83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 329: Goldberg Wins! Nitro 07.06.98

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

WCW had it's best week ever, this week 26 years ago! Join Eric and Conrad as they take a deep dive into the 83Weeks archives to look back at that phenomenal moment in time. The guys examine the first part of that week when Goldberg defeated Hogan for the World Title in front of the largest cable audience to ever see wrestling and a record house at the Georgia Dome! But should it have been on Pay Per View? Why was it on free TV? Would Vince McMahon have given it away for free? Was Eric's job in jeopardy? Whose idea was it to have Hogan drop the title? Why was it only announced four days ahead of time? Would it have happened had the WWF not been winning the ratings war? Who no-showed the event? Don't miss this two hour dissection of one of the most important shows in WCW history, Monday Nitro from July 6, 1998!  MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo 83WEEKS at https://shopmando.com/ ! #mandopod SIGNOS - Signos removes the guesswork out of weight loss and provides the tools to develop healthier habits. Go to https://www.signos.com/ and get 20% off select plans by using code 83WEEKS. HENSON SHAVING - It’s time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that’ll last you a lifetime. Visit https://hensonshaving.com/BISCHOFF to pick the razor for you and use code BISCHOFF and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. CREMO - You can find Cremo Men’s Body Wash at Walmart or Walmart.com. https://www.walmart.com/search?q=cremo&typeahead=cremo 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, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm doing great, Conrad. Getting ready for a 4th of July, my favorite time of year. Friends and family are pouring into town, the coolest full of beer. I've got a refrigerator full of amazing stuff I'm going to cook on the big green egg. I am fired up. well i hope you don't as fired up as you were last week i'm sick this week and i don't know that i can take the shouting but uh i think people uh aren't really sure how we're on speaking

terms after last week what was the feedback you got from last week's episode well before i talk about feedback i you know i come up to my office my dog nicky oh she follows me everywhere she's never more than a foot and a half away from my side now my dog is an australian cattle dog or blue healer and they're famous out here in the rocky mountain area because they ain't afraid ship. I mean, you can go up into the mountains and we're infested with grizzly bears up here. And if you like to fish and hunt and camp and ride horses like I do up in the mountains, you're constantly looking over your shoulder for grizzlies. And it's kind of dangerous. People get mauled and killed up here every year, which is one of the reasons I have this

particular breed of dog. And we got done with our show last week. I finally shut everything down. And I looked over in the corner. And my dog, is curled up in the corner and she's scared to death because she never heard me go off like that and she's like what the hell and again this is a dog that will will run down a grizzly bear and I actually had to cook her I went out to the big green egg and I cooked up a tenderloin from an elk and actually had to give her a steak just to get her to be able to get within five feet of me again so I don't want to do that man I don't want to scare my dog I don't want to piss off the viewers and I don't want to upset you if you're not feeling well today. I have empathy. I'll, I'll be as kind as I can be. Oh, no, I was just kidding. You can motherfucker me. It's fine. But that is a cool story about your dog that she's not scared of bears, but she's scared of Eric Bischoff fired up. Well, she's never heard it before. I've never raised my voice to her. She's never heard me raise my voice. And, you know, I'm, I'm just, you know, you and I are going back and forth. You know, she wasn't only afraid of me. She's listening to you.

And I looked over and she's like scared to death. So I'm not going to do that to her again. it's the 4th of July it's a beautiful Sunday afternoon I'm going to try my best not to let you piss me off I'm going to try my best as far as feedback bro I got I got who I said bro god damn it I got a lot of great feedback you know what was interesting is you know about half the people told me I was full of shit and about the other half agreed with me right in and I think you probably saw a lot of that same feedback so it's you know it just goes to show you that people that listen to the show actually do a little bit of research and a little bit of homework and they've got their own opinions. And that's cool. I dig that. But it was fun.

One of the things that happened this past week, though, is you got into it pretty big with Dave Meltzer. And I've been getting a lot of feedback lately saying that, you know, I'm letting you rant and rave about Dave Meltzer too often. And that maybe I'm part of the problem because I'm saying Dave Meltzer said because a lot of times I do feel like you have a different opinion on something just when you hear that it came with a Dave Meltzer. slant or you're perceived Dave Meltzer slant but you guys got into it a little bit on social media let's just address that at the top and get it out of the way if you'd like to say anything at all about that he's a pissant he's he's a whiny little bitch that for the last 30 years has had a

format where he could criticize other people make shit up you know insert his own agenda in the innuendo and whatever it is he was writing about and talking about and really shaped the perception of a lot of people who subscribe to his newsletter. Now we got 25, 30 years of Dave Meltzer bullshit to work from. And look, you know, he got away with it for a long time. And he just laughed at people that would criticize him. Now all of a sudden, you know, guys like Bruce Pritchard, Tony Chivani, myself, and many others have podcasts and we're able to reach a lot of people.

And all of a sudden we're calling out this bullshit and he's whining like a little bitch. well I feel like I should say I'm a 21 year subscriber and I read every week and I'm a big fan of the observer but I understand to someone who worked in the business and he was very critical of you and Bruce and Tony at different times I see what you guys would have different opinions but that is sort of the basis of the show is from a fan's perspective what we always heard happened and it came through you know either the torch or the observer versus what really happened from someone who was there and it's up to you the viewer or the listener rather to kind of decide you know where you fall in the on these things. And today, we're going to talk about something that's not to be debated. It's one of the biggest nitros in history. It's July 6, 1998. This Friday will be the 20 year anniversary. And man, this does not feel like 20 years ago to me. How about you, Eric? No, actually, truth be known, I just finally had the time because we've had friends and family porn in the last few days to really sit down and watch the entire episode on the WWE network, which, by the way, I love the WWE network. If it wasn't for the WWE network,

No one would be able to go back and see just how phenomenal, and in some cases, how fucked up. Some of those nitros, you know, back during the Monday Night War era, really, really were. And I think this is an example of, you know, a great nitro, not without its flaws, not without its weak points, to be sure. But when I went back and watched it, literally, I just finished about 45 minutes ago, I was in awe, really. Not of myself, not saying that from an egotistical point of view, but just the product itself, the emotion that it created, the energy that was in that venue, and it was just so phenomenal to watch. And it's, you know, unfortunately, one of those things that other than a WrestleMania or perhaps one of the other really big, you know, WWE paper views, you're just not going to see that kind of energy, in my opinion, ever again. it's kind of cool too to hear you go back and watch it because i think a lot of us take this for granted but we most of us listening were fans and so we were able to really experience this

as it happened but for you this is just this endless cycle where you're just sort of in the race car it's one show after another and you don't really have a minute to just sort of be in the moment and this is probably a whole new set of emotions for you watching it you know through the television as opposed to actually being there and being in the middle of it where you're worried about all the ends and outs and not necessarily the enjoyment of the experience. That's true, but I also, you know, when I watched it this afternoon, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm watch it, you know, differently than a fan, I guess. You know, I'm looking for a lot of the little details that, you know, people probably notice, but they may not be able to quantify in, in terms

of the impact that those little details had on the product and the energy that it created, an emotion that it created. And, you know, this is going to sound like I'm trying to put myself over and I'm really not. But if you look at the vignettes, for example, the nitro parties, and you see those clips of people having so much fun, you know, at nitro parties, that was our way of preconditioning, I guess, the audience, that it's okay just to have a party and love the hell out of Nitro and make it an event, even if it's just in your own living room or your own frat house, as we saw on some of those venues, you know, that was a really smart thing that we did. And quite frankly,

we stumbled into it. It's not like anybody, you know, was sitting back with their genius head on and genius and shit up, baby, like Dusty Rhodes used to say. It was just, hey, here's an idea, let's try it and see if it works, which was in many respects, you know, the kind of psychology or attitude that made Nitro such a phenomenal, you know, piece of television history that it was or is. But I look a lot at a lot of those little things. Carl Malone coming in, you know, the helicopter following him, following him as he's driving his semi,

which, by the way, he had like four or five of those semis at the time. He loved semis. He just loved them. Some people collect motorcycle, some people collect vintage hot rods. He collected semis. But, you know, seeing him drive in again, it was something you'd never seen before. how many people drove to a ring in a freaking semi it was so different and just you know oddly cool that it worked and it's just those little things that i look at and go wow that was really that was a phenomenal time did you guys have this date circled well in advance or tell me when the idea and the conversations first came together for what if we did a nitro at the georgia dome well the georgia dome date was obviously one that was selected

I'm guessing months in advance, you don't just call them up on a Monday and say, hey, we're going to have a nitro there next week. You happen to be available. You know, those dates were booked probably six months in advance. In some cases, more than that, you know, the bigger and the more popular, the venue, because we weren't just competing with traditional sports, you know, basketball, for example, at the Omni, but you're competing with rock and roll concerts. You're competing with a lot of other events.

So you have to plan that well in advance. So the date for the Omni was, I'm guessing, six months, maybe even longer in terms of planning and booking. You guys, I mean, it's a big deal because you guys draw a huge gate here. I guess we should mention it sets a huge record for you at the time. But it's not really a long on sale period. You know, so a lot of times when you have a dome show like this, you put together. on sale, sometimes months in advance. I mean, WW is going to have WrestleMania tickets on sale months in advance.

But you guys have it here for just a handful of weeks. Was the product that hot? I mean, it does feel like the show was sort of thrown together at the last minute, which is why I asked, but you say, and that makes sense based on the sheer size and in scope of the building and what an undertaking it would be. You got to map that out ahead of time. Why the short ticket window? Is there a strategy there to get more, of the card sort of firmed up before you put tickets on sale or talk me through that? I think what we were seeing, and again, you know, context is king, as we know, it's not only a great

shirt, it's also true. Prior to 95, even late 95, early 96, you know, when Nitro was up, we had to work really hard to sell tickets because the taste that everybody had in their mouth about WCW as a brand, which was pretty bad. So you had to work your guts out to sell tickets. Once we got hot, the pattern started to become very obvious where you didn't have to start three months out or four months out. You could literally start promoting, I don't want to say spontaneously, but you could shorten your promotional window to three, four weeks out, in some cases even less because the tickets were that hot in nitro as a brand was hot people weren't buying their tickets to nitro necessarily um or i should say generally because of the match that was

advertised in the main event in fact in many cases we didn't want to advertise matches because sometimes they would you know out of necessity change but nitro became such an event in itself partly because, again, some of the, you know, the aforementioned Nitro parties' promotion, the fact that, you know, we put such an emphasis on Nitro feeling spontaneous, and because it was live, anything could happen. We drove those marketing messages home as often in as many different ways as we possibly could. And once that effort of making Nitro in event or a party that you had to be at, and that was one of the things I used to, you know, preach all of the time is Nitro needs to feel like

a party at every level. And it got to the point where once you announce that there was a party, people would come, regardless of what was going on. Now, in this case, obviously, it was different because it was Goldberg and it was Hogan, and that certainly had a major impact, obviously. But across the boards, you know, we didn't have those long promotional windows like we used to. Well, let's talk about the actual show itself. But before we do, I want to sort of set the stage as to what was happening on the other channels. King of the Ring had just happened in late June of 1998 and we're just past the 20 year anniversary. And of course, the most memorable thing that happened there is the Undertaker throwing mankind off the cell.

And in years past, we've heard Kevin Sullivan say that when he saw that, he thought the war was over and that the WWF had officially won. That there was no way you guys could possibly top that. And I know you're going to be critical of that, but the next night, after King of the Ring, we're all got a 5.36 and Nitro only got a 4.05. So the rating swing continues to go the other way. After you guys have had all this momentum, the WWF finally wins after 83 consecutive losses. They get a win in April and it was fairly competitive. But it does start to feel like you guys are slipping and the momentum has shifted.

It's going to the WWF. What did you think when you saw Mankind come off the cell? And what do you make of Kevin Sullivan's comments that that meant the WWF had won the war? Well, there's really, you know, there's two questions in there. I'm going to take the, I'm going to take the, what did I think about, you know, mankind coming off the, the hell in the cell cage? You know, that didn't really leave a strong impression on me. But again, as we've talked about, 1998 was a very, you know, late 97 is when it started, where the competition really started. And you can go back to November of 1997 and there's an interview floating around out there where Vince McMahon basically says they're going to change their creative direction and expand the creative envelope and all kinds of other Vince McMahonism designed to, you know, communicate.

to his audience that, okay, this goofy shit that we've been doing that has been getting us killed for the last, however long, we're going to have to change that. He could have just as easily said, and somebody should probably do this at some point and put some subtext underneath it, is back in 1997, after he'd been getting his ass kick for about a year and a half, almost two years, he finally recognized that it was time to copy the Nitro Formula and introduce a more adult-driven 18 to 34 real reality-based kind of demo and push the envelope in as many ways as he possibly could. And that's what he did. And he tipped his hat in that interview in November of 1997. And then almost immediately, you know, out of the shoot, you know,

you start seeing a lot of similarities between Munginite Raw and Nitro in terms of its tone and its presentation. Gone were a lot of the goofy, cartoony animated characters that you were watching in 95 and 96 and early 97. Along comes Mike Tyson, you know, with a four or five, six million dollar price tag whatever was reported and that intense energy with stone cold steve austin and mr mcmann all of a sudden mr mcman comes from out from behind the shadows and he becomes the heel owner uh or authority figure much like i was on nitro at that time so when when those things started to happen that's when i started paying attention to me that's when it really began to change and the pressure became um tangible

prior to that it wasn't and i've said this before you know with you in interviews um the pivot point for me was mike tyson when when they finally pulled the plug or pulled the trigger i should say on mike tyson and really came out swinging with tyson that's when i knew we were in trouble and then well i want to say in trouble that's when i knew it was getting competitive and it was paying much more attention to the tone and style of the show than compared to what we were doing at the same time while w wf was turning up the volume and taking our formula and taking it even you know further with you know giving birth to hands and austin flipping people off on the ringposts and all the crazy shit that they did that became so popular in the

foundation really for what the attitude era meant to people um at the same time we were starting to get hammered corporately about the type of content that we had and and and there was a lot of pressure for us to become more family friendly so the very formula that we created was now being copied and quite frankly being done better than we did tip of the hat to to wwe for that um but while they were doing that we were having to tone down our shit so the the competition was really starting to have a much more pronounced impact on the way that I was thinking about things throughout, you know, early 98, certainly by this time in July of 98, there was a lot of pressure.

And the hell in a cell match and Mick coming off the top of that and such a big, bold, scary move that had everybody buzzing was just one manifestation of a six or eight-month initiative by WWE that was really starting to take its toll on us. Let's talk about the diet after King of the Ring because this is the Nitro, where you recreate the tonight show set and you have scott stider on and the segment dies it does a 3.4 and the dirt sheets would be very critical of this and they would also report that you got spent around $70,000 on the set and because it bombed you never did it again obviously you're trying to

set up something with Jay Leno for August we get that in hindsight but when you see the rating in do you realize well this was a misstep well first of all and help me out here because i i don't know the answer to this but you you stated just now that we we spent the money on the set we did that segment once and we never did it again is that your is that your position that we never did the the j lennel's kind of gags and spoofs again no i know you did them again but i'm saying in terms of it felt like after that first one this was going to be a recurring theme and you were going to do this with some regularity, but you quickly abandoned that. Obviously, you would do some shenanigans for the August paper view, but here we are in early July, and it felt

like there would be a string of these things, but that clearly didn't happen. Well, it did happen afterwards. It didn't happen immediately. It didn't happen in consecutive episodes if what I'm hearing you say is correct, or if I'm hearing you correctly, because I'm trying to be kind today. I'm trying to be the gentler, kindler Eric Bischoff today. Give me a second. So, yes, we did one. We didn't do any more of them until later on leading into August because of the Jay Leno promotion that we were doing.

So to imply, and I'm not saying you are, but you're basing that presumption on something that was written by somebody who wasn't involved, you're implying that because a segment bombed that we just were ready to scrap the whole idea. that wasn't true so what was the plan with doing it once and then bringing it back i mean to me don't get me wrong i get the i get the idea of we're going to do it because leno's coming in but that's not here yet so was the initial plan we're going to develop a string of these to build to the august pay-per-view and then the rating being so low is what killed it no no no no and that's and that's where again i'm even going to try to be kinder and gentler to to to middle

Mr. Meltzer, or whoever reported that, that's an assumption or presumption made on the part of somebody that doesn't have a clue that wasn't there, that wasn't a part of the creative process that's never produced a minute of television in their life. And they're assuming, because they saw something once and they connected a dot of a low rating for a segment, which we're going to talk about in great detail in just a few moments, they assumed and reported that, God, despite, $70,000, you know, on this set, you know, the segment died, therefore, you know, they abandoned it. Well, it wasn't true. We knew we were where we were going in August when the July 6th show came about and there was so much focus on Hogan and on Goldberg and the creative decidedly changed pretty close to that date. It wasn't like we planned on Goldberg and Hogan for months and months and months. The creative across the board change, that segment no longer made any sense. It no longer made any sense to promote and have fun and parody Jay Leno for an August pay-per-view

when we wanted to point as much focus as possible on the Goldberg-Hogan match. So there was a stutter step, yes, but it wasn't because it only got to 3.5. That's what an idiot that has never written one syllable of television or produce one second of television would have you believe, especially if that person has an agenda. That isn't true. Now, what was true, I'll reiterate, was that creative plans changed with the Hogan Goldberg initiative. It wasn't necessary to promote, or timely, really, to promote what was coming up in August

at that particular moment. giving the magnitude of that show and that match and all of the focus on it. Now, going back to segments, and I still have a pet peeve to this day, and clearly I'm not producing any television right now, but when I hear people or read people talk about ratings for a show, or in this case, a segment, which is even more asinine, and somehow a ratings for a segment reflects the quality of that segment, or the ratings for a particular show reflects the quality of a show. Those same people who have no understanding, who've never done it, who don't really understand

the business of the television business, are happy to report that stuff because you can go to zaptoit.com and get ratings information all day long. You don't have to be a wrestling expert to do that. It's available. You can go find it. But what you really need to do is kind of compare year-to-date. For example, and I'm going off for a little bit of a tangent here, but you know, and I'm not going to beat up in any more dirt sheets on this episode. I've done that

enough. But, you know, there's one in particular that I come across frequently that can't wait to report ratings and use those headlines as sort of clickbait to get people to tune in. But what's more insidious is how they take a particular rating, particularly if it's a negative rating, or if it's down two-tenths of a point or three-tenths of a point. If a rating is down 10%, you know, 5% on any given week, it's a fucking rounding error. Nielsen is hardly science. It's more art than science, to be honest. And to take those fluctuations and variations throughout an entire two-hour episode

and use that fluctuation as kind of the basis for your position of what, somebody should be being used or how the creative is not working right or how somebody should be getting more of a push or deserves more of a push all based on an indication that's nothing more than a rounding error is a joke to me and i think going back to you know looking at one segment of one show and considering a concept as being you know void of value just reflects the ignorance of the person that would suggest it. A segment can, so many things can happen in a segment. There could be a fucking breaking news headline. There could be a power outage in New York City that would dramatically affect a quarter hour. There could be competition on. You know, something could be

happening on another channel that would dramatically impact a quarter hour. Or you could have just poorly timed that quarter hour in your format and miss the most critical, you know, moment of the 15 minute, you know, measurement, you know, that Nielsen utilizes. There's so many variables that you never look at, I never looked at one quarter hour, ever, ever, ever looked at one quarter hour and made an assumption. And anybody that's ever produced television would probably tell you the same thing. You may look at the hole and you may, you know, I in particular would look at a period of, you know, a four or five week pattern and then I would start making assumptions. But to look at one quarter hour on one show and make an assumption is just asinine.

Well, typically here in America during the summertime, we're trying to think about, hey, where's a fun vacation spot? And we usually pick somewhere warm, but especially here in the South. Boy, it starts to get humid. It starts to get uncomfortable. And people start to stink a little bit. Well, Mando, whole body deodor will have you smelling gray all summer. Mando's array of odor controlling solutions, ensure that you'll be fresh from head to toe,

the solid stick and the invisible cream tube odor control for 72 hours. But you can start odor control in the shower with a four-in-one cleansing bar and acidified body wash, which is going to help stop odor before it even starts. And the best part is it all fits in your carry-on. All the liquids in the starter pack are under 3.4 ounces. And you've even got the deodorant wipes so you can find. freshen up on the go. This has been a real game changer for Tony Schiavani.

And I think everybody knows this. It's been well-established in the wrestling business that he was Stinky Nuts Chivani way back at Starbucks. And now he's got that sweet, sweet Tony Khan money. Man, he's smelling good. And it's all because of man, though. And it fits in his carry-on. You can't get any better than that.

And Eric Bischoff before we clicked record, he was a few minutes late this morning, but he told me it was because he needed to put the cream tube on his grundle. Yeah, he calls it grundle, but we know it as cock and balls. He puts it in his belly button. He puts it in his butt crack. He's got it all over his taint right now. So when we get a one shot

of Eric in a minute, you'll know his tank smells good. No more stinky crevices at the Bischoff household. And I know that Mrs. B is thrilled with that. Because sometimes Eric will take Nikki out on like a 5, 7, 17 mile hike. And when he comes home, he no longer smells like a bear. And that's all because of Mando.

Dave, Dave Silva's not producing with us today because his feet stunk so bad they put him in the hospital. We overnighted him some Mando and now he's hooked up. You see, this was all created by a doctor who saw firsthand how normal B.O. was misdiagnosed and mistreated. You see, whole body deodorant from Mando was powerful enough for the toughest body odor, even Silvas, but gentle enough to use anywhere, and I mean anywhere, all over your body, even your butthole. This is aluminum-free. It's baking soda free. It's cruelty-free. It's cruelty-free. It's It's die-free, and we want you stink-free. And did I mention that it's vegan?

It's clinically proven to control odor better than just soap with a shower alone. Like 12 hours after a shower, the average man's down their odor is like a 5 out of 10. But with Mando, that average odor is a 0 out of 10. Listen, I don't know what makes them want to do the things they want to do, but I know what makes them not want to read between the lines and get this starter pack right now for Mando. perfect for new customers. It comes with solid stick deodorant. It comes with cream tube deodorant. And two free products of your choice.

I recommend the mini body wash and the deodorant wipes. Hey, and you get free shipping too. Now, luckily, I've got a discount code to get you hooked up with my favorite smelling whole body deodorant on the market. New customers can get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code. Hey, that's like 40% off your starter pack. Go right now and use the code 83 weeks at shopmando.com. so help me understand when you guys are in direct competition and their segment goes up and your segment goes down you don't immediately think it was the content no it could be the content I'm not saying that I'm saying whether it is or it isn't you don't make a rapid judgment about the quality so so if I'm head to head with them in a quarter hour and my quarter hour drops down to a 3.5 and theirs goes up to a 4.2

or whatever, a 4.5, I'm not going to abandon the idea based on that one quarter hour. There's no way I would do that. There's no way anybody in a right fucking mind would do that. You'd be chasing your tail constantly. Let's talk about the actual content when you watched or maybe you haven't watched it. When you did the segment with Steiner, how did you feel about it? I haven't watched it. I'd have to go back and look at it.

I couldn't really answer that fairly or honestly. Okay. Let's talk about some other company news that's going on. And one of the things we touched on last week was you making the decision to sort of cut down on some of the house shows. And so you go from 23 a month to 18, which is going to run to about 240 shows for the year. And the houses are running about $140,000 when you make this announcements of the talent. That has to be met with a lot of great feedback from the guys who were promised a lighter schedule as we touched on last week, right? yeah it was but again you you know there there were there are factors going into it one is contractually as we've discussed there were a lot of especially a lot of the top guys that that came in you know later on in 96 97 98 you know we made a commitment to keep our our dates to 180 dates a year and by the way that also included you know TVs that wasn't just house shows um because if you would throw in another 104 dates on top of that you know you'd be right up there with with, you know, at WWE schedule, and that's what we had committed we wouldn't do to a lot of

that top talent. So there was two issues. One is as Thunder became more and more of a burden schedule-wise, we needed more and more talent to feed that monster. All of a sudden, our dates, you know, we're going up and we had to stick to our plan. You know, our plan was to keep our house shows to a minimum and keep the focus. It was managing resources. You know, I was able to turn WCW around from the dismal fucking disaster that it was when I took it over to becoming what it was as we're breaking down this show by focusing our resources on the television product with the kind of a, if you build it, they will come philosophy, meaning if you build a television product and you become popular on television, the house show business will take care of itself.

And it did in resounding ways. But there comes a point where you've got to manage those resources. And we had up until that point lacked the discipline to really manage that schedule the way it should have been managed. And we had to cut back because we were burning people out with two primetime shows. And again, we weren't the WWE. We didn't have, you know, a fraction of the resources that WWE has now in doing the same thing we were doing, by the way, producing, you know, a two or three hour nitro and a two hour live thunder, we did it with a fraction of a fraction of the technical production staff and financial resources that the WWE is doing it with. And we were killing ourselves in the process. And again, that's a, and people, you know,

they're going to hear this. Oh, fuck, he's making excuses. I'm not making an excuse. It's a reality. And if people are too stubborn to look at it from a, from an objective point of view because they're entrenched in their ideology when it comes to, you know, a dirt sheet writer's perception of me or of, you know, WCW as a whole, that's fine. But the fact is, you know, when we got thunder dumped on us, it buried us. And, you know, reducing the house show schedule was one kind of manifestation of it. It was hard work Bobby Walker. He sued you guys around this same time for $5,000. He's claiming racial discrimination and it's one of the more landmark lawsuits against WCW because eventually

Bobby Walker got paid chat me up that was nothing new anybody that sued WCW got paid tell us about this Bobby Walker lawsuit to the best of your recollection you know again once and again this is it's important for the listeners to understand the way Turner was set up once a lawsuit was filed, it left the jurisdiction, if you will, of the WCW offices, landed over at Turner Legal, you know, in the North Tower, and for the most part, other than perhaps some information for discovery or records that we may have had on file, we were out of it. We had no input.

We very seldom were questioned about anything. again, unless it was for a deposition or for records. So I didn't have any firsthand involvement in the lawsuit. So I'm not going to be able to give you, you know, the kind of blow by blow by blow as it relates to that particular suit. I can tell you, however, that as somebody that was running that company, and even before I took over the company, you know, the joke in the locker room in WCW was if you're getting cut, just sue them because you're going to get a check for $100,000.

And I never really understood that until later on, once I got into management, and there was a risk analysis or loss analysis kind of logic in Turner Corporate that if you're going to fight a lawsuit, it's going to cost you 100 grand. No matter what, it's going to cost you 100 grand to fight any lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous it was, how baseless it was, or anything else, it's going to cost you a minimum of 100 grand. grant. So what Turner would often do is the minute they got sued, they would go through the motions and, you know, do what they had to do to try to make it look like they were going to fight it. And if it appeared for more than a week, like the litigant was going to stick with the lawsuit, then they would settle. I saw it happen time and time again. And that, you know, the prevailing knowledge, you know, amongst the boys, even before I got into management, was, man, if you're going to get cut or you can't get your raise, fucking sue them. You're going to get a payday. And that's what this suit was all about. It was a stupid suit. Ted Turner, especially when it became to racial issues, because Ted, everybody knew.

Ted Turner was one of the most outspoken people in Atlanta about diversity and went through extremes to try to, you know, to make sure that there were. as people of all ethnicities in all races is involved as possible in Turner. And he still believes that to this day, if you follow him or read him. So the idea that anybody within Turner broadcasting, you know, was guilty of racism, especially after Bill Watts left, because everybody was more sensitive to it. I mean, it was insane on its face. As I read about it, you know, you sent me your name. notes this morning and I knew this question was coming and I'm looking at some of the

just silly shit that was written and out there in the press. It's just insane. It really is and it's really unfortunate. And it was such a prevailing problem or regular problem in Turner Broadcasting at the time that I was there because everybody knew it. Well, let's talk about obviously the lawsuit was eventually settled. I guess I should mention that, but it wasn't settled until the WWE had already purchased them. So, the DVD E wound up writing the check in this case, but certainly Turner settled a bunch

of other ones. We should also talk about an incident that happened at the Nassau Coliseum, or right after that show rather. It involved the giant and a fan, and allegedly there was a guy who was a pretty big fan starting to sort of get into it with the giant and eventually

Paul White punches him. What do you remember? This is something we heard a lot about at the time. It's got hog on into it with a fan, Kevin Nash, the giant, Scott Steiner, lots of fans are maybe taking it too far. Was WCW concerned that they may have some sort of security issue with these shows? Or was this just sort of par for course when business got hot? Well, it was neither.

I mean, it wasn't part for the course when business got hot, but shit like that did happen occasionally. It does to this day, you know, in WWE. Sweet. I didn't see the event. I didn't see it happen. So I can't tell you, you know, I can't tell you what went down. I heard about it afterwards. But I wasn't worried about it because it wasn't something that happened on a regular basis. A couple times of years, somebody would jump in the ring and do something stupid or get a little too physical or too loud and aggressive with some of our talent. It never usually escalated into much of anything in reality. in terms of people going to the hospital and getting hurt or having actual damages. So it wasn't something that I was worried about. And it was part, you know, you look at what we were doing. I mean, look at, you know, when we turn Hulk Hogan in 96, people were throwing shit into the ring.

You know, I remember being in the middle of the ring and having people, you know, throwing desol batteries, flashlight batteries into the ring from the cheap seats. And those things would split your head open if they hit you. You know, I remember having fans. come at me as I was walking out and try to tackle me. You know, so it happened, but it happened so infrequently, and they really weren't big issues. You know, we had pretty good security. The arenas had their own security.

We had our own security. Our security were cops. They were law enforcement. You see them on camera now. I noticed that, you know, when I'm watching the show today, a lot of those guys, you know, the Doug Dillinger were brought in. they were all wearing their fanny packs well guess what they had in those fanny packs they weren't you know they were they weren't breath mints um they were all carrying they were all trained

they were all professionals they were all you know they'd been there done it seen it all before uh so we had we had good security but occasionally it would happen you know i don't know why in the fuck anybody would pick want to pick a fight with paul white i mean i've i've only seen him go one time and it happened so fast and was so devastating that it was almost if you blinked you'd miss it it's like whoa and why anybody would when you get really close to paul white i mean you know he's big when you see him on tv but i don't care if you're six foot six and 250 pounds when you stand next to paul white you know you're standing against a mountain of a man and an athletic one at that he wasn't just big he was extremely athletic you want to share

that story when he beat the fuck up out of a guy he didn't even beat the fuck out of me he punched him one time and it was such a short punch i mean i think the punch probably only traveled about eight inches it's not like he reached back and you know took a major league swing at the guy i mean he literally short punched him and splattered him i mean he went down like he was shot in a mouth um that was it there was nothing more it was fast and honestly god it was it looked like one of those Bruce Lee one-inch punches. It's really what it looked like. And the guy was just bugging Paul,

bugging Paul, bugging Paul, picking on him. You know, Paul, Paul's a gentle guy. Paul's got a lot of patience. He knows, you know, you know, even then, you know, in WCW, who he was much younger and not as mature and hadn't been sued and been around the block as much

as he probably has been now. But even then, he had a fair amount of discipline. And the guy just kept going and going and going and going and Paul went up to go to the bathroom. The guy followed him back. It just kept bugging him. And it's like me swatting a fly. That's amazing.

Around the same time, you guys are in the papers all the time, whether it's the WWF or WCW for some sort of silliness where kids are trying to imitate what they're seeing on TV. There's even a story out of Indiana that makes the papers where there's a kid in middle school who's trying to start a satanic cult that he's calling Ravens flock. Whenever you see some of this silliness, I know we can sort of dismiss it or certainly I would as just you know that's stupid whatever

but I don't know that Turner always felt that way did you get any blowback when stuff like this makes the paper any sort of uh meetings have to happen to Turner about what is this Eric what are you doing with kids and the devil no it it wasn't that obvious it was more insidious than that meaning you know the the corporate executives again it's just so hard for me to articulate the cultural shift that took place corporately once Time Warner's footprint became solidly embedded up Turner's ass. Things changed so dramatically. And what we would get were rather than, hey, what about this story? Why are you doing this? What is going on with the flock? Are they wearing devil signs out there? Are they promoting devil worship? That would

have been obvious and easy to deal with, but it became more insidious in the sense that, well, we've got to be a lot more careful about the way we present this product. That's what I mean, and I keep going back to it. I know people think I'm just making excuses, but it was the truth. When, you know, major executives, guys who have gone on to become some of the most powerful people of television to this day, are sitting at a table saying, look, I don't care what you did you know to get you know i'm going back to early 1998 now i don't care what you did to get nitro to the point that it is i want you to be more family friendly that's an example of why those things started happening they wouldn't point to one kind of cause and effect opportunity to discuss

they would take a broader view and say you know what we just you can't call people names you got to you know you can sure you could still be entertaining but you know you can't go you know let's not go as far. We don't want to be as violent. We don't want to, we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. We don't want somebody sitting at home watching, thinking that maybe you're talking about people like them. And it became a real issue. And that's an example probably of, I say probably, because they didn't come to me specifically with this particular issue and asked me to explain it or, or investigate it. But there was a very constant pressure to react more broadly to

situations like this. Let's talk about Saturday night. Saturday night gets its lowest rating in history towards the end of June. It doesn't 1.5. This starts to feel like the red-headed stepchild now that thunders here. Does it not?

Oh, it was. I mean, clearly it was. We talked last week, I think, about how we started de-emphasizing syndication. And that was more for, you know, economic reasons really um but saturday night at that point it became i don't want to say throwaway programming because i would i would i would cut off a body part right now to have two

hours of prime time you know tbs broadcast window at at 605 eastern on on the saturday night but for wcw and even for turner as a whole everybody knew that the focus was on nitro and the focus is on thunder and we just couldn't put the same kind of quality into TBS. It was impossible. And everybody knew that. Ted Turner knew it. Everybody knew it. Let's talk about the NWO hotline. It's dropped around this same time. And I think a lot of people probably even forget it existed. But what's about a time? You guys could put NWO, slap that, those three initials on anything and people were consuming it. What was the strategy for the NWO hotline and what oversight, if any, did you give to any of the hotlines? I didn't I didn't oversee it that was in the marketing department

Mike Weber Sharon Sadello would probably were the two people that were more involved in it than I was I would believe I'd have to really look back at the the organizational chart to be 100% certain but that'd be my guess you know we had to I had to be aware and certainly I got an earful whatever shit was said on the hotline that either conflict or gave away or created too much heat because look the idea behind the hotline was much the same thing as the the psychology if you will or the approach behind a dirt sheet you know come out with the most flamboyant fucking headline you can create you know get people to pick up

the phone to hear what the story is and make money doing it that was the model and it worked we made a lot of money but it got to the point where it was more more of a problem than it was worth so that's why it was phased out and de-emphasized because the money that we were making away from the hotline was much more significant and again you have to go back in time go back and look at you know WCW in 94 or 93 94 95 you know I'm guessing the night the the hotline probably existed then whatever revenue that hotline generated was very significant during those budget years 94 or 95, maybe even 93. By 97 and 98, it was a drop in a bucket, and it was becoming a pain in the ass.

So that was the logic behind dropping it. On hot summer days, I keep my makeup simple. Dewey skin, a touch of highlighter in the corners of my eyes, and just enough to feel refreshed with outgoing fully glam. Thrive Cosmetics makes that easy. I swipe on their liquid lash extensions mascara and instantly look more awake. It lasts all day without smudging, in the heat and comes off with just warm water. I love that their products are vegan, cruelty-free,

and made with clean ingredients. Plus, every purchase supports communities in need. Knowing my go-to mascara also helps others, that's beauty with purpose, and it's why Thrive is always in my summer bag. Maximize your look with minimal effort. Go to ThriveCosmetics.com slash beauty for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash beauty. You said a name that we've never really talked about on the show, and I don't know that anybody really talks about it. Mike Weber, he did media relations for the WWF for a handful of years, and then he was with W-C-W for like seven or eight years, and then winds up having like a five six run with t and a and now i think he's like running the fight tv app uh anything you can tell us

about mike weber feels like he's one of those names who's been everywhere but nobody really talks about yeah mike was a look mike was a great guy on a personal basis i really liked mike a lot which is why i kept him around um and he was here's how i described mike if if you were a general contractor and you needed to build a brick wall. If you delivered the appropriate amount of bricks in the right amount of mortar and you said, Mike, here is the wall I want you to build. It's six foot high. It's 42 feet long. I want you to use these bricks and this mortar. You could leave the job site and you would come back and you would have that wall built. And it would probably be built as well as anybody could build it. But if you said, Mike, I think I need a brick wall

wall. I'm not really sure how big, how long, how wide. I wanted to be the coolest brick wall in the world. Go ahead and come up with something. That would be a problem. So he was a great worker. He was a great, you know, he worked really hard. He was very committed. He was very loyal. He had experience. He understood. He was good with people. He was really good with people, especially people outside of the company, right? But he just didn't have, to his detriment, in my opinion, you know, it's one of the reasons he used to come to me all the time because he was a director, you know, of marketing or a director of PR, whatever he was, director of marketing, I think. And he always come to me like every quarter for his review and he would want to be, you know,

he wanted that vice president title so desperately. And I just couldn't do it. And it was one, and I tried to explain that to him. And it's just one of the reasons, you know, He just didn't have that extra mile that would or that extra or the ability to go that extra mile and come up with an idea that no one else could come up with or to take a project or an idea that was on a scale of 1 to 10 to 5 and figure out a way to make it a 10. That he didn't have. But when it came to just doing what needed to be done, if you gave him some direction and guidance, there was probably nobody better. I got a little pro tip for you. does you know that the CDC estimates that approximately 96 million American adults, that's more than one in three, have pre-diabetes.

And of those with pre-diabetes, more than 80 percent don't even know they have it. Now, why does this matter? Well, because foods that are high in carbohydrates raise your blood sugar more than other foods. And during digestion, the pancreas produces insulin, which then binds the sugar in the blood and takes it into cells as a source of energy. Now, if you have pre-diabetes, sugar begins. to build up in the bloodstream rather than fueling the cells. And this is when insulin resistance occurs.

And that's believed to be the number one cause of pre-diabetes. Now, a healthy weight allows insulin to work more efficiently and can help keep blood sugars within a normal range. A healthy diet and regular exercise are the best ways to bring your blood sugar levels back to that healthy range. Now, here's the big question. Can pre-diabetes be reversed? Yes, it can.

With healthy lifestyle modifications and by monitor, your glucose, you can reverse pre-diabetes and avoid a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Signos can actually help you short-circuit this cycle by using data directly from your body. That will allow you to design a weight loss plan that's unique to your lifestyle. Now, Cygnos is the only company that combines a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM with an AI-driven app. That's going to give you real monitoring for optimal health and weight management. See, with Cynos, you can literally see which foods are going to cause your blood sugar to spike above reasonable levels. And you'll get real-time alerts to do a bit of exercise to bring

them back down. On average, we're all making about 227 food choices a day. And with Cignos, you're going to learn the difference between stress eating and physical hunger. You're going to be able to better manage your energy throughout the day and even sleep better at night. You'll be able to meet your weight loss and your health goals because you've got unique data that works for your body type and metabolism. Cygnos' unique to you program for weight loss is backed by a growing field of scientific research and scientists, and it points that a stable glucose level is a key part of overall health.

And Signos Unique to You program is, uh, it's, it's winning people over it left and right. How about this? 89% of members report losing weight in the very first month. Members report losing seven and a half percent of their body weight in 180 days. This is a real breakthrough. My wife is so impressed with this. She's in the medical field. We vet all of our products before we brag about them here on the show.

And when she saw the continuous glucose monitor that Signos makes and sends to you, she was blown away. She could not believe that this was something that we could talk to wrestling fans about. She said, honey, this is a real medical device. And it's going to help you learn things you didn't know. I didn't know. Like how much does that glass of wine with dinner really change when your blood sugar spikes? and how much does a short walk really matter?

You can actually see the difference here with Cygnos. And I can't wait for you to try it. I've gotten a lot of great feedback, even from a professional wrestler this last week, who hit me up and said, hey man, I didn't know you guys had one of these. I tried it. Dude, this is unbelievable.

Signos is the real deal. Signos has removed the guesswork of weight loss and provided us with the tools and knowledge we need to develop healthier habits. It combines glucose data from the CGM, with that AI-driven app to deliver us real-time glucose insights for optimal health and weight management. And right now, Cygnos has an offer exclusively for our listeners.

Go right now to Cygnos.com. That's sig-n-os.com and get up to 20% off select plans by using the code 83 weeks today. Let's talk about the idea that nobody had ever done. And that's to announce Goldberg, Hulk Hogan, and do it on Thunder on July 2nd, just four days before Nitro, and that's where J.J. Dillon would make the formal announcement that Goldberg was going to challenge Hulk Hogan for the world title. And Goldberg says that he found out from watching the show. Chat me up about all the specifics that you recall about how this match came together, because it does feel like something that's been

heavily debated and criticized. A lot of the dirt sheets say that the tickets had already even sold and everybody knew it was going to be a strong gate that Hulk Hogan politicked his way into the spot and others would say that this was the master plan all along but it does feel a little rushed based on a Thursday announcement for a Monday show chat me up about how this all came together for Goldberg to be in there with Hulk Hogan on Nitro well Neither narrative is true. It wasn't a political maneuver by Hulk Hogan because he heard the ticket sales were so high.

He wanted to take credit for it. That was bullshit. But it's typical of that kind of community or that logic. And look, here's how it happened and why it happened. as I admitted we were feeling the pressure starting in early 1998 and that pressure became increasingly more intense as the year went on so certainly by July certainly in June certainly in May we were feeling WWE Monday Night Raw breathing down our backs no no secret no denying it the the formula that we used to kick their ass was now being used against us

and quite frankly they were doing a better job with that formula than we could for the reasons I've already discussed and and partially because we had done so much of that crazy stuff you know things started to feel very repetitious creatively speaking in in nitro admittedly so there was a ton of pressure now I've read the you know I've read the stories I've I've heard about the comments that Hulk wrote in his book and Hulk Hogan to this day is my best friend. Inside the business outside of the business and anyway

I mean we're tight but I'm also going to tell you much like I disagree with a lot of people who write things in books and as I've said to you I myself just like everybody else have a tendency when we look back 20 years oftentimes particularly if there's stories that we've told

and told and told and told and told our perception or our memories of those events are different and they're not necessarily accurate and this is one case particularly talking now about you know the the version of how it all came about in the whole cogan's book that is an accurate what is accurate is we're feeling the pressure ton of it we all wanted to win we all wanted to keep our momentum going we were all looking for new in different ways to do that

And I was in Los Angeles that week, and I can tell you exactly where I was on the 60 in Marina del Rey. And Hulk Hogan called me. It was about 11.30 in the morning. I was on my way to another meeting in Los Angeles. And Hulk called me on my cell phone and said, I got an idea. So I pulled over on the side of the road where I pulled up on the exit ramp off to 60. and pulled into a parking lot of a deli

and Jerry's famous deli by the way in Marina del Rey, that's exactly where I was and I said, okay, what do you got? And he laid it out to me. Hulk says, let me Russell Goldberg and let him beat me for the bell. I said, what the fuck? What are you talking about?

He goes, no, here's why. He's ready. And that was his first, that was his biggest reason is Goldberg's ready. If Hogan was going to do a job, if Hogan was going to get beat, if we're going to have a major shift in storylines, he didn't want it to be with someone that wasn't ready to carry it, in his opinion. It doesn't mean that his opinion was 100% right all the time, but that's what motivated him. That's what made his gears grind. And he really felt that Goldberg had so much momentum behind him that there would be no better time, especially since we needed, you know, at that time to do something to shift momentum and to get. people talking about our product, there was no better time than to do it in the Georgia Dome

because that was, you know, the story was there. We had built so much anticipation and focus on Bill and his winning streak to put him into a match with Hall Cogan. And oh, by the way, throw into stipulation that he had to beat Scott Hall, which I don't think anybody thought that was going to happen either, by the way. It felt like, okay, here comes a swerve. They're going to have him wrestle Scott. Then the NWO is going to run in and they're going to fuck Bill Goldberg. and then blah, blah, blah, blah, because that's typically what we would have done, quite frankly, not denying that. But in this case, we wanted to do something different.

Hulk wanted to do something different. So we put Scott Hall out there, unexpected as it was, you know, Goldberg, you know, cleared that challenge and that hurdle that was thrown in front of him. And now there was so much anticipation, nobody in the world thought that Goldberg was going to beat Hulk Hogan on national television, that it just fit. And that's how it all came together. That's why it came together so quickly. It wasn't because of ticket sales.

It wasn't because of anything else. It was just because the timing was right. We were feeling the pressure and the opportunity prevailed. I shouldn't say prevailed. It presented itself. Do you think if you guys were still dominating in the ratings, the smash would have happened here? No.

So here's the other thing that people are going to be critical of and I've always felt like you have a really great answer for this because I've seen you answer this in our live show with Bruce and I don't know a dozen other times but I'm sure a lot of our listeners this is what they want to know and I think you have a really strong explanation and you know where I'm going with this a lot of people say why would you give away a show like this a match like this that would do so well on pay-per-view why would you give it away on free TV and I'll let you take it from here Yeah, I'm going to try to break the answer down into pieces that perhaps will make a little bit more sense rather than just throwing an answer out there.

Again, putting everything in context, look at what made nitro successful. Look at the elements, the creative, the choices that we utilize starting in 95 and improving upon a 96 and 97. that really put us in a position from being, you know, a distant number two that was on the verge of going out of business to becoming the dominant wrestling organization in the world. And that formula was, you know, spontaneity, live action, putting high quality, pay-per-view quality matches on free television. Going back to 95 and 96 and 97, that was the big critique of us. And people thought we were out of our minds for doing it. That was how we got to the dance. That's how we beat him.

And this match was consistent with the formula that had made us so successful started three years earlier. That's number one. And I think that was probably the biggest reason. The second biggest reason is we were a television company. We were general, our revenue was fine at that point still. We were feeling the pressure and, you know, we were getting bounced around in the ratings pretty good, but it didn't have a net effect on our bottom line. What did have a net effect on our bottom line, in my opinion, long term, was what was happening with our television ratings.

And my belief then, as now, if I was faced with the exact same situation, I would do the exact same thing. And oh, by the way, I would have 100% support from Ted Turner in the Turner organization because they were a television company. They weren't a pay-per-view company. Their goal was to keep their ratings on T&T and TBS at that point as high as they possibly could. That was their primary focus. Their secondary focus was revenue. And that had been that way from the time Ted Turner purchased WCW or the NWA out of bankruptcy. Ted Turner would tell executives throughout the entire Turner organization from 1989 and 1990, 91, and 92, 93, and all the way up to 94.

Look, I have this property because it delivers eyeballs to the network, and we can then convert those eyeballs into other programming opportunities. We can migrate them to other forms of entertainment on our networks. That's why Ted Turner had the property. So that psychology and that strategy, if you will, still existed. So when it was my decision to put that match, because it was my decision, I didn't have to go ask permission, I didn't have to ask Ted or Harvey Schiller or anybody else. else when it was when the decision came to you know putting that match on free tv you know in my mind

i'm going to achieve two goals number one i'm going to raise the stakes and i'm going to put nitro back on the map and we're going to get the buzz that we're starting to lose back number one and number two it will satisfy the mandate that i have from turner corporate to build a television property is that simple i just think a lot of people when they just look at the wrestling with business as a whole, they sort of always think with that old school wrestling promoter mentality. They don't necessarily think about the wrestling company being owned by a television company because in a traditional sense, there's no chance that a Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, ever happened on Raw if they were a WWE and Vince McMahon property, right?

I don't know that. I mean, that's, you know, it's a hypothetical number one, but I would, I would suggest to you that perhaps just perhaps if the situation had been reversed and you know WWF was losing ground and losing momentum that perhaps they would break the paradigm if you will and do something that they had never done before and put something back on television that they would never otherwise have put on television look they put a lot of things on television I guarantee you back at 93 and 94 95 Vince McMahon would have never put on television

You would have never seen Stone Cold Steve Austin climbing up on the top turnbuckle and flipping off the audience and chugging beer in 1994, 1995, and 1996. It would have never happened. You would have never had May Young giving birth to a hand. You know, you would never have had Sable walking around half dress on a leash barking like a freaking dog. There was a lot of things that were on Monday Night Raw that would have never been on Monday, Monday Night Raw had there not been competition. So, you know, anybody that says, well, Vince McMahon would have never done that, I say, you know, you're in the fan business. You're not in the television or wrestling business. And that's okay.

I don't mean it to be a criticism. But, you know, a lot of that, and there's no other word to use the narrative, you know, the prevailing logic, I guess, is another way of saying it, that people have read about in all of the dirt sheets and seems to have, you know, been able to sustain its life through a couple generations now or a generation of wrestling fans is only but. able to do so because a lot of that chatter came from wrestlers themselves and wrestlers are in the wrestler business wrestlers are not necessarily in the television business wrestlers are not even in the televised wrestling business they know a lot about what's going on inside of the ring they know a lot about their particular craft but none of them have ever been on the business side of the wrestling business so it's easy for that kind of thought to to get a hold in the community and kind of end up in a dirt sheet and all of a sudden become fact

but you know we we were doing what a we had done to get to the dance in the first place and be doing what we had to do to kind of fight off the competition all right here when we're talking about drawing houses let's talk about building a house at brandnew house dot com you see brandnew house dot com can get you into a brand new house with no money down i know it sounds too good to be true and let me just tell you if you're out shopping for a house right now new is just better not only do you get a warranty you also get freedom of choice. So instead of getting stuck with what someone else picked, and all their toenail clippings and their carpet and their old used toilet, no, you can get a brand new house at brandnewhouse.com and you get to pick everything, your color of brick, your kitchen countertops, your flooring, your tile, your shower, everything. You get to pick. New is just better. And we make it fast and easy at brand newhouse.com right now. You don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of your pocket. So what are you waiting?

for. It just takes a few clicks right now to get into a brand new house at brandnewhouse.com. That's brandnewhouse.com. Don't think you're stuck in your old house. We can even help you with that at brand new house.com. And I'm a lesson number 65084, Equal Housing Lender. Well, I mean, you saved Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair, their first match. You saved it for Bash at the Beach and brought out all the big guns. I've added a pay-per-view. That's obviously pre-Nitro. Had the focus shifted that much from revenue to ratings based on the creation of Nitro and the...

Yeah, but, Conor, that's a really good question because it forces one to look at two different periods of time. And the answer is yes. If you... And again, I think this particular episode of Nitro... going into our pay-per-view in San Diego the following week is a perfect example of a formula that had been working for us. The hotter the television, the hotter the buy rate on the pay-view. It's not like a leap of fucking logic to go, wait a minute.

If we can do a, if we can pop a five rating, if we get five or six million people to tune in the nitro, chances are our buy rate's going to be a lot better going into the pay-per-view. Granted, that single match would have drawn a ton of money on pay-per-view. I'm not arguing that. I admit that freely. But since that wasn't really our goal at that particular time, and our goal was to, like I say, get all of our momentum back because that's a long-term decision. Putting Goldberg and Hulk Hogan in a pay-per-view match is a short-term choice. Yeah, and we would have made whatever we would have made, $30, $40 million.

Great. You know, in the big scheme of things, it's not that big a deal. in the long run, getting Nitro back on track and getting our feet back underneath us would have made the difference between $150 or $200 million in the long run. So even from a financial point of view, you have to look at short-term versus long-term goals and a long-term strategy was there. Now, that same situation didn't exist when we had Hogan and Flair. We were still very much a – we were a revenue-generated company,

but our ratings were so horseshit at the time that the only – ratings revenue that we could generate or the only revenue that we could generate was really off of pay-per-view because advertisers weren't buying us. That was early on. That was pre-Nitro, as you pointed out, until Nitro came along and advertisers started looking like Valvaline. You saw the Valvene promotion inside of this particular show. We couldn't have touched a Valvene back when we had Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair in the ring. They wouldn't have picked up their phone and taken our calls. Let me ask this. Obviously, we're playing a lot of hypotheticals here. But you guys didn't really have a television rights fee the way Vince McMahon does now.

Now that he has a contract where he's getting paid X amount of dollars for providing the content to the USA Network or the Fox or whoever, it does feel like that would change the answer again because you would sort of try to keep it separate. Now, of course, now we're talking about the advent of the network, etc., etc. But let's just pretend for a minute if WCW was not owned by Turner. And let's say, in fact, it's not even WCW anymore. Now it's Verne Gaudea, the old school promoter you learned from, and he's getting paid to produce a show for WCW or for the AWA and Nitro and T&T and Turner and blah, blah,

but he's getting a rights fee is what I'm driving at. He would look at those as like separate line items, but because there is no television deal in place necessarily, I mean, obviously you have a deal where you have access, but should not necessarily be compensated for it. It changes the whole conversation. Like, in the Verdaganya imagination that I just created, that I just freestyled, this is definitely a pay-per-view, and the answer is way different, right?

Absolutely. I mean, let's look at WCW at that time, and you're absolutely right. WCW did not get a nickel from turnover. There was no licensing deal. There wasn't even, you know, I don't want to go so far in a week here that people get board. But when when the financials would come out at the end of the year, you know, when WCW would look at its loss and its revenue, so much of the transactions that took place on our books within WCW were intercompany allocations, either from the expense side or from

the revenue side. Meaning if we put on a pay-per-view and turn our home video distributed that pay-per-view internationally or wherever they did it, there would be an intercompany allocation of X that would come from Turner Home Video. It was all one big company, but we would get pieces of it, right? And when it came to television, there was no intercompany allocation on the revenue side for the television property, meaning unlike, you know, WWE, and let's just leave its current deal off the table right now. But, you know, at the time, you know, we're talking about 98.

wwe was making its revenue off of u.s.a network and they were probably getting i don't know i have no firsthand knowledge and i'm only guessing but i would imagine they were getting somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five hundred thousand dollars uh an episode for monday night raw which would offset a lot of their cost of production maybe not all maybe maybe maybe most but they were i'm guessing four five hundred maybe more thousand dollars an episode for that content we weren't getting anything for hours zero we had the expense of it and in some cases it came as an intercompany allocation expense so we weren't writing checks necessarily when we were using you know turner broadcasting um cameraman and turn of broadcasting trucks and things like that and there was some you know company allocation

and expense against those things but for the most part we didn't get a lot of the revenue that w f or e at that time was getting so it it does change the conversation. It is a different dynamic because the companies were set up differently. Well, let's talk about the money you were getting. You guys drew what heck of a gate here? Meltzer says that the attendance figure given on the air is 39,919. But the actual number is actually higher, 41,412 folks, which is rare.

Normally in wrestling, you pump it up, but you actually had more here. The paid attendance here is 35,5,514. which dominated all the company records that were set in the same building in January of that year and it blew out of the water the Starcade gate as well so this is one of the all time gates in wrestling history when you hear it being listed with shows like WrestleMania 3 and WrestleMania 8 and all these giant shows that's kind of make you feel pretty proud that not only did you do it you did it on a relative short schedule.

I, you know, I just don't think about it that way. I guess in my mind I do keep things in perspective. Even at that time, it was great. I'm not denying it, but it was like I would have much rather have had three weeks of consistent ratings, you know, dominating WWE at that time because that's where my focus was. Again, my focus wasn't on that particular, you know, house show, or excuse me, that that venue in terms of ticket sales it's a great thing i'm not denying it i think what it said to me more

and it probably spoke to me more watching the show today than it even did back then is to see that many people who you know had purchased a ticket for television when less than five years earlier you couldn't get winos to stay awake for a two-hour show at center stage that's great i mean that's what says a lot to me more so than the dollar amount and the records and all of that kind of thing and maybe it should have meant more to me but to see that crowd and to know that we created that much energy and enthusiasm and by the way even you know and this is me now looking back this is 20 20 hindsight because I certainly swear to God wasn't looking at it this way back then but I look at it now and I think my God between what we did and what WWF was doing

you know there's a combined you know number of close to 10 million people watching wrestling now there's some duplication in there and that's another kind of in the weeds conversation for another show but if you just take nielsen numbers at face value to have 10 million people are close to it watching wrestling on a Monday night that's what makes me proud right now you know back then I was like fuck we we got to beat them this Monday night but now as I look back at it that's what makes me the most proud it's one hell of a week for wcw2 because people talk about this show almost as a stand alone and i think maybe they forget this is the go home episode for the bash of the beach 1998 which would break all kinds of pay-per-view records for you guys and of course

a lot of that is centered around the tag team match we're going to have carl malone and ddp taken on dennis rodman and holko can i can i interrupt you right there sure just and i don't mean to do that because it's rude right there should draw drive a wooden stake through the heart of every dirt sheet fucking vampire that tried to make money off of criticizing my decision to put this match on free TV as opposed to a pay-per-view. You just took the words out of my mind in saying that this show set up, it was the go-home show for a pay-per-view that set records. The biggest.

The biggest. That's it. there in lies the definitive answer as to whether it was a good idea or bad idea. I mean, you can't argue that. You know, a lot of people would say, oh, well, you could save it and you could do it another time. But what they did pop the big rating, drew a big house, is in the record books for attendance and gate, and also six days later was one hell of a payday, the biggest in WCW history up to that point.

But one of the, one of the things that people are nervous about here, and we've never really talked about this is Dennis Rodman no shows this event or at least that's what the dirt sheets would have you believe the night before he appeared at a pearl jam concert in Dallas shirtless and guzzling a bottle of wine on stage where he's up there shoeless trying to sing along until they eventually cut us mic and Eddie Vedder says on the mic I'm guessing you've been drinking for about three days straight the next day he's not at nitro it doesn't answer anyone's call. So you guys have Hogan sort of cover it up in his promo. What was dealing with Dennis Rod would like here just six days before your giant pay-per-view where you've contracted

and committed a boatload of cash for him to be here? Uh, yeah, by that time I knew Dennis well enough. I knew he would, I knew he'd make the pay-per-view. And that's what I was most concerned about. Um, I wasn't worried about it. I, Look, Dennis, Dennis was Dennis. You know, Phil Jackson probably had some of the same issues. In fact, I know he did with Dennis. So it wasn't unique. It wasn't surprising.

It wasn't like he caught us completely or caught me unprepared. It wasn't an issue that we couldn't work around. It was a pain in the ass. It was frustrating. but only on a limited basis, you know, it just wasn't that big of a concern. I knew he'd show up when the time came, and when it was important, I should say, for the pay-per-view. I mean, it would have, it should have been important. He should have made, he should have made it.

He should have made nitro. But it wasn't the end of the world that he didn't. What's, uh, what's Hogan saying when all this is happening in Rodman's not here? Is Dallas nervous? What's Carl got to say about all this? Carl didn't have much. I love Carl Malone, by the way. He's one of the coolest cats I ever had a chance to work with from outside of wrestling or inside, for that matter. He's a very, very cool dude to this day. He's a very, he was, a very calm. He was going to show up and do his job. He wasn't worried about Dennis. He was worried about himself. He was focused on himself. He wanted to make sure he was ready. He assumed, I guess. I don't know. I didn't ever sit. down with him and say, what are you feeling? Carl, now that Dennis No, showed us on a nitro, what's going through your mind. I never had that conversation with him, but being around him

that night and subsequently during the week and talking to him, because I stayed in close touch with him all that week, he wasn't concerned. He was a, he was a very calm, very deliberate performer and an athlete. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Mom's and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched, true crime stories.

Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to Who Donnets, where you're a go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Let's talk about the show itself. We open up with the J.J. Dillon Pro from Thunder where they announced the match and then we get right to an in-ring promo with you holding the mic for Hollywood and in the background there's Ed Leslie with the belt over his

shoulder what's you think of this opening promo where they're teasing that it doesn't even really matter because Hogan's not going to have to defend the belt because he'll never get past the mystery man that Goldberg has to be in order to get that title shot and that was the you know that was the intent that was the creative intent of that particular scene And it had achieved that. So I, you know, on a scale on one to ten, in terms of it being effective, it was probably a nine or an eight. Look, I talked last week about why when I see Brutus the barber beefcake or the disciple or whatever, the zodiac or whatever the fuck he was, it always makes my skin crawl because I, because of the way I feel about him now. I don't want to repeat what I said last week but you know I wish I wouldn't have had to look at him today especially standing behind Hogan carrying the belt I mean that's look at Hulk as I said last week trying not to repeat myself Hulk is one of the most loyal people he's loyal to a fault and I mean to a to a big fault but that's who he is and I think he'd rather be

loyal, then not. And he was loyal to Brutus. They had been friends, you know, since the beginning of, you know, Hulk's started in professional wrestling. And if you look at Brutus at that time, he got himself in great shape. So I think Hulk was hoping that this could be his big break because he wanted to try to help Hulk. And it wasn't just Brutus.

You know, Hulk did the same thing for a lot of people. And I'm not going to call them out and in any way hurt their feelings or, or suggest that they didn't deserve anything that they had. I'm not going to do that. But you can look at the people around him at the time and recognize that, you know, Hulk, when he was loyal to somebody, he wanted to try to create opportunity for them, whether they necessarily were the right people in the right time or not. And Brutus was one of them.

But I think at that particular time, if you looked at Brutus, even in that promo, he was probably in the best shape he'd ever been in. And I think, you know, Hulk in his mind, knowing him as well as I do, he was probably thinking okay he's finally doing the work he's he's putting in the work this is this is his shot i'm going to try to do whatever i can uh to get him the rub to set him up i i bet everything that i've ever owned that that would that would have been the case next up we've got booker t defending his tv title against dean malinko jericho is going to show up and distract malinko booker t gets the win let's move on and talk about one of our favorite folks of course we're

talking about Henson Shaving. You know, if Rick Flares around, there's got to be a razor nearby. Hey, this is the razor that Eric and I really, really trust, know, and love. Even before we clicked record today, Dave Silva was bragging to me about how much he loves his Henson Racer. We think you've got to meet these folks. First of all, I want to explain their backstory. Henson Shaving is actually a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer, and these folks have

made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover. And now they're bringing that same precision engineering to your shaving. experience. What they're doing is they're using their aerospace grade C&C machines to make metal razors that are just 0.0013 inches. That's less than the thickness of a human hair. And that means a more secure and a more stable blade that gives you a vibration-free shave. It gets better too. The razor actually has built-in channels to evacuate hair and cream and that makes clogging virtually impossible. Seriously, Henson wanted to make the best razor, not the best razor business. And And that means no plastic, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades, and no planned obsolescence.

The Henson razor works with a standard dual-edged blade to give you that old-school shave with the benefits of new school tech. And once you own a Henson razor, it's only about $3 to $5 per year to replace the blades. Think about that. Three to $5 a year? Let's say no to subscriptions and let's say yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit Hensonshaving.com slash Bischoff to pick the razor for you and use the number. the code Bischoff and man you'll get two free years worth of blades that's right two years

worth of blades all free with your razor just be sure to add them to your cart one more time that's 100 free blades when you head to H-E-N-S-O-S-H-A-V-I-N-G dot com slash Bischoff and use the promo code Bischoff then we see Raven working with the canyon they go to a D-Q when Saturn interferes and eventually Saturn does a ploncha off the top of rope down to the floor where Raven is laying across the table that doesn't break, which had to be brutal. Canyon, of course, is here working carrying the mortis mask, not actually as the mortis character. What can you tell us about these opening two matches? You watched them for the first time in 20 years? What do you think? Um, I love, you know, I'll say it again,

man, Booker T watching him, you know, back in 98. I'm a bigger fan of them now than I've ever been. You know, sometimes you don't appreciate things when they're happening right in front of you until long afterwards. And I think Burger T's certainly an example of that for me in terms of, you know, the talent that we had in the ring. He was phenomenal. And I will say the same for Dean Malenko. You know, and we'll talk about it later on, the promo between Jericho and Malenko, where, you know, Jericho suggested that the reason Dean doesn't look like his brothers because his father was on the road all the time. Number one, it was a great promo. And number two, Dean was so freaking believe.

and intense. I mean, if it was a television series or a movie, that's exactly the kind of of look and feel and energy that you'd want to create. So I can't say enough good things about Dean Malinko in his match with Booker T and subsequently with Jericho.

As far as, you know, the flock, you know, I was never a fan of it. I didn't like it from the get-go. I just thought the whole thing was just dark and I knew and I know now because I get people telling me now that I love the flock back then. Look, there was a segment of the audience that dug

that kind of vibe or that presentation. They liked characters like that. I didn't. To me, it was like 10 years too late. You know, the whole grunge rock thing had already, in my mind, kind of come and gone, but these guys were living in it. And I just didn't like it. I didn't like the way the matches were laid out. I think it's another typical example of a consistent and persistent flaw in WCW and on Nitro in that we didn't have people that understood finishes. And even when you had a marginal match like this one was, it could have been a great match, had it had a great finish, had it been executed properly, but once again, it was none

of the above. It were marginal characters with whoever laid that match out, did a piss poor job doing it, and the finish was a fecocked a mess. Speaking of messes, we've got Judy Bagwell making her WCW debut in the next segment. She gets out of a limousine and the limo driver unloads a wheelchair and she helps Buff Bagwell, her son, take a seat in and she starts pushing Buff into the arena. Obviously, we remember that back in April on Thunder, Rick Steiner's trying to do a top row bulldog.

Buff slips out of it, accidentally hits his neck on the back of Rick Steiner and has a serious spinal shock incident right there live on TV and everyone is worried that he may never walk again of course things are looking a little better for buff here what's the thinking in involving judy and carton him out for this promo that he does with being jean here i don't think there was a lot of thinking behind it i think that's going to sound great bischoff says nobody was thinking about this segment um i think what we did was just took reality and and let it play itself out on television. The real story was a very,

it was a meaningful story. It was real. You know, Judy was at, you know, Marcus's bedside probably 18 or 20 hours a day. She helped get him through it.

There was no desire to create a, a Judy Bagwell character at the time. That came much later. But, you know, It was just taking reality, as we often did back then, and had often been successful back then, and, you know, she wheeled him out in a wheelchair to tell his story. That had been the first time I think that he had been on television.

It was in Atlanta. Everybody knew about it. We talked about Marcus on TV for, you know, a number of weeks leading up to that. So I think the idea was that if, you know, we're going to bring Marcus out, let's bring him out in Atlanta, and he needed to be in a wheelchair. uh and let's bring his mother out what what's more heartwarming than to have any athlete you know come out with with someone who loves him he marcus wasn't married at the time or if he wasn't it wasn't anything we wanted to put on tv um it just made sense i don't know i don't

think there was a ton of fucking debate over it well there was no debate that uh carl malone had a little help with his promo he's out doing one with ddp and ddp's doing his best to sort of teeing up how much practice and scripting did you guys have to do with Carl to getting comfortable with this dialogue in front of the crowd um that was up to ddp you know clearly they ran it by me um before they went out you know backstage but it's easy to do things backstage you know for guys that you know look car Malone when he came to basketball he was probably at that time not too many people better than him if any at that time um but when i came to you know standing out in front of 35,000 plus people who are cheering and yelling and you can barely hear yourself talk and you've got to remember all this stuff and you've got your partner over here going through his stuff. It can be distracting for anybody that's never done it before and I think that's what we saw. I can guarantee you, especially after having seen it again this morning, you know, Diamond Dallas Page probably worked for days on that promo, making sure that, you know, Carl got his

stuff in and DDP really got his stuff. in now in fairness to diamond dallas page who i love is a as a friend and a brother um there's nobody better at getting himself over in any situation than diamond delis page honestly he will he will find a way to get himself over in the worst of situations and he certainly found a way to get himself over standing next to carl malone so i'm sure just like ddp with his match with randy savage he probably had Carl's sitting back there you know in I'm sure they were communicating during the week I guarantee it page was probably faxing him shit all day and all night long and rehearsing it on the phone and then they rehearsed it when they got to the building and then when they got

out there you know it was what it was next up we see Steve McMichael do a pre-taped interview talking about the reformation of the four horsemen and we also see Scotty Riggs taking on Scott Putsky and Putsky gets a win. Anything you want to mention on the McMichael promo or Putsky and Riggs here? Well, I'll talk about Putsky in a minute. But that McMichael vignette, that promo, as you referred to it, was the first time I'd seen it since it was produced. And I'm not saying this to be a dick or to be critical of anyone or anything.

but I'd like someone to point to to an interview or vignette or promo, whatever you want to call it, done live or tape in WWE over the last six months that was half as good as that one was. Not saying it hasn't happened, but that was a fucking phenomenal promo. For a guy that wasn't in the wrestling business, that to me was an amazing promo and even for guys that are in the wrestling business that was an amazing promo it was believable without being over the top it was focused

it it really put a spotlight on why he was in wcw he put over the company and he put over the company with in a much bigger way than he put over himself which is an art form that's lost on a lot of people. I think he put over the horsemen. You know, he asked permission of Arne Anderson to please let me join the four horsemen. Let these stallions fly. Let the wind hit their face. I mean, there's some good shit there.

And to acknowledge that Steve McMichael lacked the inner ring performance in skill sets, I'll do that. You know, he wasn't a season performance. He was not Chris Benoit. He was not even Scotty Riggs. He was not even Scott Putzky. But as a character and a believable character, they got us a ton of press in a major market in the United States. Again, thinking like someone who's in the television business and who's in the business of the wrestling business and not as a wrestler who happens to be in the business, Steve McMichael checked all the boxes.

and the Dave Meltzers of the world and a lot of people not just picking on Dave but a lot of people might have looked at Steve McMichael and thought what's he doing in the four horsemen surrounded by guys like Garn Anderson

arguably one of the best workers in the history of the business surrounded by Rick Flair another one of the best workers in the business if not the best and characters on top of it and Chris Benoit or whoever else was in the Four Horseman

at the time clearly McMichael didn't have the skill sets inside the ring but outside of the ring he was as good as any of them. He was as believable as Aaron Anderson. He couldn't back it up in the ring, technically speaking, for the hardcore wrestling fan and affectionato

that really, really appreciated great, solid, you know, ring work, admittedly. But from a business perspective, he checked all the boxes. I don't feel well enough to argue today, but next week when I'm feeling better, we're going to start with 10 minutes yelling about Mongo. Fucking A, I can't wait. Because look, our audience right now is going, motherfucker they're not even yelling at each other today i know they're just not and i'm trying i'm

looking for it man i'm waiting for you conrad i literally i've got my left hand up in front of my face my right foot set back about 60% of my right foot my red hand is ready to fucking knock you out verbally and mentally but it's not coming you're not stepping across the line you're not making that move well here's the deal i had heard you sort of defend why this was a little paper review before and i know that the benefit that's going to be the biggest pay per view you guys have ever done six days later and that's never talked about it's just oh what an idiot bischoff was for not putting it on a pay-per-view so you know i think a lot of people expected me to have a different response today scottsky what the fuck is this you know i i expected that so i'm going to

give you something else to gear up for next week okay i thought scottisky had a great look i thought he looked like he sure as fuck looked like a bigger and better star than anybody in the flock he had a ton of potential his work in the ring was marginal at best he understood how to sell he tried to sell he just didn't have the skill set down his flat back bumps look horrible he was awkward but he sold more and probably tried to sell more than a lot of other people who, you know, would probably consider to be better in-ring performers. And he had an amazing look. It just didn't work.

Sometimes that shit happens. You give someone an opportunity that has what appears to be a lot of the right ingredients. And you're hoping that maybe once they get out there in front of the cameras and in front of the people that, you know, it's going to come to life. And sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn't. In this case, it didn't. But I don't think that Scott Putsky is worth, at least. back then is worth just kind of a what the fuck who did that i've seen a lot of shit that was

worse than that on on other people's programs and on ours so you know it wasn't great scotty riggs was horrible i mean part of the reason that you felt you probably feel or felt when you wash it so ambivalent or worse than that about scotty rick or excuse me about Putsky is because nobody gave two shits about Scotty Riggs. He could have set himself on fire and nobody would have thrown him a can of water to put it out. Nobody cared. And it's not, look, it's not his fault. He wasn't positioned properly.

Maybe he didn't get the right opportunities. He was in there with somebody else that nobody cared about. You got two guys in the ring that nobody cares about that was getting no crowd reaction. That's not a cool situation to be in for either one of them. But Riggs wasn't over. There was no way Putsky was going to get a baby face reaction, you know, beating a guy that nobody gave a fuck about. That's just how it works. I'm sorry.

And it's not a reflection on either one of them. It's a reflection on bad booking. Well, let's talk about great booking. And that's what you guys have Jericho out here doing the promo with J.J. Dillon and Dean Malenko. We sort of talked about this earlier where the stipulation is there's no title shot because the title's been sort of in debate. we've talked about this for the past couple of episodes going back to the great american bash episode and the rule that changing dillon lays down is if these guys can't get it together and stop being so physical with each other that the match is going

to be thrown out whoever crosses the lot is disqualified it's over it's not happening and of course eventually jericho crosses the line he starts pretty mundane and says your mother wears army boots but it eventually alleges that his mother had taken and another lover. And so that's why he doesn't like his brother. And of course, Dean flips out. And, uh, eventually it spills over into the next match, which is going to be ultimate dragon or Jericho. Lico doesn't run in, attacks him again. And this time they arrest Dean Malico. And it's pretty unique, I guess, for someone to be arrested on Nitro. They were doing it with great regularity on Raw at this point. What's the thinking of, hey, let's arrest Dean Belico.

I think a casual wrestling fan would say, well, I don't think. they arrest everyone who does a run-in. Well, didn't we arrest Bill Goldberg for stalking Mr. Elizabeth earlier in the year? No, that was that next year. Next year? Yeah. Oh, because I was going to say, we've arrested people. We've had cops coming after the NWO.

We had a significant law enforcement presence on our show pretty consistently. So I don't think it was a unique creative device. It was just a storyline, man. It was just a way to try to, it was a storytelling device. That's all I can say. 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 with this Cremow wash. It's going to combine a rich lathering and hydrating formula with meticulously balanced in 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 body wash 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. Crimo also has a wide range of other grooming products for men. You can get things like shaved. cream and beard oil and shampoo and it's all variety 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 assent. It's available at Walmart, man, or go to Walmart.com. Once again, that's Walmart or Walmart.com. Let's talk about Johnny Swinger and his fucking outfit. I need you to defend this ring jacket that somebody said, oh, you look great, buddy. Go ahead. I can't. I was fucking good. I'm going to put down my hands. I'm going to let you take a free shot, put it right on my chin. I'll spit out my teeth and get back up and keep on going, but I can't defend that one. Johnny Swinger here, of course, is taking on Chavo Guerrero Jr. Chavo Guerrero is, uh,

do it's a pretty fun stuff at the time. He's got on the hard hat and this is in the Pepe era. Uh, it is what it is. Let's talk about public enemy. They're going to be here. Uh, and this is like baby. Well, let's talk about Pepe. Don't you want to know where Pepe came from? Well, I assumed we would talk about Pepe another time, but if you want to do a Pepe sidebar, I'm in. Well, no, I looked at your notes and I thought you want to. to talk about pepe but that's up to you man you're calling these shots you were the podfather you were the captain of this motherfucker chip but i'm going to talk about whatever you want to talk about don't ask me i'm just here to answer questions well great let's talk about disco inferno followed

by elix right followed by Tokyo magnum followed by the public enemy wearing yellow braves jerseys in atlanta red and yellow amazing chat me up public enemy uh this is sort of silly they're you using garbage cans of course they do a double table spot with Tokyo Magnum who the fuck is is Tokyo Magnum I mean this is this is some silly throwaway shit right in the middle of a big show that's exactly what it was it was filler it was Kevin Sullivan Kevin Sullivan like this kind of stuff good or bad and a lot of look listen I know I always sound like I'm burying somebody or whenever something negative comes up like that was Kevin's but that was Kevin Sullivan's shit

he was a fan of public enemy that was his style you know Kevin's body of work speaks for itself I don't have to say another word that was his that was his thing and look I've said this before I didn't like it I've never liked it I still don't like it I will never like that kind of a match I hate gimmick matches particularly ones that involves fucking garbage cans and pizza tins and pie pans and all the other stupid shit that you know we see so often in a hardcore matches that don't make any sense at all i've never liked it i never will but some people do so there you go some people do kevin did there it was it's fucking horrible throughout the show we've seen a lot of the landmark wins we're promoting

that nobody's ever been undefeated as long as goldberg has and if he wins he'll be the first undefeated champion in the history of wrestling so we're going to see his big like landmark wins you see like 50 and 75 and 100 and along the way in order to sort of build even see his first win and I think a lot of this is probably done to highlight his success but also to maybe reintroduce who he is to a lot of new listeners or new new viewers like my dad who's the very most casual wrestling fan he probably would have tuned into this with me and said uh Hulk Hogan's going to beat that guy I never even heard of that guy so through watching the show you get to see his landmark wins. But unfortunately, it's guys like Hugh Morris and Glacier and Rick Fuller,

but then eventually they do show the big win over Raven, uh, who is at least one on television that we can recall. But now it's time for the big match against the mystery man. Earlier in the show, we saw a limousine pull up and the NW black and white's waiting on him and out pops, Scott Hall. He finishes his cocktail, sets the glass on top of the limo and comes into the building. And now we know it's been revealed. Scott Hall is the mystery opponent for Goldberg. And Goldberg has to beat him in order to advance to the world title match with Hulk Hogan. And man, he has his work cut out for him. This is Goldberg's 106th win. But if you go back and watch this, you have to feel sorry for Scott Hall

because, and I watched this at the time as a kid. And I thought Goldberg was the man. I mean, he's a cyborg. He's running through everybody. This is incredible. But now you look back at it later and you understand more of the wrestling business and you think man scott hall has this universal reputation for being able to get a good match out of anybody and now it's a tall order because this guy is as green as grass and he's got to try to find a way to make this match look presentable in front of the biggest possible viewing audience not just in the arena but a home too when you watch this match back for the first time in 20 years what did you think i think how it did a great job i look it it wasn't you know it wasn't a five-star dave melzer classic it was not

you know a match that you know in wwe people are going to put up you know down of the performance center and for it and say okay let's watch this match and because these guys are going to show you how this kind of a match is done it's not that but you know goldberg had been in the business for less than a year i think at that point that's right um you put him out there first of all we all know what you know bill was like he's super intense guy. Now he's in his hometown because Bill is, you know, Bill's a unique cat in that respect. It meant a lot to him, his friends, his family, you know, guys on the Atlanta Falcons were there, you know, sports media were there, everybody. There was a ton of pressure on Bill. And he had limited skill sets and limited experiences. So for him to be able to go in there and have the match that he did have, that allowed us to advance the storyline. And that's what that match was supposed to do. It wasn't supposed to be a five-star, you know, classic match. It was supposed to help us advance a storyline. And I thought Scott Hall did a great job doing it.

It got us where we needed to be. And to me, that was the only thing that was important. Nobody thought he was good. By the way, I'd like to, well, nobody's going to ever admit it. I would venture to say it's a safe bet that 99% of the people watching that show thought that the fix was in and that we were going to fuck Goldberg with Scott Hall in the NWO. Well, let me tell you, as a kid, I thought the plan would be. he beat Scott Hall, whoever the mystery guy is, but then the screw job happens in the main event.

So somehow Goldberg would still win, but he would win by DeHue. So the streak is still alive, and it sets up a pay-per-view rematch later. I didn't think for a minute you guys were doing a title switch. That's some convoluted booking. I'm glad I didn't hire you when you were 12. Yeah, instead you had the dungeon of doom.

Great, Cole. I didn't have the dungeon. Well, I did. It's my bad. You're right. So Hume and two Guerrera, uh, pin psychosis in three minutes and 17 seconds. Uh, the flock runs in and beats them both up. It's, it's weird to me that you've got, I mean, just look at the talents on this show so far.

Johnny Swinger, Scott Putzky, Jericho, Ultima Dragon, Dean Malenko, Public Enemy, Disco Inferno, Tokyo Magnum, Scott Hall, Goldberg, Hovingtoot psychosis. Who's not here? I mean, everybody's here. The giant beats Jim Duggan. Um, um, with a choke slam that I was really pleasantly surprised by. I had no idea that Duggan could cooperate like that. He got pretty damn high. Kudos to both guys on that. And then Kevin Green does a run-in and has a little bit of interaction with the giant.

I don't know how hard it is to look like a badass wearing white loafers, but Kevin Green was doing his best. And then we see DDP with Carl Malone in this corner, beat Jim the Anvil Knightheart in two minutes and 20 seconds with a diamond cutter. Uh, we got a wolf pack interview and then, uh, Lugar and Sting drop sick boy and Kidman in 29 seconds when Lex racked sick boy and sting gives the death drop to Kidman. Anything you want to mention, it feels like you guys are just running stuff here that was just maybe on the format and we got to get it in and out. Lots of two minutes and 30 second matches here. That's what it was. I mean, a lot of fast pace action. We got everybody on the show that we could.

could possibly get there was some throwaway matches on there there were matches that weren't leading to the pay-per-view uh there were people that we were trying to get over there were people that we're trying to get exposure to uh all of the above some of it sucked bad main event it's time goldberg comes out takes his u.s belt off throws it at the feet of charles robinson wcw goes to commercial when they come back hogan comes out strutton play an air guitar with the big gold belt and announces i'm going to kick goldberg's butt he cruises to the ring we the big announcement. The match goes exactly like you'd imagine. The crowd is popping for everything. Hogan uses the belt and Charles Robinson does not disqualify him. The announcers

quickly say, oh, they're letting it go because it's such a big night. When Bill eventually wrestles the belt away, he refuses to use it as you would want your hero to do. And eventually, it looks like there's going to be the screw job because Kurt comes out and then DDP and Malone come out and they give Kurt a diamond cutter on the floor. Hogan's watching all this, and when he turns around, he gets speared to hell and jackhammered for the pin, and in five minutes and 56 seconds, all of a sudden, we've got our first dual champion here, the United States champion and the world champion Bill Goldberg celebrates in the corner. We get lots of replays and a huge crowd reaction. No one is racing for the aisles. People

are content to stay and hold their signs and cheer and chant for Goldberg. And when I watch this match ironically enough it's what we covered on the tony shivani podcast this week too when i watched it with tony i sort of freestyled and i think i may have even mentioned this to you before that to me and you're going to shit all over this uh colberg is like wcw's version of the ultimate warrior maybe he wasn't the best technical wrestler but he had a great look he had a unique entrance the fans were really behind him they usually tried to hide it with short matches and power moves. And then, just like at WrestleMania 6 with the Ultimate Warrior, Goldberg's in the corner holding up two belts having beat Hulk Hogan. He's the world champion. And he had

sort of the middle belt at the same time. What did you think of the match? And what do you make of my, I'm sure you're going to argue at observation that maybe he was WCW's version of the ultimate warrior? I'm not going to argue with that. I mean, there's, there's, I understand why you say that and as you were laying that out i went you know there are there are parallels there's no doubt about it you know ultimate warrior was not a great worker he's a phenomenal character right that brought amazing intensity and energy to the ring that connected massively with the audience great so who's going to fire him right i mean i don't i don't even think i'm hoping that if Bill hears this

or reads somebody's version of what we're discussing that he would agree because I think to be compared for a guy who'd only been in the business for less than a year to be able to get the kind of reaction he got and create the emotion he created in that ring

after being in the business for less than a year I don't know I don't think the comparison is necessarily a bad one. I think Bill was a better athlete by a mile and a half. I don't think that's even arguable than the warrior. But we didn't see that athleticism until later on. And even then, we never really got to see Bill Goldberg

at a 20-minute or 30-minute or 60-minute match. That wasn't his style. It wasn't his character. But at that time, in his career, at that moment on this night, on July 6th, 1998, in front of 35,000, people in this hometown of Atlanta, yeah, you could probably take up Bill Goldberg and put in, you know, Ultimate Warrior from a few years earlier and find a lot of similarities. The biggest one, though, is that just he, you know, Bill Goldberg had, you know, so much

more athleticism behind him, and credibility, quite frankly. You know, Ultimate Warrior was a bodybuilder that got into professional wrestling. Bill Goldberg was a professional football player that got into professional wrestling, two different levels of credibility. but their characters at that same point, a lot of similarity. So I don't disagree with you. Let me ask you this.

You know, there's lots of rumor and innuendo about how this match with Hogan came together. And I know you sort of laid it out and you're in the parking lot at the deli and blah, blah, blah. But a lot of people say that the reason Hogan agreed to do this is because he saw the money in it and he saw that he would be able to get the credit

in front of Turner executives who were there that night. And these are conspiracy theorists. I know that's what you'll say. But let me ask you this. When this loss happens, it feels like when you've got a guy who's undefeated like this in the locker room and it's blood in the water the sharks are circling everybody wants to be the guy to beat the guy who's undefeated and to me this feels like a thing where Hogan would say okay I'm going to drop the

belt to him but there's going to be money in a rematch down the line and I'll get the win back was that ever discussed no and here's here here is the The flaw in the premise of your conspiracy theorists who would believe that nonsense. I'm going to get through a whole show without saying bullshit, I promise. Oh, God. Damn it. I did it again. I was trying not to say bullshit.

If the premise of that position is that Hogan only agreed to do it because there's be a payday in it for him right off the bat that the premise goes down the sewer because Hogan's payday didn't matter whether he had another big time match with Bill Goldberg or not his pay was going to be his pay that's a flaw that's that that's the disease that it's like a cancer that eats away at the fucking brains of the the people that read this kind of nonsense and theory and conspiracy in the dirt sheets and on message boards and all the other ways and means that people who like to think they know more than they do communicate about important moments like this. Hogan's paycheck wouldn't have varied a nickel whether he would have beaten Magnum Tokyo or whether he would have lost to Bill Goldberg. and it wouldn't matter

a week later or a month later or six months later his contract wasn't up for negotiation there were no stakes there was no financial gain whatsoever to Hulk Hogan

by deciding on his own to call me and suggest that we do this match he was motivated by doing the right thing for Bill that's it and people that want to believe that Hulk Hogan is self-

fish and they only looked out for himself because look that's what people have been saying for so many years in the dirt sheets that was the that even when they didn't come out and say it it was always inferred and implied and there was always these nuanced little you know messages between the lines where you know ogan never did anything if unless it was a benefit himself i'm calling bullshit on there i did it again i'm calling that one it's not true i was fucking there i was on the other end of the phone people want to believe it believe it believe it People don't want to believe it. Go back and crawl in your little fucking dirt box hole

and go back and read old dirt sheets and satisfy yourself that you know something that no one else does. But it's not true. There was only one motivation, and that was because Hulk felt like this was a great, that was a great moment. He knew the reaction that he would get. He's a performer.

Do I think he was looking forward to being in the middle of the ring and being a part of that reaction? Absolutely. Is that selfish? No, that's a performer. But there was no financial investment. or financial incentive in any way, shape, or form form to do it. Yep, ladies and gentlemen, even at this advanced stage of my life, I dig me a good time.

And it's all about performance. Bluetooth has been an advertiser, a sponsor here on 83 weeks for a long time. And I've been a customer ever since. It's got the same active ingredients as Viagra, Salas, and LaVitra, but in chewable tablets. And Conrad loves this part for a fraction of the cost. You can take them any time, day or night. Just plan a little bit ahead. For me, 15, 20 minutes, works like a dream.

And the process is simple. Sign up at Bluetooth.com, consult with one of their licensed medical providers. And once you're approved, you'll receive your prescription within a matter of days. The best part, and it's all done online. You don't have to go to the doctor. You don't have any awkward conversations. No waiting in line at the pharmacy. Because we all know how much fun that is, right?

It sucks. Blue Chew's tablets are. made in the USA and Prepared Ship direct to your door in a discrete package. Does it work? Don't you think you need it? Well, I don't know. Try it for a month and see you're going to love it. This is me and I do. You could be missing out some of the best sex in your life with you two men everywhere are excited to see the postman because when the postman shows up, your package has arrived and you know, your package has really arrived, right? You always say first impressions are important. But what about lasting impressions?

Say there's nothing sexier than confidence. And Blue Chee gives you the performance boost you need to have all the confidence in the world. Blue Chew wants to help you have better sex. Discover your options at BluChoo.com. Chew it and do it. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. Try Blue Chew free when you use our promo code 83 weeks at checkout. Just pay five bucks in shipping.

What did I just say? I said, just pay five bucks. in shipping. That's it. That's bluechew.com promo code 83 weeks to receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank bluechew for sponsoring our podcast. So when WCW had a pay-per-view that did particularly well, Hogan wouldn't participate. No, he got a piece of the pay-per-view revenue.

He would have, he would have on it. In fact, if your premise, is true. If what you're trying to suggest is true, then Hogan would have been the first one to say, why don't we save it for a pay-per-view? Right? Well, listen, I'm not arguing. Here's my, here's my takeaway. And here's the reason I think that conspiracy makes sense. Hogan Goldberg goes on to be the most viewed wrestling match in cable television history. It's the first quarter hour in the history of wrestling to reach five million homes. It drew five million 54,000 homes, which is an excess of seven million viewers total it does a 6.91 rating and an 11.8 share and it broke the all-time

record that to me feels like something a guy like Hulk Hogan who I have tremendous respect for who I marked out like a little kid for a couple of weeks ago not disparaging Hogan but it does feel like at some level it's like at this point we're trying to break records we don't have to prove no no no you're assuming that because of what you think you know of a guy like Hogan as you just said, but you're wrong. Conrad, if I came to you. Hang on, hang on. You're saying I'm wrong. Hogan didn't want to set records.

I'm saying you're wrong if you think that that was the reason that he was inspired or, or chose to suggest that we do this match. I'm saying you're flat out wrong. Here's what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting Hogan knows if I make this match happen, it'll beat, it'll beat raw. We're getting our ass kicked. So it'll look like I was on top when it won and we got the momentum. them back and we popped a big rating and set an all-time rating and then there'll be in such high

demand for the rematch we'll clean up on the fucking pay-per-view to me that makes total logical sense if i know i'm getting paid on the back end of the pay-per-view and right now we're getting our ass cakes but if we do this one match and i do this one thing it turns the whole momentum around for the company that looks like hey add a boy hulk had a way to not be selfish and pop a big rating and set a record and you get the credit for that and oh by the way on the back end i'm going to get paid handsomely for the rematch. But there was no rematch. There was no, look, if what you, I'm going to, I'm going to try hard.

Look, I'm tight with Hulk, so it's easy for me to get defensive over things like this because I know him better. I knew him then. How much you know? But let's just play this out. Let's play, let's play out the conspiracy theory and the prevailing perception that Hulk is a shrewd businessman who's only out for himself and if he's going to make a choice for a decision he's going to make sure that it benefits himself wait hang on now to be clear i didn't say any of that i

said that this would turn business around and it would draw a big buy rate and a big rating it did both so i i don't think anybody people who say that hogan just looks out for himself they don't understand business because that's i mean it is what i'm not disparaging hogan for that i'm not sitting here saying hogan's pushing someone down but to say that's that Hogan is not a shrewd businessman and not an opportunist not in a negative way because that word does have a negative connotation but hey when you see an opportunity you pouts on it I did with a podcast with you you did with a podcast with me we could say opportunist in a bad way or a positive way if he saw an opportunity to pop a big rating why would you not want to do

that if you're in the spotlight I listen I agree with you I'm not arguing that point the point that I'm arguing that I started to argue was your suggestion that the conspiracy theory is defensible because if you believe that Hogan was all of the things that people who believe in that conspiracy thought he was, then Hulk Hogan would have been smart enough and shrewd enough, especially with an attorney like Henry Holmes, who represented not only Hulk Hogan, but also Bill Goldberg, would have made sure before that night that there would have been a contract in place or an agreement in place, an addendum to an existing agreement that would have assured Hulk Hogan that there was going to be a rematch on a pay-per-view.

But guess what? That didn't happen. because that was not the motivation. Okay. That's what I want to talk about. So let's talk about that. Like I get there's no contract in place, but surely when he's dropping it, I mean,

that's not, that's not Hogan looking out for himself. That's just like commonly accepted booking. Is it not to say, oh, well, the fucking rematch are huge, right?

That's not crazy to suggest. It's not crazy to suggest. No, it wasn't the, it wasn't the conversation. It wasn't the reason we did it. It wasn't the, wasn't the plan. It never was prior to the match with Goldberg, and it never was after the match

with Goldberg. It was a, it was a, it was a, it was spontaneous combustion at its best. It was the essence of what made Nitro Nitro. You have to tune in because you never know what's going to happen. Other people have talked about that kind of branding and marketing for their show. You know, certainly the WWE tried to emulate us in that respect when they went live like we did. And the reason you go live is you try to condition your audience to believe that you have to tune in for this stuff. Because it's live, anything can happen. But you have to deliver on that message. And you have to deliver on that branding in order for the audience to believe that it's true and effectively harness that type of psychology for your audience. That's what this was designed to do. It was

the right time at the right place. So there was no plan in effect. No discussion. We had other plans. We had other plans for August. We had a pay-per-view already set. We already knew what we were doing in August. So there was just no discussion. Maybe wrongly, I will admit, probably dropped the fucking ball, not having the rematch. I'll take that hit. Right now, I'll take it. But I'm telling you, that was not the discussion then.

Why didn't it happen? Because like I just said, we had other plans that we were committed to and didn't feel that it was necessary to throw out everything that we had in play at that time. including Carl Malone and Dennis Rodman and all the marketing and promotion that is going into that pay-per-view, we didn't feel like it was necessary to disrupt all of that. We did have a plan going out three or four months. We had pay-per-views that were advertised for July and August and September and October. And all of that didn't make any sense. Let me ask this.

And I know we're getting sidebarred here, and I'm trying to wrap things up here. did you already have a plan for warrior hogan and hallowing havoc at this point i don't think so to me the money would have been hogan gulberg and hallowing havoc but it didn't happen you know what you know what i i don't disagree with you at all man i mean that that's your big pay-per-view and you know it would it would have been tremendous but here's the deal we're talking like this is a missed opportunity, even Meltzer would say, and this is directly from the observer, I waited until the end to hit you with this. This was by far the biggest week in the history of WCW, as not only did they do the second best pay-per-view in company

history, but over the eight-day period of 7-6 to 713, they ran six house shows, which totaled $2,8,407 or $335,000 per event, which is just a ridiculous figure, plus another $782, $689 in merchandise, not to mention an estimated figure of more than $6.5 million from pay per view revenue. So you're talking about a $9 million week for WCW here. Also during that week on the 10th at the forum in Los Angeles, they did your 15,821 fans. In total, the gate was $281,000, which is the largest crowd ever for wrestling at the forum. so despite all the rumor and innuendo that this was all a bad shit show WCW enjoyed incredible success when you look back at this nitro 20 years later put a bow on this episode for us before we

get to some fan questions which will certainly piss you off great just when I was feeling good just when I was thinking you know what doing these shows with Conrad isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be today I was feeling so good so put a bow on it. Look, when I go back and I watch it, I said this at the very beginning when we started this. I don't look at it. I don't dissect it. I mean, when I look at it, I don't dissect it. I don't break it down and critique it. What I take away is the emotion. Because when you can, when you produce live television, as I've done, probably 3,000 hours of it. And a lot of it was bad. A lot of it, we didn't create emotion. And it just makes you feel.

so bad when that happens but to see a show like this where there's so much real emotion and people were so passionate put the money aside and how much money we made off ticket sales and merchant put all that aside to me that's why I love producing television just just that and yeah there was flaws yeah there was shit on the show that shouldn't have been on the show and blah blah blah blah blah but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but it doesn't change the fact that that was one of the best shows I think that we're going to see in a long time at least, you know, non-paper-view in terms of overall quality from beginning, even some of the horse shit in the middle to the end,

because at the end of the day, it's all how the people felt when they left the building or when they changed the channel at the end of the night. And I don't think there was anybody that felt anything like other than, wow, that was a hell of a show. Joe Wilburn wants to know, is this the loudest crowd ever? I was there live, and it was the loudest sporting event I've ever attended in my life. might have been you know might have been um i would say they you know they were probably wasn't

the same amount of emotion as bash at the beach in 96 because of the heat that was created but that was a much much smaller crowd so i i would say you're probably right you know that that may have been one of the loudest i've ever experienced Travis wants to know that goldberg scott hall match seemed very off was there heat between the two after the match no Um, Kurt wants to know, was the line that Jericho dropped on Malinko off the cuff? If not, it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard in wrestling. I'm sure, I don't know for a fact. I'm sure that Chris and Dean worked that out between themselves.

They had a lot of latitude, you know, for better or worse, you know, for a lot of the criticism that I get about not being organized, which by the way, I find laughable when you read about some of the things that it's currently going on in WWE with the staff of 20 writers who don't know what the fuck they're doing a half hour before the show um but that being said you know i believe then and i firmly believe now you know when you have talent that can improvise and are really really gifted and know their characters and know their story you're so much better off letting that talent run with that and i you know i'll you know i'll probably reach out to chris after this and ask him because i'm curious now but i'm 99% sure chris and dean work that

between themselves and probably just ran it by the agent and said this is what we're going to do and got the green light to do it one of the other things that i've been curious about is this rumor mike brings it up here i heard a rumor this all came together because eric was told that if he couldn't turn around the ratings he'd be let go any truth to that a lot of the dirt sheets were sort of freestyling at the time eric that you may have been a little job scared which i think is sort of funny considering that you're enjoying the best financial success the companies ever had but certainly that narrative was out there that's typical dirt sheet bullshit it's just I'm sorry there's no other word it's just guys that are writing this crap that that have people

dumb enough to to send them 10 or 15 or 20 dollars a month to hear their inside opinion of what's really going on behind the scenes and then they're making shit up in order to do that nothing could have been further from the truth nothing. Greg says the title changes on TV further the anything can happen feeling. This kind of unpredictability makes the whole show appointment

viewing and is what you first started with Nitro. Yeah, I mean that's what we talked about a few minutes ago. So I think everybody sort of gets it but there's two questions I want to ask here that we'll wrap it up. One's from D and this is something that stood asking me and I watched it back this time. I

How does it feel having to deal with all those laser pointers in your eyes every single time you come out to the ring? I don't know why, but it seemed like it stuck out more in this show than a lot of others from this era. What do you remember about laser pointers? It feels like this would have been some security would have had an issue with. Yeah, and that's when, you know, the laser pointers were really starting to become, you know, kind of available in mass market. You know, they were relatively new on the landscape at that point. And they were an issue. And I'll tell you what I thought about more than anything.

anything. And number one, if, you know, if you get a laser, you know, right in the pupil of the eye, you can, you can go blind, number one. Number two, it is distracting. There's a lot, you know, especially for younger, inexperienced talent, you know, Carl Malone, I noticed watching this, you know, there was a lot of laser pointers on Carl when he was in the ring. And, you know, you take a guy like Carl who at that time, you know, now he's, now he's in a wrestling ring, he's not on a basketball court, you know, there's 35,000 people screaming and yelling. He's got to follow a format or a script, at least, or a bullet point outline of what he's supposed to do and say. And then to have lights like that flashing in your

face, it's horribly distracting. But the other issue that I thought about back then was, you know, unfortunately, the potential of a weapon being on the other end of that laser is not something that you need to just forget about. It's always an issue. um even now i mean i i see i see a laser in a crowd i'm i'm ducking you know um but that's what i was thinking about today watching that it's just not rude and and distracting it's you know it's potentially dangerous not only from the injury issue but the fact that you don't know what's on the other end of that red light million dollar question this is from adam before hogan sprung the idea of suddenly making goldberg the champ what was the idea fuck i don't know

and that amazing that you know we all just sort of take that for granted it is the go home edition it is going to be a big show but what would have been if it wasn't this it's fun to think about well it's fun to think about you know one of these days i'm going to reach out to craig leathers and see if he's got any of his notes because a lot of the times you know when we were booking meetings and things like that there were there was always somebody taking notes because it would have to go down to production to make sure that they knew who was doing what and so that they could get graphics ready and music ready. And, you know, they didn't just show up and go, okay, let's go shoot a show.

So, you know, Craig was often, or Annette Yothers, was often in those meetings. And I would love to know if they've got notes because we could go back and look at that. You know, there's no way I'm going to remember that. And there's no way anybody in their right mind would remember that. And also it was something really, really significant. My guess, it would have probably had a lot more to do with Malone and Rodman and Page. Hogan than Bill Goldberg. I mean, that's obvious, and it could be easy for me to just freestyle that and make it

sound good, but the truth is, I don't know, man, I'd be bullshit, you know, I don't do that. We're not going to bullshit you next week. We're going to let you guys decide what we talk about. The poll is live right now at 83 weeks. If you haven't already, follow us on Twitter at 83 weeks, and you'll be able to join in on the fun there and enter the conversation about what we're doing next week. I am at, hey, hey, it's Conrad, and he is at E. Bischoff. on Twitter. We'd also encourage you to check us out on Twitch if you haven't already.

Eric and I are going to be doing some fun stuff later this one, and you want to be a part of all that. The way to do this is to join right now for free at twitch.tv. 4.6.83 weeks. And it's free for you if you have Amazon Prime. And Eric's cranking out content pretty consistently there. He's watching some of these shows that we're covering, and we're going to be doing some pretty fun stuff that we're going to have announced to you here in the next couple of days. So if you haven't already, go find us on Twitch, hit the subscribe button. You'll be glad you did. It's Twitch.tv, forward slash 83 weeks. And as always, pick up a shirt. Eric Bischoff.com is your place to check. And we've got lots of fun shirts on

there, including Mabel was the third man. 100% of the proceeds. Go to his estate. But my favorite is still easy, does it. And you can be involved and support our show easy and fast by picking up a shirt at Eric Bischoff.com. And eventually, Eric's going to call. And thank you. for that shirt, and you never know, he might do it live on Twitch as well. So we're trying to be interactive, give you a little more content, a little more bang for your buck, and we'll be back at it next week right here. We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. SavewithConrad.com. My name is Doug Gustafson, and we are from Columbus, Ohio. First learned of Conrad through his podcast network. I'm a big 83 weeks fan. Probably got into a little

bit more credit card debt than what we wanted to during the course of the pandemic. We wanted to get rid of some of that. My wife and I had luckily bought the house many years ago and had quite a bit of equity built up in that. We are looking to actually redo our bathroom, things around the house that we wanted to do with the other equity that we have left over. We've been talking about refinancing forever and I finally just took the plunge and called the number, got a hold of him, and from start to finish, it was just fantastic. I had Diane with in the day. The communication with her was fantastic. The process moved quicker than I could have ever hoped. My name is Doug Gustafen from Columbus, Ohio. I ended up saving $800 a month

with Saved with Conrad, and am able to also update our bathroom. NMLS number 32416, equal housing lender, savewithConrad.com.