgeist, it's in the zeit guys. I want to smack mucker fathers that would say zeit guys. They just want to backhand them. But a lot of times they were like agents and executives and shit like that. So you can't backhand people in Hollywood. What's a zeitgeist? I think that's what they found under the pool in that ghost movie, right? Yeah.

That sounds like it. They found the zeit guys. No, it's like the orbit. it's like the universe it's like our world our zeitgeist you know i freaking hate it it's just it's it's another it's like people that always use the word literally like anytime i'm on social media if a post starts with the word literally like literally i can't believe you literally just like people use the word literally so often trying to sound smarter than they really are i guess or something i fucking hate it it's like literally dude it's like i literally watch this literal thing

and i can't believe he's taking himself so literally literally literally dude it's literally the weirdest thing of everything it's like the minute you use the word literally to open up a post or a conversation i know everything that follows is going to be just a look into the abyss of intentionally uninformed ignorant people i just hate it So don't ever start a conversation if you're talking to me, and I'm not talking to you, Cassie, you don't do this. But if you want to have a conversation with me, and we're going to communicate on social media, if you start your post out with the word literally, I am going to digitally bitch-slap you in front of the world. I can't wait for a lot of your fans to be doing that this week.

Oh, bring it. Go on. You bring it. You bring it. On principle. All right, we have got to get into some questions. what we're here for we want to hear from these listeners of 83 weeks they want to get into my zeitgeist the zeitgeist of 83 weeks we're going to start with a awesome name the neon ghost show

the neon ghost sounds pretty cool sounds like a bar scary scary um i bet they got zeitgeist floating around in the uh neon ghost uh but the neon ghost says eric sir when you look back at the legacy see you left on pro wrestling as a business. What are you most proud of? And what, if anything, do you want to be remembered for? Oh, I think, I changed the format in terms of the way professional wrestling was presented on American television. And if you go back and look at the product from WWE prior to Nitro,

it was very formulaic. And it was working, successful, but I changed it all. I'm the one that brought weekly live television to the professional wrestling industry. Back when I was putting all of our top stars on television, the internet, well, it wasn't the internet wrestling community. Then it was the dirt sheet community, but it was basically the same thing. It was like, oh my God, the business is going to die. WCW is going to die. They're putting all their top stars on free TV.

why is anybody going to buy a pay-per-view? Everything that I did that was different than the WWE was doing at the time that I launched Nitro has been replicated since by everybody including the WWE. And I know people will have a hard time accepting that because it's me and I'm not the most lovable Muckerfather out there. I get it, but if you're objective and you look at pre-nitro, post-nitro, and you look at the core elements that have led to the success

of the industry as it sits today. Let me point out to you, weekly, live television. Yep, that was me, monthly pay-per-views. And these are all things I did first. Yep, that was me introducing the cruiserweight, aka the, and bringing in all of the international talent, not just once or twice a year, but on a weekly basis in storelines. Yep. That's was me. The introduction of the luchadors, on a national scale, Paul Heyman did it before I did in ECW, just nobody was watching it. But I put the luchadors, I made them a staple. I put them in that nine o'clock crossover hour, which is other than the open of the show in the main event, the most important portion of the show, I made sure that they were showcased in that spot

every single time. I think had, it wasn't me, by the myself. There's a lot of people. The tip of the spirit would be Ray Mysterio. I think Ray Mysterio has, along with the platform that I gave him originally, has established himself as one of the primary reasons that the Lucidora product is so accepted, so popular as it is today. But the fact that we created that division, that cruiserweight division, and brought the, the luchador's end along with a lot of the Japanese, and gave guys, you know, that were otherwise smaller guys, an opportunity to really shine, A.K. Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit,

you know, Dean Malenko, a lot of the big names that we even moved on over to WWE and became big stars, became big stars in part, in part, not in, 100%, but in part because of the exposure and the success they had on Nitro. I think those are the things I'm most proud of, changing the format, changing the presentation. I was the first one to target 18 to 49-year-old males. While Vince McMahon and WWE was chasing teens and pre-teens prior to Nitro, I made the conscious decision to go after an 18-to-49-year-old demo. And now that's the foundation of the television.

The professional wrestling television industry today is the 18-49-year-old demo. It's all anybody talks about today. Back what I did was like, ooh, what's he doing that for? Because they were underserved and that's where the money was. So those are the business things that I know I initiated, created, forced, whatever you want to be. And WWE followed in those footsteps. AEW was trying to replicate WWE, which replicated Nitro when it comes to the way the show is presented, compared to the way it was presented prior to Nitro.

As far as how I want to be remembered, I'd like to be remembered as an innovator for all the reasons I just explained. You know, those were innovations at the time, going live every week. That was an innovation. Adding 12 pay-per-views, you know, adding paper views, that was as much out of necessity as it was creativity and strategy. But it was innovative. Everybody thought it would fail and it didn't. You know, the Cruiserweight Division was innovative. So, you know, and I look, I had monster trucks wrestling on top of Coble Hall.

That was pretty stupid. I tried a lot of things. And some of them really, really worked well and are still working today. And I think of the foundation in many of them, it's the foundation of why the business is as successful as it is in terms of television licensing fees because of capturing that 18 to 49 year old demo the way we did. But I'd like to just be remembered as being pretty innovative. Not that everything I came up with was a great idea, but a lot of it was. NWO was still one of the top selling merchandise products in the WWE category, 25 freaking years later. Oh, and then there's the LWO.

I also created it. So come on, people. White the fuck up. Look, I personally get excited when I get to, whether it's podcasting or just see you in person, I know when I talk to Eric Bischoff that I'm going to learn something, and that's a good thing. Learn something that I never knew. I don't know who I credited it to, but today I learned that you did 52 live weeks a year.

I don't know if I had ever thought of it or who to credit it to or not, but that is fascinating to me because I hate to keep going back to my co-host, but he's the guy I picked the brain most about wrestling. road dog when I talked to him about AEW. I just recently talked about him and what the thoughts were backstage when AEW launched. And he said it wasn't nerves. It was a, okay, well, we're not the only person on the block.

Let's see what happens. And he said they gained some steam, of course, when they first started. They're going a little hot. And then you kind of go, okay. But he said, it's funny because he brings us up all the time when we talk about it. He says,

now let's see you do it 52 weeks out of the year. live. Have fun trying to do that because WWE knows how to do it. He thinks it's the hardest separation deal between WW and AW is WWE knows how to do it, has been doing it now for years, and it's a hard thing to do live television every single week

of the year. Yeah, I mean, you've not only got your live television that you do in WWE's case, they've got Raw and Smackdown live. Oh, and by the way, what do they do? One PLA. a month or whatever it is. That's a lot of live television. It is really hard. And again, Kevin, or Kevin Dunn, we talked about him.

If you take anybody from the television production business, anybody who's in the industry, television production, that's never been backstage to a WWE event, and you bring them back, and you walk them through, the production of a WWE live event, you will blow them

away. And then when you remind them that they do it 52 weeks a year, they gain a whole new respect for the industry. And Road Dog's right. It's incredibly hard to do it well.

The physical production is very difficult to do well. And in defense of AEW. I don't have a problem with their production. It's not as glitzy. It doesn't. The production values aren't even comparable to WWE. But I kind of prefer them because I like my wrestling a little gritty. It's kind of like a roasted marshmallow. I like him to be a little burnt, right? I don't want it to come off at the campfire looking like it just came off of a set of a TV commercial for

roasted marshmallows. I want that mucker father to be charred brown and get the contrast and flavor. Same thing with production in terms of wrestling. WWE is like watching Disney on ice, right? It's so perfect. It's flawless. I like a flaw here and there. It makes me feel like I'm there. You know, I want to feel like I can almost smell the popcorn or stale beer, whatever the case may be, depending on where you're sitting. I like feeling like I'm there and sometimes that grittier, less perfect performance or presentation gets me there. But there is no doubt when it comes. comes to creative, therein, in my opinion, lies the biggest distinction between WWE and

AEW. And part of that is because live requires a different level of planning and execution and writing. It's just harder. So you combine the physical challenges along with the creative challenges that come with live television. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's tough. And that's the difference between the two companies. I think the EWs, they don't even have their training wheels on yet. You know, they shouldn't be allowed outside of the crib when it comes to the creative abilities. And they'll get there eventually.

It's a learning curve. But, man, WWE is a different class all by itself. Yeah, I think the, I think with WWE, like for me personally, I, if I don't get, I go through a stretch or I'm not watching it weekly and staying on top of it. I know between social media chatter and then watching the product and seeing their packages, their video packages before match. I know why these two people are in the ring together right now. And if I watch AEW, there's a lot of the times where I go,

now, why are we watching them? Or did we just make them wrestle? I don't know what's happening here. I know they have the whole YouTube series and a lot like that, but I think they kind of rely on that too much. Nobody's watching that too much. And Cassio, you just hit on. The most important word in any conversation when it comes to creative.

It's one word, three letters. Why? If two guys are in a ring or two girls in a ring or two girls and one guy, two guys, one girl, whatever it is, trios, quadrupleos, whatever it is, you put bodies in a ring that are competing. If you can't clearly define why, then it doesn't matter. It's an exhibition. We're just seeing how athletic everybody is.

There's no emotion attached to it. There's no real story. No matter how much you jerk yourself off backstage telling you, this is a great story in the ring, there is no story when it comes to the connection to the viewer. There's no journey. There's no nothing. It's just a match.

It's an exhibition. You need great story. and part of a great story is being able to answer the question why are those two wrestling? What are the stakes? Why are they beaten hell out of each other? And if you can't answer that,

you're just filling air. You're just filling time. Let me take a second to tell you why you should check out our friends over at Cygnos. Look, my mom is diabetic, my grandmother is diabetic, so I know personally why you should stay on top of your glucose levels and

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And this is when insulin resistance occurs, which is believed to be the number one cause of pre-diabetes. Eric, you know, you've done your research. You know Signos is a game changer. it comes to real-time monitoring you know what's so fun about a product like this and again i absolutely love this part this is a public service announcement as much as it is anything because people really need to understand the relationship between their health and the food that they eat and they don't we don't our government doesn't do inadequate they don't even they do a horrible

job of communicating nutrition i mean you know for a here's a here's a stat for you don't quote me on this because I'll get it wrong. I'm just flying them by the seat of my pants here. But I read recently that 80% of the medical schools in the United States of America, medical schools, not junior colleges, medical schools in the United States require 20 hours or less of nutritional training for doctors. You imagine that. Because doctor, you go to a doctor, it's all about the pills.

It's all about the surgery. You know, doctors are not trained in nutrition. And what's really exciting, here's the good news, the flip side of that coin, is because of technology and the amazing pace that technology is developing, you end up with products available to a consumer like Cynos, where you can monitor your blood glucose levels. And you talked about why it's important. It is so vitally important. We all have different metabolisms.

We all react different ways to different things. And when you talk about, you know, carbohydrates, there's different kinds of carbohydrates. You know, people think that, oh, if you eat whole grain bread, you know, that's better than white bread. Well, it's really not. You've been convinced that it is. But if you have, for example, blood glucose monitor, you can see that having a piece of whole wheat bread, it may not spike your blood sugar levels to the extent that, oh, I don't know, pineapple might. because of the high levels of sugar and pineapple. Oh, it's a fruit, right? It's healthy, right?

No, it's not, especially if you're pre-diabetic or diabetic. But you go back to something that you've been taught as healthy, like whole grain bread. Now, it doesn't, you don't have a severe of a spike, but it doesn't drop quickly either, like a lot of sugar does. It stays at a certain level, right? Well, your liver has to work extra hard to pump enough. insulin to react to that spike in glucose. It's very complicated, but that's one of the things that I feel so passionate about as a result of the carnivore diet is because I am eating zero

carbohydrates. Zero. And the impact of my body and the way I feel and the way I think is so much different. I feel a hundred percent better than I think I ever have because of my blood glucose. And with a product like Cygnos, you can throughout your day, you'll become familiar with what spikes your blood glucose. Because what spikes your blood glucose can say it may be different than mine. We have different metabolism. It's not one size fits all, right? So an opportunity for a product like Cygnos is so vitally important to your health. I encourage you to check it out and do your research and learn about blood glucose and insulin spikes

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That's signos.com and use the code 83 weeks to get 25% off select plans today, and we thank Signos for not only improving our day-to-day lives, but sponsoring 83 weeks. All right, let's get back to the questions. Eric, Derek Lewis, the real D.T. Lou, says, how come Eric was never an executive for a major network? Well, mostly because I didn't get a job offer, but partly because I never wanted to. that was never a role that I wanted that I saw myself in I could have pursued that I could have if my goal to be an executive at a television network if that would have been my goal I certainly could have used my opportunity at WCW to to achieve that I could have been

much more of a corporate type of a person and played that game that ladder climbing corporate game, which is totally freaking alien to my personality. So I just chose not to. I've not cut out for that kind of a role. I love to build things. I love to create. I love to collaborate. I don't like the corporate culture.

And by corporate culture, I mean, corporately, especially the entertainment business, I was an independent television producer along one of my partner Jason Hervey for, I don't know, 10, 12 years and had a tremendous amount of success. I made far more money being an independent television producer than I ever made in the wrestling business, right? And I learned a lot, but I also saw what was happening to the television industry from about 2003 to around 2014 when I finally tapped out and said, I just don't want to do it anymore. The corporate television industry had become so risked, verse. It would be like being an executive at a bank. Uh-uh. I understand what other people

would want to do it, but that's, I'm not cut out for that. The entertainment business has changed so much that it, it's not as exciting as it used to be because the process is so risk adverse that it's, it's just not entertaining to me. It's not fun. So I would never want to do it. If I was offered a job to run a network today, I would politely decline and then laugh once I hung up the phone. It's just not me.

But I don't have to worry about that because I don't think anybody would ever offer me a job like that. They'd listen to one episode of strictly business or 83 weeks ago. I don't want him in my office. John from wrestling fans in sight says, Eric, hope all is well with you. WCW had the right feel when it came to having a cruiser way division WW has tried this twice

and has scrapped it. They have all the right talent. Why do you think they have a hard time keeping that concept alive? Because they didn't create it. That's simple. They didn't create it. And they're not committed to it. You know what I mean? Here's

the thing. And here's the other part that makes it a real challenge. It was for me. is if you're going to establish, you know, T&A completely missed the mark on this, you're going to create a cruiserweight division. It has to be different than everything else you see. The presentation has to be different than. The talent within that division has to be different than.

Everything about it has to be different than everything else you see, or it won't feel unique or special. And the problem that you have, there's actually a couple layers to this. One is, in the physical presentation, high flying, all the stuff off top robe, you know, all the stuff that used to be only in the cruiserweight division or primarily in the cruiserweight division. All of us, you're seeing that cruise weight division, it starts getting over. Now you've got guys that are outside of the cruiserweight division doing some of the same stuff because it's getting over. it creates a situation where the cruiserweight division isn't that different anymore over time

because you're not seeing things in that division that you can't see or typically don't see everywhere else that's so it gets watered down and diluted as a result of its own success on a talent management side of the equation that becomes even more treacherous because your talent in that Cruiserweight division starts getting over. Well, they don't want to be just cruiserways. And that's natural. That's healthy. That's normal.

You're a performer. You don't want to be locked into a level or a position. You don't want to feel like you're in the middle of the show. You want to be in the main event, man. That's what you grew up wanting to be and dreaming about. So no matter how successful someone becomes in that Cruiserweight division, Chris Jericho, they want to move on up. That's why Chris left because he felt like he wasn't going to go.

I'm not putting words in Chris's mouth, but that's my impression that he wanted to be wrestling in the main event. And he didn't see that opportunity in WCW. Part of that was because I didn't want to dilute the cruiserweight division was part of it, other parts of it. But that was part of it. So those challenges make building, sustaining. a cruiserweight division a little harder than it would seem on the surface. Great question, great answer. That was good insight for me.

John Cooney said, what's the best way to become successful in professional wrestling outside of the ring? Who, different for everybody, man. It depends what your skill sets are, your passions are, your interests are. you know, I don't think there's a single answer other than be different than, you know, go back

and I know I keep beating on this and some people get it, some people don't, but the Sarsa equation, that formula that I use to differentiate myself from WWE, the story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action will all born, that idea, that acronym Sarsa was born out of the that I've got to be different than the WWE. That same thing is true in life. If you are playing, Cascio, you're a stand-up comic.

You have to be different than other stand-you have to have your own style. Yeah. When people see Cassio on the billboard, they know he's going to be doing stand-up comedy. They have an idea that they're getting a different kind of comedy out of Cassio than they are out of whoever else they may have seen the week before. you have to strive to create your old brand to be different than, to create anticipation for your product. You have to be organic and authentic. That's the reality part of the Sarsa formula. You have to be able to have the ability to surprise your boss, your wife, your coworkers, when I say surprise them by presenting something that's different than they expected from you, right? And action. So the Sarsa formula applies to just about any job that you can think of.

But if you think about, if you're in a wrestling business and you think about that Sarsa formula, and you look back at the things that have been successful and go, wow, there was story there. There was anticipation. Ah, it felt real. It felt believable. It felt authentic. There was a reality there.

I didn't see that coming. There's the surprise. And the action was great. There's the action. It speaks for itself. And figure out a way to apply that formula to whatever it is you want to do outside. of the wrestling ring or outside of the wrestling business, I think you'll find that it's pretty applicable and it works.

You know, Conrad Thompson, I normally do this show with, who, you know, you've been best friends with just about forever, if not forever. You know, Conrad is an amazing, people who don't work with Conrad probably don't have an appreciation for how brilliant he really is, but he's done it by being different than. How many mortgage people do you know?

that would have launched a podcast network for the sole purpose of promoting their mortgage business. If he would have pitched that to somebody else, you know, another traditional mortgage company, they would have gone, I don't think so. A wrestling fans.

Live in houses. They live in tents on the street. I mean, come on. Conrad saw that up, and he was different than. And he's become amazingly successful as a result of it. That's just one example. So how to be successful, be different.

Think about ways that you can be so unique to any opportunity that comes your way or that you're trying to create and think about that Sarsa formula. Story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. Apply it to whatever it is you want to try to achieve and you'll find, I think it's pretty applicable. It'll at least give you a good roadmap. Good way to start. Well, Eric, we are doing this. this in front of a live studio audience this morning. I want to thank everybody for joining us and watching and commenting.

And I want to do make sure I got one of these questions in, get some of them at least. And so we got a bunch of people here, man. Who do we have? Aaron Sheen, Easy Zizmer or Ezezmer, whatever. I'm sorry, man, I can't pronounce that. Mike Hoop Hoophoophoopster. What's up?

Aaron Manzo is in the house. Coach Keith. I see you, buddy. Getting up early with us. We greatly appreciate that. So let's get a couple of these. he's first. Let's go to our buddy, Mike. Hoop. He says, Eric, Sting's

last match. Do you think they should do a tag match or singles, and who should be the opponents, if so, either way? I'll give you two answers. If Sting, we don't know, you know, what kind of shape is Sting in? What does Sting want to do?

You know, he's at an age in his life where he wants to, I would think, I don't know, I'm not trying to pretend I know sting better than I do. But I would imagine he wants to go out and have a great match to the best of his ability, to maximize his abilities in the ring, minimize any exposure he has because of the condition he's in.

Is he going to go out there and do a 60-minute Iron Man match? Probably not. Is he going to be bouncing around like a couple 160-pound 25-year-olds? Probably not. but he could still go out there and have a great match that's emotional, that tells a great story. And that most importantly ends in a very, very positive note for Steve Sting and the fans.

And I think that's possible with a lot of different people and there's a lot of great talent in EW. I'd like to see a singles because that's the focus. When you have someone like Sting has been around so long, is the chief so much. It's universally loved. You're not going to find anybody that's going to have bad things to say about Steve Bourne

or the character stick. When you got somebody like that, you want to live vicariously through them, meaning you've been a sing fan all of your life for the majority of your life or whatever it is. You're a big sting fan. You want to almost experience what he's feeling to the best of your abilities by watching.

And you want him at the end of that, match to be able to look out you want to feel like you can put yourself in his shoes so when that match is over and you get that final three count you want to subconsciously see him stand up and soak it all in and love every moment of it and to be as emotional for Steve as it is for the fans or actually way more that's what you want to see that's easier to achieve in a singles match than it is in a tag. It's not going on a tag. Everything's moving, right?

Focus goes from here to here to here to here. It's faster paced, usually less emotion as a result of the pace and the fact that your attention is spread out. So I would love to see it be a singles match. I'd love to be it with someone who could give in an ideal world. And it's not an ideal world. Trust me, I know that. but in an ideal world

I would love for it to be Rick Flair and I know I'm going to get bliss if he's too old bullshit now Rick may not be interested to going out there and physically being in that position because again Rick's you know he was almost dead

a couple of years ago and he's 74 freaking years old so it's kind of understandable that he's not going to want to go out there in his underwear and bounce around I get it but if he could if he could go out there, it would be the coolest thing in the world to see Flair and Sting. Knowing that that's not really possible, whoever it is, I would want it to be meaningful from a storyline point of view, and I would want that person to want nothing more in his life than to make Sting look like a million bucks.

sucks because he deserves that that is correct I the first thing I thought of when they announced it is man I just hope it goes well for him I mean I know for us too but you know that's your last match you want to go out on going man that was that was a fun way to go out I told the story like we wanted to to go out I get more anxious for them than I do me wanting to actually enjoy the last match I just get that secondhand anxiety of I hope it goes like they want it to go. That's all that matters, really, is they're happy with their exit. And that's, you know, that's a tough thing to do sometimes.

It is. But I have a lot of confidence. You know, I know Steve well enough to know that he's preparing. And he knows his body. He's been training his whole life, you know, to different degrees. He knows, and he's been doing this a long time. I'm pretty confident he's going to be ready. and he's going to be able to put on a great performance.

I just hope it's with somebody that can make him look better than he already is, which should be the goal. Anytime he's happened to the ring, your goal should be to make your opponent look better than they did when the bell rang. That's the goal, should be the goal. But I hope there's a decent story behind it, too. It's got a matter. Beyond the script with another question.

He says we've touched on a little bit of this, but to this day, how great does it feel to be the only person to ever beat, Vince McMahon and the ratings, do you think that will ever be duplicated again? Or what do you think your promotion has to do in order to achieve such heights against WWE? Yeah, well, I don't think anybody will ever outperform Vince McMahon because Vince McMahon is pretty much out of the business. It was great going head to head with Vince.

I love the fact that I was such an underdog. Nobody in their right mind thought that I would ever be able to compete, or WCW, I should say, Nitro was ever going to be able to compete with all everybody all the dirt sheet writers and all the quote unquote experts who study the business get a big kick out of that one um all these dirt sheet assholes are like into quasi intellectuals it's just a fucking hoot um but everybody predicted it there's no way there's no way there's no way and within a very short period of time well fuck we were competitive with wb we from day one when nitro launched we were competitive forget about the first night because they

weren't even on the air. There was a dog show going on. But even after that week of, you know, we were one week, we'd win. Next week they'd win. We'd win two. They'd win three. We'd win one. They'd win one. We were competitive all the way up until 1996. And then we just stopped a mud hole in a road road dog. I said that for you. We stopped a mud hole in your ass. Until you muck and fathers drove up in Norfolk in a goddamn Jeep, got to blew everything for me. Asshole.

Chance Richardson wants to know. What is the most significant factor you look for when assessing a business opportunity? Ah. Does it look like fun? I'm a firm believer that my formula for success has to be.

There is no room. for error or margin. It has to be fun. It has to require a lot of work. Because I firmly believe that if you work your ass off, but you're having fun doing it, success is inevitable. You can't even help it.

It will be there. If you work hard and if you have fun, fun. If you have fun, but you're really only half ass in it, you're done. It ain't going to work. If you work your ass off, but you're miserable, find a new gig. It's not going to work. But if I see an opportunity that sounds like fun, and if I think about it, I can imagine doing it and what I imagine feels good to me and feels. When I say fun, I'm not talking about running around the office laughing your ass off like a blithering fucking idiot you know but the challenge if you enjoy the challenge if you enjoy the work if you enjoy the process if you enjoy collaborating with people

and you've got good people around you that to me is fun that's my idea of going to the beach to be honest but you got to put in the work too so that's it if an opportunity comes to my way and they do you know some things i i i jump into some things i i don't but my first passes, does it sound fun? And is there enough for me to contribute that I can work hard at it? Like, I don't want to be a passive player in anything. I mean, I am. I should take that back. I have somewhat passive roles in different business opportunities that are going on today, that I make money off of them. And I'm not 100% active in them. But I, chose to be involved in those opportunities because they were passive.

By that, I mean, it allows me to be available to jump headfirst into something else, if that's something else comes along. And it looks like fun, and I can work at it. So, I don't know, fun and work, man. Those are the two formula. If I see opportunities for both, I'm in. If it's one or the other, probably not interested. Jason Barker, the IWC Tribal Chief, wants to know.

Who do you think should take Kevin Dunn's place? You know, I haven't been at WWE backstage for five years now, so I couldn't tell you. I don't have a name. You know, Mike Mansourri, who's now in AEW, I think, was the heir apparent five years ago. I think the world of Mike Mansoury, amazing, amazing. And a fun guy to be with, too. He's amazingly talented, but it's also a really fun person to work with.

There's the best JR impersonation I've ever heard. I mean, he's got it down. I used to fly with him in the back of Vince's plane with Bruce whenever we'd be back there with Michael Hayes or whoever and Bruce and myself and Shane McMahon will pop in there every once in a while. We'd be drinking wine on the way home and then Mike Mansour would break into his JR routine. Oh, my God. It was the funniest. It made the flight a hoot. Towin wants to know.

Eric, do you think it would be beneficial for wrestling as a whole if someone were to start a film school type of program for writers and production people? I know WWE does this a bit with NXT, but it seems more geared towards the in-ring work and performers. Um,

I think they do, you know, already. Wrestling production at its core is so much different. I mean, there are so many similarities. Audio's audio, lighting, lighting, okay? Pyrus, pyro. The real challenge in production for me was cameramen and directors. Because wrestling, you have to anticipate where things are going and anticipate what's going to happen.

We're talking split seconds, fractions of seconds, nanofucking seconds, whatever. But you've got to be ahead of the action in order to capture it. Whereas in traditional sports, you're following the action. You're not anticipating it. I mean, you are to a degree. But not to the extent that you are in wrestling. In wrestling, you are really, really, you need to stay

a beat ahead of the action that's in the right in order to do a great job covering it. That's an easy concept to understand intellectually. It's a very difficult skill to learn. It takes time and experience. There's no other way to do it other than experience. So I think from a cameraman's point of view, absolutely wrestling is unique from anything else that they're going to cover, absolutely different than anything else they're going to cover as a camera person.

So I think that could be helpful. And maybe they're already doing it. No, down at an NXC, I don't know. And also directors. That's the same thing. Maybe even more so, because your director and your cameraman both have to be on the same page

a nanosecond or two ahead of the action. You don't want to get too far ahead of it. You just want to be, like I said, nanoseconds ahead of where things are going as opposed to following them. Mitch Krebsbock said, if Tony Kahn had not made the mistakes like Eric Bischoff comment,

do you think you'd be less critical of AEW or Tony? Actually, that comment when he said, and he didn't say Eric Bischoff, Tony Kahn said, we're not going to make the same mistakes WCW made. That offended me, a bit, but not that much. Now a big deal.

It's like, why would he say that? What pissed me off and largely is responsible for me losing respect for Tony. And that's probably why I started being honest about my critiques. I probably would have kept my mouth shut until I lost respect for him. And then at that point, I've got no reason to keep my mouth shut. It's just the way my mind works. It's who I am. Buckerfather, live with it.

Or don't. Don't care, one way or the other, be honest. But when Tony said, you know, if Ted Turner knew 1% of what I know about professional wrestling, maybe WCW would still be around. That comment was so disrespectful, number one, fucking stupid, number two, because Tony doesn't have any idea. what happened with WCW inside of Turner. The only thing Tony Kahn knows

is what he learned from reading dirt sheets. That's all Tony Kahn knows about WCW's mistakes. And for him to come out and take a shot at Ted Turner, why his punk ass has got a show on Turner broadcasting was so disrespectful to Ted that I lost all respect for him. And once I lose respect for somebody, I'm not as inhibited about my opinion. There are times when I see people that I have a lot of respect for, do something, say something,

I just shut my mouth. I don't have anything positive to contribute, so I just don't say anything. But if it's somebody that I have zero respect for, that's a difference. story. So I think it was really Tony's comment about Ted and how much Tony knew about professional wrestling, which at this point obviously did not age very well. I mean, Tony, you're running a clown car. I know the people around you that get their checks every week aren't going to tell you that because they want to keep getting those checks. But it's a clown car. And it just, it just that's what put me over the edge.

If I could quote the great philosophers, salt and pepper, I'd say, let's talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about you and me. Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let's talk about sex. Where is this going, Cassio? Bluechew.com, baby. They're going to hear. I knew it.

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want to be going in there possibly with your ED stuff so Blue shoe makes that easy. No visits to the doctor's office, no awkward conversations, no waiting in line at the pharmacy. It's all done online. And of course, they're made right here in the USA, USA, and prepared and shipped direct to your door in a discreet package. Eric, we talk about blue shoe all the time. You know why? Because it works and people are still using Bluetooth. I still use it. Yesterday morning was classic. It was awesome. Awesome. You know, been traveling, Christmas holidays, busy work, all the stuff that goes along with the holiday season. We finally get home. It's the first weekend we've been home together. And I had my plans. I went to bed the night before with an agenda. I knew what I wanted to do when I first woke up in the morning. And I also knew that if this was my window of opportunity, I wanted to be prepared. I wanted to prepare so that I could maximize the opportunity and have the utmost in performance.

So what did I do? I brought my little blue chew packet to bed with me. So it was the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning. I opened up one eye. I opened up the other eye. It was still dark outside. I felt around on the nightstand table. I said, well, that's my water.

I don't need that up. There it is. There's my little pack of pleasure in the blue chew. I pulled it out. the blue chewed took a hit of water, went in, took a shower, came back, and ready to have a monumental weekend. Blue Chew wants to help you have better sex, just like they did, Mr. Eric Bischoff. So discover your options at bluechew.com.

Chew it and do it, baby. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. Try Blue Chew free when you use the promo code 83 weeks at checkout. Just pay $5 shipping. That's bluechew.com. code 83 weeks to receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information and we thank bluechew for sponsoring 83 weeks. All right, let's get into some fan questions. We are in front of a live studio audience and I'm going to go with Aaron Sheen.

Eric, it's 4 a.m. wherever he is interacting with us from. Aaron, thank you for that. We appreciate that. I don't know if you haven't went to bed or you got up early specifically for this recording. Aaron must be in Hawaii or something, man. Because it's 9-3 year mountain time. It's 8.30 Pacific, so. Woo! Aaron wants to know during the height of WCW, is there one show you would recommend someone to check out that sums up how hot it was back then,

either a nitro or a pay-per-view? Oh, I don't think that's a great question. I'd have to think about it. a little bit more than we have time for here this morning. But, you know, I'd say anything between 96 and 97 just felt it felt otherworldly at that time. So the industry, the interest, it had been a long time since the wrestling was that hot. And I'd say anything from about late 96, mid-97. Just see.

When you watch, just watch the crowd. Forget about, forget about, but pay as much attention to the crowd as you are to what's going on in the ring, just watching their reactions and what they're reacting to and how they're reacting. That's when I think I felt the most energy. You know, people, you hear people talking about the vibe, you know, and it's used in kind of different ways throughout different cultures and times. But everything is a vibration. light, everything is a vibration.

And the idea of energy, you know, people's excitement, enthusiasm, anger, whatever it is, whatever you're manipulating or trying to get the crowd to do, when you achieve that, there is a vibration of energy that's different than just about anything else you've experienced. It's right on the verge of adrenaline. It's the best way I can say it. And the vibe back then, because of the energy and the excitement and the passion or whatever, was so consistently high throughout that period of time, it makes it hard for me to pick just one.

But definitely during that period, you can just feel it. When you were a talent and you step into that ring and you've got eight or 10,000 people there and they're really into what you're you know this guest you know what i'm talking about when it comes to the vibe you know when your audience is feeling your show yeah and and and maybe when they're not and when you capture that vibe once you've tasted it you can't get that taste out of your mouth and that's i would say that's 19 late 96 throughout 97 pick any show you want because all of them felt that way Former Hugh Morris, Bill DeMont with a question for you, Mr. Eric Mischoff.

Knowing what you know now, would you ever consider doing again running a wrestling company? So is this the real Bill DeMont or is this is? I went and verified. It is the real Bill. Hey, Bill. Good, good to kind of see you or at least interact. Wow, knowing what I know now, would I do it again? If I was 40, I would.

If I was 50, I might. At 68, I wouldn't go near it. And only because I know how much of my life it would take. It's not a, it's your life. It's not even a job. It becomes your life. And I'm finally at a point in my life where I don't, I've never been happier, ever, ever been happier. I'm healthy, probably haven't been healthier in 30 years.

I've got a grandson and an amazing relationship with my son and my daughter and my daughter-in-law. And my goal right now is to spend as much time with them and contribute as much as I can to them. And running a wrestling company would not fit into that plan. all. Not that I sometimes don't think about it, but I also am realistic in terms of where I want to be at this point in my life, and I wouldn't go near it. But let me say, Bill, I'm, I'm grateful for a lot of things. I mean, really, I am. I've been blessed throughout my whole life. Sometimes I didn't even know how blessed I was, but I was. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I had, but there's certain things, no matter how grateful I am or how much I love doing it at the time,

I just wouldn't have a place of my life right now because things are different. I hope that answered the question. Bill, I hope you're healthy, brother. I hope things are going good for you. I got to see him in Waterloo going into the Hall of Fame last year. So that was super cool. Good to hear from Bill DeMont. Uh, Pod damn Rick Spade is the guy's name. He wants to know. Hypothetically, if Eric had purchased WCW, would you have been stuck with the limited roster would he have everyone because they were still on turner tv or would your consortium of business partners have to buy out the contracts to get the big name star all of the above you know it everybody everybody that was on the roster in wcd that was still on

the roster at the point in time when we were going to acquire wcw from turner broadcasting Some of those people had two months left under contract. Some of those people had five months left under contract. Some of them had two years left under contract. So it all depends where each individual was. We weren't buying necessarily the assets of WCW. We were essentially buying the brand and the goodwill and the time on television. That's at the core.

And it wasn't structured that way in the deal, but that's essentially what it was about. some of the talent would have come along with us. Some of them would have been with us for a short period of time. Some of them would have been let go. It all depends on who they were, where they were in their contract lifespan and whether or not they had a place in what we saw as the future WCW. So there was no one answer.

They would have been all of the above. Big time Tony P said, if Tony Kahn asked you to turn AEW around and make it a successful company that could compete with WWW. What would you do first? Take him off television. I thought you're going to say turn him down. Either that or turn him heel.

You'd be a great obnoxious heel, wouldn't he? Yes. But he is not a baby face. The guy should not be anywhere near a red light on anything that looks like it might be a camera. You know, it's just, you should not. Not in a press, not in your quasi-cosplay press conferences or media scrums or whatever you're trying to present.

Just nothing. Let's somebody else be the face of your company. You know, when AEW first started, what I was excited about is it appeared for a couple months, like Chris Jericho was going to be kind of the face of the company because we're hearing a lot from Chris about AEW and the, you know, and I thought, okay, that kind of makes sense. And then all of a sudden I'm seeing Tony, you know,

and I'm going, ooh, Somebody must love him enough to tell him that this is not a good idea. Somebody. Got to have a girlfriend or parent or brother, sister. Anybody say, hey, Tony, I don't know. TV, you, yeah. Let somebody else be the face of the company. That'd be number one.

Number two is I would hire somebody that really understood professional wrestling. That was a fan like Tony that really loved the product. But, but loved it because of its story potential. Somebody that knew wrestling, but also really understood the story. And there's actually a guy like that out there. Harvard graduate, really smart guys. He's one of awards for writing a book about Shakespeare's called Shakespeare's Propelactic Characters.

Pull that right on by ass, didn't I? but he could tell you you could call him up right now i've had him on the show i've had him on the show i'm not going to mention his name because i don't want him to get a bunch of heat but i've had him on the show and we've broken down some of the best stories in wwe you know and he can make a comparison and draw an analogy to classic stories from greek literature or shakespeare and show you how that storytelling structure applied to certain stories within professional wrestling.

In some cases, we're almost mirror images in terms of story structure. So you've got to have somebody that you can't just bring in a Hollywood writer. Okay, Benner done that. It doesn't work. But if you can find somebody that really understands story structure and what makes a great story, but also understand the wrestling audience, because the televised wrestling audience is different than a sitcom audience

or different than an action show audience or different than a dramatic series audience. There are similarities. They're crossover. Always is. Entertainment's entertainment. But the wrestling audience is a little bit unique. So you have to have a sense of the wrestling audience,

the mainstream audience, not the hardcore internet wrestling geeks that populate the AW audience for the most part. But the general, the two to half million other people that love wrestling, they just don't care for the, internet wrestling style of storytelling or lack thereof so find somebody that really understands it both sides of the culture storytelling culture and wrestling culture and build a team around that

person and fix creative because creative is a mess currently in a w i don't care what anybody says you can kid yourself all you want if i was wrong the ratings would be growing like they are in WWE. And I'm not wrong. It's painful as it may be to you AEW trolls out there who live for an opportunity to bury me on social media. By the way, the funny thing is, is every time I say something like this, my social media lights up a couple hours later, and I'm getting buried. And I go, I wonder who these people are. And I click out of me, it's got like eight followers, two followers. These are people that are just living in little tiny bubbles. And they're passing. about what they're passionate about, but it doesn't take away from the fact that I'm

absolutely right. Creative needs to get fixed, and that's the first thing that I would focus on. Flair fan at Steeler Fan 8771 said from the outset, why didn't you have the same regard, respect for Flair that you seemingly had for Hogan, Savage, Piper, Nash Hall, and others? That's a good question. It's not that I had any different level of respect, but business was different with those individuals. Rick Flair was in WCW before I got there as an announcer.

Literally 48 hours after I got there, my first day of work in 1991, Flair left WCW. And he came back after I was made executive producer, despite the fact that he claims that he's the one that got me the job. I already had the job before he came back. Whatever. Minor point. I forget shit, dude.

Doesn't matter. So when Flair came, and I didn't know of Rick Flair, I know this sounds like a disrespectful thing to say, but you have to remember, I was living in Minneapolis before I got hired to come to work for Turner Broadcasting. I didn't get TBS on my cable system. I didn't watch it. So I didn't know about NWA.

I didn't know about TBS. I didn't know about WCW on TBS. I knew nothing about it or anybody in it. I didn't watch Florida Championship Wrestling. I didn't watch world-class wrestling. I didn't watch Mid-South wrestling because it wasn't available to me. The only thing that I knew was AWA and Verga in, the people that came in and out of that tour,

one of which, by the way, was Hulk Hogan. And I know Rick Fler started in AWA, and I think he was there in 1973. I think he trained with Brad Riggins. He may have traded with Brad Riggins, but he trained in the farm, in the barn, I guess, Vernon in his team. But Rick left the territory very, very soon afterwards and was NWA and Florida Chint, wherever he was in the south that I wasn't aware of. So I didn't know of Rick the way I knew of Hulk. and Randy and others.

So the perception probably was that I had less respect for Rick, but that is not true. Rick and I got along great for a long time. 94, we're thick as thieves. I gave him the job as head of creative. My wife and his former wife and his kids and my kids all hung out at the beat or at the pool at the yacht club in Disney World whenever we were down there producing television. Rick invited my family down to St. Martin, and we produced a wrestling event down there,

you know, that Rick wanted to do because he had a gold's gem down in St. Martin. So I worked with Rick to make that happen, and we hung out. We had a blast. So my relationship with Rick wasn't always tenuous. And there were a lot of times when it was great. It wasn't until later when things got, the stakes got higher, ego's got more sense, My decisions became more controversial. My personality probably changed.

I went from being fairly happy-go-lucky, easy to get along with. I wasn't under a lot of pressure. I didn't have to make choices that pissed people off or hurt people's feelings or disappointed them or crushed their egos. I wasn't in that position. But once I was in that position and the stakes became higher and the egos became more sensitive. My reaction to certain things with Rick, I do regret.

I could have been more conscious of, I don't want to make Rick sound like a sensitive guy, although he is. He wears his emotions out of sleep. We all know that. I could have been more careful about the way I handled certain situations and treated Rick with more respect than I did. But it didn't start out that way.

It ended up that way. And part of that was my fault. Part of that was Rick's fault. It just happened. I don't I say fault. Part of it was my role in the company at that time, and part of it was because of Rick's role in the company at that time. And I'm not saying I didn't do things that were just respectful.

I'm saying the opposite. I did, and I wish I wouldn't have. but it's not that it started out that way. So it's the best way I can answer that. Charlie Thrower has a fun one. He said yourself, Conrad, and the rest of Conrad's co-host are all going on a five-hour road trip. Who's driving? Who's co-pilot?

Who's complaining? Who's always talking? Who's always eating and who always wants to stop? Okay. I can tell you who's not driving. That would be Dave Silva. I've heard all the stories. I've seen the damaged rims.

So, okay, so Sylva's out of the equation. So who would be, I put Evan Polisher. Who's on our team? I don't know if he wants to know, like, co-host as in, like, Polly B and me or Albert or if he's wanting to know J.R. and Tony and. Okay, I'd let Tony drive. I'd let Tony drive.

Tony would drive because. He's a t-totel and son of a bitch. It would be like driving with your grandmother. You'd feel really good about it. Who's co-pilot? Uh, co-pilot? Um, yeah. I mean, I actually used to be a pilot.

I had my instrument rating. I was licensed to fly, um, high performance complex aircraft, which is a different type of rating. Uh, and I was instrument rating. So I think I'd be a good co-pilot. And I have an amazing sense of direction. Really, I do. All right.

Who's complaining? What's the next one? Who's complaining? Oh, who bishes a month? Who whines the most? J.R. That's what you're going to say. But here's the deal.

Like when J.R. starts whining about shit is funny. Yeah. It's hilarious. You don't even mind it. In fact, you encourage it. Hey, Jim, what do you think about all this rain? let it go because you want to hear him go nuts okay what's the next category well we got uh who's always talking who's eating who always wants to stop who's always talking that would probably also

be me because i talk like a mucker father i just know i do you got conrad too he's going to he's going to talk we got we got we still got bruce we still got yeah we still got yeah i give that one to Conrad because he's funny too and here's a deal once Jim Ross starts complaining Conrad will start feeding into that shit yeah because we all know it's entertaining as hell yeah he likes to guide the conversation Conrad does and stir it up stir that's how I first back out of the first time I came to his house you were there I think Bruce Pritch says hey I got this guy named Conrad Thompson he's getting all kinds of money he loves having people like you come in and just coming to his house drink a bunch of

beard and tell wrestling stories. But I'm not doing that. I don't like being around people I don't know because I am kind of an introvert, really. So I'm not going to do this. No, you really love it, man. You pay your money, feed you great. You have a great time.

I'll be there. And I'm like, if you're going to be there, I'll go. So I went. I thought it would be fun. It was fun. So I got about six or eight beers of me.

Conrad was just waiting. I'm going to get this punk. And then I'm going to unload my Conrad shit on him. And he did. And I left there. Yeah. I didn't want to, I wasn't angry at Conrad. I was angry at myself.

I wanted to beat my own ass for doing it. And then I got stuck in the airport. My flight canceled on top of it. So all I could do is sit at the hotel bar and drink my misery away. I was so pissed off and hung over the next day. I could barely get on a plane. We've got who's always eating and who always wants to stop. You've got people left over like Kurt Angles.

Arne, Bruce Pritchard, Jeff Jarrett. Jeff Jarrett would always be eating. That son of the bitch eats more than three of us combined. He's a monster. He's an absolute monster. The only person I've seen eat as much, I won't even say more, but as much as Jeff Jarrett is my son Garrett. Can Garrett crush it?

Oh my God. I took him out for sushi. I took everybody out for sushi. we were done it for Christmas and I was going to have to call Conrad and remorgeted my house. Diculous. You know it's something when me, Conrad and Dave Silva for the first time, eat a meal with Jeff Jared, we go to lunch at a restaurant, we're all done and Jeff Jared is like, are you going to finish that?

All three of our fat asses are going, my man can eat some. all the bread, all the appetizer. You know how some people are scared to get the last appetizer? There's only one cheese stick left. Nobody wants to grab it. Jeff's like, you are not going to eat it because I'm eating. I want to make sure. Who wants to stop all the time?

Bruce? He probably has a smallest bladder. So yeah. Yeah. Small bladder Pritchard. Yeah. He's got like a tiny, little baby poodle bladder.

It should be like every 20 minutes. I mean, I got to go to the bathroom. All right. Let's get another one. That was a good one. The official account of Jeetness. The Jeetness says, how does Eric anticipate AI affecting the wrestling industry?

In my opinion, we are very close to AI being able to produce very good wrestling matches that can be watched on TV. Obviously, they cannot be duplicated live, but wouldn't they? be a very interesting concept. You know, I, what I'm really interested in is, and I played around with it, just for the fun of it, is AI as it relates to creative. I mean, you could, and I have,

I've done this. I've just created storylines out of nowhere just to see how well AI works and learn how to, you know, use it and interface with it. And I think there's a lot of potential there from a creative perspective on at least building a framework for a great story arc, I think that can have an impact. As people become more familiar with AI, as AI develops, and I mean, every single day, there's more and more information and capabilities available to you using AI. So I think when that time comes, which probably isn't that far away, you're going to find writers in wrestling as well as Hollywood.

It's one of the reasons for the writer's strike, right? They all saw this freight train coming. They didn't know what's going to happen, you know, and I believe it will happen. Because again, I just playing around with it, I went, whoa, this is actually kind of possible that you could create characters and create story arcs with the requisite plot points along the way to make it really a storyline and a story arc as opposed to just a rustling angle, which is typically what we hear about today. with the exception, you know, like the bloodline and some of the other stories are really well-disciplined, well-structured storylines. But the rest of them are just excuses for a match that we call storylines. But with AI, you can you can take somebody that doesn't have that formal storytelling structure and understanding of structure and have them plug in the requisite elements and boom, it spits it back to you in what looks like a pretty interesting story.

And then you go back and tweak it and fuck with it to make it really wrestling. but yeah, that's what I see. As far as using AI to create the presentation beyond the creative underpiddings of it, I don't see that, but that's probably because I don't know enough about it. Maybe it could happen. Who knows?

I Am Mongo 1984 says, please tell the story of how and why the alleged favored nations clause was included in certain WCW contracts and also how did the NWAO trademark wind up where it did before WCW sold. Let me answer the last one. First, the NWO trademark ended up with WWE

because WWE bought all the assets of which a trademark is considered of WCW. It's like when you buy somebody's house, the plumbing comes with it. So that's all the NWO trademark ended up there. They bought the company and the assets contained herein. They're in. favored nations came along as we were increasing talent, payroll substantially, bringing in bigger names, had to be able to create a contract,

model that would allow us to bring in Talent X. I'm not going to name names. Let's say you've got Talent X's at the top. Talent X is making more money than anybody else. Brock Lesnar, okay, at some point, at one point. So Brock Lesnar is up here, but you still want to negotiate with people who are maybe not in Brock Lesnar's category or Steve Austin's category or the Rock's category, right, guys who are at the top of the game, you still want to be able to bring in or renegotiate and renew

people who, they're not quite at that level, but they're right here. They want to know that if they sign an agreement and business continues to grow, that you're not going to bring in somebody else who wasn't there to help grow the business and pay them more.

It's not unusual, especially in talent, to have favored nations agreements. Because a favored nation agreement is basically acknowledging the contribution of talent made or is likely to make and assuring them to some degree that you're not going to bring in somebody else who didn't have as much of a contribution and pay them more money. So if you want to pay that individual more money, those people who were there before who contributed,

who helped create the opportunity to pay someone more money, they get elevated too. So it's not unusual. it's not a great situation to be in, but it's also a situation that's not a bad situation to be in because you're there as a result of your success. That makes sense. Yep.

Footage wants to know. I've noticed that your Hall of Fame introduction that no one introduced you. Who would you have had to introduce you before your introduction? Hmm. Bill Shaw Bill Shaw is the one that gave me the opportunity if it wasn't for, well, I've been given a lot of opportunity.

I've been blessed with a lot of opportunities, you know, going back to a guy who's no longer with us, by the name of Mike Shields, who was really the one who hired me to come to work for Vern. Certainly Vern for giving me the opportunity, agreeing to the opportunity, and then teaching me in his own way, mentoring. Bill Shaw was the one that changed my life, really,

by giving me the opportunity to become the executive producer and then move on from there. So I would have, and plus Bill's fun, he's just a good guy. So I would have, I would have loved to give that tip of the hat to Bill. All right. Super Tile wants to know. Eric, did you ever feel mistreated or misused in any way

during your first run at www. e? Because you were previously labeled as the, WCW guy that tried to put them out of business. Interesting enough, I felt exactly the opposite. Really? I felt more at home in WWE and more welcomed in WWE when I went there the first time than I did when we were on top of our game at WCW. By that, I mean with regard to Turner Broadcasting. We were the red-headed stepchildren.

Even in success, it was a long time before we were acknowledged and embraced. whereas in WWE, from the minute I got there, I'm not going to suggest there weren't people there that were irritated that I was or resented the fact that I was. I'm sure there was. There were still people there with hard feelings from that time. But it wasn't Vince.

It wasn't Linda. It wasn't Stephanie. It wasn't Shane. Wasn't Bruce Pritchard. Wasn't Jerry Briscoe. those people all welcome me with open arms. And to this day, Jerry Briscoe and Bruce Pritcher, two are my best friends. And I say that, you know, I don't have a lot of friends.

I have a lot of acquaintances. And I don't talk to Bruce or Jerry, you know, throughout the year we have three or four conversations. That's a lot. But that's because I don't talk them. I don't talk to my brother or sister on the phone either. Love them dearly. We probably have a total of seven. minutes of conversation combined throughout the year.

But I'll go drive, hang out with my brother or sister for Thanksgiving, a thousand miles, drive home a thousand miles. They come out to visit me during the summers. We're very close. I love them very much. I'm just not a phone person. Kevin Nash is also a great friend. Not part of this question.

But some of my best, a couple of my best friends are as a result of me going to WWE. So I felt very, very much at home there. I never felt the reason. I know that I know that it exists, but I never felt it. Leads into our next question. Lady H wants to know.

When times were difficult in TNA and WCW, what kept you going? I, you know, TNA, I just, TNA never got me down. It's just frustrating. I mean, when I got home from T&A, I was in a much better mood than I was when I left.

I did, there were parts of, TNA that I did enjoy. I enjoyed working with my son. I enjoyed some of the creative process during certain times during certain periods of time within TNA, but overall was a very frustrating experience. I didn't want to go there in the first place. I went there really to help Paul Kogan. It wasn't my first choice. I didn't need the money. I was had my own television production company with my partner, Jason. We were making money handover. I made, like I said earlier, I was making way more money producing independent television than I ever made in

professional wrestling business. So it's not that I needed the gig, but it, for a variety of reasons, made sense at that time. But it wasn't like a passion project for me. And I didn't have anything to do with the business side of it. So it was just like, okay, sure, I'll do it. But some of it was fun. But it was never like, I'd never got into a down period about TNA. WCW, if the answer was what kept me going, probably my family, you know,

first and foremost, my job is to protect and provide for my family. That's my first rule of business every single day. So that kept me going. Otherwise, if I wouldn't have had a wife and kids, I might have said, I'm out of here. See you guys. Have fun. Nick Sims wants to know, fun hypothetical.

If Eric and WCW did put Vince out of business back in the day, do you think Vince would have eventually come back with a new wrestling company? I have to believe so. First of all, well, yeah, I don't think he would have ever completely gone out of business. He would have had to change his business. He would have had to reorganize his business, but he would have never gone out of business. All right, let's keep it going. We've got, sorry, we got our place here.

Devil Vamp wants to know. Seeing where AEW is struggling right now, I think Cody leaving was the point where the company lost its way. How much of an impact do you believe Cody leaving had on AEW? I can't really answer that because I don't know what Cody's influence

was while he was in AEW. I think the mistake perhaps that's been made is a lot. I think when Tony decided he wanted to take over creative and he wanted to be the guy and he wanted to be the president, the chairman of the board, the chief executive officer, the head of creative, all of that. It probably killed a lot of the motivation from someone like Cody who saw AEW as an opportunity to realize a vision that he had. I don't know that. I've never had a conversation with Cody about that. But I'm pretty sure I'm either 100% right or mostly right when I say that.

Tony's mistake was not so much letting Cody go, but creating a scenario where Cody wanted to go. Yeah. And that same scenario is what's keeping AEW from growing to this very day. Estimon at Steve EJ's got a fun one. beverage of choice while cooking, grilling, or smoking? Ooh, depends on the time of the year.

It's really hard not to enjoy an ice cold beer while smoking in the summertime. Like on my big green egg or my right? Usually my smoking I do in the rec deck, or excuse me, on the big green egg. Grilling, I typically do on the rec deck. But if I'm smoking something because it's a process, and you kind of, you want to smell the, you know,

you're just out of there, man. It's like, it's the closest you're going to get to be a fucking caveman, sitting around a campfire with a club in your hand, eating a piece of dinosaur you just killed, right? He's sitting around that smoker or that grill, smelling the food as it cooks. That's awesome. And it's tough to beat in an ice cold beer when you're doing that.

D-A-I-Raw. Bob's 11 says we often hear about how Charles the Godfather right almost signed with WCW but were there any other midcar talents that never wrestled for WCW that you almost signed Billy Gunn Bob Holly for example okay so here's a surprise this is the first time I've heard that the Godfather almost signed with WCW oh okay that's news to me that doesn't mean it's not true by the way people think right and they listen to the show or they're wrestling fans, or they read or hear whatever about WCW. Because

I was president of the company. They think that I was involved in every single decision, in every acquisition, in every change in marketing, every decision about a pay-per-view, who built the sets, what the sets looked like. People think that I was involved in every single decision as the president of the company. Guess what, folks?

It's not true. That's not how it works. Right? So there is a good chance that Terry Taylor, Kevin Sullivan, perhaps even Rick Flair at one point. Anybody who's involved in creative or head of creative could have easily had a conversation with Godfather could have been well underway to negotiating a contract and it might not

even have been on my radar. It might not have come across my desk until it was time to sign off on it. So could it happen. It's the first time I'm aware of it. As far as other people, none that I'm aware of it. of you know there was no undertaker conversations there was no shaw michael's conversations there was no there was really very the only people had conversations with are the people that called me randy savage scott hall kevin nash those are the conversations i had

well let's have a conversation about our new affiliate partnership with fanatics in the wwee shop this is an easy way to support 83 weeks and your other favorite podcast shop official w wdgear and apparel by using our special website shop wrestlingmerch.com or the easy way hopefully you're watching on our YouTube you see that QR code all you got to do is scan that that is going to take you to the w w fanatics experience and it's going to support 83 weeks Eric you're a businessman I would love to get your take on this this talks about how good fanatics does their job that

WWE has grown so big they went we'll entrust somebody now to run our merchandise and that person they picked is a company that is good as fanatics I think that's awesome here's what I think is more awesome and I mean this with all my heart one of the mistakes I made financially. When Jim Ross called me back in whatever year it was, 2002,

because Vince wanted me to come into WWE, and I said, eh, thanks, but no thanks. For a variety of reasons. I've talked about it here before. But I turned down that opportunity. Had I gone, it would have been a part of the NWO takeover. Had I gone, I would probably have found myself included in the negotiation with the NWO talent where I would have gotten a taste of NWO merchandise, like Scott Hall, like Kevin Nash, like Hall Cougar.

But I didn't go. I wasn't interested at the time. So I passed on the opportunity. And as a result, I don't make a cent, not a penny off NWO merchandise. But guess what? those of you loyal listeners who've been with me for over five years here along with Conrad Thompson now have an opportunity to write that wrong. You have an opportunity to do what should have been done a long time ago,

which is to allow me to participate even at the most minuscule level in the revenue generated by MWO merchandise. And now Fanatis is giving us that opportunity, giving you that opportunity because you as a loyal supporter of this show can now order an NWO shirt right here on 83 weeks using that QR code and guess what I'm at least going to get a taste. It's a little taste. I'm tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little taste.

And guess what? You can make that happen by ordering not only NWO merchandise, but let me also remind you that NWO merchandise 25 years after the fact, give or take, is one of the hottest selling items in the W.W.E. merchandise catalog world freaking wide. So come on. Help our brother out. Shop wrestlingmerch.com.

Hit that QR code. You can get the classics like the NWO. You can get the new stuff, the yeat, the mommy's, always on top, your American nightmare gear, it's all there. Scan that QR code, go to the Fanatics, WW shop, and support 83 weeks. You can shop with confidence for all your favorite WW superstar teas, hoodies, caps, belts, and more at that WW shop. And like we said, use that QR code and you can support the show. And we thank Fanatics and the WW shop for partnering up with 83 weeks.

Eric, just a few more, and we will get out of here. Let's see what we've got. Derek, Avenger 261081. He tweeted us at 83 weeks. He said, if you were offered a chance to take in a job in or out of wrestling, what would it be in why? So you said you don't want to run a promotion. You said you don't want to be an executive.

But if you did pop back into wrestling, what would that job be, Eric? I wouldn't want a job. The reason I wouldn't want a job in a wrestling business is, is first and foremost, it would require travel. I don't like to travel. And if I do travel, it's because it's something I really look forward to doing. I still do an appearance is.

I'm going to be out in New Jersey doing a show for Best Trivia ever. Whoa. Yeah, can't wait. It's going to be a blast. January 24th, the Bolero Snort Brewery. Do you get it, Bolero Snort Brewery? I can't wait. in Carl Staten, New Jersey.

Best trivia ever. I love doing the show. We have an absolute blast. I love doing stuff like this. I love going to a convention every now and now. I love going to an event. That kind of stuff's fun for me because I like to engage with the fans. But to travel every single week, it ain't happening. It's just not.

So there's not a job in wrestling that really interests me. Again, don't take it wrong. I love the business. I'm grateful as hell that I had an opportunity to work in the business. I wouldn't have changed anything in terms of career choices, right? But that time has come and gone. It's time for a different chapter in my life. There are new projects that I'm equally as excited about,

if not more, than I ever was, wrestling. I'd rather pursue that. I like doing this. This is fun for me. I don't have to go anywhere. I like my life, just the way it is. I don't want anybody to fuck with it. Yeah, I don't know anybody.

It's like you said, I don't know anybody wants a job. Do you want to have something that you have fun at and get paid for? That's a different thing, like you said earlier. But I don't think anybody wants to sign up for a job, but we have to have it somewhere. Well, you know, if I was in my 20s, my 30s, even into my 40s, even into my 40s. different conversation. Yeah, everybody's got a different place. In my life, when I think, when I step back, this is going to sound like a bragging.

And believe me, I'm not because I've had my fair share of ups and downs. And I may not have hit rock bottom, but I could describe it in fucking great detail, right? But I'm not there now. And I have an amazing marriage. My wife and I've been together for over 42 years now, married 40. together 42. I have an amazing son, an amazing daughter, and I have an incredible relationship with both of them.

Amazing. I have a grandson. I love dearly. I live in a nice house. I got to brag. But I live in a part of the country that people from all over the world travel to because it's such a beautiful part of the country,

the scenery. Literally, you could see Yellow So National Park from my deck. So I don't want anything different. I like what I have. And I don't let anything get in the way of it, including a lot of travel and being away from my family. Or my home.

It ain't happening. Not anymore. Traveling is just a, you know, you do it with comedy as well. It's just a beating. It's the non-fun part of, whatever you're doing. You just go, you know, and stand-up comedy. I love going to the club. I don't mind staying in a hotel. I like doing the shows and interacting with everybody.

It's the seven-hour drive to Augusta, the seven-hour drive over to Nashville. You know, just the road for a lot of these, it's the same thing in the wrestling business. The road weeds out a lot of people that are even good and want to do it. It just kills a lot of people and their for the for the game whatever it is and a funny thing is is if i had a choice of a three hour flight or a seven hour drive yeah if i had a choice of a of a two hour flight in a seven hour drive i'll drive it every time flying is brutal it's just brutal i hate it like somebody who called me to book me for convention it's like dude the convention part is free

but you're going to have to pay through the nose to get me on a plane that flight's going to be really expensive I'll show up and have fun with you all for free that part's free it's getting there and back it's going to cost you some money there's the squeezing the juice right there my friend uh Jim in Buffalo he wants to know Don't, Eric, why do you think many of those in the wrestling media are not being more aggressive

regarding the current AEW off-screen controversy? The allegation regarding two talents and an NDA is serious. And if it was a different major company, they would probably be all over. What's your thoughts? All right, Jim and Buffalo, please, when I, when you hear this response, I'm not attacking you. I'm attacking the idea that an NDA is anybody. fucking business.

Why is it anybody's business outside of the people who have that agreement? The very fact that it's a non-disclosure agreement suggests that it's not supposed to be disclosed. What in the fuck

is so hard to understand about that? It's not anybody's business. It shouldn't have been brought up. It's stupid. that's how I feel about that. See, I had to get you hot on the way out. You know what I mean? I'm disappointed.

I'm not in, not in gym because that's, it's out there, man. It's not the only one is feeling that way. But all of a sudden, who made it anybody's fucking business? I've signed NDAs. Anybody that's anybody in any kind of an important position

or negotiating for something. or investing in something or reviewing something because you may possibly get involved or may possibly invest. NDAs are a part of life. Look at Congress. Those motherfuckers have a slush fund so they can bang their assistance

and when their assistance come along and sue them, there's a slush fund in Congress that pays everybody out if they sign an NDA. So quit making a big deal out of it. So make your freaking business if somebody's got an MDA or not. I don't know why that all of a sudden should be public information

and people have the right to it. Fucking business. By the way, I think one of the common misconceptions is everybody here, somebody signs an NDA and there's nefarious things going on. You can work for a company where they don't want their company secrets

that you've been working on getting out there. There's a myriad of things you can sign an NDA for. Not all of them are shady. Yes, there are some shady ones, but there's no telling why you can known, you know, financials of a company that they don't want out there. You can know creative process. You can know, you know, my wife works for a engineering firm. She signs an NDA.

It's nothing nefarious. It's, because she's having a company. Yes. She's working on proprietary technology that's being developed. I don't know this, but I'm assuming this if she has to sign an NDA and she's an engineer because she's working with technologies or procedures that are proprietary, meaning this company created it and they have to protect their intellectual property. And the way you would protect your intellectual property is by having people who are

exposed to it agree never to disclose it. It doesn't mean you're banging somebody in the warehouse. There we go, Jim from Buffalo. It's out there. And like you said, and this isn't a heat on Jim. It's everybody's talking about it. And I'm on your side. It's because a couple of different internet wrestling community, namely Nick

Housman decided to make some big damn deal out of it to spread a rumor. That's all he did. He spread a rumor. He didn't even spread what he created it. That makes it worse. Create a rumor is worse than repeating a rumor. He created a rumor. And all this NDA stuff.

Like that bullshit, childish nonsense. Let it go. Let it go. Watch the product, have fun. Quit spending time thinking about shit that's none of your business. Speaking of business, if your business targets 25 to 50 year old men, there's no better place to advertise them right here with us on 83 weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for a year and new people jumping on all

the time. Why is that? Because it works. And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to advertise witheric.com. Find out more about how advertising with 83 weeks can help your business, your product, your event. It all goes down at advertise witheric.com.

And I want to make sure we bring up our buddy, Conrad, he's not here with us. I appreciate him letting me sit in. Well, you know, why he's not here? He's partied in Miami. Did you hear about those cops and all the security and helicopters? All kinds of shit was happening in Miami. I go, what is going on with Miami? Next thing I know I get a text message from.

Conrad saying, hey, I'm in Miami. Dude, trouble goes wherever he goes. I think not. But when he's back, you can save with Conrad because right now your home is worth probably more than it has ever been. Combined all your debts into one monthly payment or maybe do all those home upgrades you've always dreamed of. And on top of that, skip to house payments, put that newfound equity to work by going

to save with Conrad. dot com he will take care of you as this new year rolls in you want to hey part of your finances maybe your new year's resolution save with conrad dot com sounds like a good way to get that on the right track also as always go to bischoff book.com or to amazon to get grateful by our friend here eric bischoff a beautiful book a fascinating book you can read the reviews everywhere everyone is loving this go to amazon or go to bischoff book dot com like and subscribe leave a five-star rating on all of our platforms leave a comment below let us know what you thought about today's episode follow us on social media he's at e bischoff at hey hey it's

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So you'll get them both for the price of nothing, just a subscription. Yeah, close to 100K over there. That's our next goal. So we got to get the push going, everybody. Go to 83 weeks on YouTube.com. Like Eric said, you'll not only get 83 weeks, but you'll get those notifications for Strictly business as well. And look, we know Strictly Business is successful.

and growing and rising and it's hot because as we saw from a lot of these questions today, a lot of people want to know about that business side of wrestling and they want to come to you and hear it straight from your mouth. Plus, all the merchandise is found at boxagimics.com. You can get whatever you need, the LWO logo that's 83 weeks. Context is king. You've got the mucker feather hoodie, which is always. How about that ninja star shirt? I love that. I want to get one of those shipped to my house so I can wear it on the show. I love that.

That is the logo from the original Ninja Star Wars game that I used when I went into pitch, Vern Ganya, and I ended up getting a job. It's all because of that Ninja Star logo you see right there. That is a piece of wrestling history. Go to 83 Weeksmerch.com. That'll get you locked in for everything, 83 weeks. stickers, cups, coosies, hats, hoodies, shirts. It's all there, 83 weeks, merch.com.

We want to thank everybody who watched us in the live chat. We appreciate that, getting up early with us and hanging out. Eric, thank you for letting me sit in and pinch it with you. Always a pleasure to talk to you, brother. Always fun seeing you, Cassio, and I think I'm going to be down there within the next month. Are you coming to, you're going to be in Florida? I will. I will.

All right. I'll see you there, brother. See you there. Thanks, everybody for hanging out with us. For Mr. Eric Wischoff, I'm Cassio. Thanks for the help, Mr. Dave Silva. Everybody, see you later. Stay mashed.

Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts every single week, starting at just nine bucks. That's less than 20 cents an episode each month. And yes, you can listen to them all directly through Apple Podcasts or your regular podcast app. How easy is that? Ad-free shows also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content and docu-series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back,

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