83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 318: 83WEEKS LIVE!

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

On this episode of 83WEEKS, Eric is back from down under and ready to dish on everything that's happened in the world of professional wrestling while he was away. Eric and Conrad discuss the major WWE changes happening in the companies office staff, the productions changes that are giving the product new life, Tony Khan's reaction to releasing the backstage footage, and so much more on this 83WEEKS.com LIVE edition! MACK WELDON - Get timeless looks with modern comfort from Mack Weldon. Go to https://mackweldon.com/ and get 20% off your first order with promo code 83WEEKS. MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo 83WEEKS at https://shopmando.com/! #mandopod MANSCAPED- April is National Testicular Cancer Awareness Month! Visit https://www.manscaped.com/pages/we-save-balls to learn more about simple self-checks for cancer prevention. Get 20% OFF with code 83WEEKS at Manscaped.com and make a donation to the TCSociety at checkout. #shavetosave ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS https://app.rocketmoney.com/signup?_forward_params=1&_smtype=3&cl=on&utm_campaign=83weeks&utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=podcast&wpcid=83weeks&wpcn=83weeks&wpsnetn=podcast 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://shop.wwe.com/en/?SSAID=5036600&_s=afl_impact&irclickid=TGqUDyR%3AaxyPT79QyoThCyA5UkHWg6WnUzlX3s0&irgwc=1&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=Impact 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://www.savewithconrad.com/ ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/join BECOME A 83 WEEK MEMBER NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@83weeks/membership 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

Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks live with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm feeling awesome, Conrad. I just surprisingly fantastic, actually, would be the best way to tell you how I feel. I was expecting to come to the table today just all full of jet lag and dragging my ass. And I do have a touch of brain fog. I'm not as witty and charming as I normally am,

but I'm feeling pretty good. Well, I'm glad to hear it. And so is Mick Mack. He's already chiming in with us here watching live on YouTube saying, Hey, Eric, hope your flight was okay. Great seeing you.

Man, Australia. What a trip. And boy, things changed a little bit while you were going. There's some things that are happening and it's got everybody talking. And I know you had a brief moment to discuss it last week. when you went live from Australia, but, man, you know, I made this analogy a couple of weeks ago. It just feels like more like the late 90s. I'm not comparing the Monday Night

War era as far as show versus show, but just in the volume of news, it feels like there's something big happening every other day in professional wrestling. That's a relative. Yeah, and before we go any further, I want to shout out to Mick Mack. It was great seeing making, uh, in Australia. We had a chance to hang out and chat for just a bit, but it was always, it's it's great seeing them there thanks for coming out yeah we are wow i mean you talk about volume of news it was hard for me you know because i was stuck on a plane for 26 hours and it's hard for me to put my phone down man there's just so much going on it's it's almost hard to keep up with well we are live here on youtube normally we drop 83 weeks each and every monday and

it usually drops first thing in the morning uh eric and i usually record on sunday but this sunday he was down under as they say in Australia and you actually got to see brett hearts Australian stampede and I know that meant you got to spend a little bit of time with Brett what was your experience like hanging out with the hitman in Australia uh I wouldn't say we hung out um you know we said hello to each other I met his wife Stephanie was a beautiful woman and a very nice woman but we didn't you know we didn't have a lot to to share or just you know we everybody was busy. You know, Brett's line for two days. I was right next to him. My table was probably within 30 feet of his. And I mean, his line was out the door for two solid days. So, you know,

good on Brett. And, you know, he looked to be enjoying himself. We were watching the live event together for a brief period of time. I was in the opening segment. And by the way, shout out to Mass Warner and Josh Alexander. Had an absolute blast working with those two guys. really really enjoy getting to know man's just a little bit um we're going to probably hang out sometime in the future but oh you had to show the gut punch didn't you yeah well you know you get out in front of people and things just happen sometimes do you remember taking a photo with mans warner in front of a christmas tree in my living room uh honestly no because if i was at your house over christmas chances are we were imbibing so yeah no i don't he uh he had a booking and he

was in town and he came to swing through and say hello and he was like is it cool if i asked eric for a picture and i'm like yeah of course so he posted a random picture of you guys in front of a christmas tree and i'm sure it would make a hilarious christmas card you know he's he's a cool dude i really and i texted him after we're done when i was you know on my way home was the man let's let's get together sometime and uh break bread and have a drink and get to to know each other because he's just a great great guy he's very very positive and very talented too by the way he and Josh Alexander I'm talking a lot about manse but this is the second time I've been introduced to Josh in person we

worked tables together once a couple years ago and in Salt Lake City and enjoyed speaking to him briefly there but really got a chance to know him a little bit more and certainly watch him in the ring and I think both of them were fun as hell to work if for whatever reason you just normally consume WWE and AEW I want to encourage you try a little TNA even if you have a predisposition already about that promotion. Give it another shot because you need to see Josh Alexander, among other things.

But Josh Alexander is a world-class talent. If you love professional wrestling, you're going to love what he does between those ropes. And I think Mans Warner is probably one of the, I don't know, bright spots in a free agent. I mean, he doesn't have a major contract right now, but the guy's entertaining, he can cut a promo, he can talk. Oh, it's just a matter of time.

It is a matter of time. Totally agree. And I think for me, and it wasn't just my interactions with him. And I saw a lot of this backstage, by the way, there was a lot of great talent there. Of course, got to work with Mickey James again. It was nice to see her son running around, like, you know, having a blast reminded me of Garrett when he was just a little older than Mickey and Nick's son. You know, that was for, Shelton Benjamin got to hang out with Shelton quite a bit. Yeah, just had a great time.

Well, I'm glad to hear it. And I'm excited for us to talk about all that happened while you were gone. But before we get into all the news and notes, we've got one more question about jolly old England, uh, or actually just in the UK. And this is from Alex Hall. He wants to know, Eric, what's your favorite memory from being in the UK in your time? Because we're talking about you doing some international travel. There's been more than one time you've gone across the pond for wrestling. Any memory stand out in the UK? Yeah, the last tour I did, um, with, um, inside the ropes, Kenny McIntosh and his team. That was, I have an 8 by 10 hanging in my office in the bunk house.

And I made a point of telling Kenny before I left to do that tour, that this will likely be the last European tour. Not that I won't make an appearance here and there if one comes up, a single appearance, but as far as touring and being there for an extended period of time, I wanted this one to be my last one because I kind of, I've worked with Kenny before and his team, kind of knew it was going to be special. and I wanted my last tour to be something that I would look back on fondly. And, man, did they over-deliver?

You know, Kenny and his entire team, Fiona, everybody, I had, you know, I brought my wife with me because I knew this was probably going to be the last time I would do that. And it was so much fun, so rewarding, and developed such great relationships there. There's no one moment along that tour because I had, it was very meaningful from the time I got off the plane to the time I left. In fact, I may be going back sometime soon. I'm not even sure, but this is this time. It'll be just for personal reasons. Well, shout out to Kenny McIntosh over WrestleMania weekend.

My man wound up getting engaged, which I thought was pretty cool. So it's great to him. That's so cool. We are two great guys, two great guys, Ben. Well, let's talk about some news that happened while you were gone. And I'm going to open up with something that you and I probably never imagined we would talk about. Sue Aitchinson is no longer. longer with WWE. She's been the director of community relations for nearly four decades.

She obviously won the Warrior Ward if you're watching along with us on 83 weeks.com a handful of years ago. But I think, I don't know this officially. I haven't asked anybody in an official capacity, but I believe she was the longest tenured employee for WWE. I mean, think about that. We're talking nearly 40 years. My goodness. I was kind of shocked to see Sue away. But I was even more interestingly shocked that this was a story and got some chatter online. Respectfully, Sue's like retirement age. This is a normal thing after you work somewhere for 40 years. It's okay to retire. It doesn't mean there's a salacious story, but a WWE without Vince and a WWE without Sue. What WWE is this, Eric?

I'm sure they're going to be just fine, but Sue is one of the nicest people. I just talk to Sue, like about eight days before I left for Australia, eight or nine days. She's just such a nice human being. Forget about what a great job she did for almost 40 years. And in a world that most people can't comprehend how difficult her job was dealing with the talent that she had to deal with and the coordination and logistics. And a lot of the times when Sue would give you a call, it was to ask you when you were under contract with WWV.

it was to ask you to do things that were generally outside of what you would normally do as a performer. Extra media, that type of thing. In addition to others, you know, sometimes that comes out, came out of talent relations. But for me, it was always Sue. She was the one that generally, you know, talked to me about my travel or any other appearances I have, even to this point now, whenever WWES has something that they want me to schedule or asked me to schedule, um it's always sue and she's just such a sweet person um yeah it's i mean 40 years is a long look 40 months in wwee can feel like a lifetime depending on what what area you were dealing with

but hats off to her you know she's sweet person i'm sure she's going to enjoy her life outside of outside of wb you got to assume she's retiring and if that's the case congrats on the the rest and the break well deserved i've never met anybody who didn't love sue and we are wishing her well here let's talk about a little more wwee news before we move on to i think what everybody was talking about last week but the big news over the weekend i thought was that Vince McMahon seems to have officially listed the remaining shares that he had in tk o over eight million shares to be exact in fact even nick con registered to sell another 234,000 shares. But the idea that Vince McMahon is seemingly moving completely away from

WWE. And I saw some people saying, well, this allows him to make more money and perhaps get a better deal on some of those share prices. I get that. But the idea that he seems to have put all of these up for sale, did that strike you as, is him maybe trying to create a little distance himself? Or am I reading too much into that? I mean, who knows? It's such a personal you know who knows you can speculate all day long and i've all already on social media today i've tried to stay away from it because i kind of odied on it on my 26 hours on a freaking plane but uh i mean it can mean anything and i'm already seeing people going oh he's he's he's going to launch a new wrestling league in saudi he's like whatever and that may be true

who knows i don't know and i don't care you know it's his well respectfully if he launched a wrestling Saudi he wouldn't need the money for this and I understand that no what I mean that's what I mean I'm just acknowledging the fact that people there's going to be rumors all over the map and none of us freaking know I um I do want to talk about the idea of him perhaps setting up a new league but I at least got to ask this for him to be interested in trying to sell these other shares the thought crossed my mind it at least crossed my mind you think there's a chance he finds a way to sue WWE and this becomes a legal matter. Maybe he tries to sue that he was forced out or some sort of nonsense.

I'm not saying that that's going to happen, but I'm wondering with the run WWE's on right now, why would you sell the stock right now? It feels like that thing's just going to keep climbing. It's not like he needs it to pay the freaking light bill. Well, the TCO stock hasn't been on fire. You know, and again, how old is it been? It's now 78, 79? yeah he's up there he's 78 you know you get to a point even Vince McMahon perhaps I don't know

um but perhaps even Vince McMahon at this stage of his life is going to know maybe he's going to go buy a yacht and sail around the world or buy an island or whatever it's just I don't know it's just I to sue WWE what would he sue them for what would be what would be what would be on the outside looking in of his own creation Eric it doesn't seem that crazy and you said the stock's not on fire. I'm not going to argue with you, but I will say it's up 21% this year. I mean, we're four months into the freaking year. Yeah. And as a stock right now, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good run. I mean, my gosh. Now, I know if you take a year look back, it is down 5%, but I'm saying they're, they're doing pretty well right now. They've got

some momentum. And I'm just saying if I had a bunch of WWE stock and I don't TKO stock. You know what I mean? I wouldn't be selling now. I'd be hanging in there. We just set records. We just had the biggest wrestling ever, blah, blah, blah. We got the Netflix still on the horizon, blah, blah, blah. I wondered, would there be some sort of weird conflict? Or could it work against him? If he didn't unass those stocks, those shares before he initiated a lawsuit.

And again, I don't know that that's going to happen. I don't have any inside information. I'm just trying to make sense of why you would sell it right now. Because I like, you saw other people saying silly stuff like, oh, he needs it for bail money. guys the lawsuit you read was a civil suit there's no bail money now i'm not saying there might not be a federal investigation coming because the word traffic was used there who knows but i'm just saying what does he why did he why does he want to sell it like now doesn't seem the time to me

and conversely i'll ask why would he want to sue what's what's there to be gained regain control of the company he would be regained he would be regaining control of a disaster why would you do that why would you self-destruct I just who knows I can't imagine seeking being that revengeful or vengeful that you would take such a drastic action that would cost so much money expose not only you yourself and your family to the further public microscope and meat grinder that goes along with it and for what to accomplish what that's the part I can't wrap my head around any motivation other than I'm going to go buy a boat in an island do laps get some sun well I'm anxious to hear what people are thinking if you're watching us live and you've got a question and you want to ask Eric about what we're talking about go ahead and drop it below we are going to be getting the questions

before we jump into some questions though you brought it up so I want to bring up one last piece of Vince business and then we'll move on from Vince for a bit the idea that he might start another country or not company not maybe he's going to do that too there you yeah maybe maybe he's going to buy the island right why not i um i got to say eric i know that you know none of us really know i totally see it i totally buy that he is not willing to let this story and this news be the last story of his life like i don't think this is what because i mean let's be honest i hate that this is the way it is right now maybe i don't hate that this is the way it is right now maybe i don't hate it but you get where I'm going that's a phrase people say if he passed away tomorrow

people would be talking about this most recent news and that would become a huge part of his legacy you kind of think he's trying to dig out there on some level at this point when you're a billionaire does he need more money no I think at this point this has got to be concerned with legacy and it feels like maybe I could see him doing something and we saw when he was in Saudi earlier this year he said this is our home and we know they've got the world set up over there I don't know what the inroads are I don't know what the possibilities are but with you know there being some companies out there that are available even though they're not listed publicly for sale you and I both know they're wrestling companies that can be purchased

right now today it feels like there might be a possibility and Dave Meltzer wrote about that he says all the key talent he's talking about WWE is under contract the Early losses as a startup would be significant with two major competitors that are established, and he would be going against the most powerful version of WWE that there's been. I would really see it having almost no chance of success. Vince does have the money to bid for anyone, and no matter how much people who privately in the last few cases publicly talk about their distaste for him and how horrified they were on the suit, it's still a business where most of the talent will go to

the high bidder or the most stable company. But the latter would not. not be the case. I know we're not making bets on the program. I've seen your buzz cut. I get that. If you were a betting man, what would you put the odds on that Vince is going to start another promotion or be involved in wrestling again in another capacity outside of WW.

I wouldn't put any money on it. I would, I don't even gamble, but I'd just go play blackjack in Vegas instead. I wouldn't put any money on it. Okay. Well, I would. I'm going to put some money on it.

So we're going to bet a steak. We're going to, we're going to bet a ribeye in Vegas. Yeah, a Vegas steak. There we go. A Vegas steak dinner. By next WrestleMania, I say Vince is in the rassling business. Wow. I mean, here's where that would be good news.

If that were to happen and I really have to shift into fantasy phase right now, fantasy gear. I just can't imagine it. But if he did, can you imagine how much money all of the wrestling due sites are going to make, we're going to make on YouTube. This is like the gift that keeps on giving if that were to happen. You know, I just, you know, back when we first started this thing, you and I talked briefly. We knew each other obviously beforehand, but that wasn't like a really great experience it's not on my part you had a blast had a blast you did but you know one of my concerns was number one i didn't think i think i had much else to say and i wasn't convinced that you know looking back and nostalgia wrestling was quite the powerhouse that you saw and you

were obviously right not just because of the success of my podcast with you but all the others as well including bruce's and tony shabonis and jim rosses and arne anderson's list goes on right i didn't see it you did but one of my other concerns and i expressed it to you is like you know we're going to run out of stuff to talk about right point what are we going to call this like you know we revisit rebook 83 weeks from a fantasy booking phase or whatever but this gift this gift it just keeps on giving and i'm so grateful for it but if if vince were to make a move like that you've got it's going to be another three years before I can consider retiring. It's going to be crazy. Well, we're having a lot of fun here on the podcast. I appreciate you guys joining us.

I want to give a special shout out to John McCardell, who gifted 40 memberships. I can't believe this is real, but he's gifting memberships here to 83 weeks.com. Thanks for joining the Eric Bischoff World Order. How nice of that is it for John, man? That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm shifting gears here a little bit. Keep me on the tracks because I may go way the fuck off into the weeds just because of a little bit of brain fog. But, you know, being stuck in a plane for 26, 25, 26 hours

and having nothing to do but watch movies I've already seen or spend too much time on social media, I opted to spend too much time on social media. And I had a blast. I had so much fun. And I mean, some of the people, and obviously I got to, I had a blast with all the people that are, why are you doing this old man? You only, you know, you only want to talk hate about AEW because they won't give you a job. Oh, this nonsense.

And I had so much fun fucking with those people. I mean, I was laughing like the village idiot on the plane. People looking at me, you know, been on the plane for five hours and I'm giggling. Because it's the amount of insanity that's taking place on social media and and the tribalism. I hate to even use that word because it's just so overused now. Yes. Everybody knows what I'm saying. You know, people are you accusing each other of, you know, creating tribalism.

And I'm doing, you people have lost your shit. This is fun. And for all of you haters out there that are trying your best to bury me, most of the time you suck, by the way, which is, that's one of the things that puts a smile on my face when somebody's really trying to stick it to me. And it's like, what are you four? You know, I look at their profile and figure out if I'm, having too much fun with a 12 year old or what you know i don't want to i don't want to verbally

battle you know or not verbally but battle anybody in social media that's kind of like 10 years old but i'm looking at these people and these are adults these are grown-ass people who got pictures of the wife and kids and shit in their profile video pictures like it is so much fun i am having a blast and if you want to know why i do this i don't hate anybody i've told you that before i want AEW to be successful i want want Tony Kahn to be able to go, look, what I did, told you I could, I wanted to grow for the people that are friends of mine in the business, for people who I don't even know in the business, for some of the people that I got to work with, got to work with in Australia, young

talent coming up that are so excited and so eager and people like Mass Warner who are like this freaking close to being able to make a great living in a business where only about one half of one percent of the people that actually attempted can do that. want that to be true for everybody. But if you think I'm not going to express an opinion after spent 30 years of my adult life in the industry and having achieved an enormous amount of success, some that nobody's ever been able to not only replicate, no one's ever been able to achieve. Name a promoter in a last 30 years that was able to, maybe 40 years, that's been able to outperform Vince McMahon and WWE when they were at their peak. Well, they're at their peak now.

But you know what I mean? Name one. If you can name one, I'll sit back and shut the fuck up. Fact is you can't. Name somebody else who created a brand, a storyline out of that brand that has been for the last 20-some-odd years, probably the most successful merchandise in the marketplace. NWM merchandise is still in the top 10 of all WWE merchandise 20-some-odd years later. And if you can find someone that's achieved that level of success or had that much of an impact on the business, I'll shut the fuck up.

Or if you can find somebody that reformatted television and brought live television on a weekly basis to the industry. If somebody did it before me, I'll shut the fuck up. But the fact is, nobody did, nobody has, and nobody will. That's why I have an opinion. And for anybody to think, because I'm not actually in the business, that somehow I shouldn't have. an opportunity to, number one, express my opinion, but to number two, do so on one of the most financially successful wrestling podcasts out there. Not the most. Maybe top five. Conrad, you know better than I do. You spend more time with the numbers. Maybe top 10. I don't care.

Financially, very, very successful. And now this YouTube effort that we're putting forth, our YouTube numbers are growing dramatically, thanks to Aunt Evans, and the help and work from everybody else on the ad-free shows team or podcast heat team. And besides all that, Mucker Fathers, it's just fun. I'm having a great time from my house. I don't have to get a car and go to work, spend all day in an office doing a job I don't like. I get to work from my tree house, 40 feet away from my garage. Freaking awesome.

I get to work with people I want to work with when I want to work. with them where I want to work with them and how I want to work with them and make an extraordinarily good living doing it that to me is freedom and I'm enjoying the freedom plus y'all make me laugh and I like to laugh okay there you go I'm done not only are you doing it in your tree house you're doing it comfortably because you're rocking mac weldin and you will be too when you try it guys tend to think that looking sharp means like starchy oxfords and stiff chinos rather than effortless comfort, but it is possible to have it both ways. Mac Weldon makes timeless apparel with modern performance fabrics for guys who want to look

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This stuff is the real deal. This is real. MacWeldon.com, check it out. Be sure to use our promo code 83 weeks. You'll get 20% off your first order. Listen, let's talk about some in ring news. We had some big news happen over the weekend. There was a big New Japan show in Chicago.

I think it's actually sold quite well. for it. And before we talk about Jack Perry, we got to talk about John Moxley. I felt like this was a little more under the radar than maybe I would have expected. I knew he was getting a title shot, but I don't think maybe it was presented as it was that big of a deal. And now in hindsight, I realize, boy, that was a pretty damn big deal. John Moxley is now the New Japan World Heavyweight champion. And that makes him the first person to ever hold the WWE, the AEW, and the New Japan world title. And I recognize that New Japan has certainly lost a step as far as the way fans view them in the absence of

stars like Kenny Omega and Will Osprey and Okada. I get that. But Moxley, man, what a vote of confidence? I mean, as long as you and I have been keeping up with wrestling, it was a big deal to be the New Japan world champion. And now Moxley is. What did you think of that? I mean, good for him. You know, that obviously was something that was on his bucket list where he wouldn't have had to do it or chose to chosen to do it. And he did. So if that was a goal and and something that he just felt like he had to achieve professionally and was able to do it. Good for him. Good for him.

I'm going to talk a little bit more about AEW in a moment. But first, I think we should at least mention the WrestleMania numbers. They came out in the observer since you and I got together. The gate was up 78% from last year, which is just unbelievable. Last year was the record and this crushed it. And the number, I can't. believe this is real last year was 19,749,000. So they're saying if this really is up 78% then the two-night total here is $35,000. So I'm sorry, $35 million, about $17.5 million

per night. Eric, you and I have talked a lot about the big gates that Nitro got and that WC got, WCW got in the Monday Night War era. And that, that million dollar gate always alluded you. And I know times are different and there's inflation and blah, blah, blah. But 17 and a half million in a night back to back. This is crazy. Like, how was this possible? Eric?

It's, it's mind boggling. It's just, that's the only way I can describe it. Can you imagine 20 years ago if someone were to suggest that, Hey, I think by 2024, WrestleMania going to do close to $40 million in revenue. Excuse me.

Was it $17 million a night? Yeah, 35 million across two months. Almost $40 million in revenue. That's not, is that including merchandise? I don't even know. Perhaps it doesn't matter. But can you imagine somebody would have said, supposedly that's the gate, Eric,

that's just the gate? Supposedly, that's the gate. That's not counting sponsorship. That's not counting merch. That's not counting what they did at the world. I mean, this, this is way bigger than even we thought. If that, if that's a real report, if that's a real number, this is even much larger than we thought. I think we all knew this is the biggest WrestleMania of all time.

I don't think maybe we knew how big. Incredible. I don't know what to say about it. I can't wrap my head around it. It's so big. Here's the crazy thing. Dave is freestyling here, doing some math here, some napkin math. He says, if you're full of 66,000 is the paid number.

So keep that in mind. 66,000 is the paid number. per night, Eric, that would mean the average ticket price would have been $299. So by the time you factor in, the really expensive ringside seats and then the cheap seats that, you know, you see a couple of ants moving around down there, $299 is the average ticket price for wrestling. This is unprecedented. I remember one of the first times you talk about New Japan Pro Wrestling and where it used

to be and where it is today. Right. I'm going to go back even further. Forget about some of the recent, you know, stars that, that, that, left new japan pro wrestling go back to the peak of new japan pro wrestling at least one of them and one of the first times that i was invited by new japan by anoki to come to the new year's eve show it did i don't remember what the number is so don't quote man up but it was it was like 60 or 70 000 people which was mind boggling to me because at that time

w we was struggling the live shows were struggling yes certainly wcw was not even close to wwe at that point and i just remember seeing the tokyo dome just filled with people and it just blew me away and the way people dressed the way people approached that event it was it was very much like a sporting any sporting event and you know men wearing suits and ties in the first six eight ten rows deep and women dressed accordingly and then i asked one by joe Bajosan, I don't remember what his first name was, but Mr. Bajou, who was really kind of like the CFO of New Japan at the time. And I asked him, you know, what the average ticket price was. Now, we're talking about 1993, maybe or four, whatever.

The average ticket price that night was $100, U.S. dollars. And that blew me away. Now listen, and now look at the numbers you're talking about here. It's unbelievable. with twice the audience it's just mind-numbing here's what's crazy too eric is you know this is not your typical promotion let me explain if you had a super fight this guy versus that guy let's say it's boxing it's m-ma whatever you know other things that are promoted in arenas or stadiums or what have you you at least know who's going to be on the card you know what you're

paying to see you know the main event you got to assume 80, 90% of this was sold before they knew what the main event or even any of the matches were. Yeah, that's a good point. Wow. It's just the name brand alone, 35 million. Not all of it. Listen, let's. Okay, 10 million's off, 25 million in pre-sales before you've announced anything.

And you know when those people come, they're going to attend your convention and they're going to buy merch and it's just nuts. It's the power of that brand. That WWE brand has become so powerful. And this is a perfect. Your point is right on the money, man. You're right on the money with that point. And I didn't think of it that way. But can you think of, you know, other than the NFL or maybe the Kentucky Derby, you know,

can you think of anything else that sells out like that? Just the Super Bowl. Legitimately, just the Super Bowl. Like Taylor Swift, maybe. Well, but you know what you're getting. Taylor Swift's going to be here. she's got that's right that's right but with w we like if you were a big shamis fan well sorry better look next year by the way we got a shout out to

shamis he showed up last night on monday night raw he is back in ring action took on our buddy who you complimented a few weeks ago ivar who was a highlight for you man they had a really fun match in the crowd in montreal ate him up uh i was kind of surprised they didn't have him back in time for the rumble and doing something at mania, but he's ready to get going now, and he's got all these European tours coming up. Seamus has been a missing piece of this equation for WWE.

I'm glad he's back. Yeah, I mean, he's got a pretty interesting horizon right now, doesn't he? You know, he's been off long enough that he's like, absence makes the heart grow fonder factor has kicked in. It feels fresh. And yeah, would it have been nice if Shamis had a story starting a year ago or six months ago,

perhaps it would have built towards WrestleMania. Sure, that would be nice. But if I'm sure, James right now, I'm looking towards what's going to, what happens to me over the next 12 months? What am I going to be doing looking forward to the next WrestleMania? Because he's got a clear runway and he's got some support behind him. He's got a great creative team behind him now. I mean, functionally, I think WWE creative has probably never been even close to the level of efficiency and the quality of work that we're seeing now.

I mean, it's just by what we've seen on the screen. And if I'm Seamus, this is like a whole new lease on life. And I'm very happy for him. He's somebody that when I was in WWE back in 2019 for that cup of coffee, he was one of the first people that I started speaking to right away. And we developed a great relationship over a very short period of time. I never really got a chance to work with him the way I wanted to. Great guy, amazing talent.

Can't wait to see what happens with him. This podcast is supported by Talkspace. came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace. Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans, and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones. I just answered a few questions online, and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her any time.

It was so easy to set up, and they accept TRICARE. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couple's therapist through Talkspace, too. Talkspace works with most major insurers, including TRICARE. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com slash military. Go to Talkspace.com slash military to get started today. That's Talkspace.com slash military. I'm a big fan too super nice guy got to meet his dad several years ago just an awesome fam and really excited for him pulling for him to have a heck of a run here it's hard to believe

dude this this is going to be his 17th year in WWE that's quite a run yep and he's he's had enough time to heal up he's had he had some injuries you know and like I said future is very bright it's also bright for Tomatanga he is Haku's son, Ming's son, and now he's a part of the bloodline storyline. They say in life, in wrestling and entertainment, I guess everywhere. Timing is everything. And this guy has been rumored as a potential candidate for WWE for years. I remember back in 2016, maybe even before that, when Shinske and AJ and so many others came over, a lot of people assumed Tomatanga can't be far behind. Here he is now, and he's not just slotted in at NXT or somewhere in the

mid card. I thought there's anything wrong with that. He's in one of the biggest storylines in company history. I know you're friends with Haku. How pumped are you that his son is now in WWE? It's great to watch. Great to watch. And another young, amazing talent that's stepping into an environment that is hot as hell right now. And he's stepping into one of the hottest storylines. I think in my my lifetime i mean as far as the quality of storytelling and that you look at the stars that have emerged out of that storyline over the last couple of years you're in a half two years you know sammy zane who we're going to probably talk about uh more but holy shit again what a bright future this young man has couldn't couldn't have be happier for and man because

now he gets to sit back and watch and enjoy it as a dad we are live you guys at 83 weeks So if you haven't already, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Turn the notifications bell on. We're going to go live once a week here on 83 weeks. You may have heard Eric used to have a second podcast beside 83 weeks. It was strictly business. It landed every week here on YouTube and on RSS. Eric is doing a second YouTube exclusive show and this is not necessarily taking

the place of it this week. We just didn't get to record 83 weeks and thought, hey man, we can't get more current than doing it live. so if you're liking what we're doing throw us a comment or a question below be sure to hit that subscribe button throw us a thumbs up hit that like button it costs absolutely nothing come on uh we've got plenty of time to get to you guys questions as well but before we do i wanted to also mention you know because we're talking about all the success and the people coming and going in w e but behind the scenes a big piece dan ventral is a guy who's been running

talent relations and before he did it here he did it at a high level How about for the Oakland Raiders? Yeah, the NFL. And now he's on the outside looking in. Allegedly, I think there was even two other folks who were in the talent relations department who were no longer there. I guess the rumor and innuendo is they're talking to folks and interviewing folks and having conversations behind the scenes.

But I also know that there's been a lot of reports that guys like Natalia and Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre and even Becky Lynch have contracts that are coming up over the next handful of months. Talent relations in WWE has to be one of the absolute most stressful worst piece of shit jobs in the entire company. And now you've got all these major talent. You've got to turn around and navigate and negotiate in the next few months. This is some news here. It's not what gets all the traction.

But you've seen talent relations at work. Talk to me about how big of a deal this is that Dan is out. Well, I don't know how WWE is currently strong. so it would be, you know, silly of me to kind of speculate on any of that. But I'll go back to what you said originally. And I'm sure Jim Ross could really add to that with some credibility. I've never worked in talent. Well, I have, you know, in the role that I was in WCW.

I've probably spent as much time dealing with talent issues as probably any single person, other than our attorneys in some cases. It's such a thankless job. It is the worst. you know, certainly young, new talent that are getting their first big break, they're thrilled to death and they're happy to get an opportunity and get a contract and probably make a living for the first time in their lives in professional wrestling. So that part's rewarding because you're helping people begin the next phase of their careers

or in some cases the beginning of a career. That would make you feel good, but then you've got to deal with everything else. And what happens, and it's human nature, that's what you're, get to deal with in talent relations. There's the relationship part of talent relations. And you have to deal with the human side of that, the jealousy, the anger, the frustration, the husband at home that's mad because you're traveling, or the wife that's home that's mad because you're traveling and the personal issues and the jealousy and the envy. Oh, my God. Yeah, those young talents, they make you feel good. You feel like you've done something meaningful and you've helped

contribute, and then you have to deal with 90% of the rest of your day, and it is thankless, but it's absolutely necessary. How it's going to affect WWE, only somebody that's actually inside can speculate. But I do think with regard to the talent that you name, look, these are established, these are the superstars of the superstars necessarily. They better run a long time. They know the game. They have an expectation and understanding that's based in the reality within WWE currently.

I'm sure those people are at the top of the pile that are being serviced quite nicely and inappropriately. I don't think there's any risk there at all. But I wouldn't want to be the person in that job. I don't know how JR did it. Don't know how he did it for as long as he. And that environment, I mean, WWE and being the middleman between Vince and talent,

oh my God. I can't think that. Talk about thankless. That's like, ugh. So flagellating. As you look around the landscape, is this a hire that has to come from outside of wrestling or could this hire come from inside of wrestling? Yeah, that's a tricky one. Good question, brother.

Because you have an advantage both ways, right? Somebody inside of wrestling understands the landscape, understands the talent, understands the history, the backstories of not just new talent coming in or existing talent that you're negotiating with, but also knows the history. and how things work and how they worked in the past. That's important. You have to be able to have a thorough knowledge of your area of the business in order to be effective. And somebody inside the industry is going to have a big advantage in that regard compared to someone from outside of the industry because there is a learning curve. The professional wrestling business is a unique business.

As huge as it is in WWE, at least, it is a very unique business with unique talent, unique circumstances, and a lot of unique challenges. So somebody inside, big advantage. On the downside, somebody on the inside probably has some baggage. Some of them are really good baggage. Some of it may be not so good. Some of it deserved. Some of it perhaps not deserved.

So you're bringing with you a perception into a role. And like I said, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's bad. But it's not always a big advantage when you come with experience. Somebody from the outside, clean slate, no relationships, no, no challenges, no history. There's a little bit of an advantage in people not quite knowing you as well as they think they do. That is an advantage. The disadvantage is, as I said a moment ago, it's a steep learning curve, and it's a brutal one. It is not an easy job.

It is a very difficult job. well we know for sure johnny ace won't be on the short list of candidates and we also know that jim ross just resigned with a w and even if he hadn't i don't think he'd want to take on that job full time i don't think we can bank on corono coming back anytime soon i know scott demour is hanging out there but i think he's perhaps uh being taken care of for a certain period of time if i had to guess it was like that would be something that he might have negotiated, who knows. So I'm not sure who they get here.

It's not like there's a great candidate you can just put behind glass and breaking case of emergency. It's such a niche thing. I'm interested to see how this shakes out, Eric. Yeah. I mean, again, I don't want to speculate, but there are people there like Stephen Regal.

Yes. Has respect from talent. I can't imagine there's, there's certainly no talent I've ever met that doesn't have an immense amount of respect for Steve because he's always been such a such a professional and and yeah he's he had issues he overcame those issues and and has more credibility in that role as a result and he's there would Steve and Regal want a job like that I don't know there there internally that could if they chose to take that role and probably do well with it and particularly with the support that that

person would get you know you there would be a lot of support for whoever gets that job and someone like stephen regal i think if if it were me and if it was my decision or my option i would consider someone like stephen regal very very highly well something else i know that you consider very very highly oh let me just ask you this what is the in your opinion what's the most valuable thing in the world that's right talk it no not really uh the second most valuable thing is time right managing and worrying about body odor used to take up a lot of time and if you're paranoid about smelling around midday let me recommend mando whole body deodorant that's right i can't believe this is a real thing my wife when we got

this my wife i just realized that did bore out there she could not believe this was a real thing she tried it immediately and loved it and yeah you see mando you think this would just be for us she tried it and absolutely loved it i am a big fan of this it's effective it's long lasting i mean you could actually start and finish russomania night one night two and hillbilly jim's hall of fame induction you'd still be smelling fine when you finished all of that three weeks later and here's why mando doesn't cover up odor after the fact with heavy fragrances like the other deodorants you know who we're talking about it stops odor at a source by blocking the bacteria on your skin that's eating your sweat, which is the actual

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feet mando can help with that too it's created by a doctor who saw how normal be oh was just being misdiagnosed and mistreated. And now he's made sure that he's got something that's powerful enough for the toughest body odor, but gentle enough to let you use it everywhere. You don't have to worry about Mando. It's cruelty free. It's baking soda free. It's aluminum free. It's dye free. It's vegan. And it's clinically proven to control odor better than just a shower with soap alone. You know, 12 hours after a shower, they did the research. And the average man's grundle is a five out of 10. But with Mando, the average odor level is zero out of 10. How about that? Be a zero. Come stink less with us. It's perfect. This Mando starter pack, it's perfect for new customers.

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S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O.com. Eric, I love Mando. I know you do too. And I'm excited for us to talk a little bit about what's next for the Royal Rumble. You know, this is a stadium show. We just talked about how big WrestleMania was. We know they've got big PLEs coming up.

We're just a few months away from backlash in France. We're going to talk about that. But there's a rumor out that the Rumble might actually be coming to Milwaukee. And I think I was shocked more about that than any news I've heard recently about locations. I just did not have Milwaukee on my bingo card, but I'm kind of excited about the idea. I think Milwaukee would eat it up. What do you think?

The nice thing about Milwaukee, I do think that he did it up. Milwaukee's always been a great wrestling town going all the way back to the days of the crusher. Oh, man, I miss those days as a young kid watching to crush her. But it's always been historically, blue collar town, blue collar city, almost a suburb of Chicago. It's only, what, an hour drive, whatever it is, it's easy to get to. so you've really got two pretty good well obviously chicago is a major market and you look at the chicago market and milwaukee you know madison chicagos or milwaukee's not even that far from minneapolis so you've got some big big dense populations of wrestling fans and milwaukee's right

kind of smack dab in the middle of it all great choice great choice it may not be a sexy town but it's a great town for wrestling i for one i'm looking forward to it i mean i know they've ran TV there, you know, Rawls and Smackdowns and things like that, but it doesn't feel like there's been a lot of major events there. I think there was a pay-per-view way back when, like a No Way Out, I think was there when the, maybe that was when the NWO

came over. I think that's right. And there was a taboo Tuesday, I think there. And, oh, King of the Ring. Yeah, King of the Ring was there where Stone Cold won, but it's been a while. And so the idea that they might be coming back is interesting to me, because I just

assume what that also means, Eric, is, they're having these economic impact studies done. And this is a whole new ballgame. Let me explain there are communities and municipalities out there that are now bidding for the right to not just get WrestleMania, but some other PLEs, some of these premium live events like a Royal Rumble, like a SummerSlam. It might come with tax perks.

It might come with free rent. This is not something you got to play with in WCW, but certainly exciting for WWE. right? No, we certainly didn't take it, get the opportunity. The business wasn't at a point excuse me, WCW was certainly not at the point where we could command, even at our peak, the kind of numbers and dollars that WWE is successful with in terms of sponsorship from the cities and underwriting from the cities that we see some of these big events in. But it's amazing to see. It's, I think, one of the big benefits of the merger. I think I predicted this

would be one of the areas that the merger would probably create more opportunity than existed for WWE than it previously enjoyed, even though they had started doing really, really well. When you've got the power of Ari Emanuel and Nick Khan and their relationships within that world, now in your office, it changes things and clearly it has. Well, I, for one, am looking forward to it. I even saw there was a report that came out today. we're recording on Tuesday that the folks in Philadelphia are looking forward to talking to

WWE about bringing WrestleMania back again and I saw some folks in the area saying can we get a summer slam next time it was cold night one I just love that this is where we are and people are lining up to pay WWE money not just to see the show but please bring it to our city it's awesome Nick Kahn strikes again man hey let's talk a little bit about you know, some of the live questions that we're getting here. I want to acknowledge, you know, we said that we had a whole bunch of a gift memberships that were donated. But that all came in courtesy of our man, John McCardell. And he says, thanks to Eric, late 90s, WCW got me back into wrestling.

I'm NWO for life. Here's a Jimmy's crab cake on me. And he threw your $100, Eric. How nice is that? That is unbelievable. John, thank you so much. But you can not only can you tell by the comment that John made that he He has impeccable taste, sees true talent, sees credibility, sees honesty and integrity, which is why he's here. And if you have any doubt in your mind, look at the fact that he's putting over Jimmy's famous seafood crab cakes. Nobody that understands how good Jimmy's seafood crab cakes are, you cannot question that

individual's credibility. Zero. Not. John, one of these days we'll share one together. How's that? Hey, we've got to get John a t-shirt. uh, DM us your address and your size, man. We appreciate your support here of the show.

Let's do a few more questions here, uh, Sins fan 89 or 18, rather, my apologies. Eric and Conrad, big fan from Ottawa, Canada. Any great memories from coming to Canada. What's your favorite part about going to Canada, Eric? Um, here's my favorite memory would be working with Steve Austin at, uh, no way out in Montreal. That was without question. And I've had a lot of great moments.

I've had so much fun as a performer in the business, different scenes, different people I've worked with. And as exciting as all of it is, and it's so hard sometimes to compare. But I cannot think of a moment that was any more exciting for me personally and professionally than making my entrance to the ring when I had my match with Steve Austin. I mean, first of all, working with Steve was so much fun. The backstory was built in because of all the heat that people perceived. And to a degree, at least in the beginning we had, you know, when I had fired Steve. But we got way past all that in about a minute and a half of conversation.

And once we had that conversation, that was one of the most fun things that I've done creatively. But walking out in front of that crowd and being in that ring, it was the first time I'd ever been in the ring as a performer. not as a performer outside of my role as you know a general manager or the head of wcw i'm talking about in there to get physical with another talent i don't even like to call it a wrestling match that's why i'm having such a hard time struggling with because it wasn't really a wrestling match it was just a it was a stunt more than anything but it was so exciting the energy i can't describe it to anybody i can't even describe it to myself it's it was just amazing that that had to be it and

that was in montreal canada great question man appreciate jumping on the uh the live show here we got a ton of uh questions we're going to try to get to as many as we can instagram a wrestling story and always brings the good questions and he wanted to know eric do you remember whose idea was the west texas rednecks god i don't i don't it wasn't mine um it could have been Kevin Sullivan, you know, because people, again, just to reiterate, because sometimes context is king, but it's also lost in time, because as time goes on, it's often harder to put things like this question in context in order to be able to figure out who might have done it. But if you look back, you know, Kevin Sullivan made a lot of great

decisions, made a vast majority of the very vast majority, the creative decisions that took place 96, 97, 98. Yes, I had some direct influence in a few of them, but the vast majority of them, I didn't. So that's why I would say, first place I'd go if I had to guess, make a bet, it would be Kevin Sullivan, but it could have come from anybody because there was always a lot of collaboration at that period of time. And it's sometimes hard to tell where an idea started from. Thanks for the shout out there and the question, Instagram, a wrestling historian. I also want to shout out a new member of our new world order click here, if you will. Mr. KS joined up. We appreciate your support. Thank you for being a part

of 83 weeks.com. Here's a silly fun question from Robert Rose. I always wanted to ask Eric, does he remember when commentary in WCW kept trying to get over Hogan's trademark Dodge Dart during his feud with Kidman? I don't remember that on commentary, but maybe it happened. Does this ring a bell to you, Eric? Not a bit. Robert, I'm sorry. But that's suggesting it didn't happen, but it didn't leave an impression on me. And I think Hulk Hougar would be personally offended that you call this charger a dart. I don't know. I know the man does love his Mopar products. Yes, he does. He does love his Mopar products. And his roadrunners and his challengers, he's pretty particular about those that they're like his children now.

So he might be a little hot about that, but I'll tell him it was my idea. But no, I don't remember about it. That's a question. Tristan Young was there with you in Australia. And he says, good job in Australia. Eric, I was there. And then he turned around and gifted a membership. So thanks for supporting us and coming to check us out at Starcast in Australia.

And thanks for gifting a membership here. We appreciate the support. And before I, I just want to throw this out there. I got to be in person, Siddharassan, I think I got his name wrong. But I just call him Barat. He'll understand. What a great guy.

Made his professional wrestling debut inside of the ring. Barat's have known all over the world as a cricket reporter and journalist. He covers the sport of cricket, which is one of the biggest sports in the world. Yeah. And just an amazing guy. There he is. He took me out to dinner. That was our deal that he was going to show me a meal at a great Indian restaurant.

outside of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, where we were at. And Barat got to make his appearance in the ring. And Barack came up to me, and he had an idea of how he wanted to open up his segment. And he came up to me and he said, do you think it's okay? He was asking permission if he could use the line from Scott Hall, hey, you know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here. I said, well, first of all, I can't give you permission. It was Scott Hall's thing, not mine.

But, you know, I think if Scott was here, he'd be cool. that. And I said, but before you do that, you know, started out with, hey, yo, and then lead into it. And he got to go out there and do it. He got to meet Brett Hart. Brett, evidently said to Barat, he thought, you know, Barat was, had a lot of experience in professional wrestling or done it before. And Brat was so nervous about it. Uh, it was so great, but I had just one of the highlights of my truck was hanging out with Rob. So thank you, buddy. Shout out to Barat. Day 1 supporter here on the program. And shout out to black labels. who has a question for you, Eric, here.

Off topic, Eric Google says you're from Detroit. I'm from Alpena, Michigan. Any cool memories in northern Michigan? Also, do you still own the iconic leather jacket? You're one of the only two who made nationwide wrestling cool. Thank you. Yeah, tell us about Michigan. And do you still have one of those old classic nitro leather jackets?

Not the original. I have one just like it that I use when I ride, my motorcycle. But I don't have the original. I lost that one somewhere along the way. Literally left it somewhere. Couldn't find it at the end of the evening and there it went. As far as northern Michigan, you know, I grew up on the east side of Detroit, 10 mile of grassy.

It's called East Point now. They used to call it East Detroit, but I think Detroit had such a bad brand name that they changed it to East Point. That's funny. Only if you're from there, you would know it. But my dad had friends who had a cabin. I had an uncle that had a trailer up in northern Michigan and my dad would take my brother and I up there occasionally to, you know, spend four or five days camping out, so to speak

and had a great time. Those are my only really memories of northern Michigan. Most of my time was spent, like I said, on the east side of Detroit. There's a great question that we got to get to here. I'm pretty excited about what I saw on Raw last night. I don't know if you had a chance to see the whole show. I didn't see any of it. Well, they closed the show with Sammy Zane versus Chad Gable.

And they were in Montreal, Sammy's hometown. So they were a little hot for that one. And we got to see a great video package earlier in the show that showed sort of the backstory of Gable and Sammy Zane and how Gable had been unsuccessful and his mission to defeat Gunther for the Intercontinental title. But he was able to help down at the Performance Center just in the weeks later. up to WrestleMania to get Sammy Zane over the hump and Sammy Zane ended Gunther streak at 666 days and we freestiled here on the program a few weeks ago yeah I really

hope Chad Gable turns heel on Sammy Zane I mean they're modeling this after Rocky Balboa and the trainer deal and what if it turns and man that would be really cool and then when I saw they were in Montreal and that was the match I thought well that might be the spot and it wound up happening of course along the way we saw a great little interview before the doors were open where Chad Gable was working out in the ring with some tackling dummies if you will it's fantastic and then we got to see the actual match Sammy Zane steals a victory goes over helps up Chad Gable dust him off it raises his hand Chad Gable decides now raise your hand instead and Sammy goes out to the front road a hug his dad

kiss his wife and while he's in mid-embrace with his wife Chad Gable comes from behind and suplexes him on the floor, threw him on the table, threw him into the post, and then put on a submission move around the ring post. It was fantastic. And that's how they went off the air, getting a lot of heat on Chad Gable.

I really enjoyed that they closed that way, and I enjoyed the way the show looked. John, who's watching along with us here on YouTube, 83weeks.com, says, I'd love to hear what Eric thought about the amazing, one long shot of Jay Uso,

leaving through the crowd. to Sammy coming in from the front of the crowd again. There was some amazing camera creative there. I know you didn't see last night, Eric, but you've seen Lee Fitting. I think that's the fellow's name. He's taking Kevin Dunn's spot sort of running production for WWE.

They've been trying a lot of new things and new shots. What did you think of what you've seen so far with the way the presentation has changed on TV? Yeah. So again, John, thank you so much. Great question. And while I didn't see the show last night,

I did see that. particular shot that John's referring to on social. I said one of the first things I saw this morning and absolutely love it. I think, look, I'm not one of the, I see a lot of anti- Kevin Dunn sentiment. Yeah, I don't have that.

And people pull your head out of your ass. You know, grow up, be a fucking adult, learn a little bit, think a little bit, and don't be a damn sheep. Kevin Dunn, if you look at where WWE is today, hey, and don't get me wrong. Kevin Dunn and I, I don't know, we're friendly, but we're not friends.

I haven't heard from Kevin since he left. I maybe would hear from Kevin once every 18 months. But anybody who says they understand this business or have been watching and following, you know, the wrestling industry as a whole, if you can't recognize the massive impact that Kevin Dunn and the team that he created, it's not all Kevin Dunn,

but some of the most successful people I know aren't necessarily successful because every idea they have is great. They're mostly successful because they surround themselves with really, really talented people, which, by the way, Marker Fathers is an art form of its own. And you cannot look at the things that Kevin Dunn created, implemented, and grew when it comes to production in professional wrestling. You cannot look at that track record and look and see where WWE is today

and not acknowledge and give credit to that man. Now, is this Lee Fitting? has come in and he's brought a whole different set of skills and perspectives to production and production is taking it amazingly forward as a result because I

think there's a different mentality and I only know this based on what I'm seeing and the consistency of new ideas creatively and in terms of production that I keep seeing over and over and over it suggests growth and also suggest that people

are just not comfortable any longer you've heard me say it before one of my favorite sayings i didn't come up with it somebody else said and mrs b used it comfort kills and it can comfort can kill you if you get too comfortable and you're not thinking about new ideas you're not approaching the business from a different angle or a challenge from a different angle if you're not trying new things because a you're too comfortable or be you're afraid to fail so what do you do you do what you've always done and what do you get generally what you've always gotten. This is a whole different approach,

and it's a fearless approach because I don't think there's a fear of failure. And when you're not afraid to fail, particularly when it comes to creative, and you're willing to try new things knowing some of them are going to work. Actually, a small majority of them are, a small minority of them are going to work.

The majority of a new idea, once you execute it, you'll either go, yeah, it didn't work on as well as I did. Or in some cases, it'll be, ouch, I wish, and I wouldn't have done that. But you learn, move on and you don't you're not afraid to try something else new that's what we're seeing now

in wwe and i'm it's not because of how i feel about the people in wwee some of whom including bruce pressured is one of my best friends it's not because of that it's not because of my personal relationship with the company it's certainly not because i'm being paid by them because i'm not i'm not even under a legends contract so there's no financial connective tissue between me at WWE, but what I'm seeing at a WWE that makes me so supportive of them, since it isn't about all that other stuff, despite what social media likes to think, it's because I'm seeing growth. I'm seeing growth in an industry that I spent 30 years of my life in and would love to see it

grow even more so that when my grandson's old enough to understand that his granddad was involved in this business way back then and can, you even go to a streaming platform and watch it, I want to see that. I guess if you want to call it selfish reasons, selfish reasons. I will want to see growth in the business for WWE, for AEW, for TNA. I've got no connective tissue to TNA. I mean, some of the gallant that works there and I have a lot of respect for them, including Moose, by the way.

I forgot to mention him early on. He was in the same segment that I was in with Mans and Josh Alexander. I want to see growth. I want to see success. And we're seeing that in WWE. That's why I'm so excited about that product. We're seeing new ways of telling stories. We're seeing production techniques that engage the audience in ways that we haven't seen ever before.

I love it to death. It's awesome. I'm wondering, too, how much of this do you think is just because it's leaf hitting and it's different than? Because I think that's a big part of it. I think for a lot of wrestling, fans, a lot of WWE fans said more specifically, WWE production and the way it's presented on TV,

it's felt paint by numbers. Like we knew if we're in the middle of a match and someone gets thrown to the outside, well, here comes Michael Cole saying, you know, he's going to throw to a break and then they're going to come right back. But now things are all different. Like this past week, we had a backstage promo and then we came to the ring and they had already joined the match in progress. I don't remember the last time I saw that.

I mean, there's a lot of things that they're doing differently and I and I wonder were they doing the sense of sameness the same thing week in week out because they were playing to an audience of one if Kevin knew this is how Vince likes it let's don't deviate because you've seen the crazy mood swings and opinion swings of Vince where he says we got to do it this way every time and then the next time says who the fuck came up with this idea I mean so if that's where we are maybe out of necessity, Kevin Dunn was just, hey, we're going to do what makes Vince happy, right?

You have no idea how right you are. And I don't talk about my time in WWE, other than the fact that I was there for a cup of coffee. I'm talking about as an executive director of SmackDown. And I, because I have a firm belief that, you know, you work for someone, whether you have a contract and I don't have an ND, or anything like that, but I still have respect for the company and the people in it,

regardless of how it ended up for me, which was basically my fault. I couldn't adapt. I couldn't adjust the chemistry between Vince McMahon and I just wasn't there that allowed me to contribute the way I felt I could or hope to. Let's put it that way. But I can tell you one of the things that I noticed first when I came to WWE in 2019. And my job description, it was a brand new job. It never existed before.

It was being created for both Paul Heyman and myself. It was executive director. And the brief description, not a brief description, but the general description of my job was to oversee all things related to the Smackdown brand, from licensing and merchandising to talent, to creative, certainly. anything, the relationship with Fox, although I wasn't instrumental in it by any stretch and came in very, very late in the game, really had nothing to do with it, to be honest. That was already, that had been taking place with Kevin Dunn and the executives of Fox.

But my job was very, very broad, and one of the things I did know that I was responsible for the SmackDown writing team. So probably one of the first, the first week I was there, and I'm not going to, names because some of these people are still there and it wasn't their fault by any stretch. But one of the things that, I want to say shocked me but left a big impact on me was I came in with so much enthusiasm and feeling like at least that was a fresh set of eyes because I wasn't, I hadn't been part of the system. And sometimes when you bring in somebody with a fresh set of eyes, even though their

ideas may not be the best ideas, the fact that they're throwing different ideas on the table creates a different conversation in a writing process when you're working with the team, right? You're just, it's just a different perspective. And I came in and I, you know, wanted to make an impression, wanted to be a part of the team, wanted to get my hands dirty. And I did. to the extent that I could

because I had a very limited amount of time to work with the writing team itself because of all the other things I was doing in that short period of time. Meetings I was taking with other divisions and departments in the company, things like that. I was onboarding for about two and a half of the four months I was there.

I was onboarding, literally. And I remember in one of the first meetings where I actually sat down and we said, okay, let's come up. Let's take a look at next week's show. Let's bounce some ideas around. And I threw a couple ideas out and there was one person in particular there that every time I throw an idea out, I'd be, oh, no, no, no, Vince would hate that. And it wasn't like this person knew Vince better than I did.

It's that this person was so afraid to even explore an idea because he anticipated how Vince would react based on his tenure with the company. He'd been there for a long time. The fear of failure that I just talked about a few moments ago was everywhere on the creative team. Now, some people expressed it differently. There were certain people there. Again, not going to name names because these are people that I respect and are still there. They handled it professionally, but they understand, you know, no, I'm not pitching that. And so I hate that.

Well, let's talk it through. Oh, no, he would, I remember. Pitch an idea like this once about 18 months ago or two years ago, and he hated it. When you're operating from that mindset, when you're in a creative position, you're going to, you're just going to be miserable and you're not going to achieve any success.

So I say all this, and I give you this background to support my perspective of what happens when you bring in new people who aren't afraid to fail. it's okay to come up with a bad idea. It's okay to even to try by executing an idea that people aren't really sure about. Maybe some people don't agree with it, but you don't know until you try. Hopefully your odds when you're trying things are much, much better than when you're not. But if you're starting from a point where you're afraid to fail because someone's going to call you a name or publicly ridicule you or ridicule you in front of your peers, which I did see,

And those people were affected by that. And then you expect that creative team to be creative. It doesn't work. And it didn't work. And I think whether it's Lee Fitting, Paul Levec, Bruce Pritchard, without having to be the Vince whisperer, kind of like the horse whisperer. You know, he spoke good Vince, probably better than most.

when those people are no longer feel like they're handcuffed or frayed fucking game on and I think that's what we're seeing well fucking game on in our live questions if you got a question for Eric drop it below we've got tons of questions about AEW we are going to get there I can't believe this is a real thing Eric but OJ Simpson passed away since you and I recorded recently and there's been lots of discussion and talk about that, including the idea that they actually discussed once upon a time doing an appearance for OJ at WrestleMania. Bruce and I've talked about it and then recently another former writer from WWE posted about it on Twitter. And I know that that you guys had a little fun with that.

There were some tape vignettes, I think, when Bobby Eaton was running around with William Regal and they were in the neighborhood where the murders happened and Bobby just stumbled across a knife and glove and then just threw it in the in the bushes some silly stuff that maybe doesn't hold up and wasn't that classy in hindsight but was there ever a discussion you know of between oj's people or wcw about doing anything with oj because that seems crazy and our man greg jacobson asked the question here did any of you fellows ever meet o j simpson did you ever have any sort of discussion or interaction at all with o j no no that would have never happened.

By the way, when the infamous car chase took place, and the Bronco is going to be auctioned off, by the way, Conrad? No thanks. You're a car guy. No, thanks. When that incident happened, I was in Australia when the news broke

that O.J. Simpson died. Of course, all I saw was that famous Bronco car chase footage. I was watching from Shaquille O'Neill's living room with Shaquille O'Neal and Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart. Wow. And some member, and, and Shaquille's dad and a couple of his friends.

And we stopped, we were there to shoot a promo with Hulk and Shaquille, because Shaquil was going to be involved in Bash of the Beach with Hogan and Flair. And we went down to shoot some vignettes and that's when that whole thing went down. And I remember just sitting, you know, dropping everything, camera crew is there. We just shut, shut down. And we all watched it. car chase a lot of it not the whole thing we watched a lot of it together and we're all in shock so at that and i watched the trial closely there's no way it has no way ever we would have done

anything with oj certainly and as you talk about that scene with stephen regal and bobby i regret doing that i don't remember it specifically but obviously i did it allowed it to happen and I'm I'm I feel pretty shitty about that that was that was a bad choice on my part well a good choice is to support our sponsor manscape they're day one sponsors here on the program and boy they're doing something really important that we want to talk about today yes today's episodes brought to you about manscaped but did you know that one man every hour every day is diagnosed with testicular cancer in fact testicular cancer is the most common form of cancer among men that are aged 15 to 35. And with April being the National Testicular Cancer Awareness Month, while our friends over at Monscape to have partnered with the Testicular Cancer Society to help spread awareness for men's health and early cancer detection. Visit Manscape.com forward slash TCS to learn how to check yourself for early signs of cancer.

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because like a famous American philosopher once said, take care of your mentals, your balls and your chickens. So Eric, listen, we got to talk about AEW and I know that's what everybody is tuning in for

us to talk about. But before we talk about the footage from all in, I wanted to ask what your reaction was to the Will Osprey promo. As I understand it, Triple H, made an appearance on the Pat McAfee show leading up to WrestleMania

and there was some discussion about all the new signings and free agents that landed on the AW side of things. And Triple H said something along the lines of if you're looking to work less, then I'm glad it didn't pick you and you don't work here, whatever it is. His idea was

you got to love the grind. This is a grind. Blah, blah, blah. And I guess perhaps that ruffled some feathers because certain people took offense. Maybe one of those was Will Osprey. He came out with Renee Paquette on the stage on AEW television last week and cut a promo. And I'm not sure that Renee knew exactly what he was going to say because the minute he started talking about the only reason you have the job you have is because you were grinding on the wife's, the boss's daughter. It's a triple eight shot in regards to Stephanie.

It looked again. Maybe this is her doing her job or maybe she was legitimately uncomfortable. but that's certainly the narrative that the internet ran with that oh you can tell she's uncomfortable and listen part of me thinks that's just old school monday night war we're going to jab back and forth but the other part says wait a minute didn't edge just open the show a week ago saying let's get over this wwea ew stuff let's all get together like let's all be nice like let's love wrestling like that was a week prior to this eric what the hell and isn't it isn't a tony con is always complaining about tribalism and talking about hate between AEW and wwe and they

thrive off the hate and it's a commodity or some bullshit look i didn't see the the triple h comments i was going to ask you and i'm guessing you didn't see it either but do you know if paula back mentioned will osprey by name i don't think he said it by then all right so it was will osprey taking it personally even though he wasn't mentioned and i'm not going to criticize well for that i don't know will osprey i am super impressed with what i've seen of him so far super impressed what i feel his potential could be i'm not sure he's going to realize in a ew because nobody else that's come in there has but he's an amazing talent and has amazing potential. And if he took it personally, I understand that. It's human nature. He can't

criticize someone for being human. I kind of wish he would have been a little more creative. If you're going to take a shot at someone, I'm going to just set aside the whole issue of even acknowledging the competition for right now. But if I'm Will Osprey and I'm new to this market as he is, and I'm trying to build a following, which he is, and he's going to need to because he doesn't have one, because AEW doesn't really have one, not the following they want to have, let's put it that way. The last thing I want to do is take a shout at Paul Levick coming off the massive success of WrestleMania, the undeniable critical acclaim that WWE is enjoying for.

for their creative and how quickly they've turned it around in such a short period of time. Being a year or two, a year and a half. The last thing I would say is, well, the only reason the guy's got his job is because of anything, especially the shot at Stephanie. Look, I get it. I have, there are times when I've popped off when I wished I hadn't, or when I popped off and wish I would have just been better at it. This is probably a time that perhaps will felt justified and pop it off,

but hopefully wishes he was just a little bit better at it. Because if you're going to, if you're down here and you're punching way the fuck up, if you need binoculars to try to hit the chin you're punching up to, be good at it. Don't say something childish, particularly that everybody, looks at and hears and goes, really? Really? You know, Paul Levick's been in the business for what, how long? The success that he's achieved as a performer, what he's learned and what he's accomplished. And it's not like Paul Levick and I are best friends. It just is what it is, folks.

Unless you're a complete fucking moron and you're so beyond yourself that you can't see things correctly, if you can't look at what's happened under Polovex leadership over the last year and a half for however long it's been now, then there's nothing I'm going to say that's going to matter to you. So just move along. But I, look, popping off is one thing. Just when you're punching up, man, be good at it. If you have to do it, be good at it. Because otherwise you look kind of low rent. And there's no reason for a guy like Will Osprey with so much potential. to do that kind of self-inflicted damage. Kenny Omega has proven to be a real one.

He's been playing video games on his Twitch channel and just openly talking about a lot of stuff that I didn't expect, including him saying, I shouldn't be an EVP. I'm not a good EVP. I'm a terrible EVP. I don't have any power. I'm just, uh, I should just, I don't belong as an EVP. I thought him just sort of falling on a sword like that and saying, hey guys, I'm a wrestler.

I thought was really, really interesting. And he also said, you know, in talking about the silliness that Seampunk brought up of his dog Larry and the whole brawl out thing, he made some sort of tongue-in-cheek reference he being Kenny to saying, it was his job as EVP to keep Larry the dog safe out of brawl out.

But he was also sort of defending fighting in locker rooms saying that, hey, this is common. These are professional athletes in a professional sports and competitive spaces. People, this sort of thing, happens. I was really impressed to see Kenny Omega come out and say that. And I know we want to send him our best wishes. It looks like he's going to have to have surgery on the diverticulitis after all. He's feeling pretty good, but it's still pretty sensitive to this touch. And if he were

to take a major blow to the stomach, it could be a really bad circumstance and situation. Can I interject this for a second? Yeah. To that point, you remember my incident about a year ago or whatever it was? Yes. Yes. I ended up in a hospital. almost died twice, had to get life flighted to a hospital where they had my blood type because my local hospital ran out and I was, I was crashing. I didn't have diverticulitis, but I had something very similar. Now, mine was self-inflicted. It wasn't because of, you know, because of all the fire.

I overdosed on fiber, basically, is what I did. But that diverticulitis is serious shit. I probably shouldn't use that term. it is a very, very serious condition. So I can relate, in a way, I can relate to what Kenny Omega is going through in the surgery that he's contemplating. It's not pretty, and it's not going to be a pleasant thing.

So much empathy, much empathy towards Kenny Omega. As far, I'm sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, go ahead. I just don't know people understand how serious diverticulitis is. Chat me up. What did you think about, Kenny's comments about, um, he's cool with C and Punk. You know, he never wasn't cool with C and punk.

He sort of made fun and said, hey, it's my job to keep that, that dog safe. I'm an EVP. And, you know, listen, fighting in the locker rooms, it happens in sports. What's say you, Eric? It's the most honest adult thing I've heard out of AEW in months. And it adds to his credibility and his. character and respect because he's being honest and he had fun doing it in the process and the fact that saving a dog in my opinion puts him very high on my list of people that I want to meet and say

hello to I get it in all of the commentary and the reactions and even Tony Chivani and I love Tony he's a great dude friends but that was the Kenny Omega's comments where the most adult comments I've heard anybody in AEW say publicly in a long time good on him yeah I thought the same you know I thought man what a what an honest answer and um well let's talk about a few more pieces of AEW business we'll do some questions then we'll get to why everybody's here we're going to talk about the brawlout fallout or the all out we'll get it right the wimbly fallout with jungle boy uh Mercedes Monet went on social media last week and promote her self as appearing on dynamite.

Of course, she never actually appeared in front of the live crowd. It was a taped promo. And in that promo, the backstage segment as it was, it was revealed that she's not going to be wrestling this weekend at the AEW Dynasty show. I think a lot of people were still thinking, well, they'll add her a match in there. And it's not happening.

They're going to instead wait and have her make her first match, be it double or nothing in Las Vegas. Did you think, some people were saying online that may have been a bait and switch to say that she'll be appearing on the show. She did technically appear on the show. She just wasn't in front of fans. And I'm kind of shocked that she's not wrestling on pay-per-view this weekend. What did you think of the announcement?

Did you consider that a bait and switch? And would you have had her wrestle before the May pay-per-view? I wouldn't have had a wrestle before the May pay-per-view. I would have actually tried to build her up in a way to make her interesting and compelling. Right now, I predicted. I was asked. It's not that I came out and started throwing my shit around, just hoping somebody would be interested.

I was asked the question months and months and months ago, do you think Mercedes-Monnais will have any impact in AEW? And without even taking a deep enough breath to express the one-syllable answer to that, it was no. It was, she's not. She hasn't, and she won't. And that's self-inflicted. It has nothing to do with her potential or what she's,

capable of it as a talent it's the environment she's in it is dysfunctionally creative it is dysfunctional creatively there is a lack of vision there's it's it's just impossible for anybody anybody to show up and have an impact or move the needle or change the game whatever euphemism you want to use metaphor whatever the fuck it is it at this point it doesn't matter They can do anything they want to do with her, and it's not going to matter. It's over. They blew it. She's just going to be, what is it?

What's Paige's name, Saraya, Soraya? Yeah. Oh, that was going to be a big thing. Oh, the women's division is going to be, oh, this is it. Game changer. Really? What have we seen so far? Absolutely nothing.

Two months from now, you'll be looking at the same scenario for Mercedes. Not because of her. or maybe she's part of it. She could be part of the problem. But the real problem is there is just no fundamental understanding of how to build a wrestling company for television in this country at AEW. If there is, they're hiding. They're in the witness protection program.

Let me ask you, did you see after last week's television? It was last week's Wednesday show. I think it was Wednesday. perhaps it was saturday night but there was a a moment where tony came out and addressed the live crowd and people started saying he was having a meltdown i didn't perceive that to be a meltdown you think at this point just the name tony con becomes pavlovian to a certain section of fans online no tony shoots himself in the foot every time he opens his mouth he's building the brand every time i mean he's still doing it he he's still doing it he

He's still living in this fantasy where he thinks he's in some 2024 version of the Monday Night Wars. Dude, you're not. First of all, it's not a war. You're not competing in any, any meaningful way outside of whatever you think you're competing within your head. It's a fantasy. And it's just Tony. I don't know how else to say it. if he hasn't learned by now that coming out and punching so far above his weight

is going to backfire, then he's never going to learn. He just won't. I mean, he's still doing it. A couple years ago, what started this whole Eric H.E.W. Bullshit was because I came out on 83 weeks, and I said, Tony, shut the fuck up and wrestle. Just shut up and wrestle. quit comparing yourself, quit putting down WWE when they're stomping a mud hole in you in every possible measurable way, quit doing it until you're actually competing or willing to go

head to head, shut up and wrestle. Because the more you compare yourself to WWE, Tony, the more you try to take shots at WWE, Tony, unless you're getting successful or growing your business, you're going to look like a moron and you're going to lose the goodwill that you have. I said this three and a half years ago or whatever it was, two years ago. I predicted what we're seeing today would happen if Tony continued to punch so far up above his weight. Every time he does, it backfires. And this is not me hating on Tony. I don't hate Tony Con. With the little bit that I've interacted with him, I think I would like him personally. He's not.

just horrible at the wrestling business. It doesn't have an understanding of television in any way, shape, or form or how to build a brand. He's doing everything exactly wrong. For a guy who wasn't going to make the same mistakes WCW made, fuck, he's making WCW in 19, in the late 90s look like a Fortune 100 company. Hey, let me stop you right there. I do want to talk more about that because I have a theory that I and I really do believe this. I think on some level Tony wanted AEW to look more like ECW and less like WCW. And I understand why people immediately make the comparison because there's more money behind it. It's well funded. It's on a Turner channel. Even the name Dynamite sounds like Nitro. Like I get it. But when you hear

Tony talk about his wrestling fandom, he always talks about when his dad took him to the CW Arena and and and and and then he just holds ECW in such high regard and I can't help but wonder had he leaned more into that and less into the into the WCW style of presentation and the the roster and all of that do you think this could have looked or felt a little differently or is this all just hey he grew up reading the observer so he's making the type of show that he thinks Dave likes and maybe not everybody else likes it you ask a couple of different questions there me made a couple different points so let me start at the end i think dame melzer's influence over tony is there and i think it's undeniable and

anybody that knows the people involved and knows what's going on behind the scenes to deny that is to deny reality and people tend to want to do that a lot so how about it i don't give a fuck i i believe what i believe so i didn't say i know what i know i just believe what i believe leave because I'm smart enough and been around the industry long enough and know the players at least regard to Dave well enough, I absolutely believe there's a significant influence. Maybe not on a day-to-day basis, but a significant influence. And it's horrible. I used to say whatever Dave Meltzer, whatever Dave Meltzer thinks is the way to go, do

180 and you're probably going to be right. The guy has absolutely, talk about no fundamental understanding of the wrestling industry. He knows the history of it, better than probably. anybody. And if he would stay in his lane, he would be an asset to the industry, I believe. But Dave tries to impart his broader knowledge of how to get people over and what's good for television and what works and doesn't work on people. And some people, unfortunately, people like Tony, buy into it. I think in Tony's case, based on things that I've heard him say, or read him say, I should say, to be more clear, he was very much impacted by ECW,

and that's going to have an influence on you, just like, excuse me, AWA had an influence on me, the style of wrestling. The general presentation in that time had a big impression on me. So there's nothing wrong with that. But when the essence of your question was, could it have been differently? And that's the part that pisses me off. That is the part that pisses me off more than anything.

And it's not about me hating Tony. It's not about me hating EW. And for God's sake, you fucking idiots. It's certainly not about me hoping people lose their jobs. Fucking clowns. It's about a missed opportunity. And it was, he was there. Tony had it.

if he would have come out and said something like, I'm not suggesting you should have said this, but something like, you've got WWE, they're great. If that's what you like, they're great. But this is what we're doing over here. And we support them, but we're doing this over here. Accentuate the difference and the alternative nature of what you're about to present

by putting over the 800-pound gorilla, not by trying to chop them down. Because you're immediately taking that audience and turning them either immediately. against you or subconsciously against you because you're basically telling them you shouldn't like what you like that ain't how you get over brother that's not how you get your brand over that's not how you maximize the good fucking will that you were gifted with because you came up with this idea to launch AEW at an absolutely perfect time there could not have been a more

perfect time than to launch AEW and dynamite than October or whatever it was of 2019. Fucking perfect. The audience wanted an alternative, but Tony came out, out of the shoot, throwing fucking hand grenades. Wouldn't get to fight. Wasn't about to go head to head, but man, he didn't shy away from cutting down WWE. And by default, the audience that watched them. it's just it's it's mind-boggling to me what's even more fucking mind-boggling to me is he still doing it his business is cratering okay cratering is too strong of a word

his business is deteriorating at a rapid pace now don't give the fuck about wembley because it's an outlier your television ratings are deteriorating your live event business, well, you don't really have a live event business other than your live TV production, dynamite, rampage collision, whatever, the numbers are right there for the world to see, Tony. Everybody sees it evidently, but you. Wake the fuck up while you still can. Because this approach of throwing rocks at WWE and talking about how these companies hate each other. You don't think that coming from you, Tony,

that that's not going to incite more of the tribalism that you so desperately complain about? You're fucking creating it. And you're blowing what's left, and there's very little left. Don't believe me, if you're listening, go to Wrestling Inc. today, go to Wrestling Inc. And look at some of the comments and anything Tony Con posts,

85% of them are way more negative than anything I've ever said. Yes, you get your small handful of supporters, but that audience is getting smaller and smaller and smaller in social media. Aunt Evans on wise choices. We took a pretty good look in deep dive into the last six months of AEW's YouTube performance.

It's crashing and burning. This is like fucking watching Olympic cliff diving. And he's still doing it. That's the part that just, I'm beyond disappointed. I'm not going to, you know, I try really hard. I look for positive things to say. Like I'm excited about the Motor City machine guns, potentially coming to AEW.

Part of me is excited because they're really talented guys They're really good guys. I've had a chance to work with them, nothing but a ton of respect. But at the same time I've gone, I was poor fuckers. They're just, I hope the money's good.

And that's a common thing that I hear. Well, let's talk about the money because, uh, maybe there's some people who are looking to make a little more money. It's come out thanks to Cassidy Haynes over at body slam.net that the motor city machine guns, he recently departed TNA are probably going in to AEW.

they've had a really strong tag division over there since day one in a e w and i for one i hope that alex shelly and chris sabin are about to make more money than they ever have long overdue they've been a great tag team for what feels like forever i've been watching these guys for like 20 years and uh i got to assume whatever their new contract is it's probably going to be the best of their career even if we don't always love their creative i'm happy those guys are head at AEW. How about you? Well, for the money, yes, for the financial security and the opportunity that it provides them and their family to secure their futures, absolutely. But not for anything else, because that's all it is. There is, look, it's, again, if you can point

to me, anybody that's come in to AEW, look, MJF had a stellar growth spurt. And it's not fair to call it a spurt. Tremendous growth as a character, as a performer, in every measurable way. Now, he's injured. It is what it is. I know there's speculations of whether or not he's coming back to AEW. I'm going to let that live wherever it lives. I'm not going to comment on that.

It's not my job. Not my desire. But you look at all of the from heroes. I mean, everybody that's come in from WWE that were established stars, and what's happened to their careers. They're making a lot of money, and I'm happy for them. But that's where it is.

It's a fucking career killer. Now, if you're on the downside of your career, or if there's other things about AEW, like the schedule, which I absolutely would understand for talent, especially, you know, we talked about Will Osprey. evidently there's some situations in his family life that to make this situation ideal for him.

God bless him and Tony for creating that opportunity for Will Osprey to make the amount of money that Will Osprey is reportedly making and not have to choose between his family and his job. I'm nothing but respect for that goodwill from Tony and creating that opportunity. Goodwill is not the right word. Creating that opportunity for talent. But that's where it ends. That's all it is is a financial, it's sharing money. Tony is sharing his wealth.

He's not. Perhaps some guys are looking to build their careers. There's been a little discussion, a little rumor that popped up last week that WWE is interested in Hook, Taz's son, who's been the FTW champ and it's currently programmed with Chris Jericho. He's, uh, he's apparently caught the eye of some WWE guys.

I assume that he's on his first contract and he was starting wrestling when he signed with AW so I can't imagine it was huge money. I have no inside knowledge. I don't know. I'm just saying, as with everything else in sports, like in the NFL, you work through that rookie contract, you make your big money on that second contract. I could totally see Hook in NXT. What do you think?

Do you think, I mean, and is it a challenge since Taz is still with a, A.W. Would that be difficult for Taz or for Hook? I know Taz well enough to comfortably be able to say, fuck, no, it wouldn't create a problem. Well, it created a problem for Tony. I don't know. Right. That's what I meant. That's, you know, will Tony have an issue with it? Your guess is as good as mine. Taz won't. I don't know, Hook. I don't know him as a person. So I can't,

honestly, have an opinion. I wouldn't think so. And fortunately, looks got a father who understands the business has been through it in every way, shape, or form, understands business and knows how to make the right decisions. So I suspect hope, by virtue of proximity,

has some of those same feelings and perspectives. And I, for one, hope, because I'm friends with TAS. I like TAS. and I hope as a father that hook gets the fuck out of there as fast as he can and if he's got an opportunity at NXT or in WWE in any way shape or form take that mucker father well listen I hope for sure that hook gets paid I think he's probably more than earned his money with this ruin I assume that dude

selling a ton of merch he connects with a younger audience I've got friends of mine who were my age, but they have young teenage kids. Their favorite AEW wrestlers are Orange Cassidy and Hook. So even if you're listening to this and, and you're like, well, he's all right, but maybe it just ain't for you yet, bro. The presentation is working for a lot of young folks. And, um, I'm hoping he gets paid and, uh, he gets a big fat check. Because as you and I have learned Eric, it's not just how much you make.

it's how much you save and that's why we are proud to talk to you today about rocket money and i got to tell you guys i i help people save money for a living so when we first got rocket money as a sponsor here on the show i thought well listen i'll try it but i mean it's not to save me any money i'm really on top of the ball here turns out i was wrong yeah my wife and i we've signed up for different services that are just automatically debiting our credit card that we forgot about and it's happened to you too it turns out like neal 75% of people have subscriptions they forgot about. And I thought before I did Rocket Money, I thought, I don't know, I got like five or six.

No, it's like triple that. I was blown away between the streaming services, the fitness apps, the delivery services. It was like never ending. But now thanks to Rocket Money, I'm no longer wasting money on the ones I forgot about. Maybe the most egregious is my wife and I both signed up for a streaming service. But we watch TV together. Never had we ever logged into her account. mine was set up on the Apple TV and that's just what we watched well it's gone now no more duplication

no more wasting money think about that we were working for this money paying taxes on it and then just giving it away if you've been trying to save money and it feels like your bank account is stuck rocket money is what you need to try it worked for me i found that i had forgotten about more than i care to admit more than a dozen we had totally forgotten about it's a personal finance app rocket money is that will help you find and cancel all of your unwanted subscriptions. They'll monitor your spending and they can even help you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, you have full control over your subscriptions and you get a clear view of your expenses. You

can see all of your subscriptions in one place. So if you see something you don't want, Rocket Money can help you cancel it in just a few taps. You're going to love how the dashboard shows you this month's spending compared to last months. So you're able to stay on top of your spending habits. Plus, they'll even help you create a custom budget to keep that spending on track. And maybe that's Mrs. Thompson's least favorite part. Rocket money will even help you negotiate to lower your bills for you, but up to 20%. Yeah, check it out. All you do is submit a picture of your bill, and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They're doing all the customer service work for you. Rocket money now has over

five million users, and they've saved those folks, over 500 million. million in canceled subscriptions, saving members an average of up to $740 a year when they're using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions right now by going to rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. That's rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. Rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. So listen, before the break, we talked about jungle boy and we talked about hook let's talk about the footage and i know you talked about it last week here on the program you jumped on wise choices our youtube show that's exclusive here at 83 weeks dot com from australia and if you miss that and you're watching our live feed down you've got

a question for eric about the footage drop it right now we are going to take your questions at the end of this segment about all that hook was standing right there for the whole thing and thankfully so was chris hero and so is samoa jo and so many others but we saw the footage and it looked like uh jack perry's coming back from his match samoa joe and punk getting ready to go to their match punk makes the approach you see him chatting with him you see paul turner on the left you see jerry lynn right there and the minute jungle boy goes to pull his hair up Phil goes on the attack and quickly after a strike

tries to grab a hold on him and before you know it Jerry Lynn and Chris Hero and Samoa Joe and everybody's involved and I know that there are a lot of people who were saying well we heard from Tony Kine that he was attacked and he was scared for his life we didn't see that footage

my understanding is it's the same clip when punk goes to the right off camera I guess that's where Tony Cohen was and that's where Chris Hero sort of corralled him and help pull him out of there he being punk what do you make of all this now that you've had a few minutes and a few days

to marinate on it not only did we see it but the announcement was made in between night one and night two of WrestleMania so if they were looking to get people talking they did. Oh did they? I kind of freestyled and thought man, they're going to just have fun with this. Like when Sean Michaels teased that Brett Hart was coming back on Monday night

raw right after the screw job and it was a little person in a Brett heart mask. I just thought, okay, they're going to go over the top with some silliness and making an angle. And they didn't. They just presented the footage and then tried to say, and that's the reason the bucks were off their game that day against FTR. And then I guess system set up the pay-per-view this Sunday in St. Louis. That's because they didn't get a chance. a prey he left that part out that was part of what threw them off that you know what yeah okay

that's fair let's go ahead and we'll post what tony con there's an interview that tony con just did and we've got an actual statement from tony about his decision to air the footage and so i think our crack producer dave silver's got that for us he is defending it here he being tony con i think it made a lot of sense first of all the young bucks ftr ladder match is coming up at a w dynasty for the World Tag Team Championships. This is the fourth chapter and FTR Young Bucks. I believe they're the two greatest tag teams in wrestling, the two very best on the planet. Last time they wrestled, Young Bucks FTR3 was at Wembley Stadium, AEW, all in. A lot happened that day. Those guys at one point, they were the third match on the paper

view. And at one point, it looked like they were going to have to be called up and they were going to wrestle the first match. They ended up going on in the spot they were in. but the young bucks said the whole day everything that happened and affected their mental preparation. They weren't able to pray before the match. They were very stressed out. They slipped on the banana peel,

lost the match, and they blame FTR and what happened at Wembley Stadium. In hindsight, that's why they refused to shake FTR's hands. We've seen the young bucks change a lot. We saw them get really dark during the retirement run of sting. They've only gotten darker and more twisted. that's why they felt like they should play the tape.

It was fascinating to see after the tape played, the reaction Jack Perry got at New Japan. He got the reaction of a superstar. That is not altogether unexpected, and it's something very interesting, perhaps a side effect of this. Jack Perry, already a big star in wrestling,

really the way the crowd connected with him in Chicago, that was interesting. It leaves a lot of intriguing or intriguing going on into AEW Dynamite an AEW dynasty. So yeah, Eric, there's the official response. Tony Kahn says it was a good idea. Your response?

Tony Kahn is the reason AEW is in the shape it's in. And that statement just exemplifies it better than anything I could say. I mean, FTR3. Are you fucking kidding me? You've just booked. them for the fourth time because you can't think of anything better there is no story that whole excuse or or the premise the theoretical premise that we're talking about here that the bucks

blame FTR for everything that happened that day what the fuck what I'm sorry does that make a lick of sense to anybody it surely doesn't to me from a storyline point of view it certainly doesn't me from a reality point of view i didn't see them anywhere in a shop did you what the fuck it's just it's just it's mind-numbingly stupid and void of any creative i mean that's what this was this was tony trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit there ain't no making chicken salad out of this chicken shit it just sucked it was a horrible decision to show it it's not getting anybody over jungle jack perry is a superstar in what reality is that show me because how many people are new japan do you know at that event uh i'm off the top of my head

i'd say six thousand and change or so okay that's a good audience for for new japan i i'm sorry i just it's hard because i actually you know what's hard comment is I'm actually holding myself back. I'm actually trying to give a measured response. And it's getting more and more and more difficult because I don't want AEW to fail. Can I tell you something you're not going to believe? It's going to keep happening over and over and over until somebody wakes up. I mean, just build a story for God's sake.

You've got people around you that could help you. Just learn how to write a story. get like stories for dummies or something and read it it's just i think in a weird way this uh jack perry character has been influenced heavily by the loose canon brian pillman which was something that you helped create you see his presentation there from new japan over the weekend he showed up in chicago at the pay-per-view wearing a leather jacket draped in the Chicago flag, and he's got guys who look like they're right out of some ECW vignettes from 96, 7, and 8 in full battle gear and right gear and SWAT gear.

But when he drops that flag, the leather jacket's been customized on the back to say, Crimea River. And I couldn't help but watch that and think, okay, maybe they're trying to get some connective tissue. There is an AEW ladder match between FTR and the Young Bucks. And that in and of itself is interesting. I don't know what wrestling politics are, but I just want to remind everybody. In a ladder match, you don't have to have a discussion where you convince someone to get pinned or submit. You just get to climb the ladder. And it makes me wonder, what are the odds you think we see Jack Perry interfere and cost

to FTR the match and saddle up with the Young Box. Do you think that's where this story's going? It's pretty simple, so probably. But again, who's getting over more? Ain't Jungle Jack Perry. Jungle Jack Perry. Ain't going to be no superstar, Tony. You're getting punk over.

When I was in Australia, I was talking about this. Again, with some people who were going to remain unnamed. and unprovoked. First of all, they're big fans of the show. Shout out to you guys. You know who you are. But almost simultaneously. Who's going to benefit?

Why would you do that? CM Punk. You're getting CM Punk. CM Punk has more equity now than he has ever had at any time in his career. He's blown by his peak. that being his original run at he's blown by that

thanks to this stupid shit Tony Con is doing a better job of getting CM Punk over in WWE than than WWE is it's incredible but hey you you you convince yourself Tony and

all 800,000 of your loyal viewers every week that CM Punk's a superstar we actually have the ratings in there Eric if you want to take a look at those I haven't seen anything so it'll be great I believe Raj Geary is reporting that rampage over the weekend did 295,000 viewers um I know that's the Friday night show but still 295 295 thousand we're approaching that I did a YouTube show on my phone in Australia with all many of that almost that many

viewers. What the fuck? The ratings are Errogates Sony got Errikates AEW. That's why these numbers are what they are. No, folks. Okay. Enough.

I can't. I can't talk about it anymore. The, uh, it's, it's, it's wild to me. I mean, I don't,

I can't really put my finger on exactly. What the craziest piece of all is, but I do know that you mentioned Tony Chavani earlier and I wanted to give you a chance to respond to Tony's comments because he said it on our show that actually is coming out tomorrow on Wednesday but a lot of the reporters in the internet wrestling community they have access to ad free shows they know you can get our shows early and ad free at ad free shows.com so I asked Tony I said Tony you kind of became a meme this past week I don't want to put words in your mouth I wanted to give you a chance to respond

and I wanted to just play that clip for you now because he does make a comparison to AEW and WCW and I wanted to give you a chance to respond because I know you hold Tony in high regard but wanted you to at least have a sense of what Chivani was thinking here we go my facial reaction to what happened was me my facial reaction trying to put more heat on the bucks for being assholes within the storyline itself right I did not have any reaction to the footage we'd see, we saw because I don't give a damn. Andy, it's not like it was new for you. No, that's right.

So what? So fucking what. So I was not upset at the promotion. I was not upset at Tony Kahn. I was not pissed off about what we had shown. I was, I was trying to be fully in the moment of the angle, which is the bucks bitching about FTR, not show, you know, wanting to shake their hands and getting fucked around. and everything that's what i was doing but of course everybody wants to create their own story and that's fine that's what social media is about social media is about idiots coming together and

trying to come up with their own ideas so maybe i was still upset about bug i don't know but i didn't give a shit about the the footage and still don't show it all you look okay don't give the shit i'm i'm sincere when i say i don't care i don't care it has no impact on my life okay some people are saying all the footage that you were showing is like the uh is like the finger point poke of doom moment for for uh for a w well you know what that's what you want it to be because you want to see us fail and there's no way because i was in both companies there's absolutely no way that you can compare us to wcw you can't you may want to you may think you're right you're wrong you cannot compare us to wcd i was there at both

you were not so there's that so i love it tony's absolutely right there's no fucking way in the world you can compare wcw to a ew he's in both companies he would know now i never said by the way i never suggested i don't know that i've ever commented specifically on those tapes saying it was wcw's version of the finger polka dume and i really don't think tony was implying that i said that No, no. I don't think that that was necessarily directed at me. I'm not taking it personally. If it was, it's kind of over my head because I've never said that.

But he's right. You absolutely, you could compare WCW in AEW if you're looking back to WCW and maybe 1991 or two. That I think might be a fair comparison. But beyond that, WCW, here's another point that I want to make. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. But the shit state, Dave Meltzer, is constantly the surrogate for AW, you know the guy, constantly trying to cover.

And he thinks he's clever enough that he can hide it, but he's such a horseshit writer. He has the writing skill sets of a fourth grader. So he's pretty easy to figure out when it comes of his intention. If you're trying to figure out what he's saying, that's different because the man, like I said, he's got the grammar skills of the fourth grader. But again, the surrogate, the shit's stay, Dave Meltzer, is constantly saying, well, you can't compare time periods because television has. No shit, Sherlock.

Yes, it has. But what you can do is go back and take WCW, for example, in 1992. It was before I got in charge. I was a third string announcer. I'm not trying to put myself over here. Just pointing out facts, since supposedly guys like Dave who use the term metrics, every opportunity he gets, because he just learned it probably in the last 12 months, trying to come off as a quote-unquote analyst. If you want to be an analyst and you want to compare, take a look at market share, look at WCW Saturday Night's ratings back in 1992. Go back and look at it.

You can Google the Internet. I had people in Australia making jokes to me about Googling the Internet. memorable moment here on 83 weeks, evidently. But go back and do a little bit of research. It doesn't take much. And look at the, compare the viewers for WCW Saturday night at 605 Eastern 305 Pacific. Compare them to Monday night wrong. You had like a 2.0 back then, roughly.

Yeah, which at the time, I don't even want to try to guess off the top. I have over over, let's call it 900,000 people per point. So there's like 2 million people, 3 million people watching. WCW Saturday night, and then look at the audience for raw. This is the same time period, not comparing ratings, just look at total viewers. For WCW as a percentage of Monday Night Raw on WWE, the incumbent that had been around for 30 or 40 years. You'll find that WCW was already competitive, even though we weren't on the same nights. I say we, WCW wasn't on the same nights.

they were on Saturday nights. Monday was on my head Rawls rating was like 2.2 to 2.5. Yeah. So you guys were around the two and they were like a 2-2. All right. So thank you for keeping this short. Yeah.

But you get my point. Now compare on a percentage basis where AEW is today compared to WW. It's a fraction of where WCW was in terms of market share to WWE. So this comparison that people, as Tony said, want to try to believe, it's not even fucking close. And let's not even talk about WCW in 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, even 1929, which was hell on earth for me.

We were more competitive compared to WWE than AEW is today, which is why this whole comparison, this constant comparison, is hurting the credibility of everybody in EW. AEW that tries to defend it on that basis. And the more Dave Mouser in the people on the Internet who try to do the same, the less credibility. AEW is suffering from it. The perception from so many people is going in, it's circling the toilet because of this nonsense. And Tony's right.

you absolutely cannot compare WCW to AEW in any way, shape, or form. Another comment that Tony Cohen has had since you and I last recorded, quote, there's a number of big factors that would play in Dubai wrestling has seen such a great renaissance in recent years. I think it comes from the great competition in wrestling right now and the fact that there are so many great stars competing right now. Everyone knows that the most real thing in wrestling is the competition between the the companies. The companies hate each other. It will be a natural resource that powers the

industry. They want to beat each other and take everyone's free agents. And that is what makes it interesting for everybody else. What do you make of this? Comment from Tony. Delusional. Any clear thinking person who isn't emotionally invested to the point of it clouding their judgment understands it to be fucking delusional for the very reasons. I just you. There's nothing competitive about this situation. And AEW and Tony Khan, as much as they try, as Tony Giovanni said, and they believe because they want to believe that they're actually competition in their minds, particularly in Tony Khan's mind, evidently, it's not reality. And continuing to push this non-reality as a fact only undermines any hope Tony Khan is ever

going to have of reestablishing credibility with his audience. let's do another quote from Tony this one says to be AEW is to be under constant attack you do a great show and the next day someone is saying something negative you do five great shows in a row someone says something negative at this point I don't worry about it we just need to go out and do great shows and he had this to say about X or Twitter one platform X it is amazing how much time has spent in this industry on it and sometimes becomes what i've seen sometimes a bit of an echo chamber and also there's a lot of bad faith there's a lot of bad faith posting on it and you

giving a great day in the business like do the number one show and people will try and tell you you didn't do something great or you can break the world record for the most tickets ever sold to a wrestling show and have this massive huge success on pay-per-view it just hit a home run and the wrestling's great and everything is great and people People are trying to tell you there's some sort of problem with it or some detriment. And I got to say, he's right. Like, he is taking a lot of criticism, even when things are going well. And I think you're also right.

He may have invited it on himself. He's taking a fucking bath in it. He wallows in this stupidity, delusion. He's creating the negativity. He's whining like a bitch about. If you don't like it, Tony, shut up and wrestle. Go back and listen to the 83 weeks episode. Just listen closely.

Because there was no ill intent. There was no bad faith. That's another term. Both Dave Meltzer and Tony Khan love to use. Again, another word that, at least in Dave Meltzer's case, he probably just heard or learned recently. Bad faith. I'd like to know where that bad faith is coming from.

Is it coming from people that are pointing out? out the realities of your business is the people from pointing out the fact that you're having a hard time drawing 3,000 people to a live dynamite? I mean, where is the bad faith in people pointing out in talking about the realities of your business and the stupid things you've done and the poor leadership that exists? It's not deniable. It's not fabricated. It's right here, unfortunately, for the entire world to see, but rather than recognizing it in adjusting, pivoting, and being smarter about it, you're wallowing in it and inviting more of it.

Good luck. Have that it. I don't know that this will ever change. I think this is the way it is. And our man who helps us with our YouTube here, Aunt Evans, you've seen recently on wise choices. He ran not one, but two polls during our show today. And the poll showed that 76% of fans felt like Tony aired the footage because he was upset over the interview with Ariel Hawani. I can't even imagine that that is a stretch. Like, that's the only logical thing.

If he was going to show the footage, because I saw people online say, Eric Bishop would have showed the footage. I thought he would have in September. Not now. Like to me, if you were going to Well, I had punk under contract, and if I had a plan, hell yeah, I would have. Like, to me, if you really wanted to turn people against punk and use whatever momentum and explain and justify, then you would have shown the footage that day when you let him go and you made that announcement at the United Center. That didn't happen, of course. And 76% of people think it's Ariel Hawani's interview with punk that got that footage shown. And 90% of fans watching now on 83 weeks.com.

I can't believe this is a real sentence. Say that jet lagged Eric on his phone is more fun to watch than AW. That to me is just silly. It's, I guarantee I'm more entertaining. I'm not saying that your promos aren't better and your stories might not be better, but I haven't seen you do not one tope Suicita. So I'm going to watch a little. Hey, do not sell me short.

You saw the, you saw the video that I posted this. this morning on uh i did man you were out there a little yoddy it's not to the crowd i shot that in australia i was in australia that was my meet and greet oh god man's in australia i am over as rover as chris masters chris masters he was there he saw it he was backstage with me said going out and dance i said chris i can't dance man i'm 60 i'll be 69 years old next month you know my moves are yeah he said no eric you can do it you can do it you can do it and Chris inspired me to rather than just walking out doing that cheesy point to my dimples thing and telling me but I love you people I love each and everyone rather than

doing that try something new Chris said to me and I thought Chris why not why not so I danced my way onto the stage and I thought I'd post it for everybody today well we're glad you did and we're glad you guys tuned in with us here for a live episode of 83 weeks we're not done we're still going to knock out a handful of questions we'll rapid fire some Um, I have no idea what you asked here, Robert S. I know you're asking another language. Maybe Eric knows, but, uh, appreciate you helping us out. Any idea what the hell that says, aren't?

I ambition, Robert, I miss you. Okay. I don't know what that means. Cool. Hope it works out. Uh, Swayze says, uh, it seems like Tony Kahn strategy is to outbid any free agents, uh, which is why Drew has yet to sign with them. He's using the 1995 WCW strategy.

You know, that is something that we should talk about you know i mean tony con even made sure to mention hey uh everybody's trying to steal each other's free agents and that's what everybody else talks about can we stop right there can we stop right there who has wwee tried to sign that they haven't been able to because that talent subsequently chose to go to a ew i'm not saying no but i'm just saying who are they Mercedes Monet will Osprey. Mercedes-Money, based on what I have heard,

I don't know this is a fact. I'm not Dave Meltzer. I'm not saying this as a fact. I have a reasonably good authority that she asked for an amount of money that WWE wasn't willing to give. Correct. So WWE chose to let her go. Correct.

There's a difference between a choice and a steal. Big difference. I know it sounds like it's just semantics, but it's really, really not because AW is trying to create the perception that there's a battle for these free agents. And I'm not suggesting that there's not interest in some of these free agents. Of course there is. There should be. Not unusual.

I guess I'm not following you. Like in a free agent battle, I mean, let's just make it. Let's compare it to buying a house. If you have two offers. You take the one with more favorable terms. Are you suggesting that WWE couldn't have meat or beat? You offer the AEW Gamer? I think, I'm going to say this respectfully.

WWE didn't think she was worth the investment. And she's not. And they were clearly right. I'm not arguing. I mean, I don't know what pay-per-view she's going to sell or what merch she's going to. I don't know any of those details. I don't know what's going on to the hood of AEW, but I'm just saying WW was interested in signing Sasha Banks back.

And let me ask you this, Eric, if AEW didn't exist, where does Sasha Banks wrestle today? Doesn't, but that doesn't, that doesn't, that's doesn't, has nothing to do with whether or not anybody's trying to, the term steal. See, that suggests a Monday night war type environment. There is no Monday night war type environment here. Mercedes Monet came in, she left, walked out. of the WWE.

Yes. They were interested in her coming back. She came in and demanded something that WWE went, and you're not worth it. See ya. And then Tony Kahn paid her what she asked for. I'm going to talk a little bit about that, either on this show or maybe another one because we're running out of time.

There's a strategy. There's a chess game going on here, chess game going on here that people don't quite understand. I agree. It's being played out right under your fucking noses and you don't see it. And I'm not talking about the general population. I'm talking about the people that are constantly defending this free agent stealing battle competition. It's being played out right in front of you.

And it's funny as hell to me because I've seen it before. Hell, I've been a victim of it before. I know exactly what's going on. But the world can continue to think that because Tony Kahn said it, that WWE hates AEW because they're competing for free agency, WWE is going to get whoever they want. In the case of Will Osprey, who had a unique, evidently, based on what I've heard him or read him say, he has a unique situation,

and AEW is a better option for him. As I said earlier, God bless Tony Kahn. God bless Will Osprey and his partner for being able to achieve what they've achieved based on Will Osprey's dedication, hard work, and God-given talent. That's fucking awesome. I agree.

But it has nothing to do with, anybody competing and stealing it was a choice i don't get i don't get the competition and the stealing in the free agent bullshit it's another extension of the fantasy world that tony con lives in and he's trying to sell and nobody's buying it all right let me get back on track here what our where i was going is since we have now some topsy turviness in wwee talent relations and we mentioned a lot of critical key contracts specifically Italia Becky Lynch Drew McIntyre I mean there's a lot of big contracts that are going to be coming up including Seth and so there's there's

some interesting what's going to happen where are they going to go could we see them jump ship certainly WWE has a ton of momentum now but I am wondering since we just saw some AEW layoffs and some releases now we're talking about potentially bringing in some other new big signes. Would you be surprised to see if any of those folks jump ship, or do you think AEW or WWE might actually

start playing a little more hardball since they've seen some layoffs on the AEW side of things? I mean, it feels like the only reason the layoffs would be happening and some of the dual tapings would be happening would be if we're trying to get costs in line.

From the outside looking in, that feels like a cochet thing. and he, of course, is the new C-O of AEW. But I'm wondering, do you think any of those talent, like a Drew McIntyre, like a Becky Lynch, is there any chance they wind up jumping ship this summer to AEW? Only if they're in it for the money grab, and this is, this is their exit strategy, and they don't care about their legacy, they don't care about what happens to their professional future, they're just in it for the money, then they might go.

But if that is not the case, they're not one of those people that are going to look at anything that's going on at AEW or any of their peers who left WW to go to AW and go, hmm, that sounds like a good plan. First of all, if I'm Becky Lynch right now, whatever I thought I was hoping to negotiate for, just got bumped by about 30% with the injury to MAMI. I think Becky's in a much stronger position. Did you just call Ria Riffley Mammy? Yeah, why not? I thought it was Mommy. Mommy? I thought it was Mammy.

Okay. Hey, listen, tomato tomato. I want to let everybody who signed up for 83 weeks.com and join. They're one of our new members here, no. We're going to have some new videos this week. So if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell and tell your friends about 83 weeks.com. You can ask Eric Bischoff,

live questions. Eric, we got two dozen. No chance we get through them all. We got two and a half hours deep here, but let's try to blitz through a few of these. And I'll try to be fast. I promise. The UK goalie network says WWE got Tony to blow 30 minutes of his two hour show trying to fire back without using a single second of their own TV time. How amused by, was Eric by all this? I'd say pretty amused. In a sad, morose kind of a way, but yeah. And thanks, Scholey Network. I appreciate it very much, brother. Glad you're here across the pond, as it were. Sid says, do you think UFC guys, especially with great mic skills, will start showing up in

WWE, Connor, Nate Diaz, Mazvedal. I don't really see any of those guys going to full on wrestling school, but I could see them cross over and do it a tag match at some point. What say you, Eric? I mean, why not? You know, you look at what Logo Paul is accomplished and Bad Bunny before him or around that same time. Anything is possible, particularly somebody with great, you know, martial art skill sets that can learn the art. Anything's possible. By the way, and I feel so horrible

about not remembering this individual's name, but did you see the guy in the UFC that cut the fight about or cut the promo after his fight about Austrian economics? No, missed it. Oh, my God. It is like the best, take your politics, your view of politics, take it out. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. go back and find that i'll send it to you kind of i'll find it it is the best promo i think i've ever seen because it came from out of fucking left field it was so good it was so great we should uh do a few more questions here talking rasseling with pond water dave says would a e w get more viewers on a different night t t or maybe even head to head with right

with raw would they benefit from channel changers so that's something i'd never considered. Could AEW actually somehow be helped by actually going head to head with WWA? That's a complicated question. And Pondewa, thank you very much. I look forward to cross and pass with you again soon. Um, theoretically, yes. Theoretically, it could be a good thing for, AEW to go head-to-head with WWE, in theory. But so much would have to change. And one of the things that everybody would have to be prepared for is it would take time. You're not going to be able to achieve what Nitro achieved. And that's because things are different now. It's just not

possible. You could bring in Steven Spielberg to be your head of creative. It's still not possible because things are different now but there could still be a significant benefit if you had the right people in place you had the right vision for your brand and you had the discipline and the patience to achieve it certainly have the talent but we're talking about such a theoretical opportunity that you would need quantum physics like mathematical aptitude to even try to project the odds of success now. It ain't happening. Jim says Conrad, I know Eric and I are still lost on this.

So I turn to you. Please explain what makes AEW competitor brand and what are they competing for and how you measure it. They're a Challenger brand. That's the word you meant to use there. And Challenger brand is basically PR speak for we're not the big dog. So if you ever sat down at lunch counter or dinner or whatever and said, when they said,

And what would you like to drink? I'll have a Coke. Oh, we don't have Coke. We have Pepsi. Okay, that's fine. Pepsi's the Challenger brand. Coke is the established one. WW is the Coke.

AEW's trying to be the Pepsi. And every now and again, they look like Pepsi. And sometimes they don't. And not the Dave one. Yeah. Shout out to Michael Skagans, who's a new member.

Appreciate you joining the group here at 83 weeks. com. Tell your friends to hit that subscribe button turn on the notifications bell a nice little comment here from will francisco just wanted to thank you uh he had memories with his mom that helped get through losing her nine years ago and your contributions to wrestling helped with that so thank you for sharing that will and welcome to the club thank you for joining us here at 83 weeks let me say one thing well appreciate the comment very much and that's one of the things and

it's just like this comment it's one of the things that i love going to appearances now i used to dread it up until a couple years ago when I figured this stuff out. But when you hear stories like that, when you have conversations with people like Will who tell you how much wrestling meant to them, either as a kid growing up or in circumstances like Will was referring to here, you know, I didn't think about it at the time because I was too caught up in my own nonsense

and what was going on, but to be able to think back and reflect back and be prompted by statements like this and realized that what we did contributed a lot more than I ever imagined it. So thank you, Will. I appreciate it. shout out to justin who also joined us here at 83 weeks want to highlight him becoming a member we greatly appreciate that zach says with the viewing numbers not showing up for dynamite

after the stone with the footage do you think tony might let somebody else have the pencil no nobody's ever getting the pencil but tony con tony con when you were a kid you played with action figures tony con plays with human beings uh i mean think about that when we were all kids and we had those action figures in the play ring and we'd say what if this guy fought that guy tony kine gets to do that and when he thinks about man that guy versus this guy be a good match somebody in aew makes the graphic he tweets it out and here it comes i think that's part of the fun of a e w if you're an a w fan uh david hernandez says uh in your opinion is there anything about a e w that you're particularly looking forward to for me i was interested in the

c and punk security footage and now it's the return to of MJF. Eric, is there anything about an EW that gets you excited? I agree with Mr. Hernandez. David, thank you very much for joining us here and for a question. I agree with Dave. I'm looking forward to MJF coming back. That I am looking forward to.

I do look forward to the stupid things that Tony Kahn says because it gives me great content here on YouTube. That I do look forward to. but that's it and I and I will be interested to see Will Osprey work because I really do enjoy watching him in the ring you know I take quality of story or lack of story I just throw that out the window and in his case for now because it's new to me I haven't been following his career and seen a lot of his matches didn't pay attention to new japan or wherever he came from just doesn't fucking matter to me but I do enjoy watching him for now until you know I quit being

interested in seeing phenomenal matches because I've seen him have one too many phenomenal matches without any story at that point I'll probably fade away but that's not that's not going to happen anytime soon because he is such a special special performer in that regard that's about it Mike Browning is a big fan of yours I wanted to thank you for all the memories with Nitro and the NWO thanks for the contribution and for hanging out with us today Mike and your pal from India that you just mentioned that you just spent so much time with in Australia. Our man Barat says, I host a T&A panel with Moose and Josh, and it was refreshing to hear them focusing so positively on what they were doing rather than on the

competition. Should we talk more about T&A as the alternative? I mean, I think that's what T&A has in common with AEW. They too are a challenger brand. Why do you think we don't talk about T&A more than we do? Probably because of the lack of the exposure and domestic U.S. TV. AEW has the advantage of being on a major cable platform, two of them, and TNA doesn't. So their exposure to the mainstream audience is significantly hampered as a result. But from what I have seen of them, and especially under Scott DeMore, and that's not to say it's not going to continue to improve it. The dust is going to settle and it'll be a good solution. I don't know. I have no idea if that is the case or not. But what I have seen

limited, as it may be, has been, it reminded very, reminded me very much of the kind of wrestling that I enjoyed watching. It's story driven. It's athletic without being necessarily, you know, gymnastics floor exercise constantly. I love the high-flying, acrobatic stuff. Don't get me wrong. It's why I created the Cruiserweight Division and all that. So it's not that I don't like it. I just like it in moderation, like a lot of things. A lot of things I love in moderation. but um i think t and a has the potential certainly is much potential from a creative basis from a creative perspective is a ewe probably more so much more so let's do a few more a few more live questions here appreciate you guys keeping them coming uh mr s en says eric

what do you think of the idea of vents teaming up with tony to spite wwee if tony and the bucks gave Vince full creative decision and input, could Vince save AEW? Boy, what a crazy question that is, Mr. S.E.N. You know, when you take flying lessons, one of the first things they do, especially when you're getting ready for your, even when you're getting ready for your instrument rating is your pilot instructor, your flight instructor puts you under what they call the hood, which is you very, very limited vision. All you can see is your instruments. And they do it intentionally and they take a couple terms to the right.

a turn to the left, and they go up and they go down, I turn to the left, turn to the right, all designed to induce a state of vertigo. And the reason they do that is so you can become familiar enough with vertigo to recognize it early on and take appropriate reaction, action, I should say. This question just gave me that same sense of vertigo that I experienced the first time my flight instructor ever put me under the hood. The only reason I'm not falling out of my chair is the 700 plus hours I have as an instrument-rated private pilot in my experience with Vertigo.

I love you. Mr. Sam, thank you very much for the question. An Irish penguin, appreciate your contribution today. Thank you for that. Shout out to Andrew H. Who made a great point. T.K.

has done some good. He brought together Eric Bischoff, Vince Rousseau, and Jim Cornett. That's sweet. Doug Wynn says never say never brother never say never had you thank you Doug Wins got a couple of rapid fire comments here WCW was watchable at least back in the day TK may be the new herb Abrams but with money no no comparison there come on now Matthew says from a TV standpoint does having the key demo

really matter since they can't keep and increase the lead in audience going into prime time would you expect a new deal and he tells us how to pronounce his last name it's Matthew Ebly or Eb Lee chat me up what do you think the odds are that AEW winds up sticking around Warner Brothers Discovery do you think they stay on TBS and T&T or later this year where we hear some different news I've been 100% consistent every time I've been asked this question for the last year and that is I don't know because if you don't know if you don't have a very close look at what's going on inside of Warner Brothers

Discovery, there's no way in the world you can possibly make an educated statement about the potential of AEW sticking around. It depends on what Warner Brothers Discovery's goals are. For example, I just recently read that Warner Brothers Discovery is interested in getting the rights to women's NBA, which is getting freaking hot right now. Well, I should say women's basketball, at least in the college ranks, is getting hot right now. I don't know about the WNBA. but that could throw a wrench into it or it could help it there's no way of knowing unless you are on the inside and I'm talking about senior executive level right not because you have a friend that works in the marketing department or you have a friend that knows somebody that works for somebody

that's that's that's not where these conversations are taking place the cover the real conversations the ones that really matter are taking place way outside the scope of Anybody in the universe that you and I, Conrad, are playing in, are going to have access to. That's a fact. Now, that being said, as I have said so many times, I don't know. I think there's a reasonably good chance, but I don't think it's guaranteed. It depends, again, on the goals. Because if Warner Brothers Discovery bought into AW originally hoping to grow an audience, that ship is sailed.

And it's too obvious to everybody. If it's true, and I don't know that it is, but if it's true that Warner Brothers Discovery has a percentage stake inside of AEW, they also have a look at the books. Yep. And that ain't going to be a pretty sight. Nope. But if Warner Brothers Discovery feels that in order to somehow resurrect, TBS, T and T or to grow them, I shouldn't say resurrect, they're not dead for quite out loud, but they're

hurting like everybody else, it's not just them. but if they feel like that six, seven, 800,000, maybe once in a while, 900,000 viewing audience is important to them. And that demo, to Matthew, I believe's question, that demo is important. It is an important demo. And if they feel like they're better off with AEW until they figure out a better solution, then they'll get a deal. But not for any other reason in that.

It would be, in my opinion, I don't know this is a fact. If Warner Brothers Discovery decided to re-up AEW, which I think is a 50-50 shot at best at this point, it would be to stop the bleeding not to solve a problem. Well, we hope to solve some of your problems. You got a question for us. Drop it below. We will be sure to be back doing more live YouTube later this week for an episode of

Wise Choices. I want to give a quick shout out to Aisha Sandman. Robert Rose and FT3. Greatly appreciate all of your contributions. A little more love for Mike Browning. You asked a couple of great questions today. David Hernandez, Eric and I are not gamers. We are not really familiar with the AEW game or the problems or complaints.

But that is something for us to talk about in the future with a gamer. So thank you for that suggestion. Chosen 1-575 wants to know we'll see in Punk Sue TK for the footage. No, sir. I don't even know that they were supposed to air it. There were reports that technically you can't release footage like that from the UK. I don't know what that's about or not about. I don't know all the legalities,

but I do know that AEW started copyright striking on social media. And that's something they do a lot on YouTube, but not really on social media. I didn't bother asking any of my friends in AEW because it felt like a weird thing to ask. But I can't imagine punk would be upset that he got free airtime in publicity. And it didn't make any sense to me. I agree. Shout out to Gary Wendell, who made a donation. Greatly appreciate you being here. I want to throw some love to Erica who just signed up. And shout out to Perp.

Appreciate you being a listener down in Australia. And listen, this was a lot of fun. And Eric, I know you've had that one tweet that you wanted to air on the show. It actually came up while you were in a bathroom break. And you sent it to Dave. And I said, okay, Dave, you can show it, but do it at the end. end. I can't believe this is real. The WWE had 18 consecutive sold out television tapings. And there was an account that's elite rockers, elite club, SOB, I guess on Twitter, points out that, I don't know if this is verified or not. It's been 79 weeks since AEW had a sold out weekly television show.

So since they sold out one of their TVs, Eric, 79 weeks. so if we get four more of those well you know we have a whole new show we can go back and look at every one of the AEW episodes and break it down and talk about what it well how it could have been better and why oh god listen i'm not kidding you that would be awesome boys and girls drop your questions i've got a whole new

i've got i'm going to be doing this shit for the next 10 years oh my god goodness gracious stay tuned to boys and girls tell your friends about 83 weeks.com it's totally free hit the subscribe button turn on the notifications bell and be sure to look out for eric he's going live later this week and if i were a betting man those ratings are going to come out on thursday the observer's going to come out on friday thursday or friday i might be handy with a youtube that's all i'm saying 83 hit that so hit that notification yes hit the subscribe button hit the notification

bell you're going to push notification when eric is live and you can ask him questions here at 83 weeks.com and yes we are getting back on track normally eric is going to do wise choices by himself it's a one-man show i might do run-ins every now and again this was our 83 week show but we thought you know what we're already late because of australia let's just do it live for youtube so uh you'll catch 83 weeks every week on your rss but uh you don't want to miss what we're doing here on YouTube. So hit the button, damn it. 83 weeks.com. And we'll see you guys next week right here on 83 weeks with Derek Bischoff. As an adult, don't we all miss spring break? Nothing like taking a week off from all your responsibilities. Well, here's the next best thing for adults, a spring break from

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