83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 310: SuperBrawl IX

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad discuss all the development and behind the scenes happenings surrounding SuperBrawl IX. Eric explains the thought process behind booking Ric Flair to face Hollywood Hulk Hogan, WCW's relationship with Telemundo, Goldberg on the Tonight Show calling out Stone Cold, and unmasking Rey Mysterio Jr. All that plus the news and notes from this past week in professional wrestling on this edition of 83Weeks with Eric Bischoff. NOTE: SuperBrawl IX discussion starts at 46:50 HENSON SHAVING - Visit https://hensonshaving.com/83WEEKS to pick the razor for you and use code 83WEEKS and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s https://bluechew.com/ , promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE FANATICS - When you - or someone you know - is shopping for the latest WWE gear, you can support 83 Weeks too simply by using our dedicated link! https://wwe-shop.sjv.io/c/5036600/1371040/16449 STARRCAST - Be part of the very first international STARRCAST in Australia! Get tickets and information at https://www.starrcast.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 https://nationsgo.com/conrad/ 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 https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise 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 https://www.patreon.com/adfreeshows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm doing great, Conrad. Great to be here with you and Mr. Silva, crack producer, helping us crank out some of the best podcast in the history of professional wrestling, short history as it may be. Nonetheless, history. So I'm loving it. I'm feeling good. I am too, man. It's going to be a fun. it's going to be a fun show. We're going to be talking about one of the biggest WCW

paper views in history as we revisit a pretty big time Superbrawl. But before we get to that, man, there's a lot of news and notes. It feels like every single day, there's some other major story breaking and professional wrestling. But we are going to eventually get to Superbraw 9 foot down in February of 1999. So 25 years ago. But I guess we should start with maybe some sad news but some hopeful news keep your fingers crossed throw up one for our pal mongo just days after he got the big news that he's going into the pro football hall of fame he was rushed to the hospital going through a blood transfusion looks like maybe he's got a case of mercer this dude has had uh who one piece of bad news after another

but he finally got the good news he's been waiting on he's going into the hall of fame, but just a few days later, Eric, damn it, finds himself back in the fight in the hospital. Yeah, I haven't really spoken to Steve in a year or two. And, you know, I think about him often, particularly this time of year and with all of the conversation about the Hall of Fame. And I don't know, knowing Steve, it was important to him to be alive and to see self get inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, he might be ready. he might be ready he's a fighter he's got such a great attitude even as sick as he's been

every picture you see he's got that steed mcmichael ear to ear smile on his face oh yeah his sense of humor's just still so much a part of so much so much a part of what steve mcichael is and and was on the football field any in wrestling his sense of humor man he had just the best sense of humor to see that up until this point at least he hasn't lost that a bit the disease may be ravaging him, his body, but nothing's, nothing's, nothing's, nothing's got in hold of his spirit. And it brings a smile to my face knowing that he's as tough as he is and he got to see that he was inducted into the Hall of Fame as everything else's bonus points I think at this point. Keep your thoughts and prayers with Mongo and, uh, and his lovely wife and,

and their whole family because, uh, man, I sure would love for him to still be with us when he gets to see the ceremony. Let's talk about some WWE news. You know, we are just days away as you and I are recording this from Elimination Chamber the first of what's going to be several international PLEs

for WWE this year. We should start with talking about Smackdown this past weekend. Brian Breaker is now officially on the main roster. And we knew this was coming but we didn't know in storyline will he wind up

on Friday night, or will he wind up on Monday night? Well, Friday night Smackdown is the home for Braun Breaker. This is a long time coming. What do you think you expect to see from Bronbreaker on the main roster? You know, I haven't watched Bronn enough to be able to anticipate what we might see out of his character and where he might be positioned on Smackdown. What I have seen, I'm so excited for him, obviously, there's a, there's a connection there, not so much with Bronn, but with his father and longstanding

relationship, great guy, spent a lot of time away from the wrestling business with his father, Rick, and a lot of great memories in history. So because of that connection, obviously, I'm a huge Bronbreaker fan. I will be regardless and just excited for him, just excited for another Steiner in the wrestling business. Oh, boy. I can't wait, man. huge fans of his dads, and of course I know you got to know Scott pretty well through your time in

WCW. So we're all going to be pulling for Bronbreaker. I hope that they've got him in a pretty important spot for WrestleMania and you assume for them to make this sort of debut and it being advance of WrestleMania, we're going to see him there. But somebody else fighting for their spot at WrestleMania, several somebodies. Are the participants in this weekend's elimination chamber. Don't forget, that's going to air while you're asleep this Friday night slash Saturday morning. It is going to be live from Perth, Australia, and inside the elimination chamber structure itself. We've got Kevin Owens, L.A. Knight, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton, Bobby Lashley, and Logan Paul. Yes, the U.S. champion is inside the

Elimination Chamber, and they're going to be vying for a shot at Seth Rollins World Heavyweight championship. So now we know it's going to be one of these fellows in there with Seth. As you take a look at that graphic, Eric, we know for sure that Logan Paul wrestled Seth Rallens last year. There were no titles on the line. Seth was not the World Heavyweight Champion and Logan was not the U.S. champion. So maybe we're going to get title versus title if it's Logan.

But if it's not Logan, is it L.A. Knight's time. Is it Drew McIntyre's time? Is it someone else? Just, yeah, if you could leave that graphic up, Mr. Silva, I appreciate it. As I look at this, you know, it again, we've been talking the last couple of weeks about options, right? There's so many great options. You've got such a deep talent roster at the top, so many different ways to go. But I think, I don't know, man.

Drew just feels like he's been getting, I don't want to call it a push, but a little nudge here and there every week in the right direction, just seems to be more and more prominent in the conversation. L.A. Knight was already there. You know, do you continue to elevate him? Do you continue to turn up the volume on L.A. night? It would make sense business-wise. You'd have all the reasons to, I don't want to say justify it, but you'd have all the reasons.

reasons to support that idea if you were pitching that in a meeting because momentum is there. The audience is there. Kevin, oh, though you can all, Kevin is always a go-to. Kevin will deliver every single time. And it seems like we haven't heard a lot from Kevin lately. Granted, I haven't been watching the show religiously. And I drop in when I hear about what's going on or I follow up and watch a show after it's aired to kind of get caught up on detail. I may not be aware of conversation regarding Kevin and he may be getting a little more attention than I'm seeing given my passive viewership. He's been in a feud with Logan Paul.

All right. Then it doesn't seem to me like that would make sense. I don't know. I would have to say for me it would be L.A. Knight or Drew, you might pick. Yeah, I agree with that. I hope for one that this is LA night's time and we see the whole crowd going bananas for him. But it does feel like lately we've been positioning Seth as a bit more of a baby face.

So Drew's probably the guy who gets the nod. What's been going on with Bobby Leslie? Tread and water a little bit. Tread and water. I think he and AJ Styles are big names to have on the roster that are just sort of there right now. I don't think they're a focus. I could be staking on that.

But that's my read. way. Yeah, I would go with L.A. Knight, I think just the momentum seems to be on his side. Well, I guess what I was talking about, I mean, we knew know that Logan Paul and Kevin Owens hooked it up at the Royal Rumble. So I don't think that's necessarily there for a rematch. I mean, I guess stranger things have happened.

I could see Logan Paul for the interest of having, you know, an influencer, but that probably makes sense for him to be set up for somebody else. as a result of them, quote, costing him this match or something like that. But since Seth has been positioned a little bit more like a baby face lately and sticking up for Cody and all that sort of thing, maybe you need someone who's going to play the heel for him. And I'm okay if that's Drew McIntyre. I mean, when he won the world title years ago at WrestleMania, it was sadly the COVID

WrestleMania. So not that there's going to be a big celebration. for a heel winning, but I could see it. I'm anxious to see what they do with the women, too. We know Ria Riffley is going to be taken on Nia Jacks down in Perth. There's going to be a women's elimination chamber. The winner will take on Ria Ripley at WrestleMania. The other big piece of business that everybody's going to be talking about this weekend

at Elimination Chamber are not just the actual chamber matches themselves. But it was announced since we recorded most recently, Eric, that Seth Rollins is going to be joined by Cody Rhodes. On the Grayson Waller effect, this is a modern-day Piper's Pit talking segment. So Seth and Cody are taking a 25-hour flight to do an interview. Wait a minute. I smell what you're cooking. I mean, this is where the Rock's going to be here,

and we're going to announce the tag match for night one, right? Seems that way, doesn't it? I mean, it feels like it's right there, that that's where we make the match official. And there's been lots of speculation, certainly even in the observer, that night one will be a tag match, Rock and Roman against Cody and Seth. But now all the conspiracy theories are out because we saw the Rock's promo at Friday Night Smackdown where perhaps people are saying, hey, wait a minute. When he talked about losing, he pointed to Roman and he never specifically. specifically said anyone's name when he was talking about anyone losing and when he held up the one at the end of the night pose with the bloodline he was holding up an L not a number

one like everybody else so people are saying oh man maybe maybe the rock is a is a double agent doesn't want to be part of the bloodline and it's actually supporting Cody and This is part of the big plan. He's not just going to take the world title. He's going to take everything. So listen, the snot thickens. That's what makes wrestling fun, right? When you can't call it exactly.

And there's so many little nuances or nuggets, if you will, that are being embedded in this story that create the speculation. What if you, conspiracy theory, whatever you want to call it? You know, the speculation. Yeah. Because because there's so many different ways this could go and the intrigue way this whole thing was laid out and it's developing. It's it, it's creating so much conversation that I think, I don't know, is it fair to say that this may be the most buzz that WWE's ever had going into a WrestleMania? It feels like it because, well, social media helps that, right?

There wasn't social media back in WrestleMania 3 or WrestleMania 1 or WrestleMania 1 or WrestleMania. 5, whatever. But now we've got such interesting, creative, excuse me, you've got Rock coming in. You know, people have been speculating about Rock getting involved in a WrestleMania for how many years now. Right. There's probably been four or five where Rock's been a conversation, both internally and externally, amongst the fans, internally amongst WWE corporate, about Rock's

involvement in WrestleMania, but scheduling and conflicts and, you know, being a movie star has always been a conflict. Now he's here and there's so many different ways this could go and you layer that on top of the fact that I was excited as I am about everything, it started off as kind of a bobble, you know, behind the line of scrimmage. That ball was bouncing around a little bit in the backfield before they really advanced it with the story that we have now. And even with that bobble or that fumble, if you will, creatively, they've recovered nicely and are moving downfield or at WrestleMania. So it's going to be interesting to see where this thing goes, given the subtle nuances

in the story as you just laid out. I'm trying to think about what do they do after WrestleMania. That's really where my head tends to stay in these situations. You know, you see what's going on and you try to anticipate what's going to happen at WrestleMania, but I spend a lot of my time thinking, yeah, but what after? What's Rock going to be doing after WrestleMania? What's his commitment? We know he's committed the WrestleMania.

and we know he's on the board of directors. But what's his ongoing commitment? Is it going to be a permanent fixture or a regular fixture, perhaps in a authority type of a role? Or is he going to stay active? It's just going to be real. When I say active, I mean, in the ring. It's going to be fascinating to find out.

I love it. I love trying to anticipate what they're doing creatively. Obviously, they're working very hard. The fact that they're paying attention now to little details and planning these little Easter eggs in the story is, Hell, it's fun. No doubt it's fun. And it was really fun seeing the rock embrace that heel persona.

He is our blue chew stiff one of the week this week. That heel promo that he cut on SmackDown, where he teased the audience by saying that they had just set an attendance record, not only for this city or this building, but for the whole state. The largest gathering of trailer park trash, in the history of Utah. Wow.

Really, really great stuff. An old school rock promo, a heel, Hollywood rock promo. And pretending, at least for now, to be a member of the bloodline, just two weeks after he was nose to nose with Roman, he's on their side. Felt's a little nation or domination right there at the end,

except maybe there's some clues there. I liked the, uh, the pivot. to heal Rock. I enjoy, I know that people love his catchphrases and they want to scream it out like it's a Rocky Horror Picture Show, participation, I get that. But goodness gracious, heel rock, good stuff, man, I enjoy it.

I didn't think I'd see that, to be honest with you. At this stage of Rock's career, I would have, and again, I don't know, I mean, Johnson at all, we never really had a conversation. So I don't know what makes him tick. But at this stage of his career, it surprises me that he would fully embrace that he'll roll. I'm glad he did. The audience obviously digs it. It's taken him back to 1999, I guess, kind of a heel rock era at that point.

So the audience is digging in. I'm just relatively surprised. I mean, there was talk a couple months ago about him exploring the idea running for president. I think that's probably out the window. Yeah. You see, won't be campaigning anytime soon in Utah. but who knows, we'll see. I wanted to ask you,

you know, when you think about the way they've done this pivot, what score would you give them? Like, clearly this wasn't the original plan, but it feels like they've got a lot of momentum after the pivot.

What, you know, if you were a school teacher and you're grading their work here, however they pulled off the pivot to you, what score would they earn? Definitely an A plus for effort. because that was a hell of a bobble and a hell of a pivot.

And to be able to recover at all, I think it's an automatic B. And given the nuances and some of the details and the focus on creating anticipation, because that's what this is all about. You know we're going to get the action. We've got pretty solid story. The reality of this situation, given just the basic premise for Cody Rhodes, finishing the story, that's real.

That's based on actual events regarding his father, Dusty, and thinking he was going to get the championship and then having it in his hands, but, oh, you didn't really get it. I mean, that's all real. This is a scripted story based on reality in a sense. The surprise, you know, we're surprising enough. The rock showed up on the scene in the middle of it all, so they got that coverage. So the five elements that it takes to make a great story are all there. They've checked the box, but it seems like they're turning up the volume on the anticipation so much that that effort gets me up into a B plus or an A minus type of rate, I think, for where they are currently. We'll see how it evolves, but how do you not, how would you not give your students a B plus to an A minus, not only for the.

pivot, but for the details, the story, and the attention to detail that this is getting so far. And the fact that they're giving themselves a couple different options to get out of it, or to end it, I should say, not get out of it. That makes it sound like a burden. So I have an opportunity to end this story, this movie called WrestleMania, any number of different ways at this point. Let's talk about a few other news and notes. And then we'll get into our topic today, Super Brawl from 25 years ago. Jennifer Pepperman departed

WWE recently. She was a writer that with the company since 2017. So she actually predated you and Bruce before you all went back to WWB. Did you ever work with her during your time in WWE? And what did you think of Jennifer? If so. We became pretty good

friends. Wow. And still are. She is an amazing writer, but an even more amazing person. She is tough. She, I mean, when I say tough, I mean, she can work under pressure as well or better than anybody that I've worked with.

She doesn't get rattled. And I saw her in some situations where a lot of people would have crumbled. And she's strong. She's tough. She's extremely talented. And just a great person to be around. I was frankly surprised. um what does that mean what does what mean you said you were frankly surprised

i was frankly surprised to see that she was leaving she's she was she was really i'm sorry i should have finished the sentence because that could have been misleading which is why you were confused but no she she she's so good she so talented so tough um i'm surprised that she's leaving. But again, because she is talented, I know she was interested in writing. She was working on a movie script at least a year or two ago. And I think she's probably leaning at direction. She's been around wrestling now for seven years, a long time. That's like two lifetimes in any other business, especially at the level she was working at. So I understand it. She's, you know, she's got, I think she's got a son in college.

She's living in New York and commuting into Connecticut all the time. So that's tough. So maybe she's just looking for a transition. But I can't say enough good things about her. Jen Pepperman was just amazing writer and it is an amazing person. And I would love the opportunity to work with people like her a day of the week. So I'm sure she's going to do well. Man, I love it.

We get to give somebody to their flowers here. One of the unsung heroes behind the scenes. getting a little praise here early on 83 weeks. Let's talk about another announcement that came out. The WWE and UFC together, of course, are known as TKO. They've announced a live event deal between both the UFC and WWE

running in the same arena and the same time frame. It's Anaheim's Honda Center. They're promising three live events from both companies through 2028. Now, this isn't really, that big news, I suppose, but it's the first time we've seen or we've heard of a deal being structured like this. But it makes a lot of sense. Like if you can have one touring

manager or one touring department who's scouting buildings and trying to negotiate for the best deals, then you can sometimes get a better deal if you promised tonnage. So here's a price for one show, but what if we did two or what if we did three? And what if I could you know, fill up your calendar a little more. Could you be a little more favorable? But you don't necessarily want to do that if you're just one brand because, well, you might burn out the town. But if you've got two different brands,

boy, we're seeing some synergies here. Are we not, Eric? Yeah, we speculated a little bit about things like this prior to the, to the merger, but this is one of the, one of the situations that create kind of a formula where one plus one equals three. you know, you've got UFC over here, you've got WWE over here, both of them very, very powerful.

And if you add them together, it's not one plus one equals two. It's one plus one equals three. The magnitude of that merger becomes obvious in situations like this. Because as you said, you're able, number one, probably to negotiate a better, um,

um, rental. Yeah. A better rate. More favorable terms. And I think as importantly, is dates, you're probably going to have a little bit of an advantage in terms of opportune dates because not every date that's available for 52 weekends a year is necessarily the best weekend

of stage events and not having to compete against, you know, rock and roll or anything else that's competing against you in the marketplace for that venue. It definitely gives you leverage when you got two powerful brands to bring to the negotiating table. in hopes of getting preferable dates throughout whatever the term or the agreement is. Well, let's talk about two big brands because Stone Cold Steve Austin came up recently. He was speaking to ESPN to help promote the new video game, WW2K24. And he was asked if he was to ever consider to return to the ring again, who would the dream opponent be? and Austin of course passed on that idea but later on said I like punk and I think punk

likes me so as long as he can take a stunner ha ha I consider him a great friend a great guy and a great wrestler who's had a great career we'll see now of course we know punk is not going to be able to wrestle this WrestleMania but a lot of people when they saw Stone Cold return to wrestle Kevin Owens before they thought hey man we might actually get another dream match out of Austin

and when people saw that punk was coming back people started chattering about what if that happened the dream match that never was they promoted it and teased it with a video game more than a decade ago people are still interested in it

and old Steve couldn't help but maybe poked the bear a little bit in this interview you would you be surprised to see Steve Austin wrestle again and do you think it's possible we see it at next year's WrestleMania or one of these other international PLEs before then I would be surprised um I'd be happy to see it I'd be excited to see it but I would definitely be surprised next year's WrestleMania man that's a long way off kind of hard to predict but it all comes down to how Steve's feeling you know I'm I was probably in Steve's last, quote, quote, match, really wasn't much of a match.

But in terms of being promoted with a story behind it and an arc leading to a pay-per-view and all that, when I wrestled Steve in Montreal, I didn't want to say wrestled. When I was in the ring with Steve at Montreal, and at that point in time, I don't remember when that was. That was 2005, maybe, or it was almost 20 years ago. And there was no way in a world I could have ever imagined at that point in time that Steve would ever step into the ring in an actual match with an actual opponent. He just physically, it wasn't in the cards.

Now, as Steve recovered, is he rehabbed? Is he overcome the issues that he had whenever I worked with him at No Way Out in Montreal? If he has it, I can see it because he looks like he's a great shape. He's smart as hell. he knows his body he knows what he can do and what he can't do i'd love to see it but i would be surprised i would be surprised too but i hope it happens and i'm not saying this is it but can you imagine if they could put that together next year if it was rock and roman at russlvania and austin and punk i mean those would be monster dream matches for main event seemingly

night one and night two and you know we're talking about steve and his injuries let's be honest and talk about punk. Yeah. Punk has been very susceptible to serious injuries over his last couple outings. Yeah. So it's not only Steve that's got to, you know, would have to work hard at being physically ready and able to bump around and do the things that Steve would want to do, I would imagine, you know, when you're a guy like Steve Austin, you don't want to come out there and be half of what the audio. remembers right that's it's always a danger right when guys who are so successful for so long get out of the business and and decided to make a comeback and it just less than what people remember part of that is because people remember you and their memory of you and their memory

of that time it's kind of hyperinflated over over time absolutely you you remember it much differently and more favorably in some respects than it really was at the time. And then on top of that, you've got age and you've got time. And the fact that, you know, in this case, Steve Austin hasn't been in the ring in an actual match in 20 years. You know, it's hard to go out there and meet the audience's expectation when that expectation is kind of based on memory that wasn't actually true, at least to the magnitude that you recall it. So it's hard to live up to the audience's expectations for talent

like that. And especially someone like Steve Austin, who's very proud, but he's got his head on straight, doesn't have an overinflated view of himself or value. But at the same time, he won't want to disappoint the audience. He won't want to go out there knowing he's not going to be able to deliver on an expectation. So you've got that, and you've got the same situation with CM Punk. CM Punk has got to be able to put together a three, four, five, six-month run without injuries to really start filling his momentum. And it's good, how old is, the punk is like 44, 45, somewhere in that area, 41?

He's not going to heal up real fast. His rehab is going to be tough. And then you've got to get back in the ring and get in ring shape again. It's going to be, going to be interesting to see how. comes out of this with a series of injuries that he's sustained over the less year or so, you know, 45 years old, uh, is the number we'll put on Mr. Punk and, uh, I guess now we should talk about at EW, you and I had a bit of a discourse last week about the sting angle. I am, uh, a super sting fan and so excited to

see the way they've tried to give him a proper sendoff at the last match. and it feels like they're going to set all kinds of records for themselves in Greensboro as we're recording I think they're just shy 16,000 only a handful of tickets remain they continue to open up some production kills so I'm sure it'll expand more and more I've even heard rumors they might be trying to rent a theater next door just to show it on closed circuit that sounds old school and it is not the type of conversation we've heard about AEW in a while but our hints and close shave of the week this week

is the promo that Darby Allen cut on the Young Bucks this week. Now we did a poll over on our YouTube which you can find at 83weeks.com or 83 weeks on YouTube.com that both take you to our YouTube. But we ran a poll there. We had 5,200 votes

who said that they thought you would hate this Darby Allen promo I'm sure you saw the promo he is not talking about the attack on Sting or the attack on Sting signs he was talking about his personal issue with the Youngbox

and he sort of blurred the lines a little bit and talked about how they passed him up but there was one EVP here who had brains and I'm not talking about Kenny Omega that was indeed a Cody Rhodes reference. And then he talked about how these guys would instead hire their friends like Brandon Cutler. They even called it all friends wrestling,

which I believe is something that Jim Cornett coined originally over on his podcast. So he's leaning into a quote unquote worked shoot brother, internet wrestling community centric promo. So the listeners of this show over on YouTube felt pretty strongly 70% that you would hate this promo. What did you think of Darby's promo? I think it was typical AEW. It's IndyRific. I think, you know, if you look at that promo in terms of the structure and delivery of the promo, it was great.

It was passionate. It was coherent. It had a strong central method. message and theme. Unfortunately, the strong central message and theme was Indy Riffick as hell, typical AEW appealing to the Dave Meltzer audiences of the world. It's just stupid. You could, first of all, those who voted and 70% of those who thought I would hate it were absolutely, I don't hate it. I don't actually have two shits one way or the other. I've got no dog in the AEW hunt.

I do not take them seriously as a legitimate competitor or legitimate growth opportunity in a wrestling business. It is what it is. It is a, it's a, it's Tony Khan with his own little wrestling fantasy camp and he's having fun with it and good for him and good for the people that are making money. But there's, it was nonsensical. The entire story with Sting is not good for Sting. I'm proud of Sting. I'm a huge Steve Borden fan. and obviously a Sting fan character,

but you could drive trucks through the holes in the way this story has been presented. And if it weren't for the fact that Sting has been around as long as he have, he's such a beloved character, he's achieved so much, he's delivered so much to so many people, such a long period of time, that they would have sold out 16 or 17,000 tickets regardless.

of whose thing's opponent or the story was going to be. It has nothing to do with the bucks in their popularity or their story or their promos or anything else they're doing. In fact, the fact that they were able to sell the 16 or 17,000 tickets, given the story that we're watching is a true testimony to Sting and has nothing to do with the brain trust or lack thereof at AEW. I mean, if you just look at that story, the fact that excuse me, presumably the young bucks turned heel based on the internet reaction to

their involvement in the CM punk backstage debacle. And because the audience blamed the young bucks, they then went, okay, hell with it, we're going to be heels, whatever. I guess that was the inciting moment that changed. changed their characters and they became heels and inserted themselves or were inserted. I'm not suggesting they did it, but they then became inserted in the Sting story. Oh, by the way, Sting, we bring in Rick Flair because we're going to bank on this nostalgia, which I think was a great idea.

And I loved it. I was looking forward to it. And Sting is going to be a part of this story, which creates opportunity. Is Sting going to turn on, or excuse me, is we're going to turn on Sting? I would have hated it, but at least it's. there is something to anticipate, to discuss, to talk about, much like we're talking about with Rock. Is he really ill or is he there to help Cody? That kind of intrigue and that nuance in the story is what helps create anticipation. So I was excited that they brought Rick into

the story because it can only, that nostalgia and that legacy can only enhance the outcome eventually when you get to it. And a week before we see Sting show up and he's in a tag with Darby or whatever he was doing and he gets his ass handed to him and his kids beat up with baseball bats and bloody. There was not even a reference to Rick Flair, why he wasn't there. Not even a reference. It's like it fucking never happened. Whatever.

But that's a hole. And now this Darby's out there cutting a promo that has nothing to do with what we saw the week before. And oh, we're going to call back. to the internet wrestling community story that's floating around and we're going to build the story based on that it is childish the booking in AEW is just atrocious I hated it it's not whatever it is I don't care I just can't take any of it seriously I can't I for one did think we were going to see uh these some comments maybe we'll see what I

soon we'll hear from Sting this week. We know we will next week because they've got a double taping in Huntsville, but it's going to be interesting, say the least, how we try to. What do you think? You're always putting me on the spot. I know you're friends with Tony and you have a different way of communicating than I do. I tend to be, I vomit my emotions when it comes to stuff like this. But I mean, do you, am I, am I being too hard on them? I think you're being a little hard on the bucks. I mean, the rumor in innuendo is we heard that Sting picked his opponents. And obviously, Sting's going to be a baby face

when you're promoting the show around it being Sting's last match. So you need someone to play the heel, so they'll cheer Sting. I get that. So the Bucks were asked to do this, and I think they're doing it to the best of their ability. We actually got a good little comment from at Yellow Shoes guy, or I'm sorry, at Yellow Shoe Guy over on YouTube. You brought the noise here. They should change their name to the Bucks.

not a knock on their age but for character development I thought you know listen if you're really trying to position yourself as we're the authority and where the money and we're only here for the money and we created all these jobs blah blah blah maybe this time to drop the young

off and just go with hey we're the bucks and we're heels now because they're calling themselves Matthew and Nicholas and they're trying but it is going to be tough to get them to be taken seriously if they do this brutal beatdown and then it's not

discussed the next week. Now, I for one thought you might like a little bit of a insider comment a little shoot comment blurring the lines. But I felt like first, I mean, we have time for that later. At first, I felt like we needed to establish that

hey, Darby's here to defend Sting's honor. But I do like the idea of hey, respectfully in just a few weeks, Sting's gone. Darby might continue this feud with the I get we need some backstory I just don't know if we needed it there and maybe they're saving it for something that Sting is going to do next week on with a promo with his sons or something I

don't know but it just didn't feel connected you know every now and again you have um what are those things y'all you all do in uh in movies and television you have like a continuity person and it feels like in this particular moment we needed somebody to be like Hey, Darby, don't forget to remember to mention the blood that's all over their suits right now. Like, that was just sort of glossing. In television, that position is called a story editor. And a story editor, whether it's a movie or television, a story editor is to make sure that if there is an arc, and by the way, I don't think there is one in a EW.

I think these are random ideas that develop and Tony's had and end up on television without a lot of conversation, or at least the conversation that should be taking place. But a story editor would look at, okay, here's my 12-week story or five-week story, whatever it is. Here is the premise. Here is the arc. This is what I want to happen. And the story editor's job would be to make sure that the narrative, whether it be in the form of an in-ring promo like we saw on a derby or the action in the ring and the outcomes of conflict and resolution throughout the arc, the story editor is there to make sure that the story stays on track. And you're checking the boxes along the way in the arc, the critical points in a storyline

that need to happen in order to hope to build anticipation, create more interests, whatever it is, in the story. There is no story. First of all, there's no story to begin with. There is an excuse for having the bucks in the match. That's exactly what this is. I've said so many times, whether it's on this show or strictly business or in interviews that I've done with others is story requires discipline.

Discipline meaning if you look at any basic fundamental story, television, movies, books doesn't fucking matter. There are points along the way in that story that you really have to make sure you address. Check that box at that point of that story in order to have any hope of a story building so that at the end of the story, when you finally get your resolution and your outcome, the audience reacts the way you want them to. There is no discipline. There is no story editor.

There's no even fundamental comprehension of continuity in story or in character. It's just random, emotional fantasy internet booking. It's interrific as hell. That's all it is. It is not episodic in any way shape or form. So I think to expect that there would be any kind of continuity based on everything that we've seen out of AW up until this point is really wishful thinking and kind of naive. Do I think they're holding back some plot point or some big moment? I hope they are.

But nothing they've done up until this moment that we're recording this podcast suggests to me that that's the way they think or that's the way they operate. It just isn't. This is just random stuff thrown up against the wall. What they call a story is nothing more than an excuse for what Tony wants to do next week. It's just, it's sad. It's sad because it's, they're, AEW's missing, has missed, and is continuing to miss, such a great opportunity. And they may or may not have another opportunity like this down the road. Perhaps they will.

perhaps they'll get renewed. I hope they do. And it'll have time to figure this stuff out. But as of right this minute, there's no story. There's no build. There's just random stuff being thrown up against the wall. And just like I said, it doesn't work for me. There's people out there that enjoy it.

Huge AEW fans and drinking the AEW Kool-Aid. And are they going to be loyal AEW fans no matter what happens, happy for them. For me, my perspective, I absolutely can't take them seriously. I want to say a joke, but it's just hard for me to take them seriously. Let's take just a minute to give a shout out to everybody over on AFS. They have joined us here as a part of our live studio audience. So I want to show a little love to Coach Rossi and Lucas Kinzer and Greg Jacobson or Joe Morris. so many of you guys are hanging out shout out to Chris and Greg

see all you guys hanging out with us so oh there's coach Keith man the folks are piling in here thank you for joining to be to be a part of our live studio audience today the Novius Mac has a question for you he's part of our live studio audience he wants to know can you see Anthem and TKO merging together and perhaps we can finally see a WWE slash TNA card As a reminder, Anthem is who owns T&A or Impact, whatever you want to call it. And there's been a lot of upheaval there.

There were some things that were discussed and maybe debunked even, where earlier this week, Dave Meltzer reported that Tommy Dreamer was head of creative. And then Mike Johnson contacted Tommy Dreamer who said, no, I'm not. So a lot of questions. Well, that's a surprise, isn't it? Dave Meltzer got it wrong. That's a huge shock.

I did get that one wrong. Chat me up. What do you think about this idea that maybe there's a merger? I don't see that happen. No, I don't see it either. I don't think there's enough demand for a WWE, TNA experience. I don't see it. I don't know what's going to happen with Anthem.

I have no idea what their goals are. There's not enough information to have an opinion, to be honest. But one opinion I do have is I don't think. think there's going to be any significant interest in TNA brand by anybody in WWE, you know, other than, you know, one off appearance like we saw it, Rail Rumble, things like that are kind of fun, but you don't need to do any kind of a merger to accomplish that. I would agree with that.

I also agree with what Mike Hoop said as part of our live studio audience. He says, Darby was the best he has ever been this past week. I thought it felt real. and I agree the promo did feel real and it did feel like it blurred the lines you know them referencing Cody is not something we were supposed to hear and all those sort of things like I get all that but I don't think necessarily it advanced the sting storyline did it advance the Darby Buck storyline absolutely we know they're going to hook it up in a couple of weeks and they've got what is that four TVs to pull it together and have a big finish and

it does feel like more often than not Tony has a really strong go home episode of TV so I'm excited they're going to be here in Huntsville and I hope some of our guys from ad free shows are going to be in the house and we'll come say hello speaking of ad free shows if you're listening

to this as it drops on Monday later tonight Eric will be live on ad free shows.com we're doing a little fun Monday night raw watchalong party And as we know, Raw sometimes presents their first hour commercial free.

Well, our first hour tonight will be with EZE. All ad-free shows members are invited. Sign up right now at ad-freeshows.com and come hang out with Eric later tonight. A little watch-along, not commercial-free, but with EZE on ad-free shows.com. So listen, let's jump into it, man. We're finally here at our topic, SuperBrawl 9. we're going to table the current stuff for the rest of the show. Maybe we'll draw some correlations or see some things that stick out.

But this show went down 25 years ago in Oakland, California. And this is a hugely successful pay-per-view where February 99, in fact, it is the third most successful pay-per-view show in WCW history, 485,000 buys. So, of course, Bash at the Beach, Carl Malone and Dennis Rodman would be number two, and we know what number one is, Starcade 97. Would you have guessed that SuperBrawl 99 was number three on the list, Eric? No, especially given where we were towards the latter half of 98 and certainly at this point in 99. You know, this is following, you know, what everybody considered the beginning of the end with Sting and Hogan, you know, the finish.

Starcade, and then it was the finger poke of doom that was going to cause WC. It was the beginning of the end for WC. There's all these, in the narrative, in the internet wrestling community, there was all these things that were definitely the death nails of WCW, but yet we did almost a half a million buys and pay-per-view. It's an interesting, interesting stat, really, because in reality, our creative was suffering, clearly suffering. Our ratings had deteriorated.

We were still probably delivering, I don't know, I don't know what the television ratings were at the time. I don't know if you have them in front of you in the research, but I'm going to guess even though the wheels were falling off and there was a lot of things wrong with creative at that time, we're probably still delivering 2.5, 3.5 million viewers a week, even in our weakened state.

So there was still an audience there, without passion, we had lost so much momentum that that stat, as I sit here today, really surprises me. It's interesting, too, because, you know, this is the last sort of high watermark for the organization probably. I mean, the month before it sold out, which we did in the archives over at 83 weeks.com, that did 330,000 buys. And even the year prior, Super Brawl 8.

that was a rematch from Starcade 97. We were finally going to get clarity at the Cow Palace. Is it Sting or is it Hollywood Hogan's belt? It's a rematch. And even that show did 70,000 fewer buys than this show. You've got a lot of momentum here in early 99. People are really interested in this particular pay-per-view. And before we talk about the 70,000 and just year-over-year where we are,

month to month for you to see sold out doing 330 and then this show doing 485 do you think that was more based on super brawl had been established as being a big pay-per-view and maybe people tried sold out and said yeah i think i'm good on that now i know the first version of sold out was way different than the ones that followed it but do you think that name maybe you had burnt some consumer confidence with that brand sold out Look, pay-per-views each have their own personalities. It takes time, in my opinion, at least it did back then. Things are different, obviously, today.

But not every pay-per-view is positioned to outperform the one before it. If you can outperform year over year on a particular paper, let's take sold-out. I think sold-out happened in, what, March? Yeah, sold out's always a January pay-per-view. Okay. Sold out is January. Super bra's February.

March is uncensored. Okay. So January, not as bad as March, because March, obviously, everybody's focuses on WrestleMania at that time of year, it's hard to stand out in March. January was typically not a strong pay-per-view month for us. You know, our strong pay-per-view months were July, dashed at the beach, Halloween Havoc, Starcade, typically because of the time of the year and competition on pay-per-view, January, February, March, we're tougher, particularly March.

So I think, you know, I'd have to go back and look at sold-out year over year to determine whether or not the brand had kind of wore itself out or whether we didn't do a great job marketing the brand or brand. I'd like to look at the year over year. But in terms of that time of year, I think it did pretty well. In terms of this paper Super Bowl, which we're talking about, did it exceedingly well, given the time of it. But just for reference, and it's harder with WWE because they're PLEs.

They're not part of a pay-per-view track that we can follow. But for AEW, what's been the most successful pay-per-view? they've done this year, if you have it off the top of your head. I don't expect you have any information sitting in front. Are they in 100,000, 150, 200,000? We're hearing that they do things. They do between 100 and 150 pretty routinely. So this is, this is WCW on its final legs when we've lost momentum.

Our ratings were down. Competition was pretty much kicking our ass. And we're delivering a half a million close to a half a million. paper buys compared to AEW, which is ragging about 150,000 buys. So it kind of puts into context, whereas as weak as WCW was at this point, in context, still doing pretty well compared to what we see today. You hate that I work that in there, don't you? It's not even, it's not a comparison.

You know, you always say, whenever you're talking about AEW, you always say, Stop talking about you're competing. You're not. You weren't head to head with them. You know, that's not what it is. You were head to head with their beat, their developmental show. Right. You're not competing.

I'm putting this in context. So much of the communication that I see in social media does compare where AEW is versus where WCW was. So my effort here or the picture that I'm painting in creating context is acknowledging that I had done a shitty job with creative. Creative was in the tank. The wheels were falling off. We've talked about it in nauseam. But as weak as WCW was, at least with regard to this pay-per-view, doing exceedingly well at that time against real. competition and I was just trying to put the fact that despite the weakened state we're in creatively, strategically, every other way, still doing quite a bit better.

Well, Martin, listen, listen. We're in the 80s today. That's all. I'm for it. I appreciate that. And I'm glad you did it because I just want to remind you that at EW is just fucking destroyed WWE and pay-per-view sales. I mean, it's not even close.

Say what? AEW's destroyed WWE and pay-per-view sales. It's not even close. Because WWE has premium live events and they stream them and they're not in the pay-per-view business. Now careful using that logic around here, Eric.

There is no pay-per-view business for wrestling anymore, Eric. It's all gone. It's all vanished. So we're talking about apples and pomegranates. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So AEW doesn't have paper-

views they do but I'm saying who else does I'm waiting Eric who else has them who else Eric who else has pay for review wrestling nobody nobody nobody but what does that have to do with contextualizing where AEW is today versus where WCW was when the wheels were falling off because everybody was doing pay-review back then you had conditioned to the consumer that that's what they were paying for, that that doesn't even exist now. There's no debate that more people watched wrestling back then and more people bought the pay-per-views back then.

But that's true for everything. More people watched back then than they do now. Do you think that's true? And I'm not being argumentative here, but... Absolutely, it's true. Now, here's the difference. We're hearing global numbers now when we take a look at things like streaming.

take a look at this weekend with Peacock. No, it's not on pay-per-view. But think about how many people around the world are going to watch that. That didn't have the opportunity to do that back then. So, yes, the ease of access globally is there, but way more people watched wrestling domestically here in the United States back then than they do now.

I totally believe. I and I I I wouldn't argue that but I'm more curious and this kind of goes to way people consume because people do consume differently yes but in terms of the impressions I don't know total viewers if you look at television which clearly has has diminished the audience for television across the board has deteriorated quite a bit over the years but if you look at television you look at streaming. You look at YouTube, which I guess is streaming as well. You look at the different ways that people have access to the product. If you, in aggregate, I don't even know how you track it, but if you could track it, do we think there are actually less people watching it today than 20 years ago, 15 years ago? Or are they just spread out in ways that we can't quite count? I don't know. I don't know either. You know, I mean, certainly, I know people can, I mean, I have friends who keep up with wrestling through social media.

I have other friends who keep up with wrestling through the WWE's YouTube channel. Like, they're not really hardcore wrestling fans, but they keep up with it enough. And they do it through one of those mediums. Never do they ever sit down and turn on direct TV or. You know what, Conrad, that's, I'm probably closer to that than I am closer to, oh, It's Monday, let's sit down and watch wrong or it's Wednesday. Let's sit down and watch Dynamite. I do not make an appointment to watch any wrestling at all unless I know something that you and I are going to cover the next day or the following week.

Or if I hear something on social media that makes me think, oh, that's going to be pretty interesting. I want to see how they develop this. Then I'll tune in. But otherwise, I'll, I devier shit. So I'll go back if I need to watch something. I will. But sit down and watch it like we used to. absolutely I just think the it's interesting to take a look at what was happening in

WCW back then and try to put your finger on why did people tune in and it's such a big way for this particular show and then they never did again I mean they never hit this high water mark again throughout the rest of 99 or 2000 we're going to talk about you know the way things used to be a little bit here today and then try to compare it to today. And when I think about that sort of comparison, I think about a product like Henson. Because it has an old school feel, but it's got new age tech. This is an absolute home run. I'm a big believer in this. I have one here at my house. I got one down at my vacation spot. I travel with one. Everybody in my office, they hear me talk about it over and over. Even the lady who cuts my hair, she is even a

Henson user now. I think you got to meet Henson's shaving. What a cool story they have, a family owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars rover, but now they're bringing that precision engineering to your doggone razor. Here's what they're doing. They said, hey, let's fire up those aerospace grade C&C machines and let's make the thinest razors ever. How thin? About 0.013 inches. That's thinner than a human hair. And what that means for you is a more secure and stable blade that gives you a vibration-free shave, which means fewer nicks, cuts, scrapes. Not only that, the Hinson Razor actually has built-in channels to evacuate hair and cream,

and that's going to make clogging virtually impossible. Hanson Shaving wanted to create the best razor, not the best razor business. That means no plastic, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades, and no planned obsolescence. The Henson Razor works with standard dual-edged blades to give you that old-school shave with the benefits of new school tech. And once you own a razor, check this out. It's only $3 to $5 a year to replace the blades. So let's say no to subscriptions. Let's say yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime.

Visit Hensonshaving.com slash Bischoff to pick the razor for you and use the code Bischoff. And you'll get two years worth of blades all free with your razor. just be sure to add them to your cart. That's 100 free blades when you have right now to H-E-N-S-O-N-S-H-A-V-N-G-G-com slash Bischoff. Be sure to use our promo code Bischoff. So, Eric, we got to talk about your boy, Terry Taylor.

He's going to quit W-C-W before Nitro on January 18th and he's going to take a job working for Vince Rousseau, and Ed Ferrara in scripting the television shows for the World Wrestling Federation, he was at his job the very next day, the 19th.

And I guess he was working here with you without a contract, and maybe that's how it was all made possible. It's written here that Taylor was one of those unfortunate types caught in the middle, having to make sense out of all the egos, vetoing everything, and then taking the heat

because the shows didn't make any sense and he had at time been Bischoff's whipping boy this is the report well I want to guess I mean Terry Taylor was

clearly on the phone with Dave Meltzer all the time to the point where Meltzer even said this apparently the departure of Terry Taylor went something like this Bischoff jumped Taylor about rumors he was going to the WWF

and told him if he wasn't happy in WCW to just leave. Taylor talked about being under the pressure with his father having health problems and Bischoff offered him time off without pay. The next day he made the deal with McMahon.

Gee, I wonder how Dave got all the specific details. Hmm, makes you wonder, doesn't it, Eric? Talk to me about this with Taylor. What happened? Like, it was, I had such a strange relationship, Terry Taylor, because I really, I liked him personally. I hear the but. Well, it was a complicated relationship.

Okay. I did enjoy being around Terry, even professionally, because Terry, Terry Taylor had a great feel for producing. matches. Terry was great at that. Terry understood psychology really well. So I enjoyed and respected his abilities in that regard, but Terry brought with him certain characteristics, personality traits that I didn't appreciate. Terry didn't always conduct himself professionally WCW. These relationships

within the industry sometimes created a conflict and a conflict of interest and opened WCW up to potential litigation without going

into specifics. I'm sick to say you got your tap shoes on today, boy. Well, out of respect. Terry and I have subsequently had a conversation and it is what

it was what it was what? It was a problem. Did I know that Terry was in communication? Did I believe I should say that Terry was in communication with Meltzer? Had I known for a fact, had I caught him red-handed, I would have absolutely let him go on the spot in a very public and uncomfortable way. It's to me that's just such a sign of disrespect and disloyalty and all the things that I just detest in a human being. I couldn't prove it, but I knew it, as did a lot of other people. And it had just gotten to the point with Terry at this time that I didn't really care whether he stayed or not. I didn't. I mean, had he stayed, did Terry provide some asset value because of some of the, the, the, the perspectives that he brought into it to a creative conversation?

Yes. Was it worth some of the other issues and challenges that Terry brought to the table as well? Absolutely not. And I did not care one way or the other whether Terry stayed or left. In reality, I should have cut him loose a long time for this. Because I just didn't have that feeling, that sense of confidence that he was loyal to WCW. that he wouldn't be out using useful idiots the same way so many people have used. And we're seeing it now, by the way.

This just isn't me taking an opportunity to random shot at Dave Meltzer. But if you look at what's happening now with Dave Meltzer and how the internet now, social media is just calling him out on his bullshit, it is a beautiful thing for me to see. Because for so long, Dave Meltzer would have the opportunity to have a relationship with someone like Terry Taylor, who during that period of time, Dave would, excuse me, Terry Taylor would use Dave Meltzer to plant the narrative that Terry Taylor would want in order to help Terry Taylor, in Terry's mind, achieve whatever it is Terry was trying to achieve.

He used Dave Belzer by feeding Meltzer information that was either bullshit, a complete lie, or distorted so much that it might as well be. But it seemed useful to Terry Taylor to have that relationship with Spencer, much like other people still do today. Do I think that Dave Meltzer has some contacts within WWE or obviously in AEW? Absolutely, I do. What I do believe, though, is those people are using Meltzer because they know he's so easy to use to manipulate the Internet wrestling audience.

Terry Taylor did it back then, and I was happy to see him leave, actually, in many respects. And I think it's still happening to the stick. Do I think that Tony Kahn and Dave Meltzer have conversations? Of course they do. Yeah, they acknowledge. Do I think there are people in WWE that do? There are some that are suggesting that he has a conversation with Rock. I don't know whether he does or he not.

Come on. I do. What I do know is whatever relationships he had are helping to make. make Doug Meltzer look like a complete idiot. Meltzer did not have the best week this past week. But come on, man. I mean, listen, in your opinion back in the day,

talking to Meltzer was a fireball offense. Had I been able to prove it? Not just talking to him, but sharing information, proprietary information. You're fucking right, I would. You think Ari Manuel's going to fire Rock when he finds out that Rock's been on the horn with Dave Meltzer. Not if Rock's using Dave Meltzer like the useful idiot that he is.

That's just an asset. I just think. Now you're using somebody to manipulate the wrestling audience and create chatter and buzz. That I do believe is happening. I think Dave is a tool. Well, I'm not going to call him a tool. I understand the way you used it, what you mean there. But, boy, it has never been more apparent to me.

And it just sort of, when I read the things I read, it just sort of makes me, I mean, I turned to Megan about a week ago and said, can you believe the Rock talks to Dave Meltzer? Because, you know, she's not plugged into wrestling, but she knows who those two folks are. And she's like, what? But it happens. And anybody who denies that doesn't really read what's going on. But the important thing is, if they do talk, and I suggest they may. I don't know.

Neither do you. but we certainly feel like it, right? Yeah. Meltzer's being used. He is a tool in the end of the, not like a tool like an asshole, but he's a tool like a fucking wrench. He's just a tool to manipulate the audience.

The part that's funny to me is that Dave thinks that these people actually respect him and, and counsel with him for advice or direction or casual conversation. That doesn't happen. do people pick up the phone and manipulate him for their own purposes, much like Terry Taylor did, much like many other people did? Abs of fucking looting.

And, you know, hats off the day. He's been able to figure out a way to make a living by being used as a tool putting it out there and getting people to pay for it. But that's the beauty right now and what we're seeing on social media is people are starting to call him out in his bullshit. And he freaks the fuck out. He probably has more, he probably has a. His list of people that he's blocked probably exceeds the following that he has.

There's a minute you criticize if he blocked you. Can you imagine? And it's become a badge of honor in social media. People start bragging about getting blocked by Dave Moussaac. Awesome. It's interesting to me that, you know, because we've seen a lot of criticism in like AW or WW does a press conference and they get softball questions.

Can you imagine in private? it when one of these folks gets a call from the rock. I mean, it's really Dwayne Johnson. You know they haven't programmed in their phone as the Rock. And oh my God, a movie star. I mean, heck of a way to channel some information.

Heck of a way. The bill of the Superbraw begins in Columbus with Rick Flair going crazy saying he's going to wrestle Hogan at Superbraw for the title and he puts his hair up for a match with you and we've seen a lot over the years where people would say hey we're not sure what'll get a rating just let flair wrestle sting it always gets but it feels like in this this era hey we're not sure what to do let's get back with flair and hogan it's the match that put us on the map on pay-per-view it'll do it again and i'll be

damned if it doesn't work here. Who do you think deserves the credit for going back to the well one more time with Hogan and Flair? And what do you mean it deserves the credit in what way? Well, I'm saying sometimes people would say, oh, we've seen that match before. We're looking for new matches.

I get that. But on the other hand, it's been bankable since 1994. Here we are five years later. Why not do Flair and Hogan again? I just think there's certain, I mean, it's kind of like pulling outs. Yeah. And it just fit together.

It just works. It just did. And I don't think it's fair or accurate to give either one of them. I think Rick's ability to be passionate. Because Rick is, I mean, he wears his passions on his sleeve in real life and in the ring. And because of Rick's intense passion. you he can make you forget that you've seen that match before yes as long as there's a different reason for it a different issue on the table Rick can make you forget everything else that's

ever happened so in that sense I think as an opponent particularly when it comes to the narrative it takes to drive interest in a match how do you not tip your hat to Rick Flair that's what he was best at is creating passion and emotion Hogan because of their history because he was Hulk Hogan

it was the chemistry was built in the story was really there have to craft much just build off the history to a large degree and the who's the best in the business who's the best that ever was ogan could lay claim and arguably so could

rick flare so you've got you've got two of the very best in the world at that time and not only the best in the world at that time when what i say best maybe maybe not physically in the ring and being able to go out there and perform athletically at a super high level and do all kinds of crazy shit um but in terms of the story telling the ring history history history history history the drama that came along with it just as a result of being McFlair and Hall Cogan it's a Hall of Oates thing

it was just magic hard to pin it on any one person Let's talk about Jericho Meltzer would say the Jericho situation remains the same. There's personal heat because backstage Jericho's or Bischoff is claiming Jericho virtually agreed to

a deal a ways back but now he won't sign it. Meanwhile the WWF has made Jericho their number one priority as far as acquiring any new piece of talent. He was in Buffalo, but was told he wouldn't be used at Nitro, and there are rumors that he's going to receive a $750,000 offer, but to the best of my knowledge, he actually hasn't received the offer. It doesn't appear likely the WWF will match that offer or can even come close, but the

WWF also has some obvious advantages when it comes to someone in his position. So let's talk about this. Did you feel like you had a verbal with Chris or were you trying to find things to entice him or was the bloom completely off the rose here? None of the above. I was trying, well, maybe you covered it. I was trying hard to keep Chris. I didn't want Chris to leave. Dave's reporting once again was completely false or he was fed that information.

Perhaps by Chris. I don't know. I did make an awesome. offer, pretty substantial offer to Chris. I believe it was closer to 500. I don't, it may have been 750, you know, it was 25 years ago. So fuck, I don't know, but I don't think it was quite that high. But I was trying, you know, and I didn't have the same budget I had previously.

Right. At this time, things were, things had been, they started changing in the fourth quarter of 98. and by first quarter of 99, it was just ass ugly in terms of what happened to my budget. But I did the best I could do, but I didn't. And this is the part that I take exception with because, again, it was a lie and misrepresentation. I didn't think that I had a verbal agreement. I don't consider a verbal agreement worth having a conversation about. Verbal agreements don't mean a thing.

I was trying hard to keep Chris. I didn't think that we had a meeting of the minds in any way, shape, or form orally or otherwise. I was trying to get to that because I didn't want Chris to leave. But there was no heat between Chris and on. I mean, there may have been a frustration on Chris's part, really. Not in mind, my frustration is I really want to keep this guy. And I'm working my ass off to do it. And it doesn't seem to be working.

But there was no personal heat. I didn't blame Chris. I wasn't angry with Chris. I understood what Chris was attempting to do and why he was attempting to do it. But the idea that I thought we had a deal and there's heat because he told me he was going to such, you know, childlike reporting on behalf of usefulness wasn't true. You are going to be on your heels a little bit here. Raw at this point has extended their winning streak over Nitro for 13 consecutive weeks. and I'm wondering, did that make you feel a certain type of way?

I mean, obviously, you've been to the top of the mountain, beat Vince once, made multiple times, there was a streak, but maybe you got a comfortable after 83 consecutive weeks, and when you find yourself losing 13 consecutive weeks in a row, Is it just another day at the office? Is it getting to you mentally? Do you feel that pressure professionally? Talk to me about it. Overall, I was definitely feeling the pressure.

Not so much in losing 30. You know, it wasn't like we were sitting on going, oh, my God, they beat us again. Things were bad enough overall in all aspects of them, not just in terms of the television, but WCW overall was in a, in a very bad situation internally. And this was just like one more straw,

run on the camel's back, so to speak. Wasn't something that we all sit down the next day when the ratings come on. I went, oh, my God, I can't believe this. What are we going to do? It wasn't that. This was just one more thing that had been happening for quite a while that added to the overall sense of frustration and stress in WCB. we i take the exception to the fact i never got comfortable i mean you didn't have time to get too

comfortable did was i did i get to a point at some time say probably 97 absolutely 98 where i was perhaps overconfident yeah yes maybe that maybe but wait a minute Hang on. Comfortable, no. You weren't comfortable getting floated down from the ceiling on a fucking Harley Davidson? Look pretty comfortable to me wearing your crown. Oh, it's comfortable. And again, that was during a period of time when we were kind of on top of the world.

But comfortable to me is complacency. Okay. And we weren't complacent. I wasn't complacent. That's fair. I meant comfortable to be cocky, confident. Yeah, I was cocky. confident and I was cocky, but that was part of my character.

But behind the scenes, did I ever say, we don't have to worry about this shit anymore. Ah, we're so good at this. Oh my gosh. Call me on Tuesday. I want to take a couple of days. No. Well, I was never that.

Maybe you didn't say that. But you were also telling people, I'm going to drive a stake through his heart. I'm going to force him into bankruptcy. He's going on. And I did. I did say those things. That was my guided way of kind of rally.

the team. Sure. I thought everybody would feel the same way I felt. I wanted to be number one. Right. That's the only thing that I gave a fuck about is being number one. And not just in terms of television ratings, but there were other things that we weren't number one at all that, you know, the period of time where, you know, we were beating them

83 weeks or 84 weeks, whatever it was in row. We beat them a total over a couple of year period of about 104 weeks. You know, so, I mean, there was, we had stacked up a lot of wins on television. but they were still outperforming us in other areas, certainly internationally, certainly when it came to licensing and merchandising. We weren't even close. We weren't even a distant number two when it came to licensing and merchandising, even with the emergence of the NWO merchandising, we got hot,

even with the millions of dollars that we were selling over in Japan. We never came close to where WWE was, even while we were embarrassing them on TV every week. They still had a more robust business than, we did in so many different areas. That was my goal, is to be number one and not just on television. And I thought by being that over the top, super aggressive, I mean, that's who I am. If I decide I want to go after something, I tend to go for the throat. I don't start at somebody's feet and work my way up.

I write for the throat. And that's the way I approached the business. And I thought mistakenly that others would kind of rally around that. over the top way of saying I want to be number one and they actually didn't it was not not the and not a highlight reel for my management experience sure the nitro from Dallas would see you being sent to work at a concession stand for Shrikflare's running things here having beat you at Starcade and Meltzer has interesting commentary about you working at concession stand the similarities between Bischoff and McMahon were

amazing as now Bischoff is using a TV show watched by millions to be his psychiatric release as he was complaining about internal audits and disappearing money and Meltzer would point out that you were in the midst of an internal audit. Do you remember this audit? Was this a pain in your neck? No. I mean, audits were something that happened fairly The frustration that I was feeling wasn't so much about internal audits. It was about having budgets that had been previously completely torn up and reestablished by people who weren't involved in my business. That was frustrating.

But internal audits didn't bother me at all. I mean, finance didn't report to me. I never touched money. All I do is go out and make it or spend. it. And I did so according to the parameters set forth to be by Turner Finance. As long as I stayed within my budgets, I was fine. And I was. Frustrating in the sense that did it take time out of the day to have conversations with people that were really a waste of time? Yeah, that was frustrating. But other than that,

I don't know what Meltzer's talking about. another uh nitro in minneapolis would see doing more chores for uh flare flare ordered bischoff to stand in a dunk tank for the next three hours while all the wcw people who hate him and boy was that a long line got to throw soft balls to knock him in luckily for bischoff nobody who has who hates him has much of an arm and these segments were dying of embarrassment as guys kept missing the target pitch after pitch on on live TV. Listen, I love the idea of putting you in a dunk tank, but maybe pre-taping this so we could have made sure we had some guys knocking

you in. What do you think? Yeah, maybe, but that's the fun part of live TV, right? Yeah, for sure. If you want everything to look, if you want it to look like something Disney on ice would produce, then yeah, you pre-tap it. But if you believe, as I did and still do,

that the beauty of live television and the reason there's so much support and interest in professional wrestling today as a live television product is because that sense that anything can happen is an important part of reasons why people watch live wrestling. Otherwise, they'd be watching taped wrestling because it's less expensive and easier and there's less risk that something's going to go wrong. But then it's too stale. The fact that it's live matters. And sometimes the fact that things don't go according to plan

reinforces the fact that it's live. And I don't want to suggest that you hope shit like this happens, but at the same time, you don't panic over it either. If you embrace that television live is different than a pre-taped show, reasons that I've already talked about, then you go with it. And if something doesn't go exactly the way it should have gone, creatively sure,

it's a little bit of a frustration, but overall it supports the fact that it's live. And that has more value than a perfectly executed pre-tap segment. Let's talk about Sandman. He's going to make his debut here, and he's not going to be identified by the announcers. the announcers were told, according to Dave Meltzer, you can't call him Sandman.

You can't call him Jim Fullington. You can't mention ECW or Raven. You can't even explain what the hell Sandman was talking about to 95% of the audience. But he comes out with a cane. It's wrapped in, or he's wrapped himself in barbed wire. He's not smoking a cigarette. Looks like he's dropped a few LBs.

I guess. this whole, you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that. We're fearing litigation from ECW, or is this a deal you all cut? Or what can you tell us about? It's, again, it's Dave Meltzer, twisting, turning, inverting, and creating fiction. Were there issues regarding calling him Sandman? I think we had learned vis-a-vis the WWE trademark and copyright infringement federal

lawsuit. that we had to be judicious and careful about using previously used names, trademarks. So was there an overall awareness that applied to everybody? Not just Sandman. Of course there was. But again, I think this was built upon by Dave Meltzer to kind of create a narrative that wasn't necessarily true. Did we stay away from calling him Sandman? Yes.

Did we fear litigation from ECW? Not really, because it was almost always cry wolf. That was a tactic that Paul used, payment used a lot, just to threaten lawsuits because Paul was familiar with Turner as a talent. Paul knew, based on previous experience, that all you had to do was threaten Turner and they would settle. That was their M.O.

And quite literally, I was told that legal, Turner legal, If sued at that point in time by a former talent, and if that lawsuit was less than $100,000, it was likely just to be settled out of court because anything less than $100,000, it was just the cost of being in business and it was easier just to pay people off and make them go away than it was to stack up a bunch of ridiculous lawsuits in court. and have attorney spending time on it. Paul knew that. Paul knew the hesitance of Turner legal to get involved in any kind of litigation.

Because ballot or not. All got paid out before. Yeah. He used it. But that's not the same as being afraid of it. Just aware. So we didn't use his name. That's not, that shouldn't be unusual.

The smoking thing, that's a, that was an issue. because Turner had Ted personally had a big issue with smoking. I was notified, not by Ted, but by my boss at the time. I think it was Harvey Schiller to no more cigars coming out with a lit cigar. We come out with an unlit cigar as a prop. But to smoke in the ring, a cigar or a cigarette, I got a flag on Paul White. I had Paul White come to the ring want to smoke a cigarette. I was notified immediately that that's a no-fly zone.

Turner Broadcasting, so we stopped doing it. But other than that, there were no unusual conditions or restrictions as regard to Sam. What can you tell us about bringing him into WCW at all? I mean, we would see him as being the intelligent guy hanging out at Ravens Pool. Now we're transitioning to this. But somebody was watching ECW. You told us it wasn't you, but I know that you really enjoyed the real life.

Jim Fullington. Talk to us about how Sandman came to be a part of the WCW roster at all. Likely Kevin Sullivan. Kevin had a much closer, I was paying closer attention to ECW than I was. Could have been Terry Taylor before Terry left. I don't know. But if I had to guess,

I would say it was probably Kevin Sullivan. Mine, I didn't hire everybody that was on a roster. Some I did. Clearly, I approved them. But for the most part, I'm a, I've always been a macro manager almost to a fault. I guess it's sometimes a flaw. As you put the right people in charge, you give them the tools, you give them the authority, flexibility to make their decisions.

And then you evaluate them over a period of time as to how great those decisions were or not. It's kind of my overall approach to management. I don't micromanage people at all, never have. So Kevin was working within Kevin's budget and certainly more aware of Sandman than I was, felt that Samman would be an asset to WCW. I likely agreed or signed off on it because of the hardcore aspect of what Kevin was trying to do and create. And certainly hardcore wrestling was becoming more interesting and why not have more people that are known for that. So it just made sense. by the way

welcome Sandman to ad free shows how about that what a great storyteller and I just dig his voice he's got one of those voices you just want to sit around and listen to him

tell stories he's such a great storyteller and he's got the voice for it I think he's going to be a huge asset ad free shows and your sandman episode one is live now over at ad free shows.com if you haven't already be sure to check it out. I was told,

hey man, this looks and feels like an old school shoot interview where he's pulling no punches. Yeah, that's the idea. He's here with a beer in hand and a cigarette too. Enter Sandman, episode one, available now over at ad-freeshows.com. Let's do some more Meltzer reporting here. Goldberg was apparently offered a guest spot on ER. Yeah, the NBC show.

The WCW nixed it because I guess the filming would have conflicted with a Monday Nitro, but there was apparently some hurt feelings about this because they don't book Goldberg on a lot of Mondays anyway. So why wouldn't they give him the time off and perhaps an opportunity to be seen by an even bigger crowd? You've told us before you had some frustrations with whenever you would book something with NBC and then it would get Knicks. This is not that same thing, but do you remember there being a request for Goldberg on what was at the time, the number one show on television, E.R. Just slight memory of it, but I will say my track record, my history, everything I've ever done or said,

suggest that if there's an opportunity to cross-promote WCW talent, I am going to bend over backwards to make that happen. Yes. There's never been a situation in my entire career. In fact, you could probably go the other direction and say sometimes I work too hard. to achieve that, and it didn't really pay off in certain situations. But I can assure you that if there was an opportunity to book a WCW talent on an NBC show and it didn't conflict, I would have bent over backwards to make that happen. So Dave's reporting is probably flawed, likely flawed, based on his history,

and minimize the conflict probably existed. If, indeed, I prevented it and didn't sign off on it, there had to be very, very good. And my truck record, my truck record proves that. Let's talk about a report from mid-February. The entire WCW Latino project and Telemundo deal is off. The public response is that Sharon Sadello cut a bad financial deal for WCW with Telemundo. And the belief is that after the first Festival de Lucha taping in Waco, Texas on January 27th, which was disorganized because nobody knew which wrestlers would make

it across the border, and almost nobody in WCW was aware Paco Alonzo had switched affiliations with the WWF and thus was not going to send any of his wrestlers. That members of the production crew, like David Crockett and Keith Mitchell, really badmouthed the show to Eric Bischoff. Bischoff just a few weeks earlier had told everyone that getting the show off the ground was a major priority and the company probably spent in excess of 300 grand

looking and creating a hot new set and a new open before they wound up throwing the towel in after just one show. Talk to us about this. This Telemundo Festival de Lucha what do you remember about

Sharon Sadello? Perhaps the deal she cut these expenses and why it died so quickly? We'll start with why it died so quickly, and a lot of it is just communication and cultural differences in the way we approach business. It was always stressful anytime we did business with talent from Mexico, because

inherently communication was an issue. Conan, who is almost always at the kind of center of a lot of those discussions, and opportunities was conflicted a lot of times. You know, his relationships with talent, his relationships with WCW, his obligations to WCW, there were at times conflicts because Conan and I are pretty tight now and we're going to leave it at that. But it just got to be a situation where it was just untenable. There was no fixing it.

even the relationships within Mexico were often very difficult to track and predict and have any confidence in terms of long-term planning. So it just, it was a great idea. The idea being that we wanted to really expand WCW into the Hispanic market and we were continually looking for ways to do that. Sharon Sadello would have,

it was an international TV deal, so she may have had a hand in doing that deal, but WCW International Television was typically handled by another division of Turner Broadcasting. We didn't really have a lot of day-to-day influence over some of those decisions. This may have been one that came to us, more likely through Conan initially,

because of his deep relationships there. Sharon Sadello, because it did fall under International, may have gotten involved in it. But she wouldn't have cut any deals that I wouldn't have approved of. She didn't have the authorization to do that type of thing. So her role in this effort would have been minimal or administrative almost than anything. I think the reason the deal fell apart was just because it was untenable, giving the ad hoc nature of so many of the relationships and the piss poor communication that existed.

Whether or not talent could get across the border, visa issues were a constant problem, even on Nitro. That issue was a constant issue, talent being less than honest about schedules and who they were working and what they were doing. Because I had talent that was exclusive to WCW that weren't supposed to be wrestling in Mexico. Not that I didn't want them to satisfy their fans or even have opportunities. in Mexico. But because if I'm paying someone two or three or four or five hundred thousand dollars a year, I can't afford for them to get injured while they're working for somebody else and not be available to me while I still have to pay them. Right. So there were times when, yes, I put limits on what talent could and couldn't do in Mexico. And sometimes culturally,

they just didn't understand that. And it was an issue. All of those things combined are probably what led to this decision is saying, it's not worth it. It's not tenable. manageable. A week later, it continues to evolve.

Meltzer would say, Sharon Sadello put together a new deal with WCW. It was a verbal agreement to provide them with programming. After the first telemundo taping, David Crockett, Craig Leathers, and a net yoder, convinced Eric Bischoff

that it was terrible and they shouldn't do anymore. Meanwhile, Tony Chivani talks about WCW's good relationship with NBC on Nitro on Monday night because people in the company are under the assumption they're going to be getting regular NBC specials after the NBA season ends. We've not heard any firm dates or a firm deal. But February 14th in prime time, that was the original plan. NBC would have their first WCW special it would have been an NBA game in the afternoon

and then something with WCW and even when the whole NBC thing went down NBC never officially confirmed the story but everyone in WCW was told buildings were booked for dates over the next year booking plans were

I can't take anymore that's just so much I mean I can't comment on Dave's fantasy So how did this really get soundwise? We've talked about it. There was an opportunity, Gary, we did have, I did, personally, I did have a good relationship with executives at NBC. One in particular by the name of Gary Consent.

I know I've talked about a lot on this show. Because of an NBA strike, Gary reached out to me and said, hey, we need content, we need programming. What do you think? Could you come up with something? He did. I pitched it to Gary. I pitched it to NBC.

They loved the idea. They signed off on it. I had to take it to my boss, Harvey Schiller at the time. And Harvey Schiller had to take it to a guy by the name of Joe Yuva. Joe Yuva was the head of ad sales in New York. Joe Yuva said, uh-uh, we don't want to do any business with NBC. And that opportunity, that one opportunity, there was no discussion about regular specials. That is Dave Meltzer bullshit, just like we're reading today.

People are calling him out for his bullshit today because now people can. everybody's got a platform. Dave doesn't have the luxury of sitting back in his fucking cluttered room like a hoarder, writing bullshit, making things up and putting it out there. Because back then, nobody had the ability to call bullshit. Now everybody does. And they do, and I'm here for it. But everything that Dave wrote about relative to the one-off special that we never got to produce

because Joe, you've had turned it down, there's a Turner Broadcasting Ad Sales program. executive that was the only conversation we weren't booking buildings none of that shit ever happened it never even talked about it was a one-off special because of a strike and it didn't happen and it didn't happen well it's shame that it wasn't shame is by the way it was a not you know you talked about you know how did you feel after 13 weeks is you know yeah this was this was a this was a much bigger deal to me than Rob beating us again for a 13th or 14th consecutive time. This was a major deal.

This decision by Joe Yuva turned to broadcasting not to take advantage of an opportunity to put a prime time special on NBC at a time when we desperately needed to be competitive and reestablish ourselves as a brand in the marketplace. The decision to not allow it to happen told me everything that I knew about the future of WCW at that point in time. Why would anybody come up with a reason why anybody would turn down such an amazing opportunity unless nobody wanted you to succeed in the first place? This was a glaring example where WCW was going.

And one of the reasons why, as I've said so many times, my frustration, my battles, had nothing to do with WWE or creative. It had everything to do with what was going on in my own company. This is a perfect example. Well, if you want to have everybody in your house talking about something that's a big deal, can we recommend Blue Chew? It's fun for the whole family. Well, not really.

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towards Hogan v. Hart at Halloween Havoc this year. At the meeting, it was suggested by page that the Hart put over Booker T since Booker T had put Hart over three times on TV. Hart felt if the idea was to build up a match with Hogan, it wasn't the right time to put over Booker T because it would only devalue the big match before it got there. Nash feels that Hart isn't over and shouldn't be built up for the match to begin with.

Nash and Hart's discussion ended with Hart confused because all that was suggested is him putting people over. And Nash was mad because all Hart was convinced, concerned about was building up a match with Hogan. It wound up with Nash telling Bischoff that Hart wasn't being cooperative about putting people over and Hart not understanding what it is the company wants from him. The end result is that Hart was booked to lose the title to Piper right away. Most likely Piper would drop into Hall in Oakland.

Man, there's a lot of rumor and innuendo here. Do you remember Brett and Nash coming to an image? pass over creative? There was definitely, there was, there wasn't a good relationship between Brett and Kevin creatively. I think there was a personality

conflict there. I think there was a certain amount of resentment, baggage that both of them brought to WCW from WWE. I think there was a lack of respect probably on both parts in certain ways.

So I can see where there was a conflict. There wasn't great chemistry to begin with. And usually you put two high profile people, successful people in a room where they don't have good chemistry. Chances are there's going to be a conflict. And there certainly was here. The details as the way Dave laid them out were funneled to him probably by Brett, I would guess. Yeah. Kevin has the same level of disdain for Dave Meltzer as a lot of people.

Business does. But Kevin never had to use Dave Meltzer the way others had to use him or chose to use him. So, yeah, there was probably an issue there. I could see the chemistry being bad. I wasn't involved in that discussion or those decisions. I never recall, look, I had conversations with Kevin with regard to creative and booking. he would, I pretty much gave him the book. I had to keep eyes of what was going on and we would have conversations.

And it was clear to me that there was just a disconnect between Brett and Kevin, but the details of which, especially coming from Dave, I can't comment 99%. We do know they're talking about the U.S. title and Brett Wood wind up dropping the title to Piper. And Meltzer would say that Piper's hip that he's had surgery on is acting up and he's going to need another surgery and his other hips going bad. So he's in constant pain, but even suggests one of the ideas floated was Piper teaming up with Will Sassow from Mad TV and Brett Hart teaming up with you, Eric Bischoff for a tag match.

It doesn't happen, but... Never heard of that one before. Wow. We wind up seeing Piper take the belt off of breath there in Buffalo on Nitro. And, well, there's going to be some criticism about the book. The bloom is already off the rows when it comes to morale. The biggest complaints are, and this one is valid, WCW has made it almost impossible to be a baby face

because the role of the heels is to try and be cool baby faces, but the baby faces are just presented as dumb saps to be constantly outwitted. The other is only the same guys with political pull in all the videos and nobody else, whether they get crowd reactions or not, is given the opportunity just like before. This feels like the same old song in WCW. People are unhappy with their spot and maybe there's still some hurt feelings over the way the NWO was presented.

Do you think it was increasingly difficult to be a baby face in this cool heel era? It was increasingly difficult to be a baby face or a heel in this particular era. We're talking about 1999. Nobody was getting over. Nobody was progressing. Nobody was building.

Everybody was in a state of self-preservation because we were losing so much ground. And creative was an issue. We've talked about it at nauseam. Creative wasn't good. So it was hard for everybody. And to report that it's because of the NWO, which by the way happened to fucking 1996 three years earlier. Was that an issue in 96 and 97?

Did the baby faces have an issue trying to figure out how to get over in this new paradigm of heels in the NWO that in some cases were getting cheered? In some cases, we're getting booed. Yes. Was it an issue in 1999? No, pretty much everybody had gotten used to it or over. The issues and the frustration and the morale issues, which I do admit existed in 1990, weren't to result of anything that was going on in the end. or how baby faces were treated. It was just an overall kind of condition of malaise.

It was everybody was feeling pressure and frustration across the boards, not just with baby faces, not just in general. Let's talk a little bit about Wildcat Willie. My man got fired. You never thought I'd hear that in a podcast? My man, Wildcat Willie, I got to admit, up until like five years ago, I did not know he was called Wildcat. Willie because it stood for WCW.

I do know this outfit, or there is an outfit like this at AFX studios just outside of Atlanta. So if you want to live out your Wildcat Willie dreams, hit up Andre Freitas there. He can hook you up. I guess you saw him trying to do his thing and the crowd shit on it one too many times and you were like, this is a waste of money. My budgets are changing or something else.

Yeah, it just wasn't working. You know, I'm not so sure that it worked. It was Bob Dew's idea. Yeah. And it wasn't a bad idea. I mean, it really, at the time, it kind of made sense, it made sense on paper, and it didn't hurt anything. And if certain people were entertained during the commercial breaks

and the crowd warmups, people show and that kind of thing, no harm, no foul, probably added value to some extent. But I think as times changed, the product changed, the audience changed, need for Wildcat Willie became less and less and less every it was his time. Good idea at one point,

but it no longer applied. And you're probably right. I don't know specifically that I sat down and looked at budgets to go, okay, well, we got to cut Wildcat Willie because we're paying him $75,000 a year and all of his air.

Maybe that happened. I think more than anything we just recognized that the idea was served his purpose and it was time to move on. I know we're talking about a guy who lost his job here. So I don't mean to poke fine. But it has been 25 years.

So hopefully he's over in it. When you had this uncomfortable conversation with him, you make him keep the head on? Did he like, what? Was he wearing the mask? Did you make him? What the fuck did I do that? What would I do that?

What about me makes you think that I would say, hey, I'm going to have to fire you, but I'm going to get my kicks. Well, you threw coffee on Eddie Guerrero. I'm just saying maybe he, hey, Wildcat Willie, that's it. Pack your shit. You know what? If he would have pissed me off the way Eddie pissed me off,

I might have made him wear his fucking outfit while I fired him just to dehumanize him a mark. But I didn't feel the need. I didn't. Let's throw Wildcat Willie back up on the screen, Silva. Tell me you saw the movie Teen Wolf. Michael J. Fox. I don't think I did. I've never been a horror fan.

It's not a horror movie. Not silly comedy. Go up there on your Google machine, Teen Wolf. That's what this shit was placed on. Does that look like it? Does he look like Teen Wolf? Yes. It's silly.

And I, and to know that you looked at that man, well, that Teen Wolf, I suppose, Wildcat Willie, wearing that helmet, wearing the sunglasses,

wearing the bandana. Why don't you have a seat, Wildcat? We got some bad. we're going to have it here here's some here's some purina kitty child sit down and let's have a conversation i mean your future endeavored wildcat willie that's actually i don't even know if i let him go you just moved his his office to the basement and took his stapler

no i mean he was let go i just don't think i was the one that did oh i you did it we know there was a fedex involved uh i wouldn't waste of the fedex I might have just, FedEx were like 1495 at the time. I, it might have had David Crockett do it. Who else could have done? You probably just went to the back

where the boys see all the matches about, you know, who the agent is and how many minutes they got and all that. You just wrote, get out, Wildcat Willie. Yeah. Back your shit.

Fuck that cat. Yeah. He knew when his catering changed. It's all downhill for it. That's always step one. Okay, listen, this is some silliness.

let's talk about oh there's teen wolf telling me that ain't wildcat willie michael j fox i would have put that i would have put that guy in a ring he'd have had matches michael j fox can't wrestle so you know he's got some health issues uh listen let's talk about uh february 15 it's a nitro and dave milzer wrote this new concept is a loser i can't just express how screwed up this company is right now. The February 15th, Night Trail may have been the worst episode in show history. It was held at the 2,500 seat Steinbrenner Pavilion. The show is a favor of Steinbrenner for political reasons due to the Steinbrenner-Schiller

connection as WCW passes up a Monday where it could make anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000 at the gate. And as it turned out, Steinbrenner himself didn't even attend the show. he was at the ESPN Awards and there was finger pointing everywhere after the show according to Meltzer as the story went at least believed by many wrestlers there was a booking meeting in Tampa

on the 16th which is the next day and was said to have been plans that are going to be made to bury certain wrestlers that makes me laugh in particular Brett Hart Roddy Piper Conan Chris Finwa Dean Malinko Raven Canyon Chris Jericho and Bam Bam Bigelow for various reasons

Art and Nash came out of a previous booking meeting with Heat and Nash tried to get the word out that Art wasn't a team player. There's also finger pointing going down among the big three in power which are Bischoff, Hogan, and Nash. DDP, still having power based on being friends with Bischoff, is clearly losing ground to both when it comes to popularity and reputation that his booking ideas are usually only for himself

and his friends rather than spreading it across everyone. Of course, the same could be said for now. Boy, this makes me laugh. The idea that process this, boys and girls, this is the way it's written. This is what we're led to believe. And I want to say, I'm a lifetime subscriber to the observer

and love his work. But occasionally he gets things wrong as we saw this week. But never in the history of ever. Has there been a meeting in some fucking hotel banquet room where there's a row of tables at the front doors are propped open and there's a little sign in the hallway and Eric welcomes people

yeah come on in yep come on in yep you're the right spot have a seat got some coffee in the back some water yep I put butter in my coffee I'm fucking weird come on in have a seat I see yep all right we're gathered here today to talk about how we can bury talent that I hired and pay on a weekly basis but I don't like them don't want them here anymore not trying to make money with them but I'm not going to Wildcat Willie their ass because that'd make too much sense

so instead we're going to waste Brad Hart one of our highest paid wrestlers that's right going to fuck him around get the shovels out then we're going to do that

with Roddy Piper cock sucker ain't got but one hemp anyway oh Conan fuck him he fucked me around on that telemundo deal he's out of here Chris Benoit

you don't even want to know what the future holds for him but you'll get by we're buried him. Then there's Dean Belenco and Raven. That motherfucker has different sized boots. Who could respect that? Canyon, innovator of offense, innovator or what? Killing the fucking ratings.

Get him out of here. And then Jericho, get the fuck out of here. Everybody knows I don't want Jericho here. Bam Bam Bigelow, that goof's got tattoos on his head. Let's just run all these guys into the ground. I know I can fire them just like that and save the money. but I'm a fucking goof and I have secret meetings

the day after TV so I can decide amongst my friends that I pay to be my friends how we're going to fuck everybody individually and collectively. This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read, Eric. Conrad,

we've been doing this show for five and a half years, give or take a month or two. Feels like longer. Not to me. because this is one of the most glorious moments I've ever experienced in front of a microphone throughout my entire career.

Not just the five and a half years we've been working together on 83 weeks to make it one of the most successful wrestling-related podcasts in that universe. But that diatribe was a work of art, music to my ears, and soothed my soul. To hear it coming from you, acknowledging because you are friends with Dave and why you admit you subscribe to it is

beyond me why anybody subscribes to that director is beyond me but I get it but now people are starting to see like you have finally cut through relationship clutter to understand that this is a twisted fraud of an individual who has done damage to not only the business in general, but individuals within it to simply, I don't know, make himself feel important or convince people that he has knowledge or experience or relationships doesn't really have. It's funny because Dave often refers to people as conmen and I can't, you know how people tend to project? Yeah. To me, that is the most obvious projection. I'm not of like a dime store psychiatrist or psychologist,

but it's so obvious that this is a guy who's got real issues. And your entertaining example of it forms the fucking cockles of my heart. Thank you. There's just no scenario where you held a meeting on your fucking off day. First of all, if I would have said to anybody, I want to have a fucking booking meeting the day. after a nitro you know how many people would have showed up you me and janey yes would have been the only

two there nobody's doing a booking me i would have never thought of having a booking a creative meeting the day after a nitro it ain't happening the idea that hey let's get together and figure out how we're gonna fuck the guys are now do you see how that's consistent with so much of dave's narrative well here here's what here's what maybe happened uh when guys were headed to the their gate at the airport in Tampa they saw Kevin Nash holding court at the bar cracking wrestling jokes telling wrestling stories being charming fun Kevin Nash there's two Kevins you get the crumpy Kevin and you can get the social butterfly Kevin those are butterfly Kevin is hard to beat And he's damned entertaining.

And if he's busting balls, like he would, because let's run through there. Have we heard he had issues with Brett? Yes. Have we heard he had issues with Piper? Yes. Have we heard he had issues with the quote unquote vanilla midgets? Yes. Did he have issues with Bam Bigelow?

Yes. Guys saw Kevin Nash having a few cocktails telling stories and they turned it into a telephone game with Dave Meltzer. Oh, he's having a booking meeting, burying guys. What? No,

he's not. Are you serious? There's no scenario where that happened. It's just, that's not the way it happens, guys. By the way,

you know, you've been critical of Tony Kahn. I hate that we're interjecting a little AEW conversation in here, but people were rising on him after Wednesday night.

It was their 200th episode. of the show and the production team the graphics guys threw up a graphic on their tron. It didn't air on television but it said thank you Tony for 200 episodes and smart asses online

said boy, what WWE thanks the audience Tony Kahn thanks himself and I'm like guys do you think Tony Kahn made that graphic or ordered that graphic or knew that graphic was coming? And I got a lot of who decided they knew more about how wrestling works backstage maybe than I do.

And they were like, you're telling me that there was a graphic that Tony Kahn didn't approve? Yeah, motherfucker. Who's got time to approve every graphic? He has a production. You know, there's a whole guy, a whole truck of people out there working, right? I mean, there's people scattered all over the earth doing graphics for this company. Do you think Tony Kahn's in there running fucking Photoshop? What's wrong with them?

And by the way, there's a director of the name there. by the name of Mike Mansourri, who this seems like something Mike would have done. It's a nice gesture. The fact that you pointed out that it didn't even happen on television is an example of why

I like to fuck with people on social media. Because the sheer levels of stupidity are nothing less than highly entertaining. And I can't help myself. Fuck with those people. Now, you were probably kind and gentle the way you pointed out, stupidity in some of those comments

because like you, I don't believe that Tony actually said, hey, would you guys do me a favor? No. I know I'm getting a little bit of heat in social media. Would you put up a sign? This is, thank you, Tony. I don't think that happened. I think far like much like you, far more likely, Mike Mansori or somebody who worked in all trucks and hey,

let's just say thank you. Because by the way, our checks clear every two fucking weeks and they're huge. So let's thank the man. I'm sure it went something like this, Eric. Hey man, did you realize this week is episode 200? No way, is it really? Yeah. Or are we going to acknowledge that on TV? Nah, Tony didn't want to. Well, shit, let's just thank

Tony after the show. I'll just change it to say thank you, Tony. Oh, that's a good idea. So we'll send the guys out and they'll all clap. Man, that'll be a nice gesture for Tony. That was it. This shit didn't happen on TV. Like the idea that, I guess these same fans think, Eric, that Well, there was a graphic. I'm sure Vince McMahon approved it. No, but see, that's what Dave Meltzer would do, right? This is a Dave Meltzer type story. You throw a little bit of dirt out there that makes no fucking sense.

Well, I heard from a guy that heard from a guy that he works there. And this is what happened. This is the kind of bullshit that is distracting, at the very least, harmful in many respects, and add to the frustration and the negativity that currently have towards AEW. I mean, if you look at any of the stories that are posted on, let's say, Wrestling Inc., for example, there's others, and then whatever the story is, good or bad, you go down and you read the comments. Yeah. It's like 80% negative, where it used to be 80% positive.

I hate it. AEW is having a hard time cultivating a positive public relations image within the wrestling audience primarily because of Tony and some of the stupid shit that he's done. Here's one thing that gives me hope with regard to AEW and Tony in particular. Tony hasn't come out and made some of the same silly self-destructive comments that he typically does with regard to WWE. He's been very quiet on social media.

He said he doesn't want to talk about it. That's good. That suggests to me that Tony's learning on the job, that coming out and exploiting situations and trying to take shots at WWE, even though they may deserve it, doesn't serve him well.

It is not a good reflection on him right now. The fact that he's staying quiet, suggest to me that he's learning or someone is talking to him and he's listening, which is the same thing as learning. So that's a good thing. And Tony's been overall pretty quiet in social

media and I think that's a good thing. I know you don't know him, know him, but I would tell you that in my experience, it's been my experience that Tony Khan has always been very classy in the way he handles tragedies and bad things that have happened. I just know

behind the scenes some of the things he's done he's done for like the briscoe family and other people who were a part of the team who worked behind the scenes and all that jazz i think he recognizes hey man talking about on w w about some of the horrible stuff we've heard recently that that ain't that ain't cool that's just not very human so i don't expect you'll see any of that that's good he's learning because he was pretty outspoken early on when some of this stuff was happening, taking shots at Vince and he was. He pumped the brakes.

Something happened definitively that caused him to pump the brakes. It's not like he wasn't doing it. Well, the thing that happened was 67 pages. We all read it. I mean, I haven't talked to him about it, but I'm just saying like, when you don't have all the context and you don't have all the details, and then when you do, you're like, oh, well, I. nothing funny about this.

Leave it alone. Let's talk about Goldberg. Melzer would write and yet another example of one of life and wrestling's most perplexing moment. WCW told Bill Goldberg to go on the tonight show with Jay Leno on February 19th and issue a challenge to Steve Austin. And then they failed to follow up on their own idea for this major grandstand angle with their typically weasily acknowledgement of it on the

pay-per-view, and Nitro didn't even mention Austin's name. Goldberg himself didn't want to issue the challenge to Austin, feeling it might make him feel like a star beneath the level of Austin publicly, which, although he is, isn't something that WCW should put Goldberg in the position of looking like since he's still the most marketable wrestler in the company. It was the idea of Eric Bischoff and Kevin Nash, who ordered him to do it, and as usual, Well, it wasn't well thought out since the original idea was for Goldberg to challenge anyone in the rival company. Boy, goodness gracious.

You're getting the blame for this, but I know you have history with the tonight show. What do you remember about this grandstand challenge from Goldberg? You know, it wasn't trying to reflect back on the conversation I had with it. it was a passing thought. You know, what are we going to talk about? What should we do? There was a lot of chatter about Austin and Goldberg. You know, Goldberg is a ripoff of Steve Austin,

all that kind of bullshit. So I think, you know, probably there was some conversation about leading into it and having some fun with it, but it's not like I scripted what I wanted Bill to go out there and say. That's not kind of how that worked. I just don't think it was as much of a definitive plan as Meltzer has suggested that I ordered him to do.

I don't order people shit. Never did. I ordered Ray Mysterio to take him off his mask. That was about as close as I've come to an order. So again, it's a narrative. It was the way it was positioned. Dave was making him much. bigger deal out of it than it actually was in our conversations.

I'd have to hear Bill's side of that story to comment it on any further because you can't comment on bullshit other than just saying it's bullshit. And there may be enough truth to this or enough actual, a small percentage of fact in this to make me question it. But overall, I say it was highly overstated once again, my answer to create a narrative that they wanted to. maybe you did it in the hotel banquet room the day after nitro when you kept everybody in town talked about how you had a special meeting to figure out how to bury canyon and bam bam

bigelow can you imagine hey guys it's my off day let's figure out how we're going to fuck over canyon and bigelow we got to get to the bottom of it yeah and particularly you know and i had such a good relationship with just canyon it's not like that was somebody I would have fought for. No, uh, no, uh, that's right.

You were buried in it. You held a meeting. You know, back. You noted the minutes like it was a corporate meeting. Talk about the show. Super Bowl 9,

we're finally here. And it's sold out. 15,000, 880 fans are here. Paying an incredible $550,6151. Another $118,000. 455 in merch. It was sold out weeks ahead of time. And of course, Dave Meltzer says, well, this is a bad thing. The show exemplified WCW's biggest problems. The fact the public is

seeing it as a senior's tour and that nothing is being done to change that perception. And nobody believes there's a possibility of clean finishes in big matches. As once again, when Flair put the figure four on, even before David Flair came out of the curtains, all heads turned to the back, rather than giving any attention to the ring where a world title match change was seemingly on the verge of taking place. So let's talk about that just for a minute, because I do know that that was a criticism that you were too reliant on old stars and you didn't make new stars, and I hear you, I would always challenge that with, what about DDP, what about Goldberg, etc., etc.

However, Chris Yarrow, Eddie Guerrero. Bram Stereo, I don't know. Bramisterio. But still, it's hard to argue with the success. I want to remind everybody, we said this was the third highest grossing or most sold WCW pay-review in history. As a reminder, before that was the case, the number one of all time originally for WCW was Bash at the Beach 94 with Hulk Hogan and Flair.

And then they beat it. with Hulk Hogan and Sting. And then they got real close with Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, and two NBA players. And now we're back again with Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair. The common denominator in literally everything I said is Hulk Hogan.

So I know that Eric gets a lot of criticism for being one of Hogan's boys. Oh, A.M. Eric gave Hulk everything he wanted. I just rattled off the top four pay-per-view. Paul Cogan's in all of them. So we can say, oh, it was this and it was that. What it was was hugely fucking financially successful. And that can't be debated.

But I do think he's on to something where maybe we had gotten a little convoluted with our finishes, maybe a little too predictable, maybe we had lost some of our Sarsa. And you've even said before that finishes became a real problem in WCW. To the point we're in the main event. that everybody paid to see and sold out weeks in advance, and it's now the third biggest of all time in WCW history with the benefit of hindsight.

When Flair Hooks on the figure four, they're not watching the match. Now they're like, oh, who's coming down the ramp? Somebody's coming. Had you done too much of that at this point, do you think? Clearly. Yeah. I mean, you can't look back and analyze what we're doing

and where we were at this particular point and not recognize that. The finishes were always, weakness in WCW prior to me getting there as a talent in 91, during the time I was a talent all the way up until 93 when I became executive producer, all the way through 94, 95 when I became vice president. By 95 had had a voice, a large one in creative, all the way through 96 and 97 when my voice got even louder and I had even more control and confidence to challenge decisions that I previously might not have challenged because of my lack of confidence

when it came to creative, throughout that entire period of time, when Rick Flair was the booker, when Dusty Rose was the booker, when there was a combination of people on a booking committee was, you know, a laugh about booking committees today, like it was something that never existed before. It still exists today, folks. You call it a writing team, you can call it creative team. It's a fucking booking committee. No matter what you call it, it's the same thing. Yes. But throughout all of those iterations of creative influence and control, WCW never had anybody that was good at finishes.

Finishes were always an afterthought at best. And, well, that's the best way to say it. At best, they were an afterthought. It was just the way to end the match. And sometimes there were great stories leading into those matches. The finish is detracted. It became a term, vernacular, that became commonplace within the internet, well, the dirt sheet wrestling community or the internet.

A dusty finish became an adjective. Because we saw it so often where there was a convoluted or compromised finish, really, to try to keep everybody. It wasn't like lack of ability or lack of passion for a good finish. It was a belief that keeping everybody healthy was healthy storyline-wise and is the best way to continue telling stories. I don't know if it's ever articulated exactly like that, but have to kind of surmise that that was the thinking because it happened so consistently.

And yeah, it was always an issue. But it was interesting that you pointed out something there too, where we got into the, we conditioned, we've all of talked about while you hear it. talked about in television production meetings, for example, where we want to precondition the audience right before the show, we're going to go out, we're going to warm them up, we're going to do something or say something that's going to plant a seed that we think will cause a reaction that we want during the show. That's conditioning the audience, pre-conditioning the audience. We had inadvertently pre-conditioned the audience to reflect.

We looked at the entrance for the run-in during the finish because we did it so many times that they expected. It's interesting you pointed that out and we were guilty of that. It worked for a while. It worked great. 96, 97. Leave the show with heat. Leave the show wide open so people had to tune in to see what was going to happen. That formula worked extremely well for several years.

years and then it didn't but by the time it didn't work any longer unfortunately we had preconditioned the audience to expect it and to not even accept a finish as an actual finish because they felt like there's another chapter coming yeah there's another chapter coming that's uh maybe not what you expect i got to admit when i sat down and watched this show back I did not recall the way it started. A very attractive blonde woman in a hotel room asking what we want for room service. This is the debut of Tori Wilson.

We've never seen her before. But here she is. And I'm not sure if that's a sword on the bed. But she's talking to an unseen man. and she's asking if he's okay. She wonders if she's hurt him. And then he hands her super brawl tickets. She says that's awesome.

It's going to make her friends jealous. She suggests a shopping trip. And then she leaves to change clothes. We know eventually we're going to find out that she's with David Flair. But what an interesting way to debut Tori Wilson. here. How did you find Tori and how did we decide? I got an idea. What if we make her look naked in a bed and we open a pay-per-view with that? Wow. I don't know where that creative came from. I did not have it. I don't think I had a hand in that. It doesn't look or sound

like anything that I would have come up with. And I'm not going to dump it on anybody else. But I'm pretty sure I didn't have anything to do with that one. As far as where did we find Tori. Tori found us, I think through Barry Blue. Wow. I think. I think.

It may have been, because I think she was a fitness model. That's right. There was a guy who, I can't remember his name right now, but he was with Golds, Jim, and he had a great relationship

with a lot of the talent. I think he was an executive at Goals. So he managed different franchises around the country. Gold's Jim was a really hot property at the time. And because of this individual's connections to the wrestling business, I'll think of his name probably shows over. He had a relationship with her. And I think it's him who introduced her to Barry somehow.

And I think it was Barry Bloom that introduced her, I think. It's an interesting way to debut. Let's talk about the opening match here. Disco is trying to join the NWO. And he's out here. taken on Booker T. Booker T is going to get a win here in nine minutes and 19 seconds. He wins with the Harlem Hangover. Disco was not injured, although it did look pretty scary. I feel like we should take a time out right here and talk about.

Did you see the Sammy Guevara accident with Jeff Hardy on social? Yeah, I did. I as a fan, I admit, I don't know fuck all about wrestling, but I wondered do you think we see injuries like that happen because we're not getting as many reps as we did back in the day? I mean, these guys are working so infrequently now that they may only wrestle a handful of times a year versus once upon a time,

you know, you'd wrestle four or five times in a week. What did you think when you saw the accident with Sammy and Jeff Hardy? I'm very concerned for Jeff. I mean, he took that knee right to the side of the face. I don't know where it actually hit him, but it looked to be like it just planted right on his cheekbone, his temple. And that's a lot of power coming down off.

There's a lot of weight coming down off that top turnbuckle. And there's nowhere for Jeff's head to go. So fearful, clearly. I didn't really ask myself why. but I think your observation is probably mostly correct. I think part of it is too because of the nature of what AEW finds appealing is so much of the high risk, you know, justified this is awesome chance, which usually are a result of something really, really high risk and stupid.

that's what they're going for. And I think Eid, the sense that talent probably feels like they've got to go to an extreme to get over, particularly because you're wrestling in front of 2,000 people on a television show. The audience isn't into your shit at all from the opening match on. It's like wrestling in front of a high school cafeteria crowd. that makes it harder for talent and they push even further and they do things that are even riskier to try to overcome that issue.

But I think mostly it's the reps. Yeah. These guys are just not as tight and it's sharp as they would be if they're on the road three or four or five days a week. It is an issue. And I don't know what, you know, I think Dave Meltzer. reported finish went according to plan and it's not that big of an injury, I have heard

substantially the opposite. It's a mess. It's a mess and it's a mistake. It's somebody's going to get hurt. Seriously hurts. People get hurt all the time. You start taking knees to the head from the top rope. What's it going to take? Somebody going to need to die. Somebody's going to have to get brain injuries before somebody finally wakes up and goes, okay, we need to get a little better control over what we do and how we do it. I don't know. Hopefully not. I want to mention neither you nor I are piling on Sammy Guevara.

Accidents happen. You know, we don't think, I don't think there's any chance he intentionally heard anyone. I just don't know. Just want to be careful that we're not being reckless here. You know, I think we all want the same thing. We want the performers to be safe. And we want these guys to go back home the way they left home.

Uh, so we're pulling for Jeff and hopefully his broken nose and whatever else he suffered. Uh, he's back and at him sooner rather than later. If all he's got out of this deal is a broken nose, he got really, really lucky. No doubt. Next up, we've got Chris Jericho and Perry Saturn. Meltzer would say this match was a mix of very good spots, fast pacing, weak transitions, and bad brawling. If you're watching with us over on YouTube, can we just go back to that image of Jericho?

How awesome is that? not only that but ralphus the way we got ralphus dolled up like this era of jericho is so much this might be my most favorite i was just going to say can you think of a better era of chris jericho than this i mean he was at his physical prime clearly not that only here i mean clearly his physical time carried over into wwe for time but i think at this point in time between being in his physical prime, his creative prime, in my opinion. And he had such a free hand.

That was all Chris Jericho. We knew it was happening. We allowed it to happen. We approved it, I guess. But this was generated by Chris. This wasn't me having input or Kevin Sullivan having input. Kevin may have had more than I did. But for the most part, Chris Jericho had carte blanche to a certain point.

point. He couldn't book himself, or he would have booked himself in a main event with Bill Goldberg, one point. Probably still would have stayed with WCW if we'd let that happen, conceivably. But this was, without a doubt, Chris Jericho had his finest. Chris May I beg to it. He would know better than I. The original stiff is that Saturn would have to wear the dress for 90 days, but in this

match, it's pointed out by the announcers, that Saturn is 30 days up, 30 days were up and he was still wearing the dress but not only is he wearing it like it yeah not only is he wearing the dress but so was ralphus uh it's a fun match two and a quarter stars uh you're gonna see a little some shenanigans as we like to say diginson recovers he awards the victory to uh jericho by dq two and a half stars so you're doing everything you can to convince jericho to stick around but he's not long for this world. Billy Kidman is here, as is his bride to be. He's going to get a win over at Chavo Guerrero.

This is for the Cruiserweight Championship. They go eight minutes and 26 seconds. Meltzer would say that Kidman won with a shooting star press, but it was a disappointment. Then we get an interesting match. Chris Binwai and Dean Malenko, taking on Barry Windham and Kurt Henning. The idea here is we got,

you know, two of the best performers and former horsemen here on one side taking on Barry Wyndham and Kerr Henning maybe former horsemen of their own this is sort of rapist crap sort of deal here Benoit is the best worker on the show with all his realistic looking offense

according to Dave Meltzer he says the finish of the match was pretty good with a lot of near falls and saves the bell never actually rang to begin the second match which was to begin after a 30 second respite period. Windham took off his belt, choked Malinko out with it, then larried him and got the pen. I guess it was 20 seconds because it never really started, but boy, did it make Benoit and

Malenko look bad. So, you know, I don't know that everybody knows this, but Barry Windham's very tall in real life. And maybe that's what we're talking about here, that Maliko and Benoit were not necessarily the biggest guys in there with Barry Windham. Maybe that's exposed a little bit. says that when you book them like this, it's a killer. Melenko can get over because of his size, but the crowd was just not into it. They were dead. Do you think visually it always has to be a David versus Goliath type match if you have

a size difference? Have we moved past that in wrestling? When did that change or did it? I don't know that it has. I think there's just different ways to do it. Does it have to be obvious? Does it have to be so on the nose and you're building everything off the size difference? No, I don't think that.

Especially today, you know, the nature of type of offense and high-flying shit that we see and combinations of things that we see that we probably never saw until the last five, six, seven, eight years. I don't think there's a cut and dry answer. But I also think that ignoring the size difference, will take you out of the, take you out of the picture. It's got to be believable. And if you're, if you're Dean Malenko and you're 5 foot 10 and you're 200 pounds, 210 pounds, and you're in there with Barry Wyndham,

it's probably all of 6.5 and 260, 280. If you don't use that as part of your story and acknowledge the size difference, and allow the smaller opponent to figure out ways to overcome it, and that's the essence of the match or the story, if you will, the psychology in the match. I think that's always going to be a requisite in a situation like this. I just think there's ways to address it today that probably weren't available. Those people would protect them.

But I don't, you know, what are you going to do? Ignore it. Does anybody believe it? Is there any chance anybody will believe? leave what the story that's taking place in the ring, if don't acknowledge the size difference and a David Goliath aspect of it, I don't think so. Next up, we've got Kevin Nash and Scott Hall teaming up to take on Ray Mysterio and Conan. Scott Hall is here replacing Lex Lugar because Lex can't wrestle.

He's had surgery to repair his torn left bicep. But he is going to be ringside along with Miss Elizabeth. Meltzer would say Hall sold for all of Mysterio Jr.'s Flying moves until catching him with a fallaway slam. He was thrown around like a lawn dart until he made the hot tag.

That hot tag didn't last long, as you can imagine. Mysterio hit some moves and Nash was selling it like he was dead. Elizabeth distracts the ref so Hall can use the outsider's edge on Ray, but Nash is on top of him for the pen. And Mysterio

unmasks after the match the crowd didn't react to the unmasking like it was any big deal although chivani did try to play it up as if it was history in the making a stereo was a great one-man show here three and a quarter stars and the fans didn't react like it was a big deal because it wasn't made to feel like a big deal and in hindsight you've said this before many times on the show this is one you wish you had back right Yeah, I do. I do.

Even if I would have said, if somebody said you could have a redo, you can have a redo, you still have to take the mask off. Making it feel like a big deal would have been a much better way to go. Here's what people need to realize. At that time, within the context, I thought. that because Ray is a good-looking guy, he's telegenic, he's got a face for the camera, especially as a baby face, because by taking the mask off,

he would be able to emote, communicate to the audience, his emotions during the course of his match or even in an interview situation. Ray would connect better to the audience without a mask than he did with the mask. That was the reason I wanted to take the mask off because I thought Ray would become an even bigger star or more relatable to certain segments of the audience,

particularly kids. I thought that was a better direction with Ray than holding on to the tradition of the mask. That was my judgment call. I don't know that I was wrong. I think I could have been it could have been a better situation again

it didn't exist but had WCW developed and had an established licensing and merchandising division which we didn't have we were reacting to things that were popular if we would have had

a mature and effective infrastructure for licensing and merchandising. I would have played off the mask. It would have been great if we were making money off of it. But we weren't. And since we weren't making,

you weren't really generating any revenue in licensing and merchandising for the reasons I just suggested. And because I thought that Ray could become an even bigger star, because Ray Star was still ascending at this point. It wasn't like at his peak. He was ascending. And I thought, okay,

he could become an even bigger star if he has the ability that everybody else who's a star has is to use their face as a tool on television because that's how it works folks that's how it works your face tells the story more than your missile drop kick off the top rope it just is what it is and that's what i was banking up i had to do it all over again sure i would have different most importantly to me and this has nothing to do with business really I would have been more respectful to Ray Mysterio as a human being because I didn't understand the relationship in the history

that Ray had with the mask and its cultural relevance in the area that Ray really grew up as a professional in Mexico. I didn't relate to it. I didn't even try to. That's what I regret. But the actual decision and the reasons for making that decision, I don't regret. In the context of the time that I made

them, I think I made a good decision. I just wish knowing now, but I didn't know then, I would have handled it differently. Well, these days, we don't have to worry about merch on our side because I know where you can get a whole bunch of those Ray Mysterio masks.

With us, we've got a brand new partnership with fanatics in the WWE shop. So pick up some wrestling swag right now at shop wrestlingmerch.com. That's S-H-O-P wrestlingmerch.com. We now have an official affiliate partnership with fanatics, and that means you can shop with confidence

for your favorite WW Superstar T's, hoodies, caps, belts, and more, all on the official WW shop, which you can find at shopwrestlingmerch.com. That's a special link that will support our show won't cost you anything extra. Same great products, same great pricing, everything you expect from fanatics

but it helps the show whenever you check out shop wrestlingmerch.com so if you're watching along with us on YouTube just hit that QR code that's up on your screen right now or be sure to check out the link below and you'll get it hooked up shop wrestlingmerch.com is where you need to go by the way I should mention in my real life

I'm helping people save money left and right over at save with conrad.com and I'd be excited to help you do this too We've recently learned that credit card debt here in America is in the trillions. It's at an absolute all-time high. And if you're feeling like you're stuck making minimum payments and you've got this crazy over-the-top interest charges with your current credit card company, I can help. Savewithconrad.com.

How about this for starters? No house payments for two months. If you haven't already, you don't have to make your March or your April payment. You're done until May 1st. and we can get rid of all your credit card debt, just like that. We're routinely helping our 83 weeks listeners here, say 5, 6, 7, even 800 bucks a month. But how much can you save? Find out right now for free by giving us a call toll free at 8884250105.

Yes, that's really me. Yes, we'll answer. Ask for me at 888-4250105. Drop me an email, Conrad at savewithconrad.com. Or get a quick quote for yourself. right now at savewithconrad.com. Again, you don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of your pocket.

And if we can't help you save some cash, we won't waste your time. But it's important to note at savewithconrad.com, we don't say no. We say not yet, but here's how. You need a game plan, whether you're looking to buy a house, sell a house, get rid of some credit card debt, maybe add on, add a man cave, put in a pool. And we've done all that. So we can answer your questions about saving money or about down payment or about credit. or about credit scores.

We want to be your mortgage advisor for life. You've got a friend in the mortgage business. You know me. So why not hit me up? Save withconrad.com. And let's get back to it. The big story coming out of the show, of course, is Ray Mysterio losing the mask.

And we've talked about that in the archives as well. Maybe we needed to monetize the mask a little better here in WCW. So pick up a Ray Mysterio mask at Shop Wrestlingmerch.com. next up we got the TV title two big time stars here battling out for the TV title in 992 Scott Steiner and Diamond Dallas page believe it or not really good match according to Dave Meltzer three and a quarter stars there's going to be a big pop here for Steiner winning page is going to be stretchered out here after the big exposed metal turn buckle and then the Steiner recliner

Fans are chanting DDP sucks at him. We're still a couple of months away from him winning the world title the first time. But a stretcher job here for DDP against Scott Steiner. What do you remember of this one? Not much, really. Page was excited about it. It's a team player. I was looking for ways to make it as good as he possibly could,

which is typical Diamond Dallas page. By the way, we're talking about Diamond Dills page. I want to shout out to GDP. I saw a video. I don't know if you've seen it. With Butterbean. With Butterbean. And I would even mind showing that perhaps next week when we're prepped for it.

It's a little bit of a long video or podcast. But it's so amazing what Diamond Dales page is doing for other people, which has always been his nature. Page was always pushing. He was pushing for himself. Do not get me wrong. Page is the most consistent self-promoter I have ever met in my life. But he's equally as passionate about helping other people.

And to see what Paige has been able to accomplish outside of the wrestling ring in his second career, which is probably bigger than his in-ring career at this point, he's become so successful with DDPY yoga and all the other things that he's doing. But impact that he's had on people that we all know have relationships with. But as we saw with Butterbean and the hell, I mean, it's absolutely amazing. And if you haven't seen it, please search it out. It's really amazing. And Butterbean, I worked with Butterbean.

I think Butterbean was a part of Hulk Hogan Celebrity Championship wrestling for that. And that's how I got to know him. What a wonderful human being is. He's just a good guy. And to see Butterbean get a hold of his situation and work so hard and overcome it and working out again.

It's just fascinating to me. Much respect, much love to Diamond Dells Page. For the respected love he gives to others. Well said, if you haven't already, check out that Butterbean video. You're going to love it. Scott Hall's here. He's going to be beating Roddy Pop.

Piper for the U.S. title. They go eight minutes and 19 seconds. Meltzer says, what can be said about Piper that hasn't been said? He was a zombie who could barely move out there. They tried an eye pokes. Piper can't bump and look so bad. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

The gist is we needed to get the belt off of Brett. Kevin Nash wanted it off of him. Maybe Brett thought this is so I'm ready for the Hulk push for the world title. Whatever. The Brett is, Brett drops the belt to Piper and Piper immediately. drops it Kevin Nash, his friend, Scott Hall, not being negative, just saying that's what happened.

And it wasn't a great match. Negative star and a quarter. Next up, we got Bill Goldberg, wrestling Bam Bam Bigelow. Meltzer would say a week ago, this was booked to be a quickie. Bigelow came out to no music, so he appeared to be even deader than he really is. This was the deadest Goldberg match since his infamous match with Stephen Regal. It went way too long. and while Goldberg sold his leg well

the match just made him another wrestler and he can't get over as anything special in that role. The awkwardness in talking about the tonight show appearance by the announcers didn't help. All in all, this was a major step

backwards for him, even though he was protected and won clean. They're saying this because they go 11 minutes and 39 seconds. Eric, why wasn't this a squash? Don't know. Don't know.

Feels like bad booking, doesn't it? Well, clearly it was bad booking. It's not saying. It's bad creative all the way around. Yeah. Possibly from the initial matchup. And Ben Bigelow had his own. He had a very strong opinion and he's not afraid to express it.

Probably a compromise, as is often the case when you have something that looks good on paper but sucks in real life. And Bill wasn't ready for an 11-minute match. That was one of the challenges with Bill. And it remained a challenge and probably still does to this day or did when Bill was active

even as recently as his performances in WWE. Bill Goldberg never developed. This is not a knock. This is actually a result of Bill being such a phenomenal character. And finding that niche of that

that super dominant character that didn't have to go out there and take 20 minutes to beat somebody. Just go out there and eat you. It's what got him over. It's what created the phenom that he was. But the downside of that is he didn't have a foundation where he could go out there and have a match that was different than a match that got him over.

They have the tools in his tool chest. He's only comfortable doing a few things. By comfortable, I mean, knowing he was confident and going out there and being able to perform them well. There's not a chain wrestler. He was not great at selling. It made longer format matches a much bigger challenge for him. And perhaps knowing that, this was not the right opponent for him.

Because Man Bigelow had his own sense of what worked and what didn't his character. It's not that he was wrong. He's a big dude. I was Bill going to go out there and just manhandle a guy his size. That didn't make sense either. So it was just a bad matchup. It was a bad creative. Should have never put them together to begin with.

What's good creative is our main event. Hulk Hogan retaining the WCW title, pinning Rick Flair in 12 minutes. As we said, this was the third highest drawing paper review of all time. So they run it back the next month at uncensored. here's how we got there. Flair works a semi-heel style

since he's better at carrying people with it, according to Dave Meltzer. For whatever reason, Hogan was better than usual, although it was like watching a greatest hits of the 80s video. Flair does all of his signature stuff and they trade the hard chops. Hogan hit a chair to the head

and a terrible second chair shot and like the old Flair of the old era, Flair came up with a gusher. Flair came back with a series of low blow on his comeback. Then he gets the belt. He gives Hogan one of the worst belt shots in history. After punching Hogan with the buckle,

Hogan juices. And then Torrey Wilson came to ringside. To borrow a Frere Flays, phrase, I'll get it right. Looking as only she can look. She slapped Flair. She could be a marketing bonanza for WCW because she's fresher and more

attractive than any of the women in the WWF, although some could debate that. But for angle purposes, has more presence, and can talk and deliver a line better than any woman in wrestling already. Since it's WCW, where every ball put right in their glove is still dropped, she probably won't be. Hogan misses the leg drop, Flair puts on the figure four. David Flair comes out in a leather jacket wearing an NWO red t-shirt with the taser

and a ski mask over his head, and he zapsed flare twice and Hogan pins him after the match. he unmasks and starts swapping spit with Tori. Boy, we're heavy on story here. We're involving the nature boy son, this beautiful new girlfriend, maybe she's motivation for turning on his dad. What did you think of the execution here? Rick Flair's own son turns against him here and joins the NWO.

At the time, I was probably excited about it than I am now. or I would be now. It's just too cheesy and easy and just, eh. But at that time, I probably thought it was a pretty cool idea. Having your son turned against you is, could have been a great story, possibly. If David, player had more experience and was better established with the crowd, and had we established a close relationship,

with David and Rick Pryor done that effectively over a period of time then that turn would have actually mattered some but looking at it now was just like it's a finished version of

cheapy just easy low-hanging fruit that really didn't matter talk to me about the Hulk Hogan chair shots it's become a beam online you know Hulk Hogan was not a hard wrestler. He never had a reputation for being a guy who would take liberties or hurt people.

And no one who ever saw him swing a chair would ever accuse him of that. Do you remember that ever being a discussion or a source of ribbing these Hulk Hogan chair shots that wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight? Wow. Source of conversation or ribbing? No. obvious to a lot of people, yes. To me, I kind of dreaded, and we don't see a lot of chair shots anymore anyway. But to me, chair shots were always like either really brutal and too risky or hokey as hell. Very few people were good at them.

Very few. That could be consistently good. I just never liked him. I didn't like him when Hogan did it. I didn't like it when anybody used to chair. I never found it aesthetically compelling. The fact that Hulk was probably on a list of 10 people who were affected with a chair, he might have been right around the bottom of that list because he was careful about him.

He didn't want to hurt anybody. Right. To him, it wasn't worth it. and he and it showed yes i would have preferred he never done it but did occasionally never really looked great maybe in maybe when he was younger maybe in w c wc not when he was in wc he didn't share shots anybody especially all instagram a wrestling historian says was Hollywood Hogan going to have another long title run in 99 if he wouldn't have had issues with his name?

Probably not. Probably would have opted to engage the heart grows, founder and given him some time away in a comeback. That was the original plan, going into Halloween Havoc later that year was for Hulk to disappear for a while because we never, never, ever intended Hulk to be a regular feature on television. He was always intended to be an attraction, but as the NW. Heated up and became more successful, it saw more and more and more and more of Hulk,

but clearly by 1999, we all recognized we were running out of gas. as far as the NW was concerned and we're looking for other directions. And I think giving time, giving Hulk time away to kind of reinvest in his attracting or attraction status was on the top of our mind. So I don't think there would have been any long-term running. Awex, Archer wants to know. Seeing the tag titles,

I wonder what is Eric's favorite title design in WCW that isn't the big gold belt? also based on prestige what is your favorite non-world singles championship from any company at any time heavy belt questions do any of the belt stand out to you in wcw no other than the big gold belt no yeah because i've never really been that fascinated or interested in the belts or their history sure i think in terms of a title that made sense for me the wf intercontinental title always seemed to be the gateway championship yes for a long time it did and the reason it

stands out of my mind is because of that because so few titles really do mean a lot or represent future opportunity obviously the world title does but I always like the continental title because once somebody

made it that far you could start betting on them going forward and that matters that matters for storytelling I've always respected that because of that. The rest of the belts and championships to me seem to be so interchangeable and afterthought that it was hard for me to get excited about them.

Honest truth. We'll do a couple more here and then we'll put a bow on this one. JBL Sena fan too says, why didn't WCW have 50 different Mysterio Mass and figures and just push them to the moon? I love your show, by the way. I'm not being a jackass. You kind of touched on that. No, I don't take it as a jackass comment.

Look, we talked about it before. I try to hesitate or I hesitate to talk about things we've already covered. But WCW didn't really have a licensing and merchandising division. We did technically on paper. But the people in that department had very little experience, very little experience, very little they didn't have the Rolodex, they didn't have the relationships in the industry to really maximize the opportunities that kind of exploded. Keep in mind, WCW before 1996, we were selling shirts, T-shirts at the arenas, and maybe, you know, maybe a 900 line, but didn't have any retail relationships. WCW couldn't get their merchandise into any retail locations.

We didn't have any licensing opportunities with toy companies. If we did, they were minimal until about 95 or 96. And then it exploded. But by the time it exploded and there was this demand for WCW product, it took two years to develop the infrastructure, hire the right people, connect with the right vendors or the right customers or the right distributors. All that takes time.

And by the time we finally got that in place, we were on a downhill slide. So it would have been nice had I had the foresight back in 94 to really invest in our licensing and merchandising. Keep in mind, it would have made no fucking sense to anybody that I reported to at the time. I would have been questioned. Why are you doing this when there's no demand for the product?

I would have had to explain, well, that doesn't matter. I know there's no demand for the product, but I want to spend the money to do it. anyway because I was looking at my crystal ball while I was eating my Cheerios and it said in 1996 and 97 there's going to be a hell of an opportunity and there's this guy by the name of Ray Mysterio I know we haven't heard of him yet but he's coming and when he does he could be wearing a mask and I'm going to take that mask off at some point so in the meantime why don't we have some masks for sale for this guy that we don't know yet I'm having fun with that

but my point is I just didn't see it coming we didn't see the success of the NW happening we didn't see the explosion of nitro happening and we weren't prepared for it by the time we got prepared for it kind of I'd already miss the boat is the honest answer one last question Joe wants to know

was Super Bowl Super Bowl 9 the last great WCW pay-per-view I don't know that it was a great pay-per-view we had it pretty significant We had significant success financially. I don't know that anything happened on that pay-per-view that makes me feel like it was a great pay-per-view other than we sold $485,000 of the motherfuckers. That makes it a great picture. But artistically, creatively, I think it paled in comparison to some of the payper views that we did in 97 and 98, even 96, possibly even 95.

So, no, I don't think it was a great pay-per-view, but I think it was the last example of what could have been WCW. Well, we're going to talk about what could have been next week here on the show when we talk about whatever the hell you guys want to talk about.

We're kicking an old school, we're going to a poll, and the poll is up right now at 83 weeks.com. Cruise on over to 83 weeks.com. That's our YouTube channel, and we've got a poll posted right there. I know in years past we've put the polls up on Twitter.

We're putting it on YouTube. We want to hear from you. So if you haven't already, go check out our YouTube. It's 83 weeks.com. That'll get you there. Hit the subscribe button and turn on your notifications, but you never know when Eric and I are going to go live again, but we're planning to go live again very soon. Of course, this weekend we've got the elimination chamber. Before you know it, it'll be

Rick Flair's last match. We'll have Go-Hall episodes for raw and smackdown before night one and night two of WrestleMania and we're going to be going live early and often over on YouTube so if you haven't already cruise on over check out 83 weeks com that takes you right to our YouTube hit the subscribe button turn on the notifications bell and vote for next week's poll we want your suggestions so vote in the poll and then go ahead and let us know what you want to see on next week's poll

And we'll crank it out, man. By the way, if you're looking at Target men, 25 to 50, 4 years old, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us. Check it out at advertise witheric.com. If you've got a question for the show, it's easy to ask us and find us on Twitter. He is at E. Bischoff on Twitter,

at the real Eric Bischoff on Instagram. Our show is at 83 Weeks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Lots of new swag available for you as well. Over at 83 Weeksmerch.com. we got i'm an eric fish off guy i'm back cody's the guy the ninja stars heat is life all that and so much more at 83 weeks merch dot com but if you haven't yet go vote go subscribe turn on the notifications bell 83 weeks dot com eric we covered it all man wwee ae wcw 25 years ago we just uh clocked in at over three hours today eric a bit of a marathon for you and i on a sunday

morning. And we've been hitting that three hour mark pretty consistently of late. But before we go, I do want to remind everybody, if you're listening, you live anywhere near the Detroit area. This weekend, I'm going to be at the Great Lakes Comic Con. Go to Great Lakes Comics Convention.com for tickets. We're going to be in Warren. There's so much great history in Detroit. I have not been back in a long time. This will be the first time I've had a chance to go back to Detroit. I'm actually going to have a couple days on the front end to visit with family, which I haven't done in embarrassingly a long time. So I'm looking forward to that, but I'm looking forward to seeing some of the fans there in Detroit. I grew up watching wrestling. I cut my teeth on professional

wrestling as a young kid watching in Detroit on CKLW out of Windsor, Canada, big time wrestling, Bobo Brazil was my favorites at the time, obviously the chic. That's where I developed my relationship with professional wrestling. So in a way, I'm going back to the very beginning, and I hope to see a lot of wrestling fans. They're Great Lakes Comics Convention.com for tickets. That's next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Check it out. I look forward to see you there.

That's this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Go see you Great Lakes and we'll see you next Monday, right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-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 apps. How easy is that?

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