83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 328: King Of The Ring 1998

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us back to 1998 for one of the most infamous PPV's of all time, King Of The Ring. Eric watches the event for the very first time and give this thoughts and reactions to the WWE action happening in the midst of the Monday Night Wars. CREMO - You can find Cremo Men’s Body Wash at Walmart or https://www.walmart.com/ MANSCAPED - Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at https://www.manscaped.com/ 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 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 Fischoff, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? I woke up this morning perfect. Now, I know that sounds like I'm putting myself over, but I mean, yesterday at this time, I was sitting in a, I've got a reclining chair in my TV room, and I sat down in it about seven. 30 in the morning, and I couldn't get off that chair or out of that chair until about my back was killing me so bad. I don't know if I slipped a disc, pinched the nerve, popped a muscle, fuck, I don't know.

And it hurts so bad. I mean, it took my breath away. It was like getting kicked by a horse every time I tried to move. Oh. And then about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, it started feeling a little bit better. So I stretched very carefully, some like DDP yoga shit. stretching out my back carefully

getting lots of water getting some electrolytes element electrolytes by the best of them pounding electrolytes stretching mildly we did the show last night

the reaction to WCW and during the middle of that show I started feeling pretty good but I was scared because yesterday morning the night before last I went to bed I felt all right

back was a little stiff I woke up, I could barely walk. So I was really nervous about this morning. Went to bed immediately after our show last night. Again, hydrated with electrolytes. I kind of electrolytes people. And I woke up this morning and it was like nothing ever happened. Like I'm going to the gym as soon as I'm done here.

That's how good I feel. Oh, good for you. So I'm just, I'm grateful. I'm absolutely grateful. I feel it's good. And, you know, you hear people talk about back pain and how bad it is and you've never had it. And I experienced it for about 24 hours. But if someone that's living with chronic back pain can't get comfortable sitting up, can't get comfortable laying down.

You know, the only thing I could do yesterday that was a little bit of relief was standing and walking. If I was standing or walking, the pain went away. If I was sitting or whatever. So I have a lot of empathy for people who have chronic back issues because it's not like a bad shoulder or a bad knee. You can't work around it. You can't do fuck all if your back's bad. So much respect to those who are fighting. Well, there's somebody else who's been a pain in your back and you told me right before we went live here that you had a bone to pick.

I just want to get it out of the way. So this is me pulling the Band-Aid. What's going on with you and Dave Meltzer? day. I just, again, just as grateful as I am to not wake up any back pain this morning so that I could throw myself into the show with passion and fury and all the positive vibes that I can muster. I also feel pretty good about the fact that Dave Meltzer is getting, and his little midget

sidekick is Ryan Alvarez, are getting absolutely roasted and rightfully so, rightfully so. rightfully so and it just puts this weird smile on my face to know that every moment that goes by with every breath that Dave Meltzer tastes he's becoming more and more transparent

and more and more people are seeing what a fraud he really is and Dave likes to call and reference anybody that has anything to say about his way he conducts his business or his coverage likes to call them frauds and comment

If there is anybody on the periphery of the wrestling business, because Dave has never been in the wrestling business, he's just a goofy fan with a dirt sheet. But every breath he takes, more and more people are realizing just what a fraud he is and what a con man is by just being Dave Meltzer and putting shit out there that's not true, has an impact on people,

families that makes no sense whatsoever and just makes him look dumber than a fucking bag of hair every time he does it i'm here i'm here for every and i encourage people when you see dumb shit that dave puts out there and i'm encouraging people flood the social media flood internet with it flood x facebook let the world know what a fraud in a con man this guy is and save your fellow wrestling fans $15 a month truly yeah they just they did just do a price increase. I think it's the first one in a long time. It's 15 bucks now.

I'm crazy. Buy a roll of toilet paper, wipe your ass, flush it. You're ahead of the game. I know that you don't consider him a credible news source. I do still value his opinion, but I have to admit, he did get that McAfee story this wrong. Is that what's got a burr under your saddle this morning? No, that made me laugh.

Okay. That just, I mean, again, it just exposes Dave. Meltzer and Brian Elvarez for the complete fucking con men frauds that they really are. They spend so much time accusing other people frauds and con men. When it, I mean, you talk about projection, love of God, this should be a psychology following the mind of Dave Meltzer. It's just ridiculous. But I think, I think it's funny. But it's just another example of how fucking wrong he can.

And he talks about he's got friends in WWE. Probably the lowest level people that can get a security pass to get in the door, perhaps. Or if there are people at the top, people that have serious stroke in WWE, they're feeding him bullshit to watch him churn and burn himself. I mean, it's been going on for years. It's hilarious. But he continues to try to convince people that he's got more friends in WWE than he has in AEW. ever do. It's just fun.

My idea of fun, I guess what's what happens when you live out in the middle of nowhere with me, my wife, and my dog, little things that make me smile. Well, listen, you had a lot to smile about this past weekend. A mutual friend of ours, Cyrus Fees, is a big part of what they're doing over at bare knuckle fighting championships or championship fighting. And I hooked you guys up and you liked the idea so much. You actually went to check out a live event. Tell us what your experience was like,

seeing some bare knuckle up close from Triller TV. First of all, shout out to Cyrus and Dave Feldman, who is the owner of Bear Knuckle Fighting Championships. Super guy. Just down to earth, unpretentious, smart, and completely committed to Fairnuckle Fighting Championships. I knew a little bit about Baruncle Fighting Championships. Obviously, he had heard about it.

I think I may have come across a clip or two, but it was not really on my radar until you and I spoke, and I connected with Cyrus. And when I got there, you know, met with everybody. Fighters are great. I met a lot of the fighters. Super, super classy group of people I dealt with. Chris Lyle was there.

Got to hang out with him for a little bit. Super God loved him. He was really interesting. to talk to, been around in the UFC and bare-knuckle fighting champion. Just a smart, great athlete, enjoyed it. Big personality as well. But I kept hearing about all this. Everybody kept telling me, man, no, you're excited about it, I know you're interested

in it, but way to you see it. I'm not acknowledging that out of course, but I'm thinking, well, you know, I've seen a lot of good fights. I'm sure I'll be happy and impressed, but, you know, come on, I've seen a lot of good shit. Right. I walked away going, okay, now I get it. It's really fun. It's a great, great fun.

Here's some action shots from, man, the fighters are absolutely in great condition. They're very skilled. You know, a lot of the, look at that hook. Look at that. That is a, that right there, look at where the left hand is. That to me is one of the most impressive boxing shots or fighting shots I've seen. Look at that left. took. It's absolutely perfect. But to really put it over, look at that left hand.

There ain't no counterpunch coming here, dude. You're going down. What an awesome shot. But it was so much fun. I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to get to my next one. The women's fights were great. Some really interesting characters. And I mean, the people that have gravitated to bare-knuckle fighting championships are a different breed. I mean, there's gloves on here this is this is about as real as it can get yes in terms of contact and it's so much fun like i love mma i enjoy watching it because you know as a former amateur wrestler and recal roman freestyle that crazy stuff i am interested in in the ground game but it tends to slow it down a little bit and unless you're a fan of you know jiu-jitsu in particular and like the submission

it can get a little slow for the average viewer. Very don't go fighting championships, man, they bring that bell and it's go time. It's fast. Yeah, excellent, excellent techniques in the fighters that I saw. And I can't wait for the next one. The next one happens to be in Sturgis, by the way, in August. What? During the Sturgis rally, I kid you not.

And I was so disappointed because when I talked to Cyrus right after you guys, right after you hooked me up with him, he said, well, we've got an event in, in Fort Lauderdale, and we've got one in Sturgis. We'd really like you to come to the one in Sturgis. Now, that just happens to be my anniversary, and Mrs. B and I are taking a trip up to northern Montana to hang out for a week by ourselves. And, you know, I said, oh, man, I'm going to ask my wife

if she wouldn't mind going to Sturgis instead, which I knew is the words that coming in my mouth. I'm thinking, oh, she's going to give me that look. She's not even going to say no. She's just going to look at me in this weird. subtle way with that beautiful face of hers and those gorgeous blue eyes near smile but behind those eyes she's thinking fuck you and the horse you rode in on we are not going to sturgeon so i i said can't make surges but i did go to fort lauderdale and the next one after surges i think they're

going to be in salt lake city and i'm going to definitely be at that one that's a drive i'll drive eight hours to see people play all day long, especially good. So yeah, shout out to Red Uncle Fighting Champion. Check them out on YouTube. Just Google Bar-Nacle Fighting Champion. KFC.

A lot of great action. You can catch all their events on Triller TV and Hunter McGregor is part of the ownership team now. So big things are coming for those guys. I've heard a lot about them from Mike Weber for a long, long time.

I, you mentioned Mrs. B. And I had this thought yesterday watching as we watched the last episode of Who Killed WCW and I didn't say anything during our live show I guess I just forgot to mention it. But we got to see old photos of you and Mrs. B

and then a current interview with Mrs. B and I was like, boy, she made a deal with the devil. That woman has aged like wine. She is somehow more attractive now than she was back then. What are y'all doing out there? Y'all drinking the blood of young children or what's going on? No, man.

I mean, first of all, she's just less genetically. But a lot of it has to do with the way we eat. She is. It's working, man. Whatever she's doing, y'all need to keep that up because I was like, man, look at her. How is that possible? But it was. Well, first of all, she's kind of unfair.

Like she's going to be, she was born in 61. So what is she going to be? 63 in July. Yeah. Yeah. So she should be 63 or on the 4th of July, actually. But when I first met Lori, she was 21, but she looked like she was 14. Oh, I see.

Sunny Ono will tell you a story. The first time Sonny Ono and his wife, Julie, they came up to Minneapolis right after I first started dating Lori. And we met for dinner or drink, whatever it was. and it was fine everybody got along really well it was a fun night sunny called me the next day said Eric what are you doing I said what do you mean what am I because

that girl you were with last night is she legal are you gonna go to jail so she's you know she just again genetically she's she's been blessed but I think because she works out so hard she watches her diet, she pays attention to what she eat. That only helps it along. Well, we're hoping that we can help you out a little bit

because I know you've got to keep up with her. And that means you've got to be on your A game. And of course, I'm talking about smooth sack summer. It's finally officially upon us. And we want to make sure that you're groomed from bum to pubs. Thanks to our friends at Manscaped. This can be the smoothest season yet. The performance package 5.0 is all you need.

It's the ultimate bundle to keep your boys downstairs cool but still look hot. The 10 million men worldwide who trusts Manscaped already know, and now you can get 20% off and free shipping. When you go to Manscape.com and use our code 83 weeks, summertime and the trimming's easy, thanks to Manscapes Performance Package, 5.0 Ultra. Every man knows how scary it can get when you're going for that close shave below the belt, but not anymore.

The lawnmower 5.0 can hook you up. That's the star of the show. It's in this bundle, and it's their fifth generation tremor, and it just keeps getting better every time. Now it's got two interchangeable next-gen skin-safe bladeheads, a standard one to take a little off the top and a new foil blade to go smooth wherever your heart desires. It's also got a couple of LED spotlights to provide contrast on multiple skin tones. Jeff Jarrett says that's a game changer for him. They've even got three length setting combs, and did I mention it's waterproof?

You can shave your wainter at the beach like JR, or shave it at the lake like me, or just waffle stop it down the drain like Dave Silva. The Manscape Liquid Formulations are where it's really at. The crop sootherer, aftershave lotion, and the crop preserver anti-chafing ball deodorant. Sylvia used to have to sleep on the couch because his nuts stank so bad. But now thanks to Manscaped, he's getting a good night's sleep.

You can too. When you're rocking these new Manscape boxers, it's a free gift that's included inside the shed travel bag. JR has taken his weed vape coast to coast in that and has for years. So it's multiple purposes, shall we say. They've even got a brand new buff bundle, and that's going to have your silicone scrubber and your body wash. So dip your nasty-ass lufor in the trash can.

We're done with that. We can do better. Manscape can even hook you up. How about 20% off with free shipping when you use our code 83 weeks at Manscape.com? That's right. 20% off plus free shipping. Use our code 83 weeks at Manscape.com.

It's smoothsack summer, boys. Get on board or get left by. behind. Now, Eric, we have done four episodes on Who Killed WCW. We were going live after each and every episode at 83weeks.com. And most recently, we had Dave Pinser join us. And there's been a lot of chatter. And I think we'll keep that conversation going in the coming weeks.

If you haven't already, go check us out at 83weeks.com. It's not going to be on the RSS feed. It's exclusive to YouTube at 83weeks.com. It's totally free. hit that subscribe button and turn on the notifications bell. Just so you guys know, we've got feelers on the line right now with Booker T, Stu Snyder, and a whole bunch of other folks that maybe you didn't think you'd hear from about the WCW conversation.

And we're going to do our best to get to the bottom of it, and it's all happening right now on our YouTube at 83weeks.com, but not just the WCW conversation, Eric, because I can't believe you've agreed to do this again. but on Sunday night, very late this Sunday night, you and I are going to be live right after Forbidden Door. Now, you loved last year's Forbidden Door match between Will Osprey and Kenny Omega. You got to see that with some of our supporters from our ad-free shows.com initiative.

They were hanging out at Dave and Busters and catching some of the action. And this year, we're doing a live reaction for free on YouTube, 83weeks.com. It's a joint idea here, Eric. It's not WCW in New Japan. It's AEW in New Japan. What are you expecting this weekend, live on pay-per-view from New York? Great athleticism.

Probably a great example of what's technically possible physical perspective inside of the ring. Athletes are getting bigger, faster, stronger, and just better. in every sport, and the same is true in professional wrestling. So we'll see a lot of that, probably buckets of blood. We'll see very little in-ring story. The only story that will exist will be in the imaginations of the minds of the die-hard

AEW fans because a lot of the action that people enjoy seeing is so nonsensical. It's hard to suspend any disbelief. You're simply watching an exhibition of evidence. athleticism. It's much like, you know, like of all the Olympic sports that I like to watch, I do like to watch Olympic wrestling, Olympic boxing, I do like to watch. But other than those two, for me, it's gymnastics, floor exercises in particular. I'm just amazed what people are able to train the human body to accomplish. It's just mind boggling. And I think some of, And that same feeling is true within some of the matches in AEW.

It's just amazing to me. Athletes have been able to train their bodies to perform and execute some of these moves. But that's all it is. It's an exhibition. It's much like a gymnastics floor exercise. And to that extent, while it checks the box of, holy crap, I can't believe people are able to do that, which is, you know, it's part of human nature, right?

Certainly mine. but I can't get emotionally invested in any way, shape, or form. There's no sense of suspending any disbelief and allowing your emotions to kind of take over your enjoyment of the process and what you're watching. It's just an exhibition of talented athleticism with zero relevance to story, in my opinion. Now, these Kool-Lay drinking fucking AEW nerds that, you know, They have history back to Ring of... I was like, fuck you. I mean, what are we going to go back to Adam and Eve?

Start debating the Apple issue? These guys have history. The story needs to have a beginning in the middle and an end and plot points. And there has to be beats within that story that are designed to create emotion and to create drama beyond... This is awesome. Like a fucking group of training. baby seals but look

I like to watch the athletic part of it too it's just not a business model it's a fantasy camp well I for one am looking forward to the A.W. Paperview

I feel like they always over deliver on pay per view if you're looking for great matches they're going to have it in heaping servings this weekend. I do want to ask you about story because I know you're big on story and there is a story that has perhaps just fallen into AEW's lab.

I'm talking about what went super viral last weekend. I mean, Saturday and Sunday and even into Monday, it's all anybody was really talking about. The unbelievable conversation, I struggled to even call it a promo, that Jeff Jarrett had with a camera, where he just laid out what being in the Owen tournament meant to him. He, of course, is the only competitor in the tournament

who actually knew Owen, and he got emotional. And about 90 seconds of it aired on television, but Tony Kahn made the call to post the entire unedited and uncut, uncensored, over nine-minute conversation that Jeff had just pouring his heart out, talking about Owen and what this tournament meant to him. And my takeaway is, man, they've got an opportunity to do something really, really special here. and anyone who was critical of the announcement that Jeff Jarrett was included

with all of these Young Whippersnapper you know, chart busting seven star match performers man, they got quiet all of a sudden because this story. The chart busting seven star performers that can't draw dime. AW were the best wrestle but they still can't draw money.

Yeah. For anybody, I'm sorry to jump here. This gets to be fucking hot. This is just an example. Fuck, no. To think that, you know, Jeff Jarrett, for whatever reason, doesn't belong with those young whippersnappers that can't draw dime, the fact that that interview was so good is because it's, it points to exactly what I was talking about moments ago. It's the emotion of, that is created within professional wrestling business that is the most crucial element. And for anybody to not recognize that and suggest that because Jeff is older, by the way, he could probably still outwork in a traditional sense of the word in wrestling industry in terms of telling a story and executing physical moves inside of the ring that help amplify or continue a story and has the requisite psychology to do so, I would imagine he can outweigh.

wrestle anybody on that fucking roster, with the exception of maybe Daniel Brian, when he was in WWE, or Brian Danielson, whatever. Now all I'm seeing is, you know, super hardcore Japanese slap fest out of it, whatever. That's what he wants to do. That's what he wants to do. But don't talk about we're the best wrestle and exclude Jeff Jarrett from the conversation because he's older than a bunch of punks that couldn't draw flies if he roll a woman horse shit.

Those are the people that are critical of Jeff Jarrett. The fact that Jeff can still draw money and probably has forgotten more about creating emotion with the body of a wrestling match than 90% of the roster at AEW will ever learn in however long their careers may last. It's shit pisses me. Well, sorry, Jeff. I tried. Eric kiboshed it, but we tried. What? No, what would I kibosh? I'm supporting Jeff here. Yeah, but you did it in a way where they're definitely not going to do fuck all with it. him now so I mean Jeff Jared is one of the MVP's of AW and not that long ago somebody posted a graphic it was last year but they posted a graphic saying hey did you know that Jeff Jared has

had more matches on TV than and they rattled off all kinds of top stars in AEW he didn't have another match on TV after that for quite a while so you're saying the fact that I put him over on this podcast vehement yeah yeah that's going to hurt him yeah mm-hmm Are you shitting me? No. Is Tony Kahn that much of a punk? Is he going to allow himself to make a business decision based on an opinion of one person? Well, here's the thing.

I don't think anybody expected that promo to connect the way it did. Of course not, because they didn't have a fucking idea with how to create emotion. So it's going to be a surprise. So it caught everybody off card. And I was trying to get a little whisper campaign going. I mean, listen, I know they're not going to give him a title shot at Wembley. I would love to see that. but I don't think they're going to do that.

But are you telling me there's a better visual in wrestling that we could look forward to than him in the center of the ring with all the ticker tape holding up a trophy with Athena, Oge, and Martha and Jeff's family in Calgary? I mean, that's a movie, man. Like that, that's emotion. That should happen.

That should absolutely happen. And if it does a done well, done well, Conrad, and they should hire you and Jeff to work on Booking it. keep Tony Kahn away from that shit or anybody else that's near Tony Kahn. Let Jeff book it and watch what happens. They'll create more and they'll create so much emotion and there'll be such a positive reaction because it will be done well and it is emotion and it's real story and those

those emotions are real. That that transmits to the audience. and if done properly, and I'm sure Jeff could figure it out really, really well, that will make people forget about all the stupid shit that's been going on in AEW for the last two years. I mean, that's a great thing about the wrestling business, any business, is if you can find that one thing to help you turn around your perception, and it's hard, especially when you've been digging a hole as deep as AEW has been the last two and a half for three years. it's hard but when you do it it's like time heals all wounds right people will move on they'll

forget it's when you're constantly doing dumb shit every single week and not satisfying the audience because you don't know how to satisfy the audience that people get down on you but if they made this move and they executed it well and they created the emotion my god i i i'd become a fan again as cynical as i have become about a eW for valid reasons but it can turn it around. So Tony, just because I'm putting it over, there's no reason for you not to take advantage of it. Don't be such a pussy.

Come on. Well, and up. I mean, the right thing. And creatively, you know, Jeff could still,

I mean, he could have a little help getting there to win the tournament. And then he gives the person who helped him the shot at Wembley or something. They could find a way to creatively do it. But man, we got to have that. I want that visual of Jeff holding that cup with the Owen's family and his own family. And, man, imagine they go off the air and that's the last visual we see in

Calgary. Like, that's a real moment in time for professional wrestling for long time, you know, Hart family fans and longtime Jeff Jarrett fans, AEW fans, WW fans, I mean, that's just when it's real. And I think that's the reason I struggle to even call it a promo, because I understand, you know, that the real life Jeff Jarrett knew the real life Owen Hart. And sometimes we get caught up in character stuff, but that didn't feel like character stuff because it wasn't. That was real life. And we as wrestling

fans, myself, I mean, I can speak for myself, I gravitate to the stuff where I'm like, well, that's real. Like, okay, I know what wrestling is, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now this, this is real and they have a moment to do, an opportunity to do something really special about a month from now in Calgary, and I really,

really hope they do. You want to, should we place bets? oh no no no no no no I'm not doing a bet I'm not look at you your eyes get all big your mouth opened up like a fucking cave I get the same his head again yeah it does happen pretty regular hey uh listen I got to bring up something else

I should mention we are eventually going to watch King of the Ring 1998 Eric has seen clips what we were here for we've seen clips before but Eric has never actually watched the full match for the hell in a cell and we're going to do that So if you haven't already, I want you to go to your peacock, pull your peacock out, get that rascal going, type in King of the Ring. And you want to go to Season 6 of King of the Ring. That's 1998, of course. Are you doing that too?

No, no, no, no. You got a link. And it's in your email from yesterday. So you worry about finding a link. It was emailed to you yesterday. I hate when this happens because I'm so bad of this shit. Dave Silva will copy paste it here in the private chat. But here's what I wanted to bring up to you.

Before we talk about King of the Ring, Season 6, Episode 1 on Peacock, and before you go to one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds, before you go to one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds, I wanted to ask you about Vince Rousseau. And I know you've talked to death about Vince Rousseau for the last four weeks, but I did something that, well, some of our hardcore listeners here on 83 weeks, they weren't too happy with me about. I at least had a conversation with Vince.

Now, I haven't had the negative experiences with Vince that you have. So growing up in Alabama, I just treat people how they treat me. And he's always been great to me, and I've reciprocated and kind. And I bring this up because we talked about episode three of who killed WCW. And through that process, one of the things that he said was that, hey, man, I'm not hiding anything. I'm not running from any confrontation. You can hook me up, Conrad, to a lie detector. and ask me anything you want.

And, of course, my wheels start going, and I'm like, yes, I accept. I'll do that. What do you think of the idea of Vince offering me to hook him up to a lie detector test? Here's the problem with guys like Vince Russo that believe his own lies. I absolutely believe that Russo believes his own bullshit. I've said that for years. That's one of the things that makes him so dangerous. and one of the reasons I don't trust him

is because he is charming as fuck and he can convince you whatever he wants to convince you of because he can convince himself of that. There's nothing Vince Rousseau can say in any way, you could hook him up to the fucking space station. I don't care.

There's nothing that anybody can say that will convince me that Vince Rousseau is anything other than what he is. And we talked to a little bit about this last night. My issue, I've got a lot of issues, but they're relatively minor with regard to Rousseau. But if I don't trust someone, I can't work with them. I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to be seen in the same room with him. I don't want to share a stage with him. I don't want to lend any degree of credibility or even conversation. I may not have

any credibility left to give. That's okay. I can give a fuck. But I don't want to help draw attention to someone that I know is not trustworthy. And he's not. Talked about this last night a little bit. For me, it comes down to bash at the beach. Why you go on that note? I'm sitting in a fucking trailer with Hulk Hogan, Vince Rousseau, me, and a phone with Brad Siegel on the other end.

And Vince and I had been going back and forth all week long. My father had just passed away a few days earlier. I was in Minneapolis. I wasn't able to be in Atlanta. I was conducting my business over the phone with Hulk, with Rousseau, with Brad Siegel. We, Hulk and I knew what we wanted to do. Rousseau had been working all week with his own plan of what he wanted to do. We got the bash of the beach.

It came to a head. I'm going to speed this up because we've already covered it. It came to a head. It forced Vince Rousseau, myself and Hulk to get on the phone with Brad Siegel. And Brad Siegel got to make the vote. he got to break the tie. So I want to do one thing, I want to do another thing. Brad Siegel was the tiebreaker.

So we called Brad to break the tie. Brad broke the tie. And we went about doing me, meaning Hulk and I, and the rest of the team went about executing our plan, or at least our portion of that plan. And once we left the building, which was a part of the plan that was going to set up Hulk Hogan's return in October at Halloween Havoc.

to challenge for the world title. Once we left the building, Vince Rousseau automatically went back to his original plan, despite the fact that Brad Siegel, Eric Bischoff, and Hulk Hogan agreed on that phone call to move forward with the Bischoff Hogan. Now, I'm going to leave a crack in the door open.

And I suggest that perhaps, especially after seeing Brad kind of slime around on camera for the last couple of them. He said, I don't have anything against Brad, but he was a little slippery during his interviews, a little as being kind. I'll leave a little bit of possibility open that after Hulk and I left that call, conference call, either Brad circled back to Vince or Vince circled back to Brad and somehow one of the one of the other convinced the other that once Eric and Hogan leave, we're going to go ahead with our plan.

It's the only thing I can think of. It's one of two things. There's no gray area. There's no reason to confuse it with a bunch of extraneous bullshit that doesn't fucking matter. You were in that room with Hogan, with me, with Brad. We agreed on one thing. You motherfucker did another.

That's great. Go into business for yourself. Just don't ever expect to do business with me again. you can fight with me, you can argue, you can throw fucking furniture at me, I could care less. And when it's over, we'll shake hands and we'll go about our business. And we may even go have a beer after. But if you do something, my opinion, is just honest and deceitful, whether Brad circle back to Vince or Vince circle back to Brad, if you participate in that and you're not honest and direct with me, Fuck you. We're done. And your name goes on a list it'll never come off of. And Vince Russo's name is at the top of that list.

So, yeah, you hook him up to a lie detector. You put a fucking gun in his mouth. I could care less what you do. It doesn't matter to me because it ain't going to change anything. Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time. Me too. I'm Sarah Gibson-Tuttle from Olive and June. And this is exactly why we created the Manny system. We wanted to make a possible for everyone everywhere to give themselves a beautiful manicure at home. With our tools and our long-lasting polish, each manicure with our manning system comes out to just $2. That's right, $2. No more $30, $50 manis that you get at a salon and they take hours. Now you can paint your nails on your time and love them more than ever. And by the way, when people ask, who did your nails? Where did you get them done? You're going to proudly say, I did them myself.

Get 20% off your first manny system with code DIY nail 20 at oliveenjune.com slash DIY nail 20. That's code DIY nail 20 for 20% off at olive and June.com slash DIY nail 20. This podcast is supported by Talkspace. When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us.

Thankfully, I found Talkspace. Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans, and their dependents, ages 13 and older, can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones. I just answered a few questions online, and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her any time. It was so easy to set up, and they accept TRICARE.

Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couples therapist through Talkspace, too. Talkspace works with most major insurers, including TRICARE. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com slash military. Go to talkspace.com slash military to get started today. That's talkspace.com slash military. So now that we know how you feel about that, I do have a natural follow-up to that. If you felt so strongly, why and how were you able to work with them in T&A? Because it's not like the story ended in 2000.

You guys worked together 10 years later. I gave him another chance. I made the mistake. I knew better, but I wanted to be a team player. I wanted, you know, Hulk was interested in doing the deal. He wasn't going to go unless I went with him. I wasn't really interested in going to T&A because I just wasn't. I didn't need money at the time.

I was making more money than I ever had. my life outside of wrestling didn't need to go back to wrestling but it was the opportunity was interesting Hulk wanted to go Hulk and I were pretty close we had a lot of other business opportunities together that that would have benefited from the exposure and I convinced myself to number one give and forget I'll forgive not forget and number two I really wanted to try to be a team player. And I set myself up contractually where it didn't matter what Trousseau did. The only thing I was interested in was the Hulk Hogan's storyline and

Hulk Hogan's participation in T.N. What he did outside of that, just I could care less. It wasn't my interest. It wasn't my job. Didn't want it to be. So it was me convincing myself to give, number one, combined with the fact that I wanted to be a team player, and it was a decent opportunity that could have provided momentum for some of the other things that we were doing. Plus, it was an opportunity. I brought Jason Hervey into it. Jason

Hervey wasn't originally part of the deal. The original deal that was on the table was because Hulk forced it, not because I wanted it, but I was there to oversee the Hulk Hogan participation and creative. I said, nothing else mattered to me. But I leveraged that because Jason Hervey and we're working so closely on other things outside of wrestling. And I'm the kind of person. If you're my business partner and we have a deal where, you know, we're going to both work for this company and it's 50-50 and we're going to shake hands. At that point, anything that I do, my business partner is going to be involved in,

regardless of whether he, Jason, was able to contribute or not. And the fact is, Jason contributed a lot, brought a lot to the table behind the scenes from a, from a production perspective. And I was able to leverage Jason Herbie into the team. So overall, it felt like the right thing to do for me. I don't regret it. I do have some memories of T&A, particularly having the opportunity to work with my son, having the opportunity to work with some of the talent there that I

never worked with, like AJ Stiles and Frankie Kizarian and Chris Daniels. and a lot of people that I still consider Fress that I was able to work with in TNA. But I don't regret it. But, yeah, that was the last time I'll make any concession for Vince Rousseau. Go out of your way, if you haven't already, to check us out at ad-freeshows.com.

We went live last week and let all of our supporters ask Vince Rousseau questions. We did it a few days prior with Violent J. and we do it every month with Lex Lugar on a weekly basis with Kevin Sullivan, every month with David Crockett, every Saturday with Blue Maney, and of course every Monday with either Nick Patrick or Mike Keota. We are your home for all things bonus content and live interactive Q&A's. You're on camera, they're on camera.

We're watching old rassling together. And you can find over 100,000 hours of bonus content, including every single Starcast stage show and panel discussion we've ever done at ad-free shows.com. Now, of course, today we're going to be watching King of the Ring 1998. We want you to watch along with us on your Peacock Network. That is Season 6, Episode 1. And we're going to start at one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds.

That's one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds. But before we do that, I just want to be honest about what my summer has been like here in North Alabama. It's as if Satan himself is breathing on me. It is blistering hot. Yesterday, it was 99 degrees. The heat index was over 110. And when it's that hot, after a long day, a lot of us, man, we just want to take a shower and relax. But if you're looking for an invigorating shower, can I recommend Cremos men's body wash? You know, someone recently asked me if I was wearing a new cologne, but actually,

it's not. It's my new body wash from Cremow. It's time to elevate and enhance your hygiene. routine routine with this Cremot body wash. It's going to combine a rich lathering and hydrating formula with meticulously balanced and multi-layered fragrances, for what I believe is just a superior shower experience. Crimo's new men's body wash scent makes a regular shower feel like a luxury experience. This bourbon vanilla bodywash invigorates the scents with bold distiller spices perfectly balanced with notes of rich Madagascar vanilla and aged oak to create a shower experience that'll meet even the highest of standards. And I used this just a couple of days ago.

I was out of the house by 7 o'clock. I wasn't home until after 7 that night. I'm still smelling and feeling pretty damn good, man. Cremot works with master perfumers to make sure that every Cremo body wash scent is meticulously blended and refined. And their hard work definitely shows. I mean, every wash, it smells like I've got a high-end cologne on. I'm a big believer in this product, and I have to admit, I wasn't so sure about it at first.

But as soon as I stepped out of the shower and I was getting ready to leave for the office, boy, the wife noticed and said, hey, what is that? Man, I know what to do. Come on. It also relaxes you after a long day. The scents are awesome. You're going to feel better. You're going to get comments about it.

And if you're a guy, man, is there anything better than getting a compliment from somebody out in public? Oh, you smell nice. Come on now. See what makes Cremot different from other body washes. It's got a distinct layered scent. It's going to evolve, actually, as you're washing, getting you clean and making you smell great at the same time. Cremo also has a wide range of other grooming products for men.

You can get things like shaving cream and beard oil and shampoo. And it's all available in a variety of distinct masculine sense. You don't have to worry about, well, you want to smell like a man and you will. Let me just say that. I'm a big believer in this product. I know Eric is too. You can find Cremos men's body wash and it's new distinctive bourbon vanilla scent

at Walmart or Walmart.com. Once again, you can find Cremo. That's C-R-E-M-O and I like their distinctive bourbon vanilla scent. It's available at Walmart, man, or go to Walmart.com. Once again, that's Walmart or Walmart.com.

Eric, it's the real deal. What's Mrs. B-think when you step out of the shower smelling like this, man? it's it's our rated I won't go into it but but you know

we get we get to sample a lot of stuff here right because we'll get advertisers that will send us product to sample to see if we want to endorse it and I love that because I don't like endorsing things that I have not used myself or believe in so you get

you know you get shower gel and it's like okay how good can it be but immediately when you put this stuff in your hands. It feels different. It has a different. It's creamy, which is probably where the name came from. The at we are using it, it feels different than most soaps. And the smell is outstanding. It's very effective. And yeah, my junk is clean as a whistle. And it's easy to get, man. Go to Walmart or pick it up at Walmart.com. That's Cremo, C-R-E-M-O at Walmart or Walmart.com. So, Eric, here we are, man. We're

finally going to do it. We're going to watch a little bit of old school wrestling from way back when. This is from King of the Ring, 1998, and again, we're starting at one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds. They call it season six, episode one over on Peacock. Are you locked and loaded and ready to go, Eric?

I'm within click. We're getting closer. I'm at 108, 27. Where do I need to be? 38. Uh, one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds. No, no, hang on, hang on. Are you at the link that Silva sent you?

No, I couldn't get on. I'm at King of the Rings season six, episode one, one hour, eight minutes, 37 seconds. You did this on Peacock by yourself. Like, yeah. That whole high tech redneck bullshit is just a, I'm so proud of you. All right, Eric, I'm at one hour, eight minutes, and 32 seconds. I'll count us down. And then, uh, when I press play, we'll press.

Play. Here we go. In three, two, one play. And we see Paul Bear walking to the ring right now. He's going to be doing a promo that's going to set up the main event. Now, Eric, you probably don't know this. But the story was that if Kane didn't defeat Austin in the main event of this match, he would have to set himself on fire. So there's some real stakes here. We're setting dudes on freaking fire here. Yeah, it's summer. Is this summertime too, right? Yes, it is. It's barbecue season. Literally, literally. We're in Pittsburgh. It's June 28th. So as folks are listening to this, this is the exact anniversary. I remember watching this. My family lived on Pine Needle Trace at the top of the mountain here in Gunnersville, Alabama. And my dad had a business,

I wouldn't say partner, but a business associate in from out of town visiting him. So the adults were in the kitchen, having some drinks and fellowshiping, telling some stories. And I got the big screen. Dad let me put the pay-per-view on the big screen downstairs, and I could not believe what we're about to see. But believe it or not, the Mick Foley, King of the Ring, Helen Assail, that's not actually the main event. There's another match after that, and that's what Paul Bear is here to discuss. Believe it or not, it's a first blood match with Paul Bear and Stone Cold Steve Austin and

Kane. Now, of course, Paul Bear is just in the corner of Kane, but the idea of you, as you look at that image there, Eric, we're doing a first blood match with a guy. who's wearing a red mask. This is a challenge. I mean, goodness gracious. What are we thinking? Well, I think he has a decided advantage.

Are you think? Smart. Why would he agree to something without giving himself a decided advantage? And I'm sure when the idea was put on the table of Kane, you want to do a first blood match and Kane's probably thinking the back of his mind, shh, fuck you, I'll do that because you're not going to be able to see if I'm bleeding anyway, bitch.

So bring it on. That's probably what he was thinking. King of the Ring is going to get a thumbs up from Dave Meltzer and a lot of his readers in the Wrestling Observer because of the last three matches. And what's interesting to note here is behind the scenes, Austin had been in the hospital with a staff infection in his elbow. But the business is so hot. I mean, they've just finally beat Nitro in the ratings in April. We're riding that momentum here. Things are getting bananas.

And we're only like, as this match is happening, we're about eight days away from Goldberg in the Georgia. Dome winning the Big Gold Belt. This is peak Monday Night Wars, and there's zero chance that Austin's going to miss this one. The building actually sold out more than a week in advance. There's 17,887 human beings in the building. 15,505 of those were paying the all-time city gate record of $539,660. They did nearly another $150,000 in merchandise.

And this is the area where I feel. first started to see in the observer and the torch what they called a per head. So you would take a look at how much merch we sold and then divide that by the number of tickets we sold and say okay, this is about how much

per head we're making on merch and I know that that was a metric that was used for a long time, but I almost never hear about it anymore. Why do you think that is, Aaron? There's very little reporting on live events anymore. That's another thing that used to exist quite often.

is that people that covered wrestling not only covered what happened on television, but they also covered the details, not the storyline, not necessarily the action, but reported on the business that was conducted at live events that were not televised, including merchandise, reports on attendance. That seems to have gone by the wayside. At least I don't see it. If it's reported, I don't know where, and I don't spend a lot of time looking for it either. I just think that the focus has gone so much towards the television side of things,

whether it's rating and revenue and TV contracts and all that, that very little attention is paid to live events side of the business. Part of that is, of course, because the AEW is not even in the live events side of the business, simply producing a television show while WWE is still legitimately touring. And maybe that's why, I don't know. But I'm surprised that we're not hearing about merchant. You know, we see a lot of Brandon Thurston, by the way, think of the world of Brandon Thurston and his team over at Ressalonomics. They do a thorough, credible job reporting information.

And they cover merchandise sales, but they seem to do it more like in a quarterly basis in terms of who's doing what. It's the most popular. But you don't hear much about merchandise sales, BWE Live Tour business, which is interesting. I find it interesting because it really. really is a leading indicator. If you can watch your merchandise sales go from, let's call it, $10 a head average, which would be considered back in 98, a healthy average, not fantastic, but healthy. But if you can move that from $10 to $11.50 over the course of three months, it's an indicator that something's going well. And you have to watch those indicators on a regular

basis. Not only television ratings and quarter hours, that data can be important if it's carefully and properly. But if you take minute-by-minute ratings, quarter-hour ratings that have obviously, these are the show, and you take that data, and then you interface it or lay it over the top of some of the data that you're getting to your live event tours, and merchandise sales is one of the best barometers aside from actual ticket sales that you can have. And it also allows you to zero in on certain talents and see if their merch is moving.

And if you see that merch is moving, that should be an indication that you should give it a little more time. We build up a little more because you give the audience what the audience wants. And the audience tells you what the fuck they want if you have the ability and the understanding to listen to them. Well,

I just throw shit up against a wall and see what happens. I wonder if the merch, uh, say, and the reason it's not as prevalent as it used to be perhaps is because of the ease of access. You know, back in the day, if you wanted WWE merch, you had to go to a live event to get it, or you had to mail in a check, you know, after you saw something in a catalog. And now, of course, man, we can just, you know, find something on our phone, click two buttons, and boom, it's on our door in a couple of days. So maybe just the process of buying merch is just a lot different now.

That's possible. It makes sense. We should mention that we are watching an unannounced match here. It was added at the very last minute. It's the New Age Outlaws who were over like Rover. I mean, the rap that Road Dog would do on the way to the ring was incredible, the response he would get. And they're going to be taking on the new Midnight Express. So this is a bodacious Bob and Bombastic Bart or whatever you want to call it.

It's Bob Holly and Bart Gunn. And they're put together here as a tag team, and they're given Jim Cornett as a man. manager. No disrespect to either one of those performers. I think a lot of them, but well, they're not Bobby Eaton. And I don't think anybody would argue that. The match itself goes nine minutes and 54 seconds. This is when we're at least kind of half-assing our way through an NWA angle where we're having some NWA representation with the new Midnight Express here. We'd get the Rock and Roll Express out here. We would even see Jeff

Jarrett and we would proclaim that he's the new North American NWA champion. But it was just a failed experiment. And there's been a lot written about this that maybe once upon a time Vince Rousseau was getting a little more power and influence. And he perceived the future of the business to be more crash TV. And perhaps Jim Cornett preferred the more old school, more traditional presentation. And so maybe this whole NW. a piece of business was done just to prove Jimmy right or wrong.

What did you think of whenever you bring back an old act, at least the name, and now you have a new version of it? I've always felt like, Eric, if you put the word new in front of something, I'm not saying world order. I mean, like, hey, here's the new Rockers. Here's the new Midnight Express.

That almost never works, right? That's why, you know, a couple of weeks ago, you asked me about, um, bringing back old Bray Wyatt type storyline and bringing that back to live and I still haven't seen it by the way I'm going to go back and watch it this few days but I said it's very risky for the very reason you just pointed out a second version a new version of something that was incredibly popular is so risky I mean the odds of it being successful are so remote that they're almost not calculable, right?

It's just so hard. But I think they're doing it in WWE, based on what I'm reading and the crowd reactions I'm seeing. I have seen some of the clubs. It's pretty awesome. But just seeing the reactions we're getting from it suggests to me that they're going to meet and exceed the expectations,

which is incredibly difficult to do. Because people's especially, you know, because pretty past and he had such a beloved character and such an emotional thing, that to bring that back is, that's Russian roulette with four rounds in the chamber, basically. And to be able to pull it off is pretty amazing. And to your point here, you know, you're trying to bring back Barton, Billy are trying to bring back something that was viewed as one of the greatest. tag teams of all time. So to try to reintroduce that with new talent, tough to do, man. But I like the attempt.

The idea is a great idea. They would have called them something other than, you know, called him. It might have been better. These are both great athletes. Bart Gunn just continues. I mean,

Barkin looks better today than he did in 1998. What the fuck? You're saying, you mean Billy Gunn, but yeah. Or Billy Gun. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, he does look.

better. I mean, there's no doubt about that. I, uh, he almost knocked me out with his ass in Detroit a few years ago. I'd tell you about that. No, I didn't know that Mr. Ass almost knocked you out with his ass. He almost knocked me out with his ass. I was in a, my son Garrett was in a match. I was in his corner. And Billy was one of his opponents. It was a tag team match. And Billy's running across the ring and I'm there, you know, trying to cheer my son out. And I made the fucking mistake of putting my head through the ropes as I'm yelling towards my son, trying to yell at him to get up out of the corner. I didn't see him really coming.

And he hit those ropes with his ass. My face was right there before he got to the rope. I shit you not. I thought I was going to go down. I almost got knocked out by his ass. It would have been him. I've been kicked in the head hard and not been knocked out. So to get knocked out with somebody's ass,

it just would have shattered my self-esteem. I don't know why that made me laugh, but it did. I apologize for that. Goodness, it got me. The next night on Monday Night Raw, the WWE would land a 5.4 rating. Nitro would turn in a 4.1. Wow.

The following week, of course, we know it's going to be a taped raw. That's where we would see the DX parody of the nation of domination. that would get a four but meanwhile you guys have Hulk Hogan and Bill Goldberg in the main event for the world title and it gets a 4.8 so Nitro gets

control of the steering wheel again you know you get criticized for that a lot that perhaps that match should have been saved for pay-per-view I mean we even heard Neil Pruitt on the Who Killed WCW series say boy we threw away a lot of dollars by not putting that on pay-per-view

but what it did is it allowed Nitro to get back in the driver's seat and beat Monday Night Raw after one, two, three, four, five weeks in a row. So five wins in a row it looked like for Nitro or for Raw, rather. And, yeah, Goldberg and Hogan does the trick. But then, of course, Rawls back to its winning ways for four weeks. When you think back of, I know you've told me before in public and in private that Halloween Havoc 96 is probably like

the peak of your experience in WCW when you were having the most fun and all that. And 97 was so rewarding creatively I'm sure. I mean, the sting story, the big blow off at Starcade, we'll set aside the finish for a minute. But then

98 does feel like when it was more fun from a competition standpoint. Because in 96, you guys were firmly in the lead. In 97, you're firmly in the lead. but that competition back and forth was interesting in 98 in a much bigger level than it was in 96 and 97

and that's of course because the WWF started to do more attitude stuff they started to borrow from Nitro a little bit and of course Stone Cold got super hot and we can't forget the inclusion of Mike Tyson 98 I know it starts to get a little frustrating for you but are there any bright spots for you or is it just pure frustration the whole year?

No, 90, look, the frustration started in 98. It started specifically in August of 1998. I'm not going to go into the meeting again. I've talked about it a million times. That was when I first went, what the fuck is going on? Right. Who are these people over here? And why are they telling me what I should do?

You know, that started in 98. Up until that moment in time, and end of July, first week in August, Yeah, it was getting more competitive, but it was still a blast. We were making money hand over fist, which I want to go back to, yeah, we should have put it on pay-per-view. We didn't need money at that time. Our revenue was not our issue. Our issue was the fact that we were starting to lose ground, and the brand was starting to lose market share. And the only way you can protect long-term revenue is to protect the market share that generates it.

so our focus was on television absolutely was on television is the only way you can retain or in our case at this point claw back some of the financial positions we had enjoyed and the revenue we were enjoying is to keep the television hot because if a television isn't hot guess what else is it going to be hot paper view now there's about a six-month lag really maybe a little longer but when you start losing ground in your television ratings, it doesn't happen immediately, but you will then begin to see the deterioration in every other aspect of your business. Television drives everything. So anybody that's ever actually been in the television business, specifically the wrestling business, I'm not talking

about dirt sheet shit staying writers like Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez. They don't know fuck all about anything because they've never done anything. But our focus right then in 1998, was clawing back our dominant position in terms of ratings that everything else would follow. Think of it like throwing a rock in a pond. You know, you throw that rock in a pond, it makes a big splash. But it takes a while for the ripples to get to the beach. By the time they do, they're not as noticeable. They keep coming, coming, keep coming.

And they erode the beach. In our case, the beach was revenue. So I will defend that position until I'm blue face. and anybody that actually has a business mind, particularly if they've been in television and in wrestling, well, absolutely understand it. Our, we were, we were over, we were creating more revenue than we were projected to, to create.

Back in 1977, when we put our budget to bed and our forecasts. We were so far above our forecast, it was ridiculous. So why would I hold something off to create revenue we didn't? When what we really needed to do was, stop the bleeding in terms of the erosion of our television ratings. Only a moron who's never been in the industry would possibly argue that. Well, there's no morons in the ring right now, just three bona fide superstars. The New Age outlaws get their hand raised and China got to low blow cornet.

Lots of star power involved here. But we just saw the NWA tag team champions against the WWF tag team champions, Road Dog and Billy Gunn get the win as the New Age Outlaws to retain their WW championships. Now we're setting up the next match, which is to determine who is going to win the King of the Ring. We're about to watch the King of the Ring finals with Ken Shamrock and Rocky Maivia.

And these guys have had quite a story. They even hooked up back at WrestleMania. And that feud continues here. I did want to ask you, though, because Road Dog, back when he was able to do a podcast, of course, I think most people listening to this know that he got a big promotion, and as a result, he's basically living full-time in Connecticut now

and just home on the weekends. So he doesn't have time to record a podcast every week. I get that. But when he did have a podcast with our friend Cassio Kid, there were discussions about who was a better sports entertainer, this guy or that guy, and he would routinely piss off the internet by coming out and saying,

I was a better sports entertainer than this guy or that guy or whoever. And I think sometimes people took offense to that. But he was never saying, I'm a better in-ring performer. I had better flashier moves. My finish was cooler. He said sports entertainer for a reason, because that dude got a monster pop for just saying a little rhyme on the way to the ring. And then dancing in the ring and people would lose their mind.

And he sold tens of millions of dollars of merch for DX through the year. when someone uses the phrase sports entertainer versus wrestler, that's what they mean, right, Eric? I guess everybody has a different definition opinion. I like sports entertainer because, again, it just resonates with me because wrestling is what wrestling is. It's entertainment, first and foremost, but it is athletic, and therefore, I guess you could call it a sport.

much like I'm not even going to say it because I get so much fucking heat I mean people called bowling a sport people called golf a sport I'm not suggesting that it doesn't take talent

not just suggesting that you don't have to be a great athlete clearly that's obvious but it's more of a game than it is a sport you can talk about that all day And I could be convinced I'm wrong pretty easily. So it's tough to distinguish between professional wrestling and sports entertainment for a lot of people. But I'd lean into sports entertainment because first and foremost, it needs to be entertaining.

If it's not entertaining on multiple levels, it's not going to be satisfying. You're not going to build and hold an audience. So I like sports entertainment. And I think it does a better job of defining what professional wrestling. really is. You're not offended by it. And I use professional wrestling often. You're interchangeable to me. I think when you're talking about what goes on inside of the ring and Road Dog talks about being a better sports entertainer, I kind of agree with that because in order to be successful, you have to be able to appeal and resonate with a large part of the audience.

Either need to love you or hate you, but you feel strongly one way or the other. Thank you for have gone here for that sage and money. And I think Road Dog is mostly right. You can argue with him. I could probably be convinced that I should argue with that. But that's how I feel right now. Well, Ken Shamrock is feeling it. He's in the zone here.

Did you spend much time seeing any of his work? I mean, I know he never spent any time in WCW, but I was convinced in 1998 this guy was going to be a top guy. I mean, it just felt like he was a natural opponent against Stone Cold Steve Austin for whatever reason I shouldn't say for whatever reason we all know he is an OG

of the UFC he brings a lot of credibility I mean ABC called him the world's most dangerous man and if nothing else we all believed in that Stone Cold character I mean I know his real name is Steve Williams but we believed that Steve Williams was Steve Austin he had

he felt authentic it felt genuine and we knew that about Ken Chamrock have you spent much time watching his stuff? And if so, what did you think about Ken Shamrock here in 98?

I watched some of it. You know, I was a little busy in 98. I really wasn't despite what people suggest watching WWE.

I didn't really have the time. Be perfectly, I was a little busy on Monday nights and then I had a, you know, a couple hundred million dollar company to run

during the rest of the week. So I didn't spend a lot of time watching WWE. I did watch some of his matches. I was curious about him because of his MMA background. and all that.

But I didn't have a strong impression of them at the time. There was something lacking. And I just saw it again as Rock and Ken were staring at each other down. The difference between the look in the eyes of Rock as we're watching and Shamrock, it's subtle. But Rock is believable. That intensity I see intensity I see in Rock's eyes in this clip is believable. clip is believable to me, whereas Shamrock is trying to look crazy.

He's trying to look intense. He's trying to be a character as opposed to being a character. I know that sounds farsi, but I just found even subtle stuff, and I was almost going to comment on about it, but you're in a middle of a run and I hate interrupting people. But that one shot of these two staring each other down probably defined. and why Rock went on to be the Rock and why Ken Shamrock went on to be Can't Shamrock. Because Rock was believable.

His look, his facials, he connected with the audience with his eyes, and they believed him. Because I'm not sure they believed Ken Shamrock. It's amazing what the difference a year makes. You know, two years prior to this, none of us even knew who the Rock was. He debuted in November of 1996. And by June of 97,

boy there was die rocky dye everywhere people hated this guy he had go away heat he had been shoved down our throats as this white meat baby face and oh there's your blue chipper right there we didn't like him or his pineapple wheelie haircut and then he came back as a heel join the nation of domination started to stand in front of farouk started to call himself the rock and speak about himself in third person show some of that character work and now here by the summer of 98. Just one year after we hated him, he's a star on the rise. At SummerSlam, he's going to be in a ladder match against the guy who's doing commentary out there. Last year's king of the ring winner, Hunter Hurst-Helmsley, as we're starting to call him here, Triple H. And the

winner of that ladder match is going to really climb up the ladder, metaphorically and literally. He's going to become the world champion for the very first time at Survivor Series 1998. And that's pretty crazy when you think about two years after you make your debut, I mean, a year in, people hate you, not in a good way. Two years in, you're the world champ. Like that career trajectory, that's not something you hear about a lot. It's rare. Kurt Engel, Goldberg, Randy Orton, the Rock, these guys were thrown into the deep water very, very quickly. And who would have thought? I mean, watching this back, there's no chance anybody watching this thought. Hey, that guy's going to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Isn't that wild? It is. And I was thinking back, listening to you about the first time that I actually saw Rock in person. And I was in, I was checking into the Peninsula Hotel on Beverly Hills Drive, Beverly Hills, which is, it was right next to where CAA's offices were. Right next door to that was this beautiful hotel where every, all the movers and shakers that were doing business in Hollywood would stay there. And it was a great bar there. I probably conducted more business at that bar than I ever did anywhere else in terms of dollar revenue.

Because Jason and I would always meet a lot of the network executives and people that we were doing business with. We'd always meet there, partially because it was close to our agent's office right across the street. But it was cool. And you'd be in there and Sean Connery would walk in and sit down at the bar with somebody and talk business. And, oh, there's James Brolin, Barbara Streisand having a cocktail over here. And, you know, this is kind of a cool vibe. But I walked into that hotel to check in, and Rock came in behind me. Now, I don't think he saw me.

Did he ignored me. But he walked right by me. And I remember stopping, I was Rock. I wonder what he's doing here. And then I just, I remember to this day watching people watch him. He walked into that room. And he wasn't making eye contact. He wasn't shaking hands.

He wasn't signing autographs. He wasn't posing for pictures. He walked in and went up to the desk just like everybody else would. and people stopped in their tracks. Some of them didn't know who he was. Some of them may have recognized him, but they all went that. And that's that kind of charisma that you're just born with it or you're not.

We got a live chat here going because when you join up at ad-free shows.com, you get to be a part of our live studio audience. And we got some questions here that I wanted to ask you. But right in the middle of these questions, Travis Medway just jumped in and gifted 5.83 weeks with Eric Bischoff memberships. So you too can be a member over at 83weeks.com. Be sure to join us there. Hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell so you know when we're going live and make plans to join us this Sunday night for our live reaction show to Forbidden Door.

Bobby wants to know, what's the reason for changing pay-per-view names versus keeping the same name per month? also when you add paper views how does that process work with your budget that was already approved let's do the second question first would you know how far in advance would you have to know how many paper views you're going to do is that something that you have to negotiate three months out six months out 18 months out what's that look like erin at least a year okay i mean you can say well i want to do one paper view a month but then you got to schedule it you got to make sure the dates are available no other competition not anything else going on paper.

So it is a long process. I would say we probably planned at least 18 months out in terms of the number and starting to negotiate and determine locations. From a budgetary point of view, everything had to be done a year in advance. My budget had to be in. I think it was by November, the end of November, the middle of November, for the following year. So all of our projections, everything that we plan to do the following year

had to be presented and approved by Dick Cheatham and Dick Cheatham. him's boss over return of finance. That was all done at least a year in advance. But in reality, we were probably any further ahead. And we didn't just arbitrarily add paper. So we went from four to six to eight to 12 over probably a one year period of time or 18 months period of time. And once we hit 12, that was it.

What's the thinking about changing the names for pay-per-views? I know that this happened a few times in WCW, like one, Once upon a time we had beach blast and later it was bash at the beach. I know that, you know, there were a few different one-off WCW pay-per-view names, but by and large, a lot of the staples were there. You had a Super Brawl, you had a Halloween Havoc, you had Starcade, et cetera, et cetera. Is that just all marketing? How many people were involved in that decision, naming a pay-per-view?

It would have been marketing, primarily marketing. they would have been driving that car. While I was president of the company, I would have had to sign off on things and been involved and be aware of changes that were being made. I may or may not have expressed an opinion about a change. I typically didn't get too deep into that. I relied upon the people that specifically worked in that area

to come up with the best ideas and delegated. So I didn't have a heavy hand in the, naming pay-per-views. Uncensored, I did. Road Wilde, I did for obvious reasons. Although I didn't come up with the name. I didn't. I wasn't discussion. But beyond that, it was primarily the pay-per-view marketing, which would have been Sharon Sadello and or Mike Webber at some point. I don't know the story, so I'm just going to ask. I know the first year in 1996, it was called Hogwild. In subsequent years, it was Road Wild. I assume that Harley sent you guys a cease and desist. Yeah, in typical Turner fashion, they just, they fucking caved, no reason to.

They just didn't want to fight. So they forced WCW to concession, and we did. Didn't really matter all that much. Road Wild was fine. Orwell, like, better. Sure, of course. Aaron Manzo was with us here live and he says, Eric, how do you view the world championship lineage with respect to the classic NWA lineage?

Do you feel that the WCW World Heavyweight Championship of the late 90s and the World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE should carry that history? Now, that's interesting. I know that we don't spend a lot of time talking about this, but of course, the NWA technically did split from WCW in the early 90s, which is while we had a physical representation of the Big Gold Belt, and then we created a new championship that we saw Lex Lugar

ultimately parade around as the first champion. But when that belt came back, we tried for a little while, to have two. We stopped calling it the NWA title and eventually just called it the international championship but the big gold belt was a classic design

that lived on in WCW through the very end and then you famously brought it back and just gave it to Triple H on Monday Night Raw and a lot of people just said, okay, well we're going to pick it up from there. Do you consider that title

in a weird way the linear championship for the NWA as well? No. Yeah. I just have no, to me, and I crucified for saying this, and I apologize in advance to David Crockett, but to me, the NWA in its lineage, in its history, and whatever other value had at some point had been so diluted and deemed meaningless for the years that to this day,

I just don't. Look, I'm not saying it wasn't an important period of history and it wasn't an amazing success and perhaps the NWA in some way was responsible for Ted Turner having interest in WCW and me getting the opportunity I got. So I'm not dismissing the NWA except for to say by the time that I was in charge in 1998, that NWA title didn't mean anything to me. I looked at the big gold belt as a WCWT title, not an title, even though I know. I know. where it started. It was a WCW. And it wasn't my idea to give it to Triple H. It was Vince McMahon's

idea. So, come on. It sounded like I just gave it to him. I was forced. I was paid to give it to him. Let's put it that way. I took the cash. I'm a whore. Fuck it. I took the cash. I gave the bell. It was a television show. I know that.

I know you know, but there's people out there listening. Your fucking heads are going to explode. Say that. Travis Mettler says, hey, Eric, we know you were hamstrung by executives and standards and practices, just as the WWF was firing up the attitude era. But how did a lot of Vince Rousseau's crap get on TV a year or so later? That's interesting because we have spent a lot of time talking about how, you know, Turner would say you couldn't do this or you couldn't do that. Like, once upon a time, there was a mandate from Turner that if one of the heels cheated and he threw in, you know, rass knuckles. We could no longer call it a foreign object because that could be offensive to people

who watch CNN. So we had to say international object, as if these brass knuckles were made in fucking Russia. What are we even doing? But you had to deal with some of that nonsense. And I think Travis makes a good point. Hey, if you had to deal with all of that, how did Russo get away with some silliness when you weren't there? I can only speculate, but I think it's especially after reading Guy Evans' book and now seeing Who Killed WCW series in hearing from Brad Siegel and in others, here's my guess. My guess is, yeah, standards and practices starting in that meeting in August of 1998 when I met Terry Tingle, swore to God she was a stripper, the Cheetah Club.

But no, she was head of standards and practices. I love the name Terry Tingle. I just do. I think it's the best stripper name I've ever heard. It's awesome. But I think that there was an attempt while I was there to force change, executive committee onto WCW. I resisted that change.

We all know how that worked out, September 10th, 1999. I was gone. For about a month and a half or two months, Bill Bush, who was like a fucking deer in a headlights, he was an accountant, you know anything about the wrestling business. He didn't know anything about the product. He didn't know anything about the television business. He knew how to add and subtract. and multiply. That was it. And he knew he was over his head. So he brought in Vince Rousseau,

and I've said this before. I'll say it again. He's a fucking snake charmer. And I think he came in and said, I'm going to turn this is what I got. You got to let me do what I want to do. And I'm going to bring you. I'm going to do for you what I did for WW. I was the guy that turned WWI around. I was the man who was responsible, not Vince McMahon, not it, but me. It was all me. I can do it for you. And I think the snakes got charmed. I think. I think Brad, because again, now, after listening to Brad's interview, he was feeling the pressure. He didn't want that company. He didn't like that company.

He wasn't originally supporting the idea of wrestling on the TNT network. He was forced into it by Ted Turner. He didn't even get a, he wasn't even in a fucking room when the decision was made. He was just accommodating. And he did support it once that decision is made. He knew he didn't have any vote. But I suspect that Brad was really. feeling the pressure and gave enough rope to Rousseau and standards and practices backed

off to see if his stick would work, three months later, I get a phone call. What does that tell you? And in that phone call, when we started talking about why, why Brad was interested in bringing me back and what my role was going to, Brad's exact words, I'm not ad-libbing here, I'm not improvising in any way, shape, or form was Rousseau stuff. is too dark. It's just not working. Those are his words, not mine.

I think they gave him, they gave him enough rope. It didn't work. They went, fuck it, let's bring Eric back. But I don't know. I wasn't there.

I don't know what was going on behind the scenes when I was gone and why he was able to get away with some of the absolute dreck that he put out there. It's a fucking horrible. I don't know. We just saw King of the Ring,

crowned. Ken Shamrock is victorious. The previous winner, Triple H was on commentary, and out of nowhere, Ken Shamrock locked on the ankle lock, the rock submits, and Ken Shamrock is on the rise. But what's next is going to be one of the most famous moments of the Undertaker's career, of McFoly's career, and of even J.R.'s career, his most famous call. As you and I are recording this morning, we need to give a shout out to J.R. He is still in the hospital. He went to the ER yesterday with having some trouble breathing. He's back in Jacksonville Beach.

And he was thinking, man, he was going to make the move to Oklahoma. He's got a better support system there and his family's there. And I know that he was trying to figure out, hey, what am I going to do with my condo down here at the beach? And as he's down there visiting, man, he just starting to start to feel so well, goes to the hospital, and they kept him overnight. So thoughts and prayers. going up for JR if that's your sort of thing throwing up for the voice of wrestling

we sure are pulling for JR this morning is he back home is JR back home or is he still in the hospital is in hospital wow that's that's that's concerning we uh we're setting up the a big main event here or co-main event it really ought to be the main event maybe it's what everybody remembers and talks about the most as I mentioned it's J.R.'s most famous call, easily the most famous moment of Mick Foley's career as well. And it's a spectacle like no other. And this is not the first hell in a cell, but it is clearly and easily the most famous

hell in the cell. And after the matches prior that we've seen in the hell in the cell, a lot of people are wondering, and how could it be better than what, say, Undertaker and Sean did in the hell in a cell? well a friend of mine has said before in business and in life you can be less than than be better than or you can be different than well this is different than we're about to see something that we've never seen before and hopefully respectfully never see again it just costs too much physically for Mr. Foley and this is the stuff that

legends are made of so people continue to try to raise the bar and we've seen some crazy stunts i mean my goodness look at some of the things derby allen's done in a w yeah but darby allen weighs about a buck 40 mick foley was what 280 i mean for a guy as big is mick foley to put himself through what he put himself through is so different than 140 or 160 pound person it's i saw mick And I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt you. I apologize. No, it's all cool. I just, um, I was getting to, I wanted to ask, why do you think this particular,

I don't know another way to call it. I'm not trying to be dismissive. I know that we're about to see real, a real moment here. But this, I mean, this is a stunt on some logo. I mean, this is, this is what, this is stuntman work what we're about to see here. And yes, it's part of a bigger story. Ray and blah, blah, blah, I'm not diminishing it. But I'm wondering, why do you think the stunts that have followed this

didn't, don't resonate the way this one did? Is it simply because the technology has changed and we didn't have social media back then, so we couldn't just find the next thing and move on so quickly? I mean, this, this thing was legendary. And there's been crazy, dangerous risks and stunts that have happened in wrestling in your sense, but none really connect and leave that. lasting impression the way this one does. Can you put your finger on maybe why that might be?

Probably because it was considered to be one of the first times, a, what's call it? I don't want to call it a stunt because that's, it would be offended by that, but you can't think of anything else. I'll go with stunt for the time being. But this was the first time something is extreme and visual. had ever really occurred.

And it's hard to, when you're not first, it's hard to get the recognition for doing something, even if it's bigger and more dangerous in some respects. But I also think a lot of it has to do with the fact that McFully was almost 300 fucking pounds. Yeah. I mean, physics, even if you don't know anything about physics, you kind of get it. And while we see smaller guys doing a lot of crazy extreme shit,

it's not the same as seeing someone as massive as McFoley was at the time. What is he six, four? Yeah, he's six, four, six five, three hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds coming off the top of a stage, you don't need to calculate her to look at the physics aspect of this and go, oh, man, is that amazing? And I think that's why. That and the fact that it was really the first.

And everybody else is trying to achieve what McFolly was able to achieve back in 1998. They're always going to fall short. as a reminder the undertaker is working hurt here and i mean it badly like he can barely walk on this ankle and they make the decision to start the match on the top of the cage mick foley and i have broken this down it's available on youtube and we'll link it in the comments of our youtube at 83 weeks dot com but i think it was all born out of a conversation with terry funk where they were discussing hey man how could you possibly top what's already happened in these helena sale matches and the discussion was what if you started the damn thing on top and they do so the whole

idea behind this idea behind this cage is it's not just a regular cage match where you can escape there's a top on it there is no escape you can't leave so what if we do some shenanigans before we ever get in the thing and as you see them walking across the top man that's a lot of weight you got two guys there that are 600 pounds and they're walking around up there and in any moment that chain link fence could give way and they're in a bad way that is just crazy yeah that is so crazy and i i hate to admit this but i haven't watched this man look at that look at that eric when he stepped i've seen clips of this but this is fucking nuts look at that you know why i couldn't do that because instead of focusing what i'm going to do next i'd be standing there

shitting myself in front of 10 15000 people oh my god what am i this is great One of my favorite Mick Foley comments is one of his first times in WCW. Oh, here we go. It's about to happen right now, Eric. Are you ready for this? I kind of sort of. Oh, my. Wow.

Oh, God. Unbelievable. You know, I just saw Mick about two weeks ago in St. Augustine, Florida. Is that the same conclusion? mention I was at and we said he stopped by and say hi and we talked for a moment he was done his way out but I'm so glad I saw him and knowing that he's pretty much okay walking a little stiff walking a little slow but he looked pretty good and he was smiling because after seeing this I wouldn't know what to expect if I saw Nick again wow we recently sat down and talked

with Tom Carlucci over at ad free shows.com and you're going to see somebody run across the front of the camera right there that was Tom Carlucci he's got the headstead sit on and he's moving out of the way. As they talked about this beforehand, his only instruction to Carlucci, who's the floor manager for the company at the time, helping with the international tables, Foley's only instruction was,

get the fuck out of the way. Because he knew if he falls on somebody, it's bad for him, but it's really bad for the person he falls on. And all I could think is you see, look how close he is to that monitor. Terry Funk is out checking on him, but he just flipped the top of that table over.

The monitor is right by Funk's knee. If Foley had come down on one of those monitors, now, Eric, I'm not saying that you worked necessarily in the production side, but you've seen those monitors. You know that those things are metal bricks. I mean, that's the reason they're made that way.

That's the best way to describe it. It's like a fucking concrete block with a screen. And it's done that way so they can travel. And it's not going to be, fragile as a regular television would. So they can throw it in those road cases and just beat it up and take it to the next town over and over and over.

But it is a metal brick and the idea that Foley is falling right beside it. Like, what if he hits that thing? That's the end. He lost consciousness. You've talked with Mick about this. Do you know what he was saying to Terry Funk right here?

He doesn't know what he's saying. He's got a concussion. oh my god he's he's not all the way there and here's the here's the crazy part we're not done that's not the end of the match as a matter of fact it hasn't even really started they're going to do more that's not the finish and kind of he just he threw himself there was no inhibition no there was no trying to control anything that looked like he got thrown out of a out of an office building i mean that was brutal and really when you take a look at how he rotates and turns his body and lands on the table he could not have done it any better no but this is not something and i know everybody

listening to this knows this but this is not something where before the doors are open for fans they're walking through this and he's taking this bump a few times to make sure he's got it i mean that's not what you do no no there's no practice we're going to do it one time, and you better get every fucking angle you can, because then ain't happening again. And now the Undertaker's on the top of the cage, they're going to raise the cage. And I thought this added

to the realism of it. Vince McMahon personally is down there. And, you know, this is something that we didn't see a lot in this era. And I know it's still the Mr. McMahon era, but he doesn't appear to be Mr. McMahon here. He's he's the concerned owner. He broke

character. Yes. And it was, my dad used to tell me about this with Bear Bryant and Alabama injuries. If a player was injured, you know, obviously the crew would go out there and the staff and they would help the fallen player. But when Joe Namath got hurt, Bear Bryant went on the field. And that was a big deal that my dad noticed as a kid, like, wow. And it added a layer of realism and concern.

And it felt bigger. It felt important. It felt special. And that's what McMahon is doing. here. As a 16-year-old, Eric, I guess I'd just turned 17. I was losing my freaking mind watching this. I mean, I will never forget watching this live where I was, who was in the house, because it didn't feel like a wrestling show. It's like we just saw something, I don't want to say tragic because no one died, but it felt tragic at the time. Like, what happened? Is he

alive? Really amazing moment in professional wrestling. One that I pray, we don't see duplicated again. I don't think we see any more of this. Let McFoley have this moment. Let's not try to out McFoley, McFoley. It's not going to be able to be achieved, number one, and it's too risky. but this was this was an amazing moment professional wrestling

and I can see why people still talk about it to this day absolutely can see it now here's where the story gets crazy they're trying to attend to him all the EMT sergeant slaughter the referees we see the undertaker climbing down the cage and Foley has told me as we discussed this match many times that he was concerned about

having the upper spotty strength to be able to climb up the cage he knew this first spot was planned and now here comes the spirit of 76 comeback against all advice against everyone's orders he's back up off the dresser the stretcher the stretcher I'll get it

and he's climbing the top of the cage the undertaker sees him and he's climbing the top of the cage on the other side and they're going to meet in the middle this feels like a horror movie mixed with an old western and what's crazy to say Eric is the most brutal part of the match hasn't even happened yet.

It's still to come. And it wasn't planned. What we're about to see right here, Eric, is a total accident. A choke slam through the cage, the cage gives way, and the chair comes down on top of it. Oh. My God. I know you weren't wrestling in this ring in pretty,

particular, Eric, but before you got there, you at least heard other performers describe the WWF ring compared to pretty much anybody else's ring, and it was universal that it was the toughest, most concrete-like ring in the business. And now at 300 pounds, and look, the Undertaker Falls jacks up that ankle even more. And he is completely out of it, because that was not supposed to happen. This was never part of the plan. You see those black things in the ring there by Terry Funk's feet. Those were zip ties holding that fence together.

They went for a choke slam not knowing it was going to go through, but it did. Funk realizes his friends in trouble, so he just throws himself in there and says, hey, do something with me. Literally choke slams the Funker out of his tennis shoes. But when Foley wakes up, he sees the tennis shoes in the ring and wonders, whose are those? he has no idea that Terry Funk was ever in the ring with him

and the chair comes down and that's what knocks the tooth out of his mouth through the roof of his nose it's unbelievable this is the first time I've ever watched this match in its entirety

I've seen clips of the bump a million times but just the bump doesn't do it justice this is fucking amazing. Eric, they're not done. They've got more violence planned,

a stunt that we've never seen in WWE before in 1998. Foley is the guy who goes and orders a pizza and says, give me everything on it. I don't think he's ordered ever in his life just a cheese and pepperoni because we're throwing everything at this match. Right now he has a tooth hanging out of his nose that's gone through the roof of his mouth.

He's got a concussion. he's got broken ribs I mean he can barely fucking stand but we're not stopping the match why would we stop the match look he's poking his tongue around

he's got a hole in his lip where the tooth is torn through and he has no idea this is hard to watch the sacrifices that Mick Foley did for this business and this industry the idea that when people talk about all-time greats, and they don't just rattle him off as a standard for one member of the

Mount Rushmore, not just his work as Mick Foley and all the charitable stuff he did, not the fun mankind or the dark mankind, or even the silly dude love, or Cactus Jack, but just the physical toll. And I mean, listen, we don't talk about money a lot here on the program. He's not the top paid guy in the promotion here. but you know that doesn't matter to him he's doing it for art he's doing it because he loves it he's doing it for fans he's doing it for his legacy because there's no amount of money you could assign and you'd say okay well i'll do it for that i'm just i almost don't even know what

to say watching him walk around with his tooth sticking out of his nostril yes that's that's easy mick i've always had a lot of respect for you, but I can't wait to see you next time. It's unbelievable. All I got to say, this is crazy. Of course, Meltzer would write page after page after page, saying we never need to see this ever again. Like, this was dangerous on a level that's bad for him.

It's bad for his family. It's bad potentially for the industry. Like, this set a bad present. precedent for violence, and I don't think anybody will ever talk about a match the way they talk about this one again. You see, I'd always wonder, why do we shoot that? Like, why would we get a stone cold close-up of the Undertaker cutting his forehead there? My goodness.

Show literally anything else. I wonder how long it took to start feeling somewhat normal after this man. I mean, this had to take months to get over. I don't think he's all the way over it now. I would agree with that. I don't know how he could be. I don't know how your body could possibly, a structural point of view,

survive that without long-term. Just don't think of back, hips, knees, shoulders. Oh, my God. And he landed when he came through the ring. I mean, that was just flat on his back. That was not a flat back bump. he just dropped like a bag of potatoes flat on his back. Eric, I'm not saying that.

What do you think that is? 15 feet? Well, yeah, at least. From the top of the cage to the ring mat. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. That's probably, uh, yeah, that's probably 12, 12. 12. But still, and again, I'm not making like,

I know that you had a real life circumstance. But you were just talking about last night on our live show over at 83 weeks.com. The way you hurt your back is lifting a. 200-pound railroad tie and you just see what he did to his back and it's like think about how excruciating your pain was from lifting something incorrectly maybe and now you were just debilitated look what he just did and he's still wrestling it's unbelievable he's a he is a he is one unique individual yes one unique individual and he deserves to be as highly regarded as he is

and I just feel bad that I haven't watched this entire match until now because I've been missing out and this is not my kind of match no this is not something that I would book it's not something that I would get excited about as a fan but I certainly understand why it has become as memorable and such an iconic match because while it may not be my style of a match

a lot of other people do like this extremely violent presentation and you're never going to get a presentation to meet or even begin to exceed what we've seen here because I don't think it's physically possible without a death taking place. No, I totally. By the way, here comes the big surprise. For the first time ever, yes, those are thumbtacks in a WWE ring. I mean, to have the foresight to think, I'm going to do the big bump off the top,

then we'll work with the stairs and the chairs, then we'll break out the thumb tags. He still did all that, but the choke slammed through the cage was never supposed to be part of it. And at no point did they say, hey, that's enough. We should just go home right now.

No, we're still doing that. Which they could have and should have. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that would have been, had they decided, let's call it, Take the format. We're done.

We're going home. We're taking you to the hospital. We're going to pull your teeth out of your fucking nasal cavities. Try to glue you back together to get you to the hospital. Ending that match on that bump would have been just perfectly awesome. Yes. It would have been no. It wouldn't have felt like a compromise.

So to add more on top of it all, just, I think, is a testimony to Mick and his commitment. as well as Undertaker. Because if I'm Undertaker, I'm begging this guy to stop. I'm begging this cat to go home. I'm looking at his fucking teeth coming out of his nose. And I'm talking to him and saying, dude, we're done. Come on. Go get a beer.

A pizza. Well, no pizza for you because you don't have any teeth. They're sticking out of your nose. Cry it out loud. They're still going. I mean, I remember watching this back. and the first time Mick went for a pinfall afterwards, I was like, oh yeah, I forgot,

we're still wrestling a match. Like, after all this, you just put your arm over the guy and you could still win. But take a look at what's about to happen. There, that spot he made famous in WCW with Vader. And he hoped when Vader did it to him on the ramp

that it would just bust his guts up so bad that he could cash in on his Lloyd's of London. And when it didn't, he was disappointed. So he just had Undertaker do the same spot to him. But Undertaker wasn't exactly in the right spot that Foley wanted where he could get all of the thumbtacks. So to make sure that he still got that visual, Foley just rolls around on him and then says... Hey, he rolled around like a chicken leg in his flour right before you throw it in a fucking frying pan.

He was rolling around in that thing. My God. Hey, Undertaker missed it, so I'll fix that. Don't have enough thumbtacks in my back. So I'm going to roll around on this stuff. And we'll do a choke slam in it. And you know what? Why don't you just tombstam me right on the thumbtacks too?

God damn it. What are we doing? This is unbelievable what a visual this is. Mercifully, thankfully, it's over. And look at the crowd. Pittsburgh never forgot what they saw. A standing ovation. It was, respectfully to the Undertaker, a one-man show.

And I don't even think the Undertaker would argue that. He's in here barely able to walk with a bad ankle. and we were concerned, man, can Undertaker pull this match off? Little did we know. We need wheelchairs. We need gurneys. We need a med flight for Mick Foley. My God.

And even just think about that last bomb, you know, Tombstone Power driver on a bad wheel. Yes. That could have gone bad. Yes. That's not the safest move in the world. That's a high, high risk move. You're tired, you're beat to fuck, got a bad wheel.

and now I'm going to hit you with a tombstone pile driver. Oh my God. Hats off to both of these. This is nuts. Coach Keith is watching live with us and he says, I remember watching this pay-per-view drunk as hell and this match got me sobered real quick. I still can't believe this match. I'm a guy who went to ECW and Philly every month.

Man, I can't believe you just saw this for the first time, but it's hard to even describe this to someone who's never seen it. Wouldn't you agree? 100%. I've been hearing about this match for 25 fucking years. I'm always not. Yeah, that was crazy. That bump off the top.

Oh, man, that was nuts. Holy crap. I can't believe Mick did that. That's Mick Foley. But I never sat down and watched it from beginning to end completely. And it, I'm, I'm stunned. I'm absolutely stunned. Mick Foley, that I saw Mick Foley three weeks ago smiling and walking through a convention

center. Yeah, you wouldn't have guessed that watching that match. Gavin Napier says, I love this match, but I don't think two guys have stayed in the cage for the entire match since this. And that way, it ruined cage matches going forward. I don't know if necessarily that it ruined cage matches, but certainly the premise of this match was we're putting a top on it so there's no escape. They did find to work around,

and I do feel like in subsequent Helena cells, certainly where Shane McMahon was involved, there's now an expectation. Oh, well, he's coming off the top. oh well there's got to be a big crazy stunt like on some level the hell and the cell match was changed forever because of this match

because there is an expectation that oh well they got to do something crazy and so even when like when Shane took the bump off the top here allegedly they had something under the table to help break the fall and then people were like well it's not the same well no it's common sense

I don't like that it feels like we have to continue to do this and can you top this and it always happens to diminishing returns. I absolutely agree with you. And I do think cage matches have become irrelevant for the most part. Maybe hell and so is going to be different continually. But cage matches have just become a meaningless prop. No reason to have them.

No storyline leading into them. It's just you're selling the perceived danger of the cage. And it is what it is. But this match, I really hope no one ever tries to top any of this shit again, including Shane McPen. He's getting a little older now, so maybe he'll talk himself out of it if he ever gets, if he gets to AEW and gets on top of an AEW ring. Just let this one stand on its own, folks.

No need to try to compete because it's not possible. I don't live. Travis Medway wants to know. Did you hear requests from your talent the following day? anybody trying to top this? Does professional pride have the locker room pushing to do crazy stuff? No. No.

I think most of the locker room, probably if we could assemble whoever's left right now, and we took a vote on the number of people in that room that would like to raise your hand and try to compete with something like they just saw, they would say, fuck you, I ain't going near that. Now, this was uniquely Mick Ful. This is McFoley. This is nobody else. There's no one else that will put themselves through what McFoley is put him through.

Not only in this mattress, my mind is still scrambled, but this was kind of what McFoley's style was all about. It's one of the reasons that he was no longer in WCW. We just couldn't justify the risks that McFoley wanted to take for his art. Just got to the point where we had to say, no, publicly held company, it's just too much risk. And we don't want to be responsible for what could happen to you. It left. And he continued and elevated the risks even more so. and did it in a way that resonated with the audience.

It wasn't just setting himself on fire and throwing himself up buildings for the sake of it. It wasn't just for the stunt. There was a tremendous amount of emotion and what they did do in the ring. Yes, it was ultra-violent. But watching Mick Foley trying to make his comeback as beat up as he was

and seeing Undertaker sell for him and start to give them that comeback, that's what creates the drama. And it happened slow and plotting. It wasn't a high-paced, fast-paced match. It was a dangerous, high-impact. Still an adequate amount of emotion, a tremendous amount of emotion as a result of what they did in the ring. It was fucking awesome. Let's do another question here or a comment, rather.

I want you to react to this because I think it's, spot on. Gavin Napier says it's arguably the greatest spectacle of all time. As far as spectacles in wrestling, it's got to be number one for me. What about you? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I just can't imagine anybody ever coming close to this. I mean, it's going to be hard to top. And speaking hard, today's episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. Let's talk about sex guys. Remember the days when you were always ready to go. Maybe it was back in June of 98, just a stiff breeze would hitchy and boing. You can feel like that again here.

Blue Chew is a unique online service that delivers you the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis, and Lovitra, but in chewable form and at a fraction of the cost. Take them any time, day or night, so you can plan ahead or be ready whenever an opportunity arises. And the process is simple. Sign up at bluechew.com. You consult with one of their licensed medical providers. And once you're approved, you'll receive your prescription within days. And here's the best part.

It's all done online, so that means no awkward conversation and no waiting in line at the office or the pharmacy, rather. Blue Chew's tablets are made in the USA, prepared and shipped directly to your door, all in a discrete package. Blue Chew wants to help you have better sex. Discover your options at bluechew.com, chew it and do it.

We've got a special deal for our listeners. Try Blue Chew free when you use our promo code 83 weeks at checkout. Pay the $5 shipping. That's bluechew.com. The promo code is 83 weeks to receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Blue Choo for sponsoring today's podcast. Eric, we're watching a recap video here of Kane in 1998.

And we see all the fire and all the effects and the costuming and the lighting and the music and just the whole presentation. And I got to ask. I know you don't like this, but I got to ask. do you think that perhaps this Cain presentation and the way he was presented as a serious threat? Is that what we needed for the Dungeon of Doom to succeed? Because this is kind of silly too.

I mean, if you really think about the Undertaker presentation and his story and you think about the Cain presentation and his story in the confines of wrestling, where we've got the realism of a, Stone Cold Steve Austin. It feels pretty damn silly. But so did the Dungeon of Doom. But this is still presented in a much more serious way. So we're able to suspend our disbelief.

And it feels more real, even if, really, if you get it down to Brastax, it's all kind of theatrical and silly. What was missing in the Dungeon or Doom presentation that's not in the Canaan Undertaker presentation? Credibility and consistency. Okay. I think the Kane...

character, it falls into that very highly animated type of character that I tried to get away from in WCW, but it worked in WWE, largely because of the association with Undertaker. Talk about a rub. Undertaker had a tremendous amount of credibility. Kane was able to benefit from that in his association, and the consistency in Kane's character allowed people to look past the cartoonish element of it and believe in it because they were consistent. They stuck with it.

It didn't change much. And it had credibility from the get-go. So I think the two answers are consistency and credibility. And I would say credibility first and foremost and then consistency. I know that we just want. The dungeon of doom and I all do, oh, please, please, Kevin Sullivan, if you hear this or you hear somebody talking about it. Please understand.

I mean this in no disrespect. WCW was where WCW was at the Dungeon of Duke came along. But we didn't have the budget. We didn't have the infrastructure. We didn't have the commitment to quality and consistency when it came to our characters. And just the way they look and they're dressed, the way they were lit. We didn't do any of that. We just threw them out there in whatever gimmicks they brought to the TV.

that particular. And oftentimes those changed. So then that's what I mean about consistency. This is a well thought out character that they made a long-term commitment to. Long-term means, yes, you're going to go through ebbs and flows as you build that character because you can't introduce a character and have the audience embrace that character to the degree you want them to over a short period of time. It takes a long time. And I think that's one of the reasons why WWE has been consistent. Go back and look at Roman Raines. Go back and look at your comments about the rock. He was being shoved down our throat. Well, yes, he was. And when that was no longer working, they took a different attack. They were committed

to the rock, just like they were committed to Roman Raines. Back in 2018, when I was hearing about how he was being shoved down everybody's throat, the audience was sick of him. Did they just cut him loose? Send him to some farm team somewhere? Don't further develop? No, they figured out a way to fix it. And they continued pushing him. So there has been over the years, I think, examples of the kind of commitment to consistency, at least commitment.

And sometimes you do have to change gears. But the commitments to the characters in WWE has always been established, especially looking back. Whereas in WCW for a long time, so let's try this. That doesn't work. Okay, let's bring them back as that. Ah, shit, that sucked. Let's just have him come out as himself and see if that works.

there was a lot of throwing things up against the wall hoping to find something that stick and there wasn't a lot of thought in preparation, design, and detail that went into those characters. A lot of times guys would just show up and put on whatever Zulu makeup they had

in their bag that their wife or girlfriend gave them and tried to look interesting. And it's just very little thought given to characters where I think at WWE, a tremendous amount of thought was given to character. it's a lot of the difference I do want to follow up and ask some more questions about Kane

but first I want to make sure you're getting a good look at Steve Austin's elbow here Eric he was in the hospital earlier this same week he's going to check himself out not to miss this show and he's got that elbow wrapped up something serious because he's got a fucking staff infection as he's working this man yeah that's scary

dangerous very dangerous by the way yes I mean he's not got his elbow taped up and he's out mowing the fucking lawn. He's throwing it against the mat over and over and over. And that ring is not necessarily the most sanitary place you're going to find in an arena either. It was just covered in thumbtacks, a few minutes ago. It's bacteria and all kinds of nasty shit.

And, I mean, staff infection can kill you. Absolutely. This is crazy. We got some questions about Kane. but one of the things I want to point out, Gavin Napier says, Kane would have legitimized Glacier, Mortis, and Rath.

That is interesting because we've said on this very program many times that that presentation was just out of date compared to the NWO. You contrast the realism and the maybe the over-the-top theatrical presentation of those characters. But maybe you're right.

That consistency, they can coexist because they are here on the other channel. Yeah, they can. And I think it had, you know, Kane come to WCW as, as Kane, that character, would it, which, you know, legally would have been impossible. Right. Let's pretend it was possible for a second, second discussion. Yeah, Kane coming over would have added the credibility to Mortis and Glacier the same way that Undertaker provided that credibility to Kane. I mean, that's the rub.

You hear people use the word all the time, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. but that's the rub. That's the transfer of equity from one character to another and from that character to another. And theoretically, if it would have been possible for King to come over, even though the whole glacier thing and Mortar's thing was kind of late, should have happened about two years earlier. It would have been on fire, perhaps.

But even putting Kane in late, theoretically, if it would have absolutely changed the landscape for. take a look at the cage coming down from the ceiling. They're sending down the hell in a cell, and there's something that's still to come on this show that you will not believe, Eric. But can we just take a minute and give Steve Austin his kudos? First of all, for coming out here and working with a staff infection

in a main event, in a first blood match with a guy wearing a freaking red mask. But as if that wasn't enough, he's got to follow what we just saw with Foley and Undertaker. And I know he's the hottest star in the business, but damn nation, how in the world do you follow that? Do you have a gun?

I mean, what else can you do, right? There's got to be switch blades and nunchucks and guns involved to follow what we just saw. And I wonder if that was, I wonder what Steve was thinking when he was backstage getting ready to come out for this match. You know, he may or may not have been watching what was happening for this,

but what he was going through. I would imagine he was watching it. um i'd love to i'm next time i talk to steva i'm going to ask him what fuck were you thinking is you're coming down the aisle head to that ring after what we just saw what can you do i mean that's the thing and and to you but you just said you know kudos to austin this is why steve austin became ste this is one tough tough son of a bitch yes i mean physically tough, obviously, but what's less obvious

is the mental toughness? Yes, sir. This, this, yeah, unbelievable. Austin deserves the iconic stature that he's obviously. This is an example why.

We should mention too, just like three days after this is when you announce that it's going to be Goldberg and Holkogen on Monday Nitro. I mean, this, are knee-deep in the Monday Night Wars here. Coach Rosie wants to know, in your opinion, Eric,

what was the most violent injury in your WCW tenure? Like of all the crazy, because we just saw something we'll never see again, hopefully, with Foley, but of all the crazy injuries and violence and things like that that you saw in WCW, what's as close as we got to what we just saw? I mean, nothing compares, but what was the high point of WCW violence? we didn't we didn't do anything to compare with this number one so i i can't make a comparison you know the most i started to misunderstand your question i figured it out at the end but i thought

you could ask me what was the most violent thing i've ever seen or injury that i ever saw and i would have to be sid breaking his leg but that wasn't part of a match that was created to to present this kind of violence. Right. That was just almost a freak injury. In terms of just physical, you know, I can't think of one, to be honest with you. I'm sure we had some that were memorable to other people, but that's me. I can talk about great matches.

I love Bookerty and Chris Benoit. I could watch that another best of seven times. We had a lot of great matches, but I just, just don't recall anything that could even cared remotely to what we've seen in the last two matches here. Mr. Epic wants to know, if you knew

what you know now, would you have pushed for Foley to not involve himself in in ring performances in TNA? No, by the time I got to, I would have tried to talk him out of it personally. As a friend, how to concern, or his future

well-being. but at that point out, you know, from a business perspective, not been something I would have given any thought to. It wasn't my role, wasn't my job, but as a personal basis, I would have absolutely like to go out have a beer with Beck and talk about what he was doing and how much fun it could be to walk around when you're 65 years old. I've heard both Kevin Nash and Kevin Sullivan talk about meeting at Nitro the next day,

having both seen this match, and it being the discussion in the backstage. area catering and whatnot. And they were both sort of like, we're not going to be able to compete with that. We don't have anything that can compare to that. Do you remember that being a sentiment amongst a lot of people in WCW the next day, everyone talking about this and like, man, we're not doing anything close to that? I don't.

I don't. You know, again, I was in the office far more than I was in the arena. So most of my time was spent in the office, not in the year. And meaning talent. I don't remember a lot of conversation about it. And I wouldn't have even wanted to try to think of ways to compete with this because this just has never been my go-to creatively. Let's do something fucking crazy where someone might die.

It's never been a premise I've tried to work. I mentioned the Hulk Hogan Goldberg match being announced just a few days after this. And we actually got a question here from Anthony D. He says, Do you know if Hulk watched this show prior to you pitching the Goldberg Nitro match? As I understand it, that match had been advertised for quite a while as a dark match. And then perhaps he called you and called an audible

and made it a part of the show to drop the title to Goldberg. Do I have that at Tom Wright? Is that right? No. I mean, this is the first I've heard that Goldberg and Hogan had been determined to be a dark match. Hey, Hulk, I got an idea. Come on over here.

Here, I got a beer for you. Sit up, big man. So I got this idea. You know, we're going to beat Atlanta, right? And I know we've never used you in a dark match before. But let's do a dark match before. He did dark matches all this. time, Eric.

All the time. He wouldn't have done it with Goldberg. He wouldn't have done it with in Atlanta. And if you did a dark match, it's the end of the night to send people home. Yeah. Happy. And those were mostly angles, not matches, or spots, not matches for the most part. It didn't last long.

No. Somebody else talked about it and never got to my desk. And Hulk called me and said, hey, I got an idea. Let's do you in Goldberg, in event. That was the first conference. I had ever heard, even as a passing comment about actually wrestling. What do you make of the criticism that people say that the reason Hulk made that pitch to you is he knew all the Turner executives are going to be here and there's already 40,000 tickets sold.

We're going to be up against the taped Monday Night Raw. We're going to win the ratings that night. It's going to be a high watermark. Most attended WCW match in history. All the Turner Brass will be there. I want to be in the main event for the world title. I can understand because of the narrative about Hulk being selfish and it was always, always all about him,

it's a false narrative. You know, different than any other talent that worked at the top for an extended period of time and was concerned about protecting his character because that's how they get to the top, by the way. But he was no more aggressive about it. He was no more self-serving than that. And I know people, oh, you just see Nick as you're friends with Hall. I'm saying it because it's true.

And if you need to further understand the bullshit that the narrative is built around, consider this fact. If you believe that Hulk Hogan was selfish and only out for himself, only concerned about himself and greedy, why would he put himself out there and try to churn up all of this good way? will return our executives, it didn't fucking matter because he's not going to make one more nickel who is under contract. It was going to get a raise. Not like Brad Siegel was going to stand up, him and his buddy Stu Snyder, sharing a box of popcorn and having a beer, go, hey, Hulk, over here. Oh, hey, Hulk, hey, this is so cool.

I'm going to give you a raise. This is so cool, Hulk. We're going to extend your contract. silliness to think that way. But again, that's what bullshit wrestling narrative tends to get to buy into. Because on a surface, it would sound, well, if he's greedy, then he's self-serving. And if he's self-serving, well, of course he would do that. He's not doing it for the fans.

He's not doing it for the company. He's not doing it for Bill Goldberg, which is the real issue. He's not doing it. He's just doing it for himself. Hey, take a look at what we just saw there. I don't know if you're paying attention, but Mick Foley's back out there. oh my god and he's running yeah he ran he did a run in with a tooth hanging out of his nose with a hole in the roof of his mouth and in his nose he probably went back and saw that

two sticking out of his nose and somebody said let's get that thing out of there and make hopefully went no I want my teeth in my nostril it makes me look crazier I don't think he was saying that look at his boots he's still got the thumb tacks hanging out this is an unbelievable spectacle what a one-man show and performance performance this is. I didn't mean to cut you off or derail the Hogan talk because I just wanted to point out, holy shit since you've never seen it, Mick Foley's still not done. He's still out there. I want to remind everybody that if we are going to shit on Hulk Hogan, and I understand that a lot of people like to do that, I get it. I'm just throwing it out there. This contract that

Eric has been criticized for giving Hulk in 1998 happened on May 29th, 1998. So it's not like he was doing this with Goldberg to get this big contract. He already had it. And he might even note that he is getting a percent of the pay-per-view revenue. So on some level, if he was really out to just make as much money as he could, that Goldberg-Hogan match would have happened on a pay-per-view. He didn't pitch it on a pay-per-view. He didn't make any extra money for doing it on TV. But he would have made a lot of extra money had he done it on pay-per-view. He just didn't. And by the way, as if that's not enough, Undertaker is now dousing the referee and gasoline. This is

what you had to compete with, Eric. This is the reason we had to get Goldberg to wrestle Hulk Hogan on Nitro. We're setting dudes on fucking fire with thumbtacks and stairs and hell in a cell and goodness gracious. This is so crazy.

Right? And by the way, I'm going to finish up on a Hulk Goldberg thing. Hulk took Bill Goldberg under his wing very, very early. You're going to have the haters. You know, yeah, he did that because he saw Goldberg was going to be the next big star. He believed in Bill Goldberg.

He nurtured Bill Goldberg, to a large degree when Bill first got there and started spending time in a locker. When I say Paul took him under his wing, he basically went to Henry Holmes, who was Hulk Hogan's attorney and George Foreman's attorney. And really, a lot of Maria, Natchavola, notralo. was attorney, Billy Jean King's attorney. He was a very, very established attorney, entertainment attorney. And he made sure that Goldberg hooked up with Henry Holmes because Hulk wanted to protect Bill and want a bill to make as much money as possible. Actually, to my chagrin, I got a little hot about it because it ended up costing WCW a lot more money than it should have at that time. But when I say Hulk took Bill Goldberg under his wing, and Bill may not even

agree with this. But I know what Hulk did for Bill early on, including wanting to see Bill get over in front of the executives at Turner Broadcasting, because Bill wasn't financially in a position that Hulk Hogan was. And as you rightfully put out, and I'm grateful to you for doing it, Hulk had absolutely nothing to gain as his contract was done months before this. This was Hulk doing for Bill Goldberg for all of the right reasons. Nothing selfish, nothing nefarious, all for Bill. Hey, let me hit you with this. That's the truth about that.

Let me hit you with this. Here's the real number. It's in his contract. Go Google it. If you just type in Hulk Hogan, WCW1998 contract, you'll see it. You'll see what the buy rate would have been. You can guess what the buy rate would have been for Hulk Hogan Goldberg. Hulk would have made a bonus of $1.75 million had he done that match on pay-per-view instead of on television.

he did it on television instead or Bill Goldberg's better yes that's what I'm saying like if he really was in it for me me me me me me you're going to wrestle the same match either way you want to do it on television for free where more people will see it and it'll make this guy

or would you rather say hey he'll still be made on pay per view but I'll make an extra nearly two million dollars 1.75 million would have been the bonus I'm just saying the narrative out there about Hulk Hogan and all that way off base but we just saw a one-man performance for Mick Foley.

By the way, if you're curious, Eric, I know you don't give a shit. But Kane just won the world title. The guy wearing the red mask did not bleed first. But what a performance from Mick Foley. It's kind of a performance beyond words, is it not? It is. It literally took my breath away. I'm glad I've never watched it before because I enjoyed the hell out of this.

Maybe more so now because I can look back at it and know that everybody came out. reasonably healthy to the extent that they're still with us and everybody's still walking. I don't know if I would have felt that good about it, you know, if I'd have seen it live for a week or two later because it was just too intense for me, to be honest. I mean, I probably would have watched it, everybody else, but it was pretty intense and maybe for me even too much. Next week, we're going to be doing something that well had to happen eventually. It's going to be pretty intense. It's going to be uncomfortable.

But we're going to tackle a tough subject next week when we do a profile piece on Chris Benoit. And if you have a question about Chris Benoit, we would love to hear it. The best place to ask it is over on our YouTube at 83 weeks.com. Hit the subscribe button. Turn on the notifications bell. We're going to be looking for your Chris Benoit question. questions there. Be sure to find the community tab as well, and we'll tackle all things Chris Benoit next week. The good, the bad, and the ugly right here at 83 weeks.com.

But that is next Friday. This Sunday, we're going to be live right after AEW completes the forbidden door. It's totally free and we'll hope you'll join us at 83 weeks.com. That'll be your question to ask Eric questions and get his take on the pay-per-view. We may have a course who's going to be in town anyway covering the pay-per-view who can tell us what folks in the live house thought. I think they've got less than a thousand tickets available. So this is going to be a near sellout for them based on what they originally are setting the pay-per-view up for.

So 10,000 folks or so in the building to watch Forbidden Door this weekend. Make plans to join us immediately after late Sunday night at 83 weeks.com. Next week, man, Chris Benoit. Is it just me or does it for? feel like we've been all over the place lately. But this Who Killed WCW series, you're posting a lot of top fives over at 83 weeks.com. We're doing live Q&A's.

We just watched an old match that you'd never seen before, one of the most famous spectacles in all of wrestling history. Next week, Chris Benoit, but before that, recapping an AEW pay-per-view, we're doing a lot, covering a lot of ground these days, Eric. And I'm having fun doing it, and I'm grateful to you and Dave Silva, Super Dave,

and everybody else that's got their fingerprints on this because it's a it's a team no doubt about it I know that sounds can't be and corny but I'm really really grateful because I have fun doing this like I told you when we first started doing a podcast right after I asked what we're going to do after the 84th week six years ago now 300 weeks ago but I this is I'm still having so much fun doing this I my week would be weird if I didn't have this to look and connect with you and everybody else. So thank you to everybody, listening behind the scenes. Well, no, thank you, guys.

We appreciate you hitting that subscribe button and telling your friends about your favorite podcast and letting them know that it's a Friday show now. Join us each and every Friday at 83 weeks.com. Be sure to hit that subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell, and we'll see you this Sunday night, right after Forbidden Door, at 83 Weeks.com.

Your house is probably worth more than ever right now. But if you could change one thing about your house, what would it be? Would you put in a new kitchen? Maybe some new hardwood floors. You can do all of that with no money out of pocket at savewithconrad.com. Use your equity to make your house worth even more. You might even be able to get a lower payment too. A better house with a lower payment without moving? Sign me up for that. NMLS number 32416 Equal Housing Lender SavewithConrad.com. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.