83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 330: The Last Georgia Dome Nitro

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us back to July 5th 1999 for the end of an era. The guys watch the very last Monday Nitro in the historic Georgia Dome. Eric discusses the difference in the company one year after the legendary Goldberg and Hollywood Hogan match happened in the same venue. The guys also peel back the layers on all the happening surrounding this Nitro with stories and viewpoints you won't hear anywhere else. EARNIN - Download the EarnIn app today. Type in 83 WEEKS under PODCAST when you sign up. EarnIn, the most loved way to get paid as you work. ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/83WEEKS GAMETIME - Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and redeem code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. 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. SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at https://www.savewithconrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/join BECOME A 83 WEEK MEMBER NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@83weeks/membership Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? Groovy, just groovy. Man, I hate to hear that because this is not going to be a fun episode today for you. We're watching a watchalong from 1999, not just any old 1999, but. time in 1999 when you're not having the most fun we want you to watch along with us it's season five episode 26 of monday nitro so get your peacock out season five episode 26 this is going to

be a fun show can we say get your peacock out i mean it is the peacock network and you're you're asking people to go to peacock so that they can watch along with us but we want to make sure that, you know, people that don't have much of a sense of humor or imagination don't jump to the wrong conclusion. Just don't I throw that disclaimer out there, you know. Isn't that crazy? I guess we should mention, uh, we recently got a YouTube reprimand for me saying, get your peacock out, which doesn't make any sense.

Like, we're watching wrestling on a streaming service called peacock. And that's a bird. But they're cool with me. doing blue cheery reads i don't get it uh boys and girls it's july 5th 1999 we're going to be watching a 25 year old mitro does 99 feel like 25 years ago do you eric and time is time has done a number on me but no it seems like 20 minutes ago so much time has gone by so many things have happened so many lives have been changed the industry itself no longer really um looks like the industry back then but

in many ways it's it's improved greatly evolved greatly so this will be fun kind of sort of in a way well let's have some fun kind of sort of in a way go to season five episode 26 unlocked and loaded on my side eric you ready on yours it's been fertic well here we go and uh three two one play so this is the uh new logo era of wcd that's always the tell-tale for me. If it's this logo, it's probably not that good. Is that wrong with me to say? No, it's absolutely right.

I'm looking for how to get rid of my audio. We've got a recap of what's been happening on Nitro here. We see Tony Chivani in a polo shirt looking as only he can look. Of course, they're out in front of the United Center, the house that Michael Jordan built. David Flair is a part of the program. This is an interesting time in WCW. you see Kevin Nash walking around backstage with the big gold belt

there's the most jack version of the macho man we ever saw what did you think of that final act of the macho man if we just set aside his brief T&A appearance the last days of WCW he wasn't even there at the very end but the dude looked bigger than ever and a lot of people felt like his work had changed and obviously father time does no jobs but

did you think the extra mass was something that Randy felt like he needed to do in an era with, you know, monsters like Sid and Goldberg and the like. Or was he just trying something new? What did you think of that presentation of macho man? It's not my favorite. I mean, I love Randy Savage as a person and as a performer.

This did not serve him well. I mean, I get it, especially when you see guys like sit out there and, you know, you know, Goldberg and some of the top talent that were so big Lugar, for sure. You want to be competitive. You want to be able to stand alongside them and feel like, you know, you're competitive.

But it slows, it slowed Randy down so much. You know, one of the great things about Randy was just some of his crazy stuff. He'd do off the top rope and he threw himself into his matches. He was fast on his feet. He was explosive. And I think when you, you know, put 15, 20, 30, pounds on, whether it's lean tissue or not, it's going to slow you down. And that was my feeling about it. It didn't serve him well. And I don't think it serves a lot of people well. You look back at

Ray Mysterio when he felt the need to kind of bulk himself up. It made him injury prone. It slowed him down. He didn't bring some of the dynamic action to the ring with him that he had previously before he got so big. So yeah, I just didn't serve him well. we got the big explosive nitro open here and what a crowd this is the georgia dome and as a reminder we're just a day shy of when goldberg beat holk hogan for the world title in this same building a day shy of being a year anniversary that is because that was back on july 6 1998 here we are july 5th 1999 was it like a homecoming a roll out the red carpet type circumstance anytime you guys were in the georgia dome for sponsors, television executives, higher-ups in the Turner organization. Was it as big of a deal as I might imagine? It was the year before with Goldberg and Hogan. It was definitely, I had executives I'd never even heard of before,

you know, requesting tickets and wanting to bring their families and wanting to meet people backstage and all the things you would expect, right? Didn't get that in July of 1999 because everybody was in a different frame of mine by them. see the nitro girls who were doing the big open and man just the visual of being in the the georgia dome isn't it crazy they've torn that thing down like i know there's a much nicer newer you know more current with the times much more luxurious building there but i watched one of the last football games in that dome before i switched to the new dome and it was it was not

woefully outdated i mean you've all been in some arenas you're like man this thing was built in the 50s of the 60s. The Georgia Dome, man, golly, what a nice building that was. It was. And what was the attendance for this event? Do you have that information? I do. Yeah.

It's a whole host of folks. We've got 25,338 fans total. That's 19,456 paying fans. So about 6,000 comps. But the gate was $594,745. Can we just stop right there for a second? Just to put things in contact. You've got 20,000 paying customers approximately for a TV show in what is undeniably, well, you could argue that 2000 was the worst year for WCW, which it clearly was.

But this is 1999 that most people, including myself, look at the last real year of WCW and 20,000 paying customers. for over a half a million of $1999 when, admittedly, undeniably, WCW was creatively in the toilet. I mean, we had been losing ground and creative had been really one of the first things to suffer beginning in late 98, 1998, early 1999, but even as bad as things were, you had 20,000 people. Half a million dollar gate for a TV show, not a pay-per-view, a TV show. It's just kind of amazing when I think about it in those terms. It makes what we've learned because of Guy Evans' book, the Nitro book, and what we saw and the words we heard from executives outside of WCW who are involved, it kind of all helps it make sense in a way.

Because otherwise, this makes no sense. you've got a brand you've got a product we're still getting probably higher ratings than anything else on t and t at this point in time we're still drawn massive crowds but yet the move is underfoot to to make wcw go away it's incredible look at that shot look at that shot a lot of fans here man a lot of fans here we'll see hoovintude coming down to the ring sans the mask uh i want to talk about the gate and uh boy I thought this would just slip by, and we wouldn't have a reason to talk about it necessarily. But we talked about what the gate was.

And you said in $1999. So as a reminder, we got 19,000 paying fans here, over 19,000, nearly 20,000 fans. And we did $594,000 in change at the gate. Now, if you go to USinflationcalculator.com and you type in $1999, $5,000, $5,000. $594,000 bucks. And now what would that represent in 2024? It's $1.1 million. And I bring this up

because not that long ago, just in advance of the forbidden door paper view, Tony Cohen sat down with Dave Meltzer and Brian Alvarez, and they were talking about where AEW was and the state of the business and things like that. And they were congratulating Tony on a million dollar house. And Tony, a little tongue and cheek, I'm sure, couldn't help himself,

along the lines of, hey, Eric Bischoff never had a million dollar house, did he? And of course, when you're adjusting for inflation, we're actually watching a Monday Nitro, not a pay-per-view, not a premium live event, not even the biggest nitro in history, one where we're all admitting, hey, it's on the downhill slope here. But in $2024, it's a $1.1 million house for a free television show, Eric. Did you hear Tony Kahn say that? And what were your thoughts? I did.

And I've gotten so used to Tony Kahn saying stupid shit because he's not the brightest bulb of the Christmas tree. He's just not. He may be really smart when it comes to data analytics, although I'm even beginning to question that, because he's clearly not analyzing his own data. And I'm sure there's many things that Tony Kahn is intelligent about. But not when it comes to the wrestling business.

And certainly not when it comes to WCW. he only knows what he read online or what Dave Meltzer told you want to make a comparison let's look at what is tonight's Wednesday i haven't looked at the data i'll go to wrestle ticks and check it out afterwards but i'm guessing for tonight's dynamite because we are recording on a wednesday um tony count will be lucky lucky to put 4,000 people in an arena for his show he's got 4,087 tickets out there you go how's that 1,500 more there's 414 tickets available right now. So he's hoping for 4,500 in the Scotia Bank Saddle Dome in Calgary.

Unbelievable. So when Tony Con makes comparisons and tries to compare AEW and Tony Con's approach to the business to WCW, I'm not, I just laugh when we're talking about 96, 96, 97, 98. And yes, even in 1999 with wheels, falling off and flying down the highway and sparks flying and everything else. Tony Kahn and AEW aren't even close to where WCW was when WCW was on its way to the bottom. It's just context. And I'm sure that, you know, Meltzer and that other little clown that he hangs out with wouldn't correct him or didn't correct him or probably wouldn't have the capacity to question.

But I just find it funny. I mean, Tony's become laughable to me. He's just a laughable little clown. Just having fun, man. Have fun, Tony. Spend your daddy's money. Have all kinds of fun. Make people rich.

That's cool. But don't legitimately try to compare what you're doing to. Even WCW and it's one of its lowest points. I don't like all that spend your daddy's money stuff. Like, that feels... Is it true? I don't like it either, but it's... Is it true?

It feels like a low blow. It doesn't feel it's all I ask is it true. If it's true, it's not a low blow blow. It's just pointing on a fact. Well, the fact is we're seeing a pretty good match here with Chavo Guerrero and Huvintu, Garera. It was written at the time that, well, here's exactly what Dave wrote. Some of them the company tried to blame the crowd.

The smallest WCW has drawn in that building, which was set up for 44,368 seats on it being a holiday weekend, but it's clearly a good sign at this stage of the game for a company that is failing fast in popularity epitomized greatly on this show. The key item on the show, at least as far as the anchor position on the show, was Megadeth singing a song they recorded for the soon-to-be-released Universal Soldier 2 movie, which Goldberg is the co-star in, followed by the WCW title match with Kevin Nash and Sid Vicious. But from a crowd reaction standpoint, it was the return of Goldberg and Brett Hart that popped the biggest reactions, with Goldberg's return being unannounced and creating so much enthusiasm that it

literally killed the main event and post-match angle. The irony about the Goldberg return was that WCW debuted a new pizza commercial with Goldberg and Ming that ran all over the television show before his return. So let's talk about, you know, where we are here. You know, it's July 5th. So it is the day after a holiday, and there's probably a lot of people who were traveling, going to the beaches, spending time on the lakes, things like that. Now they're going to have to go to work the next day, and then they're going to rush over to the arena. That sounds like a tall order, but 25,000 fans did that. Do you remember being disappointed since you had, you know, done 40-something thousand the year before?

So if you just look year over year, we are way down. or did you even have the context back then that hey guys we used to have to beg 300 sober people to sit in front of the camera and now we've got 25,000 we're going to be okay you know I don't think either of those thoughts really would apply I mean I look it was and it was ironic about this is Dave Meltzer makes excuses for AEW's ratings every week and he'll sometimes blame it I haven't heard him blame it on the direction of the wind or maybe a weather pattern but But every other excuse known to mankind, Dave was somehow able to come up with an excuse for AEW's dismal ratings, which they are.

No, I didn't think of it that way. Look, it's, number one, creative had suffered. We talked about that, admittedly, creative wasn't as good at this point in 1999 as it was in 1998. But acknowledging that and setting it aside, that was Goldberg and Hogan. That was the match that everybody criticized me for in WCW for because it should have been a pay-per-view. So the fact that we went from $40,000 down to $20,000 didn't surprise me, given the circumstances. And I didn't look at it as like, oh, my God, we only drew half as many people as we did the year before. Because the year before, we were advertising a pay-per-view quality match for free.

We gave them pay-per-view for free. and the energy and the focus and just the enthusiasm for Hogan of Goldberg, especially for the Goldberg portion of it, was off the chart. So, no, I didn't look at it as a hit. Oh, my God, we're going to have the audio. Oh, this is horrible. I didn't make excuses for the 4th of July. It just was what it was.

I was pretty happy with 20,000 people, 25,000 people in the building, 20,000 of them paid. I don't know how anybody could look at that any other way. other than a moderate, if not pretty decent success story for a Monday night for free TV. Hey, Tony, what was the last time you drew 25,000 people for a TV show? You'd have to do a month's worth of TV and add it all up. Maybe throwing a rampage or two in a collision. It wouldn't have made much difference, but you could just throw them in and you still wouldn't be there. So, yeah, Tony, pull your head out of Dave Meltzer's ass,

learn how to create it, how to produce a television show, understand your audience, understand what it's going to take to grow your audience. I know that's, it's really funny. I don't know if you saw it. I don't want to go too far off topic here, but since you brought it up, did you see this story about Shad Khan in the comments he made about the Jaguars and no longer relying on free agents and putting pressure on the coaching staff? Did you read that?

I did. Yes, sir. It's pretty interesting. I wonder if Tony read that because all Tony ever talks about is free agents. He's going to sign free agents. Well, great. You've signed a ton of them and you're losing ground. So maybe the free agency approach and vision for your industry or your business is really not the way on.

And maybe shutdown's putting pressure on Tony to start making. I read it. I don't mean to cut you off, but Shod Khan made no such comment about AEW. No, he didn't. And I'm not saying he did. Hang on, hang on. Let me say this.

You're going to get quote tweeted everywhere that Shod Khan said Tony needs to stop hiring free agents for AW. And that's not what the article said. It was in regards to the Jacksonville Jaguars. So I just want to add that context. Everything you're saying is accurate. That is exactly what Shod said. But we just quickly shifted gears out of the Jaguars conversation

where you and I knew that. but people at home may assume that there was some sort of article about Tony signing free agents for wrestling. That's not the case. You're just comparing the analogy of, hey, the shot said, we have to develop players. The coaching staff has to develop players. We can't rely on free agency. It's not a successful business model long term. That's not what we want for the direction of the success of this football organization.

I think you're arguing, hey, Tony, create some stars. the solution is not to just continue to keep signing free agents. I guess what I was asking and thank you for clarifying that because you're absolutely right. It'll be twisted, turn, taken out of context in all kinds of different ways, which is fine because it's just gets people talking, I guess. But my question really was, I wonder if Tony Kahn read that story and can somehow make the leap between the messaging about the Jackson,

Jaguars and Shod's comments about not depending on free agents. And I wonder if Tony is thinking, perhaps, in the back of his mind, maybe that would work for AEW. Maybe me focusing on free agents, which is all he's done since he's opened the doors, basically, and hired half of the WWE roster that was let go or otherwise leaving the company. maybe Tony can read what his father said about the Jaguars and apply it to what he's doing. That was it. That was my question.

Thank you for making it clear. Yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just know how that's going to go. And it's like, wait a minute, Sean didn't say anything about wrestling. He was talking about football. We are going to talk about wrestling here today, though. We just saw in the middle of this Chavo Guerrero hoovintude match, and they were having a pretty fun match. Here comes the macho man and his favorite Christian.

Jericho 1999 club shirt. I mean, I think guys who wore shirts like that. And 99, they definitely knew where you could buy ecstasy. With Sid here, who's looking as only he can look, Sid came in and started power bombing fools with the big gold belt around his waist. He never took the belt off. It's pretty rare that you see dudes getting jacked up with the big gold belt while they're wearing the big gold belt.

That's amazing. Now we're in the backstage area and we see Tori Chalaxon with, uh, Kevin Nash, his kickback in a hockey jersey. And, well, he's talking a little smack to Sid and, um, and macho man. We know later tonight, that's going to be the main event. Sid and Kevin Nash for the world title in the Georgia Dome. Let's spend a little time talking about the Georgia Dome. But before we do, we should talk about, well, some dull hairs.

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That's 83 weeks under podcast. Earn-in is a financial technology company, not a bank. Subject to your available earnings, daily max, pay period, max, and location. See earn-in.com slash TOS for details. Bank products are issued by Evolve Bank and Trust member FDIC. So we see Mean Gene in the ring here, and I want to talk about, you know, the history of you running shows here in the Georgia Dome. We mentioned that maybe internally people were disappointed that there were 25,000 fans

who were here, 19,400. of those paying fans, but this is actually the fourth time you've done a nitro here, I believe. Way back in January of 98, you drew 26,773 folks, and the main event was Lex Lugar versus Randy Savage. Now, that is fresh off of Starcade 97. Fast forward, and July of 98, we know, is the high watermark for WCW. 41,412 fans saw Bill Goldberg. beat Hulk Hogan for the world title now we also know that the finger

poca doom happened in this very same building about six months prior to this it was January 4th 1999 and there's 38,809 fans there's a lot of history in this building so quickly after Starcade 97 the finger poca doom Hogan beating goldberg or Goldberg reading Hogan rather and now this show I mean it's pretty rare that you run a building this big for a TV and to know you did it four times and your worst one had 25,000 fans not bad no not bad at all and again especially if if you recognize the context if you recognize what was going on at that time it's actually quite amazing to be honest you know I hate to say it that way but it's it's amazing that many people

showed up truly we got seven minutes of action with Hove and Tud and Chavo Guerrero before Savage and Sid do a run in. By the way, Sid Powerbomb and Fools gets a huge baby face reaction. Let's talk a little bit about what we're seeing now, though. We've got Rick Flair and David Flair in the ring with Mean Gene. We spent a little time talking about David Flair before. Is he maybe the most prime example of too much too soon?

Like, I know that we wanted him out there storyline wise, but with the benefit of hindsight, we probably did that young man an injustice here, putting him on TV so soon, right? Oh my gosh. I almost feel like I should apologize to David Flair. No, I don't feel like maybe I should. I should. It was just, it was a, it was, it was, it was, it put him in a situation where he was absolutely going to fail. First of all, he's Rick Flair's son. Talk about shoes to fill. I mean, right off the bat, he's two and a half strikes behind before he, before he, before he laces up a pair of boots. And then rushing him in the way we did, putting the spotlight on him before he had a chance to really develop his confidence and his skill set, knowing that he's in his father's shadow, which is a massive shadow.

He could have spent six years in a training facility and worked independence for five years, and he would still have two strikes against him because he's brickflare's son. It's such an unfair position. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time because we really didn't think about it hard enough. We were throwing things up against the wall, hoping something would stick. And on paper, this kind of makes sense.

At least it did initially. On paper, for a short-term program or for a one-night stunt, more or less, to get David involved or any other member of the family. but to put him out there the way we did was such a disservice not only to to the audience honestly but most importantly to david it was just such the wrong thing to do i feel bad about it right now i just it's horrible so we've got mean jean chatting with uh rick and david and here comes little nage with a bevy of models they're all uh dressed to the nines and

of course you see little natch has the u.s title there with him who's that girl out of his arm you know um that's not medasia what was her name i don't remember her name i was just going to say that charles is way prettier than she is oh my gosh will you listen to you is he not i mean go put that picture back up there i mean it's a handsome fellow yeah she looks like she just wants to tear your head off mean looking she's mean looking she's mean looking she's mean looking look at that look on her face like she can't wait to tear somebody's head off and i don't know that made me laugh but it did she's a mean looking mean woman that's uh asia i was like i don't think it's i was like it's not china

but it sounds similar to that i forgot it's a Mudd Asia had black hair. She was, yes, this is just ASYA Asia. She had had some body or whatever. She was the nursing aid for Rick Flair when y'all put him in the nut and house. Oh,

I bet. No wonder he never got better. He was looking at other stuff. What a great line. Coach Rosie's with us live here as a part of our initiative for ad, Free Shows.com. You not only get to be a part of the shows because you get to sit in on the live studio recording part, but you also get tons of bonus content, more than 100,000 hours of

bonus content over at ad free shows.com, including exclusive series, you can't find anywhere else with Tully Blanchard, with Nick Patrick, with Mike Keota, with the Blue Meney, with David Crockett, with Kevin Sullivan, and with Lex Lugar. It's all available now, more than 100,000 hours, including. bonus content from each and every one of my shows, all of our Starcast panel shows through the years, just more content than you can shake a stick at. And as we're recording,

last night we sat down with Sam Adonis from AAA, and he told us all about the times that he's had in Lucha Libre. So we're going to start learning a little Lucha south of the border with Sam Adonis. And if you just can't get enough of the WCW discussion, as you're listening to this, last night, we had an exclusive that's out of this work. world. Stu Snyder one on one with Eric Bischoff at ad free shows.com. That's right. The same Stu Snyder that we saw on who killed WCW. This is, uh, we're actually recording right now

before that's live and happening, but my goodness, how much are you looking forward to talking to Stu Snyder after seeing who killed WCW? A lot because I got questions. So many questions. it'll be an interesting i'm i'm very much looking forward to it i hope he shows up we uh what we've just witnessed here by the way is that um they just gave the u.s title to david flair he's the new champion yeah that's going to help i count out last week uh buff bagwell is out now there's a ton of balloons that fell from the ceiling and of course as you might imagine we're trying to set up David Flair versus Buff Bagwell for the U.S. title it's just challenging creatively to try to figure out exactly where David Flair can

fit but at his shoulder's at his father's shoulder side with the U.S. title over his shoulder and he's not old enough to rent a car I mean you're throwing a guy out of the deep end here in a major way with a concrete block tied around his neck yeah he threw him into the deep end of the pool and anybody in the right mind would have known it was going to drown him it was just such a bad idea to be clear though my man's making six figures a year he's not even old enough to drink a beer yet i don't think yeah but that part of it is cool i mean i yeah he was making a lot of money, but it's temporary. And dating Sacey Keebler.

Huh? And dating Stacey Keebler. Okay, I take everything back. The man knows me everything he has. That's what I'm saying. There's two things. I was feeling bad until you reminded me of that. Stacey Keebler, six figures on television every week.

I'll figure it out. This day. He can still walk around and say, yeah, George Clooney had to follow my hat. And for what it's worth, he's doing really well. Lives on a lake in North Carolina owns a couple businesses. He's got life figured out. Good for him.

We should talk a little bit about the Megadeth piece. Coach Rosie, who's with us live here, wants to know. I was a fan of Megadeth as a youngan. What's the story behind landing them on Nitro? I know there was a universal soldier tie-in because they worked on the soundtrack for that.

That's, of course, a sequel to a, I don't know, kind of famous Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. and all of a sudden, Goldberg finds himself with that opportunity. Allegedly first offered the WWF and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The WWF turned it down without ever telling Austin. He was not too happy about that. So Goldberg got the nod. But what can you tell us that you remember, if anything,

about the mega death circumstance for them to actually play on Nitrin? Well, it did start with the opportunity that Bill was able to get to be in that movie. And I believe was it, Dave Justain was the kind of. Dave Mustaine, yeah, yeah, Dave Mustaine. Also a wrestling fan, which is probably had a lot to do with Bill Goldberg getting the opportunity and having been offered to Steve Austin. And because Dave Sustain was a wrestling fan, hit it off with Bill Goldberg, the opportunity was there to cross promote. It was a pretty natural thing, really. I don't remember the details.

I don't remember how much. I don't think it cost us much, if anything, because it was promoting the movie. So it wasn't a financial impact that I can recall. But yeah, it just cross-promotion. It's one of the things we were trying to do a lot of. We got the television champion coming out now. Rick Steiner in singles action. How about that beware of dog leather jacket with the Mack truck dogs on the shoulders?

That's an interesting look for him. he's so fun and how about his son braun breaker he is coming on strong i can't wait to see where he's going to go this year you got to assume he's a russomaniian main event or it's only a matter time right oh this year or next year probably next year but you never know i mean he's he's got all the tools he's there he's i think he's there mentally you could just see he just his confidence is palatable you could you could feel it when you see him. It comes across television. He's got so much confidence. You can see it at his eyes. And physically, he's obviously capable of just about anything he wants to do. Anytime he

wants to do it to anybody he wants to do it too. So yeah, it's just a matter of time. I think it's just a matter of the WWE. I'm guessing one of the things that they're watching and waiting for is the crowd getting behind them. You can't force that. You can try. It almost never works. The audience, has to, they have to accept you in their own timeline in their own way. Sure, you could push. You can try to accelerate that. You can try to collapse the timeline as best you can. And WWE is doing a great job of that right now.

They're building people slowly. And when you build them slowly, the foundation, the fan base that makes up their their foundation is so much stronger than trying to force feed it. But, yeah, I think I think Braun is there. I think it's just a matter of the audience accepting him. And when they do, he's going to take off like a rocket. He's got everything. He's got the look.

He's got the physicality. He's got the credibility. His promos, short and sweet, awful good, direct to the point. And he's just believable. When did I see him in last? The pay-per-view that you and I want money in the bank. He lost that match. Yes.

He didn't look like he's. lost that match he looked like he was planning what he's going to do next he just has so much confidence and it comes across and look I'm biased I'm going to admit it I'm not going to deny I think a lot of his father were still pretty good friends and I want to see him succeed so I'm sure that taints my view just a little bit but not much of course the worst thing about braunbreaker is his name his real life name is Bronson Reksteiner I really wish they would have just called him Rex R.E.X. Steiner. But whatever. They let him keep his first name. So I guess that's something. Brian Breaker with 2Ks, just 26 years old. And it's crazy to think that as we're talking

here in July of 2024, just four years ago, the dude was signed. He was a member of the Baltimore Ravens organization to play fullback. He got signed there in April of 2020. He gets released August of 2020. So he never actually sees any action. but after the release in August of 2020 he signs with WWE in October of 2020 I did not know that so from the first time this guy took a bump ran the ropes did any sort of training

it's been less than four years now he started this journey in October of 2020 here's his real stats by the way I know this because these aren't wrestling numbers of course they bill him as you know six foot and 230 pounds but before the draft he was 5 foot 10 inches 223 pounds he did a 4 540 which we've seen some of that speed on television he had a 35 and a half inch vertical jump and he bench pressed 225 pounds 35 times

as a fullback so this is a hoss it's a stud athlete and i'm excited for his future his dad just picked up a big win here in the georgia dome man you want to talk about a special day for a lot of WCW talent because a lot of WCW talent lived in the Atlanta area no plane rides just ride right right down to the dome where the Falcons play and we're going to wrestle there that's got to be kind of cool for all the guys and nice break and that probably felt like a 10 day vacation to a lot of town not having to jump in and out of different planes and hustle to the next town you're just right up the road we see a bumper there for the rap is crap promo

they've got a rap his crap music video and here's lennie and loady those are two power plant specials aren't they i'm not sure about that kind of looks like a chris jericho want to be though doesn't it oh man i didn't even think about that but with the top knot thing he's got going yeah and the gimmick it's like oh chris jericho's doing really well i think i'll be him so somebody told them once guys kind of looked like chris jericho probably somebody walked up to him in a minute and in an airport Chris can I get your autograph like bulb goes off I'm just going to look like Chris Jericho Chris Jericho of course is about to debut here August 9th 1999 so we're about a month away from the Jericho WWF debut at the time did that feel like a major loss

to you or there's so much other stuff going on that you know it just wasn't priority Because in 99, your life has just turned upside down. It was both. It was a major loss and I recognized it as such. But on a personal basis, and, you know, Chris couldn't have known this, but I thought the world of Chris. I know he was frustrated because he wanted to, you know, accelerate his career and he felt that he should have been able to work with Bill Goldberg or work at the top. And in many ways, he was, he was right.

He wasn't wrong. It was just the time he sucked. but losing Chris was probably that probably hit me harder personally than any other loss to WWE you know when Paul White left I was I was actually relieved

and happy for Paul because I knew Paul would be better off in WWE than he ever would be in WCW we just couldn't do what we had been trying for a while to figure out how to really maximize Paul White and we just couldn't do it. It wasn't working. And there was that chance that W.W.E could figure it out. And he had more talent to work with. So I was,

I don't want to say happy, but relieved is the best word. But that wasn't the case with Chris Jericho. I was really, really disappointed in the last Chris. We're seeing a pretty special package here that I wish we could track the audio for you guys, but it's an Owen Hart package where we saw all the different headlines about Owen passing away, a nice little title graphic you're seeing with us at 83 Weeks.com where it's him in a ring and his name in the years. And then we go to the article that Brett had written in the Calgary Sun. And it's a pretty fantastic video package just talking about Brett Hart and his brother Owen and their family's history and

wrestling and some clips of Brett and WCW. We're about to hear from Brett for the first time publicly in months since really the first time since his father's passed away and you see i mean this is probably one of the the better packages that wcw put together and it kind of flies below the radar but you guys did a really great tribute shot as we see as we're going to close the segment with a dark shot of the ring just a solo spotlight on the ring really really well done here and what's interesting is it's It's not like Owen Hart was a part of your company. I mean, I know he had a cup of coffee with WCW back in the day, but he worked for the competition, but you guys still went out of your way to do this really nice tribute video.

Can you tell us about that, if anything? It was, I mean, no details. I couldn't tell you who produced it. I could guess, but I don't want to do that because it might offend the person that actually did it if I got it wrong. So I don't remember who actually produced it, but it was, more of respect and support for Brett. True, Owen was not a part of WCW. He was a part of WWE, but Brett was a part of WCW at this time.

And, you know, losing Owen and going through everything that Brett had gone through was important for us to recognize and just give them as much support and love as we could. As well as the audience. I mean, but honestly, it was more for, more for Brett. It was to help Brett. to get him back and allow him to at least attempt to find closure. He's going to say in this promo here that he's been told that he has all the time he wants, so he's going to try not to rush, but he's going to thank wrestling fans on behalf of the

entire heart family for all the well wishes they've received. And he says that WCW has given him a chance to collect himself, and he appreciates that. He says, Owen wasn't your average wrestler. He was a great human being. And Brett doesn't think there's anyone that can. say a bad thing about him they were the closest of all of his brothers and never had a single argument i mean this is uh you can see him just looking around how emotional he is because it's a huge reaction people are excited to see him that want to support him that know this is real

and what's crazy is i think when people talk about brett and wcd they never mentioned this segment and i want your opinion as to why i mean i realize that it's not rassling storyline it's not him winning a championship or what have you but it is real and it is special and i don't feel like anybody discusses even brett like when he talks about his w-tw experience he just goes off as if it's largely all negative and and hey that's his prerogative but this you guys affording him this opportunity i thought this was really really classy like i could see other organizations not really doing this they're in a cat fight hey we're trying to gain ground and blah, blah, blah, but you just carve out as much of the show as he wants to just talk.

Pretty classy gesture there, Eric. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time for Brad. And again, you know, I had a, I was very, uh, had a lot of affection for Brad, thought a lot of them. And we had developed a reasonably good friendship, at least I thought we had, um, over a couple of year period of time. So it just seemed like the, the right thing to do. It didn't seem out of place to me at all, to be honest.

And I think the reason people don't talk about it is because when it comes to wrestling, people, look, if you look at, why do people watch wrestling? I actually had somebody on a podcast that I used to do with Elba, strictly business. And one of the first episodes, first, second, third episode we had talked to a psychologist who had studied wrestling and wrestling fans. Because I was really curious as to the reasons. There's more than one, obviously. the main reasons why people watch wrestling and there are a lot of them but at it at its core it's conflict and resolution people like to debate people love the conflict they love the heat they love people throwing hand grenades back and forth at each other that's what they're

attracted to and this is not that this is human it's it was kind it was heartfelt it was Everything that generally speaking, rustling is not, which is probably why nobody talks about it. That and the fact that, you know, Brett Hart can't open his mouth without shitting all over WCW and me. That's his Brett. He's never going to change. There's never going to be a light bulb that's going to go off in Brett's head and go, wow, actually, despite all the things I've been through, I've had a pretty good life. And I've got plenty of life ahead of me. He's never going to be that guy.

He's always going to blame somebody, hate somebody, need to do. disparage somebody without taking any responsibility for himself. It's always everybody else's fault and nobody is as smart or as talented as Brett Hart. According to Brett Hart, he just recently criticized Paul Levec. Didn't think Paul Levec was the right guy for the spot in WWE, despite everything that Paul is doing and the success that they've had under his reign and direction. But in Brett's mind, Paula Vecan shouldn't be in that spot.

Brett should be in that. He didn't say that, of course. But nobody is as smart, as talented, is knowledgeable about the professional wrestling business, is Brett Hard and everybody else is in over their head. And as is Brett, he's never going to change.

Unfortunately, I wish he would, for his sake, I don't want to give a shit, but for his sake, I wish he would. Really a great segment here. encourage you to go out of your way to listen to it.

We would track it for you if we could, but WWE doesn't want anyone to know about Pinkock. It's a secret. He's going to say in this promo though that Eric Bischoff has asked him what he wants to do, but Brett admits he's not sure where he wants to go with his life. He says the Hart family has lived and died for wrestling and there's really not much left for him to accomplish.

He sees all these other great athletes retiring in 99 and they all seem so happy. And he's afraid that his career will end in tragedy. but he just doesn't know. Brett thinks all of his fans everywhere and all the rest of he's worked with over the years. He hopes he wasn't too stiff. So it feels like a farewell speech.

It feels like a goodbye. It feels like a retirement speech. Did you know that was the vibe and the tone and tenor? Or was it all just up to him? That was all up to him. I didn't talk to him about what he was going to say. He didn't have any limits on it. As he said, I gave him all the time he wanted.

There was no rush. But no, I did not know. And I wonder, and I'm not being a smart ass here, but I wonder if from Brett's mind he wished he would have retired right then and right there. Because ultimately, I think he would have been a happier person had he done it. It's hard to argue, you know, especially when you consider it's this same calendar year. You know, it's Starcate of this year where he gets that mule kick from Goldberg.

I mean, so we're five months away from that. But the benefit of hindsight, that's pretty crazy timing. is it not sure is sure is it's a special promo it's a cool moment and of all places it's at the Georgia Dome like I think we would all understand if this was

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we've got Eddie Guerrero who's going to be getting a little shouting match with Doug Dillinger he's going to start shouting in Spanish and when he switches back to English he says someone stole his wallet it was a masked wrestler and Eddie wants them to all line up

so he can pick out the culprit I don't know why but I love Eddie Guerrero and his creative in WCW and in the WWE I just felt like every time he was on screen as jr might say he maximized his minutes and even this someone stole my wallet i mean he's holding up his pants and show him to jj he's so funny he has he was so funny just naturally he didn't even

have to try to be funny which is why it worked he just had an inherent comedic gene that made it easy for eddie he he got i miss him i miss him i miss him there's certain people like Roddy Piper, I miss Roddy a lot. You know, Randy, I had a unique relationship with Randy. I really liked Randy. It was crazy and intense as he was. Sometimes it just make you want to twist your own head off your shoulders and roll it down the road. It was just something about him that you look past it.

You just look past his crazy and his intensity. And when you did, you got to the real guy. And the real guy was a gentle soul. Actually, he could be quite calm. And when you saw him in his home, I went and visited him in Florida a couple times. And when he got to his house, when he wasn't in the arena, surrounded by wrestling people, he was just a chill dude. I enjoyed his company so much.

And Eddie was the same, man. I just, I miss Eddie a lot. Another one of your friends coming to the ring here, Ernest the Cat Miller. we're going to have a kickboxing match between ernest the catmiller and jerry flin and both of these guys sunny oh no you see uh i think he's wearing is it a shade of puke orange or something that's really hideous but yeah sunny is going to be here uh next month in august and so is ernest so we're gonna and i haxel jim dougan and his lovely wife is going to be here we're going to cook steaks and eat like gods this is a really bad idea a kickboxing match with ernest miller and jerry flan

did i'm not saying this to be negative but do you i mean clearly somebody in creative had to think yeah this is what wcw fans want to see well this this was not about what w c this was building ernest miller this is trying to define his character this is what made ernest miller different than everybody else. And the fact that Ernest Miller was a legitimate martial arts competitor. Not only legitimate, he was at the top of his game. It was just our way of taking advantage of that. And using this match to help define his character as opposed to this is what wrestling

fans really want to see. We knew it wasn't what wrestling fans wanted to see. But we believed it would help define Ernest's character. boy jerry looks like a badass here got his karate pants on looking jacked and he's got the boxing gloves on it's a cool look that you don't expect to see in a professional wrestling match it doesn't look like like 28 ounce gloves or whatever i mean it seems like a huge for sure we should mention that uh again i know this isn't necessarily going to be a barn burner type nitro with this match right smack dab in the middle a kickboxing exhibition

if you will, but I just want to add some context. Here's what's happening on Monday Night Raw. They're over at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, North Carolina on July 5th, 1999, and they've got the Hardy Boys taking on the Acolytes and four minutes and 25 seconds. They've got a minute and 19 second match between Godfather and Gangrel, a minute and 53 between Tess and Joey Abbs, five minutes and 10 seconds without Snow beating Delo for the hardcore title, retaining it. Dogg and Valvinas go to a no contest in a minute and a half. Jeff Jarrett wrestles Chaz to retain the Intercontinental title in a minute 45.

Edge beats the big boss man in two minutes and 24 seconds. Mr. Ass is going to beat meat. What a sentence that is? We're going to get a flag. We're going to get a flag because you said. There's a wrestler named meat. His real name was Sean Stasiak.

I know that. We just got to make sure that the people that got their finger on the freaking button know that. Kane is going to be in a two on one handicap match against hardcore Holly and Big Show and Kane beats them both in two minutes and 33 seconds. And the main event that night is the Rock versus Triple H in a steel cage. They go nearly 14 minutes. So while we could say, boy, there's parts of this nicer show like this one that are

head scratchers. Well, you know what kind of we're skipping over this match. And I know there are a lot of people are some people aren't watching along with us. but if you are, I'm excited. First of all, Jerry Flynn was also a legitimate martial artist. And you can, I mean, if you look at the footwork that you're seeing more so out of Ernest than out of Jerry Flynn, Ernest has much, much better footwork. If you look at his punching techniques, his hand techniques,

Ernest Miller is what a legitimate martial artist, a competitive martial artist, generally would look like. Unfortunately, so many people have used martial arts or represented that they're martial artists, and they just looked like crap. They couldn't fight the way out of a wet paper bag. They give black belts away, you know, just about to mean where you want to go anymore. But back when Ernest was training with the people that he trained with, these were very legitimate martial artists.

And Jerry Flan just threw a jump back with her sidekick that, you know, you're only going to see that in a legitimate martial arts, whether it's MMA or otherwise legitimate competition. So both of these guys are not just going out there in pretending to be. Martial arts experts. Both of them were very, very good, very good. And Ernest, as I said, was probably world class at this point in time. And you can see it in his hands. If you watch his offense and his defense, watch the way he covers, watch his footwork. That tells everything. You can always tell a good fighter when you look at their footwork. Really, really did it. For what this was, it was really good. People may not have liked it, but it was really good. interesting to see that y'all are trying this in 1999 where a year removed I mean to the month if you take a look back at like the july 6th 1998 nitro where hogan was dropping the world title of goldberg here at the georgia dome we would see a taped raw with a brawl for all I just remember that too was happening in july of 98 a year later this isn't brawl for all it's kickboxing but we're trying something a little different and as a much as I wanted to hate it in execution, it's not that bad.

It's not bad. And again, it's because the guys are legitimate. Braulfur at all was just tough guys. It was like watching a tough guy contest. And there were some legitimate badasses there. Don't, don't get me wrong. And I don't want to meet one of them down the road at a convention and get a lesson that I should have learned a long time ago.

But generally speaking, it was a tough man contest. This not so much. Oh, Jerry Flynn just threw up a roundhouse kick and lost his balance and didn't make himself look too good. But. really i just have fun to watch i didn't expect bad or miss has got good hands damn he's got good hands oh i love this oh jump back sidekick to the midsection followed up with the left hook to the head now they're in a clinch nick patrick trying to keep his eye on the action has no fucking clue what

he's really watching oh a vicious liver shot there to jerry flin flin took the shot really well you see people they're standing up they're holding their sides spinning oh spinning back fist drops jerry Flynn to his knee, the referee starting to count. Ernest Miller's going, man, I can't believe you didn't see that common. Jerry Flynn, where did you learn your martial arts? Go again. Now, Nick Patrick moves back to the corners. Got both fighters in the center of the ring.

Ernest's moving towards the ropes a little bit. He's circling to his left, throwing his left, counters with the right, nice right, right jab there. No, I'm sorry, right cross, right cross. Sorry, it's been a while since I called this kind of shit. You see, Jerry, oh, Jerry Flynn just took another liver shot. Ernest is working the body because he wants to kick him in the head. That's kind of what you do.

Yeah, jump back, reverse sidekick drops Jerry Flynn again. And those are devastating. That sidekick almost cut him in half. This is fun. We should do this more often. This is going to end it in the second round. They're going to roll around, do a little post-match angle. But it's clear that we're trying to get over Ernest Miller.

and he whipped his ass. We did. But Meltzer had this to say. They were big gloves. The crowd hated this bad. Nothing is worse than fake kickboxing with a pro wrestling finish. Oh, oh,

Oh, Dave, you were such a douchebag. It's incredible. Listen, I'm not trying to dunk on Dave. I'm a subscriber. I have been for almost,

well, since 97. So, what is that almost 30 years now nothing is worse than fake kickboxing with a pro wrestling finish isn't every martial arts wrestler like a rob van damn aren't they doing fake kickboxing until they do a pro wrestling finish that's and what's worse is both of these guys are a legitimate martial artist this is not fake martial arts it just is indicative of fact that Dave Meltzer doesn't know his ass from a bag of fucking rocks is just so

stupid and if i were you and you've been i've been subscribing to that clown for that long i would i would join a class action lawsuit to demand my money back because this mother my gosh will you stop i um i encourage everybody if they've never had a chance so because i know we're done with ernest now on this segment if you have a chance to see ernest miller at a convention go out of your way to do it you'll get your picture you'll get your autograph, but you'll get an experience. Like, that dude has natural charisma that very few people you're going to meet in real life have. Would you agree with that? I mean, he drips charisma. Yes. When he walks out of a room, he could be gone from that room for 15 minutes and he's left

more charisma in that room than too many people that are in the business today will never have. He just drips charisma. We got some questions with us live here. Michael Stuttler, who's watching with us live from ad-free shows.com, says, Eric, thank you for the call a couple weeks ago. I appreciate you allowing to me to share my Disney MGM WCW taping memories. Curious, if you ever watched any of the Nitro DVD compilations that WWE released. I never have. Really, I never have. I probably should. It might be entertaining, but no. I very rarely look back. The only time I really look back. is when you and I do a show like this. What says, thank you for the call a couple weeks back.

Why did you call Michael? Because he's a part of the Adprey Show's family and every once in a while. Usually once a week. In fact, I'll be doing it again tomorrow afternoon, which is Thursday as we record. But I randomly, Evan Polisher over at Adpfrey Shows, he's our main pilot. He'll send me a list of just random names, people that are part of the family and I just call them, surprise them, shock them. We have great conversations. Actually, I'm going to be honest, it's something I look forward to doing every week because I've

had some of the most amazing conversations with people that you would never expect to have. You know, because wrestling has kind of brought everybody together. But whatever reason, I think it's because of the nature of the after he shows family and the people, you know, including Evan and you and Dave Silva, everybody else that's involved in it, you just develop these connections and they're real. I mean, I've had some very, very deep and meaningful conversations with people, heartwarming. I just can't say enough good things. But yeah, I'll just call like 10, 12 people randomly and have fun with them. And here's the best part, like when they're not, when they don't answer, because a lot of times I'll call from a number

they don't recognize or I'll block my number. So they see no caller ID. A lot of times people don't answer because they don't know who it is. I'd be one of those people. So when I leave a message, I just screw with them. I have so much fun doing that. It's really fun. I pretend I'm somebody else. It's like, hey, Chris, I'm outside the door. You told me to be here at 1 o'clock.

I'm here. I've got pizza. I got a case of beer. We've got people coming. Where are you? You told me, you know, and I'll leave this long message. And people are like, oh, my God. And I had one guy the other day.

I called him up, and he was busy taking care of some family business, kind of a heavy situation, taking care of, and dad, so to speak. And he had a truck on its way to pick up, pick up some stuff. And he was waiting for that truck. It was running late. And I call him. And I say, hey, Dave, whatever his name is. I'm here. Where are you? I'm outside. Where are you? And he actually dropped what he was doing and he went outside to look, to look for the truck because he thought I was the truck driver that was calling. It was coincidental. But it was fun as hell. That's just an example. but I fight it fun crazy stuff that we do

I enjoy it as well I want to ask you about this stuff we're doing with Lodi and Lennie here because what we saw backstage we sort of glossed over it because it was silly but we're hinting that they are in fact homosexual lovers because Lodi is going to be gifting Lennie there a pair of new trunks and he says well I'm not sure if these will fit and Lodi says, oh, I know every inch of your body or something like that. He gives them these.

And then as they exit to go change into this new gear and see how it fits, they go into, they open a door and go into the door and the door shuts behind them. And there's a sign on the door that says closet. The implication there is that these are homosexual men and that they're still in the closet. it. Of course, this is all silly and it's terrible and awful. But this isn't even something that is attitude era.

This isn't something that has Vince Rousseau's fingerprints on it. And people can say, oh, it's him with this Howard Stern level humor. This is just what we were doing in 99. And I know that, you know, this aged very, very poorly. But a lot of, like, if you guys. go watch even you know dude where's my car and things like that movies from this era there's some lines in there that you're like wow jarry i mean even today i mean you watch comedy it's such a funny thing about wrestling is like if you watch a sitcom today there is all kinds to this

day over the top tongue and cheek innuendo humor about homosexual relationships. It's flaunted. It's exaggerated. But, boy, you do something like, and I'm not advocating. I think this was a really stupid idea, by the way. So let me be clear on that.

What I'm pointing out is the contrast between what's acceptable and pro wrestling, which you would think, if it's pro wrestling, pretty much anything goes. You would think, but, man, people are so much more sensitive in many respects, in some respects, about pro wrestling, then they are about general, you know, primetime major network humor. It's really interesting. And I think what this was, and you touched on it, Conrad, I want to give you props for it.

If you go back, you look at, go back and look at 95, 96. It wasn't until 97 when Vince McMahon realized that he had to follow the nitro formula. He had to go after 18 to 34, 18 to 49-year-old males. He knew he had to leave the family programming, leaving the, the teen and preteen audience and the characters and the story lines and everything else that went with it. He had to leave that behind in order to survive because we were choking him out with our approach, our format at WCW and Nitro. 97, McMahon comes out, we're not going to insult the intelligence anymore and all of the

speech that he gave. And then, boom, you've got the attitude era. So 95, 96, 96, 97, pretty much WC, it's. WWE is following their own format. End of 97, they realized they've got to replicate. They've got to copy our formula. By copy, I also acknowledge that they went further than we did. It started to work, and it worked very, very well. The attitude area was a stunning success in many ways.

It turned the business around for WWE. Now we've changed shoes, so to speak. And now you've got WCW here, as we're watching with the Lenny and Lodi silliness. We're now trying to replicate what WWE was doing in order to make our comeback. It's just really interesting when you look at the strategy and the tactics that changed over really a three-year, two-and-a-half-year period of time. And we sucked at it. this this was an example of why we couldn't pull off what wwe was able to pull off because our stuff was all tongue and cheek and innuendo their stuff was all over the top and in your face

van hammer picks up the win here uh mr epic is with us here live and he's talking about the lennie lowdy characters and he says i always thought they were copying mango from s and l you know that was part of pop culture back then mango was a character portrayed on saturday night live by uh chris Catan. He started doing that, I think, in the fall of 97. So it would, they would have still been doing that here in 99. So it was just, you know, part of pop culture to have these over-the-top characters. Now we're seeing, uh, Doug Dillinger talking to a lot of the mass wrestlers in the backstage area. We see Ciclope there and, uh, LaParcha and psychosis. And he's explaining to the, uh, the luchadors with the police officer there with a

weapon on his side. hey we're going to have to have all you guys come to a police lineup there's blitzkrieg which is funny because he is not actually a hispanic lichador he's uh i think a computer programmer a very young man here from uh the united states a caucasian if you will we um this segment is kind of funny i mean it's so silly but it is funny the idea that You know, there's this narrative out there that, oh, Eric Bischoff wants to unmask all the luchadors. And now he's doing a storyline where he has him unmask.

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You talked about people that you miss. You miss Eddie Guerrero. And here is another guy you missed. ratty, Roddy Piper in the ring, cutting a promo with Maine Jean. I have to tell you, I don't remember much about Piper in WCW in 99. I remember a lot about 96 and 97, but 99 and Piper's kind of a blur. What were the contract negotiations like with Piper? Like, were you doing that every year, every couple of years?

How was he to deal with in that regard? I don't remember. Usually, I very rarely did less than a two-year deal. Two years was a target. I tried not to go three unless it was a really good reason for it. So it was probably two-year deal. I probably negotiated with Roddy twice for contracts. And both times it was easy, easy.

I don't want to say I enjoyed it, but there's not a lot to enjoy in a negotiation, but it was pleasant, it was respectful, it was productive, and there was no nonsense. And that's what I miss about Roddy. He was just a no-nonsense guy in real life. Yeah, it was easy, non-stressful. We're still doing the fake sting routine. I mean, respectfully, this is probably played out by now, is it not? It had been for quite a while, yeah.

Yeah. Do you think wrestling does that more than other places like, Probably. Because I think, well, yes, yes. The nature of wrestling is, you know, you don't have, let's produce eight weeks of television and take the next, you know, 46 or 44 weeks or whatever to figure out what we're going to do next season. You're constantly producing. You're on the road. Very little time to sit back and analyze effectively what's working and what's not.

So you're working primarily off instinct too often. for myself. Too often, I went back to the well with things that had proven to be successful in the past. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's generally a pretty good way to approach business, sticking with the things that work. It becomes problematic when you don't stop and really reflect and analyze what's working and not working, which is, again, hard to do when you're on a treadmill, producing two primetime shows that are live every single week in different parts of the country. Not making excuses. It's just the difference between a scripted series when you can do focus groups and you can analyze which characters are registering with the

audience and which aren't because every network series, every major motion picture, focus groups is such a big part of it. And you just didn't have that opportunity. Our focus group was the live audience every week. And our ability to correctly determine what's working and what's not working. And ratings obviously go into the quarter hours, sometimes go into it. People make way too much of it, mostly because the people that are talking about it have no idea how to really interpret it. It's kind of like a bad information in, bad information out, which is pretty much Dave Meltzer and people like him. But yeah, when you're on the road, you're producing two hours of live prime time every single

week you make the mistake and develop the flaw in your game where you're relying too heavily on things that maybe worked six months ago or a year ago even hoping to kind of rekindle that interest in that idea so piper's cutting a promo here on sting it's not really thing of course this thing is like the same height as me jean oakerland i was going to say it doesn't look like the jeff farmer sting at least i don't think so no i mean hell that could be gerrit bischoff in a wig i mean it's not really i'm just saying like this is yeah this is not and sting wishes he would have ever had that head of hair i guarantee wishes he had it now

bash at the beach is right around the corner here in 1999 we're going july 11th uh is where that one is going to happen um fort logger of Florida, so we're right around the corner from that. And what Piper is about to do is announced that he wants Buff Bagwell in a boxing match on pay-per-view this Sunday. Now, of course, you might be asking yourself, wait, is he feuding with Bagwell? And why is it a boxing match? Well, that's all going to crystallize here in a minute.

They've been able to secure in WCW a boxing match, well, a boxing referee, rather, legend. Mills Lane, who was really a part of pop culture at this point, not just from the iconic Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield fight, but he became a fixture on that claymation series that I'm TV had where you'd have like celebrities fight each other in clay and the referee was Mills Lane. He was even given a television show where he's a judge. So, I mean, I understand, hey, we've got an opportunity for some crossover. But realistically, wouldn't we, in hindsight, have been better served having Mills Lane do something on Nitro? Like, nobody's buying the pay-per-view to see a boxing referee, right?

I guess it's a coin toss. I mean, it's just garnish on the plate for a pay-per-view. Nobody's going to buy the pay-per-view because Mills Lane was on it. But it makes the pay-per-view a little more special. a television show. That's, you know, and that's the tricky part of navigating at this time, at least. In the late 90s, early 2000s, we elevated the content on Nitro. If you remember, you probably don't. Well, maybe you did because you subscribed to Meltzer. But, you know, the big criticism of Nitro early on and the fact that, you know, Dave Meltzer, amongst

others predicted that I was going to kill the wrestling industry because I was offering pay-per-view quality matches on free TV and, oh, my God, he doesn't know what he's doing. This is going back to 1990, 95, right? You know, the Bishop doesn't know what he's doing. He's fucking clueless. He's going to ruin the business. It's never going to work. Well, it did work.

It worked for us. It worked for WWE. But it also creates a challenge because you still, especially back then, more so than now for WWE, at least, because of the nature of their PLEs versus the former paper revenue model. You have to distinguish between the television show and the pay-per-view. You have to give them something extra. And in this case, that's something extra was Mills Lane.

Mills Lane here's cutting a promo that Dave Meltzer would say was the second best interview of the entire show. But in this, he's talking about how he's going to referee Sunday's fight in Florida and California. uh it's actually not in florida california wherever that is it's fort lauderdale florida but hey he was probably nervous it's not like this is something he does every day did you spend any time with mills what was your experience with mills i said hello i introduced myself welcomed him he was very cordial he was very cordial but i didn't have time to to hang out and get to know

him or anything like that he just passed away a couple years ago but my man was born in 37 in Savannah, Georgia. So to get to come back and do something in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome, that's probably pretty cool for him. Yeah, I would imagine. We should also mention that we've got this live studio audience and the questions are rolling in. Let's hit a few here.

James Sorensen wants to know, would you have booked David and Rick Flair to be a tag team to cover up him being green? We talked to the top of the show about David, and he was probably done a discise. service a lot of times when you do see someone who's older or someone who's younger they get put in a tag team to sort of camouflage you know some of the weaker spots and you've got somebody there ringside to sort of fill in the gaps was that ever seriously considered do you think rick would have been an advocate for that i don't know if it was considered or not to be fair keep in mind kevin solvin and rick flare were working very closely together so

they may have talked about it i wouldn't necessarily have been a part of that conversation conversation, if it was a general kind of creative conversation, I will say that it probably would have been a great idea. It would have been a better idea than what we did because it not only camouflages a younger talent's lack of experience, it's also a great learning opportunity. I mean, it's a difference between learning how to fly a plane by reading a book. or watching a video and getting up into the plane with an instructor and actually being in the environment and having your hands on the yoke and learning how to fly with the help

of an experienced co-pilot. Big, big difference in it would have served David much, much better. And I think Rick probably ultimately would have had more fun. We're about to watch Ray Mysterio team with Conan to take on Steve Regal and Fit Finley. this is the hootie-hoo era of uh ray mysterio what's your favorite masterpiece on here okay you got me i'm not even gonna try uh yeah i didn't figure a guy who had tom jones tickets was also a big fan of the no limit soldiers well i'll be careful there i mean if next time we're together i'll show you my, I'll show you my playlist. You'll be, you'll be surprised. I was surprised when you knew who

Yellow Wolf was a few years ago. One of my favorite songs. When I go to the gym, which I've been doing more and more of lately, trying to get myself into a reasonably good shape. You've got to stick around long enough to hang out with that grandson, if you know. Absolutely. But that's like one of my, I, I, that's like the third song on my, my workout playlist. Is it just, which song of Yellow wolfs do you like till it's gone till it's gone yeah i just i love that song it's just because it tells a great story right it's it's it's a it's a it's a great song it's got an amazing beat i love you're asked so story obsessed or even looking for story and songs not just i do i absolutely do the greatest songs in the world all have great stories in my opinion

did i say we are great song great story did i tell you the fun little fact about yellow wolf have we talked about this before cassio's cousin isn't that crazy what a small world but you told me that because the yellow wolf came up yellow wolf came up uh i don't know four years ago yeah you were trying to bust my balls you know oh yeah you listen to hip hop who's your favorite hip hop artist and without taking a breath i said yellow wolf couldn't believe you stopped right in your track i could i could i could i could i could feel you going oh yes i didn't expect that gadston alabama Who would have thought Eric Bischoff's favorite rapper is from Gadsden, Alabama? And you just sent me the song that he did with Jelly Roll, which I thought was pretty,

it was about a month ago you sent that to me. It was pretty bad ass. The biggest stars in all the music now. So it was a big opportunity for Yella to be on a track with him. They've been friends for like 20 years or something. So the idea they got something was cool. I don't know that trailer park in the sky is going to be a huge radio hit, but I thought it was neat that they got to do something together.

I agree. We see Regal here, who doesn't look like it's the best version of William Regal we saw, but he was always entertaining. Just the way he moved in the ring made me happy. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, but I did. I love the presentation. I wish I could say the same for the no-limit soldiers here. Ray without a mask just feels weird.

I know we were trying something. I understand it was an experiment. I'm not saying he absolutely had to have the mask to be successful, but I just prefer Ray with the mask. and I still am in awe of Conan and just his natural charisma. I mean, and how he's able to move around here. And I know that he's put on a lot of muscle and he's not exactly the most fluid

luchador. He's not doing, you know, double and triple her, Kornranas and craziness like that. But that's a big muscular dude who's moving around pretty catlike here in 1999. Yeah,

I mean, Conan is deceiving, you know, because he's not like six foot six, but man, he was thick as a brick. he really powerful strong low center of gravity and as you can see here tremendous upper body strength and again you we talked about it earlier about

guys who you know put on weight because they felt like they had to in order to be competitive Conan was another one who I think was probably better served about 20 or 25 pounds later the other members of the no limit soldiers are Chase Tatum B a which is Brad Armstrong and Swole is getting laid out here. Meltzer would say with the bandana covering his head he looks like a taller version of Mustafa. Meltzer would also note that originally Conan Mysterio were going to get the win in the match and this was going to be a post-match angle but they had to cut it for time so many times that it just became a run-in. How often do you think or how rare was it maybe is a better way to

ask that a match would lose time during the course of a show? I mean I know it's alive broadcast and I know we're back timing and we know we've got to have a certain amount of time for certain segments was that a weekly occurrence what did it happen on every show every quarter every hour when you're adjusting times for matches how often was that back then eric i mean there's always going to be minor adjustments always always i mean it's it's it's live you're going to go over 30 seconds you're going to go under a minute and you so you're constantly adjusting for time i think a better answer would be, or a better way to frame it, would be, how often was it crucial? How often did it create a problem?

And I would say the answer to that would be 30, 35% of the time, not every show, but probably every third or fourth show, you'd have a situation where somebody would go over by five minutes or four minutes and the closer you got to the end of the show, the more critical that became because you could adjust, you know, somebody went over five minutes in the very beginning. Well, then you can take, you know, 30 seconds out of the next six minutes or six matches, right? Because you had time to adjust. Seconds doesn't matter.

But if you're halfway through the show, where are we right now? We're, uh, I can't tell here. Hold on. We are, okay, we're, one hour and twenty, 28 minutes into a two-hour show, that becomes a problem because now you don't have enough matches to take any time away from without affecting them. So when you're halfway through the show, if something happened earlier that puts you five, six, seven minutes behind schedule, now you're starting to do, instead of fine-tuning timing, you're doing a reconstructive surgery.

And that's when it became a problem as it did here. We're doing reconstructive surgery right here with the U.S. title. We've got David Flair v. buff bagwell man buff has so much charisma in his entrance the jumping and skipping around the posing kneeling down in the aisle showing off his spray painted or uh airbrushed head he was just he was just being himself conrad he was just being himself this wasn't this wasn't acting for buff this is buff we've talked about how many times we talked about you one of some of the greatest characters or ones where you just have to turn the volume up a little bit yes that's buff bagelow right there he came into the locker room like that everybody show up early

in a day dragging her ass tired half hungover knowing it's going to be a 12 hour day buffin come skip into the locker room just like this 11 o'clock in the morning can i blow your mind eric yeah he's 29 years old right here unbelievable right and he's out of the business in two years unbelievable like this guy looks like he's in the absolute prime of his career he's 29 but he was 31 when he has his match his only televised match with w he worked a house show the day before that tacoma raw the now infamous tacoma raw the very next day they taped smackdown and he was a part of a big run in at the close of the show but the rest of the wcw contingent and that

was it but of all the biggest what ifs in wrestling The idea that Buff Bagwell, who it felt like one rookie of the year three times in a row in the early 90s, I mean, here he is at 29 years old. And to think two years later, it's over for him. It had to be hard. I'm sure it still is. Maybe that's part of the reason he's, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why Buff has been through the challenges that he's

been through and overcome, by the way, and overcoming, because you never completely overcome the challenges that's right, that Buff had, but he has, he is overcoming them on a daily basis and winning. But you have to wonder how much of an impact that had on him. And if that wasn't a large part of the reason that Buff has had some of the challenges, he's had since the wrestling business. David Flair is 20 years old here in this match. And Buff Bagwell, just 29.

It's just crazy to me to think that Buff with all his natural charisma and the look and the wrestling experience that it didn't go beyond this like I don't know it just feels like of all the people all the characters I'm not saying this to be funny but like we know how much Vince McMahon likes these type characters and it just didn't work there I'm fascinated by that timing man I'm going to be really honest about this and buff is a friend and and i have more respect for him now than i ever have but there was a point in time buff as you pointed out very very young at this point in time and very young when he went to wwe buff had a hard time occasionally more often than not

reading the room and knowing when to tone it down and when not to tone it down that wasn't his strong suit Some of it had to do with Buff's attitude. Some of it had to do with the attitude of others who had a preconceived notion of what Buff was and who he was. I think if Buff would have been able to survive another couple of months and actually get in front of Vince and give Vince and company a chance to see past the kind of overly confident, sometimes overly aggressive. um personality that he just had he just believed in himself so much so that we just came on so strong that it would rub you the wrong way and i think of buffett maybe would have had a couple more years under his belt and a little more seasoning um in terms of how to conduct yourself

backstage and off stage and how to deal with people the outcome could have been different but he just wasn't there long enough for anybody to really get to know him i mean he's he was talent and talents are quirky. I mean, everybody that we've been watching on this show so far to one degree or another is a quirky personality. And you've got to get to know the individual behind the character to really get an assessment of what they're like or whether you want to work with them. And I don't think Buff really got that opportunity.

And part of it is his own fault. Part of it is because, again, the perception of him. And at the core of it, it's just bad timing. it's amazing to me though you know you think about a guy like austin theory who we know that vince was really high on georgia guy six foot one muscular handsome good looking dude buff bagwell was the original austin theory in that regard and it just didn't work out but uh hey his story's gonna have a happy ending if you see buff bagwell at an appearance he's out he's out actually making appearances again i encourage you to go out of your way to go see him and go meet

him. I understand he just recently had knee surgery, but he's up and moving around, and I I'm excited for what's next with Buff to know that his story can still have a happy ending is pretty exciting. This is an actual girl doing their thing here. We're going to get an

interview from Hack. What happened there is a lot of shenanigans with Flair and Arne doing a run-in during the Bagwell match. Charles Robinson's not going to de-Q him, of course, because he's their boy. So that becomes an issue. And Dean Malenko wants to write the wrong.

So he makes the run-in. And now we get the Lichador segment. They're doing the lineup. This is so great. It is cheesy and fun and awesome and everything I love about pro wrestling. Doug Dillinger, having the Lichador's line out. This is crazy. It's crazy.

It's amazing. I don't remember this at all. This is nuts. I love it. Oh, Kevin Salvin. By the way, how's Kevin? do it. I know he's hanging in there, but is he getting a little better every day? He's on the end. And people have come through in a big way. I was able to connect his family

with WWV. And I saw Tony Kahn dropped a $10,000 donation. And Jim and Stacey Cornett dropped a $5,000 donation. It's been really, really cool to see the support for Kevin Sullivan. We're going to throw a link in the description for today's show for his co-fund me. They were originally looking for $20,000 to help a medical bills. They doubled that almost immediately. I know it has to make Kevin feel good. I talked to Kevin on the phone a couple of weeks back and man, he could not have been in better spirits. He's going to fight through this.

He's going to kick out of two and a half like he always does. So go out of your way to support Kevin. There's not like a, and I don't mean to interrupt you, Conrad, but I'm just excited. And I want to make this clear, we're going to, we've got to figure this out. There you can see behind me is the oil painting, the moment that, the NWO was created and I've had this now in my studio for quite some time and we're going to auction it off. Hopefully Super Dave Silva can help me figure that out. Let's create a link. Let's put it up for auction with all of the money going to help support Kevin and his medical expenses because

if it wasn't for Kevin Sullivan, that guy you see in the middle of that painting right there, Hulk Hogan, there is a good chance that that could have never happened because Kevin really went to an extreme to sequester Hulk and to control the people that had access to them to make sure that Hulk Hogan didn't change his mind. So I really want to auction this thing off. Not that I don't love it, I do. But it was an important moment of professional wrestling history,

and it's one that probably may not have occurred, had it not been for Kevin Sullivan. So we're going to come up with a link and we're going to promote the hell out of it. And we're going to raise a shit ton of money. Somebody's going to get an amazing picture that's been seen by thousands and thousands of people around the world maybe millions who knows by now so we're going to get a fundraiser put together here in the coming days so stay tuned we're

going to have a little bit of an event rick flair is gung-ho to do it we did this for mcmichael a few years ago so we'll do it again for kevin so in the meantime keep those donations coming it's going to go a long way uh really great segment that we're watching here on nitro we're shooting it from behind So even though all the wrestlers are unmasking, we don't actually see their face. We're just seeing them lifted up. So Eddie can see and Doug can see. Really a fun segment, though.

I mean, this is really, it's got to be segments like these that make Vince McMahon and the WWF sit up and take notice. There's lots of great wrestlers that are out there. But characters who can deliver this type of stuff, that's what it takes for WW. Wouldn't you agree? Absolutely.

because that's what it takes to grow and build an audience. It's got to be entertaining. It has to be more than as gifted, ridiculously gifted as Eddie Guerrero was inside of the ring. It was his character that made him a superstar. We see a, the TV feed is starting to go out here

as part of the effect here. And we've got a backstage promo with hardcore hacks sitting at the top of a ladder with his cane chastity right beside him and he's saying he was born in 63 and when he was born he started choking his doctor he had to fight all his life it's all he knows how to do and now he's in wcw and he gets paid to fight and he lists off all the men he's hurt and thinks that there should be a junkyard hardcore invitational on sunday because we can't have hardcore matches in the arena anymore so as a reminder yes this is that pay-per-view

it's just yeah it's a it's a little silly it's a little it's what it is really is it's just creative desperation we're just grasping in straws looking for the formula that works the junkyard invitational what a great name 13 minutes and 51 seconds we're just days away from that pay-per-view down in fort lauderdale Florida Florida man it's the perfect spot for bash at the beach I know you did that one in Huntington Beach but I think about Daytona beach with Hulk Hogan you know that painting that we just talked about and now here we are for Fort Lauderdale are any tax benefits to doing pay-per-views in Florida there were a lot of benefits uh Florida is a right to work state so union issues were not a problem I think you gave also recently uh or no I think we melt

Meltzer covered it, but Mike Mansuri, who is the VP director over to AEW, had to fill out a form for the state of Nevada in order to receive, I believe it was tax credits of some sort or another. But the document that Mansoury supplied to the state of Nevada, because it's public domain, Meltzer published it and was shocked, which doesn't surprise me because he never produced a television show, was shocked at the amount of expense that it took to put on, I think it was forbidden door. And part of that is because of unions.

It's just really expensive. When you go to Chicago, when you go to Las Vegas, certainly when you go to New York, Madison Square Garden is ridiculous. But you go to any of these major markets where there's a strong union influence, it's significantly more expensive. than going to a right-to-work state where the unions just aren't as influential. Not only that, because it's Florida,

because of the amount of television production that takes place there, partly because of the state and the incentives that it provides, there's a lot of freelance talents in Florida that you won't find in, say, Kansas, right? Because if you're a freelancer, whether you're a camera operator or a grip

or a lighting person, whatever, you're going to work a lot more often in Florida than you are just about anywhere. outside of California. So yes, there was major financial incentives, not only from tax incentives and even additional funding, that happened as well.

But really, it was because of the lack of unions and the abundance of qualified, highly qualified production talent, independent. Let's talk about something you're going to be qualified to do soon. And that's monitor your glucose. Thanks to our friends at Signos. I'm a big believer in this. I have to admit, I was ignorant to a lot of this,

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where we just saw the West Texas Rednecks do a concert And they came out and said, any rednecks here tonight, big pop, any rap fans here tonight, some cheers, some booze. How much fun was Kurt having, doing this bullshit? I think he was living a dream. Yes. I think Kurt, if he could have been anything else other than a professional wrestler at the highest level, which he was, I think if he could have been anything else, it would have been a country Western singer. I absolutely believe that. He loved country music.

He loved it. Next up, we've got the Jersey triad who are going to be taken on Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn. We need to hit a few questions from our live studio audience. Coach Rosie wants to know, how was Doug Dillinger's bilingual skills? Actually, he spoke three different languages.

He spoke Charlotte. He could converse pretty well in the general language of North Carolina. And he had a pretty good handle on English. So, yeah, he was bilingual. You had to be around him. You had to be around him for a few minutes. Or, you know, if you're from the South, you didn't notice it. But if you were, like, from New Jersey, for example,

the first couple minutes of being in a conversation with Doug, you almost felt like he needed an interpreter. he he was his country and and north carolina in down home as you could get it was so much fun seeing him last summer in huntsville and he looks the same he doesn't look any different he's still in pretty good shape he's moving around great it was so fun to see him but yeah he had to be around him for a minute make out what he was saying we should also mention that um i mean this this tag team we're seeing here. Chris Benoit, Perry, Saturn, Dean Malenko. I know come January, they're all going to be out of here. But this was really supposed to be the next wave of

WCW right here. Was it not? Certainly with regards to Benoit and, yeah. Perry Saturn was, although I will admit, Perry Saturn was, if not at the top of his game damn near close here too. So he was right in there in the mix. Pretty impressive. Should have gone for. there. Obviously, Chris Benoit went very much further. Dean Malenko is still in the industry today and doing well.

But, yeah, had WCW been around for a couple of more years, I think these guys would have emerged to some of the top players. Josh Annie has a fun question. He says, how did they determine how much of the dome would be used for Nitro? Was there ever any consideration to open up fully for the Hogan Goldberg match in 98th? You just monitor ticket sales. Yeah. You block it off for what you expect is going to sell and you monitor ticket sales every day and increase capacity as,

as dictated by the market. James Sorensen wants to know in your opinion, Eric, is 1999 an easily forgettable year for WCW. It was for me. I've been able to remember it sitting here today. I kind of blocked it all out. It's kind of like pain. Your brain functions in a really cool way is you remember that. something hurt, but you can't remember the actual pain.

And I feel the same way about 1999. If it were not for this show and the fact that I'm going back and watch these matches occasionally, I'm not even sure I'd remember what happened in 1999, other than it was painful. James Sorensen is a regular here on the program. I greatly appreciate his support. Josh Henney says, off the subject, but we had Sam Adonis with us last night with the top guys. This guy's an absolute wealth of knowledge and a great guy. have you had any interactions with Sam? Sam Adonis, of course, is a big star for AAA and

the real life brother of Corey Graves, the son of a promoter in Pittsburgh. Have he spent any time with Sam? Do you remember meeting Sam yet? I do not remember. If we met, it would have been in passing, but I, nothing, nothing that I can, you know, recall. I got up this morning. I got up late. I'm not going to lie.

I forgot to set my alarms. I was scrambling and I was looking at my phone with, you know, when I open, when I close, I'm trying to suck down coffee. And I saw a lot of great responses from the people that were a part of ad-free shows, a lot of great responses. So I will go back and check it out. But I don't think I really, I've had any interactions with it. We got another one here from Coach Rosie.

He says, if I'm remembering correctly, this was the episode that Randy Savage slapped Tori in the shower. Did y'all catch any flack for this? because watching with my 2024 eyes, I'd be shocked. Do we see that clip a lot online? Do you remember that? Was there any pushback on that? Not that I remember. I'm guessing there was because Terry Tingle was all over WCW at this point in time.

Terry Tingo was a head of standards and practices. So I might have gotten an email or a memo or a phone call, but I probably largely ignored it or tried to. Michael Stutler says, Eric, if you'd been able to purchase WCW in 2001, I know you mentioned Vegas as a place to film weekly TV. Would you have considered producing a syndicated show from a Disney MGM Universal Studios?

No, everything was going to be produced. Had we completed the purchase, we were going to go with a destination in Las Vegas, a destination home. We were going to have a permanent home where all of our production for Nitro and Thunder was going to take place. on top of a parking garage and Hard Rock Hotel, which was going to build a small arena,

3,500 seat, 4,500-seat arena. And we were also looking at acquiring some property. It was right over next to the Palms, what is now the Palms Hotel Resort. I think the Palms might have been there at that time. But it was a big piece of vacant property, and we were going to have a warehouse training facility in a small production studio where we could do a lot of other types of programming, But syndication was already becoming less meaningful to the model, the revenue model. And there wasn't any emphasis.

And I don't think there was even any discussion. I think all of our emphasis was going to be on our prime time shows. We weren't really considering syndication because it costs a lot of money to produce syndicated programming. We just weren't getting the return on that investment. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom, style humor, Moms 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 Donuts. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. We got some questions online. we went ahead as well light coin 2000 says my question is even with your disdain for vince russo would you ever do a show with him about castrating the marks and hammer melts her for an hour that would be an instant classic is there any circumstance you'd do anything with rousseau i think is what everybody's wanting to ask here nope david wants to know if you had to create your own type of wrestler who would it be body type grade on the mic in ring ability like if you're building a super wrestler you know we've got some help from a computer game or a i when you think of a wrestler

is there a body prototype you think about not anymore not anymore i mean you have to look believable you can't go out there looking like you know the young bucks and expect anybody to believe that you're actually any kind of a threat to anything um you got to have some physical credibility, but to me, beyond basic physical credibility, and it doesn't take much. You don't have to be six foot, five, and three hundred pounds anymore. We've proven that, right? The market has proven that. I'd start with character. Give me personality first, because you can learn a lot of the rest of it. You may not ever be an Eddie Guerrero or Ray Mysterio or a Brett Hart or Rick Flair. But,

Give me, first give me character, the rest of it you can take care of. But without character, without personality, without charisma, like we were talking about with Ernest Miller, it doesn't matter how good you are at the other things. You're not going to connect in a meaningful way, a long-term way, in a way that will grow and build unless you have charisma and the ability to tell stories and connect to the audience. That starts with charisma and character. and then you just add to it. We should do another question here.

This is an interesting one. And I don't know why I never thought to ask this. But Jacob wants to know, did you ever go to the Georgia Dome after this show for any event? Have you ever attended an event at the Georgia Dome after your WCW Nitro days were done? Yeah, I saw John Cougar Mellencamp there. No, I took that back.

That might have been the Omni. That's when it was the Omni. I went to a Monster Truck event there with my son, Garrett, and a couple of his buddies. I took them to see Monster Trucks. That was awesome. Just the sound and the smell itself was awesome. My kid, you know, obviously Garrett loved it.

So did his buddies. I saw Elton John there with my wife and another couple. I think that was it. So coming up next, it's our main event. We got some questions we should get to before we hit there. Michael wants to know if you were going to start taping all at Las Vegas, why would you choose there for someone else if you had to deal with the high expense of unions? That's a good question.

Like you just mentioned how expensive it would be to run there. Why would you pick Vegas if it is so much more expensive? Yeah, we were kind of talking about that during the break. Madison Square Garden, Vegas really, you know, probably debate which one of them is a true entertainment capital of the world. You know, the theory was, I think one of the reasons why WWE is still considered home turf at Madison Square Garden is if you could make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, right?

Madison Square Garden has been the host of so many amazing sporting events and entertainment events. It just adds to the branding. It makes your brand appear to be, and actually would be, stronger by virtue of the fact that you have a presence in Madison Square Garden. Same can be said for Las Vegas. Now, here's the one thing about Vegas that makes it more interesting and why Brian Bidal and I were so interested in having a permanent home with Vegas

is because unlike any other city in the United States, Las Vegas gets a new population of about 300,000 people or whatever the number is every Thursday night because people come there to be entertained. So you're not just, you have a resident wrestling audience that lives in Las Vegas. But you've got such a vast number of people that are coming to Las Vegas and looking for things to do. That's a double-edged sword because there's a lot of stuff to do in Las Vegas and you have to kind of break through the clutter. But if you're hot, if you've got a brand that's working and you're in Las Vegas, you know you're going to be able to sell tickets every single, every single event. Same thing.

It's one of the reasons why we went to Disney MGM studios because you've got a fresh audience coming through that studio, coming through that park, you know, five or six times. a day that you can call a new audience from as opposed to having the same audience every single week, which is what T&A did down in Orlando. It's one of the reasons why it eventually went away because an audience was just boring. They'd seen the product so often they were just like stage hands, and that's not a real audience. So Vegas provides some unique opportunities that kind of mitigate the additional expense of producing your show there.

good question though dude i love smart people we have so many smart people that listen to the show michael wants to know with the union expenses in those areas does the revenue in those cities do better to put the revenue over expenses if not why would they keep going back to the same cities like chicago chicago does get so many big wrestling shows but at times it is very much a union circumstance there i don't think all the buildings are maybe the maybe the suburbs aren't that the city limits is. I mean, but you see. I mean, that's exactly it.

City limits are, I think they're all expensive. I mean, you've got a strong union presence even in the suburbs, but it just gets to be more expensive in the city. And the reason you go back is kind of the same answer. It's a branding opportunity. You're coming from a major city that adds to the credibility of your brand, much like New York City, much like Las Vegas. Let me just give you guys some context to what we're about to say as we get ready

for our main event. Sid is in the ring with the world title and macho man is by his side. Here comes Kevin Nash down the ramp by himself. This is the arrow by the way where Shane Douglas was coming in. He's going to be on Nitro within the next couple of weeks.

WCW Live, which is really the precursor to what you're listening to now. I mean one of the original quote unquote podcast before we called it that. Nikita Koloff was a guest there and he was talking about being in great ring shape and being interested in returning to the ring. Do you remember having any sort of conversation or discussion at all with Nikita in 1999? I did not. I don't think I've

ever met Nikita Koloff in person. If I had, it would have been as a part of a large group and it would have been in passing, but I've never sat down and had a conversation with Nikita Kulov. I'd like to. I find him to be a really interesting guy and I love what he's doing now and he's very active in the Christian community and there's a lot of reach out and support. So I admire him. I have a lot of respect for them, but I've never had a conversation with it. Of course, it's not on Peacock, but if you were watching this show live, you would have seen the Megadeth

concert, and now it's time for the main event, Nash versus Sid. I found something that I wanted to just share with you. Because there was a question in the observer when we were doing our research

back in 1999 here, where a reader named Ed Dana wrote in, and said, I found your observation that prayer wrestling operates according to rules quite different from normal businesses, very intriguing. Certainly if WCW were run according to normal business procedures, Bischoff Nash and Hogan would have been fired or at least placed on probation for failing to deliver as advertised. He continues. And Meltzer responds, first you have to look at Bischoff's record from an overall perspective. He took the company over when it was grossing

30 million per year and built it to the 200 million per year level. It would be down this year from last year, but still probably operates it close to five times the revenue is when Bischoff started, so he still looks good. I found that very few people who live wrestling truly understand the big picture business of it, so outside executives aren't going to see much past those numbers. They're probably more concerned about the declining ratings, but have probably been snowed to the idea. It's mainly because the WBF is so raunchy as a corporation. They feel that that's the reality of not wanting to go in the gutter, and thus blame the decline. blah blah blah but where did bischoff come from he was a sea team announcer who talked his way into running the company when the position opened and turned the company around big time with some ballsy moves there was no knowledge or background that would lead anyone to believe that he would have what it took to do this maybe to an extent that he was just a lucky person who stole one good idea from new japan and had the biggest bank account in the history of the industry to scour the earth and sign the best talent and got to

a few good year run out of it the odds are his replacement if from outside of wrestling would be another herd because this is not a business that is easily understood by outsiders and he continues but i just found some of that interesting that on the one hand he's given you i guess a backhand to compliment you grew it from 30 million to 200 million even down this year it's still going to be 150 he's guessing but then he says hey nobody could have predicted he could do this he did make some balls he moves but he had the biggest paycheck the industry ever saw stolen idea and had a few good year ruin given what's happening in restaurant i like that piece of shit day belcher i challenge you you piece of shit and i hope that i get quoted accurately tell me exactly what

idea i stole you lying fuck if you've got the balls Tell me exactly what idea that occurred in Japan that I was privy to, that I was part of, that I witnessed, that even remotely looked like the NWO. Tell me what that is, you fraudulent piece of fucking trash. This is why I despise this person's. This is the same piece of. garbage that said that Pat McAfee's absence off of Monday Night Raw because he's got such great insight information was because it was part of a storyline when in fact it was a death

in the family. That comment about Pat McAfee in his absence from TV is all you need to know about anything else, this lying, fraudulent piece of, he's just a parasite. He's at no talent. He has zero talents and ability. He calls himself a journalist. Yet he can't confirm a story. He writes lies.

He's been caught red-handed printing lies from other people just to fill fucking 10,000 words and put out his garbage toilet paper that people spend $15 a month for, whatever it is, he has no understanding of the business of the wrestling business because he's never been in it. All he could do is sit in his little basement or whatever he lives, milk people for ridiculous amounts of money,

and pretend that he knows anything about what he's talking about. So his compliments offhanded or not, backhanded or not, are fucking meaningless as anything else that he has to say. By the way, it was way more than $200 million, you lie, a piece of garbage. But I digress. There's nothing Dave Meltzer says that has any ounce of credibility. Thank God for social media because now people are just pointing it out right and left. You know, before podcast, before Bruce Bridger, who started it all, before Jim Cornett, before I got into it.

You know, Dave Meltzer had free, he could go out and print whatever he wanted to print. Nobody had a platform to dispute it or point out how badly this person lies, distorts, omits. And I think he lives to cover Tony Kahn's ass because Tony Kahn is actually pursuing Dave Meltzer's wet dream. And that's why Dave defends AEW as much as he does. Because Tony Kahn is actually implementing what Dave Meltzer is always believed would be the great way to, the best way to run a wrestling company. Well, in fact, it's rotting, it's deteriorating before Dave Meltzer's very eyes and now he's going to extremes to defend not only AW, but really defend everything that Dave Meltzer's been talking about for 20 years. And it's becoming more evident every day that Dave Meltzer doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Whether he's giving you a compliment or he's bearing you, it really doesn't matter.

Nothing he says has any credibility. Well, the matches ended here. Our main event, Sid versus Kevin Nash got broken down. Now they set up a pay-per-view tag team match. So this is the go-home show to set that up. It's going to be Nash and Sting against Sid and Randy Savage. Nash has just high-tailed it to the backstage area, or I'm sorry, Randy Savage has.

And this is where we're going to see some of those backstage shenanigans that we see on a regular basis on botcha mania and other places. um this was an interesting show man you know it's it's a company that is certainly on the decline but they're still doing really really well there's still something there but it does feel like we're just not able to get on the same page it doesn't feel like a cohesive show it feels disconjoined i mean how would you describe say july of 99 wcw you know it's just you've seen watching this there was still elements of nitro that were coherent

that kind of made sense there we just saw the slap Randy and Torrey Wilson more than anything it wreaks it's beginning to wreak of desperation we're not quite desperate yet but boy including the scene

backstage with Randy you know going after two women in a locker room that's just that's desperation that's us kind of doing or attempting to do what WWE had been doing now for a year or so and had been so successful with. And it was just the wrong choice.

It was a long way to go. And you're beginning to see it. I would imagine if we watched the show from September of 99, it's probably going to be worse. And by the end of 99, it will be hideous. But this was the beginning of it. This is one it was so obvious to everybody that the wheels were, falling off. I felt it back in 98. I started feeling it before it started showing up on

television, but certainly by July of 1999, everybody was beginning to see it. Well, we're beginning to see that we're going to be back next week. I'm excited that we got to watch this old episode of Nitro. I don't know why, but I love watching old nitros with you. I hope that you guys will consider checking us out on YouTube as well. It's 83 weeks.com is where you can find your home for all things. Eric Bischoff. We did reaction shows for forbidden door and for money in the bank. And you never know when Eric's going to go live. He'll get a wild hair every now and again.

Something will get, they'll get a bur in his saddle and he'll just let it rip tatership. And that's what we're going to do at 83 weeks.com. It's totally free. Hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell. You don't want to miss when we're going live again. I also want to mention that you can interact with us on social media.

The show handles are at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you haven't already, give us a follow there. and man we would love to have your ratings if you think we've earned it man throw us a five-star review wherever you enjoy your podcast whether that's on Spotify or that's on Apple or anywhere else be sure to leave us a review and give us a rating we're looking for your feedback and if you've got a question for Eric the best place to ask it of course is 83 weeks.com you saw Eric rocking an easy E t-shirt there today

that's available for you as well at 83 weeks.com Eric I never know what to expect when we sit down and click record but this was a lot of fun today man i appreciate the time and i'm looking forward to what's next and we're recording it we're recording early uh so as you're listening to this last night eric bischoff sat down with stew schneider and eric has some questions he thinks remember there was some dirty pool being played in the end of wcw and stew schneider doesn't do a lot of interviews but he will do one mat mono emano with eric bischoff and that's exclusively at ad free shows.com. So if you're listening to this, you missed it last night, but it's still available on

demand for you right now at ad free shows.com. Anything else we should mention before we wrap up today's episode, Eric? No, because you pull up that graphic of Stu Snyder again. Sure. Tell me that doesn't look like David Pinser. It looks like they could be cousins. All right. Looking forward to. Thank you much, Connie. And hopefully you're going to feel better quick. And we'll see you guys next week right here on 83 weeks. dot com save with conrad dot com my name is duck 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 uh 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 this 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, it was just fantastic. I had Diane within the day, the communication with her was fantastic. The process moved quicker than I could have ever hoped. My name is Doug Gustafin from Columbus, Ohio. I ended up saving $800 a month. It was saved with Conrad. And I'm able to to also update our bathroom.

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