83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 322: WCW/AEW Parallels?

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad take a look back 25 years to Monday Nitro (05.17.99) and discuss the beginning of the end of WCW. Eric shares details on the direction and struggles the company was experiencing at the time and draws a parallel to what AEW appears to be going through now. Watch along with Eric and Conrad on Peacock, season 5/episode 19 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 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. MANSCAPED- Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at https://www.manscaped.com/ PRIZE PICKS - Go to https://www.prizepicks.com/83WEEKS and use code 83WEEKS for a first deposit match up to $100! 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? I am, I'm still riding an incredible high from last night's wise choices over on YouTube, 83 weeks.com, if you're curious. We did a breakdown of dynamite Wednesday night, and unfortunately, because of, you know, user error on my part, was only able to record the last half of the show. So I broke down, starting with the hook backstage segment, which is where my BBR picked

up the show, started with that, and then went through the end of the show. It broke each segment down and kind of, I don't want to say graded it, but broke it down based on a Sarsa formula, story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. Talked about each one of those elements as it relates to the segment. that we saw and it got a lot of great feedback it was a fun format um Dave super Dave Silva here had a great idea about saving all of the questions to the end of the show so that we could stay in the flow of what we were talking about and it I think it worked up great we got a great response and I had so much fun doing it I was you know I thought maybe

I can get an hour out of it because I only had um half the show to talk about, but we ended up going an hour and 40 minutes. And it was the most fun hour and 40 minutes I've done by myself. It was, it was interesting. And I think we're going to tweak that format, get a little tighter, clean it up in a couple different ways. But I think by the third time we do this review format, we're on wise choices, I think we're going to have something that's kind of fun because it's different

than everybody else's review. I try not to talk about my opinions too much, my personal taste, things like that. just looking at the show from a strictly production perspective, I put my producer had on. Just like I would when Jason and I, or Jason Harvey and I were producing, creating and producing television shows for various networks, that whole note noting process, you know, you got six, eight, ten executives all giving you notes. And it's a pan of yes, but it's also very helpful. So that was the approach that I took. And I loved it. So I'm still right. And that I'm on my fifth day of my first day of my first.

five-day fast and feeling just awesome. Really, really feeling good. So I'm doing great. Sorry, long-winded answer. That's what I'm known for. 83 weeks.com is where you can enjoy wise choices. So if you're listening on our RSS or anywhere you enjoy podcasts like your Apple podcast or Spotify and you're thinking, wait, where is wise choices?

It's all at 83 weeks.com. That's your home for all things. Eric Bischoff. We're going live. So be sure to hit the subscribe button. It's free and turn on the notifications bell. Drop us a comment. We're actually mining the comments on YouTube now to be a part of our show here,

which, by the way, this is the very first time you're hearing 83 weeks on a Friday. We did a little switcheroo, so no more Mondays for all EZE unless it's a wise choices or a YouTube exclusive at 83 weeks.com. But week in, week out, plan on seeing 83 weeks everywhere you enjoy podcasts on Fridays. Eric, you have been reviewing and discussing a lot of AEW programming in a period where most people believe, and I think the facts support it, AW's in a down period right now. And if we're going to, you know, be fair, because this is the criticism that whenever you're critical of A.W, people say, but he killed WCW. Okay.

So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at one of those. less than nitros on the 25th anniversary and we want you to watch along with us the good the bad and the ugly of wcw in 1999 we're going to go to season five episode 19 to get your peacock out pull up nitro season five episode 19 that's season five episode 19 i'm locked and loaded on my side eric you got it ready on your side go well here we go we'll do a little countdown And we'll go live here watching a very special edition of Monday Night Trail. From May 17th, 1999, exactly 25 years ago today. I want you to watch along with us on Peacock at Season 5, Episode 19 in 3, 2, 1, play.

So there we see. We've got the new redesigned WCW logo that everybody pretty much universally hates now. I think when I associate the bad years of WCW, I think of that logo. Is that fair, Eric? That was the beginning, right? Yeah. Definitely. That is the point in time when Harvey Schiller came to me and said,

Eric, you're doing too much. You need to learn how to delegate. I want to be an executive internal broadcasting. You need to learn that skill. And I, because I wasn't good at it. I felt like I had to approve, being involved, all that with every aspect of ECW. And it's not realistic. So I took Harvey's advice, Nick Lambros, who was really, I think he was an executive vice president of the time.

He was really my right hand man in any respects. He was the attorney for WCW, but he was also involved in a lot of other aspects, including marketing. Nick Lambrose oversold marketing, and he hired a guy by the name of Jay Hassman. Jay Hesman was hired to take over marketing, WCW. And for some reason, I guess the brain trust at that time decided that we needed a new logo. I don't know why. In retrospect, but I went along with it. I was a little bit, I had a jail food mentality when it came to all things, WCW.

And in an effort to kind of learn how to be a better executive, yep, I let that happen. And that was the beginning of a lot of bad things. Not the cause of it. I don't want to suggest that. I'm kidding. We're knee-deep in story here where we see the president of World Championship wrestling logo on a door and its head, Roddy Piper. And, of course, Little Natch, Charles Robinson, slides. in the new nameplate for Rick Flair.

We also saw Little Natch jump out of the limo there with Rick Flair, R.N. Anderson, Diamond Dallas Page. This is a fun moment for Little Natch. I mean, he grew up a super fan of Rick Flair and Mid-Atlantic and then later WCW. And then he actually became a referee and he becomes a part of the program. But you go back to early shows and you can actually see him front row holding up signs. And now he's not, quote, unquote, just a referee. he's involved in story, how pumped was Charles for this?

First of all, Charles is such a great person. Yes. He's high energy. He's always, always positive. Even now, when I see him occasionally, you know, if I cross past with him in WW, he's still just such a positive, likable guy. And to see him get that experience, and he, you know, he wasn't shy about letting you know how excited he was and grateful he was for that opportunity.

It was fun. It was fun for me to see him have so much fun. We think the world of Charles Robinson, and it's crazy to think, man, he's still doing his thing at a high level, still one of the big time referees with WWB, which means he's going to be going to Saudi Arabia. Can't believe that's real.

But king and queen of the ring is coming up this next weekend, as well as double or nothing. Happy to tell you that 83 weeks.com is going to be your home for both of those shows. We're going to be doing a post show, Eric, after the queen and king of the ring in Saudi Arabia at 83 weeks.com. And the very next day,

or maybe it's the same day, it's a double header, yeah. We got AEW double or nothing as well. So how about that, man? Post-show coverage for both pay-per-views. We're going to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly at 83 weeks.com. So as soon as that WW pay-per-view from Saudi Arabia finishes, hurry on over to 83 weeks.com.

And when double of nothing starts winding down, yes, it will be a late night. Cruise on over to 83 weeks.com. And that's what's interesting is we're actually going to be doing our post-show during the press conferences for both. So we might get some breaking news to respond to as well. And we want to hear from you. What did you think of the shows?

What was the best match? What was the worst match? What were you most surprised about? What were you most disappointed in? Join us live, totally free at 83 weeks.com. Take a look at Rick Flair doing his thing with Mean Gene. When you go back and you watch these old Nitros, it's always a highlight to me just to see Rick and Mean Gene together

because you knew they were having a blast in real life. They were having a blast. It's great to see on there with Rick as we're watching now. If you're watching along with us, yeah but it is there's just something magic about me jean and it takes me back it's kind of like mendo macaroni and cheese you know macaroni and cheese being you know kind of a comfort something i grew up with maybe not the best for you nutritionally or anything else but it just makes you feel good because it harkened back to a simpler time and place as a young person

and i feel the same way when i watch jean and rick and see arn in there and little nature It brings me back to what for me was a very exciting period of time. So I always get that macaroni and cheese mentality when I see me, Gene. We're in Iowa here. And this is, well, less than ideal as a time period for WCW. We're in the three-hour era of Nitro. And we're coming off of a preemption due to the NBA playoffs the week before.

That's still something that people are dealing with on Turner Station's this year, but they lost the contract, so it won't be an issue next year. Anyway, the prior week with Nitro preempted, Raw did an 8.1. It's an unbelievable rating, an 8.1, and it had one of the most watched segments in wrestling history, which was the Main Street Posse versus the Stoges, Briscoe, and Patterson. The WWF is just white-hot here, and the worst part of this. this nitro coming off Slambury 99 is that's going to be the last time that WCW cracks 20,000 people in live attendance and the free fall sort of starts.

Meltzer actually said that. It's no great news that World Championship Wrestling is in a popularity free fall. The current situation where ratings have been dropping weekly to dangerously low levels and the arena business and buy rates are falling as well. It isn't a short-term problem and is the result of a long period coming home to Roos currently with a number of serious problems from a lack of

strong leadership to attitude amongst workers to the most serious of all the total disregard for the fans when it comes to going out to present a good show, present the product advertised, and deliver storylines that make even the slightest bit of semblance

among fans. So a pretty harsh criticism from Meltzer, but when we start to see things like, hey, buys are down, event sales are down, ratings are down. I do see parallels with the period that AEW is in now. We know that ultimately WCW wasn't able to pull the nose up. And I think that's why I'm so excited to watch this show with you. Like, was there a way for WCW to pull the nose up here?

And if you had another crack at it, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently here and we'll call it the spring of 99? Before I get to that, you know, one of the, there are a lot of parallels, I think, between what AEW is going through currently and what WCW was going through in 1999. But one of the contrasts, 180 degrees, was the way Dave Meltzer covered it compared to the way he covers AEW. That's fair. When covering AEW, Meltzer has a tendency, not a tendency, a distinct pattern of making excuses and coming up with theories as to why AEW is in decline. And a lot of it is just funky math. Now, you've heard the phrase, numbers lie and liars use numbers.

And I think there's nothing more, there's no better way to discuss Dave Meltzer's current AEW coverage than numbers. lie and liars use numbers. But in our case, I'll be honest, given the circumstances, because this is the most important part of this answer, could I theorize here

creatively what we could have done and could we put on top and how could we have booked it differently? Sure, you could talk about that stuff until you're blue in the face. This is always fantasy books. application that you can sit back, 20-20 hindsight, 25 years later and come up with a lot of

great solutions. But none of that would have mattered. I know it's hard for people who subscribe to the Dirt Sheet universe, those on the Internet wrestling community that, you know, the majority of their knowledge or opinions are derived from chat rooms and dirt sheets and bullshit from people that don't have a clue of what they're talking about. And it just gets repeated and repeated and repeated. But the reality is there was so much, there was evolution at Turner Broadcasting

and not good evolution. We had the Time Warner merger, now we're in the AOL merger, two massive mergers taking place between three corporate behemoths. And if you think the, turmoil that exists today in WWE as a result of the acquisition by Endeavour TKO. If you think that's crazy, try being in the middle, during the dot-com bubble, by the way.

So AOL had a tremendous amount of leverage in this whole process. But imagine being a part of a small division of Turner Broadcasting in the midst of the multiple mergers and acquisitions that were going. And all of the changes that take place downstream as a result of it that affected every division. It wasn't just me. Take a look at CNN. Look where CNN is today. Look where CNN was pre-merger.

So it wasn't just me that was. WCW was I think it was more dramatically affected, visibly affected. But there was so much going on behind the scenes that made really coming. up with a plan, the sound creative resolution to the issues made it very, very difficult. Not impossible. Could I have done a better job? Yes, certainly. But to suggest that, well, if they would have just put the younger guys over and all these

dirt sheet Meltzer-esque kind of solutions are just fantasy booking in a different form, it probably wouldn't have mattered. The agenda that was clear as a bell to me at that time was that nobody wanted WCW to succeed and they were going to do everything they could to make sure that it didn't in terms of slashing budgets and changing the format of the show and different restrictions on us. They didn't want it to succeed. So there's really nothing in reality I could have done differently that would have mattered. I could have done it differently, and it would have been an improvement, but ultimately it wouldn't

matter. It's just, it's disappointing to think, you know, what could have been. But I, I'm a little concerned for AEW. You know, you do see the pattern of what's happening here with WCW in 1999, 25 years ago, the same weekend. And at the same time, we know that Kevin Riley, who first put AEW on the air, is no longer there. and with Turner losing the NBA makes me wonder how long Zazlov's going to be there.

It's, uh, I, I don't want to think that maybe, you know, television politics are back at play. But that's just a part of life, is it not? Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. And sometimes those changes are really beneficial and sometimes they're not. You know, you look at AEW and, again, the NBA is a powerhouse, no doubt, but it's been a powerhouse for a long time. Again, going back to Melters bullshit, you know, constantly using NBA and NHL as the excuse as to why there's this deterioration in AEW. He competed against, and we competed against the NBA and WWE head and still delivered millions and millions and millions of viewers.

And before anybody reaches for their Twitter, we have a television has changed and there's not as many people watching television anymore. Okay, that's true. However, if you look at environments based on a percentage basis, not the number as the sole barometer, but if you look at how AEW is doing on a percentage basis compared to what they did before against head-to-head competition

with the number is crashing this past Wednesday night and I didn't know this yesterday when we were covering the show dynamite but they came in at 672,000. That's pretty bad. So you've got what you've got now, I think, and this is just me on the outside looking in, of course, I don't have any inside information. I'm not so sure whether Zazlov's job is in trouble or not. and who are you going to put in there that's going to change anything at this point. TBS, TNT, TBS in particular, is in a tough spot.

I don't think it's a personnel issue. I don't think it's a leadership issue. I think it is a strategy issue. Vision issue. And now losing the NBA, what is that going to do? I don't know. Nobody knows. Somebody asked me on social media.

I think they're going to get a bump in their licensing fees. Because, again, Meltzer, you know, the last year a year, and a half has been predicting massive increases in the license fee based on what NHL is getting, other sports franchises getting, which is an absolute fucking rock of bullshit. AEW is going to get an increase in license fees if indeed the ad sales that pays for this show on TBS shows a positive growth or projection. If it doesn't, it won't. It's really simple.

But beyond that, even more importantly, it really depends on the three or five-year business plan for Turner Broadcasting EW. There may be a big benefit to having AEW as a part of the card, so to speak, that doesn't really have anything to do with ratings. It could be a strategic decision. there could be strategic opportunities there are tactical opportunities because there's a difference there could be strategic and or tactical opportunities having AEW that have a benefit to turn

broadcasting that has nothing to do with ad sales but we don't know that if we don't have well I don't care who you are me included obviously I don't have any visibility into a strategy or turn broadcasting what their business plan looks like I have no idea And neither does anybody else that's commenting on this shit. Nobody knows. Everybody's guessing. That's right. And some of those guesses are based in logic, you know, something that sounds like it makes

sense. But a lot of is just emotional. It's coming from internet wrestling community and people who are looking for attention and clicks and trying to sound like they know more about shit than they do or they're better analysts than they really are because they're really clowns or they just want to share their thoughts which is fine all of it's fine but the reality is none of us fucking have a clue unless you're yeah unless you have visibility into their three to five year plan and you know what their strategy is you're just guessing I don't know what the fuck you're talking about

I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about when it comes to predicting AEW's future on Turner Broadcasting. We're going to find out shortly. Indications don't look good. I think we're in cable upfronts right now. Haven't heard of peep about AEW. Seeing a couple different things posted about the new streaming platform that Fox and everybody else is kind of getting together on and they talked about all the different

sports that are going to be available on this new streaming platform. I think it's going to start maybe this fall. I didn't see AEWs. I didn't see an AEW reference in that. Now, that could be. because they wanted to focus on the sports elements of this new streaming platform. And they didn't feel like including AEW and that press release as appropriate. They're talking about NHL and all the NBA and different things.

But not a good sign. Not a good sign that we're not hearing a lot about TBS's plans for AEW going into the future. Because right now, this is the time when the ad sales division of Turner Broadcasting, they're taking meetings all day long and they're meeting with big advertisers and advertising agencies and these advertisers and their agencies are making substantial commitments

for the rest of the year. That's when you pitch your product. You don't have a prime time show typically. Now, again, typically, I'm not there. I don't have visibility. There may be a plan. There may be a strategy. I'm not lying that this is, you know, bloom and doom necessarily.

But it's an indication. It's odd that TBS isn't out there touting, selling, positioning, a primetime show that typically is in the top three or four shows for the night in prime time. In fact that they're not talking about it, it's curious, very least, it's curious. we uh we still have a really long segment here going it's uh it's pretty crazy hey let's uh let's take just a minute and pay some bills and tell everybody why we're here one of the reasons we're here is because of our support from mando and man they're going to be supporting you all day long hey they're baseball fans do you hate foul balls you know the kind no matter how hard

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give me a time code where you're at right now i am at 22 minutes and 18 seconds we uh we've just seen you and roddy piper enter the building and now we've got a look here at our three announcers you know mike teney and tony shivani and bobby the brain heenan when you think of you know classic wcw nitro announced teams is there one that stands out above all the others to you I like what we have here. I love Mike Teney's touch and perspective. He could bring a perspective and knowledge to the table that Tony and Bobby couldn't. Because Mike was kind of like the professor.

We just call him professor today, man. Study what was going on in Japan, going on in Mexico. And as we were bringing more and more Japanese and Mexicans into WCW, Mike did a phenomenal job of giving us context in his background, perspective, some of his talent. He just knew more about the other than else. Tony did a great job. He was the traffic cop. Yeah.

This is the one that's keeping the flow going, not getting too much of some information, not enough of others. And he did a phenomenal job. Bobby was Bobby. Nobody better. Great color guy. I love this one. But we've had other ones.

I love Larry's Abiscos. Oh, yeah. Well, excellent call there. I kind of forget about Larry, but I'm with you. I think Teney, Bobby Heenan, and Tony Chivani, that's probably it for me. But I do think it's interesting that people always talk about J.R. and the King on the other channel, but nobody talks about this group as being pretty iconic. And they were to me.

I mean, I just think the world of Mike Teney was so glad that he got to live his super fan dream. And then, I mean, what can you say about Bobby Heenan? one of the best that ever did it. This is a cruiserweight match coming up here, and let's recap some things that Dave was saying about WCW here in May of 99. We all know the problems. We all know how they've started and what they are and how a company with the highest payroll in the history of wrestling

has not one piece of talent that's really over and has the ability to pop a buy rate or draw a competitive rating on their own. The young guys were destroyed first by the problem of jealous, older, and usually less talented, but with far more name value wrestlers wanting to keep their spots. Then the older guys started falling apart due to bad booking and being in the company that was getting the rep among younger fans as the old guy's promotion. They were constantly turned, sometimes with absolutely no storyline, to the point

nobody cared about any of them. Let's just take a time out there. I do think you can see some parallels with some things that have been happening in AEW. I mean, I know that fans get really upset. when you're critical of AW because they say, yeah, but WCW failed too, so he can't even speak on it. And I sort of made the comparison a few weeks ago, and I shared the link with you where I compared it to that great moment in the move, the Steve Martin movie from 92 called Leap of Faith. And he's sort of laying out that, okay, yeah, he did have a checkered past before he became a

pastor, but he's, he's sinned and now he doesn't sin and here's why. And I'm not saying that you're sort of trying to absolve yourself of your WCWCNs, but I do think you're uniquely qualified to comment on this because you've seen it from the inside, how, man, we've got a lot of momentum. And then as Arne Anderson might say, it feels like somebody cut your water off. Yeah, and it's interesting, Dave's commentary, if you look at somebody, if you're watching along with this, of course, if you're not, you can't see this. But it looks to me like this building.

If it's not full, it's damn close. I don't know what the attendance was for this particular show, but it looks to least, I mean, I don't see an empty seat, and we're full all the way up to the top, at least in the shot that I'm looking at now, as opposed to what we're seeing in AW, which is, I mean, Wednesday night, they go all the way to Washington State,

and with the great Dax Harwood and Okada in a main event, drew less than 4,000 people. Here, even though the wheels are falling off, and Dave was making all this great commentary, and great in his mind analysis of where WCW is, we're probably still delivering four times more audience on television than AEW currently is, and we're still selling out arenas,

and we're not producing our live show in front of 3,500 people. So there are parallels in terms of momentum, and comment, how many times have you heard me say, last five or six years, that creating my mind, momentum is hard, not easy. You have to be smart. You have to have timing in a way.

It has to be your friend because you can have great ideas and great strategy and great tactics to go along with that strategy. But if the timing isn't right, sometimes it doesn't matter. But creating momentum, as hard as it is, is much easier than maintaining momentum. because once you lose momentum that you've created, as we have here in 1999, as I did, getting it back is five times more difficult because the audience has already made up their mind.

As Gary Considine, former executive producer, NBC, Night Show, very, very knowledgeable guy, still very active in production today, told me once that once the, audience picks up their remote and says, not for me, it is so much harder to get them to come back. Yeah. It was to get them in the first place.

And I think that's what AEW is experiencing right now. They had great momentum when they launched because the market, the timing aspect of this equation was working in their benefit. W.W.E had become stale under Vince McMahon. It wasn't growing. There was nothing really new. And I said hundreds of times, I don't know, said often, before I even went to work there in 2019, that it's like a cookie cutter.

Everything that goes into the WWE dough mold, dough machine and gets turned into a cookie and all the cookies look the same, taste the same, smell the same, and a little different color sprinkles on top or whatever, vanilla chocolate chips instead of chocolate chocolate chip, they you know visually there were a little bit of differences but formula strategy the vision had become stale and I spoke about that often and then AEW came along in 2019 and all of a sudden oh man there's this new product it's an alternative and people were hungry for an alternative so in that sense timing worked for AEW and it was easy to create a lot of momentum and goodwill because I'm hungry.

Now that they've created that, or they created it five years ago, getting that momentum back, getting that goodwill, it goes along with the momentum, getting that back, getting the grace from the audience because you're new. You get on the block. They'll give your mistakes. But look at things a little different. That's gone. And for example, if you go to Wrestling Inc.,

which I go to. I follow Dave Shear. I follow Mike Johnson. Sean Ross Sapp. People that I believe are credible. John has his own controversies, but I love that. He's an outspoken person. But create, if you go to wrestling ink and you look at the post once the ratings came out yesterday, late yesterday for AEW dynamite, just look at the comments.

Now, these aren't Eric Bischoff fans or subscriber. that are going to tell me what I want to hear. You look at those comments and then you go back and compare them to the comments of 2019, 2020. Goodwill is gone. So now, like WCW was here in 1999, as we're looking at Rick Flair, the president of WCW at that time,

talking to Sergeant Buddy Lee Parker's, if you're watching along with us. AW's in the same spot. That interview that we saw on this show, long interview. It was about me trying to recapture momentum. Yeah, I mean, you basically said there, you know, you were talking about dominating wrestling for 88 weeks and you were basically admitting that WCW wasn't number one,

but they would be again. And Meltzer would say too bad he didn't tell us how. He thanked Bill Shaw for giving him his break and putting him in power in 92. Anyway, we were 32 minutes into the show before a match hit the ring. Why did you feel the need? to do this long interview and sort of fall on your sword, so to speak, that, hey, we've lost some momentum. I mean, you're acknowledging what the entire fan base knows, but it was a little different. I mean, we've seen that work effectively, by the way, and sort of mainstream corporate America.

I mean, a handful of years ago, Domino's did a whole rebranding strategy where their advertising campaign basically said, hey, our pizza sucked. It tasted like cardboard, but it's better now. Give it a shot. And it worked. was that what you were trying to do here in 99 saying hey we know it sucked but we're turning it around yeah and whether it was a good idea a bad idea i guess is in minds of the beholder but for me it was exactly that it was acknowledging not pretending it didn't exist not pretending we didn't have problems

that's spinning shit blaming other people and and blaming it on the evolution of technology we weren't doing that i thought it was appropriate to just say come out and and acknowledge it. I mean, if you want to get people to have faith in you and give you a shot, you have to acknowledge where you're really at and not make excuses for it. Whether it was a good idea or bad idea, that was my coach. We had issues. I wanted to address them in as honest of a way as I could on a professional wrestling show.

We've got one heck of a professional wrestler coming to the ring right now. Booker T. he is in his singles era and boy he is on his way to becoming a big star coming down to a hero's welcome here in Cedar Rapids at the base of the ramp talking to mean Jean you mentioned a minute ago hey this looks like a full crowd well it was even though you know this is WCW in a free fall according to Dave Meltzer it's a sellout here in Cedar Rapids now it's not a huge building there's 5,676 fans there 5,4996 of them were paying fans. So a little under 200 comps, $109,000 at the gate. But still,

you had an ass every 18 inches. The optics of that are good. And I'm curious, we've seen a report that AEW is going to be setting up residency. And what essentially is a big sound stage as they get ready for Wembley. I'm sure that as a cost-cutting measure, that's going to save them an absolute boatload of cash. But I am curious what you thought of that move, Eric. I mean, I know that T and A relied heavily on doing soundstage business and then they folded up tent and took it on the road. And then came back to that.

I mean, it made a lot of sense cost-wise. And you actually first started going to Disney MGM. It was one of your first major initiatives when you got power within WCW. What do you make of this news from AEW, perhaps borrowing a page from yesterday? year and going to set up residency? Yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's good and bad. You know, the, the positive side of the equation is that it is going to save money. And that is important.

I know that, you know, Tony's obviously got access to billions of dollars. So financials at least up to this point don't appear to be an issue. I don't think it's really factored into too many equations, given what they're paying talent at this point. So it is a good move from a cost-savings, profitability perspective. Downside, this is what I experienced firsthand of making that move, is that it becomes very stale. Look, below the show.

Now, I haven't been to this venue, so I could be wrong about this. You're describing it as a type of a soundstage, and I get that. But depending on the size of that sounds. stage in the way it's built, configured, we'll see what it looks like on camera. But typically, here's what I predict. You're going to get a pretty good crowd for your first episode or two. And then it starts dropping. So depending on the configuration and the way the building is set up,

first couple of shows are probably going to look pretty good. You're going to have an enthusiastic crowd. You're going to have people that perhaps haven't been to an AEW ever. So you're going to get some energy in that crowd. But by the second, third, fourth episode, it's going to be, I don't want it to be. That's just what happens when you're in the same market, given period of time. So we'll see. I think it's one of those decisions that someone,

and EW said, okay, we've got to address the issue that we can't draw. We are not drawing people. We're not going to be able to be successful if we're only drawing three or four thousand people for live dynamite. And they don't even do house shows. So as a touring model, EW doesn't exist. It is a television production company that instead of producing a sitcom drama, it's producing professional wrestling. The math just isn't going to work currently.

So someone made the decision of becoming more efficient, and that is a good decision. Yeah. Business perspective. But if they don't mitigate the negative side of it and find a way to keep that audience fresh, especially going into Wimbly, maybe it doesn't matter because Wimley is an outlier. I think the fans in Europe, particularly in the UK, they're unique in the sense that they have a incredible appetite. for professional wrestling will support just about anything that comes to town, particularly if it's WWE or in this case, but take Wembley and that potential

and just put it off to the side as an outlier. It's a risky move. It's a good move, but it comes with inherent risk. We should mention, you know, you correctly pointed out, it's not technically a soundstage. It's an e-sports arena. So depending on how they configure it, 250 fans to 2,500 fans, but it is east for it.

So it makes me think maybe the look and feel could be different. And I think if anything, we all agree that AEW probably needs something that feels different than right now. So I, for one, am going to be my usual delusional optimist and hope that this comes off looking awesome. But I do think there is that since the sameness that you mentioned, that if you're getting those same fans, weekend, week out, maybe it works out, but maybe it doesn't. We've seen it go both ways.

And we've also seen David Flair before, but not a lot here in this era. He's trying to cut his teeth right in front of us as a professional wrestler, wrestling sergeant Buddy Lee Parker, who he's probably been training with a lot down at the power plant. And there's Little Nate strutting around in his wrestling gear, as crazy as that is, but a referee shirt on top. This is silly and fun and heavy on story. You know, maybe it's not the best storyline WCW ever had.

but they're at least trying. But at least that story. Yes. And again, notice and look, everything is subjective. We look at stuff like they, we need to look at Rick Flair in a ring and Tori Wilson and David Flair and R and Chris Benoit. I mean, this is so much great talent in that ring. But my opinion is just my opinion.

Yours is just yours. Anybody else is just theirs. The only objective perspective that you have on whether or not the story is good or bad is in the crowd reaction. and the number of people in the building. You've got a sold-out building, over 5,000 people in. And you've got a crowd that's reacting accordingly. And that's, again, one of the reasons why, you know, I watch wrestling,

I can't help it. I watch it from perspective. I don't pay as close attention to the technical action in the ring as I do to the reaction in the crowd because that's the only thing that really matters. Right. End of it. It's does the crowd react the way you want them to react. And if they're engaged, buying into the story or the action, you win.

If they're sitting on their hands, looking around, you lost. That crowd was reacting. So the story here, just to catch everybody up, is Rick Flair is now the president of WCW and he's going to tell Buddy Lee Parker backstage, hey, everybody who runs a wrestling company pushes their kid. asked Vern Ganya or Bill Watts or the Von Erick's. Of course, he doesn't mention Vince McMahon. But he tells Buddy Lee Parker, hey, when Arne gives you the signal, you lay down for the figure four.

And I'll make you an executive in the company. So, of course, we have a storyline reason to be throwing David Flair on TV, even though fans know, he's new. He can't, he's not very good. There's at least a story. Maybe not the best story, but there is a story. Speaking of stories, we should at least mention the story that we sort of glossed over. We saw Ray Mysterio Jr. wrestling Evan Courageous earlier, and he quickly got the win in just

after two minutes. They were supposed to go nine minutes, but after about 90 seconds, the guys get worded, hey, it's time to go home. And allegedly, Ray was not thrilled about this backstage, but even Dave would say, Courageous has a good look, but man, he's really bad. Mysterio Jr. couldn't do a thing with him in the ring. why do you recall how often matches would be cut short while they were in the ring because that feels like a stressful spot to put the talent in it's a horrible spot to put the talent in

I don't blame Ray Mysterio for being upset um but it happened more often than it should have and usually I would say 90% of the time if not more it happened because of the timing of the show you're doing a live show you've got commercial breaks that are scheduled, got to hit your breaks. That is your commitment to the network because breaks are the revenue that supports the show. It comes first. It is a priority. And what would happen often, too often, is that talent in the ring would go long. They can get the shit in or they're not paying close enough attention. Now, you've got a three-hour show. I don't even know how many segments that was or matches are on a three-hour show. I'm going to

take a wild-ass guess and say, I don't know, 15 to guess on this show. Well, if four or five of those matches go two minutes long, four minutes long, sometimes they went way more than that. You've got guys in a truck scrambling to retime the show in order to hit your commercial breaks because you don't have an editing opportunity. You're live and you have to hit those ad breaks. so as you're retiming the show in the truck and everybody you know the director's doing everybody it's all hands on deck when you have to retime a live show in the middle of it ultimately you talk to the ref ring and say okay these guys had eight minutes you need to go home in four or five because you need to get that time back and that often screwed up the flow of a match everything that had been laid out prior to some of the creative and some guys were good

at reacting to an audible that was being called by cutting that short some weren't depending on their level of experience and confidence so it was an issue and it happened often what a segment we've got here it's a big segment we've got the one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling coming to the ring here the macho man randy savage big as a house i mean he's more jack than he ever was right there and he's got a gaggle of ladies with him there's medusa with the old plus twos we got gorgeous george and miss madness who we know is going to go on to become molly holly why did you uh like the the presentation of randy savage the ladies man with three ladies in a stable here for him i was kind of ambivalent about it i

I wasn't excited about it. I didn't, for me personally, it wasn't consistent with Randy's character. I know, of course, Randy had Liz and that was a big part of his presentation for the time. But this felt like, I don't know, it just didn't feel authentic to Randy's character. It wasn't bad, something Randy felt strongly about. And I was aware enough at the time to understand that just because, I liked something or in this case dislike something doesn't mean I was right and I would

allow sometimes other opinions whether it was from the talent or other producers or people on the staff I would hear them out if it sounded like well maybe they're right and I'm wrong give a shot that's kind of what this was I don't think any of ladies in the rain yes but it could work a little bit. You know, in all fairness, she's in there wrestling with, you know, little Natch and he's greener than do shit. And to be honest, Benusa wasn't nearly as technically gifted as she likes to remember. She was.

Oh. It was just awkward. You know, it was okay. But, eh, I really didn't like. Let's also mention this is the segment that is the first segment that's really head-to-head with Raw. As a reminder, the prior week, Nitro was preempted, so Raw was unopposed. This is the three-hour era of Nitro, so the first hour of Nitro was unopposed.

So the first time we're head-to-head with counter-programming on the WWF side of things, this is what we slide out there. It's a mixed tag of sorts. It's Randy Savage teaming with Medusa to take on Little Natch and Rick Flair. and Raw does a 5.0 rating when they feature Xbox Road Dog and Kane

taken on Billy Gun Delo Brown and Mark Henry and a six man but this segment as silly as it is gets a 4.2 so yes the WWF is firmly winning

I mean a 5.0 to a 4.2 sure they had more viewers but a 4.2 can we stop right there for a second just for context? Yes. What was the WWE's rating? Five. You're 4.2. They're five. Okay. Because we don't talk about ratings anymore. We talk about viewership.

Yes. When ratings are reported, you never see really a rating. You see viewership. But at this point in time, and I could be wrong about this. Okay. So if you're out there listening and you can correct me, feel free to do so. But I believe that the formula for Nielsen at the time was a rating point equaled 1.6 million viewers, 5 million. You're talking about 7 million viewers for WWE, and yes, the wheels are falling off, talking about the comparison to where WCW was here in 1999 and where AEW currently is. And you're absolutely correct. I have fully admit creative perspective from a. just operational perspective, 1999, 1999 was a bad, bad, bad year.

It was but ugly. But we're still within, what, 10% or so of WWE and head-to-head competition. A 4.2 is probably around 5 or 6 million viewers. Yeah, you're over 5 million viewers here for sure. So there's 5 million people watching this. And yes, it's losing. no doubt, but there's still 5 million people watching it. So there was an opportunity here to turn things around for sure.

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You've got a bunch of folks hanging out and they're bringing in some good questions. Coach Rosie wants to know, Eric, what do you think would do a good rating in 2024 for a wrestling program? With streaming and YouTube, do advertising companies still really use that matrix? So that's interesting. You know, like I've seen people talk about the Tonight Show. and the stuff that Jimmy Fallon and James Corden have done late night on broadcast television and they would be pretty honest about saying the ratings are what they are but we're trying to see if we can make it go viral on social media

whether it's Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or YouTube do you think how much do you think that has changed in recent years well it hit well obviously it's changed a lot everything's different and in television advertising began changing when the internet started really exploding, probably 2000s, early 2000s, when internet advertising all of a sudden became, look, think of it this way, Coach Rosie. There is a pot that is filled with advertising dollars, and advertisers distribute those dollars to get maximum return investment. Well, in the 60, 70, before internet ad sales, that money was spread around between

print, basically radio and television, depending on who the advertiser was. Minut, internet advertising started to become a big issue prior to streaming. So now, companies were taking some of the money out of that pot that traditionally went to television, radio, and print, billboards, whatever, and started dedicating it to that advertising. That was the big. beginning of this evolution when it comes to internet, which became streaming issues in television. When streaming started to become really big and a competitive place for agencies to put their ad dollars, that is when it really began to affect the entire industry, the television

industry. And it's been getting progressively more impactful on television ad sales because more and more money is being dedicated to streaming, which is why you see so many television networks, cable and otherwise, building out their streaming platforms because that's where the advertiser dollars are going to. Hey, I don't mean to cut you off, Eric, but take a look at Randy Savage come off the top here on Little Natch. This is a devastating move, not just in wrestling land, but in real life, he just collapsed

Little Natch's lung right there. What's your time code on that? I want to be sure I get that. He went right to the hospital right after. I'm at 55-07-08, but we just saw Randy Savage come off the top there, and it was reported in the observer at the time that he had the bruised esophagus and a possible collapse lung. When I've talked to Charles Robinson, he said that was 100% factual. He is going right to the hospital. He broke a rib, collapsed the lung.

I mean, bad deal there. And Dave is going to suggest in the newsletter, the bump. is harder to take now because Savage is overly protective of his bad knee, which means the elbow lands with more force than ever, and Robinson's only about 145 pounds, and he doesn't have the thick chest most wrestlers do who take the move. So he winds up going to a hospital, and I think a lot of times, myself included, we see just something that seems so elementary and so common in wrestling. An elbow off the top rope, you're going to the hospital for that. But that's a reminder that, hey, man, these are big boys flying around.

It's easy to get hurt pretty quickly. It is indeed. And I think I don't remember how much of a check I wrote to Charles as a result of this. He didn't ask for it. It wasn't a litigious situation, no threats of lawsuits. But I felt really bad, Charles. And I wrote him a check. I don't remember how much it was.

But it was substantial. I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to point that out because I knew it was important. Yeah. And to Charles' credit, he didn't bitch. He didn't complain. Typical Charles Robinson sucked it up, put a smile on his face, and went about his business. That's why I like the guy so much.

Still doing his thing now. We actually got a comment from Mitchell Barnett. He said, Eric, where do you rank Charles Robinson as an all-time referee? Also, who is your personal favorite all-time referee? referee. I think it'll be Charles. Me too. No doubt about it.

You know, referee, that's, you know, it's part of the show. It's part of the presentation. A referee is on stage with the talent, center stage. Very, very important part of the show that sometimes people don't really think too much about. Charles was naturally gifted, but also studied and learned. and you'll notice that, unlike some referees, Charles knew that he wasn't the star of the show. And you very rarely saw Charles in the midst of the action

unless it was necessary. Whereas today, in some places, you see referees who think that they're the start, like they're the third person in the ring. And you're not. You're distracting. In some cases, significantly. Charles knew how to position himself so that when referee was part of the show,

part of the action, part of the story, yes, he was there. And he did it without detracting or distracting from what you wanted the audience to focus on. So he knew, like I did, I always referred to myself as an announcer as garnish. I'm that little piece of green shit they put on the plate parsley or whatever it is when you go to Denny's or some breakfast place and you order two eggs over easy hash browns and bacon, which is my go to when I'm on the road. I don't eat the hash brown of the eggs and bacon, but they always put that little piece of parsley on the plate. Well, you're not going to eat that shit. It's horrible. It's a fucking rabbit.

But they put it there to add color to make a complete presentation to that dish. Totally useless as a food source. taste like shit. And that's what announcers are. They're part of the presentation, but they're not there as a part of the main course. Charles knew that. He knew how to position himself in the ring to not be a distraction

as opposed to mugging for the fucking camera. Nothing pisses me off more than that. Notice I didn't drop any names because I don't like to call a talent because they're all basically doing the best. Yes. And they're doing what they're asked to do or told to do. or in some cases, they're not being corrected by people that should know better. But that's what made Charles one of the best.

Not only his passion, his energy, he could fly around the ring because he was in good shape. And he was a smaller frame. You mentioned he was probably 5, 8, 140 pounds. That helps when you're in the ring with talent because it just makes the talent look bigger. And when you've got refs and we've had a couple of WCW who were, you know, two bills or more. number one they can't move around that good aesthetically it is called television because vision is a part of the process aesthetically they didn't look that great for that role and they were slow Charles was like telegenic perspective he's a great looking guy and it looked like a

California surfer and he was in great shape he could fly he could move around a ring he knew when to get part of the action and when not to kept himself positioned properly So if you're a referee out there in any organization, especially on the independency, go back and study Charles Robinson as a referee and watch how he positions himself in the meeting. Because he added to the story, he didn't distract from it.

And that's kind of an important reference to understand. Piper's out here dying a royal death here, according to Dave Meltzer. This promo is pretty bad. Meltzer would say he was given a comment. comedy routine to read 10 reasons Flair shouldn't be president. It was, it wasn't funny and he knew it and it never ended.

Being wrestling fans, the only line that got over was Flair thinking Y2K had something to do with KY Jelly. Still, I mean, listen, we both know how great and fun and random and off the wall Piper can be.

But sometimes when you're not scripted, it doesn't go all that well. And this is probably one of those times. besides the warrior rambling mess on nitro which we've covered before is there a moment you remember it being live television like this a nitro or a thunder or what have you you're in the back a guy's trying his best to do a promo and it's just painful and you wish you could pull the plug but you just can't I'm sure it

happened you know nothing stands out of my mind you know nothing I mean obviously the warrior does I almost referenced it a few moments ago But, yeah, the warrior one does. And look, we've all done anybody that's been in the ring for any amount of time that's done in ring promos. We've all had some that you could just feel we're going to work and getting over and the crowd was really out. You had the crowd in the palm of your hand.

And we've also done ones that we went, could we just pretend that didn't happen? It happened. It's live TV. You know, and I think in Roddy's case, one of the things that made Roddy such a an interesting person to work is that he would have these moments of just

excessive wasn't part of a plan was rehearsed he would improv and he was almost like the Scott Steiner math equation you know sometimes things just hit

and you're the heart they're improv and the great news about that is when when it's good it's generally really really good when it's not it's really not and this just happened to be one of those nights for roddy here he had an idea what he wanted to do he thought it would work and when it didn't probably much like a stand-up comedy guy or a stand-up comic sometimes you go out there and everything feels like it should work and when it doesn't

it's painful and this was just one of those times about the creative in this era, and he says that, you know, clearly WCW needs to make some changes. The booking regime needs to change. And he would say, you know, it's easy to say that the WWF has a competitive advantage because their wrestlers can swear and tear women's tops off. But he would also say, hey, the writing on the WWF isn't very good either. It's only good when compared to how bad the WCW stuff is, and WCW was still doing things the way they used to be. They weren't using the television Hollywood writers like Vince Rousseau and

Ed Ferrar. They're using former wrestlers. And Meltzer would say, at this point in time, Bischoff needs to either take control or step aside for someone else to take control. Major changes have to be made in regards to how talent is treated. I'm not advocating Bill Watson's insanity because that doesn't work. But I see a WWF where there are very few no-shows, usually from fairly serious injuries and it works in 1999. An entirely new system needs to be put in place. Whether it's to give the aura of authenticity, which may be an outdated idea, or to hire creative script writers to work alongside a very intelligent retired wrestler and make the

point that everyone over 40 has to understand that their day in the sun is waning and the only way to keep the spotlight is to effectively use their startup to create a younger star. So let's time out right there. I mean, he's clearly saying, we got to do something different. And he's almost implying, without saying it, perhaps one of the arbitroses that WCW has at this point are these, quote, unquote, guaranteed money contracts where talent knows I'm getting paid either way.

So if my ankle hurts, I'll just sit home and get paid. Do you think that, I mean, how, I don't think this gets talked about often enough. People talk about script writers and scripted promos and unscripted promos, but I don't think that we talk enough about the way guys are paid. Because when you were paid on the house, if business is good, everyone does good. If business is down, everyone doesn't do as well. But now that's not the case anymore. Like, it's almost like a scene out of Goodfellas.

The draw was down. Fuck you, pay me. The buy rates are down. Fuck you, pay me. Nobody's buying the merch sales. Fuck you pay me. The ratings are down. Fuck you pay me.

That's a scene from Good. But it almost feels like it could apply to modern wrestling where the talent, I mean, the companies are beholded to these contracts to the talent, whether or not the company's performing at all. And that's exactly what AEW is where AEW is today. NWE. Yes. The WWE has guaranteed contracts.

Yes. It's not like I invented guarantee contracts. And that's a part of the narrative because Dave is very selective in his coverage when he talks about certain things. what Dave failed to recognize or acknowledge at least context is when I came to WCW everybody on that roster was on a guaranteed contract I think create this shit

I don't hear any of the commentary or analysis from or see any of the commentary analysis from Dave applying the same analysis which really wasn't analysis it was just his ax to grind and trying to get people smarter than he is But this analysis for whatever it was, he's saying the exact opposite or omitting some of the major issues that are going on right now in AEW in this parallel universe where WCW was in 1999, as we're watching, where AEW is today. And we listen to Dave's commentary, both from 1999 and today. no there's no discussion about the size of the contracts there's no discussion about any of the issues

that david is so focused on here and presenting as someone who supposedly has knowledge of the industry and what he does today so his coverage and my response to his coverage acknowledges that davis full of shit doesn't know anything about what he's talking about but puts it into his dirt sheet or now, today, his other commentary in a way that isn't accurate, doesn't really apply to the industry, and in the EW's case, is really making excuses and covering his ass. And I'm pretty confident, and I know why. It has nothing to do with Dave getting paid by EW.

No. I don't believe that's true. But I do believe that Dave was so invested in tearing WCW down because he had a personal issue with me, my friend, did from the very beginning. because I was an outsider. Dave was one of the commentators that predicted that Nitro would be a dismal failure. Because I didn't know what I was doing.

Right. And when WCW and Nitro became a huge success, and I started calling Meltzer out on his bullshit because this goes back a long time, that set the tone in the course of Dave's coverage of WCW. So he's got a great ability to point out the obvious, but then spin it into a context. It has nothing to do with anybody's reality, whether it was mine here in 1999 as we see

Kevin Nash and Ring with Roddy Piper or whether it's today. He's making excuses for AEW. His analysis is nothing more than his personal opinion and agenda spun to sound like he knows what he's talking. And nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. So it's hard for me to really respond in any way other than a defensive one. to some of the things that Dave said,

but I do like to point out the differences in context. I wanted to mention another thing that Dave wrote here in 99. One year ago, WCW was outdrawing the WWF in a lot of markets. Now you'd be hard pressed to find one market that WCW could even head up, stay even in. And it wasn't that long ago,

we were seeing in certain markets, hey, AEW out drew WW when they were here last or what have you. Boy, that feels like a long time ago now at this point. I, for one, hope that they can find that magic bullet. I don't know what that missing puzzle piece is, but I think we've seen it's not signing someone. You know, a Mercedes Monet or an Okada or Will Osprey

is not necessarily going to turn that around. But I do think that, you know, maybe it's time to take a look at changing the format of the way the television is presented. And I don't know what can be done. there. I'm not necessarily talking about the way the show looks or is shot. I just mean in terms of

maybe it's less about matches. Like as you and I have been recording this morning, Tony Kahn has announced that on collision, tomorrow night Shibada is going to be taken on Rocky Romero as a part of their FTW contender series. And listen, if you're a big

fan of either one of those guys and they're great humans and excellent in-ring performers, hey, that's going to be a fun match to watch. But that's what it is. It's a match. It's not necessarily a cliffhanger of, I can't wait to see what they do next. Well, and this is, this is my big issue. I really don't want to spend a whole lot of time, much more time talking about a EW, but based on what you just said, changing the format is, okay, that's kind of an obvious thing.

But just changing the format in and of itself, what does that really mean? changing the format to support a completely different vision and strategy is what AEW needs. They've needed it for a long time. It's just now manifesting and becoming an issue. I predicted this years ago when everybody thought, you're just a hater because you couldn't get a job. Bullshed. I pointed out the flaws.

I pointed out what was wrong with the show and what needed to be focused on as opposed to dream matches. and big signings, and all the hype without delivering any substance. The wrestling audience watches wrestling characters, stories, action. It's live action with great over-the-top characters and solid stories. When it's at its best, Tony Kahn's vision, based on what I've seen over the last few years, has nothing to do with great storytelling. And a story in AEW from Tony on down, including their fans, is just an excuse for a match. A story has to have structure.

There has to be plot points along the way benchmarks, along the way in a story that are designed specifically to create a certain type of emotion during the journey through the arc. There's no one in AEW that even understands that, or if they do, uses to apply it. Tony has believed, as Dave Meltzer has, and this goes back to why I think Dave is spinning so hard, and the fucking wheels are falling off of shit. I mean, he's losing it.

He's saying some of the stupid shit in the world, and everybody's reacting to it. But Dave Meltzer and Tony Con, I think, have the same perspective on what good wrestling should be and what the audience wants. They think they know what the audience wants, and they think the audience wants what they enjoy.

Dave Meltzer has a passion for the technical perspective, the technical action in the ring. He thinks the whole world revolves around physicality and the technical ability in the ring. He's fucking wrong. He's dead wrong and always has been. Tony Khan, unfortunately, either because of Dave's influence or maybe just because they see things the same way, they're friends. It doesn't matter. Tony Kahn has the same vision for AEW and stream matches and high quality technically matches the sake of them without any real story or talent that can execute it.

That's the problem. You can change that format a hundred different times. And unless you change your vision and your strategy that goes with it, it won't fucking matter. You're kidding yourself, kidding your audience, and you're going to continue to lose goodwill. Changing a format, sure. Re-vamping or analyzing your vision in the strategy that goes with it is what it's going to take. When I created the nitro format, which entirely changed the wrestling industry regardless of what people want to say, people like Dave Meltzer. No doubt.

a bigger impact, had a much bigger, much more significant impact on the wrestling product that we're seeing today than just about anything else I did, including end of. I was the first person to bring live television to wrestling every single week in the modern era in prime time. That changed everything. And we're seeing the benefits to people like WWE and even the opportunity that was correct as a result of that significant change to the format. But along with the format change.

came a creative strategy or not exclusively more but more reality-based content more focus on a new presentation in the form of the cruiserweight division bringing in all the luchadores and all the people that i brought in from japan bringing a more international feel to the format so yes change the format but change the strategy along with the for because doing just one or even just the other isn't necessarily a solution. Maybe the solution is to change the format of your dong hair. Hey there, Beach Babes. Are you ready to soak up those summer vibes and unveil your ultimate beach bod?

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I want to talk about Fit Finley a little bit. I'm pretty good friends with Steve Regal. and I had a conversation with Steve a while back. In fact, I think it was with when I was with you in Dallas. Yeah. Or an event we did. And Steve actually stayed in the Airbnb that we all shared. And one morning I got up while we're there and just started talking,

just casual conversation with Steve. Just Steve and I sitting outside having coffee early morning. And Steve started telling me about his background, how he got into the wrestling business and just amazing stories. And I can't wait to talk about Steve Regal and his time in WCW and hopefully soon. Yeah, let's do it next week. We want to hear your questions. So drop them on our YouTube right here below this video.

If you got questions about Mr. Regal, we'll hit him next week here on the show. But some of the stories I heard about Fit Finley, the people that really influence Steve's early professional wrestling career kind of guided him through the process around. the world, long before he ever came to the United States, such a fascinating, fascinating conversation with one of the, of all the people I've worked with, there's, if any, nobody I respect more than Steve Reed in terms of his integrity, his professionalism, his view of the product and what the product needs to be. He's such an amazing asset, but the stories that he told me about fit and some of the things they went through were fascinating. And I bring this up and I feel so passionate about it because one of the things that I've

realized over the last couple of years of doing this podcast with you, really, is I didn't really appreciate or have the opportunity to appreciate it and get to know somebody is amazing is Fit Finley. I mean, he's such a classy guy. And he was, he's so good. But he never really got the attention, creative attention, that he really deserved because he was that freaking good and he had so much ability to do so many different things because of his experience.

But I love learning about it now and hope to someday have a stake with Fit. Here's some of those stories from him because Steve Regal, Fit, Finley, Dave Taylor. These guys have a background and a history and experience that very, very few people today come close to. Let's do some questions that we got here. One of the questions we got from Simon C says, why didn't you call Hack the Sandman? Did ECW own the IP or did you just think it was a stupid name? I did think he was using the Sandman or Mr. Sandman before all of that, but maybe I'm mistaken. Do you recall why you didn't use Sandman and went with Hack instead here in WCW?

I don't remember off the top of my head, but I would imagine, but it wasn't, look, Paul Heyman didn't have copyrights, trademarks, he stole music that he never had rights to. Paul was able to, and I love Paul. He's a lot of respect for Paul. But it is what it is. At that time, he was an outlaw. He'd steal shit from, you know, music again publishing. He didn't have the rights to, and it worked for him.

But, you know, fortunately for Paul, he was on, he wasn't on anybody's radar. He wasn't big enough to matter. So nobody really caught on to it. Never became an issue. And Paul would often threaten a lot of, because he's a very litigious guy. Father was an attorney. Paul probably got a pretty good feel. Paul just based on his proximity to his father.

And I know Paul really, really respects his father, respected and still respects his father. that being said paul would threaten lawsuits all the time and again going back to the wwee copyright trademark wcwalities and all that it was easier just to make a change and to deal with a potential threat so i'm guessing that we changed it just so that we didn't get weird threats from paul human because he'd always threaten a lawsuit but he'd never file one because that cost that cost money but the threats were the threats worked wcd was tie litigious particularly when it came to WCW, just throwing the fucking towel,

check. Let's talk about where we are in this show. In this quarter hour, we've got Jeff Chirot teaming with the Blue Blazer to take on the Godfather and Val Venus on the other channel. And that would be up against the Piper interview that ultimately brought you down and then Randy Savage and Kevin Nash.

And the WWE got a 5.2 for that tag match compared to you guys just getting a 3.7. So they're starting to, to really pull away here and then the quote unquote bottom fell out according to dave melzer meat versus test yeah that's sean stasiak against andrew martin test got a 6.2 and as we did a rundown for what happened at slam barry last night and started this hack versus fit finley match nitro falls to a 2.9 boy that's getting thump pretty good right there 6.2 to a 2.9 and here's going back to one of the questions you asked me earlier in the parallels in

we're having some technical difficulties there with Eric Bischoff his internet's frozen but we're still hanging out with you here watching an episode of Nitro from 25 years ago Eric you back with us now I am back with you what I was saying when we were so rudely interrupted by technology gods is this is a perfect example again the parallel universe that exists between wcw then and a ewe now when i said earlier that turner broadcasting was really doing everything they could to hurt wcw to to set wcdw up to fail was really it was subtle in the beginning but asking us to do a three-hour show if anybody that's ever produce live television, especially wrestling, things that being mandated to do a three-hour

show isn't a major issue, that was a big problem. The creative really was affected by that strategic decision forced WCW powers. How about do I still have you? Yes, sir. We're still here and we're answering questions. We got one from Aaron Sheen. He wants to know, was Eric ever surprised that Mike never got the call to work for WWE after WCW Close.

He's talking, of course, about Mike Teney. Are you surprised that you never saw Mike Teney even have a cup of coffee in the

WWE? No, I wasn't because WVE never really had a sports centric approach to color and

play by play. And that's one of the things that I liked about Mike is because he really covered, covered color from a sports-centric perspective.

That just wasn't WWE style. So, no, I wasn't surprised. Just wouldn't square peg round hole. Coach Rosie wants to know, where did you rank yourself as a Monday Nitro announcer? Of course, we know when Nitro first kicked off, Tony Chivani was not in that seat. You were.

How do you think you did as a talking head on Nitro? I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, I was probably a six or a seven. I wasn't as good as Tony. I didn't have the experience. I certainly wasn't as good as Jim Ross. The advantage I had was that I had a better feel for where we were going. And more importantly, what I wanted to achieve vision I had in my head.

But sometimes I articulated well. Sometimes I didn't. I could have done better. But because I had it in my head, in my heart, I could feel it. So much of this is feel and the instinct as opposed to science and math. It gave me a little bit of an advantage early on with Nitro. I could set the tone differently than Tony or anybody else.

But I wasn't as good at the actual job as Tony. So I think I was adequate, maybe a little better than adequate. But I wasn't one of the most. I see Booker T left laying in the backstage area here. we got another question or maybe a comment here from Josh Hennie. I'll admit, I didn't know this. Fun fact, WCW and the WWF changed their sets on the same Monday. It was April 5th.

Was this intentional or just crazy timing? That's interesting. You said that WCW needed or, you know, the powers that be in marketing decided, hey, we need a new logo. Do you think perhaps that was done in response to the news that maybe WVE was freshening up? So maybe we should too?

No, I think people we read, and this, thanks, Josh, by the way, I hope things are going well for you down there. But, yeah, people read so much into, oh, they're going to do this, we're going to do that. It wasn't that. It's a pure, a very interesting coincidence, but I can assure you it was pure coincidence. Why do I, why am I so confident? Because that whole process took a long period of time, developing the graphics, proving the graphics. settling on a look and a design,

and then you had to integrate those graphics into the production cycle and have them ready, and to think that we were as organized as we would have to be in order to react to what WWE is doing so that we could do it to is it's just not reality. Even if we wanted to do that, we wouldn't have been able to do it

because we weren't that good. We weren't that organized to be able to effectively time all of the work that went into that so we could be ready because we heard that WWE might be doing the same thing. Good question. Interesting, interesting observation, Josh, thank you very much, but

one had nothing to do with it. Do you think it could have been influenced by sweeps? Like when you guys knew you had sweeps coming up, would you say, oh, we need a new graphics package or what have you or is that not part of it either? Might have been a part of the conversation, but it wouldn't have been the impetus. It would be the catalyst to make the change.

we got a few more questions here we'll rattle through those as we see sting here doing his best crow and looking like a million bucks taking on rick steiner um we got a question here from jim and buffalo he says do you recall was savage supportive of this type of booking here did he really just not care much or was he just looking for something different he's pretty heavily featured on this show do you think he was having fun in this era i mean this this feels a little bit like Randy Savage was sort of lost in the shuffle. I mean, he's programmed with top talent. I mean, we saw him working with Flair earlier, but it all comes off fairly forgettable compared to a lot of the other stuff he did in his career. Do you think he was creatively satisfied

here, Eric? I don't think so. I don't think, to be honest, I don't think Randy Savage was ever really creatively satisfied. If he was, it was momentary. And that had a lot to do with his intensity, the pressure he put on himself. He knew when things were going good. He's going great. He also felt acutely when things were lukewarm first. And he would put a lot of pressure on himself and the people around him. But he did it in a professional way. Sometimes it was, you know, colorful. But his intentions were purely professional, committed to doing the best work he could do. I think there were, you know, in Randy's case here, as we're watching Rick Steiner and Sting, which is fun for me to watch me. This is just so WCD. I think with Randy,

he was, you know, obviously there was creative issues and forced to go three hours, had a dramatic effect. All of the other issues that were going on and Turner Broadcasting at the time had a dramatic effect on WCW. So it was kind of like all bad things are happening at once in a way. And with Randy, it was even worse because Randy was dealing with injuries. It was really, you know, I think Randy was feeling the decades that he had spent in the ring at that time. He was getting older and he knew it. Here the clock ticking in your head. You can oftentimes ignore it to a certain point.

I think with Randy, he had been ignoring the ticking clock in his head for a very long time and successfully. But now he was having a harder time dealing with it. So he created frustration, added to where Randy was physically at that time, dealing with injuries. I think all of that combined to create a frustrating time for Randy, but Randy was a pro. And just dug in and tried harder. Sometimes trying harder means you're making choices and decisions that aren't necessarily the best, but you're feeling the pressure to do something. and you're trying, like being surrounded by the women in this case,

we've seen on this show for 1999. That was an attempt to try something different and perhaps to a degree camouflaged some of the physical challenge that Randy was facing as a result of the use and bother time. Meltzer would write about this segment. When Booker T didn't come out, since he was supposed to be jumped during his interview by Lugar and suffer a knee injury since his knee is in rough shape again

and he needs time off. Rick Steiner challenged anyone for the TV title and Sting came out. They do a double count out in 357, which was pretty hot. Scott interfered and Lex made the save. And the TV title is interesting that that comes up here because the Novius Mac who's watching along with us here as a part of our live studio audience from ad-free shows.com. He wants to know why was the WCW TV title retired when you and Rousseau rebooted WCW in April

of 2000? And I mean, why did you guys cut away a title that had so much history? I mean, going back to the Crockett days where guys like, you know, Tully Blanchard and Arne Anderson and Dusty Roads, they were all the television champion. And in WCW, it would prove to be very important for a talent like Stone Cold and even Sting held the television title. And now in 2000, about a year after this, you guys say, enough of that. Why was the TV title done away with, Eric? You sent me a ex video with, not Nick Neath, but his brother.

Sorry, I got the name wrong. I wish we could play that right now because it would answer the question in a much more entertaining way than I am. Ryan Nemeth posted a fun video where he was talking about the absurdity of when promotions have too many wrestling belts. I wish we could play that right now. It would be so awesome. Because it's funny as hell. Funny as I'm going to try to get Brian on the show, talk more about it because he's a funny guy. But it was because in order to make something matter, it has to have value.

It's kind of like money. It's like inflation. You can put all the money into the system you want. You can print money, give it away. Money for you. There's money for you. there's money for you and eventually the money doesn't have any value that's what inflation is similarly i guess if you want to look at it this way you deserve a title and you deserve a title

and you should have a title and oh there's a title shot in every match and as we see in a w there's just so many fucking titles that none of them mean anything anymore and that was an attempt not a great attempt on our, but it was an attempt to eliminate just titles for the sake of titles and try to put focus on the ones that actually mattered or we wanted to matter. In a case, I think they didn't matter as much as those belts didn't, championships didn't mean as much as they should have. And what do I mean by that? We've talked so many times, I'm not going to go back into it, but you need to have stakes.

In any story, there has to be something, a brass ring. a pot of gold, an opportunity. There has to be something that someone is striving to accomplish and to attain. That's part of the journey. But when you have so many belts, as we did in WCW and as clearly AEW has today, and arguably perhaps even WWE, when you have so many titles, the value of those titles or the stakes that those titles represent in this case creatively diminish.

and that's your answer. It was an attempt, half-hearted as it may have been, to add value to the titles that we needed to matter so that we could create stakes that felt. At this point, 1999, which we're watching Conan in the ring now. Again, another example, I've gotten to know Conan so much better now than I did when I worked with him all the time. What a cool fucking guy.

really, really has a unique perspective. I'm saying I agree with everything he does, but man, I agree with a lot of it. I wish I would have been able to tap into the Conan I know today versus the Conan I worked with back then because he wasn't the same guy. But, yeah, it was all about making titles, championships mean something

so that you build stories around them because they represented real stakes. Well, everything is more... Brian's answer, Brian needs an answer to that would be much funnier than mine. Yeah, Ryan Nimeth. Ryan, I said Brian. I'm sorry, Ryan. Yeah, I'm putting this guy over and I can't get this fucking name right.

Well, I'll be honest. This water fast is kicking your ass, isn't it? In a good way. I mean, I noticed even I watched back the Wise Choices episode we did last night because I want to critique my own work as I do. By the way, I think it's a valuable experience, and I've asked other people who watch the show to critique me and give me ideas in ways that I could make the show better, a firm believer in critiquing your own product and honest about it. But I did notice that yesterday in the show, I got names kind of interchanged.

I was referring to WWE and calling them AEW a couple times. I don't know if that's a water fast or just the fact that sometimes I talked too fast. mouth is moving faster than my brain. I'm going to work on that, try to improve. But for the most part, this water fast, I fucking love it. I'm going to do another one in about 60 to 90 days. This is my third one since November. And every time I do it, I feel more strongly about it.

I feel like you're more calm, your more low energy today. Are you changing your, I mean, I guess there's no caffeine, right? Or, no, caffeine is part of it. I can drink caffeine. Coffee and tea is part of it. I add electrolytes to my water to keep my energy up. I think my, like I am full of energy right now. I'm actually forcing myself to slow down my speech patterns because after watching wise choices last night, I realize that I talk too fast.

I understand. Sometimes that's appropriate. Sometimes it's not. I tend to do it too much. Well, something that I haven't done enough of is enjoy playoff basketball, but I'm getting into it now thanks to our friends and prize picks. I've had so much fun with prize picks during these NBA playoffs. Normally, I really pay attention when it gets down to like the conference championships

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City Thunder and the Dallas Mavericks. It's game six. Dallas is up three to two. And Luca just had a triple double and you could go ahead and say, you know what? I think Luca is going to get more than this many rebounds, more than this many points, or less than this many rebounds, less than that many points. It really is that simple. Price picks is the best way to get in on the action in more than 30 states across the country, including California, Texas, and Georgia. And right now, you can win up to 100 extra money on price picks with as little is just four correct picks. You can turn $10 into $1,000

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Let me explain. Your entry stay in play, even if one of your players get injured. For basketball games, if you have a player who exits the game in the first half and doesn't come back in the second, prize picks have you covered, they're not going to count that as a loss. And now you get to test your skills against prize picks during basketball. And again, as I said, if you got the skills, man, you can turn 10 bucks into a thousand and just a few quick taps. It's so simple to play, you can make your picks and submit your entry in

less than one minute. They've got quick withdrawals. They've got easy gameplay. And they've got an enormous selection of players and stat types, and they even have weekly promotions like Taco Tuesday, but they make it even easier for you to win. I've had a lot of fun with prize picks. I think you will too. And this week, you know I'm doing all the NBA. There's a big game tonight and one tomorrow. I'm really more interested in the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder. But I'm not going to miss tonight's game either. The Knicks are leading three to two against the Pacers. Man, somebody's getting eliminated and I'm going to win some money along the way. I want you to join me.

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They got 13 minutes here. That's an enormous amount of time. Yeah, we're looking at Kurt Henning and Coyant and I just, man, I miss Kurt Henning. I just miss his, I miss his personality, number one. But I love watching Kurt Henning. I cut my teeth on Kurt Edding when he was green and working with Nick Bockwinkle in the AWA. And even as a very, very, very young, he'd been in the business for two years at that.

Apple. He was so good. His timing, his fluidity, his selling so good. So fun to watch. And even watching now, as we're watching him, Dric Conan into the center of the ring, just one of the best, really, one of the best, not necessarily one of the biggest stars, but one of the best performers in the ring during his career. Hey, real quick, I want to do get a cheap plug in here for my friend Colin over at C4 Authentic belts.com. We just got that great question from DeNovius Mac

about the television title and why WCW did away with it. Well, I think everybody listening to this known that I own the big gold, like the actual one from WCW and the one that Vince took to, or Rick took to Vince in 91. So I've got the OG big gold

and there's been lots of companies out there who've made their own version of this. And Eric, I know you got to hold it and see it in person down in Australia. Well, he just gifted me out of the blue a custom big gold nameplate with my name, Conrad Thompson. And man,

it's fantastic. I saw that in Australia. He had it there. It was so cool. I'm so thankful to have it. And I want to give him a quick shout out. It was a very nice gesture. If you're looking for the ultimate big gold belt,

I've held it in person and it doesn't get any closer to the original than this one. Go out of your way to check out his stuff. C4, that's the letter C and the number four, authenticbelts.com, is where you can see all of his work. it's made the exact same way the original big gold was so instead of there being you know a cast and all that this is hand carved just like the original one made out of silver it's amazing i've held it it's just i mean you hold that belt you know you've got something in your hands it is really the the detail yes the quality of work is freaking mind boggling it's really really cool stuff

My ring used big gold is now beat to shit. I mean, it's war-torn now. I mean, it was in active use from 86 to 2001. But if you want a big gold belt that looks like it did the day Rick Flair debuted it on Valentine's Day, 1986, look no further than C4 Authenticbelts.com. Not a paid plug, not a paid sponsor. He hooked me up, did a nice gesture, wanted to show him some love to, because he does have a great product. That's C4 Authenticbelts.com. as we're talking over this Mr. Perfect match here.

I call him Mr. Perfect because that's what I was first introduced to him. It's the real life Kurt Henning. Can you imagine how great the perfect podcast with Kurt Henning would be in 2024? People would love to make his face. And he was so entertaining. And again, going back, you know, I used to watch Kurt when he teamed up with Scott Hall. And in AWA, again, that's when I was just a fan. I wasn't in the industry.

At that point in time, I didn't think I would ever, I had no interest in the industry. It wasn't a goal of mine. I was a huge fan of Kurt Henning and Scott Hall. Scott looked great back then. And the chemistry between Scott Hall and Kurt Henning was so good. And I think it's one of the reasons Scott became as good as he was because he learned, along with Kurt, learned a psychology and approach in a philosophy industry that was very similar to way Kurt. And these two together were just awesome.

I mean, if we could go back in time and pluck Kurt Henning, Scott Hall out of the AWA and somehow transport them into 2024, they would own this business. They were that good. Really miss them. And we're seeing it here. Conan's doing a great job in here with Kurt. This is a different style for Conan. Yeah.

As we're watching him just take a slam here as Kurt Henning is going up to the middle rope going to come off a double dump not a double axe handle he came down and got a face full of boot but Kurt was so good his timing was so precise I just love what Conan's doing a great job here too this is really fun Irish whip into the ropes and Conan comes up with a short clothesline takes Kurt handing off his feet see I just love doing play by play I know I'm not really that good at it but I love it's fun something else that's fun is we saw a promo and we were talking well you were talking A slam society fan club got a promo here on Nitro. And I have to admit, when I saw the commercial, I was like, wait, what the heck was that?

It was the WCW Slam Society is what they called it. It was very short-lived, but when you signed up, you would get a T-shirt, a CD-ROM, a monthly newsletter, access to a subscriber-only website, discount on WCW merchandise, and a subscription to the magazine discount, and an opportunity to meet WCW Wrestling. and access to official sweepstakes. The idea being, this is a WCW fan club. I mean, that's existed for a long time, but I don't remember hearing much about it. It was an advocate for the Slam Society, and why ultimately did you shudder it?

I wasn't directly involved in it. That would have been a marketing, promotional kind of thing. I would suggest that it was probably like Weber and Jay Hussman, and it was an attempt. The idea is a good idea. Yeah. It may not have worked, which is why we probably showed it down because it just wasn't paying dividends. But the fact that it didn't work, didn't have anything necessarily to do with the concept,

probably in the execution and support that he got or didn't get it. And by the way, we have, Super Dave Silva has Ryan Nemes video. And since I butchered his name, I want to give him some exposure here. Do you mind, Conron, if we pull that up? Oh, goodness gracious. Okay. Come on now. As you would say, come on now.

let's take a look super dave ryan neemith great great segment here talking about belts and people having too many of them perhaps i think he's referred he never said AEW it's just suggested do we have it super dave so we're going to have a tournament okay it's going to be a tournament to crown the next contender so it's going to be a tournament with like it's round robin okay but we have brackets also And we're going to have another tournament ongoing, okay, and you win the first tournament is how you get to qualify for the next tournament to become champion. And it's going to, like, it's been to me, like, always year-round, like, ongoing. It's a very complicated point system.

You, for sure, can't figure it out. And you never know when the tournament starts or stops. And if you win it or if you don't win it, you get qualified to get into the quarterfinals of the tournament will get you to the next tournament. And then that's how you get a shot at this new title, because I think we need a championship title, okay? Because I was just in the locker room, and I noticed there were still some people in there who don't have championship titles. And we want to be taken seriously as a wrestling company. And I don't want to be a company that only has like 15, you know,

championship titles or 16 championship titles or like 17 or 18 or 19 championship titles or 20 or only 20 championship titles. Like, are we a real wrestling company or not, okay? I want to be a company that has more than 20 championship titles. I want to be a company that has 200 championship. The more titles, the better. Okay, the more people who are champion in our company, the better and more professional and serious the company is, and the more important those titles are. So back to the tournament, if you are

a title holder in the tournament that awards you more points to get to the quarterfinals of the other tournament, which qualified to get and both tournaments will bond, at some point, blend together. Oh, and there's going to be a red bag with another fucking title in it. 200

That is just so, and there is the vision for AEW that needs to be changed. He doesn't say it's AEW. Why do you assume it's AEW that he's talking about? Because there's so many fucking titles over there. You can't throw a cat without hitting a title before it hits the floor.

There's titles everywhere. Are you suggesting that there's titles and tournaments in AEW all the time? I don't know if that's true. Are there? Sure feels like it. Whether it's not, whether it was targeted towards AEW or not, I thought, Ryan, I'll never get your name wrong again.

Nemith has become one of my favorites. I think he's talented as hell, and I'm going to seek out matches and segments that he's involved. He's in T&A now with his brother, who you think a lot of as well. I do. I do. I keep calling him Wolf Ziegler, but you know,

I just think as a performer, I don't really know him as a person. I don't know what he's really like. I crossed past a couple of times and said hello, but I don't know him, but I love his work and I always have. And now I'm a huge fan of Ryan just because what he did just there took a lot of talent. And it's funny as hell. It's entertaining. Yeah.

And here's the thing. I think everybody who sees that. And I mean everybody is going to have a sense of humor about it. That was well done. That was wrestling comedy at its best. Shout out to Ryan. Ryan with an R. Hey, let's talk about the ratings here for this show.

watching in particular. Meltzer would write, from the hack match on, it got ugly. With WCW getting a slight increase to a 3.2 for the Steiner-Sting match, even though Raw did a 6.3 for the Austin confrontation with the corporate ministry, Raw had an amazing 4.7 rating point advantage over the first 30 minutes of the second hour. That's a 7.3 and a 7.1 for the Rock versus the Undertaker, which was followed by the brood versus the Hardy Boys and Michael Hayes. Meanwhile, Nitro does a 2.6 and a 2.4 for that Kurt Henning Conan match.

I mean, it was getting pretty lopsided here in a hurry. I mean, it started strong and then it fell off a cliff. Is that a concern? I mean, I know that we as wrestling fans have been conditioned. They're going to start the show hot. The crossover segments from hour one to hour two were going to be hot. They're going to close hot. and as a wrestling fan, I've been conditioned to think the rest is kind of just filler.

So if I'm short on time, my wife even commented the other day, you can get through a three-hour raw in 12 minutes. And I have pretty routinely. I'll fast forward and find the parts I like, skip the parts I don't like, and I know the way they've positioned the television for years and years, and I'll admit that's changing a little bit on the WWE side recently. It was very formulaic. You knew this is an important segment based on where it is.

that's an important segment based on where it is, but the other stuff could be skippable. What do you think of that? I'm going to answer your question and minute up, but right now I am just sucked into the action that I'm seeing in the ring. You got Chris Benoit, Raven. They're going at it right now.

And so this match is fucking awesome. Dean Malenko, maybe at Dean Malinko's, I'm not going to say, suggests he was at his best here, but man, he looks so freaking good in this match. Love watching Dean Milligo. This is a hell of a match.

I don't care what kind of a rating it got. This is awesome. Yeah, and there's plenty of time too. I mean, again, this is the television era here where, you know, on Monday Night Raw, we're seeing one minute,

two minute, three minute, four minute, five minute, a long match on Raw six minutes. Well, these boys get 16 minutes and 45 seconds. And when I say boys,

I mean you got Arne Anderson on the outside managing Dean Malenko and Chris Penwa, what a great tag team that was in 99, taken on Perry Saturn and Raven. So not too long ago, you could have seen this match in ECW, and now it's live in prime time. A lot of great in-ring work here. Let's do some questions here. Aaron Sheen wants to know. Did Eric think by this point things were still fixable?

That's an interesting question. I mean, I know that your challenges were rearing their head here from a Time Warner standpoint, but in May of 99, before the complete burnout over the late summer and early fall of 99. Were you still optimistic that you could pull the nose up on this thing? Or were you just trying to put on a brave face? I was not optimistic. I was doing my best for the circumstances. But I saw the handwriting in the wall in late 1998.

And as time went on, that handwriting went from a pencil to fluorescence. to orange, it became more and more and more obvious to me. Certainly, at this point, it became obvious to me right after really the first of the year, what was really going on at AOL-Time Warner Turner. I wasn't optimistic, but I wasn't ready to quit. It's just not my nature. I thought, okay, now the part of me that would rather fight than fuck needs to come to the surface and I need to fight as hard as I can.

And I did, but I was not optimistic. Well, let's do some more questions here. We got a great question from Gavin. He says the first generation of cruiser weights, Ray, Hoovey, Ultimo, Eddie, Dean, were such a part of WCW's identity. What kept the next generation guys like Kidman, Courageous, psychosis, Jamie Noble from feeling as important? Boy, that's a great question because I do agree. Great question. I think, yeah, that is a great question.

I have to think about that for a second. I'll try not to have too much dead air. But I think part of it was, again, when I created the Cruiserweight Division, I didn't have, there wasn't a lot of pressure on me. I had more or less carte blanche in reason. I didn't have Ted Turner's checkbook. I had a budget that was approved by Turner Finance a year before. So I had to work within the structure, parameters that I had to work within.

But as long as I stayed within those parameters, I was left alone. And that I think is because I was personally focused emotionally on creating this cruiserweight division because I have been seeing so much type of action that I liked personally in Japan combined with my efforts to work more closely with Japan and expand that relationship so that it'll be just a talent exchange, that I put so much horsepower into the Cruiserweight Division. I think after we created the Cruiserweight Division,

the passion for it, partially because I'd already achieved it. and partly because of everything else that was going on that was a distraction from everybody else at the time, I don't think next generation of Cruiserweight stars got type of commitment and effort that the previous, the first group of Cruzeweights did, if that makes sense. So in other words, I'm trying to establish something new with the creative, excuse me, with the cruiserweight division. I wanted that to be new.

I wanted to feel like an actual division and not just an afterthought or an excuse for a match. I didn't put that same horsepower into the follow-up. Best way I can say it right. But it certainly had nothing to do with the talent, some talented, talented people in that career. But I wasn't new anymore with it.

I didn't feel like something different than it. It felt like an extension of, as opposed to a little bit the audience is you held a meeting before this episode of Nitro on May 17

Oh God, here we go and you let the company know that you're trying to focus around 10 wrestlers and they weren't named but Meltzer would say those 10 wrestlers

are believed to be Hulk Hogan, Diamond Dallas Page Randy Savage Rick Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sting,

Brett Hart, Roddy Piper and Goldberg. Yeah, well, that would kind of make sense, wouldn't it? Meltzer would say, All but Goldberg are past 40 years old. And it's basically said in this meeting that everyone else would have to wait for their push. And Meltzer would say this is diametrically different from what just about everyone following the situation believes is the way to cure problems if such a cure exists. And he's going to talk about the interview that you did.

And I know that you got that criticism all the time, that you didn't create new stars and you didn't. didn't push the underneath guys and you just push the the big older stars but at the same time if you're getting your ass kicked it's probably easier to use star power to lure some fans back over as opposed to quote unquote a bunch of no names that you're trying to make like when when the business is abomin that's when you can create new stars but when business is down you try to rely on what you know and what you think will get some attention from the casual or perhaps lapsed fan that makes sense to me. Was that the strategy? Well, it's, it's not just what the, what your instincts tell you about what the fans want. The numbers tell you what the fans want. It's really not that

hard. There's no fucking magic in it. I want to go back to Dave again. I can't help it. Do you know, 40 years old, everybody's 40 years old. You hear that conversation today? You don't. You know why? Because Dave's a bitch. Because he was, he was, he was an extension of the The WWE marketing push that focused on the age of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage and all the silly videos that they did, Dave became the useful idiot for that marketing narrative that WWE put out there. That's where it started from. Dave kind of adopted it and made it sound like he knew what he was talking about when in fact all he was doing was being a useful idiot in a mouthpiece for WWE because he's such a mark. Yes, Dave, you are a mark. And the reason you don't hear about it today is because his buddy Tony is doing the same thing.

And quite frankly, I hate that term, quite frankly, honestly and objectively, if you look at the people are ringing the cash, the talent who is ringing the cash register at WWE, it is those established. high equity talents that the audience has invested in over a long period of time as opposed to somebody that's 23 years old and coming out of an XT. It takes time to get to that point where you're actually creating revenue as opposed to just getting reps in and high profile matches, hoping you're going to get over. It is a business at the end of the day. You're going to, you should, unless you're some people. Make decisions and choices, strategies, vision, tactics and otherwise, including creative

that are going to register at the cash register or register on television in terms of growing your audience and your base or your licensing or your merchandising. Are you going to, fuck a damn the torpedoes, we need more revenue, but I'm going with this 25-year-old guy because I think in the future he's going to be successful. It sounds great if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but if you've ever had a job where you had to be responsible for growth. The emphasis on your job was creating new opportunities for growth, fixing the things that aren't registering in terms of growth and revenue. You're not necessarily looking at somebody's driver's license and trying to determine how old they are.

Because this is such a false narrative. It was WWE's marketing approach. They wanted to appeal to a younger audience. They wanted advertisers to believe that they were delivered. a younger role. And eventually they did because they focused on that. But that's not where WCW was at. WCW is under a revenue generation challenge. We needed to create more revenue. Well, you're not going to do that by experimenting. You're going to do that by going back to or sticking with some cases the talent and the stars that have a track record of creating the most revenue and sometimes that's a conflict with building for the future. Ideally, you do both. And I will argue, not argue, I will acknowledge that creating new stars had historically been

a big issue for WCW, but a lot of the reason for that is because WCW was never hot until 95, 96, 97, 98. As we got hotter, it became much easier to create new younger stars, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit at that point, Hedy Guerrero, not that they were young developing stars, but they were younger on the younger side of the equation, and they were stars outside of mainstream prime time television. But bringing them into prime time based on their abilities and recruitment experience, even though they were very young,

they became more valuable than they would have otherwise. But it takes time. You're not just going to pluck somebody out of the, you know, somebody that's in a matter how good they are just because they're really, really good and they're really, really young. You're not going to pluck them out of that environment, plug them into a main event,

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and they're walking out with those tag straps. Let's also briefly talk about another angle that was going on here that doesn't really advance or pay off here. But believe it or not, as the week wound down the prior week, So the Friday night before, Kevin Nash was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and he's trying to talk about that Goldberg challenge where he was challenging Austin for $100,000. And he says, hey, we knew that he wouldn't accept. And now Kevin is actually here calling out Brett Hart.

He calls Brett Hart high maintenance and said he's a whiner and he doesn't want to work for our federation. So he's challenging him to a match right here on the Tonight Show. and he's putting up cash and raising the stakes and he's offering $250,000 in cash for the match. Jay Leno is laughing all this off and yeah, it doesn't really go anywhere. Now, the reason it doesn't really go anywhere

is because, well, we know what happened with Owen. And as I understand it, Brett was going to fly out there and make a Tonight Show appearance. And unfortunately, the tragedy with his brother happened, and this thing never really got going. We know that we haven't seen the end of Jay Leno and WCW, but do you recall specifically what it was the original idea with Kevin Nash and Jay Leno and Brett Hart?

I don't remember the original creative on that one. It was too long ago. And I don't know that it was fully fleshed out. I think it was an idea. It's like, let's do this. Let's build this story. Let's use NBC and Jay Leno because he was a friend of the show. so to speak. By the way, shout out to Jay Leno. I know he and his wife are going through a

horrible situation right now with her health. I know Jay's dealing with that. I can't imagine what it's like. So shout out to Jay and his wife. That being said, I think it was an idea. I think it was a great idea. I think we had a great platform to that being NBC and Jay Leno, Tonight Show, which was one of the hottest shows in television at the time. But you're right, man, what happened to Owen and what Brett was going through time to go. And I just knew he wasn't going to be ready,

mentally or emotionally. I didn't even want to pursue the match. Even if Brett would have wanted to, I wouldn't have it wouldn't have been appropriate. Brett wouldn't have been able to put focus in the passion of the energy into something like this given what he was going

through. Just a fortunate situation. Meltzer was writing pretty routinely in the observer in this era that a half dozen new stars need to be made and be the focal point that everything is built around and there's only a few guys on the roster who could be given this sort of mega push but it's going to be a long-term process. Do you remember having a conversation in 99 about I don't know who it might be? Chris Benoit, Booker T, Ray Mysterio, where they're talent. where you're like, we got them in a good spot,

but there are next wave of main eventers. We got to start pushing that direction. Or is that not really the approach? No, I mean, I was certainly aware of it. It's not like it was oblivious to it. But as an example, as we've seen Kevin Ash get into the ring and he's going to be work. Oh, with DDP, this should be good.

Domodale's Page in 1999 was really reaching his peak, even though WCW wasn't. Again, going back to timing, sometimes it works for you, sometimes it's not. But certainly we're aware, I mean, look, before I even got into management at WCW, I would sit and listen to O'E Anderson, bemoan the fact that we didn't have any new talent. Young guys just weren't learning the way they needed to learn in order to evolve to become potential main event. Those were conversations that I had. I heard those same conversations when I worked for Verganya.

So the idea of developing new talent and trying to create an opportunity or a pathway where new talent can be converted into main event talent. And it was kind of a process, an organized process in that. That was a conversation I've been hearing since I broke into the business in 1987. I heard a lot about it when I came to WCW and heard even more about it once I got into management in WCW. So it's not like somebody discovered a new idea here. Creating that new talent, establishing that new talent, was difficult because

independence scene where so much of the great talent in WWE and WCW came from at this point in time was gone. Independent wrestling was the shits. There were no, I mean, wrestling schools were few and far between. The opportunity for people to learn out there in front of a live audience was, existed, but it was not what it is today. So the talent pool as a whole dried up, which is why WWE and WCW developed.

In WCW's case, we did it with the power plant. In WWE's case, Ohio Valley Wrestling and other small independent promotions that they use as that training environment to try to cultivate that young talent that you could integrate into your system that would have enough experience that you could build on to hopefully get them. to a main event type of position. None of that really existed in WW. Like I said, you're using small independent companies.

I think WCW tried to do that, but we decided now let's focus on the power plant and try to develop our own system. But even that had serious flaws, as Oli would harp on any time you ran into him in a hallway, he'd be coming out of the bathroom, and he'd stop you in a hallway and plain about the fact that the power plant wasn't the answer

because it didn't give the talent the opportunity to really get out there and get the reps in front of a real crowd, no matter how good you are in the ring technically in a training environment until you can go out there and learn and develop an instinct for how the crowd is reacting to what you think is a good idea. That is a very important component of the process. Power plant didn't provide that. It's one of the things that makes NXT such an interesting commitment

that was made many, many, many years ago is that talent is getting the opportunity to perform in front of a live crowd. And it matters. It changes the game dramatically. But in WCW's case in 1999, for Shedstein's comments, we didn't have that process in place.

We were reliant upon finding people like Eddie, Chris, and Dean and others, and some of the younger challenge coming out of, ECW in some cases to try to bridge that gap. The narrative that WCW didn't create any stars is bullshit. Bill Goldberg might suggest that it's bullshit. I'm in Talas Page. If you know he wasn't a younger talent, he was a fresh new talent.

He would start training until he was in his early 30s. But as a star power, might as well have been 25. He was young. He was fresh. He was different. You look at, oh, I don't know, Shannon Moore and some of the people that we brought in as a part of that young group who were lighter, smaller, faster, obviously younger. We brought them in to groom them.

We pushed them on TV. We gave them opportunities on Saturday night. But for anybody, including Dave Meltzer, to suggest that you can just pluck one of those guys out and say, you know what, we're going to develop them. We're going to put. them in this upper tier performance we're going to give them we're going to put them in a stories or b stories when they're not ready and neither is the audience because until the audience accepts you until the audience endorses you you're not there yet and sometimes it's just time and i brought this

up i'm probably on the show before but maybe not so let me throw this at you other than bill Goldberg and Rock, name me one major main event player that the company could be built around that had been in the business and on television for less than 10 years. I'll wait. I'm not talking about somebody that just gets an opportunity once or twice. I'm talking about somebody that it becomes a John Sina, a Rick Flair, a Hall Cogan, a Randy Savage. any take your pick somebody just gets a shot for two or three months that's called a transition doing that for a reason maybe to help build that talent there are other reasons involved as well

when you're counting on the cash register ringing and you need to make you need to create revenue name one person other than those two and maybe there are i'm not saying there aren't i'm not like throwing down the gauntlet but i would be curious to know who at that Randy Savage, Rick Flair, Hulk Cogan, Level, Rock, Stone Cold, Steve Austin, other than Rock, take him out of the equation, had been on television for less than 10 years. And I'll wait, and I'll be waiting for a long time. It takes time. It's not just about how good you are or how much potential you have.

It's whether or not the audience and a wrestling audience is really difficult. People think wrestling is so simple. there's just guys beating up each other in a ring and no no it is so much more difficult in some respects to build a wrestling audience and to build successful wrestling because that audience they don't tolerate they don't accept you no matter how good you are immediately to earn their respect and I tried to and I think I did a good job bringing in younger, fresher talent and giving them the opportunity to be exposed to the audience so that the audience would accept them in that main event role or the face of the company role.

But for anybody to suggest that you can accelerate that process without acknowledging the fact you really can't fucking change whether or not the audience accepts you or not, you can work towards it as I think we did some of this younger talent that we developed right off the street. And, you know, ever and courageous. We just talked about a while ago. Young as hell. It's going to take a lot of time. Shannon Moore.

You know, so many of the people that we brought in at that time with Shannon in the group, oh, younger, super talented people, they need time. You can't fuck time. You can think you can, but you really can. We did our best under the circumstance. I think we did a good job. I think timing had a lot to do with how effective those initiatives were. Just because by the time I started really figuring a lot of this out

and was able to try to develop a system and recruit accordingly, which I was doing, the wheels were starting to get a little wobbly because of all the other things that were in time. Not an excuse, just give you my perspective of the reality in that moment. So Kevin Nash is our world champion, and he's going to get a win over DDP. It's a DQ finish. The fans were chanting Goldberg, and a few fans jumped the guardrail.

And that one actually made it in the ring before Randy Savage just beat the ever-loving shit out of him. That was the best part of this show. Randy Savage, you know, unfortunately for that idiot, he got, he got pinned down in the center of the ring. Usually when those things happen, everybody's pretty quick to get to the knucklehead before they get. all the way into the ring. This poor bastard got all the way in the ring and there was nobody there to save him and Randy ate him for lunch. And that's after he put lipstick all over Kevin Nash, strong segment to close with the

macho man Randy Savage here. But still, it didn't do much. The final quarter hour with Rawl having the beginning of Austin versus Triple H did a 7.2. Meanwhile, Nitro does a 2.5 here for the end of that great tag match, Raven and Saturn against Benoit and Malinko. and the beginning of this Nash and page match. In the overrun, the finish of Austin and Triple H, and then this Nash and DDP match going heads up.

2.4 for Nitro, 7.8 for Raw. Pretty strong showing for Monday Night Raw, and even with a lot of star power here, as you see Randy Savage, accosting Bobby Heenan, cutting promos on the announced team as we go off the air. A wrestling historian over on Instagram wants to know would it have been more beneficial for WCW if Kevin Nash

had given himself a longer reign as WCW champion? Did he keep it short because he was the Booker and trying to cool off the backstage heat? That's interesting. You know, we've heard about the heat that Dusty got when he booked himself favorably, and I know that Cody was very aware of that in AEW and made sure he would never get another title shot,

and perhaps that was a mistake too, seeing the success that Cody's having, carrying the flag for WWE. Was Kevin cognizant of that heat? And that's why he kept these title runs short. You know, you'd have to ask Kevin. I don't think he and I really talked about that aspect of his strategy. I think it makes sense because it is, it's just a horrible,

first of all, if you're a wrestling talent, active talent on the roster, and you're in charge of other people's lives on that roster, Better love heat, better love it because it's coming. Exacerated in Kevin's situation because Kevin and Scott had a lot of heat before Kevin took over creative. So it was really tough on Kevin. And I want to make something really clear. Kevin took over that role because he saw where I was at. And I've talked about this again.

I want to make this really clear. And I know we got to wrap this up pretty quick. This is really important because I see. I file a commentary. I want to see how people are reacting to things that we do. I want to try to figure out a way to improve my game. I want to be more successful with this podcast and being on YouTube or Rice Choices in 83 Weeks.com.

The only way I'm going to make it better is to focus on what I'm doing and how people are acting to. And one of the things that I really want people to know is Kevin didn't want to be the Booker. And 90% of the talent, maybe more, that people hear talking about WCW, and I'm talking about people that are even close friends of mine, don't have a fucking clue what they're talking. Because they had no visibility into the business side of what was going on.

They had perfect visibility into how it affected them, the frustrating things that occurred as a result of it and the fact that it sucked I get it. It's really easy to talk about how dysfunctional Turner Broadcasting WCW became during this time. But the fact is 98% of the talent that you hear talk about what went wrong with WCW

or what was wrong with Kevin Nash's booking, all these opinions like this, like Meltzer and people that actually think he knows what he's talking about. None of them, including some of the top talent, some of whom are, some of my closest friends, have any clue what they're talking about. What they talk about is how it affected them, and they project what they think they know was going on in WCW. And they were as clueless as the people in catering as they weren't exposed to it.

They weren't in the office. They weren't in corporate executive committee meetings. they weren't involved in the accounting process. They weren't involved in the budgeting process. They had no visibility into what was working and what wasn't working on regular basis from a financial perspective. But they had strong opinions, and that's where a lot of these opinions live today. I want to make it clear that Kevin Nash did what he did and took over what was essentially

my responsibilities because he did have visibility. I did share insight and what was going on with Kevin that I didn't share with people who were even closer friends of mine who were talent. Kevin had insight that other people didn't have. And because we were friends, because Kevin, look, Kevin can be grouchy as fuck. He can be a real pain in the ass.

But if I'm in a situation where my life depends on room full of people and Kevin Nash is in that room I'm going with Kevin just because he's a big bad motherfucker but I'm talking about any other aspect of being under pressure Kevin is a good good

friend maybe a shitty person to work with sometimes because he's a moody fuck he's grouchy well you get through that part of it just like I have my flaws everybody had a flaw Kevin Kevin's personality

could rub you the wrong way. But if you're under pressure and you need help, you need somebody you can depend on, Kevin didn't think he was going to be the solution. Just knew he could be a temporary mandate. And I'll never, ever not respect. Appreciate Kevin Nash for that. Well said. Shout out to Kevin. What small world it is. I just realized that I guess he told me before, but I kind of forgot. Just one town over for me, Eric. He's got family. And as we're a recording, he's in town this weekend where I live. How random is that?

That's awesome. Adam. You know, I'm not a phone guy. I need to call Kevin because Kevin probably is a phone guy and I'm not. I love Kevin Nash. I really do. It's a person. Check out him and Sean Oliver doing their thing every week over on Click This, the Kevin Nash podcast. We got lots of comments, I mean, a ton of comments

about you trying your hand of being a baby face here, basically insinuating after you had been such a heel for so long, it was really hard to buy you as a baby face in this era. We know it doesn't really have legs. You're gone in just a handful of months. But I know you liked being a heel more. That's certainly more fun.

But did you think that fans ever bought you as a baby face? Absolutely not. Absolutely. That choice of my idea. I did it out of necessity, not because I thought it was a good idea. as a reminder raw would finish this show heads up with a 6.34 rating and a 9.4 share nitro got a 3.36 rating and a 5.0 share um so you know the head to head they got their ass kicked it's pretty bad uh the average head to head for nitro was a 3.07 but that's still

a ton of folks watching i mean you're talking almost 4 million viewers that are averaging Even when they're losing to the WWF, there's still four million hanging around. And selling out arenas. In front of a sold-out crowd. That's exactly right. But there were still some missteps. On this particular day, there was a full-page ad in the USA Today promoting Nitro. And Kevin Nash is the centerpiece of this ad, which makes sense.

He's the world champion. But it was described internally as being an embarrassment because they didn't even have the start time for Nitro. It just said Nitro and, you know, T&T, but it didn't say the time. Sometimes we just can't help but shoot ourselves on the foot. It feels like at times, Eric. Yeah, that's our marketing department, promotion of the department. And when I see there was dysfunction in WCW at all levels, I'm obviously not kidding. You know, it's easier now with the benefit of hindsight.

and I know that there's a lot of fans who are listening to this who will say, oh, the problems in WCW started here. And a lot of people would say it was Starcade 97. You and I have clearly debunked that. There was more success, more top line, and more bottom line profit in 1998 than ever before in WCW. So that's not the case. And then people would say, oh, well, beating Goldberg at Starcade 98 a year later,

that was the beginning of the end. And we certainly heard Bobby Heenan say that. Oh, we killed the Golden Goose. But then others would point to the finger poke of doom. And we could say that, hey, you know, they did have success after that. But it is one of those things where somewhere we got to draw the line. And we're only about five months removed from the finger poke of doom here for the show we just saw. And we're in a straight free fall.

If you had it to do over again, do you think you would have handled the Goldberg title drop differently or the finger poke or doomed differently or were those both fine and this was inevitable? Well, it's not that simple, but in the essence of saving time, effort to save time. Anybody that believes that those moments, even though we've debunked them and we have the numbers to prove it and all that, because people don't care. People think more emotionally than they do logically. That's just your nature. emotionally because wrestling is a controversial conflict-based drama-based and you've got the internet and the dirt sheets and all these people that are trying to be experts in a business

they know nothing about and have zero experience them you get these narratives oh is the figurebook of doom oh it was staying the finish oh was this oh is that the truth is I don't think in fact I'm convinced 100% neither one of those individual moments decisions had anything really to do with what ultimately happened to WCW. Could they have been different? Sure, if the finish of StarK-97 would have been, according to the plan that we had really developed over the previous 16 or 18 months, it would have been awesome. But if you talk to anybody, it was in the arena or watching in paper, they didn't feel the

same way about StarKade 97 until after the narrative came out. So many people there. Who was? Oh, it was Cody Rhodes. Cody Rhodes not long ago heard you and I talking about StarK8927. We're obviously covering a show around the topic. And he said, hey, Eric, I just want to let you know. I was a fan at ringside.

That finished didn't affect me at all. Yeah. At all. He loved it. So I think that is the audience's, that's an example of the audience's real reaction to the finish. It wasn't until the dirt sheet narrative and the people that followed it grabbed a hold of this subsequent narrative.

And then long afterwards, oh, that's the reason. Like they fucking have a clue. No. Would it have been better? Sure. Would it have had any impact on the outcome? Absolutely not, as well as the other things you pointed out. The fact that here we are, a year removed, or whatever it was, a comment that you made,

and boy, the things are really falling down, is it possible that it was because of those things? The answer is no. It happened because of the reason that it happened. And if you read Guy Evans book, Incredible Rise and inevitable fall of Ted Turner's Nitro, whatever the title is, because it's the long title, read that book. Well, Eric, I think you're confusing, too. That's the perspective and that didn't have anything to do, not as directly as people think with those decisions or those creative choices in those moments.

I think you were assuming I meant the demise of WCW, WCW folding up tent. I mean creatively fans changing the channel. No, and again, that's a different question. You're right. I misinterpreted it a little bit. But the answer is still the same. Because creatively WCW was dysfunctional at this point in time, all the reasons I've already talked about, my focus being primary.

And because W.W.E made a decision at the end of 1997 when Vince McMahon came out, said, from now we're not going to offend our audience or this, we're bad. What he was really saying is we're going to fucking do what Nitro's been doing and kicking our ass with for the last year and a half for two years. and hence the attitude era. Stokel Steve Voss and Mike Tyson, Mr. McMahon. Eric Bischoff was the own president of the company coming out and being a heel character a year before Vince decided,

oh, Goddown, that's a pretty good idea, pal. I don't know I do that? Or however that came to be. Vince's change in creative strategy that he announced in late 1997, I think it was November, and then actually started to develop and be presented, presented in 98, was to do what WCW was doing, but do it bigger, better, and louder. Taking the male-oriented theme of Nitro, which is what got us on the map,

targeting a different audience than WWE was targeting, that's called a strategy and the tactics to go with it. That decision is what resulted in WWE being forced. They didn't volunteer for the shit. They were forced to because we were strangling them every Monday night. But when they did it, they did it bigger, faster, and louder. The approach to 18 to 39-year-old audience, 18- to 49-year-old audience, was highly sexualized, overt sexuality, extreme versions of everything. And it worked.

it worked so well that the audience that I dominated, which was the 18 to 49 year old audience, went, whoa, this shit's been fun. This stuff's crazy over here. Let's go watch that instead. That was the difference. That was the difference. Had WCW or had WWE stuck to their original creative strategy and vision,

they wouldn't be here today. They would have died. They were hauling the water coolers out of Titan towers because they couldn't afford the maintenance to keep them filled with water. That's not my opinion. That's a conversation I had with somebody very close to us at the time. It was there. We were close to putting them out of business.

Not that I'm proud of that, even though I know I made a bunch of bullshit statements. But that's how close it was. and Vince was forced to do what we were doing. But he, he, like, man, didn't do it a little bit. He made the decision to do it. He fucking jumped in with me. We're going to be talking a lot about who killed WCW. Vice has a new four-part series,

and we are going to be covering it along with the creators of that series. Evan and Jason, they're going to help us coordinate some times and drops and some screeners. So we're going to be doing it live here on YouTube at 83 weeks.com. As soon as those programs end, you'll be able to come right to 83 weeks.com. We may even have some special guests who were interviewed. Maybe we'll have some cutting room floor stuff. You never know.

But we're great pals with Jason and Evan. And we're going to help promote their Who Killed WCW program on Vice. The only way to see all of that content, of course, is to go hit the subscribe button and turn on the notifications bell at 83 weeks.com. And of course, you get all that content live and ad free over at ad free shows.com. Well, we recently sat down with Crowbar. Man, what a great guy. The real life Chris Ford, the former Devon Storm, we know him in WCW as Crowbar.

He had such an incredible year in 2000 in WCW, and that's not something a lot of people can say. He started the year off winning tag team gold. would capture the hardcore title and he would even round out the year facing off on one of his heroes on wcw's biggest paper review let's take a listen and wrestler watching ECW watching what terry funk did there made me an even bigger terry funk fan and then fast forward to where i'm wrestling terry funk at starcade which for like you know the fans that don't know WCWL, that was WCW's version of

WrestleMania and where wrestling for a title belt on Starcade with this guy who not only as a character which was brought up during this storyline, I in real life I idolize this guy. Huge, huge fan of this guy. And

again, if you would ask 12, 13, 14 year old Chris Ford, if he thought he would be wrestling, Terry funk for a title at Starcade, it would just be unimaginable. The real life Chris Ford is a super wrestling fan, just like you and I. He got to live his dream. He wrestled for WCW.

He was in ECW. He was in the WWF. And we talk a lot about the things he had to overcome, his genetics. He was soft in the middle, I think, is the term he used. And how he tried to stand out from the traditional wrestling school that he had been taught. and make a name for himself on the independence and why it didn't work out in the WWF and why it didn't work out in ECW

and how he became Crowbar and everything in between. But what I'm really fascinated with is his ability to overcome things like less than ideal genetics, even a stutter, being bullied, and he still got to live his dream in wrestling and now after wrestling. We talk about his real life medical practice now

and how he's really helping folks. And it's a fantastic series that created, at a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with myself and Crowbar in a program we called the false finish. And we've previously talked to guys like Glacier and Muhammad Hassan and Zach Gowan and many others. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already at ad-freeshows.com. That's just one of the many pieces of bonus content that we have there.

And next week we're going to be back talking about Mr. Regal and what a unique performer he was. You gave him some praise and some props. Next week you're also getting a double dose. of Eric and I will be recapping Queen and King of the Ring and AEW double or nothing. Plus, you never know when Eric's going to go live next week. All of this is happening at 83 weeks.com. So go hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell, and tell the person in your

life about your favorite wrestling podcast, 83 weeks. Eric, I appreciate all the time today. I never know what to expect when we click record, but doing an old watchalong of a A nitro that really wasn't that bad, but boy, did it get killed in the ratings and trying to make comparisons to then and now was an interesting exercise. And I, for one, am looking forward to what's next for AEW. I am too, because it gives me great content, gives me something to talk about. And let's hope that we, you know, we're going to see some changes and things are going to get better and hope that their agreement with TBS gets renewed and got more runway to play with. So let's hope.

But in the meantime, we're going to cover the hell out of it. We're doing it every week at 83 weeks.com, and we'll see you next Friday. Remember, we're on Fridays now, not Monday, and each and every Friday, right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, guys, Eric Bischoff here. Now, if you need cash without the controversy, the team at saved with Conrad.com can help. But don't take my word for it. Hi, my name is Richard Smith. I'm from Moss Point, Mississippi.

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