83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 319: Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us through Eric's history as a reality television producer and his Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling project with his partner Jason Hervey. How did the show get developed, who was the most difficult to work with, was any of it "real"? Find out the answers to those questions, plus Eric's thoughts on everything going on in the wild world of professional wrestling on this edition of 83Weeks. SIGNOS - Signos removes the guesswork out of weight loss and provides the tools to develop healthier habits. Go to https://www.signos.com/ and get 20% off select plans by using code 83WEEKS. PRIZE PICKS - Go to https://www.prizepicks.com/83WEEKS and use code 83WEEKS for a first deposit match up to $100! 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 BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s https://bluechew.com/, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE 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 with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? Getting ready to smoke chickens. Well, all right. That's not the answer I expected, but it is a Sunday morning. I'm doing great. I feel great.

It's early, early Sunday morning. The sun is out. Spring is in the air. It's going to be a beautiful day. And I invited, Lori and I invited one of our neighbors down the road, Doris to come over. Doris brings me goose eggs. Doris has geese, ducks and cows and horses and an ostrich. Now, what is it?

It's a bird that looks like an ostrich, but it's not an emu. She's got an emu. She's got a giant pig. Pig is the size of a Kia. It's huge. All it does is lay in the freaking mud. All day long. But Doris, she's from Germany.

She used to be a veterinarian. She, like, picks up every stray animal, every stray cat, dog, horse, donkey. She actually raises and trains wild Mustangs. This woman is 70-some-odd years old, maybe 70, 74, lives by herself on a ranch. She breaks, meaning tames to a degree, and trains. wild mustangs. Did you know that? There are wild Mustangs you can adopt them

and then train them. They turn into absolutely fantastic mountain horses. Not a lot of that happening in downtown Huntsville. I can't say that I've seen anybody break a wild Mustang, but. We just went off into the weeds right off the top. Your ADD is kicking in real early this morning. And we're kicking in. We're excited that we're here with you this morning on 83 weeks.

Thank you guys for checking us out at 83 weeks.com. We were out of sorts and out of our routine last week, and we actually wound up going live Tuesday evening. And boy, there was a lot to talk about. And as luck would have it, we're recording this Sunday morning, just hours ahead of AEW Dynasty in St. Louis. Over the weekend, they announced that Chris Jericho and Hook are going to wrestle for the FTW title.

but the rest of the card we pretty much had mapped out. I do want to talk a little bit about AEW at the end of today's show. Of course, there is going to be some speculation on my part, maybe even some spoilers. So if you're watching with us live here this morning from ad-freeshows.com, and you don't want to potentially have the pay-per-view spoiled tonight. We'll give you a heads up, and you can tag out. Of course, I'm talking to our live studio audience who joins us early in ad-free. they get to be a part of what we're doing and everything we're doing over to ad-free

shows.com, including great bonus content from every single host each and every month. I'm having a blast over there. I think you will too. We've got a very special interview lined up later this week. One I've been looking forward to for a long time that's going to be coming to ad-freeshows.com sooner rather than later. But before we talk about our nostalgia topic and then close the show with a little AEW chatter, I want to talk to you a little bit about WWE.

Eric, because we're seeing now solo Sacoa step up as the new leader, if you will, of the bloodline, and he's introduced formally his MFT, made my wife chuckle because those are her initials now, Tomatanga, and boy, they had a bloody scene with a car wreck behind the show on Smackdown. We debuted some brand new tag team titles. We even had an interview done over in London that was then dropped into the show from Cody Rhodes, who was wrestling in front of the largest house show in

WWE history. It was a fun smackdown. It was a well done show. And meanwhile, that's just one of the crews. The other crew is set in records across the pond. There's a lot to talk about in WWE land this week, Eric.

A lot of energy, a lot of success, a lot of records being broken on a regular basis. critically acclaimed really pay-per-view amazing storytelling new character is this tomatanga character what a impressive young young man he is by the way you keep saying young young and you're getting roasted online he's like 41 but i appreciate you leaning into it i'm 69 i know my son's age he's my son's age my son just turned 40 yesterday he's a kid in my eyes he will always be a kid in my eyes.

The hell are you people getting upset about nothing for. Have you nothing better to do? My favorite is when people were like, oh, he's an old man. Not like my favorite L.A. Knight. They were born in the same year, guys. 41 is no longer old in the wrestling business. Well, the heat I got, of course, it's not old.

Look at, I mean, if you look at the rosters in, in, in, in, in WWE, or look at the roster in AEW. 40, you're kind of knocking on the sweet spot store. You're getting into your prime in 40. Because you've gone through your 20s learning that you don't want to do all the stupid shit you thought was cool when you were 12. And then you start figuring it out. Well, some people do.

And if you're lucky enough to get into a situation where you're working with people who understand the storytelling components of the business, understand how to pace the match, understand how to manipulate the audience to get the reaction that you want to get when you want to get it as opposed to hoping and praying for this is awesome chance. If you're one of those lucky individuals on the independence and you happen to cross past with a veteran that can teach you some of those things,

or maybe you just learn by observing oh my god imagine that you just learn by watching people oh i don't know like maybe randy orton example who is an artist he's an artist he's not a professional wrestler he he passed professional wrestler a long long time ago he's an artist he tells a story with every square inch of his body every facial twitch adds an element of interest to his story. Perhaps you're one of those lucky enough independent wrestlers to observe a guy like Randy Orton. And then you take your skill sets out of the road. You grow and you become better. And that doesn't usually happen unless you're a freak of fucking nature. Doesn't happen until you're probably in your late 30s. The light bulb goes off. You finally figure it out.

Well, so I think I want to become huge stars. So yeah, 40s, whatever. But the The reason I'm getting all the heat I'm getting is because I was unfamiliar with Tomataga. Guess what? I don't sit around and watch wrestling eight hours a week. I really don't. I have another life. I enjoy watching wrestling. I drop in when I hear about something that I'm interested in particularly that I think we might talk about here in 80 weeks.

Yes, hold on a second. You wouldn't be able to watch him anyway, Eric. He's a new Japan wrestler. Even if you watched eight hours of wrestling a week, you wouldn't. I've seen him. He's a, he's a New Japan wrestler. So unless you were keeping up with New Japan. What the fuck? That's how I ought to touch I am.

One of the OG members of the bullet club. He's an impressive young man. Yeah, 41, when you're damn near 70, still a young man. Honestly, I have two pairs of jeans that are almost that old. That's tremendous. Well, what's not old is the matchup, AJ Stiles versus Cody Rhodes that is going to headline backlash in France, as Cody said in his promo, two Georgia boys.

It's paddling it out in the middle of France. Man, it's pretty fun to think about how long A.J. Stiles has been at this. In the early days, the Asylum Nashville days of T&A, he defended the NWA World Championship against dusty roads. And now all these years later, 20 years later almost, we're talking about him wrestling Cody for the WWE title. what a career AJ has had and and I know he's probably in the twilight now he's made it clear that he's not planning to wrestle forever he's at least thinking about retirement he can see it from where he is in his career I don't think he's gotten his just due in the company because you want to talk about a guy who was the torchbear for T&A

and then he enjoyed so much success with New Japan but even under the Vince McMahon, WWE. He had a hell of a run. He did. And I do believe that with a trivia, that AJ got his start in WCW. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, the very end. That's right. Yeah, very end to WCW. And he may have been part of the power plant. I don't think so. I don't think that's where he was trained primarily. But perhaps, perhaps, AJ Style's got to start in WCW. On another related trivia note, this may be the first time in history.

I don't know. I have to check this out. Got a bunch of enlightened Mucker Fathers out there listening to the show that'll probably do the research and correct us before the end of the show. I'll correct me if indeed I'm wrong. But this may be the first time in history

to former George, high school state wrestling champions meet. Yeah. I don't know. Check it out. Interesting idea. It's true. May 4th is a date that will go down in the history books.

Dave Meltzer will be writing about it. True history. All kidding aside, and I'm not kidding, that is true. I can recall. two great guys. I mean, really, really get about what they've accomplished in professional wrestling and entertainment.

Just forget about all that. If they never step foot in a wrestling ring, these are two of the nicest human beings I've ever had the pleasure to meet. I agree. These are really, really good human beings. Now, add to the fact that they're both phenomenal in the ring and phenomenal characters know how to make you believe and keep you excited at

the same time. Can't wait. It's going to be fun. I can't wait either. I do think it's going to be a great show. I am a huge AJ Styles fan. I think he has been one of the best wrestlers in the world for the last 20 years. I mean, I really mean that. And the idea that he's getting to be the headline in the title match in the first ever PLE from France is a big deal. And it's a a big deal that he's the first challenger for Cody in his new Renaissance era, whatever we're calling this, this Triple H era. That being said, I have seen some criticism online from people who felt like, you know, maybe what we really needed was Cody to have a big, mean, nasty heel lined up right

after WrestleMania. And instead, we had a match to determine who would get that opportunity between L.A. night and AJ Stiles. I think I said recently on one of our podcasts, probably got to be AJ because he's the heel in that scenario. I don't think they'd want to split the audience with Cody in LA night, baby face versus baby face just yet. But do you think if you had your hands on the steering wheel

after we had Cody slay the dragon of the bloodline after all these chances and all this time, would you have immediately put him into another scenario where it looked like he was at a disadvantage, a big, mean, nasty heel? Or do you like, hey, let's go out and put on the best match we can with AJ? I like a little bit of both, and that sounds like a cop-out. It is.

But let me put it this way. I would not have thrust him immediately into a precarious situation with a big nasty heel with no real story. Now, if that's what I wanted to get to, I take my time to get there. I learned the hard way. I learned by mistakes. I learned by observing others' success and others' mistakes. And story matters overall.

And I think the formula, and that's what it would be, you know, typically wrestling was until recently. As television has become more and more important financially to a company, I think the approach to television has changed a lot. Well, in some places. You know what I mean? Storytelling, character development are obviously much more important in WWE, perhaps than they've been in a long time. At least from my observation, the depth of story and structure and discipline and the nuances in the story, the little things, the little details in the story, which is what really makes it strong.

I'm seeing a lot of that. And I say all that to say, I forgot what we were talking about. We're talking about Big Mean, Nasty, Heel or AJ. Oh, yeah. So before the emphasis on television, I think that we're seeing today, wrestling has always been, okay, let's shoot an angle, then you're going to do a promo, then I'm going to do a promo, then next week you're going to do a promo, I'm going to do a promo, but we're going to have a pull apart. And then the next week after that, you're going to do a promo in the ring, and I'm going to sneak into the ring.

or I'll come up from underneath the ring. I'm going to hit you with a fucking chair. I'm going to sabotage. I'm going to get my heat. And then you're going to barely make it up to your feet. And we're going to go off the air. And then we're going to have a pay-per-view match. That's not storytelling.

That's a formula. It's creating a series of events that take place that justify the match you want to have. That's basically AEW, a nutshell. Whereas you've got WWE, who is taking more time. and they're building more slowly. They're not rushing into the character, or rushing into story. They're letting them simmer

and cook appropriately. So I think because of that and the commitment that I've seen over the last at least year to detail and nuance and discipline and story, I think it's a smart move not to jump into the big nasty heel

quite yet. First of all, Cody's in our face now for a long time. It's been Cody, Cody, Cody, Cody, Cody, Cody. Yeah, there's rock in there. There's other people involved in our story. But all of that story was designed to get us to where we are right this moment. So there was obviously emphasis, so much emphasis on Cody.

Let's let that carrot, let the people start to want it again. They got it. We just gave it to them. Think of it like going to a restaurant. Go to a, you've had this great anticipation, you've been reading about this restaurant. Your friends tell you about it. You saw it on the freaking food channel.

Now you really can't wait to go. And you go and you actually starve yourself a little bit before you go to the restaurant because you want that anticipation. You want the excitement. You want to look forward to that wheel. And finally you begin to eat and you eat and eat and you eat and you're starting to get full and you go, oh, my God, I still have dessert. Oh, I got to slow down.

And then they bring you dessert. Of course, the dessert looks like. something right off the cover of a magazine and even though you committed to not eating dessert before you went to the restaurant, you end up going face first into a fucking cheesecake that leaves you in a coma. And as you come out of that coma, the waitress says, would you like a cup of coffee so you take that sip of coffee? And you go, wow, this is really good. Can't wait to come back. But instead, they bring you more food. Well, you're tired of the food. You've had as much. You love that you can't wait to come back. But God, give you.

break. That's what they need to do with Cody. Give it a little rest and everybody else can rise to the surface, get a little more TV time, a little more tension, build your stars, got to keep going. Don't put it all on Cody right now. Let them get hungry. And then let the Bucker fathers eat all the cake they want. That was funny.

Well, I don't know if you should eat all the cake you want. and maybe you'll learn a little more about whether you should or shouldn't. If you try Cignos, they are proud to sponsor our program and we are proud to have them sponsor our program. You know, we vet all of our sponsors here on the show, which means they send us something to try before we commit. And when my wife opened this box, she said, honey, this is a real medical device. This is the real deal.

You got to talk about this. And what she's talking about is a continuous glucose monitor or CGM. and I have to admit, I'd never even heard of that until we found out about Cynos. And the reason I think this is important is the CDC estimates there's approximately 96 million American adults, which is more than one in three who have pre-diabetes. And of those with pre-diabetes, more than 80% don't even know they have it. Now, why does this matter? Well, foods that are high in carbohydrates raise your blood sugar more than other foods.

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That never even crossed my mind. And as Eric said, hey, an apple, well, you know, that's going to spike you too. There's some glucose in there. There's some natural sugar in there. And most of us listening to this man, we'd have thought, well, we went with an apple, not a candy bar. How could that be? Well, Signos has removed the guesswork of weight loss. They're providing us with the tools and knowledge we need to develop healthier habits.

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I'm fortunate. it. I don't have pre-diabetes or any other conditions. I'm not on any medications whatsoever. I'm knock on wood. Damn healthy. But one of the reasons I think I'm pretty damn healthy, well, it's mostly because of my wife and her discipline rubbed off on me eventually. But it's because as kind of a hobby, well, Lori takes it very seriously, but as almost a hobby for me, I'm in nutrition and kind of maximize it. I hate to say the word hack, but hacking my metabolism. And you know, I want to live longer. I want to be more active. I want to stay as physical, physically active as I can for as long as I can. I have a grandson that I want to, you know, take hunting and fishing and horseback riding in

the mountains and another 10 or 12 or 15 years. So I got a lot of plans, but I'm only going to get there if I stay healthy. Now, even though I don't have any type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes or anything kind of, anything like that, again, I've been blessed. I'm still fascinated with this product. Now, I'm speaking for myself. I'm not a doctor. This is just my personal experience, and we all have different metabolisms. It's going to affect us all differently. I sleep better because of what I've learned from Cigna.

And by that, I mean, I'm super sensitive to spikes, to glucose spikes. I'm always have been. And sometimes sugar has the opposite effect on me and carbs, than it has on most people. But for the longest time, I had the hardest time sleeping. And I'm not proud to say over a long period of time, I was, you know,

give me an ambient and six or eight beers and I'll probably fall asleep. Well, for at least three hours, four hours. I'd wake up wide away. And for so long, I tried everything. And for so long, I was just, I just simple, screw it. I'm just going to be this way for the rest of my life.

And then I started reading and researching and learning of someone like me who's super sensitive to glucose and spikes. It disrupts sleep. So I started paying attention because of the Cygnos monitor, paying attention to what I would consume four or five, six hours before I wanted to go to sleep. And a lot of the things that I was eating, even though it was healthy, there were a lot of carbs in it or there was sugar in it. Sometimes it's things you wouldn't expect like fruit. You're doing the right thing. And in some cases you are. But for me, all of that, even though I wasn't drinking anymore, I didn't take the Ambien,

but those things were keeping awake. And once I realized I made the connection between what my monitor said and the way I was feeling, it was like, boom, light bulb, changed my diet, sleep like a rock. It can be that simple. It was for me. Check it out. signos.com, SIG-NOS.com, and be sure to use our promo code, 83 weeks. It's a game changer. You'll be glad you did. So listen, man, I want to talk to you about discipline and story and all that

in regards to AEW, because you made that comparison. But I want to do it at the end of the show because I think it might have a spoiler for some of our live studio audience. Let's touch on some other WWE news and then we'll jump into our topic. Well, I guess along the way, we'll handle a couple other pieces of news too. But I do know for sure. that there was a big controversy this past weekend when seemingly at a kind of random time, Friday evening, WWE released several talent.

And it was pointed out online that all of these were persons of color. And the biggest name on the list was Jinder Mahal. Gender Mahal is a former WWE champion. And WWE really doubled down on trying to corner that market in India. I guess it was 2017 he became the world champ but I mean he's been a part of this company for a long long time with three man band and we would see all of those guys go away and then come back he reinvented his body I mean just totally changed his look I don't know maybe almost 10 years

ago and was immediately enjoying some success and it felt like they put him on the back burner he hasn't been used a lot but earlier this year they dusted him off and he more than than held his own against the rock and it created a little bit of an online back and forth with Tony Khan, but this is a universally beloved guy, a guy that I've had a chance to meet and talk about watches with and really think a lot of. But I mean, everybody he worked with, all of his coworkers, they really tell the tale of how gender was the guy. And so I kind of thought, this is a story. This is an angle. They wouldn't have released all of this talent from India at the exact same time unless they're going to come back in maybe on speed

or something like that and there's a new faction that's where my brain went but that was two days ago now it certainly feels like them this might actually be real they might actually be releasing all these folks what'd you make of this news eric not sure what to make of it first of all before we go any further because i'll forget this shit you know how i am but if I was Tony con and if gender is available and this isn't a storyline I'd hire him so fast going back to the comments that Tony made about gender and that started a whole thing I mean it turned to the internet buyer for about three days four days it was awesome it was fun to watch people are nuts man people are nuts on Twitter and I'm here for it all

It's the most entertaining thing for me to sit down and watch some of these people crazy. But I would take advantage of that. Take advantage of the fact, Tony, that you stirred up a bunch of ship by throwing a grenade, so to speak. It wasn't a grenade. It was a firecracker. It was a tiny little firecracker. It didn't even make much noise. But boy, did people react to it.

Now you get kind of a built-in, I don't know, at least an incident to start from something, a spark of an idea, to do. do something fun. Have him, have Ginger come in, Tony, and make you beer for your life. Oh, will you stop? I mean, listen. Oh, seriously. I'm down. Okay, I'm having a little fun with it with a fear for

your life shit, but I'm actually serious about, you know, why not? I would love to see it, but I guess the question is, I mean, really, it wasn't anybody else who tweeted at Ginger. It was Tony. That would almost imply that you would like to see Tony Con as a television character. Oh, fuck.

No. That's what you just said. That's what you just said. I would use Tony because Tony's the one that lob the firecracker. I would use him as the part of the inciting incident, the thing that sparks what we're going to see in terms of a story. And then I would have Tony being the chicken shit heel that he is. He's actually turning into a heel right before our eyes. He doesn't even realize it yet. But I would, Tony, I'm the chicken shit here because this is going to get gender over. If this storyline plays out, it'll get gender over.

It'll be one of the biggest baby faces of the company. Kind of like MJF did it, only a little, a little more well-planned and a less spontaneous, I guess. But, yeah, have Tony surround himself with whatever he feels he's trying to get over and let them, you know, Tony's protector. And yeah, you may see Tony run, may see him, you know, jump and leave his desk or something if somebody breaks into his office. But you'll never see him. Don't ever give him a microphone. Oh, my God, please. do that will ruin everything. But a story line kind of like that or anything

remotely close to that would be interesting. It would be kind of timely in a way. We're talking a couple months ago, but still timely enough. People still remember. You remembered. Jog my memory. So yeah, go for it. What if I mean, I think there's a chance that this could happen. Like I really, really do because it does feel like Tony has put himself on television a little more. I mean, he was just in a backstage segment with the Young Bucks where they were watching a gorilla, they were watching a clip and the whole deal. And I thought, wow, okay, Tony's on the regular TV, not necessarily with a big announcement

or whatever as the leader of the company, but, you know, in the story, in the Young Buck story. So it would be interesting to see Gender Mahal show up there, but I don't know that Tony wants to be a television character, but I think if you're going to have gender over there, you kind of got to have him. I don't really want to be a television character, but I put myself on television all the time. What the hell?

Come on. Who are we kidding here with this bullshit? That's the thing that drives me crazy about some of this stuff is everybody thinks they're so smart and they're able to hide their biases, Dave, so I'm talking to you, bitch. And people who think they're better on camera than they really are think that, you know, people can't see through their shit. I don't want to be a character

I don't want to be a character but he's on TV every chance he gets so why don't I said the same same thing was true with Dixie Carter by the way oh you're so sweet I just don't think I could ever put myself on TV no Dixie really if I think you

could do oh I just couldn't do that I mean I appreciate it and all you're so sweet but I just I just can't do it Huh. Good way to be on television. Right now. I need you to write down exactly what all you've consumed this morning. How much cratum and coffee. Get that ratio. Get that mix on file because this is prime Eric Bischoff. And I need to know the formula to get back here. So write it down before we forget because you're on a roll today.

When you started doing that designing woman, I do declare. I was like, oh, my God. Where are we going? By the way, today, Eric, is a happy anniversary. It is the six-year anniversary of 83 weeks. So happy anniversary, baby. We've had a lot of fun on this show, yelling about Starcade 97, talking about the nonsense of the finger polka doom and the bash of the beach 2000 and so much more. And he even got your head shaved on more than one occasion.

We've had a lot of fun here, but I know I'm going to tee you up and have a little fun when I talk about Dave Meltzer's tweet this week. He says Raw Monday did a 1.81 slash 0.61. That's the demo. Strong numbers and beat the WNBA draft, which did 2.45 million and 0.58 in the demo.

Or for those of you who hate AEW irrationally without the slightest understanding that demo ratings benefit WWE just as much, you can tell yourself it took second. So it was number one in the demo, but second overall, but I just love that he had to bring AEW into the conversation. And I sort of had this epiphany a few weeks ago where I said, wow, I don't know how

this was lost on me, but all this quote unquote tribalism, which is a buzzword that you've grown to hate Eric that exists in the internet wrestling community, it was largely created and put there by Dave Meltzer. And that really had not dawned on me until a few weeks ago. But this tweet feels like a perfect example of exactly that. Like he's talking about WWE versus WNBA, but somehow we got to slide the AEW conversation in there. He's so fucking twisted up right now because Dave,

Dave hooked his wagon to AEW. It was Dave's wet dream come true. He was living vicariously through Tony Khan. These two guys think a lot of, you know, they love the same type of wrestling. And God, you know, again, there's nothing wrong with the indie style of wrestling. There are aspects of going to indie events that I really, really like more than you could ever imagine. You may find out soon just how much I love indie wrestling.

But for the moment, let me just say that there's a lot of it I like. And I like the fact, it's like, you know, in my book, Grateful, I talked about going to an event in New Mexico. And in my head, because I was all fucked up and turned inside out because of what I was going through on a personal basis and financially. And I was kind of, you know, I had to do this event. I really wanted to because the guys were seemingly really nice of the phone. But at the end of the day, I jumped in my truck with my dog and I drove from Cave Creek, Arizona to Albert Creek, New Mexico, in large part because I needed to.

And I was angry at myself for that. And I got to the arena and it was in a sketchy part of town. That's not fair to say sketchy, but it was not in a part of town. Let's put it this way. There weren't a lot of outdoor seating restaurants in the neighborhood, okay? But I got there early because I, you know, I was supposed to be surprised. I didn't want anybody to advertise me. And that was one of the conditions.

And I kind of went to the back of the arena and I saw the people coming in. And it brought me back. It brought me back to when I was a kid and went to wrestling events. Energy was different. And when I finally made it into the building, remember, you know, I came through the back door. Obviously, you know, these are all local independent wrestlers. There's nobody of any consequence on the card other than me and whatever. But I went into that backstage area and the vibe that hit me was so fucking cool,

so inspirational and aspirational at the same time. Some of those people were young wrestlers that really were hoping someday they were going to get that break and they're going to find their way to NXT or or find their way to AEW, find their way to T&A. They're really hoping, you know, just to see a camera would be a major accomplishment. And you see that there and you feel that energy and that excitement and God, not to get crazy over this, but. There's a purity that no longer exists by the time you get to a WWE, where this is truly a profession. I mean, the energy is different. It's impressive in WW.

Don't get me wrong. And it's friendly and it's fun. Can be sometimes. But the energy in the Indy scene is so cool and so real and authentic. it's not that I don't like in the wrestling at all. So if you do, there's nothing wrong with it, whether you're Tony Connor, Dave Meltzer, whatever. But the tribalism aspect of if you don't like what we like,

then you're just a clown or you don't really matter. That's the problem that Tony's having right now. And it's largely because of his like-mindedness at the very least, if not more connection to Meltzer. Because they're creating the tribalism that they're, whining about Tony got Tony con himself was it a week ago whatever it was came out oh the only thing that's real is that the companies hate each other why is people always every time I turn around somebody's making fun of it no matter if we do a good show and then

the next time somebody says something bad why the fuck do you think that happens Tony you're begging for it and Dave Meltzer is is aiding and betting. The shit was a crime. They'd both be in jail. And it's only interesting and a way fun. I know I sound like I'm more passionate about it than I am because I find it's so obvious it's entertaining and comical.

But so many people are buying into this. And that's where the tribalism came. Dave did it right there. He absolutely embedded reaction for his. his next tweet or reaction for his next, whatever he does on YouTube. He's creating, he's creating content. That's what Dave does. He says stupid shit, spreads stupid rumors, makes dumb comparisons,

tries to convince everybody that he's like some kind of fucking highly involved intellectual wrestling savant. He's just a fucking creep that likes a certain style of wrestling and thinks everybody else that doesn't see what he sees. he isn't on his intellectual level when it comes professional. He's a fucking clown. He can't structure a sentence more or less give you insight and analysis into a business. He's never been involved in.

How did we get on this conversation? Well, we talked about- You brought up, day courting this week, Dave Meltzer said. Yeah, we were talking about his comparing the WWE rating for Monday Night Raw with the WNBA draft. Let's talk about some other news from this. week. We saw another article from Forbes saying that AEW is worth $2 billion. Mike Ozanian, I think is his name, and here's the quote here. His assessment included various financial aspects of AEW's business, indicating that it has been consistently generating more revenue

year over year, despite some debates about its profitability. Additionally, comparisons have been made to other combat sports franchises to contextualize AEW's market value, with some analysts suggesting that if companies like Bellator are valued at around 500 million, AEW's more substantial brand presence and revenue would justifiably place at a much higher valuation. Of course, there was a valuation of Bellator that said it was 500, but I think it actually traded for under 100 in an all-stock deal. I guess what I'm saying is

guys, these valuations they can pretty much say whatever they want. It's not a real indicator of what the perceived value is. I mean, you don't have to look very far in the wrestling space to see like a company like Triller. And those guys have been trying to go public forever. And supposedly they were valued at billions and billions of dollars.

And then, well, every time you Google them, they're being sued here or there or not paying this bill or that bill. and they're finally going to go public, I don't know, four or five years later. I'm just saying all that to say, let's not get too caught up in the Forbes numbers.

AEW's not for sale. And even if they were for sale, I don't know who would pay $2 billion, like legitimately like, I don't see why this was even a discussion this week. They're not for sale. Go ahead. I do.

And it comes back to what we were just talking about. Dave Meltzer for the last year, year and a half or so. All, and again, I, you know, I'd be careful what I say because I can't pull his tweet up and go, see, here it is. I can find it if I have to, but I'd rather not spend the time. But Dave has been talking to, you know, now he's quieted down a lot over the last few months as AEW is getting closer and closer to the expiration of its exclusivity in

in terms of selling or selling the show. But Dave, a year ago, oh, now Tony Kahn's going to triple his rights. He's going to get double his rights. He's going to be making so much money. Dave Meltzer putting over how much money Tony is going to make when he renews. And in the basis for that is exactly what this cat, Michael Zennian or whatever his name was, did the same thing. Well, and Dave was comparing it to other sports leagues, which is really weird because wrestling

is not a sport, matter how hard people try to convince others that it is, it is scripted television. It's scripted live action television. It falls into its own category. Now, you could sell it as a sport, I guess, if you can get people to buy into it from an ad sales point of view. But it is scripted television. But nonetheless, Dave Meltzer, because he's an analyst, spends time reading and studying, I don't what the fuck, he reads his studies, but was making, you know, suggestions much like he does in

that headline that we looked at. He's got to get it in there. Oh, now Tony Khan's going to enjoy a significant increase in license fees based on the license fees for the NHL or any other example that Dave was giving. So he said, well, if they are worth X, therefore AEW is worth Y based on it. It's bullshit. It's all bullshit. It's fucking clickbait. It's exactly what it is because the writer in forums got to put those logos up there, right? UFC logo, WWE logo, NFL, whatever it was. Gets to put all those sports brands up there.

Great. It's fucking clickbait. You can go through anybody's financials. Give me an audited valuation. Talk. Otherwise, my houses were seven. million dollars. Oh, there you go.

Conrad it is. No, I believe you. I value my house at $7 million. Because right up the road for me, Bill Gates has a ramp. Kanye West does too. Kanye West, right down the other road. So, yeah,

$7 million. Just less than a couple months ago or right at a couple months ago. Dave Meltzer tweeted out, Forbes was $2 billion. They literally just did that in their con family valuation of their sports franchises at $8.5 billion

in an article that just came out I disagree with it, but that's the value they had on it. So now even Dave is saying I don't know if that $2 million or $2 billion is accurate. But here's my thing. It's not for sale. Who cares? What does it matter?

I tend to agree with you that Tony Kahn has become a heel to a certain corner of the internet wrestling community. And I feel like it's largely just misplaced like who care i mean people are like well the buildings aren't full he's not making money what does any of that matter do you enjoy the fucking product like why can't we just watch the matches and say we like them or we don't but Conrad you

you but why do people do it because of Dave Meltzer and Tony con well they're the reason they're the answer to you the question you just posed Yes, people should just go, what the fuck, who cares? I don't care how much money Tony Con makes. I just want to watch this, or I'm looking forward to that in AEW. That's all the fuck should matter, right? But it doesn't because Tony Conn himself and his cohorts and this conspiracy of con artistry. They're creating it because it creates buzz.

It creates interest. And, I mean, I actually, I plan on doing this on YouTube, but it'll end up. on YouTube anyway. Do I, is the tribalism that bad? I think it's childish. I think it's stupid and I find it entertaining as fuck.

But it is kind of stupid. But if that's all you got, that's the only way you're going to get people to talk about your product. Then Tony, Dave, keep doing what you're doing. I mean, don't bitch about it because now you're looking like kind of a wimp.

said something you almost said a P word there you can say that I think that's okay hey I don't want to are you dropping the F bombs yeah but I'm fucked F bombs are like S bombs now don't be a pussy here hey let's uh let's talk about that tribalism for a minute and then I want I do want to move on I I guess we should hit some ticket numbers too, but you know what? I'll do that right now. WWE, let's talk about some good news for a minute.

I think this is the, in RESTLix, I believe even said this. This might be the most attended non-televised event in WW history. We used to call them house shows. I guess now they're just live event, non-televised live event, whatever. What a fantastic shot of Cody there

in front of a huge crowd at the O2 in London, 16,410 fans, an unbelievable number and they're going to be continuing to set records as they continue to travel around. I mean, how crazy is this to even think about? WWE is not going to run another PLE in America until SummerSlam. Everything else is international

and it's because they're doing this huge business like this. Meanwhile, Collision and Rampage made their debut in Peoria, Illinois in front of just over 3,000 people the night before the dynasty pay-per-view. And I'm not trying to compare the two. I'm just saying here's the barometer and here's sort of the score, if you will, of where they are.

And I just don't understand why that tribalism exists. Like it's clear that there is a recognized leader in sports entertainment. And then there's AW. But the back and forth, to me it's like what is the end game behind that Eric like do we want to keep hounding on AEW until it doesn't exist anymore do we want to keep pounded on WWE until their business falls off and they let more people go how about

just fucking watch the show and enjoy what you enjoy and put the keyboards down and let these guys try to grow their business this I just don't it's not a comparison let's stop you sound just like me about two and a half years ago when I cut that promo on Tony Kahn after he came out and said, if Ted Turner knew 1% of professional wrestling as I do, WCW would still be in business. That was my fuck you, Tony, moment. And from that moment, before I got actually aggressive about it,

and I was just being honest, I came out on this show and said, Tony, shut up and whistle. Quit punching up. You can't even see that guy's chin, more or less make contact. Quit punching up. Quit comparing yourself. Quit taking shots. quit trying to convince the audience that your product is a better product when it's not.

But I was considered a hater. Tony Kahn blew your phone up. Couldn't believe I said what I said. Took it personally. And I felt bad about that. And I actually tried to call Tony and apologize for making him upset because that wasn't my name. intention. My message was absolutely fucking as sincere as if he were sitting in front of me because I would have delivered it the same compassionate way. But rather than listen,

I don't expect Tony kind of listen to me. I wouldn't listen to me either if I was Tony. So it's not that. But the internet wrestling community, that's what we're talking about here, the tribalism that exists and all the hostility going back and forth. in a silliness of it all, actually the humor of it all. Tony Kahn is creating it. Right. He has from the jump. His brand, his strategy, I don't know that he ever articulated the strategy or wrote it down.

I don't know if it was communicated, but it was clear that they wanted to create that Monday Night Wars vibe without actually being in a war. They wanted to pretend they were in a war. And they wanted to convince more importantly, not only themselves, but they wanted to convince their audience. They wanted to galvanize the audience behind him. Much like Paul Heyman did in ECW as the underdog, but that was the mistake Tony made. He wasn't coming at the audience the broader,

let's say three or four million active weekly wrestling viewers that are out there to be had, right? He didn't do it in a way that was going to attract that audience. He did it in a way that defended them. By saying, you know, the product that you love, that you watch every week, well, that's the shits. We watch is better. We do is better.

And that's okay if you're actually had to, and this is the other part that's lost on so many people that exist on the internet and write some of the funniest shit because they're so clearly uninformed. But the difference is, yeah, take swings, call them out. tell the world you have a better product if indeed you do or at least you think you do and in tony's case i think he does but have a better product but do it if you're face to face if you're head to head if you're in the ring go ahead square off trade punches see who's the last man standing because people like that that's combative it's dramatic it's the same people it's the same reason people watch wrestling it's combative it's dramatic there's good guys there's bad guys that's okay feed into that play that as long as you're

actually willing to compete, but don't do it like some punk on the sidelines telling the little girl sitting next to you, your girlfriend, you're in the high school parking lot, you're 15 years old and your little 14 old girlfriend sitting next to you, say, you see that big bully over there, I could kick his ass. I'm better than he. I'm tougher than he. I could kick his ass. And a minute that guy turns out looks at you, you fucking run the other way, whine about it,

a little biatch. Hey, let me ask you about that because this just clicked for me earlier this week. I was, because I've been thinking a lot about what I said last week here on the show and you just sort of repeated it about the whole, hey, what if he would have went to Paul E way? What if we would have went to ECW way? We're the little engine that could. We're the underdog. Blah, blah, blah. Maybe the reason that was a challenge for Tony is, uh, well, my buddy Cody used to say in wrestling, sometimes there's handsome guy heat. Maybe there's rich guy heat. Like, I had a wealthy guy. I knew once who said,

said, do you know why anybody buys their 11th Rolls Royce? I said, no, why would anybody buy 11 Rolls Royces? He said, because their neighbor has 10. Oh, okay. And I don't have a yacht, never going to have a yacht, but I'm friends with guys who run in those type circles, and they're always looking to trade up. And the conversation is always about, well, so-and-so got one, so I got to get a bigger better one.

It becomes, I guess, what we say in Alabama, a dick measuring contest. And on some level, the clients had more money than the McMan's from day one. So maybe that's the reason Tony didn't want to embrace the underdog thing. I don't know if that's it. I've never been a billionaire. Never going to be a billionaire. But I don't know. I don't inside of Tony said, obviously, don't know them well enough.

So when I say that's not it. My perception is that that wasn't it at all because that would look, if that was it, there's a way to manage that. The way he manages, they'll come out and say, I've got more money than Vince McMahon. First of all, it's not your money. It's your daddy's money. You just got, you're the lucky, you're a member of the lucky sperm club. Oh, come on.

God damn it. It's true. He was born into wealth. It's not deniable. It's not even rude. It's not even mean. Well, so are Shane and Stephanie. So let's just throw them in that too.

Okay. They were born into the lucky sperm. Club. Okay. God damn. So is Trump's kid. There's a lot of people that are born into it. That doesn't mean that you have to brag about it.

Lord have mercy. What am I wrong? I just never imagine we'd be on this program on our sixth anniversary talking about Lucky Sperm Club, which is our new sponsor, LuckySperm Club. Not really. Now, if we don't segue into a Bluetooth commercial right now, then neither one of us are worth a fuck. You know what?

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The promo code is 83 weeks. You'll receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we want to thank Blue Chew for sponsoring today's podcast. So, Eric, our topic today, we should shift gears. Stop talking about sperm. is Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling. Now, this is something an episode that you and I have tried to do,

I don't know, for six weeks, and boy, the news just kept coming. But today we said, all right, time out. We're going to look at that rearview mirror today. And we have not spent a ton of time talking about your life in television. And most everyone listening to this is listening because they're familiar with your work with WCW. and I think a lot of people don't realize that after WCW, you got knee deep in the television game. Do you remember, can you tell us a little bit about your production company with

Jason Hervey, what the name of it was, how many employees y'all did, how many shows you had or developed, just talk to us a little bit about your television life because a lot of our listeners, they don't know. Yeah, it was, uh, Jason and I had, we met through WCWCW. WCW and became friends. Jason Hervey from the Wonder Years. Jason Hervey, yes, I should back that up. I assume everybody knows it.

But Jason Hervey was one of the stars, ABC's Wonder Years. It was a massive of a show. Actually, it's in the Smithsonian Television Institute, Washington, D.C., there's a recognition of that show because of its representation of culture at that time in a primetime show. It was a really good show, really, really, really well done. But Jason had been acting even before Wonder Years. Jason, I think, started acting when he was about four years old, did a lot of commercials. Went over to Japan as a kid, did a lot of commercials in Japan, got back to the States.

His mother, Marcia, who I was very, very friendly with, she's since passed, as has Jason's father, Al. But I was pretty friendly with both of them. I was actually closer to their age, and I was with Jason's. Jason is about your age, maybe a little older. But because we were friends in WCW and Jason Hervey, interestingly enough, another little tidbit here, worked for a company by the name of hell. Once Jason was done with Hollywood and he got,

I think Wonder Years might have been the last series that he did. He didn't really want to be an actor anymore. dabbled in professional wrestling while he was still with the wonders actually and that's where I met him but after that he just had no interest in pursuing acting he had been in movies he did a Pewy Herman movie and back to the future movie and so he had some chops and he made a ton of cash as a young kid but he'd had enough and he wanted to produce well before he and I teamed up to to launch her own television company. Jason Hervey went to work for a guy by the name of Peter Scroozy.

Peter Scroozy was enamored with Jason's connective tissue in Hollywood. Richard Scrooci wanted to be a music guy, wanted to have record labels, wanted to produce TV shows. He was like a CEO of Health South, but what he really wanted to do is be a music. He wanted to be a star. Yeah.

in a television star. So he looked at Jason and because of Jason's relationships. And Jason had extensive relationships in Hollywood. Still does to the same. But Scrooosie zeroed in on that. Hired Jason Hervey as a VP of Marketing, I think, was the title, maybe something. You know, something that Jason, Jason was generally familiar with marketing. He worked for Peter Goober and Mandalay Entertainment.

So Jason, and he's a very bright guy. He learned a lot, but he had never been in an executive. position but scroo she didn't care moved them to alabama to birmingham uh jason had access to scrooshy's one of scrooshy's jets whenever he wanted it to go back and visit in california it was really cool until it wasn't as cruci i bring scroozy up because of his connection to jeff charit and t anyway thought i'd throw that in there a little bit of relevance sure But I remember I was with WWE. In fact, there was a WrestleMania going on in Seattle.

19. And I was literally on my way to Seattle, living in Phoenix at the time. And I got a phone call from Jason, and he's in a panic. He said, Eric, our offices at Health South just got raided by the FBI. They're taking everything. thing, he was panicked. And Jason was an officer of the company. And in Scrooche and

Jason were, you know, they were joined at the hip. They were everywhere together. So Jason started the panic and I said, Jay, just, let's do this. I know your wife is with the kids and your mom and dad

jump on a plane. Right now, meet me in Seattle. At least get the fuck out of Birmingham. You don't want to be wondering about every car that drives by your neighborhood if it's the FBI coming to serve you. So rather than stressing yourself out any more than you already are, jump on a fucking plane and come to Seattle there. And he did. And we kind of talked through.

You know, I did my best to get his mind off at least what he was worried about the most. And part of that process was talking about, okay, what now? And it was in Seattle that Jason and I said, well, we should just start our own production company. We'd already worked on some other projects together. Jason and I worked very closely on outside projects for WCW. We developed an animation product called Chowdaheads with two guys that went on to become hugely successful film directors. We did the home video series for Universal Home Video. So we had been working together in a variety of different ways. We did a music deal with Tommy Boy Records together. So we said, Jason, and I was no longer

with WCW. It was, you know, a talent in WWE, which means I could go do anything else I wanted to do. I said, Jason, why don't we just start our own production company? And literally, within two weeks, we were on her way. We launched Bishop Hervey Entertainment or BHAD.TV and took advantage of Jason's relationships in Hollywood. I had some of my own relationships. relationships there and had gotten the attention of some pretty influential people with what I was doing with Turner at the time. And we just said, fuck it, let's do it. And I think the first show that we did, first reality show that we did, I should say

they were all reality show, all but one or two of them, was, I want to be a Hilton with Kathy and Rick Hilton, Harris Hilton's mother. And we sold that through a company called Reveley Entertainment. and sold it to NBC. That was our first one out of the shoot. And we just went on from there and tell you the number of shows that we did that we sold it. And with our shows, somebody didn't come to us and say, here, here's a television show we want to do. We want you to produce it.

We sat down and went, all right, what can we sell? Who's buying what? What is the market looking for? Let's identify what the market. is looking for what's hot right now or what we think and this is the this is where the art comes in it's not what's hot right now it's what people think is going to be hot next year that's right that's what you want to be pitching that's right if you're pitching what's hot now you're pitching where the puck was you're behind yeah you need so we're constantly and we because

both of us had really good agents um it was represented by william morris and c aa at different times and some good contacts there and jason was as well and our agent agents kind of knew where things were going. So we said, okay, if that's where it's going, let's work backwards and have something to pitch. And I would imagine we probably created out of thin air and sold and produced 20, 30 different shows, usually six to eight episodes each, sometimes multiple seasons. sometimes not

yeah we did a lot of stuff we sold to NBC CMT VH1 MTV True TV yeah VH1MTV true TV A&E AMCCMT yeah I mean so many stations and so many shows

and I think a lot of our listeners aren't really familiar with that so for everybody who who loves to clown on Eric Bischoff online well you're probably not a listener of this show, because if you were, you would know, it knows a thing or two about television. And respectfully, I think I have this right. He's produced more television and created more television content.

I'm not talking about it in the wrestling space. I mean, outside of wrestling space. Then anybody else in the space, I don't, I don't think it's even that close, Eric, do you? Nobody has your. I never talk about it that way, but I, yeah, you're absolutely. So I'm just saying when people are like, well, what the hell does he know? He bankrupted two companies. not true. But, but separately, who knows more about television than a guy who put up

dozens of television shows with different networks, with NBC, with VH1, with MTV, with true TV, with A&E, with AMC, with CMT. Notice I never said TBS and TNT, you know what he did there. I didn't say Spike. You know what he did there. I've said all the other stuff outside of wrestling. Put some respect on Eric Bischoff's name. God damn it. Let's talk a little bit about CMT. That's country music television. That's where Hulk Hogan Celebrity Championship Wrestling is going to happen. How do you first get hooked up with CMT and how do you pitch the big man on this idea? Is he excited for it? What's Jason think about it? How was it received with C&T? Talk to me about all that. Yeah. Again, you know, kind of describing the

scenario that I did a few moments ago about pitching where things are going. right around this time there were discussions about dancing with the stars because if you look at reality reality started out as real people that was the attraction these are just real people

could be your next door neighbor in these bizarre situations and we're watching real people react to real drama none of that was true but it looked like it was true it was kind of like wrestling in that regard for the most part

there were some that were Pretty legit, but 90% of them were not. And then we started hearing about, oh, we want to, you know, that type of reality, you know, when, when Road Rules, I think, was the first one, MTV did the first kind of real reality show. Real world of Road Rules, yeah, yeah. Real, yeah. Those were like the first ones, although reality television was a very, very successful format, style of television, presentation. It was a really, really successful format. in Europe. But like a lot of things, it gets hot in Europe and about six to eight years later

it ends up getting hot here, whether it's music or fashion or whatever. But so the reality format had been around a long time. Relatively new to the United States, MTV did it first. Then there was a writer's strike kind of thrown in right about the time that reality television was just beginning to land on the shores here in the U.S. in terms of a television product. right about that time there's a writer's strike, an extensive one. And all scripted television shut down. So now there's a

rush. Every cable outlet out there and network outlet because they had air to fill. They didn't remember to be running reruns in prime time. So there was panic. And it flooded the market

with so much reality television. A lot of it was horseshit. I mean, it was just horribly produced, but it was people were buying anything. It was just like, kind of like, you know, the internet, you know, IPOs back in the day, just people were buying it. You put it down on a piece of paper and pitch it, somebody's going to buy that shit. It was wonderful in a way.

It allowed a lot of us who were starting production companies to get started. If you were talented, you had credibility, you had relationships. You had a shot. Make it. And a lot of people did. Long story short, sure. That type of presentation, real people, real situations, theoretically, kind of started losing its flavor because it was such a dearth of it, so much of it.

And then it was like, oh, we need to get some celebrities and mix them in with real people and reality and, okay, we can do that. The idea, original idea was my idea. The original idea that I pitched to Jason is let's take real people, train them, teach him so the people that watching on television can learn the process and in wwe had already done tough enough so i i didn't want to do that i wanted it to be different than tough enough so that's for the elimination and jason by the by the time i said no let's use real people now jason's involved jason immediately goes to no we need to do celebrities because he was right that's where

the business was going anyway and it's easier to sell when there's celebrities attached. I was kind of stuck in my, I can be stubborn. Oh, really? Yeah. I was stuck in it,

stuck in it. So Jason and I decided, hey, let's go, we flesh the idea out, meaning we laid out an episode and what it looked like, what the goals were, kind of described it in a little PowerPoint.

And we went, made an appointment to go through our agent, Hans Schiff. Hey, Hans. How are you, buddy? Tanna's doing well. Thank you very much. We went and pitched this lady by the name of Melanie Moreau.

Melanie Moreau was the, she was like this senior, oh, there she is. I love Melanie. Oh, I'm so glad you got a shout of Melanie. She is the coolest chick in the world. Lori and I were friends. Her daughters have come out here to Wyoming, her daughter and her husband, newly married husband came out and camped out on our property two years ago, keep asking Melanie to come out. She came out with her daughters when they were real young, stayed with us. She's

awesome. But I met Melanie probably, you know, for our agent pitching this show. And she loved the idea of wrestling. You know, they saw the value. Wrestling was still hot. People love wrestling. And this was a variation of it. But she was really, really adamant about celebrities, which I knew that would end up happening, actually. So I did what I do, you know, or I did what I did back then. At the time, I was actually working very closely with Hulk. I was sure if it was exactly at this period or adjacent to it. But I was, Hulk was a bad shape, surgery, or issue with his son, Nick.

There was a lot on him. And at some point, I literally took over all of his business. I had signing authority for contracts and agreements and branding opportunities. And Hulk basically told me, you speak for me until I can pull the nose up on this thing. Whatever you need to do on my behalf is fine with me. Wow. So I, you know, I called Hulk. I said, here's what we've got.

Here's the idea. And I walked him through the idea on the phone. Enough, because I knew Hulk, you know, you could explain something to him on the phone. the time and he would go yeah that sounds really interesting by the time he hung up 20 minutes later he wouldn't remember what you were talking about that's how much stuff was going on in his life and why he handed some of it off so I flew to Tampa I was in L.A. at the time living in L.A. most of the time and I sat down and laid the show out to him I think Jason came with me on that one yeah he did did and we laid it out Ogan tagged in

And then Jason went about going, you know, I got Dennis Rodman because of my relationship with Dennis. Hey, timeout. I don't mean to cut you off. But I just want to give some timeline here. You sort of ran through what was going on in Hulk's life. But Hogan knows best started on television, I think, in 05. It went through 07.

I know what you're thinking. So two seasons, no, four seasons. There's four seasons of Hogan knows best. And it did really, really well or else they wouldn't have the subsequent second, third, and fourth season. But then, of course, the real life, Terry Belaya circumstance

and marriage and household changed. So you're fresh off of Hogan knows best. So I'm sure that CMT was, no matter what baggage and what may have been going on behind the scenes, it's all freaking Hogan, a pop culture icon from the 80s and 90s. And he's fresh off of another reality show.

It feels like, well, yeah, this is a no-brainer, right, to start this show. Yeah, and keep in mind that CMT and VH1, where Hogan knows Bessaird, are owned by the same company, it's Viacom. Yes. So it's not like, you know, Biacom, VH1, CMT, it's all the same thing. They absolutely knew what was going on in Hogan's life because they saw it firsthand producing the reality show. That's when the wheels started falling off the Hogan situation, family situation.

but they also knew what Hogan could deliver. And in this environment, because it was a wrestling environment, not his family, everybody felt more than comfortable. We ended up Jason and our agents. We got, you know, Danny Bonaducci and Todd Bridges and Aaron Murphy. She was a little girl and bewitched. I used to watch her when I was a kid. Now she's, now I'm teaching her how to wrestle.

Yeah, so let's talk about that. We're going to talk about the celebrities, mentioned that you didn't really want to do tough enough because W.W.E had already done that. Isn't this tough enough, but with celebrities? Yeah, I mean, it is. I think, yes, it's not like it's a completely different idea. Essentially, it's the same idea, but with a different spin on it. It's, look, there's only five basic flavors in food, but it's the

combination of all those different flavors that, you know, change the world. Same thing here. It's the same basic flavor, but but we had to come up with different combinations of elements to make it fielded. We should mention that this is going to be an elimination format amongst a lot of reality shows like Survivor. That elimination format, man, it really just gets people going. Was that something that was critical to the show as well, where people are being eliminated episodically? Yeah, I mean, you know, I often refer to formats and I should be more specific sometimes when I do that because there's some people formats, you know, okay, here's what we're going to do in the opening segment, here's what we're going to do in the second segment, here's what we're going to do in the break, you know, it's just basically a layout of the show. That's not what I generally mean by formats.

A format, when I refer to a format, especially in this context of a reality show, you're talking about a. specific formula within that run of show, right? So you know there are going to be certain elements at certain points in time throughout the running time of the show that are intentionally designed to create a certain reaction in the audience, whether it's holding them through a commercial break, whether it's building anticipation for the final act, whether it's a callback to something that happened the week before in order to help advance a story, whatever it is, if a format is done properly, it's rinse and repeat. Now, the story and the actual events that take place within the format obviously changed

from week and minute to minute, but it's like a recipe. And the reality format, because it was a new thing in the U.S., now competition elimination had existed in Europe, as I said. Survivor came over, I believe, from either the UK or Australia, as an existing show. it was just modified for the U.S., right? What's like we're doing with Tough Enough with this show? So when I refer to a format, I'm talking about a very unique, and oftentimes they're copyrighted.

If you create a successful format in the world of television, just the formula. Forget about the stars, the narrative, the location. Throw all that shit out to win. I don't give a fuck. Because if I can create a unique format, formula that you can insert different types of stories into and characters into, that's kind of like inventing penicillin.

That's where so many people that are really super successful in a television business isn't necessarily because they produce massive volumes of television. It's because they've created very unique formats and they copyright those formats. It's intellectual property, and they can license those formats to other production companies around the world. You, Michael Fathers just got an education and television production, sales, and distribution that you're not going to get anywhere else. You're just not.

For those of us who never saw the show, because I'll admit, I saw one episode, but I wasn't really consuming wrestling at the time. I was building my business. I wasn't watching a lot of television. And CMT was just not on my regular programming. now forever not together uh but talk to me about the concept just explain to everybody you're going to get all these celebrities together we assume there's going to be a training facility there's going to be a ring what is the goal what is the process what are we trying to accomplish

i mean there were two teams it was team nasty and team beefcake oh what did i i love to have it bryan Brian Knobbs. He's such a great character on television. Such a great character, especially not in the ring. Because he's got it amazing. Anyway, so we had team beef cake. This sounds like, this sounds like a porn period. We had team beefcake and team nasty. And each team had, a certain number of baby faces and a certain number of heels and they would both Brian Hobbes and Brutus would have to train those people on their team and they had other coaches that would come in, guest coaches. And we would train them either to be a baby face

or to be a heel and it was time to book a match. We'd have our match and we'd have our judges and we would judge everybody based on their wrestling skills, their promo skills, the way they carried themselves to the ring. You had to come up with some categories to judge so that we could have a winner and a loser. And the show was really more about them learning the process and exposing the process. And when I say expose it, not let's ruin the business way.

Obviously, it did to a large degree, but it had already been done by then. So I feel like I was breaking any new virgin ground. But yeah, that was essentially the show. And the drama that took place, you know, backstage. And some of it we created, some of it was pretty real. Just because physically, the fucking place was miserable to work in. We're in this giant former warehouse and south side of L.A.

Kind of over by UCLA campus, but met in a nice part of town. It was fucking hot, no air conditioning. The place was filthy. So it was perfect for producing reality television because everybody was miserable. It's awesome. You wrote in your book Grateful. The first thing I did was get a hold to Dennis Rodman. I'd worked with Dennis quite a bit.

We were friends by this point, and he jumped right in with both feet. He's like the perfect person for this. Is he not? He is. And again, because of his relationship with Hulk and more than me, I mean, Hulk and Dennis are so tight that I knew he, you know, and I'd worked with Dennis enough to know that, yeah, you know, scheduling-wise is a pain. And he asked sometimes, but as far as working,

with Dennis, I couldn't wait to work with Dennis again, because I knew he was going to deliver and he's, I enjoy being around Dennis. Some people find it a challenge. I dig. Danny Bonaducci is another celebrity on the show. At the time, he was a very successful radio DJ, but most of us were first

on there, buddy. I lost you. With the Partridge family. Not the first time he's dealt with professional wrestling. He actually did a dark match during spring stampede 1994. So two for two on former WCW connective tissue. What was Danny like? Danny was pretty crazy. Now, the reason why Danny was such a score for us as a cast member and I was always an old, you know, he has been, you know, a child actor who happened to have

one of the most successful radio shows, either in Chicago or New York. I can't remember. had a huge, huge footprint in radio. So we knew that with Danny, not only is he a celebrity, a child star, a lot of notoriety, spent a lot of time in the headlines, and also had a gigantic footprint in radio

in a major market that would help us. We're going to get free promotion. But Danny was, I think he had been in rehab, Probably a number of times by this point, and he was pretty good. In fact, I don't think he cracked at all while we were in production. But he was challenging. He was a hothead.

He'd frustrated easily, and it would escalate rapidly. But he's a great guy. He had a great sense. Obviously, it's been a lot of time. as an actor you have a sense for timing yes and what the scene needs it comes naturally to you when you've done it uh and it for that reason he made especially our backstage stuff so real and believable because for the most part it was we didn't rehearse a lot of stuff and that was a great thing about working with former actors and actresses is because you

didn't have to lay out everything it's say here's the scenario they know intuitively professionally, they know what you're looking for. They know you're looking for drama. And they're able to find it in the scene and created by themselves. And it creates a genuineness and authenticity even though the situation's set up,

it's contrived as fuck. Obviously. We're there with cameras. We have the set. This is all planned. But when you can take people, even though they may have been actors and actresses previously, put them in a real

holistic situation and just let them be themselves, you're going to get a much more realistic reaction. And Danny was a big part of that. So it was Aaron Murphy. A lot of the cast was a lot of the castes. Let's talk about Aaron Murphy. You majorly put her over in your book. She played Tabitha on Bewitched. Why did she make such an impact on you? Well, one, as I used to watch bewitched when I was young. And I remember hers, you know, Elizabeth Montgomery, you know the witch character. It was her little

baby. Her and Darren. Had a baby. And a baby was a little baby witch. Baby witch. She could tweak her nose. Watch. Watch closely. Watch. She would do that shit and people would disappear.

Or a horse or a pony would show up in the backyard. Or a boom, a swimming pool comes up out of the ground from out of the word. just by a little twitch of the nose, a few little baby witch. But that's not so much yet. I wasn't like a mark for the baby witch. But when I first met Aaron,

and I went, Jason, really? I don't see it. I mean, she looks like a PTA mom. She doesn't look like someone that's going to want to do this. I mean, I get it.

She was a baby witch and a very successful baby witch. But damn, this is never going to work. And then I met her and I talked to her. I went, oh my gosh, she wants this. She wanted to win this. This was not, oh, I get a check and oh, maybe somebody will see me on this reality show and maybe I'll get my next gig. This was not that.

This was a mother, and she had a ton of kids. I don't remember. I want to say seven. It could be wrong. She had a lot of them. Litter of them. Kids everywhere. And she wants to do this.

She lives in Malibu. And she's going to come to South L.A. In July and August, in a filthy way. warehouse no air conditioning and get thrown around sweaty she's not going to want to do that but she did she wanted to do it and i fell in love with her because of that i don't mean i fell in love with like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we didn't have any blue chew thing going on but i mean as a person and to this day you stay in touch i i really admire her i think she's a she's a great human being she she spends a lot of time,

donates a lot of time, gets involved with a lot of great causes, and it's just a sweet person. Some of the other celebrities involved were Tiffany. That's right, the singer from the 80s, you're all familiar with. How about Sylvester Stallone's brother,

Frank, Frank Stallone, Nikki Ziering, Butterbean, Pod Bridges, and Treselle, who recently made a splash on Peacocks, The Traders,

I guess Dustin Diamond, he was on there as well, one of the more well-known cast members from the Saved by the Bell series. And he had a reputation for not always being the easiest to deal with. What was your experience like with Dustin? You know, I didn't,

I had no issues working with Dustin. I enjoyed working with Dustin a lot. Just a little bit. I really enjoyed it. But I also didn't deal with him a lot. Jason did. Because Jason had, you know, Jason and Todd and Dustin.

Jason, Jason grew up with a lot of these people. I mean, a lot of these guys were, you know, the actors and actresses, were actors and actresses as children when Jason was out auditioning. Yes. They would see them. They kind of grew up together. I know it seems weird to say that, but they literally grew up, many of them in the same neighborhood, generally.

So, yeah, Jason handled a lot of stuff with Danny and Dustin, Todd, If there were any issues, Jason Dill. There was nobody that wasn't a pleasure to work with, to be really honest with you. That's different than I expected. Now, granted, I hadn't worked with celebrities, former celebrities. You know, obviously in wrestling, I did, you know, but athletes, professional athletes are a little different. That's a different challenge than different opportunity, I should say. than working with actors and actresses.

I expected the actors and actresses to be a little tougher to work with just because they had been familiar with being treated a certain way when they were active in the business. And sometimes people forget that, yeah, when you're up here, you get that brand new limo and you get, you know, yeah, you're going to get first class all the time. And there's an occasional private jet in your future. People are going to bend over backwards to make sure your fucking M&Ms are chilled

or whatever the hell it is. whatever your, give me a kid. But when you're no longer hot, a lot of that shit goes away. And some people have a hard time adjusting to that and try to work it a little bit, try to get more of that because it makes them better about themselves somehow. All right. So that's what I expected. Got the exact opposite.

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Well, now we know who the roster of celebrity. are going to be. We kind of understand the format. We've got two teams. We're getting down to the end. The two teams thing sounds a little bit like the ultimate fighter. I like it. We've got a budget from CMT for $750,000 per episode. That seems astounding. That's a home run. Is that high fives all around for BHE? Yeah, that was a good number. You know, the business model for BHE at the time. And this was this part of it at least was standard in the industry probably still is where as executive producers and we you know we had that title basically because this was our original concept and we put

the pieces together and we pitched it so typically a non-writing showrunner get 10% of the budget so BHE would have gotten $75,000 an episode that Jason and I obviously would split. That's not where the money was. Money was in the physical production of the show. That's where the majority of that $750,000 went, the largest portion of it went to the actual production, shooting it, editing it, audio, all of the things that go into taking all that raw footage and turning it into an actual television show. That's where the money really is spent.

Because Jason and I, and this is largely because Jason was the, this was Jason's vision from the get-go, was to own our own equipment, we created a company called Westside Rentals. So we went out and bought the equipment. We didn't start out buying everything. We had to slowly, we'd sell a show, we'd go, okay, what's it going to take to sell, to sell, to, to produce this show, we may rent some of that equipment for that show, but then we would take the revenue from that show and buy that equipment. So we got to the point where we had a pretty significant warehouse full of cutting edge equipment to the extent that we needed it.

You know, we weren't making feature films, right? He had pretty cutting edge equipment that we needed to have to deliver the types of shows that we want. But here's the sweet part. we would make a margin on that budget. So if we're making 10% off the top, say, of $750,000, so we take that 10% of that, we take that $75,000. And then we're making about a 25% or 30% margin, sometimes more, sometimes less.

But on average, about a 20, 25% margin markup, if you will, on the production side. So, you know, by the time we're done, we're looking at sizable chunk of change. Jason and I got to split. So it was sweet, daddy, sweet. But this was also one of the last big, when I say big budget, I mean for reality television at that time, $750,000 was on the edge of the budget for reality television. obviously Survivor was doing more Great Race or whatever it's called was spending more

but there were very few reality shows that were in that $750,000 an episode bracket a lot of them were you know 4, 5, 6, 750 was especially for you know an outlet the size of CMT pretty unique what do you think a fellow like Cole Cogan

would get paid for something like this when it's going to carry his name image and likeness I mean and it's called Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling. Obviously, he's going to call in more than everybody else. If you had to guess, what do you think that was worth to Hulkster? 100. 100.

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you know when they're investing that kind of money CMT is going to promote it do you recall there being any challenges negotiating with talent to get them on board just the financial piece I'm not saying whether or not they would do it I just mean we're going to agree on a number here would you have handled that

would Harvey have handled that or somebody else depends on who the talent was some of it I did a lot of it Jason did a lot of it probably the bulk of it the our agents did you don't want to get as a producer you don't want to get into negotiating talent fees if you don't have to yeah they'll bring you to the dance if there's an issue but if you're if it's somebody that you go to you're going to them as a friend or somebody

that you want to be a friend as an associate want to bring somebody in as a talent I don't necessarily also want to be the same person as negotiating their fee right rather somebody else do that so the agents or in you know usually the agent, we would have an attorney that would represent the project. So our attorney, in this case, it was Jason's brother, Scott Hervey, was an IP attorney in California. You also represent a Bischoff Herbie Entertainment. So usually it was Scott Hervey that was handling that portion of it. We should also mention that you mentioned the set was kind of dirty, dingy, everybody was miserable.

that's all done in south in southeast LA and you wrote that there was no air conditioning in the building and you're shooting in the summer this had to make it even more miserable especially for a big fellow like butter bean now it was horrible I mean no breeze I mean no breeze it just again the warehouse I don't know how long it had sat empty but it was like six inches of dust in the floor in the corners and It was brutal, but that's what we wanted. We wanted it to have that pretty, almost fight club kind of vibe. He didn't want it to be pretty.

Now, we had a lounge area where sometimes, and we would use it, it was part of the set. We would use it to kind of create drama. But that was relatively clean and comfortable, but the rest of the place was just, you'd leave the set at night and go home and take a tetan shot. we should also mention that you wrote in your book it ended up being a really great experience not so much because it was a great television show or anything but rather because of the talent themselves they truly put a lot of talent and a lot of effort into what they did was there anyone in particular that you mentioned that uh the lady from bewitched she really crushed

but is there anybody who was like oh man this guy is just miserable he does not want to be here and we don't want him here either. Does that exist in this group? No, no, no, no, no. It was the opposite. It got to the point early on where it's like, well, do we have to eliminate somebody? Can we change a format? Okay.

Can we have a tie? Can we just do another season? How about I just don't want to eliminate this person because they're fucking good TV and I like them. It literally got to that number of times. So there was nobody that we were anxious to see. leave, quite the opposite. I think of the cast, the one person who I got the impression was most anxious was Frank Stallone.

I don't know why. He was like Aaron was anxious, but in a positive way. Stallone was anxious in a insecure way, maybe, doubted himself, but was still wanted to really, really do it, but was anxious. It's the only word I could use was anxious. But a great guy, loved to hear, you know, a couple stories about growing up with Sly and his experiences and,

It's fun to work with, but he was anxious. We should mention what Dave Meltzer wrote about this show. Quote, The format of Hulk Hogan Celebrity Championship Wrestling TV show was that Eric Bischoff and Jason Hervey are producing two teams of five celebrities. Each team will be coached by a well-known wrestler. The celebrities are getting $40,000 for the season,

which will be a month of filming this summer. They'll do a tournament of matches. Each match will be judged by Hogan, Bischel. and a third person, wow, Bischoff is finally doing that idea. In 2001, Bischoff and I had a few long discussions as he had the idea to make wrestling more real as an art form and that you would have matches and then when it's over, there would be judges choosing the shoot winner or loser based on who performed the best. Time out.

Explain yourself, Eric. You had a conversation with Dave Meltzer about wrestling with judges. I've got to hear more about this. Because this is 2001, he's saying this happened, which would have been the same time that you were trying to take over WCW and, of course, WCW wound up being told. Here's how you know that's bullshit. Now, if Dave would have said back in 96 or whenever it was

that I spent a little time trying to develop a relationship with Dave, because Zane Bresloff was a mutual friend and tried really hard to convince me that it would be a good idea. And I did. I tried for a short, very, very brief period. of time. So if Dave would have said that I had that conversation back then, I had to throw in a, I don't know, flag, could happen flag? But not in 2001. Had I, I won't go so far as to say if I saw Dave on the street back then, I would have knocked him out. But I would have probably tried to provoke him to the point

where I could justify knocking him. That's bullshit. Hogan claimed, this is all from the observer. They're trying to get David Arquette, Danny Bonaducci and Kid Rock. Now, we know that Danny Bonaducci is on the squad. Tell me about David Arquette and Kid Rock. Were they ever in consideration? Did you all reach out or try to pull that off or what happened? Uh, Kid Rock is news to me. Although, you know, his name might have been on a, you know, a list. Hey, what if list. Yeah. Especially because of CMT. That, so it's a possibility at least that somebody at least threw his name out but there was no it wasn't me that reached out

it wouldn't have been Jason neither one of us no Kid Rock personally so we wouldn't have done it it would have been through our agents if indeed there was any interest at all I don't know Jimmy Hart of course is going to be the third judge of the matches because well of course you would be

and the story is that Rick Bassman and Tom Howard were the trainers while Brian Knobbs and Brutus Beefcake were the coaches on TV what was your experience like working with Bassman and Howard? Really good. I think that was, you know, I had known of Rick Bassman. I may have had a conversation or two with him on the phone prior to this project.

So I didn't really know him. I knew of him. But working with him was really positive. He's a very positive guy. He's always thinking he's a very creative, hardworking. a guy. And he's a hustler in a good way.

I mean, he's a likes to hustle. New ideas, projects, trying new things. So I liked him. And I enjoyed working. You've said before

sort of tongue in cheek that occasionally there was a Hulk tax. We got Brian Knobbs, we got Brutus Beefcake, we got Jimmy Hart. Are they part of the Hulk tax?

Well, certainly beefcake was. Yeah. Brian, I was excited to work with because I knew for reality television, his character would, I'm surprised, really surprised that we didn't see a lot more of Brian in reality television because he was, especially when reality was hot, you know, emerging a few years. You could put Brian in any environment and you're going to get drama. I mean, absolutely 100% of the time, you are going to get more drama than you know what to do with. So I was excited to work with Brian.

Brutus, it was what it was. Jimmy, I probably wasn't as excited about working with Jimmy as I should have been. Jimmy can drive you crazy working with you can drive you fucking crazy he's so high energy and he's constantly moving it's like frenetic energy

on steroids and he gets a little irritable at certain things about wrestling or he gets super passionate about things. Maybe, baby, baby, baby. He's almost begging you to hear him, right? And for me back then, in WCW primarily, it would drive me bad shit because it's like, get to the fucking point, Jimmy. If you got a point, you want to make, get to it.

I don't have all. afternoon to listen to the backstory tell me but that's you know that's not jimmy's style and jimmy would always focus on what the little details and at the time this is one of the things that i've learned the hard way mucker fathers sit up so you don't have to learn the hard way trying out loud you should have this figured out by now but one of my mistakes and flaws again was get to the point paint the picture let me see if i can see it if i can great if i can't let's move on to the next that was my approach to thing and i shut jimmy down a lot because of that because i just my brain just couldn't absorb it any other way but i have subsequently as i have gotten

wiser, looking back, realized how as many times as advice as I've said this on this show, television is nothing but little details together very, very well to create the motion. Jimmy was really good about the little details and things that Jimmy would say to me back in WCW that I would find to be, you know, okay, we'll get to that. little things that I've since brought up critiquing other people's shows Jimmy used to go bat

shit like if a heel came to the ring wearing red the baby face came to the ring wearing red Jimmy would lose his shit and you'd hear about it for like weeks

days God forbid he'd be on the plane with us leaving Nitro and I'd have to be on that plane flying back to Tampa or Atlanta where they were dropping me off and I got Jimmy yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got me, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, my God, so I would shut Jimmy down. I'd try to do it lightly.

It wasn't like, shut the fire up. Felt that way, off that way. But, but, but I really, have learned over the years that a lot of the things that Jimmy pointed out early on had I paid more attention to some of the things Jimmy said, as obnoxious as he could be sometimes, I love you, Jimmy, but, you know, he was right more often than he was wrong. But I didn't learn that in WCW, not to the extent that it should have.

but by this time I kind of saw it differently and I had more room in my head for Jimmy Hart in his opinions or his thoughts on something because sometimes it was yeah okay Jimmy sometimes it was Jimmy one so I created more opportunity for the latter we would also see Bill Goldberg appear as a celebrity yes and Rob Van Dam Is that you or Hogan making those calls to bring those folks in? Both. How was Bill? Great.

I mean, look, I'd like to say I always got along with Bill. That would be a lie. There was a period of time there when Bill was just soon step on me and squash me as look at me. And I would have liked to do the same thing. I just wasn't capable of it. There was, there was, you know, there were times in our relationship. You know, all set it around money and contracts and Bill wanting to renegotiate his contract early and asking for exorbitant amount of money because his attorney and Hulk Hogan's attorney were

the same attorney and everything. And he knew everything. So, eh. But once we got through that part and yep, up again as friends and working peers, we had a lot just great. And Bill showed up, you know, he did great. It's enthusiastic and supportive job. Let's run through a little note from the observer here. He's saying that you did an interview talking about and plugging the new television show. And you said, quote, Bischoff said he'd talked with people about starting a company, but always tells them he would need a guarantee he's got $100 million to work with

that it would take five to five and a half years to be successful. He said he does want to find a way back in. but doesn't want it, what doesn't want to do it like T&A is doing it. And he hopes the Hogan TV show will launch new business ventures for them. I'm zeroing in on one thing in there, as you say, as you know,

a hundred million in five to five and a half years. That's what you were saying when you were plugging this show in 08. What do you think now in 2024? I'd adjust that number for inflation. But other than that, yeah. And, you know, I think my point, it's not like I was fixated on $100 million because I sat down and did a budget and tried to figure out what it would actually cost. I threw the number out there because it was at the time. Well, certainly $100 million in 2008 is a big number.

And it's still a big number. It's just a bigger number today compared to 2008. But I threw that number out there to just make a point that it's not cheap and it's not fast. Because I had been approached a number of times by people. Some of them had money or access to money. But when you don't understand the business of the wrestling business, even though you've been successful in other areas of one's life, one comes to the professional wrestling idea and goes,

hey, what if I started my own? It's just guys in heights wrestling, not brain surgery, simple. not a lot of special effects. Let's do that. The problem is the business model, the business side of professional wrestling is far more complex than the business side of the television industry as a whole. This thing is a unique business and a unique business model

and then add in, you know, subculture that goes with it. So whenever I would be approached by someone, hey, would you do, would you be interested in starting a wrestling company? Sure, you got $100 million you can hand over and wait five years for a phone call, you bet. But if you think you're going to invest $5 million, you're going to be calling me three times a day, wondering when you're going to make your first dollar profit.

Don't call me because it's not real. It's not how it works. Well, we can't help but notice that we're right here at five years now for AEW. I just found that interesting. Bischoff says that while he has a lot of respect for the people that run WWE, that the product is as stale as can be. The thing is, if this show is a TV hit, and I'm not sure where it goes from here, obviously Hogan and Bischoff would like to run a wrestling promotion,

but the ante to get it in doing professional wrestling and competing with WWE makes it cost prohibitive unless you have a TV partner with a lot of patience. Now, that narrative was out there forever that you and Hulk were going to try to start your own promotion Did you think this could have been a step in that direction or is that all just rumor and innuendo from the internet? It's all bullshit. Okay. All bullshit. Once the fusion media deal went away, that was the last time I've ever contemplated or entertained a serious conversation.

I've had some unsurious conversations. I've had discussions like what would it take or what would it be like or what would you do. And I'm talking about general conversations. nothing any kind of a serious business tone to it whatsoever had those conversations but once the fusion deal went away i never had a serious conversation with anybody now did you know there was a point in time when uh oh god who was he at fox he was the sports executive at fox for a long time he's australian i remember his name right but he you know he he wanted to have a meeting with Hulk and because I was handling a lot of

of Hulk's business at the time I ended up taking that meeting with Hulk um I'll listen to the most name shows over how but Adam Adam was it Adam Howard Nope there was a bigger name than that

he was probably in a 60s when I met him back then um David Hill okay David Hill um took meetings like that but there were meetings that we attended by invitation.

They weren't meetings like, how can I say, hey, what if we go pitch David Hill, the idea of starting a wrestling company? That never happened, ever. But we would take meetings of somebody,

especially somebody with credibility, like a David Hill, call and say, hey, I want to talk about launching a wrestling company, sure. Buy us out, hang out,

eat some sushi, talk some business, it's real. We'll have another meeting. If not, we've had some great sushi. Let's talk a little bit about a story that happened. I can't believe this is real,

but here's the write-up from the observer. A funny story regarding the taping, Zerring is pregnant and is rumored she got pregnant while filming the show. When Bischoff was talking with Bubba the Love Sponge, he made a joke that maybe the kid was Brutus Beefcakes. Although apparently it wasn't a secret, the two had been together during filming.

so Bubba then called Ed Leslie told him Zering was pregnant and TMZ was reporting that he was the father they're not reporting that Bubba made it up Leslie was eating dinner with his family when called and then responded that he was with her a lot during filming he said she kept coming to his trailer

and quote what was I supposed to do that it is possible he was the father but that quote I wasn't the only dog in the pen he claimed all the guys there except Brian Knobbs were having fun with her my goodness Eric What the fuck is this shit?

What? Is this just a nice way to plug reality TV and sex sales and all that jazz? What? I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know. It just feels weird. Hey. Sounds like it works to me.

Roll time. There you go. The show comes on. First, if you just look at the facts, like a lot of times when you read shit on the internet or you read shit and Dave Meltzer's shit stained sheet. Just ask yourself, well, wait a minute. Does this really make any sense? None.

Do you think Brutus and Barbara Bufke makes any sense at all? Do you think that that could possibly happen in real life? Maybe with alcohol. Okay. Well, the show debut is October 18th, 2008. Meltzer would describe it as a cross between tough enough, ultimate fighter, Hogan knows best, and surreal life. you've got a judging panel trying to be witty when critiquing the contestants so

maybe it's got a little bit of dancing with the stars in there as well were you happy with the first episode and the way it looked and felt when it aired Eric were you pleased mildly pleased I wasn't like super excited about it the judging aspect which is really one of the most important elements in that format just it was a seven on a scale one to ten okay talking about that element where we try to you know make it interesting and have fun and be compelling um none of us were really that good at it so it was just okay the ratings were just okay too it did a point four in its

key prime time ratings there's two other airings of this first episode the first rerun does a point three, the second run does a point two. The prime time rating, though, is usually 0.2 on this network. So to come out at a point four, although if you're listening, you think, well, that doesn't sound very good. It's double what they were normally doing. Were you disappointed or happy with the number? Was the network disappointing or happy with the number?

Network was pretty happy with the number, but keep in mind, this show was a lot more expensive than a lot of the other types of programming that CMT would run at this time. So, yeah, we doubled their average primetime audience. We doubled it 200% or whatever. Hell of a headline. But because the cost of the show was more. Right. It typically budget.

And the ad sales didn't adjust up with the cost of the show. It wasn't the financial success that the ratings would indicate. Here's something else that maybe was a Hogan tax because I know how you feel in real life. Bubba the Love Sponge did commentary on these shows, and Meltzer said the most surprising thing on the show was the commentary by Bubba. He had a different style of commentary that probably made anyone who has ever been a pro wrestler or worked in the industry cringe. In a sense, it was the most honest commentary when it comes to what wrestlers are trying to do in the ring. He'd use inside terms, talking about the heel selling and putting over the baby face to make them

shine in spots, ring positioning, working the crowd, and using the words, baby face and heel to describe the roles played. Obviously, we're going way inside here. This is by design, I'm sure. Were you hesitant to have commentary that used all those terms? Or was that sort of the reality of the show? And it's just what we're doing? And how did Bubba get the gig?

Is that the Hulk tax? Yeah, well, not so, I mean, because Bobba brought, you know, what does Bruce the fucking Barbara briefcake bring to anything other than sucking up valuable oxygen. It doesn't really contribute much, right? Blah, and you can see what you know, this is someone that I would avoid like plague on a personal level.

But professionally, a great voice, is how to use radio, and he's a passionate wrestling fan. He's got a fucking massive radio footprint. to help promote a show. Yes. So when you've got something to bring and contribute to the equation, yeah, you put up with however he got there.

He's adding value. And blah, despite the fact that he's a human, just a piece of shit, added value. And to the terms, I don't like it. It's interesting, though, that, you know, Dave Meltzer is a smart mark complaining about smart marks. I love it, using inside terminology. Great.

Irony is fun. But I didn't, I don't, I never like that. Guinness, it's easy because it becomes interesting to somebody that's never heard it before. It's because it's like, well, what the fuck are they talking about? You lean into it. What does that mean? Well, oh, never heard that term. So it's, it'll attract attention.

And I understand that. but too much a little bit of that is fine too much of that is like david copperfield taking me backstage and showing me how he does the trick before he does the trick right i want to see that just want to see the trick show me how it's done how man's done show me the trick you live in my little fantasy world escape let me i'm really seeing magic fuck with my imagination so let me have it tell me how The wrestling matches, according to Dave Meltzer, which should be the climax, like an Ultimate Fighter, where the show builds to matches, at least in week one, was the worst part of the show. The show that follows, a reality show about redneck weddings, is considered a hit on the station. So far, with more pub and the Hogan name, no reason this won't be, the clips for upcoming episodes weren't too bad, but it did come across as low rent, which is the kiss of death for a project involving Hogan.

Dave knows so much, like the wrestling is supposed to be the best part. He wanted a five-star fucking match with Aaron Murphy and Todd Bridges. You were such a fucking goofmeltzer. When you expose yourself back then, you're exposing yourself today. And I am so here for it because my timeline is filled up with people that are calling your shit. And my only other hope is they're canceling their subscriptions to your shit show of a dirt sheet. but in the meantime over over again

this guy keeps exposing so week two of the show did a point three week three did a point two five week two did a point two and it grew in week five

to a point four along the way something interesting happens though quote Vince McMahon is on the warpath against Hogan Bischoff and Hervey because he saw an episode of Hulk Hogan

celebrity championship wrestling went nuts on a recent flight and ordered Laurenitis to tell everyone involved that they are not only no longer welcome in WWB, but he doesn't want them coming to shows or talking with his wrestlers. Seriously, apparently many in the company are not happy with Celebrity Championship Wrestling thinking it exposes the business. Can you imagine anyone even thinking that way in 2008, let alone Vince McMahon? I mean, well, first of all, we don't know that it's true.

That's what Dave wrote. Well, it doesn't mean it was true. We can find out if it's true. true. Did Johnny Ace or Vince or anybody call you and tell you, you're no longer welcome in WWE. Don't talk to our people. Absolutely not. Shortly after this, I entered into a licensing agreement or an energy drink for WWE. And I subsequently got it distributed in Walmart stores nationwide. So, no, we're good. Here's here, if there was any issue at all with WWE, despite what Dave Meltzer made up in his own fucking twisted mind.

was that we wanted to use Brutus the Barber Beefcake. Yeah, the name. The name. WWE sent us a cease and desist. I mean, they owned the rights to produce the barber beefcake. Scott Herbie, Jason's older brother, who's a very successful IP entertainment attorney in Los Angeles, said, sorry, Jerry, as in McDivitt,

Fuck you. You don't have the rights. And we were right. And we used Brutus the barber beefcake. So if there was any heat, it might have been from that because we stood up to cease and desist and they didn't like the fact that we were right and they were wrong. We're able to do what we wanted to do anyway. They didn't like that. But I never got a phone call saying don't show up.

And in fact, as I pointed out, engaged in business with them subsequently. as you said jerry mcdivitt sent ed leslie a cease and desist a legal letter on october 27 saying hey you can't use the name brutus the barber beefcake we own that IP and of course your show attorneys would argue well you haven't used that name on television since 93 and a requirement for a trademark to stay active is acting in it in commerce and of course they never said or used brutus the barber beefcake since 93 so you guys got it how about that Yeah, and not only did I bitch-slapped Vince McMahon on WWE for 83 weeks straight, over 104 episodes in combination. That was hard enough as it is, as it was, but to bitch-slapped Jerry McDivitt in court over a trademark issue, that was something they were not used to. They did not like that.

Making that part up. I don't know. It's written here. Eric Bischoff wrote that Laurenitis called knobs and told him to not get near any WVE talent and not come to any events. Bishaw, but a lot of people say that to knobs. That doesn't mean anything. Bischoff says in his own

smarmy way, if I were Vince, I wouldn't want five plus million wrestling fans watching a fresh concept and entertaining product either, especially with the product he's currently producing. Actually, Vince probably wouldn't want five plus million wrestling fans watching an entertaining product. But where are they going to find such a product?

I have no idea what that has to do with Hulk Hogan's championship. wrestling. See, now there's a different. Let's talk about different situation. I am ripping on WWE. I'm shitting all over their product. Call it out.

Boring, stale. Guess what? Because it was. Yeah. But at the same time, I was able to do business with Vince McGahn and WWE. Not only in an outside licensing project for an energy drink that we got distributed in Walmart called raw energy great great great brand by the way um not only were was I able to achieve that as subsequently went to work did TV forum from time to time

ended up getting hired as executive director for about four months I don't know it's just a difference some people can take criticism other people from the next to last show did a point three at 2 p.m., a 0.3 at 8 p.m. and a point 2 at 1 a.m. And the final episode with a ton of publicity does the exact same. 0.3 at 2 o'clock, 0.3 at 8 o'clock, 0.2 at 10.30 p.m.

This is a Saturday show, so we're getting three runs out of it. And it ends the first season on December 6 with Dennis Rodman being crowned champion, even though most, including Hulk Hogan and media interviews afterwards that he thought Todd Bridges was probably the best wrestler in the cast. And the show assigned deals

with several foreign countries and the first season in Canada will start on much music just eight days later on December 14th. It's going to start in the UK on Bravo in January. So listen, this thing had some legs.

Was there ever a discussion about a second season? And do you agree with Hogan that maybe Todd Ridge's was the best wrestler? I think in some ways Todd was. I still think Dennis, his overall presentation, his characters, personalities, promo.

I would have gone with Dennis again. Another little interesting tip. This is one of the first shows, probably one of the only shows, that we were able to negotiate international distribution rights for. That never happens in Hollywood. And you're dealing with an established,

you know, unless you're a Mark Burnett or, you know, Tom Beers or somebody, Frank Polygian. I'm sure there were others, but those were the big names back then, that because of who they were in their magnitude, they could negotiate either a piece or in some cases, or in distribution rights. This one, we were able, the H.E was able to negotiate for distribution rights on.

So that was sweet too. Overall, were you happy with the final product? Did you learn anything doing this show? I was, I wasn't unhappy with it. It was, it wasn't, it was transactional. I was proud of the business. Happy with the money that we made. I made a fortune off the show.

Happy with all of that. Happy with the experience because, you know, every show you do, you learn something. I mean, if you don't, you shouldn't be doing it. But yeah, I'd learn a lot. Every one of these shows, you learn something, sometimes a little thing, sometimes a big thing, sometimes you try it. technique to get a certain emotion out of a scene that I hadn't tried before, you know, because my experience up to that point was directing wrestling talent, primarily in interviews

and, you know, backstage stuff. Didn't get involved in laying out a match to my skill set ever and didn't try to pretend it was. I would leave that to other people. But the backstage stuff, you know, getting somebody's character over, helping them through an interview, trying to elicit an emotion that I'm not seeing when I need one from talent. With a microphone on the hand, I was really good at that and still am, quite honestly, having been a talent as well as being a producer, kind of learn how to speak both languages

at the same time. But I still learned a lot. And that's one of the reasons why I love doing different projects, whether it's different television shows or any new business. It's the entrepreneur in me that draws me to a new opportunity, not so much because, I'm convinced the opportunity is going to be a success, but in the process of exploring that idea, learn some shit, especially if you're actually doing it, you're not just reading about it. It's not theoretical. Dig in, try it, figure it out in real time. I love that. And that's

one of the things, each one of these different shows that we produce. Each one of them was unique in its own way and you have to try different things and learn different process. If you could have done a second season. Even if you were doing it current, like modern times, is there a celebrity out there you think would be perfect for this format? Oh, not that I can think of off the top of my head, but if I sat down and thought about it for 45 minutes or an hour, I could probably come up with it. I don't, look, I just don't think the idea would work today, obviously. But the timing was right then. You know, the evolution of reality television and the introduction of of celebrity, still kind of on the cusp, still in a growth phase.

So the timing was right. I think if you tried to do this now, people would shit all over it. What was the highlight and what was the low light to you? Don't say the cash. The highlight was every night when we rap. It was typically late at night, 10.30, 11 o'clock. And once the crew and the cast and everybody split, Jason and I would kind of sit. out in a parking lot.

One of us would have a cooler in a trunk. There you go. I have a beer and just talk through the day. Remember those scenes? I can't remember. There's a couple different shows where there's a lawyer show that was really good. At the end of every episode, these two lawyers would go out on a balcony and have a scotch and a cigar recap the day.

Yeah. Or in this case, the episode. It's kind of what we did. And it was pretty cool. The days were hard. They were long. They were hot, sweaty, filthy dust all day, dealing with the issues that you have to deal with when you're working with human beings

who have pride and ego and emotion. And you're asking to do really uncomfortable things in an uncomfortable way. But by 1030 or 11 o'clock at night, once it started cooling off in L.A. back in June or July or whenever it was. I cold beer with my buddy Jason. It's pretty cool. I can't imagine shooting this show without air conditioning in the summer in L.A.

It had to be hot as balls. It had to be pretty smelly. I can only wish that you guys had a Mando sponsor back then. You know what the most valuable thing in the world is? Five star matches. No, really. The second most valuable thing is time. Managing and worrying about body odor used to take up time.

If you're paranoid about smelling, especially around midday or at the end of the day, you can become extremely time consuming, but not anymore. I switched to Mando whole body deodorant, and I got to tell you, my wife and I have never looked back. My wife has stolen this from me. I had to go reorder. She's such a big believer in this because it really does. last, not only all day. It's clinically proven to control odor for up to 72 hours. That's a long

time. It's unbelievable. I mean, you could put this deodorant on and then binge watch the entire season of Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling. And then when he got done with that, you could watch all the eight hours of wrestling that Eric needed to know who Tomatanga was. And you still wouldn't stink as long as you're using Mando. You see, Mando doesn't cover up odor after the fact with heavy fragrances, you know, like those other deodorants. Instead, Mando stops the order at the source. It blocks the bacteria on your skin and it's going to eat your sweat. That's the natural cause of the B.O. And that's why Mando is going to be hooking you up for 72 hours. That's a long time. So give yourself the precious gift of time and get

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Eric, what's your grundle odor right now? Or yeah, grundle was. I'm probably at a two or three because I use my Mando product regularly, and it's really good for about two days for me. I can go two days without worrying about anything. Stuff is amazing, quite honestly. I was shocked. I first heard about it on, I saw a television commercial.

It's for a different product, but by the same company. And a lady that invented it, the doctor that invented it was talking about. She goes, it's good for your, yeah, it's good for you here. Underboob, butt crack. And I'm going, huh, she must know Conrad. She just, no shame whatsoever. Yes. She's talking about her smelly tits and her ass crack.

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Let's do some questions. We've got a ton of great questions here. We've even got some from our live studio audience. We'll hit a few here. This one comes to us from Coach Rosie. He wants to know, how many times did Hulk say that's not going to work for me, brother,

during the production of Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship, wrestling? That never happened. Hulk was in terms of, terms of creatively, super, super, super easy to work with on his show. I will say, though, he had some amazing, I mean, he had some intense, intense physical challenges that made producing the show actually quite difficult. Now, we typically would shoot all of our, you know, our training stuff, our promos, our interviews. We do all that stuff during the day. Then we'd take a break,

usually about five o'clock. And then by seven, we'd start loading the audience in and we'd shoot our matches at night. So, I mean, it was a brutal full day. Now, Hulk wouldn't necessarily be there during the course of the day. He wouldn't show up until about five or six. And then, you know, we would prep him to matches. And then we'd do his pickup shots, everything else at a later date. There was more than one occasion where I'd head over to the hotel to pick Hulk up.

He was staying over at the Plaza and Century City. I'd go over to get him and, uh, there was more than one time where I had to get into his room and help him get out of bed. And one time I had to take him to the hospital before he could take him to the set. Oh, wow. That's how bad he was. Yeah. My goodness.

Let's do a few more questions here from our live audience. Appreciate you guys joining us from ad-free shows.com. Shout out to Bobby, who's got a question here? This is a fun one. It's off topic, but a great question. If WCW would have won and put WWE out of business, what do you think Turner would have done with Titan Tower? sold it yeah yeah is that going to be weird when they sell that you think i mean i know they've moved into a new office i think they've still got the old one my understanding is originally

they were going to rent it out but it does feel like there's no if tkio is really trying to move past the vince mcman era tkos not really by and large in the real estate business i know they have some holdings but it feels like they're going to unask that at some point That'll be like the real end of an era to me. Not only has Vince gone, but there's no more Titan Towers, like at all. That's going to be different. Yeah, it's kind of weird, right? You know, and I only spent, like I said, four months there.

All the time I was a talent, I had never gone to Titan Towers. So I never laid foot there inside of that office building until I take that back. When I did the licensing deal, I actually took meetings there for the energy drink. But I was really unfamiliar with that facility. for the most part until I went there in 2019. But even now, as a matter of fact, we're going to be doing another episode on Tuesday night with, Brad.

Tomorrow night. As folks are listening to this. Tomorrow night, yeah. And we're going to be talking about Hulk Hogan and WWE. And the six-pack, the book that he wrote that we're breaking down over on YouTube. He talks about, you know, the original office building. It showed us a picture of that. And there's so much nostalgia.

In history, I guess for me, the history that's taking place within those walls. Now, just imagine if walls within WWB could talk, the stories that they could tell. I'm not talking about, that's not even negative at all, but just think about the ideas that were exchanged in the Hogan, Andre, all that. All that. And those walls could talk. It would be an amazing conversation. Here's another question, a great one, too, from DeNovius Mack, of course, over the weekend,

T&A had their rebellion pay-per-view, and we got a surprise. Matt Hardy is back in T&A. He probably did his most notable work of his singles career, at least in recent memory. They're, I don't know, gosh, what was it now? Eight, nine years ago? It was fantastic. The whole broken Matt Hardy stuff at the time was pretty innovative. And DeNovius says, do you think Matt Hardy will end his career in TNA or wait

until Jeff's contract is up and then return to WWE to retire there. I think it was smart of him to return back to TNA right now. Hard to argue, you know, he's sort of been middle of the pack at best, maybe at times in his positioning in AEW,

but he was a tippy type guy in TNA and that character was really, really over. What do you expect for Matt Hardy? I wouldn't be surprised, I guess, to think if Jeff's contract is up one day, if they do a retirement match or I don't know that they're going to go back to WWE full time long term

but building towards their last match, that probably makes sense that that should happen in WWE. What say you? I mean, I would like to see it, right? That's a happy ending to an amazing journey and story and to guys who have contributed a lot and

made so many memorable moments. So the part of me that wants everything to be unicorns and sunshine and rainbows and all that. I'd love to see that. I think it'll happen. I think there's a low probability.

Do I see WWE or anybody else taking a chance on Jeff given track record? And I'm a big supporter of Jeff, and I love Jeff, love his work. This is what it is, folks. And I think at some point in time, it's fair to say the wrestling industry and the demands of it

probably aren't consistent with what Jeff needs in his life. And he's done so much and accomplished so much. I'm sure he's accumulated enough wealth to do smart things and good things and healthy. And I don't think Jeff Hardy going back to wrestling

would be any of those. Now, a one-off match. He's wrestling right now. He's under contract with AW. I guess I'm talking about full-time. I'm going back to W. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't think it's a good idea for Jeff to be working with AEW. Now it's a little easier because they're not on the road other than television taping. Television production, I should say, it's not a taping. He's for dynamite. I think Jeff would be better off away from it. It's going to be hard because everybody that I have known to one degree or another has a very hard time forcing themselves for business. It becomes a part of who you are. is a part of your DNA.

When wrestlers say sometimes too often, oh, it's in my blood. For some wrestlers, that's absolutely true in their minds. It's in their DNA. It's part of who they are. And giving it up or walking away from it is like walking away from a self. Some people can handle it. Some people look forward to it. Some people have a very difficult time with it.

And it's never really truly adjust. I think perhaps Jeff is in the latter category. Don't know. You could be wrong. Hope I am. Been some time with your kids, your wife. Appreciate what you've got. Be grateful for what you've got.

Be grateful you can still walk. All the crazy stuff you put yourself through, both recreationally and in the ring professionally. Be grateful for the health that you have and just look back and smile. That'd be my advice. We're going to do a few more questions. that we got from social media and whatnot and then we're going to touch on some AEW stuff

that may or may not have spoilers. So for our live studio audience, I'll give you a heads up when we're getting there. But you're getting close to wanting to tag out. But hang in there for now for everybody else. We should do a few of these questions here. Slovakia 99 wants to know. Did you enjoy your

role as Simon Cowell on this show? It was okay. You know, it probably suited my personality more than being, you know, a cheerleader. It was a little easier in that regard. But as I said earlier, I don't think any of us were really that particularly good at it.

So I was a little bit let down by all of us, including myself. J.M. Wagner wants to note, did Danny Bonaducci and Screech go into business for themselves with their fight? Or was it all part of reality TV? I was a little bit of both. It was a little bit of both. the direction from probably Jason on that one was a wink and a nod like guys get into a conflict

yeah not saying you know we don't want anybody get hurt you know because we have insurance here we've got standards to see that guy over there he works for standards and practices see that lady over there she works for the insurance company she watches you eat to make sure it's safe so keep in mind that If anything is going to happen, it's going to have to happen away from those two individuals. Or if anything should happen, the only way we're not going to get in trouble is if that person doesn't see it. Now that kind of should. What percentage would you say of reality television or this particular show was real versus quote unquote reality TV?

Like, we all understand what reality TV is. We're wrestling fans. but where is the line of because there's always been this debate at first of course everybody took everything at face value and then eventually people said oh no it's all scripted it's all bullshit was there a mix or is it all sort of wrestling well it was 100% contrived meaning it's not a documentary these things are not going to be happening happening anyway even if our cameras weren't here so in that sense it is 100% contrived but in our case I would say the emotion and the reactions and the drama that our contrived environment created

was probably 60, 40, 60% natural, real authentic, 40% because everybody knew what the game was and what we did. Yeah. But it was probably that balance most of the time. Victor Redman wants to know from Eric's point of view, is there any way concept or format today that would conceivably draw a mainstream non-wrestling audience to a wrestling-related product like Celebrity Championship Wrestling? What would that take? I don't think so. When you say mainstream, now, there's very few mainstream audiences anymore.

What's mainstream? I mean, look at the programming, take the networks out of it, see NBC, CBS, take the amount of it, look at your cable offerings, look at your, not primarily, your cable offerings. They're very, everything is a niche. It's a niche of a niche. It's hard to find an opportunity for mainstream show if you're not a yellow stone, something of that magnitude that's going to get mainstream intention immediately.

Otherwise, everything starts off small and if it's a hit, it's a little viral and grows. But I can't, I can't think of a format today. that would come close to the viewership of live action. Live action is always going to draw. It's live action.

You have the drama. You have the visual dynamic excitement of the athleticism. You have the spectacle. You have the story and the character. So you have all the elements of what makes up great entertainment, whether it's at a movie theater on a television screen or on a Broadway. Broadway. You have the elements.

You have story, of character, you have drama, which creates emotion. It would be hard to do that in any other wrestling-related format and come close to what the actual action. Let's do another question here from the funk. He wants to know who owns this property, whatever is left of it today. I'm not sure if he's talking about the set, the building, or the actual content, the episodes themselves. Do you have answers for either? Sure. The show is owned. The masters, if you will, of the show are owned by Vycom.

The rest of it, other than the furniture that we rented for the lounge area of our set, I would imagine it was returned to the dumpster we got it from. Dylan Leahy wants to know, was there ever a discussion to get Carl Malone on the show? considering you already had a relationship with him. No. No. I mean, the cast came together pretty easily and pretty quickly.

So there was no, hey, what ifs that I can remember. Certainly Carl wouldn't have been. Tristan wants to know. The C and D list celebrity reality TV shows started off really hot, but they've kind of gone away in favor of reality shows

with everyday people, like 90-day fiancé, love after lockdown, etc. Why do you think that is, You know, it's just like, it's like music and fashion and, you know, kind of like I said in the very beginning, when when celebrity first became a thing, it was really fascinating to see these stars, these people only otherwise saw in movies and television series all of a sudden being thrust into an everyday life situation that, you know, the viewer perhaps would face something similar to that. That became very interesting until, and this is Hollywood, this is so fucking Hollywood. It's one of the reasons why, you know, Jason and I decided neither one of us were cut out for it any longer is when you meet with executives, not so much ages, because they become a victim of the process too. But you meet with these executives, most of whom don't have a fucking clue with them. And they're in horrible jobs.

They're in horrible jobs. The lifespan of a network programming executive is probably about the same as an insect of some sort. You may get a season or two. And then it's musical chair. So it's a tough job. But you get these people that are like, oh, what I'd really like to see. And, you know, if we did this and we could do that. And I think this would, you get these network executives with these grandiose ideas.

But when it comes time to making a decision, they can't. It's very difficult for them because their jobs are insecure and because it's, and it's everything is a committee. Before you pitch a show, you know, up to the senior executive, it's got to go through the ad sales division. And all the ad salespeople are going to tell you all the reasons why they don't want the responsibility to sell the show because they don't want to fail at anything. It's just such a negative environment. I'm not sure why I went off in this direction.

What was the question? We were talking about celebrities versus real people in reality. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so it's just like anything else. Network executives have the least amount of imagination of most people that I've ever talked to, even though they're their network executives. So what they tend to do is jump on what's ever hot. So somebody comes up with an idea. I got an idea.

Let's put, I know we've been using. real people now, ever since a real world came along. But what if, what if celebrities? Oh, I don't know. Man, that's not what works. Nobody's done that. And oh, my God, I don't. Do you really want to pitch that?

Really want to take responsibility for this? Maybe not. Yeah, let's not do that. Let's do something else. Until eventually somebody goes, okay, let's just try a celebrity because all this real people shit isn't working anymore. Numbers are going down and down and down. There's 75 new reality shows with real people coming out next month.

So let's try the celebrity thing. It's cyclical. And then you try the celebrity thing and it works. Guess what happens next week? Everybody's doing it. Every fucking cable outlet and studio and agency in the world is taking celebrity meetings until it's not hot anymore. And then they go back to what worked before, real people situations.

I think in fairness what I'm seeing now, and I don't spend a lot of time watching non-scripted with the exception of documentaries. And what I'm seeing a lot more of now are docudramas. What's a docudrama? Give you an example. Tom Beers, you have a fishing show out on the ocean with the tuna boats and crab boats and all that. that's real that's a that's a that's a docudrama that's the drama that you capture in the process of documenting a dangerous situation deadly as catch so what you're talking about deadly as catch deadly as catch that is a great example of a docudrama real people real situation

yes that that still works but the it's probably not a good idea to use this example but it's the only one I could think I'll top of my hand. Kardashians. It's just a bunch of self-made celebrities. None of them were anything in the beginning. And because they were at the time, there were real people with a patina. They were the Kardashians.

Robert Kardashian was the patriarch of the family. He had some no other variety. But for the most part, other than a sex tape that Kim Kardashian did with some rapper, they were off the radar. are until the reality show came along. They were real people in this unique situation, and they became huge stars financially successful.

But for the most part, the real people thing, in the beginning at least, just played itself out. And hopefully it's coming back, because real people are in a lot of ways. If it's a docudrama, especially, or the other categories, sounds like the same thing, but it's not, is a doc follow. So it's shot documentary style, but you're following somebody through what is typically referred to as a process format.

Pawn stars. It's a process. Process format. It's real people. But it's not a documentary necessarily, but you're following the owners of this pawn shop as you see the process, which is the essence of the show, the process of people bringing in unique things and have. a valuation put on them and then finding out if it's true or not. That's a format.

It's a process format. Next week, Eric, we'll be talking about who belongs in the WCW Hall of Fame. Of course, I guess it technically no longer exists, but it did once upon a time. And I'm curious who Eric thinks would make a good candidate for the WCW Hall of Fame. And we really want to hear from you.

So head on over right now to 83 weeks.com and comment on our community page who you would put in the WCW Hall of Fame and see if it matches Eric here. Now is time we're going to go ahead and tell everybody who's watching along with us live here. We're going to be talking

potential spoilers, so see you next week. But for everybody else who's listening to this on Monday, Eric Dynasty as you and our recording is tonight. So as folks are listening to this, it was last night. This as you see on the poster here, the graphic

that Silva has posted at 83 weeks.com. Samoa Joe, prominently, front and center. Not featured on the graphic at all. Swarff Strickland, his challenger. Swerve is the betting favorite. Every insider I know says Swerve is winning the title tonight. And I couldn't help but wonder what Eric thought about that.

Because you and I have spent a little time talking about how timing is everything. In comedy, in sales, in real estate, in business, in life, in relationships, timing is everything. And you sort of pair it a lot of times on here and just beat the drum. You got to have discipline and storytelling. You got to have patience. And you sort of indicated at the top of the show, you felt like WW had demonstrated a lot of that. And perhaps AW was hot shouting things. You didn't say those words, but maybe they didn't have the same patience that WVE does. I would actually argue that if anything, they waited too long to pull the trigger on

swerve. I'm a huge swerf strickland fan. I've been on the swerve train for over a year now and telling everybody how much I appreciate and enjoy his work on my social media accounts. But it feels like they've cooled him off a little bit. Now, I think they're still going to go forward with it as we're recording and he's going to win the title tonight. I think he should have won it a couple of pay reviews ago, maybe. Because it feels like that if there is a negative pattern in AEW, the one I can point to is we get guys hot and then it feels like we accidentally inadvertently cool them off. Wardlow comes to mind. The acclaim come to mine. Like these were the fans could not get enough. I'm talking thunderous pops, huge reactions

and they're all still signed. They're all still there, but it just doesn't feel the same. And I kind of feel the same way about swerf Strickland. And I know that we had a ton of discipline in the Cody Road story. And when he didn't win at last year's WrestleMania, a lot of people were saying, oh, they missed it. They've killed Cody. It's over. They had patience. He fixed it. They did it. I'm curious, do you think that same thing can happen for Swerf Strickland? Or do you think they just didn't pull the trigger on him at the right time and now it's going to be an uphill battle? I want Swerve to be hugely successful. He'll be,

this will be his first major title. Yes, he had success in NXT. Yes, he had success in MLW. This is a different deal, but I would, I just think, man, the time to do that was maybe a couple of months ago. What say you? I haven't been following Swerve, Strickland, closely enough, have valid opinion other than to say that if you look at AEW and you look at the track record, you look at the pattern, you look at history, I don't think Swerve Strickland is going to reach his potential in AEW, which is not. It's not that they don't have discipline in their storylines. It's that they don't really have any storylines.

They really don't. They have excuses for matches. That's not the same thing. And I think perhaps he has the talent. But if there's one person that anybody that can point to in AEW that had potential, that was involved in a storyline that went for three or four months and built and built and then paid off, I'd like to know who that person was. I'm not saying it wasn't.

I just like to know who it was. I haven't seen anything to suggest that there's anything that remotely could be described as a creative plan. I think it's spontaneous creative. I think it's whatever Tony is in the mood for in any given moment. I just think storyline wise, and I know you haven't been keeping up with it, but I have more probably than you have. And it felt like they should have pulled the trigger on swerve at Revolution.

And maybe they didn't because they wanted to make it all about Stings Night and they didn't want to have a title switch happen in the middle of the show. I'm not sure. But they're faced with a similar circumstance tonight, like is Osprey and Janus are going to close or will it be Joe and swerve? I'm a huge swerve fan. I think Joe has been phenomenal in his role as world champion. he's checked every box and been everything

you wanted some Ojo to be I just think I want I shouldn't say I think I want Sware of Strickland to become a made man here in AEW and be the torch bearer but it does feel like the timing was off and Conrad they didn't even think enough

of him or there's not even enough of a plan or detail in that plan to include him on the cover shot that we just talked about and that even on the freaking poster that to me is egregious. I'm just like,

how is he supposed to be the top guy? We got, and listen, I understand. He's not even there. And I understand we're showing our champions here, Eric. That's what we're showing is our champions. I get that.

But still, it's just like, golly, if we're going to make him, we got to make him. And I think the world of the real life guy behind Wardlow, I think he's a great guy, always been awesome at our Starcast events,

things like that, great with fans. If you have a chance to meet and go out of your way, but once upon a time, instead of putting him with the T&T belt, they could have put the big belt on him. He was over like Rover, destroying MJF.

And we didn't pull the trigger and that feels like we missed our opportunity. And I really didn't want you to answer specifically about swerve, but more about the delicate balancing act of understanding that timing is everything and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression sometimes,

but also having discipline and storytelling. Because the overreaction to this would be as soon as someone gets hot, let's push him to the moon and make him the top guy. I'm not necessarily suggesting that, but I am saying, where's the balancing act, Eric,

of, hey, if we don't do it now, we're hurting him long term, and we're hurting us on our upside long term. How do you balance that with? We've got to be disciplined in our storytelling. And just because they want it now,

we can't give it to them now. How do you balance that, Eric? It's not hard. First of, and it starts with a premise. that every story should have a plan. There should be an arc.

There should be points along the way throughout the story from the inciting incident, which is, you know, you're in film school 101. How does the story start? What happens? Something happens. In every movie and every book and every television show, particularly dramas,

something happens at a very beginning that allows the story to unfold. done from there. And then there are elements along the way through Act 1, first 33 to third percent, if you will, that can vary. Pull your mic a little closer, Eric. For the purposes of this discussion, your Act 1 is about a third of your story.

You're developing, you're exposing the character, you're letting the audience understand the character's traits, You're allowing, you're creating situations where the audience will begin to identify as a protagonist or an antagonist, maybe face or heel, with that character. And you're watching this journey until, boom, something happens that thrust your central character into an entirely different reality and now is being faced with a challenge of some sort. It's the hero's journey. I'm making this shit up off the top of my head. I read it in a fucking book. but then apply that traditional storytelling format to a wrestling story and learn how to identify

those same plot points along the arc so that in the middle of your story, this is answer your question now, how do you know when, where's the balance? In the middle of your story, if all of a sudden your crowd is reacting like they're at the end of the second act, like is where the tension should be the highest, right, going into the final act, this is where your character is in the most trouble or the most likely to succeed, or the most likely to fail, the most likely to get killed, or most likely to lose the girl, whatever the fuck it is, right? It should be happening right around the end of the second act. But if you're towards the end of the first act, you're going, holy shit, people are

really reacting to this. Here's what you do. If you have the luxury of a freaking plan, is you sit down and go, okay, what did we have planned? Well, we were going to do this and this. and this for the next three weeks, but fucking crowd is hot. How do we adjust? How do we not eliminate? Don't skip them. How do we adjust these next steps in our arc? Points along the way that are absolutely necessary to create the emotion.

But perhaps we misjudged in a good way. Perhaps this talent is getting over faster or more than we thought. So rather than losing Steve, Let's tweak that. Is there a way to collapse it without losing the integrity and the continuity of the story? The answer is always going to be yes, because you're only limited by your own lack of imagination. So the answer is always going to be yes, but it's no different, Conrad, than building a house. When you build a house, you have the foundation, you have the plan.

And somewhere along the way, you say, you know, I really wanted five bedrooms instead of four. but we've already poured the foundation, we've already framed the house, roofs on it, we haven't wired it yet or plumbed it. Shit. Wish we would have thought of this sooner. Your architect will say, no problem,

provided you have the money, no problem, let me go back to work. And I'll come back to you with a plan that shows you how to change the schedule of production, the additional materials you're going to need, and structurally what it's going to take to change your plan. A wrestling storyline is no different than a fucking blueprint for building a house. It's a plan.

And plans can change. But the idea of having a plan makes it a lot easier than just, oh, fuck, I'm not in the mood to do that. I know we talked about doing that last week. But I want to do this today because I was just talking to the guy in the locker. And he's really excited about it. And I don't want him to yell at me anymore. So let's do this instead.

that's what you got. That's what you're working with. That's why people are stumbling. They're not getting over. You're not building your audience. There's no cohesion to stories. They're not really stories to begin with. They're not plot points.

They're excuses for matches. Once you get to the point where you see the value of a creative plan and you're 100% confident your ability to adjust it in an intelligent way as you go, in a tactical way as you go, Once you get comfortable with that, then the balancing act becomes less of a guessing game. I can't wait. I'm still yet to see Dynasty. I know as everybody's listening to this, they saw it last night.

But there's rumor and innuendo, according to the observer, that Jack Perry is finished with New Japan. And he is returning to AEW. I think a lot of people expect that he'll show up tonight or as folks are listening to this last night at Dynasty. and you've got to think he's going to be involved in the Young Bucks match. What do you, what would you do with Jack Perry? How would you reintroduce him into the fold here, given all the recent controversy and the reaction he got in Chicago, how would you,

how would you present him? I don't know. That's an interesting question. You know, I, I, I just don't know how much value Jack Perry really has. And it's going to sound like a shot. He never impressed me a bit, like not even a little bit before the whole C.M. Punk incident. Now, the only reason I think that there's any attention on him at all is because of the C.M. Punk backstage incident. And I think it'll be an interesting character for the next couple appearances.

But I don't know how you build from that. I don't I mean and maybe there's a story there that I just can't see because I'm not interested in him or nor am I interested in the young bucks not as people but as character just not evidently based on last week's ratings neither is their own viewers oh come on hey hey is it a lie tell me if I'm lying I'm waiting no can't because I'm not lying I'm telling the truth they lost over 100,000 viewers in one segment that's not good It's not an indication that there's something going on there in a positive way, quite the contrary. But because I'm not interested in them, I'm not seeing any value in them. I'm not seeing any value in their audience in them. It's hard for me to spend a lot of time thinking about them. But I think basically because this situation is borne out of a negative CM Punk incident, we saw what happened, the backlash that happened as a result of showing.

that footage. We saw the ratings come down the very next week to 700,000 1,000 viewers. It's trying to build on quicksand. I'll go back to the house. You're going to build a house, build it on a strong foundation.

Don't build it on a quicksand or in a swamp. And because this Jack Perry's character and awareness of him right now is all the direct result of a negative? I'm not confident that you can build on that.

Well, I'm confident we're going to be talking about it. The good, the bad and the ugly later this week on 83 weeks.com. If you haven't already, go hit the subscribe button. Be sure to turn on the notifications bell. It's absolutely free, but Eric is going live each and every week, and it doesn't cost a penny. It's all happening in 83 weeks.com. You don't want to miss it.

So the way to do this is be sure to hit the subscription. button turn on the notifications bell and I also want to mention that we're taking a lot of questions over there so if you've got a question about something we're talking about drop it below the video even this one and we're going to start screen grabbing those and discussing those here on the program by the way I want to mention hey Conrad before we wrap it up here this week on 83 weeks.com bully ray is going to be joining me oh wow stay tuned watch out on social media We're a fan on Twitter said, hey, you two should do a wise choices together on 83 weeks.com. So bully made a comment.

I made a comment and we're going to do it. And Chale Sonan also going to be joining me, I think this week on, on 83 weeks.com. We're going to talk wrestling promos and UFC and professional wrestling. So that'll be fun. Chale Sonan should have been a pro wrestler in another life he was. And by the way, in another life, you were saving money with me over at Save with Conrad.com. In my real life, I'm helping people keep more of their own money and get out of debt faster. And just don't take my word for it. Go read some of my reviews at Conradreviews.com.

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And we'll be back next week talking all things WCW Hall of Fame, a fun hypothetical. And we're going to be having a discussion on social media this week. Love to have your interaction there. It's at 83 weeks on Twitter or X, I guess, as the kids are calling it these days. And we'll be talking about the hypothetical WCW Hall of Fame next week here on the show. And be sure to check it out at 83 weeks.com. We'll see you guys later this week sooner rather than later right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff.

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