83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 333: Purchasing WCW with Stu Snyder & Wrestling With Shadows Watch Along

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

On this special edition of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad are taking you behind the curtain of AD Free Shows and giving your two bonus events for FREE! First, Eric Bischoff talks one-on-one with the man who helped orchestrate the deal for WWF to purchase WCW right out from under Eric's nose - former WWF President, Stu Snyder! Eric and Stu talk about Stu's role within Turner, how he landed in WWF, his friendship with Brad Siegel and how the deal for WCW to be purchased ultimately came together! Second, for the FIRST time ever, Eric sits down to watch Bret Hart's documentary, "Wrestling with Shadows." Hear Eric's review and reaction to the doc, and his always-candid thoughts on Bret This is just an example of the OVER 100K hours of bonus content offered over on ADFREESHOWS.com if you're not a member of the family, what are you waiting for? Join ADFreeShows.com today! ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/83WEEKS CREMO -You can find Cremo Men’s Body Wash at Walmart or Walmart.com. BE KIND LET'S REWIND - Are you a fan of the 80s and 90s? Do you long for the good ol’ days? Do you still “too sweet” every stranger wearing an NWO shirt? Then check out the new nostalgia podcast “Be Kind Let’s Rewind”. Join 3 lifelong friends as they discuss tv, movies, music, and pop culture from the 80s, 90s and beyond. They’ve covered topics ranging from personalities like Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan, to Movies like Predator and Happy Gilmore. New episodes air every Friday on YouTube, Spotify, apple music, and all major podcasting platforms. Be sure to subscribe to their YouTube page @BeKindLetsRewind and you can engage with the show on Instagram, X and Discord HENSON SHAVING - It’s time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that’ll last you a lifetime. Visit https://hensonshaving.com/BISCHOFF to pick the razor for you and use code BISCHOFF and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. 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, except without Eric Bischoff. It's his anniversary weekend trip, and Mr. and Mrs. B are out of pocket. So today we're pulling back the curtain and giving you a chance to sample some of the fun we're having over at ad-freeshows.com. we've got not one but two bonus episodes for you today and boy are we starting out hot coming in hot with a one-on-one sit down between eric bischoff and stew schneider that's right that fellow who used to work for turner and then somehow became the president of the wf and maybe knew ahead of time that bishoff and fusion media were not going to be successful

in their bid for wcd that's certainly what was revealed in the observer we talked all about it the entire internet wrestling community did when we all watched VICE's multi-part series Who Killed WCW? Lots of people were wondering, hey, what really happened with Stu Snyder? Didn't he have a relationship with Brad Siegel?

And how in the world were people inside the WWF saying as soon as the fusion deal was announced, it'll never happen? Hmm, certainly raised Eric Bischoff's eyebrows. He wanted to know what was really going on. was there ever a good faith attempt from turner to actually sell wcw to someone other than the w wf or was it predetermined we're going to find out when these guys talked for the first time in

decades it was exclusive as a part of ad free shows.com we are really proud of what we're doing over at ad free shows.com and i would encourage you to check it out if you haven't already you don't just get exclusives like these one-offs and bonus content from all of my other podcasts we've got more than 100,000 hours worth of bonus content for you right now live at ad-free shows.com. That includes all of our archives for all of our shows, commercial free, bonus content from all of our hosts nearly every month for years, and series you can't hear anywhere else. How about an interactive Lex Lugar experience? Yeah, you get to be on camera asking Lex Lugar questions every month as a part of his series Lex Express. What about the brand new series

we just rolled out. Pardonain easy. He and Cassioquiat are going to have some high times over there. Probably a few laughs if I had the guess too. What about Toley Vision? If you just can't get enough of nostalgia, does it get any better than watching old Tully Blanchard stuff from Jim Crockett promotions with Tully Blanchard himself? And we're talking about a multi-generation performer there, giving you his insight. We've also got that happening with Learning Lucha. Sam Adonis, the real life brother of Corey Graves, the son of a promoter, has now making a heck of a name for himself south of the border he knows wrestling here in america forwards and backwards just like you and i he's trying to teach us all a little bit about what

happens down yonder check it out it's learning lucha one of my favorite things i do each and every month to sit down with a member of wrestling royalty mr david crockett we go episodically through all of 1985 and now we're into 1986 page by page from his brother's red book that's the excellent penmanship of J.J. Dillon, the genius booking mind of Dusty Roads. We're actually covering the Great American Bash Tour from 1986 right now. Yes, that stadium tour with all those country music acts. And at the end of the tour, Dusty's going to win the world title.

The Big Gold Belt, his last world title. Check it out at ad-free shows.com. And every Monday, we do Monday mailbag with Mike Keota or Nick Patrick. They were the third men in the ring on the WBF side of thing and the WCW. of things. You can't find these series anywhere else. Check them out right now at adfreeshoes.com. But without further ado, man, let's catch you up. Let's jump right in. Stu Snyder and Eric Bischoff from adfreeshows.com right here for free on 83 weeks. All right. Welcome, everybody. I think we're open. We're up and running. As you can see,

our guest, Stu Snyder has really, really graciously joined us here. It's the middle of the summer. He's sitting on a pier that he owns, along with his lobster cartel and sharing time on a beautiful evening to spend a little bit of time with us. Stu, thank you so much, man. It's cool of you to be here. My pleasure. So listen, this is, you know, a wrestling podcast. Everybody that's here is interested in wrestling. Of course, everybody that's here, most of them have seen the Who Killed WCW series, which I found really fascinating. It was so well produced. I loved it. And I appreciate that you were a part of it. I didn't have anything to do with producing it.

But you brought a level of interest and detail and in a face to a name. Before we get into the wrestling stuff, though, aside from the lobster cartel that you and your family are running, it almost sounds like it could be a movie, right? Yeah. What else have you got going? What did you do after you left WWE? So let me bring you up to speed in terms of when I left WWE, I did a tour of duty. I ran a, I turned around an animation studio up in Canada called CINAR. And that was a public company.

That was a company that had gone through some trouble. So I went there. Board of directors brought me in, fixed it, sold the company. And then after that, I got asked to come back to turn of broadcasting by the chairman and CEO to basically run up a division called Animation, Young Adults, and Kids Media. And in that division, I ran Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and a digital gaming service called GameTap. I did that for 10 years of my life, and we were coming up on the end of my contract around

2015, and that's when I bought Beale's Lobster Pier right then. And then since then, since leaving, I've had the, I've really enjoyed what I call a third chapter of life, which is I do projects that I care about with people that I like. And I subscribe to that motto now that I'm gray hair and in that third chapter. So I'm producing Broadway plays. I've got three shows on Broadway right now. I'll give a shout out to those great tasks and teams, by the way. The first one is called Hell's Kitchen, which is Alicia Keys. his new show. The second one is called Sufts, which just won two Tonys, Hell's Kitchen won two

Tonys. And then the other show is called Water for Elephants, which is based on the best-selling book. So I've got that going on. I'm doing a movie with Sam Rockwell based on a very famous story out of Japan, Carlos Gosen, was arrested for embezzlement out of a Japanese company that he was running, so we're doing a movie. On that. And I have... have Beals Lopster Pier, and I sit on the board of some companies, and I have fun. That's my life right now. This guy just decided he was going to spend maybe an hour with us here on every show. Let's give him a hand.

Listen, I knew that the, first of all, I agree with you, Eric. I really enjoyed the documentary. I thought it was well-produced. I think the story was laid out well. I think it was they showed all sides of kind of the story. And I figured coming out of that, there would be some drama, some heat from question marks on it. And certainly, I figure over the last 20 years of the speculation and the stories of what really happened, you know, it was time to dive in with it. So when Dwayne and Seven Bucks did it, I said, I'd be happy to participate.

And the same with the invitation to do it. I have a conversation with you about it after all these years. Well, I very much appreciate it on a personal level, as well as. you know, what our audience is going to think. So let's shift into wrestling. Yeah. But before you did any into any of the drama, and I'll try to keep this at an hour or under,

if that's okay with you. I'm available for as long as you need me. Oh, want me. I remember when I first got to Turner, I got there in 91, and I was a backup announcer, basically, pretty low level. It was me and the people that watered the plants.

Everybody else was above that. But I remember hearing your name early on, I believe I did, and with Turner Home Entertainment, but I never really understood what all did Turner Home Entertainment encompass at that time? Sure. So I was recruited to run, to turn around and grow Turner Home Entertainment, which basically it was three groups within one. First of all, it was home video distribution. You know, back in the early 90s, home video was exploding.

So it was home video, and it was also licensing and merchandising. Those were the two core divisions within Turner Home Entertainment. There was also an international group, who was a smaller group. I headed up the Home Entertainment, the Home Video Group. And under, I came on board right around the time where Ted said, wanted to be an entertainment player, not just a cable player. We had all the cable networks, but I want to be an entertainment player. So we went out and bought Hannah Barbera. We went and bought New Line Cinema, and we bought Castle Rock, if you remember. So we rolled all of those

assets in, and that was the formation of the home video business, because the home video business was, like I said, was thriving. Our ambition was to grow when I joined the company, about $25 million in gross revenue. Knock on wood, when Ted sold the company, and we merged with Time Warner, it was doing about $450, $500 million. But we took all the assets from the company, including WCW's assets, and our charge was to distribute them in home entertainment. And I think that's probably where I heard your name, because I think Sharon Sadello would

have either. I worked with Sharon. Right. She was our VP inside of WCW. And for people that don't know, you had. Turner corporate, and WCW was a division, so to speak, of Turner Broadcasting, and there were elements of our business model, home video, for example, international distribution is another one under your umbrella.

Yeah, WCW didn't really have any control or we didn't put any effort into it. That was all handled and managed by Turner Home Entertainment. So that was the relationship between my division and your division. Right. And Sharon, what I remember was the most. your marketing person. Right. So sharing waiting on most of the marketing. So we would collaborate on what the marketing should be.

And then our job was to physically go out and sell it, distribute it, get it out the door. Very good. That's kind of what I thought, but I wasn't sure. So I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. And so you've had two lifetimes at Turner. Because 10 years is in, you know, relative terms, like 18 years in another job. job. Right. You've had two of those careers. When did the first one end? The first one ended in 96.

So Ted sells the company to Time Warner. I get an offer to join Warner Brothers out in California. And I decide, no, I'm not going to go move back to California because I was based in Atlanta. I got recruited to run a company called Feld Entertainment. Sure. So Ringling, brothers, Disney and I, Siegfried and Roy, I went and did that, and I stayed there, and then after that I went to the animation company and then got the offer to come back to Turner in 2005. Okay, so where did the WWF part fit in? 99 through 2001 period. Oh, okay, okay.

All right. I was a little confused watching the series because it sounded like you were there beforehand. So you went there. Yeah, so that was, that's one of the speculations or things out there. No, there was a, I left and I went to Feld, and I was at Feld for about three years. And then I ended up getting recruited by WWE after my time it felt. Very cool. Very cool.

And what was your experience like it felt? And that had to be really interesting. That was, that was a lot different than home video and international distribution. Yeah, it was. It actually, I was intrigued with going there because early in my career, and this goes back to high school and college days, I promoted concerts. So I was, I was booking shows in college. I was promoting shows, concerts. You know, my big thrill was booking Bruce Springsteen for the Broom County Memorial Arena in Binghamton and Billy Joel.

That's kind of a big deal. Right, but I'm 18, 19 years old, so I'm a punk. So, yeah, so it was. What attracted me to go to Feld was basically a return to that live entertainment. I had done the movies. It's kind of like throughout my career I like to keep learning and growing. So I did movies. I did distribution.

I was part of a big company for all of my career, but to that point. And all of a sudden, to get this opportunity to join this family business, Feld, live entertainment, takes me right back to entertainment, which I always enjoyed. So I said, yeah, let's jump off the bridge and go do that. So it had a lot of positives, a lot of positives. At the end of the day, I didn't stay past my contract because I decided I want to return to a bigger company. I wanted to get back into what I call more mainstream entertainment, which had,

WBE was live entertainment, pay-per-view, television, movies. You know, it was a return to that. Did you go to them or did they come to you? I got recruited to them. Very cool. A headhunter called me about the job. So who hired you, Vince? Oh, yeah.

I reported to Vince and Linda. Okay. All right. So tell me about your, not your first meeting, but what was the second meeting like? Oh, my first meeting is even more fun, though. All right. Let's hear the first one. I'm skipping right to act two.

Okay. So my first, I called my first meeting with Vince, who is my interview. So I make it through the process, and now my last conversation is with Vince. And I met with him in the office in the New York City in the advertising, in the advertising offices. And it was great. I mean, the conversation was going fine. And then, you know, you get to the point at the interview where they say, well, what questions do you have that you have? so i said i do have a question and i said can i ask you about this venture you just announced

called xFL and he says yes and vince was got very serious and he said yes uh i said well i'm trying to understand you know the positioning and the take and why you're doing it and how does it fit into the job that you want me to do and uh you know what what's the game plan And he goes, he explains it a little bit. And then he's, you know, Vince is, is a genius. I mean, you know, from a standpoint of business and how he looked at life and things. And I gave him a lot of credit for a lot of things. And he says, but I can tell by your question that you have some doubt.

So I said, well, I have some questions because it sounds like it's going to be very expensive, high risk. you have a very successful company and have did you ever think maybe of just buying arena football league you know you can control it centralize it it's in arenas where at that time called WWF

you know has tons of shows you can you can leverage the arena fees all of those things and he looks at me and he just goes arena football is not football not even compared to football and at that point I figured I blew it I said I'm not getting hired

but end of the day we went forward and I did get the job and join the company it was great great experience I had much the same experience but let me ask you did he lean forward is it pal arena oh yeah I mean because he's got to get

in your face a little bit when he's trying to make. Oh, no, no, the chest, the chest went out. The chest went out and the pal happened and, you know, it was all the dynamics that anybody who works with him, you experienced. There was the lean in and the head was tilted. And I got the whole, I got the whole Mr. McMahon perspective. I bet you the reason he did hire you is because you did in your way challenge him professionally, you know, appropriately under the circumstances.

But I've, I learned the hard way. Vince likes to be challenged. He likes not everybody to challenge him, but he needs one or two people that he knows are not going to yes him into a bad decision. That was, we had a lot of those conversations over the years I was there. I was the, look, I was the business guy.

I wasn't creative. I was the guy who had to deal with the pay-per-view deal that we were negotiating. Obviously, we're going to talk about the buying WCW, looking at other strategic investments to do. So I was the guy who that I saw myself as the guy who had to present opportunities, talk about tough things. And even if we didn't agree or if we were going to argue, that's what the job is. And that's how I was raised with Ted Turner. And I can go back to all my bosses. Look, I work for a guy named Jose Menendez.

and Jose Menendez, everybody can look that up, who doesn't remember. But these are all very what I call strong leaders who do, I agree with you, respect being challenged. Or else they're going to see you as a rollover, and guess what, you're of no value to them in the organization. It won't get to WCW, but I'm really fascinated with your role in WWE because I think it was at a time, a really critical time. in WWE, that transition from being a family-run business and a private company to taking that astronomical leap into becoming a public company. See, it was that the words roll off my tongue sitting here all this time later, it still blows my mind that he pulled that off.

Oh, yes. It was, had he not done that, I don't know that we would be talking about WWE today. I agree with you. He got, besides the money, he got legitimacy. Real true legitimacy within the marketplace, both bankers, the financial community, and the entire entertainment space. And I think that we would not be looking at the organization the same way if that had not happened. So again, this is where I admire Vince, Linda, and that entire organization so much for accomplishing. what they've accomplished and monetizing that organization the way they have.

It just, you know, all the other stuff put aside of all the bad stuff that I admire greatly about the organization. And I even can admire the risk on XFL taking the shot, because that's Vince. I get that. That's Vince. Yep. He really did amazing things, but I want to go back to getting the, the credibility by going public because I talk about this. The reason I want to zero in on this

just for a minute is because I oftentimes refer, especially talking about contemporary, you know, business for whether it's AEW or WW or whatever, you know, you look at, you know, in WWE's case, massive ratings on network television on Fox. I was there. I was there the night they debuted on Fox. I was a director of that show of SmackDown the brand. They opened up with 3.9 million viewers, 3.8 and change, viewers, which was probably less than they hope, but pretty, pretty massive in any, any event. But throughout their contract with Fox, they've been hovering probably at a 2.1 million, 2.5 million range, give or take, which is pretty good. But the challenge, I think, and Fox came out and said it, they didn't renew because even though the ratings were

substantial, the ad dollars just aren't there. It was... It was way worse back before he went public. Wrestling was always a tough sell, wasn't it? It was. And look, you touched upon it. The documentary touched upon it. Brad touched upon it in terms of wrestling in the genre. The business over-indexed on eyeballs.

It under-indexed in relation to the eyeballs in the ad dollars. The other thing that it under-indexed on was holding an audience. So what happened was, and again, people came, build it and they will come. The challenge was holding them. And in the old linear model of a business, right, of Fox Network, Turner Networks, you know, I was the Turner Networks at that time. And then we went to Viacom, you know, W. DWF when I was over at Viacom.

The whole issue was, yeah, we'd pop a rating. We couldn't monetize it the way other shows monetized, but then also the audience wouldn't stay for the next show. So if you're running a network, if you're not bringing those, let's call it 3 million people or a majority of them to the next show, you're almost working harder to get the audience for the next show. and that's not the way television works.

And I don't care whether it was a dramatic drama network like T&T or comedy network like TBS or my cartoon network, which is what's all about, I make sure I have a good lead in for my next show and the next show and the next show and the next show to hold the audience so they don't click the, you know, they don't go somewhere else. And wrestling and wrestling became an island if you didn't have the right show,

is why, you know, when I was at WWE was one of the reasons why I spearheaded with Kevin, a show called Tough Enough, which was about, you know, a reality show about creating the next superstar because we needed more programming to try to hold audiences.

All right, we've got to take a time out right now. I know we're knee deep in this conversation with Stu Schneider and Eric Bischoff, and we're trying to figure out, hey, how in the heck did the WWF get such a good deal? I mean, a fraction of what the other offers were. It's almost like somebody forgot about it.

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. That's rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. Rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. And now let's get back to Eric Bischoff and Stu Snyder on 83 weeks.com. And that was a great idea, by the way. It's kind of cutting edge at the time. That was right on the, you know, the beginning. wave of reality in the U.S.

It was around for a couple of years, but nobody ever thought we'd see it in wrestling. Yes, for sure. Yeah, it was a great idea. I want to go back to prime time, pick your brain just for a second. I'm sorry about to interrupt you. We got a little bit. Go, come on. Yeah.

Love it. Crime time and holding an audience. Just to be clear, wrestling itself, the island, yeah, no problem getting a whole bunch of people to show up at the island. The problem is as soon as they close the island, everybody left and went somewhere else. That's right. And I point that out because today there's a lot of conversation about AEW in the wrestling world, the number two organization by a mile, but they're in the middle of contract supposedly negotiations,

renegotiations to extend. And the number for AEW, I guess relatively speaking, around 700,000 viewers as of last night, whatever, I'm not sure, relatively speaking, if that's good, bad, or indifferent anymore, No comments on that. But what is interesting is they have a lead-in, right into their show is at 8 o'clock Eastern. They have a lead-in called Big Bank Theory that does pretty well. And the AEW show drops that lead-in by about 100,000 viewers within the first seven or eight minutes.

And what I try to explain to people is the analysis isn't just how great is the AEW dynamite rating. the analysis really comes down to, first of all, it's ad dollars, going back to what we said before, can you monetize it? And number two, what does it do to your night? And if it doesn't hold its lead in and doesn't do anything for anything coming after it, it really doesn't matter what the rating is in the revenue is, because it's a big hole in your beachfront property. It's a sinkhole. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And that was always the challenge of wrestling and it's not just wrestling

there are other examples of that but especially with wrestling and network guys like us we look at it from a standpoint of what are we holding for the night and what are we retaining his eyeballs because you're working off promotions like our promo spots

how many eyeballs are seeing the promo shop for the other shows that night right it's not just commercial dollars it's promos you know are we attracting an audience if our sweet spot it's 18 to 34 and there and the audience is leaving us well how are we promoting other shows so you've nailed it 100% it's what's the leading what are you retaining of the leading how many people are showing up and how many people are leaving on the back end and to prove your point and just to go back a couple years quite a few years at this point to highlight it even more. One of the things that Brad came to me with when

obviously Brad was at T&T and I had Nitro for WCW. And we would try, you know, I loved working with Brad. He was all extremely supportive of Nitro. He wasn't even in the room as far as I was concerned. I was in the room. Brad may have known about Ted making the decision about Nitro beforehand. I don't think that was the case, but it could have happened. But once Brad found out either way, however you found out, he really jumped in 100%. It wasn't like, I'm going to pretend I'm really supporting this because I'm really hoping it's going to crash and burn. He named the show.

I mean, it was his idea to call it nitro because he had the nitro block. He convinced me, although it wasn't really my decision, it was really his, but he made me feel like I was a part of it anyway. I mean, he did a good job on that. He did a great job. And I'm glad he did because one of the best experiences I had in terms of being an executive and learning how to develop a show and content was being exposed to some phenomenal research and focus groups. I mean, Brad said, look, if we're going to do this, let's make sure

we give it 100%. And he was his budget, not mine, and put together these focus groups. And I learned so much. And I'd see, I've been involved with other focus groups at WCW, but they were horrible. Bad data in, bad data out. With Bradson and E. Brad's and he, initiative, I set, I went to focus groups all over the country, behind a wall, they couldn't see that we're doing. I watched them watch a show with reasset so we could see as a whole what they were responding to, not responding to. And then you do the Q&As with them after that portion of it. And man, a lot of what I learned in those focus groups, I took away. I kind of knew intuitively. I guess I kind of thought I knew feeling. But when you hear people all over the country

kind of singing the same song at the same key, telling you exactly what they want. It makes creating a show a lot easier. It really does. And I really appreciate you. I've got two comments. One, I am not surprised at all, knowing Brad, and I'm sure that we'll talk about that

because that's one of the things on the radar screen for a lot of people, our relationship. I almost don't even care about that. But hang on, but knowing, we'll get to there. But knowing Brad, I would expect absolutely nothing less in regards to once Ted said, this is where we're going, let's go. And because I lived that with Brad and Ted on a movie called Gettysburg. So I lived that type of thing, which was Ted, Ted made the movie Gettysburg, short story.

And he was going to go on T&T first. That's where it was going to air. and I put my hand up and I went, excuse me, we can make more money for the company if you don't put it on T&T first, throw it into the movie theaters even for a week and I'll put it out on video and this is how much money we'll make. And then you could run it simulcast on TNT and we'll have our cake and eat it too. And Brad kind of went, wait a minute, I'm not going to get a premiere on Gettysburg. Wait a minute, what? And then, but we went through the process. and then once the decision was made, he was on board fully supportive.

So I've seen, you know, look, I've known him for a long time and professionally I would expect nothing less. And then on research, and then on research, research my philosophy on research, intuitively you knew the right answers, by the way. I believe that. And by the way, any of us who do this job long enough, we intuitively know the right thing. So we're getting confirmation from a larger group.

We're looking for the large fuck up. uh-oh don't do that because they're going to hate that idea that's what you do the major set of the research to avoid the fuck up well one of the other things that i remember working with brad is trying to cross promote because we had this powerhouse of an island called nitro but it wouldn't hold an audience and brad was trying to figure out how to make it work so right around that time he created a developed special called the i think was the Adventures of Robin Hood and we had Brad had this idea I would say we had it because Brad came to me and we collaborated to a large degree. What a way to use Nitro. What I did is

I extended Nitro. I went over our allotted time into the time for this premiere of Adventures of Robin Hood and then we would break into the show. I think that's how we had to set it up. So we were continuing Nitro into this premiere of this episode. Some kind of a configuration like that. I don't remember the details. But even that, with all of that effort and the power that we had with Nitro, as soon as our part of that little stunt was over, out, they're gone. Yep.

Yep. That was the nail in that coffin. We didn't try that too many times. Got it. Got it. So let's go back. We're talking about Brad. How did you first meet Brad?

I was at MGMUA in the non-theatrical division. and I had the Southeast Territory. My job, straight out of college. Remember college? I book all the films and the concerts. Well, now I went to work for one of my companies that I booked movies from, MGMUA. So I'm booking movies to colleges, prisons, libraries,

nursing homes, non-theatrical stuff. And Brad was running the college television network. work in New York. That's where we met. So we figured out, okay, what do you do? What do I do? License movies. Maybe we do something together. It just are the two companies. And that's how we met. And we stayed in touch for all those years as we both kind of grew up in the business. And then we went separate ways. You know, he went with his career. I went with my career out to California, and really didn't connect until I came to Turner about six months after Brad joined Turner to run T&T. I showed up because Ted was, you know, arming the company

with executives. I came on to do Turner Home Entertainment. Brad was hired out of AMC to run T&T. So about six months later, I show up. That small world. Well, the whole business is a small world. it is so so that's how we really reconnected at turner after all those years because we were it was early 80s when we first met and i joined turner in 93 the first time around okay cool so you've got a relationship with brad through turner you've worked with with brand for quite a while you end up leaving you do felled stop a couple of places along the way you end up in wwe and i mean i mean Honestly, I don't remember dates. I don't have any notes.

I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy either. WCW goes up for sale. Was it 2000 or 2001? Do you remember? I'm thinking 2000. I'm thinking, and again, I have no memory. I want to be clear.

I'm thinking it went first time around 2000, the end of 2000, around that time period. I think you're right. In fact, I know you're right. now that I think about because I got let go in 99 and then Brad brought me back in 2000 early thereafter.

When did how did you first hear about it? Do you know? Just read about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. First of all, the news is everywhere.

Okay, I'm reading the same trade magazines everybody else is reading. I'm reading the same wrestling stuff that everybody else is reading. So, you know, I keep reading about frankly how the business is not going well. Let's focus on the business. The business is out there that the perception is it's not going well. Perception is Turner as an organization is not happy with the way the business is. And then I frankly thought about my friend Brad who's

taken a beating in the press and running, you know, for lots of different reasons. What I call real, unreal, doesn't matter. Just the copy that I'm seeing. And what I recall is, even before the company was for sale, because remember I mentioned earlier, Eric, that we were in a mode at WWF. We were looking for businesses to buy. We were in expansion mode. We had just gone public. I could tell you three other deals that I was looking at. And I picked up the phone and I called Brad. And there were two things I said. I said, no, I thought you froze up for a second on. I thought we lost you. We got you. Oh, okay. There were, really there were two reasons for the call one is fred how are you doing i wanted to see how my

friend was doing just as a colleague how are you hanging in there because i just keep reading shit that was number one number two is i said hey i don't know if any of this gossip is real or not what i'm reading and speculation about wcw but if you guys get to a point where you want to do something with the company, we're looking to buy things we might be interested. That was a very simple conversation, short and sweet. He said, all right, I'll keep you posted. And that's how that's how I recall everything started from there. And again, the dates, if either one of us had them, it would be helpful, but either one of us

do, I'll just give you my side of that equation. that's probably right around that same time. I got sent home by Harvey Schiller. I think it was a decision of Vicki Miller, had a finance made. Vicki Miller. I remember, Vicki. Yeah, don't get me started.

I understand. Keep going. But I had two and a half years left on my deal. So it wasn't a big, you know, emotionally it was a big deal. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like, oh, my God, what am I going to do tomorrow?

So I, you know, I went home. and after about 48 hours, it was like, rearview mirror, brother. I'm off to the next project. I'm good. I get a phone call for Brad sometime around February, right around the Super Bowl.

And Brad said, okay, because they paid or played me. They had to pay me, and I didn't have to go back. So Brad asked me, what's it going to take for you to come back? Had an agent over at William Morris at the time, David Tinser,

basically renegotiated deal. They paid off my initial contract, wrote a new one, and gave me a three, free movie deal, put deal on T&T or Turner Broadcasting, TNT or TVs. And my age you thought we could leverage that and, you know, get into the movie making business a little bit. Sure. So I went back, worked for a few months. Things were worse than when I left the first time. And I was there as a consultant. So I wasn't in the middle of it all.

It wasn't reporting to anybody other than Brad on the creative stuff. But it was bad. It was really bad. A couple of incidents happened, one in particular in July at a pay-per-view. Brad made the decision to send me home again. And shortly after that, now that's in July, before that, before that, actually, early in January or February, when Brad first called me, I suggested to Brad, and I think I said something very closely, Brad, because I had that relationship with him. Why don't you think about selling WCW,

while it still matters. It's clear nobody in this company wants it to be here. It doesn't fit this corporate profile. Sell it. And he laughed at me. You heard my comment in the Yeah. He was like, we don't sell things here.

We buy things. Right. I just laughed it off and went, okay. Call me back a couple months later, maybe a month later, and asked me if I was serious. And then that's how the Fusion Media deal began. Guy by the name of Peter Goober hooked me up with Brian Biddall, Steve Greenberg, and we were off and running.

So it's interesting that you saw the opportunity right about the time I'm trying to convince Brad. Maybe it's time to sell. Obviously, there was some resistance during that period of time, but ultimately they decided to sell. I guess the confusing part for me, and anybody that's tuning into this to think that this is going to get confrontational, kind of gotcha, you can go ahead and sign off now because that's not what this is. This is me just trying to fill gaps in my own head, because there's a lot of them. Time does funny things to you. But I guess the confusing thing to me is we put the fusion deal together.

Badal and Greenberg threw in five, it was either $3 million or $5 million of their own money. It might have been $3 million of their own money. And then I was apart, to a limited degree, of raising money on Wall Street, from institutional investors as well as private investors for the balance that ended up being, I believe, either $62 or $67 million. Put the offer on the table. Offers accepted. We go into due diligence, which was lengthy for obvious reasons.

It's a lot of shit to sort out. We start due diligence somewhere in there. I don't have the date. Didn't write it down. Didn't Google it. We do a conference call, Wall Street. with everybody that mattered, CNN, everybody that was interested. Where we jointly, along with, I was on the call, Brian Bedal, Steve Greenberg, and he was Brad.

It might have been somebody else from Turner. And just lay the whole thing out. It was a purchase agreement. If you're buying a business isn't like buying a house, but if it was, you make an offer. The offer is accepted, sign off on a purchase agreement, and then you got to wait to close and that's kind of the position we were in thinking we were going to be done and just seems like out of nowhere I get a call from Bidal and says okay the deal just blew up we're not doing it and the only answer I got was Jamie Kellner decided he didn't want wrestling on the network

that was easy to accept for me I mean easy in one sense pissed me off to no end at the time but it kind of fit into the way I saw things unfolding anyway at Turner But the fact that the deal was done, it had been announced, and they pulled the plug the way they pulled the plug. I think that's the reason why there's so much curiosity. And I saw your comments, by the way, in the in the, in the documentary, when you said that if Turner had a deal on a table for 60 million, they'd have taken it. They did. It was 62. Now, how that deal was structured, I wasn't a part of how that deal was structured.

So I didn't have any first-hand knowledge of the details of that deal, other than it had been submitted and it had been accepted. We talked about it on a Wall Street conference call. So I'm going to fill in a few gaps for you. And you may or may not know this or recall this, but let me fill in some gaps. So when after my phone call and I said, hey, how are you doing? And if you want to do something ever, we might be interested. We're an obvious buyer, if you're interested.

Somewhere after that period is when Turner and WWF started having a conversation about acquiring WCW. Okay? I can't tell you a date or a time period. Was it a month or two months? I don't recall that. but we actually had a deal done closed we had agreed on a price Brad was only one player of the Turner team involved in that negotiation was Steve hire another one exactly so I had all these folks who I knew for my

previous life were at the table and we were paying I'll put it this one Eric, we were paying a lot of money. Our offer was for a lot of money for WCW, the first go-round. And we had our exclusive deal with Viacom. So the deal with us was we were taking the shows off of Turner. We were going to go with Viacom because we couldn't have the shows on Turner. So Vince's perspective, because one of the things Vince and I chatted about was, you know, Vince, we have to get Viacom on board with airing war

wrestling. They're not just going to go, oh, here's two more hours. We already had two hours. So, and Vince, in his magnanimous way, said, don't worry. We'll make it happen. Okay. Got it. You know, Vince had his very good relationship there in Viacom. I knew the players there, but Vince obviously was dealing at the top with Fresden. So we negotiated a deal. I flew down to Turner broadcasting on the jet. We had a deal. We then go to Viacom and say, we have a deal to buy WCW. We need two more hours on the Viacom networks. Viacom said no. So I want to be clear in terms of timeline here

because I know, this is how I know my timeline and this is part of one of my, you know, funny stories. All I remember about Yom Kippur 2000 is that I worked all day on Yom Kippur in my apartment in New York on the deal. So we had done this deal, brought it to Viacom, they said no, We then had to pick up the phone and called Turner, Steve Hire, Brad Siegel, the lawyers, and go, we can't move forward.

So that all happen. I believe, Eric, what I believe happened at that point, and I could be wrong, but I believe that opened. but I believe that opened up the door for you infusioned to negotiate your deal. Okay. That actually is the only thing that makes sense. Knowing that piece of the equation, because it were just like the spike deal. Yeah. We're probably out there to public, but, you know, I don't spend a lot of time.

But I will tell you, I will tell you, Eric, in all the years, in the 20 years, and you know I spoke to Guy Evans you know and there I saw all the chatter about you know the deal right I never saw it that chapter really fully explained because the reality is we had a deal with them to buy it and got blocked by Viaca so we couldn't proceed and then my memory is you went back in with Fusion whatever that was had made it an arrangement again and I thought that that deal was moving forward. I wished Brad and Steve hire all the best. I said, I'm pissed. We can't do it. So I thought this was happening. And then I was kind of heard the word that said, wait a minute, Jamie or somebody at Turner said, I don't want

wrestling on the airways. You don't, you guys don't, whatever, I don't want it. And then my perception was that's what impacted the deal with Fuciant that opened up the door that it was available once more because it circled back to me after that point. This is fun. So, I mean, it all makes sense. I can see how the timeline played out because the first time I suggested it,

you know, Brad just laughed at me in a friendly way, but you know what I mean? Just, yeah, right there, go go do your wrestling thing. Leave me alone. And then all of a sudden, a couple months later, hey, Eric, do you think you could put a deal together? And at the time, of course, I said, sure, absolutely. And I had no clue how to do it, but I figured it out. But the Jamie Kellner piece then still holds up as being that moment.

And the only question is, I guess, not in my mind, actually, because I don't really give a fuck. But at this point, you know what I mean? It's not going to affect my life. Yeah. But the only question is. is internally, did someone help Jamie, did someone convince Jamie to not, to kill that deal? That's one question. The other question that I saw the other day was more of a statement, was that Steve Hire had structured the fusion deal or had agreed, I should call Brian Bedell and ask him,

I didn't do it. But Steve Hire had either agreed or structured the deal, probably agreed, that would have allowed, should anything happen to WCW, Bidal's group, essentially, Fusion, would be able to program those two hours of T&T or that programming time. That's apparently what Kielner saw and one of the reasons, if not the reason why he put a bullet in it. Because you kind of got to understand that. Oh, no, I will tell you, and I truly know nothing, okay, about what happened over at Turner's line.

but I can only speculate like the rest of the world is speculating but knowing a little bit about Steve Hire who I also respect and Jamie and Jamie is a programmer Steve is ad sales okay I just want to give you a little bit of the roles

yeah that's kind of like mutually exclusive destruction so you have the ad sales person and you have the programmer where ad sales obviously fits into programming. Jamie was true at his core, a programmer. So he's looking at ratings and also numbers, but a flow of programming.

Remember, we talked about flow of programming. The idea of giving up an hour or two in prime time to another company to go put on something whatever the hell they want to do without Jamie or the network approving it, could rub them a wrong way let me put it that way could basically and I'll give you an analogy I once was offered

somebody came to me at Cartoon Network and Adult Swim and offered me a lot of money I mean a lot of money to buy five hours of my day part and I had no say and we had lots of provocative conversations within the organizations And I ultimately turned it down and said no.

Because I had no idea what the programming would be. And I couldn't give up five hours of day part. I could see Jamie going, wait, two hours of programming. That's my beachfront property where I get the highest CPMs. I secure the highest revenue from. And I don't know what the program is. I can actually see him saying, what are we doing here? So I don't know.

By the way, I don't know if. I don't know if that, by the way, I don't know if any of that is real or not. I'm just saying I can see the point of doing it. And from a standpoint, I think Jamie made a decision that just said, okay, well, I'll do a deal with to sell the company for whatever the money is, whatever the money is, but made a decision from what I can tell. It just said, I don't want it on the network anymore. I want the real estate for other ideas. and the other question I had for you may or may not know this but to your knowledge did hire and Jamie Kellner have a good bad unhealthy relationship I can all I do not know for sure

I just heard it was a professional but competitive that makes sense programmer had sales well they they both you know the end of the day from what I recall two bright bright individuals, two bright executives, money programming, and both wanted to run the company. There you go. You live the corporate life. You live the corporate life. You saw a little bit of that. I did.

This has been a blast, brother. Yeah, love it. I've filled in some blanks. And I'm going to get your number from Evan. Yeah, please. My wife and I have never been to Maine. We always talk about going to Maine. One of these days we're going to get.

and I'm going to call you. You have two things going. I want to make sure you know. One, absolutely get my number and all my data and let me know you have an open invitation here, my guest. Number two is you have an open invitation because I'm going to send you a whole bunch of lobsters that you're going to love out there in Wyoming because I know that I'll ship them to you because we ship Nation 1.

I'm going to send you a love package. Not only that, dude. I'm going to start putting your stuff over in our podcast. You're going to be shoved on the rest of the hands all over the world. Well, you know, we've been around for 97 years. Crap, we ship a lot of boxes. That's awesome. Any questions for your,

any questions from anybody of your team? Because that was on a few minutes. That's your call. For Stu, though, now for me. All right, we've got to run a time out right now. I got to tell you down here in Alabama, boy, it is hotter than donut grease, as J.R. might say. And after a long day out in the sun,

if you've been on the boat you've been in the pool you've been running around the yard or just standing outside man just taking the trash to the road checking the mail i'm sweating and at the end of the day crem-o is there for me i got to tell you i wasn't so sure about cremo men's body wash because when i heard it was bourbon vanilla body wash i was like i don't know what that's going to smell like well let me just tell you it's now my go-to solution first of all i found i guess i should take a time out We vet all of our products here. So before I talk about something on the show, I've actually tried it. And when I tried this, I thought, man, I don't know, this might be too fancy for me.

Dude, I can't live without it now. It's unbelievable. The more I worked with it in the shower, it felt like the more it changed. It's like a luxury experience. I really want you to try it. It's got rich lathering and hydrating formulas, but it's also meticulously balanced with multi-layered fragrances for a superior shower experience. And that's what they're telling me to say. Let me just tell you, it's awesome.

It feels great and it smells better. And I had a great time with it. But then as I'm rounding out of the house, going towards the garage, I had to go past the kitchen. My wife smelled me from the kitchen and said, hey, do you wear a new cologne? Is that a new cologne? She was interested.

Hey, what's going? What's the one? What's this? Cremo, man. Check it out. I'm telling you, you're going to love it. Not only will you feel good in the shower. but you're going to feel more confident out of the shower.

I even got compliments at the office. My mom noticed I smelled different. Dudes in the office noticed I spelled different. Francis noticed I smelled different. People will notice. They're going to take notice. Maybe you got a little pep in your step. Maybe you put your shoulders back.

I don't know. I just know I've never smelled anything like Cremos bourbon vanilla scent. I got out of that shower. I felt like a new man. I think of that shower stall almost like the phone booth that Superman jumped into now. It gets me clean. It helps me relax. and buddy, I get compliments everywhere I go.

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They got all kinds of stuff too, man. Cremot does. Just for us guys, you get shaved cream. You can get beard oil. You can get shampoo. And if I get the same response from those products, I do from this body wash, sign me up. Hell, I'm going to get a Cremot tattoo.

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at Walmart or Walmart.com. I'm going water skiing today. I have placed a lot, Evan. Danielle, are you there with us? Yes, I'm here. Hi. What are you got for us? My question is, Mr. Snyder, thank you for coming on, first of all.

But are you surprised at how much interest is still in all of the WCW chatter throughout the wrestling universe, even so many years later? you know um i guess i have to answer it this way i am and i'm not um you know 20 years is a long time so uh that that's just from a from a you know just timeline however knowing wrestling fans and knowing how wrestling fans felt about and feel about wcd in those that era and also feel about WWE. And wrestling fans are amazing. I mean, they're so passionate. They love the sport. They love the format. They love the guys and the women. I'm not surprised. And frankly, it's a good juicy story with a lot of tons of speculation of what really went down. So I completely get it and understand it. And when I go out to visit Stu, it is a lobster cartel. He's going to tell me

the real story. We got to keep it going. We got to keep it going. Exactly. It was too. Right. Exactly. Eric. Yeah, there's a real story, too. Thank you. It's such a simple story. And it really is at the end of the day. It's what else? What else you got? We got a little Jimmy Sorensen up next.

Hey, Jimmy. Hi, guys. Eric, always a pleasure talking to you. Mr. Snyder. Name is Stu. You can, Stu. It's okay. Stu, you programmed a lot of my childhood. I'm the youngest one here, 26, and got your network and everything. But why, in your opinion, do you think a lot of people have blamed Eric for so many years, unjustfully, unjustfully, why do you think that has been the case? Because you had a C-Spot announcer turned profit for a multi-million dollar organization.

And a bunch of corporate executives just never wanted it on their networks or around in general. Thank you, Jimmy. Okay. So I'll answer it this way. First of all, Eric should get all the credit in the world for building WCW into what it was. WCW, you know, look, I was there. Again, Eric, thank you for pointing out. I was there during the beginning of the growth. All right, 93, I left the 96-97 era.

I was beginning to see the bubbling Ted sign, you know, we were buying talent, bringing it on board. you knew what to do with it. So Eric should get all the credit in the world for building it. The reality of the jobs that we sit in, Eric sits in, jobs I sit in, and others, we get the good news and we take the crap and the shit when things don't go as well as we want it to go. So he's an easy target because he was in the chair of leading the organization. He had a lot of stakeholders to share on what happened there. had a lot of divided agendas there. I said in the documentary that wrestling inside a company like Turner Broadcasting was, one could say, doomed from the very beginning, because ultimately

to compete, you have to do storylines and do drama that will not always match up with standards and practices. And also, the financials are not going to add up for a public company. like a Turner Broadcasting or a Time Warner, or AOL at that time, by the way. So, you know, it's kind of like the minute the dip happens, uh-oh, wait a minute, why are we in this business? Why, what, what are we doing here? So I think that there is a lot of, there's no, there's no villain to why WCW didn't continue or didn't succeed.

It had enormous success. It had its ride. It was under an organization that was done. with it candidly, and then it needed to be set free. I'm sad, I'll give you my own personal take on something. I'm sad that WWF didn't find a way to really creatively keep it alive. Because that would have done it. If you guys would have been able to work by a comm, that would have kept the brand alive.

But, but, and by the way, the other thing is we still, again, Vince, plan, the creative team's plan in earnest was to try to keep it alive within even the two programming and so forth. But I was sad that the company didn't find a way creatively to keep the brand alive and to keep it going. That was one of the things when you look back, you know, I look back on my career and I go, damn, I wish they would have figured that out. Yep. So. Thanks, Jimmy.

We've got one more, Evan? Yeah, we've got two folks on deck if that's all right. That'll be fine. We've read us to the top of the hour. And, yeah, we wouldn't be a Zoom without Coach Rosie. So, coach, what's going on? Man, still, I'm looking over at my 18-year-old son and thinking about all the shows we watch together on Cartoon Network.

But here's my question. Here's my question, buddy. You're a jack-of-all-trade. You've done the circus. You've done wrestling. You've done movies. You've run cartoon networks. You've done it all.

Broadway place. Of everything that, yeah, exactly. Of all the things that you've done, which was the most fun for you? If you're backing me up against a wall and you're making me answer the question, because I can give you the truth of it, I've had an amazing, wonderful career. I've looked every gig that I've been in. But if you're backing me up against the wall, I would say the 10 years running Cartoon Network, Adult Swim,

and the kids' business at Turner and Time Warner, which probably I can look back because I'm really proud of shows like Rick and Morty and Adventure Time and regular show and Stephen Universe. And, you know, when I walked into the chair at Cartoon, we were irrelevant. the network was irrelevant it was not doing well in ratings uh i had the privilege of bringing on some amazing talent to the company to work with me to reinvigorate cartoon network with new shows

and new attitude and i'm really proud of our stop bullying speak up campaign that we did with the the white house uh so if i if i'm pushed up against the wall i would say i'm most probably most proud of that team of the 10 years, you know, that I had running that organization. Well, as a public school teacher, yep, see it. Sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to jump your brother. I just wanted to add to your question, coach. Do you think part of the reason you enjoyed that time, Stu, was Ted and working under Ted? Because he was different.

I mean, Vince was in many ways the same way, but it had, because you worked closer with Ted than I did, obviously. That had to be a class, man. So here's reality. I got to work with Ted my first time at Turner. By the time I came back, Ted was already out of the company. Oh, that's right. But, but, but Teddy, you know, Teddy worked for me, you know.

I don't know if you remember that. Teddy was my Southeast sales manager. Oh, that's awesome. So, no, but Ted and I went, when I came back the second time in 05, Ted had his place in Atlanta, and so we stayed in touch the entire time, but he was out of the company. I just spent a week at his ranch in New Mexico, which, by the way, I highly recommend it's amazing Vermejo. So the Ted era was really my first go-round, first four years. It was Ted and Sasa and Phil Kent and had a blast building that company.

the second time it was not Ted, but he was hovering around. But it was a blast because it was a business. I like going to places that need, like, that are hurting or needed to growth plan and need a next step. That company needed it. So I enjoyed it the most. And then we just, you know, did the research. You mentioned research. We did the research.

We did the homework. We figured out the right programming. And it was a great time. great fun time. Thanks, Coach. Awesome. Thanks, Coach. We got our final question of the night, Mr. Epic.

By the way, I love all the names. Mr. Epic. Where's Mr. Epic? It's right here. How are we doing, man? I know, where's Mr. Epic? There we go. How are we doing?

All right, Mr. Epic. All right. On the road, as always, finally heading home after a long week on the road. um so i know like wcw ended in oh one now just to simplify the question if it did last a little bit longer i mean the dot com fallout is right around the corner like aOL stock if i remember correctly dropped a significant amount like a few months later like even if it survived and they kept it on like would it even have survived the dot com fallout a well like They lost a good percentage when the dot-com boom blew up.

So I want to make sure I understand the question. Are you asking me if the dot-com bust didn't happen, you think he would have stayed on the network on Turner? No, if it did stay on, like, how much do you think, I mean, the dot-com fallout would have affected it? Oh. So what I recall is the dot com, we were already in the middle of the dot com bust by 2020, by 2001, that really hit 2000. So, because we were feeling the pain over at WWF.

We were no different than anybody else. You know, we had a dot com business and then it just went into the crapper and the shitter. So we experienced it. Everybody was experiencing it. And certainly AOL, Time Warner was experiencing it with their share price going down and everything. So it was, look, there was blood on the street, as we all know. I don't really believe, and again, I don't have anything to prove this. This is just one person's opinion.

I don't believe that is what created YWC. was not going to be on the Turner Networks. And I also don't believe that that impacted why WCW didn't succeed with Vince at WWF. I think they wanted it off the Turner Networks for all the reasons we talked about, which was it was an island. It didn't make enough money for those hours. I think Jamie, I truly do believe Jamie wanted other programming for that time, period, and again, I respect that Eric Infusion had a deal, but I don't think he wanted to give up that time slot for someone else to program, is all my speculations there. And I just think

creatively, WWF couldn't figure out a way to integrate WCW in the storylines that excited viewers. But I wasn't, I had left by then, so I really don't know if that was true. I just know that they killed it after they bought it. And by the way, I always said, and have always said, one of the reasons I was attracted to buying WCW was not just about the television shows, but because of the library of programming, because the one thing I truly believed in, and I said this to anybody within WF, because I was the guy, I was the point guy on the deal. I said, what's valuable here long-term, in my opinion, was the library.

Because while the dot-com bust was happening, I looked down the road of the future, and the future I absolutely believed was online and streaming and so forth. And I said that library, especially for the wrestling fan, is going to have a lot of value downstream. So the return on the investment of that WCW video library for WWE is probably one of the Probably very good. And that makes sense, Stu, given your background and home video, that's kind of, you knew that market. Yeah, I saw that.

I saw where the world was headed. For, you know, first there were cassettes and then there were DVDs and then there was Netflix and then there was streaming. You know, I could see the way the world was going and I'm looking at a library that I think, figured, you know, shit, I'm going to want to watch Hulk Hogan against Andre the J. I, you know, five years from now. Who's, who's not going to want to watch that stuff? So that to me was, was really an exciting part of the deal. Stu, it's been exciting to have you. It's really been a pleasure.

Stay here. Same here. I can't wait you sit down and have a lobster to with you. I want to, I'm going to make it. I want to get your stuff. I'm going to come out to Wyoming. I'm going fishing in Oregon next weekend. and I know about you in fishing. So I'll have to come. We'll coordinate trips or something. Yeah, because fly fishing is outstanding here, especially like September, October.

I've heard. I've heard it. But yeah, definitely. All right, man, thanks everybody for joining us. Thank you, Stu, very much, Evan. My pleasure. I've set it up. All right, folks.

So now we've finished our conversation with Eric and Stu Snyder, but we've got one more piece of bonus content coming your way that I think you're going to dig. I think by now we've all heard every angle possible from the old Montreal screw job. But did you know that all these years later in 2024, Eric Bischoff had never actually seen the documentary wrestling with shadows? We sat down with Eric Bischoff and Cassio Kid from ad-freeshows.com, and they took a look at this documentary that somehow, some way, Eric had never seen before. As you may recall, the company was afforded unprecedented access backstage in the world.

of the World Wrestling Federation. You see lots of locker room footage and backstage footage that we've never really seen before or since maybe in some instances. And I don't think anybody would have predicted exactly the way it all went down. It was a fabulous documentary and one that somehow was not on Eric's radar. So who better to watch it with, and Cassio Kid, who joined us live at ad-freeshows.com. And we're going to present that to you now.

It's a watch-along from wrestling with shadows way back when about that unbelievable story that somehow just it never dies man the montreal screw job wrestling with shadows covering the story from 1997 somehow eric never saw it he's going to watch it for the first time and you're going to get that live reaction right now this by the way was another piece of bonus content from ad free shows.com so if you're liking what you're hearing come join us check it out starts at just nine dollars a month at ad free shows dot com but without further ado here's eric and Cassio Kid watching Wrestling with Shadows from way back when. Welcome in to a bonus edition of 83 weeks with Mr. Eric Bischoff.

I, oh, look at this. Look at this. Boom, we will swap and had my name. I know. I saw that. We're ready to go. Got myself a new gimmick. I am Cassio.

That is Mr. Eric Bischoff. How are you, E.B? I am doing well, my friend. Spent a long time. How have you been? it's been a while hanging in we got the spring coming i'm excited for good weather finally when do y'all get the good weather up there fuck it maybe in a few years no it usually i mean it's starting to get nice already we're in you know we're typically in the 40s right about now and sunny about another

month or so we'll be hovering around the upper 40s mid 50s for quite a while and then around the middle of may end of may it just breaks in it's summertime so it happens fast weird uh we are at uh you know we're at the time where it's like 40 in the morning and then 75 by afternoon yeah i need i i just got home last night i had an appearance in springfield massachusetts and i flew in and out of hartford connecticut i was supposed to get home 1 30 sunday afternoon flying right to decode and uh of course that flight was canceled coming into Cody and I got stuck in Denver

overnight and that flight got I was supposed to come back the next day and that flight got canceled so I ended up jumping on a different airline flying to Billy's Montana and then driving home for two hours and I finally got home late last night so yeah it's this time of year

of weather and flying in and out of Cody Wyoming is it we call it the Wyoming tax like we don't have a state income tax which is really nice yeah however if you fly for a living or if it's part of your business, you pay an extra tax

by virtue of the fact that you have to drive two hours to billings to get a flight that even remotely has a chance of being on time or even getting in. So just the price of pay for living here. Well, we are going to do a very special review reaction

to Brett the Hitman Hart wrestling with Shadows. This is the documentary that came out a few years ago and this was your first time ever watching it Eric it was you know it was so funny because it was such a hot topic when the rumor of this documentary came out and when in reality when it came out of course it was so much going on at that time we were at the peak of the monday night wars bread leaving w c wccc the the screw job in montreal which is really what this documentary is all about it was really a fascinating

really well-done documentary. I expected it to be a little bit more like a typical wrestling documentary. And it wasn't. It's got a lot of heart in it. I really feel like, to be honest with you, I have more empathy now for Brett than I did up until I got a chance to watch this thing. It was really quite interesting. And, you know, you go behind this, you know, there's so many shots behind the scenes,

you know, prior to Montreal as well. well as some of the other events, and seeing some of the faces and hearing the voices of people that I hadn't really got to know yet, but have since come to know pretty well. Some of them have become really good friends. But to see what was going on on the other side of the coin, so to speak, was really, really fascinating. And Brett, you know, he opened up, man. He pulled no punches, and he usually doesn't.

but he pulled up pauses he was he really revealed a lot more than i would have thought at that time that brett would have uh you're from that area so let's start at the beginning kind of where the documentary uh did uh just your thoughts when you were coming up i know you weren't in the wrestling business early uh but talk about what you heard and when you first first started hearing about the heart family up there and what they meant to wrestling up there in that area You know, I mean, Calgary's not really where I'm from, and I wasn't familiar at all with Stampede Wrestling or anything out of Calgary as a fan. You know, even when I lived in Minnesota, we didn't get it. We, you know, it was still a regional product, and we, the only thing that we got was AWA.

So I really wasn't even familiar with, you know, the Heart Foundation of Brett Hart in the early part of his WWF career, WWE career. Wow. It really wasn't until much later on that I became familiar with Brett and knew who he was. You know, heard a lot about him. Heard a lot about Stu Hart to the dungeon and I heard all those stories, which was another really cool thing about this documentary is I've heard a million Stu Hart stories. I've heard Brett, you know, Brett and I sit down and spend many hours, you know, talking about how he came up. And so I'd heard a lot of the stories, but to see the dungeon and to hear. Stu as he's stretching, you know, young future wrestlers.

And it was really, really quite eye-opening. It helped me to better understand, Brett. I may not agree with a lot of the things that he said or necessarily his perspective about how everything went down. But like I said, when we started this out, seeing that documentary, it provided a lot of, empathy that previously I didn't have because I understood why Brett thinks the way Brett thinks and reacted the way he reacted until I saw this documentary. And like I said, I still

don't necessarily agree with that. Some of the things he said and did. But it makes it a lot easier when you can understand the motive and the reasoning. And I guess that's what I took away from this documentary is, you know, Brett's a very unique individual and he's still carrying around a lot of resentment. And I understand that too. You know, his career ended abruptly. You know, because of the match that he had with Bill Goldberg and the concussion, and I'm sure, like a lot of athletes and performers,

it's not how he wanted to go out. And there has to be a lot of frustration. And then you look at all the tragedy that happened, you know, soon after Brett got to WCW and that whole era, that period of time in Brett's life, It was really, in many ways, a tragic time. Yeah. You know, the idea of losing the belt in Montreal, I never really am still dealt in

some respect as a professional and as a television producer. You know, the idea that a talent would be so immersed in his or her character that it would get in the way of doing business, especially given the relationship. and Brett talked about it in the documentary early on. He talked about the fact that he had an almost father-s-son relationship with Vets. Yep. And seeing that play out in the documentary as opposed to just hearing it, like I said, helps me to at least better understand, Brad, if not necessarily agree with him.

But it was really, really eye-opening for me. Yeah, to your point, I thought it was very interesting, you know, when you go back and watch the documentary, he went to Calgary, which he considered, you know, his hometown, his home venue there,

had the great match, you know, everybody's involved, the whole family's involved, and has a great event there, and then, but no, not doing it in Montreal,

not doing anything in Montreal. I thought that was very interesting, like you just said, he's so immersed in it. For some reason, he can't get, he couldn't get past the fact of it's in Montreal,

That was the craziest part to me a little bit. Well, and you've heard it a couple of times in a documentary, and I've heard, you know, and Brett said this to me, you know, just one-on-one conversation early on. Brett really saw himself, and I think probably still does, as a Canadian hero. Yes. And again, early on in the documentary, you hear Brett talking about heroes and villains and his desire to represent a true... He's had a wholesome character.

A true baby face. Yeah. Which, especially during this time, we're talking about here. I think this must have come out in 1997, I think, or 98, whatever it was. Yes. You know, that was a period of time. And again, Brett talked about it how all of a sudden now the bad guys are the good guys, the good guys are the bad guys.

You know, everything was kind of upside down. And it was interesting hearing that perspective because I was hearing the same thing in WCW because of the NWO. And the NWO came in and they were supposed to be heels and all of a sudden they're getting cheered and the baby faces are like scratching edsling. What the fuck do we do now? You know, this magic doesn't work if baby faces are getting booed or the heels are getting cheered. And to hear Brett, you know, talk about that in that period of time because that's when that transition really happened. And true baby faces, you know, is like. white bread baby faces that by 1997 that was history that was no longer whether it was

wrestling or movies you know a lot of the lot of characters the baby the heroes were more anti-heroes than heroes they were pretty dirty bastards themselves from time and time and you know they did things that john way wouldn't have done as as a character let's put it that way yeah and to hear brett talk about that in his own words in this documentary again i've heard those conversations, but seeing it in this documentary, really, it just illustrated to me how much Brett Hart took the character, Brett Hart, to heart, not trying to be cute, but he was that character. He believed that character. And I think that's so healthy in so many respects as a performer, if you don't believe what you're doing,

if you can't convince yourself, much like a method actor would, right? Method actors, if you're studying for a role, you read about it, you do your research. In many cases, you spend time with the subject if you're doing a biopic or something, or you spend a lot of time with the director. You're really immersing yourself in that character, and you're trying through a technique that you'll learn and instinct to become that character. And we've all heard stories about how. how some actors get so deep into that process that they sometimes have a hard time pulling

themselves out of it. And it seems to me like that was a state of mind that Brett learned. He taught himself to be a method actor. And I think that's really wonderful. And it explains why Brett was so believable as a character. and why people related to him so much. But like an actor who immerses himself or herself into a role and does so to such an extent that they can't get themselves out of that character

and move on with their life to the next project or on with their relationship or whatever, then it becomes a bit of an issue. And I think Brent Hart, I don't mean this to be disrespectful, Because I do have, Brett and I are probably never going to sit down and break bread together. That's unfortunate, but it is what it is. But I do respect Brett a ton, and maybe even a little bit more so now. Again, just seeing the world through, seeing this time of the world through Brett's eyes and hearing it the way I did in that documentary, I understand it.

But, you know, in the wrestling business, she heard the term, you know, somebody who's a mark for themselves, which is another way of saying they believe so much that their character is real that they can't make good judgment calls. They can't conduct business because they're so immersed in that character. It gets in the way. And I think to a degree, I think Brett's passion for being that Canadian hero, his true, honest intention and desire to be that hero, the society really didn't want anymore. I think that may have a little bit to do with the fact that Brett is unfulfilled

at this point. I don't think he was able to achieve the success he really wanted to achieve as a performer. And as someone that wrestling fans could really honestly look up to, and they do. I mean, Brett has a ton of fans all over the world. To this day, there's probably nowhere where Brett can go in public and not be recognized and ask for autograph. and have people tell them how much they enjoyed watching him as a performer. I know that that's still true. But I believe there's still a little bit of passion left in Brett that is unfulfilled because he believed in that character so much

and he wasn't able to become what in his mind he wanted to become. All right, let's run another time out, folks. Are you a fan of the 80s and 90s? Of course you are. You're listening to this podcast. Do you long for the good old days? How about every day that ends in why? Do you still too sweet every stranger wearing an NWO shirt for life?

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Be Kind, Let's Rewind, and you can engage with the show on Instagram, X, and even Discord. If you love the 80s and 90s nostalgia, this show is for you. Check it out. Be kind. Let's rewind. I thought it was interesting, to your point, it's one of my favorite lines

in the documentary is he's riding around with his kid and Brad says nobody ever comes up to us and says, man, you're such a great actor. They come up to us and say, man, you're a phony. And to your point, he was immersed. That was him. He was Brett Hart. And I also think, wow, that is a true statement. You don't ever hear wrestling fans go, man, that guy's a great actor, which they are. I mean, that's the point of the whole deal is to get us to buy into that character and any other scenario we would go man they are a fantastic actor a fantastic actress and in this case in the wrestling business nobody ever says that nobody ever thinks that it's just whether you oh that's not believable blah blah or as his point back in the you know back in that time

was you're a phony you're a fake i thought that was very interesting your point he was in this fully he was fully invested in his character and i think i agree you know 100% you're on the money and i think with brett i don't know that what i'm saying is true but i want to believe it is so i'm going to choose to believe it is i think brett was trying to convince those people that didn't think it was real that it really was it the pride that that brett took in his work you know the excellence of elocution i guess was that at how was this giving execution yeah yeah yeah Excellence of elocution is me. Yes.

Excellence of execution is Brett. I'm going to steal that. I'm going to make a shirt out of that. Excelled. Elocution. Excellence of elocution. Adfrey shows shirt coming your way. But I think the pride that Brett took in his work in the way he was trained, you know, coming up in the dungeon and being trained by his father and being so impressed by his father's perspective of.

of professional wrestling, made Brett want to prove to even the most vocal critics of professional wrestling, those people that just didn't really enjoy it and made fun of it or called it fake. I think Brett's goal was to convince those people that it was real. Because in Brett's mind, it was real. The wrestling business was real, the pain, the things that you have to give up. And Brett talked about it earlier on. You know, he at one point just wanted to make a lot of money, go home and be. secure. But I think his passion would have never allowed that. I think drug would still be in

the ring working today if things would have turned out differently. I took some notes while I was re-watching it. I've watched it a few times since it came out in 98. But one question I had for you personally was besides Brett, were you close to anybody else in the Hart family throughout the years? No, I really wasn't. I didn't get to know any of them. Of course, I worked with Davey Boy Smith. and, you know, got to know him professionally, but never personally. And never really, other than being introduced to and having brief conversations with other members of the Hart family, Bruce Hart in particular, I remember. I never had a chance to say hello to Owen.

I never met Owen in a person. But no, I got to know them through the stories I heard and now this documentary. One of the other questions I had was, first, I've, I love that Brett had an electric chair in his house. What the fuck was that? I couldn't wait to break that up to you. I heard about this. I remember when I saw that when the shot, you know, because when the shot in the in the

documentary, all you see is this thing going back and forth. I'm going to what in the fuck. That was super interesting. Isn't that crazy? And he just played it off like it was nothing. It still is a little bizarre. It's a little bizarre. And he had it right by the steps.

Like it was not. hidden somewhere it's we're all going to see it every single day uh early on uh so early on on before he accepts the contract with you at wcd of course early on of the documentary he talks about his first decision was a 20 year contract with w f at the time and he claims wcd turner offered him nine million over three years do you remember that being a exact number uh that's what he said of the documentary nine mill over three years so that would have been about three million a year i get that close yeah i think it is i think it is uh he decided then to go with the 20 year contract with w w f um and then of course um they made a storyline out

of it uh were you were you peaking at all to what they were doing on air especially with Brett at this time because they were talking about the contract and hey, is he going to leave? And then he decides to say and he announces he's going to stay. So you had so much going on your plate. You never took a peak over there.

No. And, you know, I met, I met Brett, the first time I met Brett and we had a meeting and I really liked Brett. I mean, we actually had quite a bit in common. Brett loved history. Brett was particularly interested in Native American, or in his case, indigenous, Canadian indigenous tribes in history.

And I have always been interested in that part of American history as well. It's probably one of the reasons I live where I live. And we talked a lot about that. We talked a lot about Native American history and the indigenous tribes in Canada. You know, Brett, we talked. about a lot of different things that had nothing to do with wrestling and allowed me to get to know Brett a little bit. But in that first meeting that I had with Brett, I don't think we ever even discussed a contract. I think it was more of a chemistry check. Brett was, I was in L.A.,

and I think Brett was coming through L.A., and Barry Bloom might have been the manager representing Brett at the time, if I got there, right? And Barry Bloom set up a meeting, and it was at a restaurant right near L.A.X. And we got together and hung out, probably spent a couple hours getting to know each other. And Brett had decided we weren't, he didn't want to move forward. He was going to stay where he was. I think he went on and then negotiated that other contract with WWF. The way I remember it and the way I think I remembered it even in this documentary that I just saw a couple hours ago was that Brett decided to stay because Vince offered him the 20 year deal. Vince came to Brett and said, I'm sorry, I offered you a 20 year deal, but I can't afford it because we're in

financial peril. At which point Brett came back to me. and said, hey, would you still be interested? So bringing Brett into WCW wasn't something that I had planned. I didn't have a plan for Brett. I didn't see an opportunity for Brett. There wasn't like an opening for Brett. To be very honest, I didn't need Brett at the time. We had a pretty dense roster of A-list talent, arguably more than we could really use effectively.

So it wasn't, when Brett finally called in when that $9 million offer came or whatever it was, the three-year deal, I was like, well, sure, if you're available, sure, because at the time I had found out recently that I had to do another primetime series called Thunder. And I knew at that point in time that if I was going to produce another primetime show, that I was in a, I had a serious challenge on my hands in terms of diluting the storylines and deluding the characters. And I decided then that I wanted to bring, because he was available, and it was an opportunistic decision.

It wasn't like a plan. Wasn't, there wasn't, a draft of a plan and a storyline in place. It was like, hey, Eric, I'm available. Didn't work out with Vince. Is there, is there a place for me? I said, sure. I put a deal together. I'm not sure why I was going with that.

I lost myself. Sorry. It's been a long of four days. You know, we were just talking about him, you know, talking about it on air. You didn't really check it out. And then, of course, now he comes back to you. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm available.

Now I got you go. Your question was, was I paying attention to what was going on in the WWF? And to be honest with you, I wasn't. So his call, because in the documentary, he says, you know, when Vince has that speech, like you mentioned, which I think is one of the biggest quotes in that documentary as well as him claiming Vince uses the words financial peril, which, well, I'll ask you this without making assumptions. Do you think at that time, WWF was in, quote, financial peril?

I'm pretty certainly, they were. Okay. And yes, they were. I mean, I've had generally after years of, you know, working in WWE as a talent for however long I was there, three and a half, four years, then going back and spending time there, even for four months. I had developed a lot of relationships there, good relationships, people that were there that confided in me that indeed it was tough.

You know, they were taking the water coolers out of heightened towers because they couldn't afford to service them anymore. They were cutting back everywhere they could. So based on what I've heard firsthand from people that were there, reason to believe that this was in Financial Bureau. He goes through, of course, in the documentary, he talks about, I thought one of the interesting points, just to get your thoughts on it is he's talking about the time he injured his sternum and he was out seven weeks and they said nothing would change and he's out

and realizes his check goes down to quote a couple hundred bucks a week and he says, no, that's not going to float it. So he said he came back earlier than he should. I thought that was pretty fascinating, where he's talking about he's on top of the world. He's, you hear him saying the documentary, he's kind of like the guy who's been in prison the longest and he's got the best sell and he runs things in the yard.

He's got the warden in his back pocket. But I thought that was pretty fascinating. If he, he's that guy and yet he's claiming, I just got a couple hundred bucks a week while I was on the injury. list. Do you think that was a real thing? Yeah. You know what? Look, Brett, I will say this about Brett. He's not a liar. He may see things from a very unique perspective. He may have convinced himself over the last couple decades that certain things are true that maybe aren't

as true as he thinks they are. Okay. But not, again, it all goes to a intent. I don't think his intention is to be deceitful. I don't think Brett is not a liar. Yeah. Because someone has a perspective that may not be 100% accurate in my opinion or your opinion or anybody else's opinion. It doesn't mean that that person is lying necessarily. They just see things from a different perspective. I think that's the case with Brett. I don't think Brett, I don't think Brett knows how to tell a lie. It doesn't mean that I agree with what he says or I agree with his perspective sometimes but he's not a liar um in the documentary they make a big deal about him finally turning heel he's the quote wholesome character and uh vince and everybody

wants him to finally turn heel of course that doesn't really work out at first because he's trying to be the heel to stone cold so now we've blurred the lines on he's saying hey i'm he's playing dirty but they're still cheering him so i don't know how to be be the heel. Then they strike gold for a little bit with the USA versus Canada. When he came in, I was wondering, when you called him, you're finally the second time when it's going to happen. Did he ask about creative? Did he have ideas about creative? Or did that happen after he came in? No, that happened after he came in. And even after he came in, now I want to be careful what I see here. Again, this is my perspective, not Brett's, but my perspective as the president of the company

and probably the lead producer, I guess, not that that was my official title, but in effect, that's what I was. I was calling the shots, maybe not even producer, but director probably would be a better way to stay it, say it. I can tell you this. I was a little disappointed that Brett didn't have more contributions. But I also understood, and when I tell you that Brett was not the same Brett Hart, when Brett Hart got to WCW, he wasn't the same Brett Hart that he was maybe a year or a year and a half earlier, that Montreal decision, the screw job, as it is, took a lot out of Brett emotionally.

It devastated him. And that goes back to what we were talking about. I think the fact that he got, first of all, he got screwed to Montreal in front of Canadian fans. He felt like he let his fans down. I don't think he did, by the way. I had conversations with Brett on the phone prior to Montreal and told him not to worry about it.

It certainly wasn't going to affect anything I was going to do. again, from my perspective, I think he was overreacting a lot. I don't think the fans would have felt like he let them down. But Brett felt like he let them down. And when Brett got to WCW, he carried that burden. And it was a heavy burden. It was real. That's the part that I really have a hard time understanding.

Like I said, I think he got so involved in that character. And he believed in that character so much that it, ultimately got in the way of making good decisions. I think the best decision for Brett, and I told them this on the phone prior to the Montreal event, Brett, it doesn't matter. You're Brett fucking heart. No one's going to care whether you lost a match in Montreal and WWE because they know you're coming here in the audience, all of them, but the vast majority of the audience

understands what's going on here. and if anything it would have probably created an element of sympathy for Brett he would have been a bigger baby face but Brett Brett didn't believe that still doesn't to this day different perspectives that was my that was my thoughts as well watching the documentary not the time at the time again as a fan when that is going down um you know I'm again I watch it and didn't think well he Well, he's lost now. He got screwed, so we don't care about Brett Hart.

We were excited to see what he was going to do in WCW, regardless of what that happened. And I found that fascinating as well as he thought it seemed like, again, this is just watching the documentary. It seemed like, like you mentioned, he thought he might lose fans because of this or something, or we don't respect him as much. But to your point, we, to us, he got screwed over. and now we have the empathy now we have the damn it they screwed over our hero you know the canadians are not going to lose he's not going to lose them ever and to us he was worried about hey can i come back to USA and the americans like me again and yes of course that is true

but i could again like you said it's his perspective but to us that had no bearing on what was going on in fact it probably made him more fans because he got screwed i i would think and And I remember, you know, this was back when pay phones were still a thing. And before cell phone service even really existed in Wyoming, it did technically, but effectively it didn't. And I remember I was out to dinner with my wife. We were about 20 miles outside of town. And I got a page.

It was like, you know, Brad wanted me to call him. So I went to, the reason I remember this so distinctly is because I had to use a pay phone to call Brett. And I got a hold of him when he was really upset. he told me about what Vince wanted to do. And like I said, I sure have made no difference to me. I actually was surprised that he was calling me with that, to be honest. Nothing I said in our previous conversations leading up to Brett deciding to come to

WCW had anything to do with how he was going to leave WWE. I assumed he was going to get beat because that's how it works. Sure. Especially when you're that higher profile. You're going to do the job on your way out the door. that's just the nature of the business. So when Brett called me and he was very disturbed about it, I just went, dude, I thought it was silly.

I didn't want to say that, but to me it made no sense. And I tried to assure him. I don't think, obviously I didn't. And I think one of the things, too, that I picked up in the documentary is if you go back and you talk and you listen to Brett talk about what Vince wanted to turn heel and Brett struggled with that a little bit, I think, because of this. immersion in this Canadian hero character and what Brett believes he met to the audience. I'm not saying he didn't, but maybe put a little more value on it than was necessary.

But even when Brett was talking about turning heel, if you go back and you listen to him, he'll talk about, wow, I was going to try to make the American fans heels and the Canadians' baby faces. And it's like, this is, again, as a producer, how I look at things differently, there's one wrestling audience. There's just one. There's not Canadians and there's not a way. There are Canadians and there are Americans, just like there are Brits and, you know, Scottish wrestling fans and Irish wrestling fans.

But as nationalistic as Canadians are, and they are, trust me, they are. The idea that you're going to try to create this heel character, if I understood the documentary correctly, by trying to position yourself as a heel here, but a baby face, there because you really don't want to let go with your Canadian baby face connection. That was that was hard for me to understand. I'm going to actually go back and listen to it to make sure that I heard it correctly because I kind of confused me listening to that. But you know, I get it. You know, Brett, Brett didn't really want to be a heel. He was immersed in the idea of being a Canadian hero.

You know, that storyline took off. The Canadians and you know, they emphasize that in the documentary. They're going to events and the Americans are he's a hill you know we hate him and the Canadians are loving him one of the notes I took was there's a young lady who said that Brett inspired her and now she's going to school for her quotes computer graphics and I just was left wondering I wonder if she's out there now with her computer graphics degree and a successful if you are young lady come to ad free shows we'll take you here

yeah she's the excellence of uh graphication but he one of the notes I took is he said that quote sabotaged his career because he they want him to be a bad guy now he's a good guy and he can't be a bad guy because he can he come back from being a bad guy and be a good guy again so that goes to your point of him saying he thought that whole arc quote sabotaged his career that's fascinating it was to me too because I thought I did that and then I thought Bill Goldberg did that and I heard Hulk Hogan did that

there's a lot of people that sabotage Brett's career along the way but again I think that's part of you know Brett taking his character just a little too seriously I mean look I don't want to take anything away from Brett's dedication to the business because I think that something in some places is lacking respect for the business

dedication to it and no question about it I think Brett if somebody came to me and said who do you think is one of the most dedicated professional rosters and it's hard I would have a hard time answering that

because so many of them are it is such a grueling difficult business and you've got about a one and a million chance of being able to make a good living at it and to get to where Brett and people like Brett at that level to get where they, to reach the levels that they reach, they have to give up so much and endure so much because the lifestyle of professional

wrestling is probably more grueling than just about any lifestyle, professional lifestyle out there. You know, professional athletes, yeah, their seasons are tough and preseason is probably tough. And yeah, you've got to stay in shape all year route. But you get time away from it. You get to have a life. You get to have a relationship. You get to spend time with your kids. You don't

in professional wrestling. It is the grind of all grinds, and it's 52 weeks a year. It's not like the rolling stones that go out of tour for three months at a time, and it'd take two years off. You're out there every single night, 52 weeks

a year. It's such a grind. but again i forgot what we're talking about i'm sorry uh we're just talking about him uh i think you nailed it i think you got us there um my next notes that i had was he he does a big uh there's a big scene where he's talking about he changed his career with the facts in 20 seconds faxing over the contract back to you guys when you guys talked and you're waiting on a fax i guess that was the signed contract are you guys going hey until we get this fax back anything could change. Is that a moment where you're like waiting on it or is that just,

he's either going to sign or he's not? The latter. Okay. Again, there wasn't a strong need there. And despite what people think, even though I've said it, I know I said it. And I talked about putting Vince McMahon out of business. That was my way of rallying the troops.

Sure. It was fucked up. It was not the right way to do it. But that's what it was. It was false bravado. It was me trying to inspire people to want to work as hard or be as aggressive as I was. And there were times of talent wasn't. You can tell when talents really committed to what they're doing and not.

And we were so close. We were so close to being number one. We were already number one in terms of television ratings. We held that position for a while at the time this documentary came out. But WWE was still generating more revenue. we hadn't caught up to because WWW we had a very sophisticated and mature licensing business

merchandising business their ad sales business was better than our sponsorship. There's a lot of things DVD sales or on video sales and there's a lot of revenue especially licensing and merchandising that WCW just didn't have and we were striving for I was striving for

so while we were probably number one in maybe one, possibly two categories, the second one being pay-per-view, there were still a lot of revenue streams where we were just in number two. And that's what my focus was up. My focus was not on technically putting WWE out of business. That wasn't really my goal, despite the chest thumping. My goal was just to be the number one company across the board. So when I say that, I say that to put into context where my head was at. that relative to your question, was I so obsessed with getting Brett Hart because I knew that would be or I thought that that would be the nail in WW East Coffin?

That was not my thought at all. My thought was, shit, I got this new show I'm going to do on Thursdays. I don't want to overexpose my top talent, even though I have quite a few of them. And I need somebody fresh. I need somebody who feels like, holy smokes, this is a whole new show here, as opposed to to seeing a repeat of nitro or just a different version of nitro, I wanted something that felt decidedly different and there was no better way I thought at the time. I was probably right than to bring in somebody of Brent Hart's profile to kind of lead the charge for WCW

along with Rick Flair and some of the other more established baby faces we had that were outside of the NWO kind of storyline. That I was excited about, but not in the content. It's just of hoping it would be the final straw that would put, you know, WWE to cough. That wasn't good at all. He says when he called you the second time when Vince tells him, hey, you'd be doing me a favor to go over there.

We can't do the 20-year contract. He said when he called you the second time and he finally got a hold of you. One, they paused the cameras for a second when he starts talking about talking to you. But he does say that he got you on the horn and you said, quote, what's it going to take to get you over here? So one, do you remember that conversation a little bit? you touched on a little bit, but two, was that second deal, which I forgot exactly how much

amount of time happened between the first offer of $9 million for three years, to that deal? Was that number far off? Did that that contract change much? I don't remember the first conversation. I mean, it was Brett calling me saying, hey. I'm available. I thought I had a deal, but I guess I don't. Right.

the subsequent conversation you know like I said I wasn't desperate so I don't think I would have said hey what's what's it going to take or maybe just saying give me your offer and we'll see me yeah give me the number context yeah yeah give me the number you know what do you think it what do I got to come up with that I probably said because I had to go I had to give this approved because it wasn't in my budget I didn't have two and a half million dollars of free cash floating around my talent budget which had been approved a year before so I had to go I had to have a conversation with Harvey Schiller about that one. And I had to know what the number was. I would have asked that question, but not in the sense of, hey, what's it going to take?

What do I have to do to get you over here? That's why I wanted to ask that. And that's, you know, that's where the presentation gets a little unique. Yeah. All right. Let's run a time out right now. I've got a pop quiz for you. If you were born after 1970, there's a very good chance your razor, your very first razor, was a multi-blade razor. These razors have been the status quo for over a half century, but where has that gotten us? According to a recent study, two-thirds of men expect some sort of irritation when they shave. There's virtually no information out there on how to prevent irritation, only information on how to treat it,

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number the three for nine i i don't want to say that it wasn't but i'm not 100% sure it was it had to be close look it was it oh it had to be close look it was hard enough that i had to be aware of Hogan had a there's a there's a legal term for it where he's the highest paid no matter what yeah there's a specific term for it

but it escapes me right now but Hogan did have that language in his contract and I didn't want to bring in Brett hey Brett whatever I was two and a half three million whatever the number was I think it was more like two and a half but it might have been three since I don't remember

I'm going to say three because that's what Brett said. It was high enough that I had to go to Hogan and say, I don't want to have to have a conversation with you about money. So if this is going to be a deal breaker, you've got to tell me now. And Hulk said, fine, do what you need to do. Hulk realized that we needed the talent. And Hulk was actually excited about bringing Brett in because Hulk knew he needed a bonus. He needed, if we were going to continue growing, we have.

had to have other talent than we had. And Brett was because he was fresh. He hadn't been to WCW before. That was a big deal to take somebody of Brett's stature in WWE who would never, you know, Undertaker, he started out in WCW, Stokel and Steve Austin started out in WCW. Ryan Dillon, who we saw the document, he started out in WCW. Mark Rarrow ended up going over there. He was from WCW.

A lot of talent that was from, you know, Vader started in WCW really. So, Brett was one of the few top WWE talents that had never been in WCW. I think the only other one would have been Sean Michaels, and I didn't want him. He wasn't in the right frame of mind. He would have been too big of an issue. The two guys that I was concerned about, one in particular was Scott Holland, Kevin Nash. Favored nations, that's illegal. Favorite nations, there you go.

I knew when it had come to be eventually. It was going to kill me. It was going to kill me. I spent way too many hours sitting in the airport waiting for the next flight that isn't going to come. You know, I've found it interesting that he is, and I know he's, he's ending up going to WCW because Vince is telling him, hey, I need, I kind of need you to go because we're in financial peril. But I found it interesting that his character, he's doing this. They show him at the TV show off the record, which I, were you familiar with that show?

show before the documentary? Oh, yeah, I did that show. Staten those little fucking host event. I, yeah, I can't stand it. To this day, if I saw it, smack him in the head, and then I buy him a beer. So they're talking about it. He's going on news channels, and he is talking about how, hey, the WWE is too dirty now. It's, it's going, you know, it's sexual and it's over the top.

I found that interesting that he's going to WCW where NWO is ruling the deal and it was the cool kids and it was uh you know you guys were cutting edge as well you were treating us like we weren't dumb that was the allure when it first happened i thought that was very interesting he was almost going to the same product if you will does that does that make sense what i'm trying to say i thought that was very interesting it doesn't it doesn't away but also remember w w when they decided to go when they decided that the attitude era was going to be their version of the end of era. When they adopted the kind of formula decided to target 18 to 49 year old men,

they did it in a lot of ways that WCW wasn't doing. You know, they overt sexuality and all that. That was not a part of WCW. Yeah, we did a lot of crazy stuff. And we were more reality-based, I guess, and there was reality bases you could get in professional wrestling and still be professional wrestling. So we were edgy, we were dangerous. Yes, the NWO was still kind of half-assed baby faces and all that. That was the same as what was going on in WWE. He was new to WWE, but they had started doing it. But it was the overt kind of provocative sexuality. That part of it wasn't happening in WCW.

And I think that's maybe what he was thinking about. I'm not sure. I know you had to love the scene of the limo loaded down with the Heart Foundation and honky talk man sitting riding with them. I believe that was Barry Bloom in the back. I'm not positive, but I know there, Brett and somebody beside him seemed to be an agent, so if that was Bloom. That was probably, well, I didn't notice it in the shop,

but it was probably Barry Blum. Owen and Anvles there and then Hockey Tonk right in the middle of it. I did not know that he was close to the Hart family. He might not have been. He was just such a cheap bastard. He might have saw the limo there and he said, hey, I'm just going to jump in with these guys. that's $16.

Carbide. I'm not doing it. And as we get to the end, I'll ask you a couple more questions. I thought it was fascinating. There's a lot of debate, of course, fans and everybody alike. The question is, is all this a shoot or a work?

One of the things when I watch it and saw the documentary and I'm watching it live that made me think that it is a shoot is when he spits on Vince, because if you've heard anything, I've never met him, of course. You've met him and worked with him closely many times. Is it, he's a neat freak, and he's a clean freak, and a germaphobe, or whatever you want to call it. I find it hard to believe he would say spit on me.

I just, as a fan, find that hard to believe in what I've heard now. I thought that was an interesting moment in that match. He's standing out there. He's screwed. The screw job is done, and he hawks a luggy right on. on Vince's face. What's your thought on that little moment of the screw job, if you will? Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I mean, look, if it was a work, and you know, it's crazy to have this conversation because for every point, every point that I can make or you could make,

you could have somebody come to that with a believable argument, which is one of the reasons the story's never going to go away. Well, to be honest with you. Um, but, But with my producer hat on and knowing the people involved a little bit, there would have been so many other ways that you could have achieved that same act of defiance, which was what is spitting in someone's face. But there are so many other ways to achieve that that would have been so much more in line with Vince's personality. I mean, we know, physicality would have been the end. I mean, right? If this was the work, it would have been some kind of, you know, face-to-face between those two and Brett would have knocked him out, you know, in front of people instead of in a locker room.

You know, that's a wrestling angle. Now, the flip side of this argument is going to be, but yeah, that would have been telegraphing it was an angle, spinning in his face itself that nobody would ever seen before. It never would believe that Vince was a degree too. I know. Fuck. But I. here's why I think it was real.

I've got to be really careful how I say this, not because I'm afraid of how anybody's going to react to it, but I want to be sure I get my thought clear. If I'm so pissed at someone because I think they've cheated me, they've stolen for me, they betrayed me, whatever it is, whatever that emotion is, and if that volume was turned up to 10, and it can't get any higher.

Spitting in someone's face is the least, it's the last thing I'm going to think of. And if I were to have spit in someone's face, I'd be embarrassed that I did that. It's kind of a childish thing to do when you think about it, right? Sure. You see little kids, you know, throw dirt at each other and spit out each other. It's just not, it's not the thing that I would want people to see me do

and I think it was just a natural reaction with I think Brett was so frustrated I think he was all just overwhelming him in that moment and he saw Vince down on the floor and the quickest thing that he could do is spit in his face I think it was real and as far as Vince you know fuck this guy blows a gasket if you sneeze in front of him fuck you could be 40 feet across the room and he'll still get hot about it to your point So I think it was, I think it was all real. And Brett, that was all too real. The emotion was too real.

The conversations between Brett and his wife and the frustration, nobody in wrestling is that good of an actor. I was going to say, the wife in the hallway is definitely another moment that you, that I've talked. She is, she's hot. The only way that was the work is if Brett, worked her because her reaction was as real and honest and it's just authentic as authentic and that was real yes i don't even want to call it authentic because that's just suggesting it you

know may not be real that was real and you can't get that kind of performance out of a non-actor he just can't and to your point like we talked about him and his character as a person it doesn't seem like he would work his wife. I mean, he he kept her in the fault on everything. So again, that leads to the point of he, I don't think he would even, he would even fathom, I'm going to work my wife,

so she'll be hard about it and have a normal reaction, quote, uncle, authentic like you said. Like that lens, it doesn't seem right. No, I can, I've never got into the debate, you know, when people ask me, he was the work and says, shoot. You obviously, no, I think it's real, but you know, who knows,

I left the door. open. After seeing this documentary, I'm not leaving the door open. I do believe it was all real. It certainly could have been a great work if it was, but sometimes I think as wrestling fans, we tend to over-analyze, particularly people that talk about wrestling for a living, of which I'm one of them now, never thought that would happen. But I think we all have a tendency to be overly cynical and think everything is a work. right and nothing's real not going to get one on me that's what you want to say yeah yeah so never get one on me and and that's always going to be the case but i i do especially after seeing this documentary

i i really do believe it it was real it was certainly real to brett you said you never peaked at the storyline just to make just to make sure because i took a note during watching it again you did not knowing he was coming in you didn't watch this pay-per-view in real time, right? No, I didn't. In fact, I was sitting at home the night the pay-per-view was going on in Atlanta. It was with my wife and my kids and sitting on my couch. I wasn't even watching it. I was, I wonder what else. I was watching, but I wasn't watching pay-per-view. And I got a call from Rick Rood. I'd known Rick for a long time, pretty good friends at the time. And Rood called me and he described to me what happened, you know, moments after it happened. Rood was there.

And he, Rick Rood was so pissed off. He said, Eric, I can't work here. Is there a place for me in WCW? I said, sure. Get here as soon as you can. And he did. And he was on TV within five days. Actually, he was on Monday Night Raw, because Raw had been taped. And Rick was on Monday Night Raw and on Nitro at the same time. Wow. Nitro was live, Raw was taped, and the episode that Rick Roon was in aired the night that Rick Root showed up at WCW live on Nitro. Let me just get a handful of questions before we get out of here.

Just a couple of the ad-free shows, family members sent in questions. And a couple of them I wanted to make sure I hit. let me make sure I get this off one was after after viewing this documentary if you had seen all this footage the question was would you have still brought in Brett

would it have changed your opinion on bringing him in at all if you were privy to everything you know now it wouldn't have changed my decision I think perhaps I would like to think to think that I would have the empathy that I have for

Brett after seeing the documentary would not have hurt right would have helped understand him a little because I got frustrated with Brett I certainly I understood he was frustrated he was angry he was resentful he was disdain for the entire McMahon family

was something I had to hear about every time we were together for a while and it showed me after that you know Owen passing away the way he did, how he did. It would not have, and I certainly had empathy for that. I mean, I couldn't relate to it. I tried to relate to it, but it never happened to me,

so I couldn't put myself honestly in Brett's shoes. But I think having a better understanding of why he was so resentful, I'd like to think it would have helped me, perhaps manage Brett a little bit better, because I didn't get frustrated with Brett. I was disappointed. I was used to guys showing up at TV, and not all of them would show up early. Some of them, especially how good would show up barely on time.

But they were all engaged. One way or the other, they were in my ear and pitching constantly. That's how the Stinkrow character came about. That's how so much of the good stuff about NWO. It wasn't my idea. It was a collaboration amongst every. involved. Some of the bad ideas were collaborations too, but it was, it was the reason, look, you've probably heard the stories a million times when you heard talk, you've heard

old Tomers, legends, if you will, talk about back in the day when they all traveled together, the best ideas happened on the road, going from town to town, because you're stuck in a car together, probably drinking a couple beers. I'm not advocating that as a good idea, but let's be honest, that's what was going on. But you're in that environment. You're just coming off of a show. you're going to your next time and you're thinking about what you can do. You're thinking about what you just did, what worked, we didn't work, and hey, what if we do this, that collaboration, whether it takes place in a car going down the road to 60 miles an hour, or whether it takes place in a hotel room, or a bar after the show.

It doesn't matter. It's the collaboration with great talent, all sharing ideas and shaping ideas that make some of the best stuff. And Brett never checked in, never be, I shouldn't say never, very rarely would Brett check in and participate and collaborate. Brett was a loner. When Brett would get to WCW, when he'd show up at TV, by himself, you know, find a quiet corner somewhere, he didn't really engage. I, you know, again, I wrote a lot of it off to the fact that, you know, Montreal had a pretty devastating impact on him, which, again, At the time, had not seen the documentary, didn't really quite relate to it or understand it. And then, of course, oh, and shortly thereafter, obviously that's a big deal that people could try to understand and relate to.

So I just, you know, I gave Brett a pass. I never confronted them. Never said they do. How much you get to the show an hour or too early. Let's bounce some ideas off each other. I never did that either. But neither did Brett. And that's the one thing that I do think Brett needs to hold himself at least a little bit responsible for.

is showing up, waiting for somebody to hand you the creative that you feel good about, the odds of you being happy with that creative long-term is pretty minimal. You've got to participate. You've got to have skin in the game. You've got to contribute and collaborate. And that's the one thing that Brett didn't do. If he did, it was very rare. I think the one idea he came up with was Goldberg putting a metal plate in a hockey jersey

or something like that. That was one of the few times. probably because we're going to be in Canada. Do you want to be sure he looked good to his Canadian famous? Because here's a Canadian era. I don't mean to me, but that was my impression. A couple more and we'll get out of here.

I wanted to hit this. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, because like you mentioned, if you believe it's a worker, shoot, for every point, there's a counterpoint. But this is an interesting one. I wanted to bring up to you because of your producer hat, of your creative hat,

and what your thoughts on it was, your production angle. Donovia, smack, of course, good buddy. Donovia says, Eric, now that you've watched this documentary without ruffling any feathers, you see how some, he said, parentheses, including myself, could say that the screw job was a work. His point is, and it's a lot of,

it's one of the biggest points for people who think it's work, is who gets a film crew their last year in a company before jumping ship to the opposition. So do you think he had the foresight of this is going to be interesting later do you think someone approached him and it just happened to land at the right time or maybe he's smartened up to the ending and decided let's document all of this I see what I mean it's so hard even you know to get into a discussion about this you know you're halfway through defending your position and you realize

fuck I could be wrong you know because that's kind of an important like you know there's First of all, the fact that Vince McMahon would allow a documentary film crew behind the scenes during this period of time when he was under quote-unquote financial peril and there was talent jumping right and left and Vince was getting his ass kicked and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's like the least likely time somebody's going to say, oh, sure, you want to bring you a couple cameras and get behind the scenes and fuck, we're going to pull our pants out. We're going to show you our ass. you're going to pull up close here tingle you that you know you're not going to you're not going to do that so it and that's a good point you know vs mac brings up a good point uh it's just too

much of a coincidence but i'm just not going to let go of the fact that i think it that's exactly what it was it was a fortunate fortunate circumstance uh you touched on this earlier you touched on hey you know uh talking to hulk about breck coming in and he's he understands what's happening understands the needs of the company. David Fakes said, did Hulk ever say anything about not wanting to face Brett? Quote, I know Brett wanted this match for years. No, on the contrary, I think Hulk would have liked to work with Brett. I think Hulk had some misgivings about Brett because of their previous experience in

WWE, where Brett blamed Hulk Hogan for all the things that Brett didn't get. when it was really Vince McMahon's decision and Vince probably faded a lot of the heat to Hulk which would have been easy to do because Hulk was historically in self-preservation mode so that's an easy one to do but no Hulk was excited that Brent was coming and he called as safe to say

because of some of the conversations we had about what could happen in the future I think Holt would have loved to work a program with Brett, but the chemistry has to be right. And I think Halk was very concerned that the chemistry would ever be real because of his previous experience. He didn't think the chemistry would be right between him and Brett. He didn't think Brett would ever really trust him.

And I don't think Halk ever believes that, I don't think Brett believes that Hull would ever trust Brett or respected Brett. I mean, that issue between Brett and Holt that started in WWE and it carried over into WCW but I think if things had been different I think perhaps

if Brett would have made a little bit more of an effort more of a team player less of a kind of a recluse and what about me I think if Hulk would have seen some of that I think we might have seen that match

but just it wasn't there man it just it would be like you do and stand-up comedy with somebody that you can't stand being in a room with. You can get through it, but you're not looking forward to it, and it's not fun. And I think that's pretty much the way Hulk felt that the chemistry between he and Brett would end up being. And last question, and we'll get out of here.

I thought this was very good. Dylan Lehigh, Dylan, thanks for sending his question. He said, Eric, would you have let Brett punch you in the face like Vince? And how fast could you have put Brett? on his ass with your black belt training. What would happen is someone I ever want to put hands on you? What would happen? Yes.

I would do my best, my best to avoid it. Whenever, whenever that meant or took. But like Brett, who just apparently sucker punched him out of nowhere because of the heat. Yeah, I mean,

I don't know how I would have reacted. It's too hard to see. I've never, nobody's ever sucker punched me like that. whenever I've been in situations where there was a chance of me getting punched, I was kind of ready for it. Somebody being able to sucker punch me probably would be tough to do unless you snuck up behind me and did it.

But I don't know. You know, I don't know. Look, Brett, Brett could lay one. I'm sure he'd run fucking vitz his bell. And this is a big guy. It was a big guy. Brett wasn't someone that anybody would probably choose to want to mess with. myself included but i i don't know how i would have reacted to be honest so we'll get out of here

put a bow on it uh one uh your thoughts this is an enduring uh everyone says it's one of the best if not the best wrestling documentaries ever put together beyond the mat is uh in the conversation as well but uh just your thoughts finally seeing this how it holds up you know we're talking you know almost 30 years later here 25 years uh a long time uh between uh when this is released and now just put a bow on it your thoughts about this documentary and now your thoughts on the whole situation i agree that it's probably one of the best documentaries that's been done in many ways not in every way there's been some good document wwe does a great job uh with their documentaries but i i do believe this is one of the best and i think the reason

for it is the authenticity of it and the just no other way to say it authenticity of it it and the real emotion and the glimpse inside of early Brett Hart, growing up as a kid, I found it interesting when Brett said, you know, growing up, you didn't want to be in a wrestling business. He wanted to be in a film business. Yeah. Found that interesting, you know, because so many times, you're stories, you know, but, you know, John Cita, eight years old, you know, practicing wrestling olds, you know.

So many of the big superstars that we know of, you know, grew up. for a large part of their lives wanting to be a professional wrestler and here's Brett Hart, one of the best that ever was who grew up not wanting to be one. I found that interesting. And I think just having a glimpse into that side of Brett may seem a more interesting person.

And that's what documentaries are designed to do. They're designed to tell you a story or give you a glimpse into something or someone that you perhaps have never seen before that adds depth to their story or to their character, to the situation. I think this, this documentary did a great job with them. I think it was a good fast forward to the line I said earlier of him

saying nobody ever comes up and says you're a great actor. It goes back to him wanting to be an actor and thinking, man, this is all tied in together. The whole thing is tied in together. And, uh, you know, maybe he is the greatest actor and it's all work. And he worked us on the documentary. He worked us on afterwards. who knows and he worked to me out of nine million dollars mucker father uh but you worked everybody because you got a new shirt the excellence of that's true i better be coming soon the elucation i can't wait thanks everybody for being an ad free shows member and interacting with us

thanks for dropping us questions uh eric thank you for your time uh it was fascinating uh i was excited when this topic came up i was fascinated to hear your take on watching this for the very first time. Appreciate your time and sharing your thoughts with us and being honest with us about it tonight, man. Always good to catch up with you, brother. Good to see you Cassio, and hopefully I'm going to see you in person somewhere on the line over of Pensacola, because I'm dying to get down there party with you guys. Let's make it happen for the man of myth, the legend, Mr. Eric Mischoff, a bonus episode of 83 weeks. I'm your host Cassio. Thanks, everybody for being a part of the ad-free shows family.

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