83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 335: The Shocking debut of The Shock Master!

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

This episode of 83Weeks with Eric Bischoff is brought to you by Magic Spoon! Get $5 off your next order through my link https://sponsr.is/magicspoon_83weeks or use code 83WEEKS at checkout, or look for Magic Spoon in your nearest grocery store! This week Eric and Conrad take us back to Clash Of The Champions XXIV and the infamous debut of The ShockMaster! Eric discusses his place in the company at the time and having to navigate though the personalities. Eric also shares his thoughts on the passing of his longtime friend Kevin Sullivan and his impact on Eric's life. All that plus Eric's thoughts on the business of the wrestling business today on this edition of 83Weeks. BABBEL - Get up to 60% off at Babbel.com/WEEKS. Rules and restrictions may apply. MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo 83WEEKS at www.ShopMando.com! #mandopod EARNIN - Download the EarnIn app today. Type in 83 WEEKS under PODCAST when you sign up. EarnIn, the most loved way to get paid as you work. BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s BlueChew.com, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at https://www.savewithconrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/join BECOME A 83 WEEK MEMBER NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@83weeks/membership Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish Off. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? Enjoying life, my brother. Enjoying life. It is the perfect time of year here in Cody, Wyoming. Clear is the bell. Went down to about 48 last night.

high today, maybe 70, 72, 73, no humidity, sunny, no wind. It is beautiful. I'm doing great. Couldn't be better. Well, I'm excited that you're with us today. We're going to be doing something kind of fun. We're going to be watching an old episode of Clash to the Champions. And, man, it's always fun when we get to reach back and take a look at some nostalgia.

Clash of the Champions 24 is what we're going to be talking about. This went down August 18th. 1993 at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. Yes, the very same building where Hulk Hogan became a bad guy. And you can actually see that shot behind Eric of a pretty famous moment from that building. Oh, yeah. Let's do, let's do the, where to go? There we go.

But before we get to watching this program, because we are going to do it watch-along style. So we hope you'll get your peacock out, which is a streaming service, by the way. And watch Clash of the Champions 24 with us. It's Clash of the Champions season 24. It's a little silly, but that's the way they do it on Peacock. Not so silly, though, is all the news and notes in wrestling this week, Eric, and I got to get your take on what's going on in wrestling. But before I do, I want to ask, what's going on at the Bischoff household right now?

There's a report that there's a couple of WCW alumni running around town. What's happening? Yeah, we'd be tearing it up. Ernest Miller is here, along with Sonny Ono, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and his wife is going to be here a little bit later this afternoon. And yeah, we're going to spend the next three or four days tearing up the town of Cody, Wyoming. But right now, as we speak, this is Thursday morning. I was out with Sunny and Ernest last night when they got into town.

Got together over at the Irma Bar place at Buffalo Bill Cody himself built, aimed after his daughter, historic, historic place to grab a cocktail. But we went over and had a couple of cocktails and then dropped the, them off at the hotel. They got up at 8 o'clock this morning, and they're heading right over to a range where they can shoot Gatlin guns, like the old-fashioned. Oh, wow. Oh, man, they're good. Last time I saw it a gatling gun in action, it was in the outlaw, Josie Wales, Clemesewood movie, a nominal movie, by the way. What a Clint's best, if I do

say so myself. But there, the Gatlin gun was kind of like a co-star. of that particular feature film that dates back into the probably early 80s. Check it out. But Sonny and Ernest are just tearing it up. And then later on we're going to get together. We're going to the rodeo tonight. Yep. We're going to the rodeo.

Me and Sonny and Ernest, probably hacksaw and his wife. What a crew. My goodness. We're going to be cheering on the rodeo clowns. We're going to be cheering on the Bulls. We like when the Bulls win. I know it sounds screwy, right? No, it doesn't.

Cassio, Kid, friend of the show, says, I've never not pulled for the bull like it's the bull every time so every time i can't i just love watching the bulls and i love watching the young kids like 10 and under do barrel racing i know that you're probably not a rodeo affectionate but barrel racing is fun to watch because it's amazing control of a 1,200 pound animal that's solid muscle and just wants to freaking run and to be able to to have a 10 or 12 year old or under kid be able to control that much power. It's pretty phenomenal. And, of course, the horses themselves are so athletic that I love to go watch them.

I love the rodeo just because I love watching the, they call it stock in rodeo lingo. But the horses and the bulls. And I just love watching the athleticism of it all. Well, we'll get a report next week about what the heck happened with Ernest and Sonny Ono and Hohexaw himself at the rodeo. Now let's talk about some wrestling today, Eric, a little more modern news. Let's hit a few news and notes, and then we'll jump right into our topic today, which again is going to be watching Clash of the Champions from August 1993. Watch along with us on Peacock's Clash of the Champions season 24.

We are just days away from the AEW version of WrestleMania, if you will. Wembley Stadium, All-in, is on deck next weekend. and Eric and I are going to be doing a live reaction show as soon as it's over. Now, don't forget, this is an early pay-per-view because of the time change or the time difference between us and America and across the pond, our friends over in the UK. So I think zero hour starts at like 11th Central. The actual pay-per-view starts at noon from what I understand. So it'll be a late Sunday afternoon conversation.

But join us live at 83 weeks.com. they're um this is where they sort of you know trot out their biggest and best Eric and there's a lot of buzz right now that there's some other big announcements coming in the last week or so we've seen two sets of rumors for new major mega shows if you will for AEW one to include a potential discussion of where the Texas Rangers play in Dallas. So not a super show abroad, but a super show in Arlington where they've been running their Eastport Arena show, their residency, if you will. The talk is they're going to run a baseball stadium next year. Eric, have you heard this? Yeah, I've heard it. You know, I've kind of kept

track of what's going on on a daily basis and you hear the rumors and sometimes the rumors are true and sometimes are not. And, you know, the fun. And it is fun sometimes to just try to discern you know, what's real and what's not. But yeah, I've read the chatter, you know, it's on the one hand. I think it's kind of exciting conversation and what if, all that. But then, you know, the business side of me goes, wait a minute. They're putting 2,500 people at their TV tapings and, you know, 5, 6, 7,000 people on average at their big pay-per-view events. who amongst the brain trust in AEW thinks that a stadium is a good idea.

But maybe there's a plan. You know, that's the thing about being on the outside is, you know, there's a lot that you don't know. Even someone like me who thinks they know everything. That's not really true. But who spent, you know, 35 years of my life in professional wrestling industry at a lot of different levels, being involved in a lot of different aspects of the business.

um i've seen the bottom i've bounced off the bottom a lot and i've been at the top so yeah um i have an opinion but sometimes i'm right sometimes i're wrong so who knows we'll watch it that's the fun part all right folks now let's talk about something that we're all familiar with we love our nostalgia we love talking about old school wrestling and one of my favorite things as a kid was waking up early on a saturday morning turning on wrestling and for myself a big bowl of cereal and now we can do that again with our friends at MagicSpoon. Magic Spoon has reinvented your favorite childhood cereals to taste great, but each serving contains less than zero grams of sugar. It's 13 to 14 grams of protein and four to 15, four to five grams of net carbs per serving.

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Magic Spoon for sponsoring today's episode. I'm excited to see what's possible, and I know that there's a lot of naysayers out there who don't believe that, oh, they can't run a stadium show here in America. I don't know about that. I think for the special event, if it's presented as special and it's made to feel special, it will be special. And I think Wembley's a great example of that. Like, nobody would have guessed with the amount of television viewership they have in that

market last year, that they would have sold the amount of tickets that they've sold. And now there's a talk that not only are they looking at Dallas, but they're looking at Australia, a stadium show in Australia. Dave Meltzer has come out and said, he's skeptical of that as far as how successful it might be because they don't have a ton of coverage in Australia. But allegedly, they're working with some folks in the space. And as I understand it, as silly as this is, they've got three cities picked out. So it seems like they're dead set that not only are they going to Australia, but they've narrowed it down to three markets.

That's the rumor we're hearing. And I don't know if this means they've got some sort of a, and nobody ever talks about this, Eric, but as you know, a lot of times when you see some of these super shows go abroad, it's not just a promoter speculating. And I'm not suggesting this would be a paid show. But perhaps Australia, some of these other markets,

have seen the success and the revenue that's brought in when a WWE comes to town and runs a super show. Yeah. Maybe there's an opportunity here to use all three of these cities to almost create some sort of bidding synergy where someone is going to want some attraction from America that's going to get tens of thousands in theory of folks in the building. I like the Australia opportunity, Eric.

I think I might be more bullish about that one than I am Dallas. What say you? I'm exactly the opposite. I think it's a, look, I'm not saying it can't happen, but if you look at the success of Australian promotions, setting WWE aside, over the last 20 years, they're dismal failures. It's just, first of all, you have the cost, the expense is astronomical. uncle. This is not like running, you know, cities, venues here in the States. I would say the costs are essentially going to be not three times as high, but damn close, somewhere between two and a half and three times as high. Your expenses are just going to be through. There is no

television there. So what, to speak up, there's very little district. Nobody's watching the show in Australia. So you're bringing an American wrestling company that's on TV in America that nobody really knows about beyond the hardcore wrestling fans that know about it through the internet. That's the only place it's available. And you're banking on putting 10,000 seats in an arena. And by the way, I was in Australia recently. It's a very expensive place. inflation has really, really, you know, we talk about it here in the States and around the world, and yes, it's an issue everywhere. It's really an issue in Australia.

So to think that you're going to be able to put 10,000 people, you're going to convince 10,000 people to part with, I don't know what the ticket prices would look like, but they would have to be really high to help to even cover expenses. I just think, unless. Unless there's a magic formula somewhere that I can't see. Poorble. Wouldn't do it.

But it's exciting. You know, and here's, this is not negative. Okay, this is just honest. So if you're going to take it as negative, take it as negative.

I don't really give it to fuck. I'm not talking to you, Conrad. I'm talking to the people listening to this thing who like to flood my social media with, you're a hater. Not a hater. Just honest. so much of what we hear out of Tony Kahn and AEW is hype, so much hype, so many big announcements,

so many things are going to change the face of wrestling as we know it. It's just, so now that when we hear this kind of AEW is going to Australia, something that represents growth and momentum and success. That's the perception that announcements like this make. I don't believe it. I'm cynical. I'm not steadfast to the point where I'm going to say, this is absolutely not true.

I'm not going to do that. I don't know what's true and not true. I don't have details. I'm not behind the scenes. I'm not involved in conversations. I don't hear things. I don't pay attention to the things I do here, frankly. I probably hear a lot more than I remember because I don't pay attention to any of it.

Unless it's from someone, I'm getting information from someone who I know is credible and doesn't have a clear agenda. But in this case, all this hype, the big announcements, oh, it's the most imminent and oh, this is the most important time in AEW's history. And oh, we're going to do a stadium show in Texas. And oh, we're going to Australia in these major markets to create a bidding war. In the meantime, you can't draw flies. Nobody's watching your show, your audience is free falling. There is no buzz outside of the internet, and the only buzz on the internet are from really, really hardcore, delusional, if I may say, AEW supporters, and which are fringe. That's a fringe audience.

That's the perception of AEW, not just mine, but pretty much everywhere else, except for that fringe. group of supporters. So I take all of this stuff as exciting as it sounds and hopeful, even for me, because it would represent growth and success, which is what I really want to see for AEW, as well as the business in general, including TNA, which by the way, seem to be doing a pretty good job. They're inching, right? They're not making giant leaps forward, but they're steady as she goes and moving forward. So I'm hopeful. But with regard to AEW, very cynical because Tony Khan realized so much on hype and perception and doesn't know how to bring, doesn't know how to put meat on the bone,

or at least he doesn't do it often enough to support the amount of hype that's out there. It is interesting to see, you know, how, I don't know, they're staying the course with AEW. Because when you take a look like, as you and I are recording on a Thursday, morning and collision of course is going to be live this Saturday and it's in Arlington Texas the same town where the rumor in innuendo is we're running a baseball stadium next year there's 946 tickets out for that and on Wednesday September 4th they're going to be in Milwaukee not too terribly far you know from the the heart of the Midwest if you will Chicago market and things like that 1589

or the tickets that are out. But when you take a look at, like, what they're doing in Wembley, I mean, there's still over 40,000 tickets out for that show. How do you reconcile that, Eric, where domestically, it's one number, but this super show. I mean, there's got to be something to the super show. That's the only thing I can wrap my head around. What say you?

No, look, I think the, Wembley was an outlier, is an outlier. And I think so many people are, and this is the, you know, those who are very optimistic and with all due respect have not really been in the business and know how to read the cards on the table. It's a one-off. It is not an indicator. It is not a data point. It represents, I think, an amazing appetite for professional wrestling primarily because of the strength of the indie wrestling market. in the UK over the last 10 years or so. There's been a lot of good stuff that have come out of the UK.

And Ireland and Scotland and anywhere you go, there's great independent wrestling on a pretty consistent basis. WWE has done a great job over the last 20 or 30 years of cultivating a generally, a general professional wrestling audience. And AW has come along, come along at the. right time and there's such a rabid interest in wrestling in general that Wembley's going to do great. It doesn't, it doesn't represent opportunity anywhere else on a planet. It's a one-off outlier. And if I was sitting in a meeting with a group of people, particularly if we were

talking about making good financial decisions, I know haters bring it on, bitches, come up with something new, I fucking dare you. But if I was in a room and analyzing things, I would not be interested in hearing too much from anybody that would be discussing a stadium show in Texas or big arena shows, you know, big. I'm talking about 15, 20, 30,000 seat venues, whatever, in Australia, I wouldn't be interested anything I had to say if they prefaced it with, yeah, but look what it we're doing in Wembley. Because that would indicate to me somebody that's completely disconnected from reality.

If you can't understand the unique nature of Wembley and the market in the UK, and you rely upon that to justify decisions that you're going to make anywhere else outside of the U.K., I think it's flawed thinking. Well, listen, I do want to get your take on the AEW TV show, but I want to circle back to something that you said at the top of the show. Your old pal Sonny Ono is in town with you, and you guys are going to go to the rodeo and all that, but I think most of the wrestling fans listening to this show,

and we think of Sonny Ono and Eric Bischoff, sure we could think about Ninja Stars and all that. But what I think about is the fact that he became almost by default, your liaison for New Japan Pro Wrestling. And I think that's simply because he understood the language. And one in five of us have learn a new language on our bucket list. I'm not sure what's up with the other four. But if you're that one, let's make this year your year to finally learn a new language with Babel.

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You know, there's been a report out that, you know, they're getting really, really close. And Tony Kahn had this to say. This is the most important and exciting time in AEW's history. In addition to what's happening in the ring, there are so many exciting things happening behind the scenes at AEW right now. We're on the verge of the most important announcements in the history of AEW. There are multiple aspects. The arrival of those announcements is imminent. We'll have big news that could come at any time.

Isn't that the best kind of wrestling surprise when you know something is coming and you won and it's exciting? But you're not sure when it's going to happen. You have that feeling that it's going to happen. And in this case, I have more than a feeling, paraphrase Boston. I've been working on this for a long time. We have a great team here. The future of AEW is very bright. And of course, a lot of people are taking this to me.

he's talking about the TV deal, perhaps the Australia deal, and the Dallas deal. There's been a lot of discussion, and you've been talking a little bit about it on your YouTube channel at 83 weeks.com with your program-wise choices. What do you make of this tease about the new TV deal, Eric? It's the same thing. How long have we been hearing about this? I mean, I watched a clip yesterday, I think, on social media where Jay Meltzer and Brian Alvarez are on their radio. show and Dave Meltzer is basically saying the deal is done. It's going to be announced.

It's imminent. It's going to be announced at the up fronts. Just clear as a bell. Like he had the information. He did his research, Dave did his thorough research because, you know, he's a journalist at all. It's bullshit. It's all bullshit.

That's what I mean. I can't believe anything. I don't think that Tony Kahn is intentionally misleading people. And there's a fine line between rape, promotion and misleading, right? You've got to be careful. But again, it's the boy that has cried wolf so many times and failed to show up with even a poodle puppy. You can only cry wolf so many times and then show up with stray dogs and expect people to get excited about your shit.

that's that's the that's the you know bill gober we're talking about the similarities between tony con and dixie carter and i you know bill hasn't really worked with either one of them but you don't have to spend a lot of time with either one to know what motivates them and it's attention that's the one thing that dixie carter and tony con really have in common and it's a dominant you know it's a dominant part of their personality at least when they're you know in their wrestling environment is the need for attention supersedes the need for logic. So, like, whatever, TV, look, I think they'll probably get one. I've never been of the mindset that, you know, they're done.

They're never going to get another TV deal with brothers. I've never, ever said that. I challenge anybody to find even a clip of me saying something like that within, within the context of the conversation. Hey, time out, why do people attribute that to you? Because any time this conversation comes up, I see a lot of people tagging you like, well, Eric, say then after he said it's never coming. And I'm thinking, I'm pretty sure I did most of these shows with you.

And I never remember you saying that. No, I've never said it. Yeah. Dave Meltzer has said that I've said it. But you didn't. No, I never have. Just like Meltzer has put out there that I never, my opinion of Kevin Owens is that he would never be a World Heavyweight Champion.

I've never said that. I love Kevin Owens' work. I've always put Kevin over. I worked with Kevin, you know, one-on-one when he was in his program with Shane. I think the world of Kevin. I think Cornett had problems with Kevin. Anything he chooses to do. But Dave Meltzer somehow felt it incumbent upon himself to put out there in his little universe that I just, you know, Kevin Owens is never going to be a top guy.

bullshit. And I've never said that I think that Warner Brothers is not, that AW is not going to get a renewal. I have said, and maybe this is where, you know, because Dave spins off into his own bizarre universe and the fringe follow along like puppies, I have said during that period of time when WWE was up for sale and I had it on excellent authority, excellent firsthand authority that, that, you know, that, um, that, um, that, um, that, um, Warner Brothers Discovery was interested in purchasing WWE. Well, that indicated to me a strong interest in the wrestling industry, and I'm part of Warner Brothers Discovery, and they obviously saw the value

and what it could bring to the network. And I did say if that were to happen, in my opinion, unlikely at all that AEW would get a renewal. Because I just couldn't see two wrestling companies under one broadcast deal. That I did say. That's it.

And somehow Dave spins off into the bizarre world of Dave Meltzer and concludes that I've said somehow that Warner Brother or that AW is not going to get a renewal. Clear, I never said that. I don't think they're going to get, if they get renewed, it's not going to be the deal that people like Dave Meltzer and others. we're talking about, you know, the billion-dollar deals. People, Warner Brothers Discovery woke up a week ago and found out they had $9.1 billion less than they thought they had.

Nobody's handing out buckets of money anywhere. AEW is not that valuable of programming. The return on the investment based on the low ratings and the fact that it's professional wrestling means that it is not an advertising-friendly, It's not an advertising cornucopia, right? Your ad sales network are going to, they're going to wake up in the morning and go, oh, you mean we renewed AEW again?

Oh, I'm so happy because there's going to be so much pressure on me to sell advertising in the show that nobody wants to buy advertising in. That's the world. That's the reality. And within that reality, oh, and here's another reality. Warner Brothers Discovery is not going to go away. They need programming. And relatively speaking, professional wrestling AEW is still very attractive programming in terms of cost of acquisition.

There you go. But in terms of return on investment, it's marginal. Yeah. Which in that reality, who amongst us thinks that there's going to be some kind of doubling or tripling of rights fees? I think that's that's the disconnect from reality that I tend to react pretty aggressively towards when I see it and hear it because it reflects, number one, ignorance, lack of experience or knowledge, and in a spin that is overrelied upon. It could be relying on the spin and the hype and the teases and the super things that are going to happen to change the world and professional wrestling is we know. Fuck that. Just start putting together good shows. Learn how to tell a story. Not the kind of story that you've been selling and telling people are good stories, but really good stories. And just learn how to do that. And your world will change. And maybe some of these things that Tony's trying to create in the minds of people, you know, the big tours in Australia and stadium shows and oh my God, maybe he could actually deliver them and be successful. in the attempt, just improve the product to quit the nonsense.

I do want to ask you, you know, I've heard from several people, heard, Crockett, others, that the way WCW had a lot of their ad sales was they were bundled up with other Turner sports. So if they had football or they had basketball or certainly they had the Braves, then it would just add to the total cue because wrestling did generate a lot of eyeballs, but it wasn't necessarily advertiser-friendly, as you said. Advertisers weren't beating your door down to get their product on your wrestling show.

However, when you add it as part of that sports package, now it really adds to the total number of eyeballs that are watching the sports package. So instead of selling just baseball, just basketball, just football, just wrestling, it's a part of the sports package, and it looks like on paper you can deliver a lot of value and a lot of eyeballs.

Do you imagine that Turner is still trying to position their sales that way? Because when I watch AEW, it looks like they have two commitments from advertisers, Draft Kings and State Farm. And those folks are there pretty consistently. But outside of that, it does feel like it's sort of run of sight. They're going to be on all Turner programming. Like these commercials or commercials you could see anywhere on TBS or TNT. do you remember the sports initiative being a big part of what WCW did

and how effective do you think that could be for T&T and TBS and AEW? Well, I clearly don't know how the sales structure set up over at Warner Brothers Discovery. I would assume that ad sales treats AEW like they treat. It's just a product in the catalog. it's really it's if you're an ad sales person for turn or ad sales you walk in with a briefcase and a drive and you plug it in and say okay here are all the here's our program here's what we have here's our numbers relative to that program so I don't think you can you know I've said this before and this is another you know it's a big topic of conversation a year and a half ago

led by especially by Meltzer and people like him where there was a lot of comparisons being made. And this is back when Dave Meltzer was predicted they were going to get multiples of their licensing deal. I don't remember what the number was. It was fucking ridiculous. So it doesn't matter. But it was multiples of what they're getting now. And Dave based that projection on the fact that other sports franchises and sports rights fees were escalating at such a high pace. And of course, look at WWE. And somehow making a correlation to AEW and what Dave perceived or projected AEW could enjoy in terms of a rights fee increase because he was comparing it to sports primarily, NHL specifically.

Only an idiot like Dave Meltzer, someone who has never actually stepped foot in the business for more than 10 minutes would think that you could sell wrestling to a advertising agency as a sport, you might be able to sell it and categorize it as live action entertainment. That works. And because it's live action, it has similar attributes, similar properties to sports. because it's happening now and there's very few things other than news

that you can watch that's happening now which makes it attractive always has that's why I'm one of the first things that I did when I walked out of Ted Turner's office with the mandate to create a show

to compete with WWE the very first thing on my list of things to do differently is to be live every week because even back then live was better than anything else still is so you can make some correlation to live action in sports, but again, for someone like Dave Meltzer, who has never spent

a second in the industry, the only thing he knows is what he reads in variety or what other people tell him, second and third hand information. That's the extent of research and knowledge. It's not sports. So I think, yes, to sum this up, do I think they're going to get renewed? I think it's likely they will because it is cost effective. Wonder Brothers Discovery, regardless of their financial condition right now, no matter what their strategies are going to be a year from now, five years from now, even if they're going to sell off parts,

which is what I'm hearing, by the way, is that Warner Brothers Discovery is going to get spun off. Other divisions are going to get spun off. It's not going to be pretty. And from what I'm hearing, and I don't know that it's true, I tend to believe it. But regardless of that, Warner Brothers Discovery,

We're still got to have shit on TV every week. And wrestling is relatively inexpensive. So even if it's losing money, relatively speaking, they may renew it anyway just to have something there that does attract, even if it's only six or 700,000 people, six or 700,000 people. They may do it. What's the alternative? The alternative is for Warner Brothers Discovery, TBS, to just put reruns in. there. That's a real thing because they already own that content. They have a library. They can plug it in just like you can put in a CD. Do they still make CDs, but? I don't think so.

I don't think so either. But if they did, we get the reference. You just have that in your library. And if you're in the mood to listen to Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels from 1967, you go to your Mitch Rider catalog, you pull it out, you plug it in. Doesn't cost you a dime. Don't have to download it. You already own it. And TBS, Turner, has a massive library of content. So there's no cost of acquisition. All of the sales is upside from a purely financial point of view. That would make more sense, particularly for a company that's losing or is lost $9 billion, as opposed to strok and a check for $100 million or whatever the fantasy number would be for programming that's continually losing audience and can't hold.

hold its lead in. I don't know. We'll see. I don't. It all depends on, you said this before, Mr. Meltzer. It all depends on the strategy

of Turner, Brother's Discovery. Unless you're in those meetings, unless you're part of the conversations that are taking place, hoping to resurrect and get one or

discovery on the right track and the kind of ideas that are coming to the table in those discussions as to how to do that. Only if you're part of those discussions, would you have any idea at all, even a good guess as to whether or not AEW has a future there. The rest of us are all just running our freaking mouths. Yeah. That's all we're doing. Tony's running his mouth to keep his audience excited. Dave Meltzer is running his mouth to try to create the illusion that he has inside information that he doesn't have. I'm running my mouth here because, hell, we have a podcast that people all over the world listen to. It's one of the most financially successful podcasts in the marketplace, thanks to the team over shows. And Dave Green,

podcast heat, we're a huge success financially. And I have fun doing it. I'm running my mouth because I don't know fuck all. Just like nobody else does either, unless you. you're in that room. Well, what I know from experience is when you're buying advertising, so I'm saying as an advertiser, right, someone who's paying to get a commercial on the air, live just works best, man. You know, I got towards the end of my buying cycle, I said, hey, if it ain't live news or sports, I ain't buying it. Because the other stuff, I found that people could just DVR and fast forward or they could watch one of their other favorite series on a streaming network, just one after another, and never have to sit through a commercial.

But, you know, commercials become the necessary evil if you're watching a live event, whether that's news or sports or wrestling. I mean, I guess we could go sports entertainment there. But I also hear pretty consistently that, hey, compared to all the other live content, aside from news, the rights fees that the NBA and the NFL and baseball, et cetera, et cetera, all the other quote unquote traditional sports I realize wrestling sports entertainment but you get where I'm going those fees are astronomical so this is and I don't know we don't like to think about wrestling this way but it is a low cost alternative you know it is a way to say you have some live programming without having to break the bank to get it so I could see it but to your point when Fox tried this with the WWE they said we couldn't get any RRR So it's got to be part of the overall strategy. I don't think there is a circumstance where AEW or for that matter,

WWE can be the centerpiece of any network. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. You can build around it. Yes. You know, especially in the case of, excuse me, you know, WWE right now, it's hot. You know, if you look even up against the Olympics, you know, I know a lot of people were using the Olympics as an excuse for,

dynamite, but if you look at WWE's numbers head to head against the Olympics, they're down single digit percentages, not 25% and 30% like AEW was, because they're hot and they're strong. And you've got, in the case of raw,

I think last week's episode was about 1.8 to 3 million people or something close to that, I think. That's a big number. You got a demo number of whatever it was, but I think It was up around 0.60 or 0.60 plus, that's a big number. So you can use that, you can promote to that audience, ideally.

That was, and that was the big, that was the goal for Brad Siegel. You know, when Nitro, first of all, he didn't want it as we all know. We know the story. But once it hit and immediately became competitive with WWE, like right out of the shoot, not talking about the first night because they went on. but even afterwards you know we'd win one raw would win one we'd win two they'd win one they'd win two we'd win one we were back and forth until nitro came along or until uh until nwo came along but brad got so excited by the brad sego got so excited by those numbers that he saw the opportunity

because our demos were pretty clear 18 to 39 was the core 18 to 49 was the bulk and then you had the fringe of teen, preteen, and women. Brad looked at the growth of Nitro and went, ah, I can promote other shows that target that same demo. It makes sense on paper, right? Brad was a very smart program. Brad was not just in the job because he knew somebody that knew somebody. That was very talented, had a good feel.

And for someone like Brad, with his experience and talent and success, to look at that wrestling number and go, wow, I can use that to promote other similar type demo programs, common sense. And he did it work because the wrestling audience is so unique. They'll tune in for that product that they want. But the minute it's over, they're out of there. It's the extreme version of must-see TV for that audience. they're not going to stick around for anything else you have to say.

Brad found that out. Fox found that out. I don't know. I'm guessing if I'm an executive at Warner Bros. Discovery, my company just lost $9 billion. And somebody's asking me for my opinion. I don't know if I'd throw my weight behind a wrestling idea. Just because it's so difficult.

Even if I thought AEW was flawless, it wouldn't change the reality of how business of the business looks at professional wrestling. Well, it's going to be a long hike here on the show and just the story of AEW and navigating all this Warner Brothers discovery stuff. And it might be a longer battle than we initially expected, especially if we're thinking about. battling these longer summer days. I don't think the sunsets here until like after 8 o'clock at night right now. These are marathon days and you got to be prepared. Can I recommend Mando whole body deodorant? It's going to be your best friend for the rest of the summer. On into the fall, Mando is clinically proven to control that odor for 72 hours. Yeah, three whole doggone days. And it's really safe for the whole body. And I mean the whole body, the pits, the package, the

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40% off your starter pack. Just use our code 83 weeks at shopmando.com. That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O-com. Shopmando.com. This podcast is supported by Talkspace. When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found Talkspace. Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans, and their dependents, ages 13 and older, can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones. I just answered a few questions online, and Talkspace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her anytime.

It was so easy to set up, and they accept TRICARE. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couples therapist through Talkspace, too. Talkspace works with most major insurers, including TRICARE. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com slash military. Go to talkspace.com slash military to get started today. That's Talkspace.com slash military. Eric, enough conversation about AEW. Let's talk about some things over in WW land.

Before we get busy watching Clash of the Champions from 1993, I have stand corrected. Although this is the 24th episode of Clash of the Champions. If you're watching along with us on Peacock, it's season six, episode three. So if you haven't already, get your peacock ready. That's a streaming network. It's season six, episode three. Raw came in with the best rating it's had in like four months.

That's good news for WWE. They're back to the WrestleMania form. Chad Gable has signed a three-year deal. Randy Orton has signed a five-year deal. Roman Raines was back on Smackdown. It looks like Kevin Nash and L.A. Knight have squashed whatever perceived heat there was backstage at SummerSlam. And John Sina has come out and said that his retirement tour is going to be roughly 36 dates across the globe to thank the WW universe. He's going to wind it down in December of 2025.

Lots of news. What caught your headlines and caught your attention this week, Eric? I like the way John Sina is handling this. I think it's going to be cost for celebration in a lot of the events that he goes to. He's such a positive guy and there's such a positive vibe behind him. People are going to want to be a part of that moment. I think it's great. I'm not surprised at the rating that you referred to.

Again, I think it was about $1.83 million this past Monday. You look at the quarter hours. They're very, very stable. There's not a lot of ups and downs. You compare that to, you know, the quarter hours, again, in AEW, and you see just every week. It's just like a cliff. And for the most part,

WWE seems to be able to hold their audience from beginning to end. Even in a case of raw, you're going to lose some audience by the third hour, but obviously. But for the most part, for a three-hour program that happens 52 weeks a year, they do a hell of a job holding the audience. Again, it's all storytelling. You know, I know there's like two kind of ideologies, you know, in the internet wrestling community. One being, you know, it's just the wrestling.

We don't care about the gimmings. We don't care about the stories. We don't care about the promos in the ring. We just want to see good wrestling. That is a very small fringe of the fringe of the wrestling audience that believes that. Then you have the other extreme that is all about the theatrics of it all. And I think somewhere in the middle or towards perhaps the more theatrical extreme are those people who that's the general audience. These are the people that aren't critiquing and analyzing how many minutes of wrestling there are per hour.

These are the people that are sitting back with a beard of a piece of pizza that just want to be entertained and look at larger-than-life characters and be drawn into. into the stories that they represent. That's the American television audience. That's 99.5% of the wrestling audience. Take that back. That's 99.5% of the general audience and probably 75% of the wrestling audience. The fringe is the remaining 20%, maybe 25%.

The general audience is loving the product. And I think that for the last year and a half ever since Paul Avec took over creative with a lot of great support from our buddy Bruce Pritchard, Ed Koski, a lot of other very, very experienced and talented people have made a commitment to storytelling. It's what I've been saying for the last couple of years with regard to AEW. Focus on story. Learn how to tell a story. learn how to develop characters and create them so they don't all look one-dimensional and all kind of look like they were cut out of the same die cast. WW is doing it, AW isn't.

And the success of WWE does not surprise me. Wrestling is going to be around so much longer than anything else. It's always going to be there on television, always going to be there. Because when it's done well, there's really not much better for just general. simple entertainment. You're not going to get an education, watching it necessarily. But if you want to escape and just live vicariously through characters you're watching on television, professional wrestling in general, and AE, or excuse me, in WWE, particularly

right now because of the discipline and emphasis on story, is a hot television property once again. Well, let's take a look at something that wasn't so hot back in 1993. It's an interesting time for WCW. We want you to watch along with us. It's Clash of the Champions 24 over on Peacock. It's season 6, episode 3. We got a runtime of an hour, 33 minutes, and 18 seconds.

We're going to talk all things, WCW. But first, Eric, I'm locked and loaded on my side. I'm at triple zeros. I've got it muted. Are you ready on your side? I think I am. I don't have mine muted yet, but I think when I hit play, I'll have that opportunity. Well, here we go.

let's get going in three two one play so here you see the the open this is of course a big deal in wcw because well this is pre-nitro so to be live is always a big deal and this show went down on august 18th 1993 the ocean center in detona beach florida it's live on tbs and it does a 3.8 rating There's 8,903 fans, so it's going to look like a heck of a crowd. But only 2,400 were paying customers. That's tough for me to wrap my hat around, Eric. Only 2,400 paid in a building with 8,900 fans. Do you think we...

Is there a lesson to learn from that? Is there something to take away from that? You're muted, bud. Eric, you're muted. You've muted yourself. Eric's still with us. Sorry. I appreciate you.

I'm trying to manage everything here, and I'm not very good at it. But, yes, there's a hell of a lesson to be learned. I learned it a long time ago, the hard way, being a part of what we're seeing now and the numbers that you just shared. Once you give it away, it's really hard to charge for it. Yes. That's the lesson to be learned. Yeah, in the case of WCW in 1993, we were kind of like where AEW is now, a lot of parallels, right? Great talent, significant budget, you know, great television platform, they just couldn't figure out how to create the product that would resonate with the audience in that period of time.

There's a lot of great things about WCW in 1993. There were a lot of great things, just like there are an AEW. But just like AEW today, WCW, when we would have our big pay-per-views or in this case the Clash of the Champions, the television audience is such an important part of the end product. You can't compromise on that. You have to have a live audience of a good-looking audience. When I say good-looking, I mean in terms of size so that you can light it properly and you can bring life to the product so that your, that you're, live show feels like a live show, not like a game show. WCW couldn't do it.

We just couldn't draw flies. So when our big events happen, particularly on TBS, what do we do? We papered, we papered, just papered the hell out of the market. We did everything but pay people to show up. That's how bad it was. And as bad as that sounds, the worst part is that for a long period of time afterwards, you've conditioned the audience not to part with their money. Oh, I don't have to buy a ticket.

WCW is coming to town. You don't have to buy a ticket. They're going to be giving them away. Just sit back for a week or two after they announce, and you'll be able to go to your local 7-Eleven, buy a slurpee, and get two free tickets. that's how we put 8,000 people in a 2,900 paid audience. We just gave away tickets. And that was the biggest challenge that I had to overcome when I took over WCW

is because in order to improve production value, the visual impression of the show, I had to figure out a way to put an audience, a real audience, in the background, which is what led me to Disney to an extent, which is what forced me to go to Mall of America for a premier episode that was supposed to go head to head with the incumbent, the number one wrestling company for decades, the juggernaut, Vince McMahon and Monday Night Raw and USA Network.

How do I compete with that? I can't. From a production value point of view, so you do the next best thing. You do something different then. And the Mall of America worked. It wasn't a choice. It was a necessity because of what we're,

watching right now because we had conditioned the entire country to know that you don't have to pay for a ticket because you're going to get them. That's kind of what AEW is up against right now. They've got to put together a good television show. It has to look good on television, especially if you're shopping your show and you're sitting down in front of network executives other than perhaps Warner Brothers executives because your exclusive negotiating window is gone and you're out there in a free market, you want your shows to look as good as they can. So what are you going to do?

You're going to give away tickets. And a year from now, you're going to go back to that market, and you're going to give away more tickets. It's a bad pattern, and you've got to find a way to break it. And the only way to break it is to create hot programming. We're watching, of course,

Clash of the Champions 24 from Daytona Beach, Florida, and what an interesting opening match we've got. We started the show being welcomed in by Tony Chivani and Jesse the body of Ventura. And then we go to some pre-recorded comments after Tony announces that Brian Pillman will be unable to compete. We saw Brian in a cast and then we see that, hey, they're still going to find a way to have Steve Austin defend the tag titles here. He's just got to go find a new partner. The opponents that night were the horseman, but not the horseman you remember. It's Arne Anderson, of course, one of the foundations, really the founding member of the horsemen.

But Paul Roma, an airbrush t-shirts, they're going to come to the ring as the opponents. And it's revealed when Steve Austin walks through the curtain that his tag partner that night is William Regal. I'm sorry, Lord Stephen Regal. I guess this makes sense. We're trying to, you know, firmly cement that the Hollywood blinds as over as they may be with the quote-unquote quote smart marks. They're a heel tag team and well, Regal was near the top of the list of a heel performer.

And you've got some really talented performers in there, but this feels sort of thrown together. What's say you, Eric? Yeah, it does, doesn't it? This feels like, you know, this is what happens when a day before the event or maybe two days before the event you're forced into a situation where you're going to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

That's what this was. Nothing against any of the talent in the rank. They're all phenomenal. clearly. Austin, everybody knows what I feel about Regal. Same with Arne Anderson. Is there anybody better in his peer group than Arn Anderson? Not many. More successful? Yeah, sure. But when it comes to entering abilities and storytelling and understanding psychology, there's nobody better at this point in time than Aaron Anderson. So it wasn't about the talent. It was about the magic that you could make as a writer with that talent and when you're making substitutions without a lot of

backstory and the audience not fully understanding why probably regals new to this situation so regardless of how talented everybody is it's just not going to resume wanted to the show overall got 31.8% thumbs up from the readers of the observer 46.5% thumbs down and 21.7% thumbs in the middle. Most folks agreed that Davy Boy Smith and Big Van Vader had the best match that night. And this opening tag affair is going to go nine minutes and 52 seconds. Brian Pilman here has his ankle in a cast. I guess he was injured nine days earlier. They don't know exactly how long he's going to be out. Bill Dundee, who is the second for Mr. Regal, as Jeeves, I believe. And then we got Brian Pilman. They're both

ring side here for the heel side of things. This is going to end the blinds 169-day title run. What did you think of that presentation, the Hollywood Blonde's? I mean, I think amongst the tape trading community and the smart marks, people felt like this tag team had so much momentum and so much upward mobility and then, well, one day it just wasn't a tag team anymore. What did you think of the Hollywood Blonde's pairing? I loved it.

Part of that was just because the way I felt about Steve and Brian, I just, I had so much respect for them in terms of, in terms of their abilities and their performances. I wasn't really good friends with either one of them at the time. I was friends with him, but we weren't close. Steve,

I just, I just admired his work. And I kind of felt, I had a lot in common with Steve, believe it or not. And because of that, I had an affinity for the Hollywood blondes that probably went beyond what I thought of them as an actual tag team.

Looking back now, left so much on the table, didn't we? Yeah. That could have been so much better, the potential. Brian was at his peak at that point in time. Steve was hungry as fuck and had it all. Didn't know how much he had, but he had a lot. and we didn't tap into it. And by the way, I wasn't booking Hollywood blondes at this point.

It wasn't my idea to unbook the Hollywood blonde. So I'm not defending anything or criticizing anything. Just kind of capturing the moment and the context could have been a lot there between Ryan and Steve. Could have lasted a couple of years easily and turned into a single story and all kinds of great things that obviously never happened. Well, we're going to talk about what did happen. do want to do a business comparison here and just talk about where we are with ratings and gates and ticket sales and all that but also want to remind you that life doesn't happen biweekly so why should payday the money you earn can be in your hands today with earn in earn in is an app

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Bank products are issued by Evolved Bank and Trust, member FDIC. We're watching a pretty fun match here. They're working their ass off in this opening match. Lots of talented in-ring performers. Again, Paul Roma, Arne Anderson, Steve Austin, and Mr. Regal. We see Pilman and Dundee on the outside. Nick Patrick is the other man in the ring. the third man in the ring.

I mean, when you take a look at this roster you had in 93, there's just top to bottom Hall of Famers littered everywhere. But this is a time where business was down across the board. And I want to get your take on something we've all heard a lot. Well, the wrestling business is cyclical. Do you buy that or do you think sometimes the creative gets stale and fans just wander off? That's all it is. That is all it is.

I'm not buying a cyclical bullshit. I've heard it since the day I stepped foot in the business in August of 1987, August 15th, actually, 1987 was my first day on the job. Wait, wait, wait. So as we're recording, today's your anniversary? Whoa! Because today's August 15. Whoa!

Well, then, hell yeah, that's awesome. What are the odds of that? Oh, wow. Well, happy anniversary, baby. Good for you. It's been a blessing. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Here I am.

69 years old. Talking about wrestling. 35 years in the business or whatever it's been. Yeah. But you just think that whole cyclical thing, that's an excuse. It's not real. I've been hearing it from day one. Yeah.

I've been hearing it from day one. And it's not true. What is cyclical is creative and the audience. Because the audience changes. Anybody that thinks that the wrestling audience is the wrestling audience and the The wrestling audience doesn't evolve, clearly has never been in the wrestling business. The audience does evolve, just like it does with movies and television and music and fashion. It's no different.

It never has been any different. The key to good creative into avoiding those downturns, or at least mitigating them, is to understand your audience, or at least understand the audience you hope to have. Understand the audience that you're trying to build. understand the audience that you have once you build it failure to do so will end up in a WCW Nitro like crash in 1999 or what we're seeing in AEW now you have to adjust to the audience not to what you like not to what I like not to what Tony Khan likes not to what Paul Levec likes necessarily what does the audience like and your ability to ascertain that and your instinct because it really is it's not something you can learn it's not well you can't learn it it's not something

you can put in a pill it's not something you can read about in a book it's not about it's not something that you can develop in a classroom it's instinct it feels some people have a feel for music some people have a feel for psychology. Some people have a feel for flying spaceships. Some people have a feel for the wrestling audience and can predict how they're going to react. That's the art part. It's also the hard part. It's also the part where if you're batting a 250 average, you're really doing great because that allows you to mitigate those cyclical terms. I've heard so many times wrestling's dead. Wrestling's dead. Wrestling's going to die. It was really great in the 80s, not going to work in the 90s, especially when American Gladiator got

hot. I heard that all the time from ad sales people who didn't want to sell wrestling, and their excuse was, ah, wrestling's dead, American Gladiators. Everybody's looking at that's the future, younger, faster, bigger, stronger, blah, that, that fucking blah. Bullshit. Creative just sucked. There you see, Arne Anderson with a little accidental assist for Mr. Dundee and the crutch

from Brian Pilman, Arne Anderson sneaks a win, and he is a tag team champion once again, this time with Paul Roma. Man, why do you think Paul Roma catches so much shit from old JCP NWA faithful? Like, he had a great look,

seemed like a nice guy. I really enjoyed his work with Hercules Hernandez and the WWF as part of power and glory. Was it just people who felt like this isn't our horseman? I mean, is that it? Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. You know, wrestling audience is tough. Yeah. And that, we're talking about 1993. We were still, what, five years outside of the JCP and, you know, NWA and the Krocats really kicking ass. So there was just, you know how, here's how bizarre people are in general, including me. Like, I get up every morning and I put on my right sock first because I'm right-hand. My right foot is closer to my right hand than my left foot.

So when I wake up and I'm half awake, I do the easiest thing first. I put on my right sock. And I think 75 or 80% of the people on earth who are right handed probably put their right sock on first. Natural. But what if somebody passed a law? I'll be careful how I say this because it could come true and people are crazy with their laws

but somebody passed a law that said up from now on if you're an adult male over the age of 18 by law you have to put your left sock on first here's the truth it really doesn't make a fucking bit of difference

but the fact that I have to think about it and it's not natural and it's new and it's different I'm going to resist it because that's human nature is to resist change in anything or the most part people don't like change and will be willing to put up with less than in order to maintain familiarity with the minute you bring something new into the equation even if potentially

it's better than maybe it's just different than but the fact that it's different represents a change and people inherently don't like change. Now, take that general philosophy and apply it to a wrestling audience and multiply it by a factor of 10. So Paul Realma, coming into WCW here at this point in time, we're trying to resurrect something that represented a highlight reel for a lot of wrestling fans in their life, which was the four horsemen, Jim Crockett promotions. So now we're trying to breathe some new life back into it,

but we're going to be doing it by putting a square peg into that round hole in Paul Roma. And it felt like Paul Roma was forced upon them. And it didn't happen organically and naturally, which is true. Didn't happen or naturally. There was no story behind it. There was no backstory. There was no journey. That's the key.

There was no journey from Paul Roma's perspective under his, his arrival into the four horsemen. And since there was no journey, there was no connection. The audience did buy into it. They didn't care about it. He's just a placeholder. They resented him, partly because it's human nature and mostly because they're wrestling fans.

And they're very peculiar about what they like and they don't like. And that's part of getting to know them and anticipating them. This is a showcase match here for two cold Scorpio. we're trying to really get behind him here in singles action. Originally, it was advertised, Scorpio versus Regal. We know that Regal substituted for Pilman. So who do we think can give Scorp a good match? Well, Huntsville's finest, Bobby Eaton.

And this is a pretty fun match here. Let's talk about where business was, though. We made the whole cyclical discussion. The average attendance in August of 1992 for WCW was 2008, I'm sorry, 2,380 fans total. So 2380 was your average attendance. A year later, we're down to 700. So we're down 70%.

Not only that, the gates are down. Your average gate a year prior in August, 92, was $21,420. In August of 93, it's $6,300. And somehow, ratings are actually up. Your average television rating in August of 92, was a 2.0, but here your average television rating in August of 93 is a 2.5. So ratings seem to be up, but ticket sales and house show attendance, those are down. And what's interesting to me about that is we know Rick Flair is one of the centerpieces at WCW for the most part, but in the

summer in 92, he wasn't there. He's back now. We're going to see him as a part of the player for the gold and we're even going to see a tag match from him on this show and somehow the numbers are down how do you reconcile that? Is this all just bad creative or is there more to it, do you think?

Definitely bad. Look, creative is either good and the audience is there or creative is not good and the audience isn't there. There's nothing really complicated about it and it has nothing to, again, this is why I've been so adamant and so strong vociferous when it comes to my opinion about current product,

it does not make any difference how great your talent is if the story and the interest isn't behind them. People don't watch wrestling to see specific stars wrestle, just like they don't go to movies to see a particular actor act. They go because of the quality of the experience, and the quality of the experience is directly related to the quality of the story. So, yeah, you had Rick Flair, you had, again, you had Sting, you had Pilman, you had Austin, you had Regal, you've got two cold score, but you got an amazing, you got a fader, you got so much great talent. But nobody knew what to do with them.

Nobody understood how to create the stories and the discipline to create the stories that would take advantage of the power of that talent. the asset that they were it was bad creative no question about it and you had a lot of transition in there too in 91 92 you've got

heard then you've got Kip Fry for a moment which every time I say that how did that happen what was that and then you got Bill Watts

and none of them were there long and you know Dusty Roads was booking during a lot of that time but you had so many different changes in top management over a relatively short period of time that it's not surprising

that there wasn't any cohesive creative because everybody had a different approach. Bill Watts' approach was much different than Jim Hurd's approach. Jim, Jim Hurd's approach, or excuse me, Bill Watts' approach was different than Dusty Roads approach. So there was conflict there. When I say conflict, I just mean, you know, there wasn't like, like-minded people working together, two different philosophies creatively. So it doesn't surprise me that there was no coherent story audience at this time because WCW wasn't coherent. We're watching a pretty fun match here with Two Cold Scorpio and Bobby Eaton.

Hopefully you're watching with us over on Peacock. I wanted to get your opinion on some news and notes that happened around this same time, Eric. There was a report that came out in the Marietta Daily Journal. so a paper that's maybe not quite as big as the AJC that Barry Windham has been sued by a woman. We won't necessarily list all the details or her name, but I guess this was a domestic issue and there's no criminal complaint that's been filed in the incident,

but it is her seeking $5 to $10,000 for medical bills, and it makes the paper. I'm wondering from a Turner standpoint, point, like I understand that everything changes when there's a criminal complaint. But in a case like this, where there was no criminal complaint, so Barry's not being charged with a crime, but it is ugly from a PR perspective for Turner. Is there a best practice?

Were there policies and procedures? Do you even remember this happening? Vaguely remember it. There were no policies and procedures in place. perhaps at Turner Broadcasting Corporate, but keep in mind, we were treated literally like the red-headed stepchild. So if there was a policy, we may and may not even have known about it. That's how remote, even though we were part of the company, for the most part, we were on

an island and fairly isolated. So I was unaware of any particular policy. In this case, I mean, I do remember it happened, but. But the reason I don't think it mattered is because I had a pretty good feel for Barry Wyndham. I think I knew Barry Windham pretty well. This to me sounded like a he said, she said, I don't know. It just wasn't enough meat on the bone for me to concern myself. And because it was so outside of the Barry Wyndham that I felt like I knew, that it didn't have any credibility.

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If you want to feel more connected to humanity and a little less alone, listen to Beautiful Anonymous. Each week, I take a phone call from one random anonymous human being. There's over 400 episodes in our back catalog. You get to feel connected to all these different people all over the world. Recent episodes include one where a lady survived a murder attempt by her own son. But then the week before that, we just talked about Star Trek. It can be anything.

It's unpredictable. It's raw. It's real. Get Beautiful Anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts. We're watching Max Payne come to the ring here. He's going to be taken on at Mark Miro. And from what I understand, or I'm sorry, Johnny Be Bad. And we got some stakes here with a guitar and a mask.

I do want to ask you about some interesting parallels. It's not really the same thing. But we started this show talking about how soft A, W's ticket sales have been recently, like I think as you and our recording, they had around 3,500 people at their live television show last night. And this is certainly a down period for WCW here. So maybe there are some similarities. One of the things that was happening here for WCW, though,

that was definitely not going to happen for AW, and maybe because we're talking about a pay-per-view versus a sold show. But, boy, that was a long preamble to say this. I was shocked to read in my research for this, that you guys had not one but two sort of stadium or dome shows on the books here. Apparently, you guys were doing a sold show where, as I understand it, that means a promoter comes to you and says, I've got a building, I'll handle all the promotion.

I'm just going to pay you this flat fee, and I want you to bring me a show to San Antonio at the doggone Alamo Dome. And that was supposed to happen on all. August 29th, 1993. So that would have been like 11 days after this show, just a couple of weeks after this show. But ultimately, the show was canceled because in the freaking Alamo Dome,

only 400 tickets were sold. Not only that. Tony, hey, Tony, are you listening? Somebody that loves Tony Kahn, send him a clip of this show, please. Come on, that's not going to happen. Now, you want to bet? Yes, yeah.

let's bet your hair again, come on. I wanted to mention, though, that's not the only time because the very next month on September 17th, you guys were doing a sold show in Irving, Texas. Yes, Texas Stadium, where the Cowboys played, where Rick Flair, Russell, Kerry, Von Erick.

Well, that wound up being canceled as well because there were 35 tickets sold. So we booked the dog where the Cowboys always play in less than three dozen people buy tickets. The Alamo Dome, are you serious? Less than 400 tickets are sold. Like, how do these opportunities come your way?

And what do you remember about these promoters with these grandiose ideas of if we build it, they will come and, well, nobody did? There's a sucker born every minute, you know, and somebody thought, It's just wrestling. I can promote this. And they found out the hard way. It's not, no, it's not rock and roll. It's different.

The audience is different. Even from a promotional point of view, when I talk about understanding your audience and being able to predict how they're going to react to certain things, you also have to understand where they live. You can't promote wrestling like you. You could be the most successful rock and roll promoter in Texas. But if you promote wrestling like you promote rock and roll, you're going to have 400 people show up at the Alamondome

and 12 tickets at Irving Stadium, whatever. It happens. People who don't understand who have access to resources think they can do it. I experienced that with the promoters in Australia back in 2009 or whatever it was. Two very credible promoters that have been promoting rock and roll and different shows, not just rock and roll, but different shows, Disney on Ice, for example. All over Australia, tremendous success, great reputation, financial backing, great relationships with the media, with the sports team, just everything.

They overestimated their ability to promote wrestling, and it was a miserable failure for them. And well, and for all of us, it was not successful as a tour. And it was a paid show. Just because it's a paid show doesn't mean it's going to be successful. And that's kind of why I have the perspective I have of AEW's announcement regarding the big stadiums and regarding Australia is, okay, I get it. They may even have somebody on the hook that thinks they're going to make this work. and more power to you. But I lived this shit.

You just talked about it. I sat. Now, I wasn't in charge at this point in time. I wasn't making those deals. But I was there. I heard about it. I understood where we were because a year later, I'd be highly involved in management based on my ability to analyze where we really were at

that time and what the solutions to those challenges were. That's why I got hired. So I'm so familiar with what was going on back then, but how it, more importantly, how it relates to what we're seeing today. Flair for the goal. I haven't seen one of these in a long time, Conrad. This is cool. This is the one.

This is a big deal. This is Dusty love this idea. There you see, the long time on again, off again, girlfriend, I suppose, of the nature boy, Rick Flair. Fee, the French maid, or these days. days. You hear the nature boy refer to her as windy. Our first match on the show, of course, was Arne and Paul Roma winning the tag straps from Steve Austin and Mr. Regal. That got three stars in the observer. Two cold Scorpio pending Bobby Eaton in five minutes and 26 seconds. Got two and a half stars in the observer. Only half a star for the very quick affair with Johnny

B. Bad picking up a win over Max Payne in two minutes and 41 seconds. But this segment, This is probably the reason we're watching this show. One of the more famous segments in WCW history, it is Flair for the Gold. As I understand it, part of the terms of his release from Vince McMahon's WWF was that he couldn't wrestle on television or he couldn't wrestle for WCW for X number of days.

We create this vehicle as a workaround to get Rick Flair and his fans and charisma on television. And while we're doing a talk show format, and he's inviting two baby faces. This is a weird time for Rick Flair, where people are so happy to see him back, he's a baby face. Yes, he prefers being a heel, but he's a baby face here, sitting with a now baby face sting and a baby face Davy Boy Smith.

And he's just trying to get these guys pumped up and excited. And, well, the heels are going to come in in just a minute, Eric. And they're going to stop talking about what's happening tonight at Clash of the Champions and start talking about what's happening at the next pay-per-view because we're right around the corner from Fall Brawl. And we're about to see maybe the most infamous debut in wrestling history. Do you think, Eric? It lives forever.

And it's still generating revenue for this individual to this day. I love it. And we see that one fabulous painting over your shoulder, but you actually have a Shockmaster painting hanging around somewhere. That's probably over the bed if I had to guess. Yeah, it's actually on the ceiling. Oh, there you go. You never want to miss that.

we can't uh we those blue chew moments yeah oh hang on that's coming stay tuned boys we're going to get eric's talk all about his wiener but right now we've got sid cutting off davy boy cutting off sting he's got the harlem heat with him colonel robert parker's there what a scene we've got with miss fifi in the background we're talking all about what's coming and the beat down that's coming your way and you can't compete and blah blah blah and of course course, they're going to say our tag team partner is going to shock the world because he's the shock master. Eric, how early in the day did you see the outfit, if you want to call it that, that they had for Fred Altman? Did you see this ahead of time? Are you seeing it live like all

of us for the very first time? I'm seeing it live like everybody else. I wasn't, again, this is before I was really into. There he goes. It's just, I don't know why I look back so fondly at this. I think everybody was excited. Dusty love, oh, here we go. Poor Fred.

I say poor Fred. I see him at conventions now. He's still got that helmet. He brings it with him. He signs pictures of him falling through the wall. He's got such a great attitude about it. The most embarrassing moment, maybe in ever, forever, in professional wrestling. What is he thinking right now as he's coming up?

He's got his helmet back on, shaking, and say, going, what the fuck just happened to me? I really encourage everyone to go back and watch that clip with the sound on. I'd love to be able to play it for you. W.W.E does not want us to play it for you, so we won't. But it's on Peacock. But when he first comes through and he falls, you can hear, I think it's Sid asking, did he fall? And I think you hear Colonel Robert Parker say, yeah, he fell. And then you hear Davey boy say, he fell fat of his ass.

He's flat on his fucking ass. And everyone's just sort of shocked and no one's saying anything. And then you can hear in the backstage area, Oli, pick up the microphone. And he's still laughing. And he stops himself from laughing when he realizes that's going out live. And he starts talking as the shockmaster. I can't imagine the way the real-life Fred Ottman had to feel in that very moment. I mean, my daughter taught me a term years ago watching old reruns of the office.

She said, Dad, I don't know how you deal with this much second-hand embarrassment. I hadn't heard that term before, Eric. But when I watch this, I can't help but feel second-hand embarrassment for Mr. Otman. Yes. And the only reason I don't feel bad. about it, going back and watching it to this day, is knowing how, knowing Fred's attitude about it.

And in fact, he's still making money, signing autographs with his little helmet. And do you see that helmet, how poorly? You talk about bad gimmicks. It's a Star Wars helmet from Walmart. They spray painted with, like, litter spray paint. And look at the, look at the vest on him. Like, who the, who did? And he's got a lizard skin belt.

He's like something out of Star Wars meets Fred Flintstone. Means Crocodile Dundee. Crocodile Dundee that falls through the wall. It's crazy to think about, by the way, the next match, I mean, they went to commercial break mercifully. And the very next batch back, as soon as we come back, we see Ricky the Dragon Steamboat coming out. He's got his silly 1991 WWF look where he's got the wings and he's breathing fire.

And they've got two gimmicks, two dragons or lizards or whatever, on the aisle way, and they're both releasing smoke. And you hear Jesse Ventura laughing, as he says, one incredible entrance after another tonight here, Tony, and WCW. Here comes Paul Orndorff, and I want to ask you about this. I don't know that we've talked about this. What do you think about this look? I think it's underrated.

I think only he and Rick Rood are two people I remember doing it, but wearing the belt around the robe. So the belt is not under the robe. he puts the robe on, cinches it up, then he puts his television title on the outside of the robe. What do you think of that look, Eric?

I think it's badass. First of all, anything that Paul Orndorff did look bad out. I don't care. He could have wrapped a belt around his head and walked to the ring and it would still look badass.

Agree. There's just nothing not badass about Paul Orndorff, period, end of conversation. Bringing out the big guns here for the TV title for a live defense on TV. Mr. Buffer is here

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We got to talk about this match here Because Ricky the Dragon Steamboat Is about to win the WCW television title Against Paul Orndorff Think about what a great match this is no matter the year you know i mean if this match was happening in 85 or 95 it's going to be badass three stars is what it got in the observer they go eight minutes and 31 seconds it's our second title change on this clash of the champions we started with new tag champs about to have a new

tv champ but as we're watching the playback here all i can think is eric uh did the lights go out in the building what the hell happened What's the date on this? August. August, 1993. I think I would have been executive producer at this point. I'm not sure. Perhaps.

And if the lights would have gone out while I was executive producer, intentionally I would have been involved in a conversation. There's no way it's intentional. No. So clearly, well, I say clearly, perhaps it was a power issue or something internally in the building, but it wouldn't have been, because there was a good crowd there. There would have been no reason to cut the light.

You know, if that back, you know, if a lot of those seats were empty and there were holes and it was obvious on camera, I would have cut the lights for sure. But that wasn't the case. We had a pretty decent looking size of a crowd. Let's talk about the crowd that's now become the booking committee. The August 9th Observer had this to say. After much discussion and speculation over the past week, WCW has reverted back to a booking committee composed of those already involved on the previous booking team. Dusty Rhodes, Oly Anderson, Eric Bischoff, Greg Gagne, Mike Graham, etc.

It appears the final decision-making power rests with Bischoff, who seems to be the most influential individual in WCW since Bill Shaw is crediting the Disney tapings as a major success, and Bischoff is getting the lion's share of the credit for those shows. Both Terry Funk and Jerry Jarrett were spoken with Boshal and or Bob Doe over the past few weeks about a spot in the organization, but to the best of my knowledge, neither were actually given a firm offer or a specific spot. Among many other things, Funk felt coming in with Bischoff having the final decision-making power

wasn't an environment he wanted to be a part of. I want to take a time out right there and ask you about that. you know, they're listing all these folks that are a part of the booking committee but they're saying that you're getting the final call and you've got the power and maybe that's scared away Terry Funk. Have you heard of this that Terry Funk

was offered a spot or do you remember him not coming in? What do you remember of Terry Funk? I remember hearing some conversation about Terry Funk but again you got to correct the reporting and the record. I was not

in charge of booking. I had nothing to do with booking. I was not allowed to vote in booking. Was I a part of the booking conversation? Of course I was because I was in charge of physically producing the television to cover the booking. Right. So I kind of had to know what was going on. That's a lot different than Eric Bischoff as a decision maker on the creative team. That was not the case. Bob Dewe oversaw. Here's how WCW was structured at this point in time. Bob Doe was, I think, the executive vice president. He was the highest ranking Turner officer in WCW as executive vice president at this particular time.

I don't even think there was a president at this point. I reported to Bill Shaw. I had a dotted line. report to Bob Doe. Bob Doe had a direct line of report to everybody on the booking committee. So while I was in the meetings, I was not a decision maker and I didn't even get asked to vote generally. Somebody may ask my opinion, oh, the lights just went back on for a second.

Somebody may ask my opinion about something, but for the most part, I was a fly on the wall. So Dave's reporting is an error on that respect. Number two, Terry Funk didn't know me. I had never met Terry Funk at that point. So I don't know. Perhaps Terry Funk had heard about me from guys like Dave Meltzer or had a perception of me, but he didn't know me at all.

I don't think at that point we were even ever in the same room together. Dusty Rhodes and Terry Funk, however, did have history. And there was conversations more than once, and this is before I even got into management at this point, more than once about Terry Funk coming in, either because somebody wanted to bring him in or Terry Funk put out feelers or whatever, the obstacle was always Dusty Rhodes. Now, I don't know what, I never got their history. Dusty never really talked about it too much. I did hear some stories about some individuals, but Terry Funk wasn't one of them. I knew there was history there. I knew that it was an up and down type of history,

much like the relationship at that point with a lot of people. Rick Flair and Dusty Roads included. I heard a lot about Rick Flair from Dusty Roads over a beer or 10. I heard a lot about Dusty Roads from Rick Flair over a beer or 10. And it was not always fun conversation, but not fun. But then, like we've seen so often in a run, people come around. They put whatever issues aside,

and they do honestly respect each other and probably have a genuine affection for each other, but the business sometimes got in the way. And I think there was a point in time when the feelings and the emotions and the differences of opinions between Terry Funk and Dusty Roads got in the way of Terry Funk ever really becoming

a part of WCW until I brought him in. But that was at the end of Terry's career. I don't think Terry had any interested in both. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about steroids here because it's written here that WCW does a comprehensive drug test for both street drugs and steroids on August 2nd in Atlanta for all wrestlers. And Dave would report that the wrestlers knew about the test several days in advance, which because of well-known written ways to beat steroid tests, it makes the results less foolproof than doing an announced test. and Bill Shaw earlier in the year had outlawed a new drug program and there's been hires that happened since he made that announcement that make a lot of people in the locker room scratch their head and say

well if we've got to pass the steroid test before getting hired which is something Shaw said how did that guy get hired and of course this is the era where it is a hot button issue for traditional sports and certainly the WWF with all that Vince McMahon has going on with Doctors Ahorian. But Dave would lay out. The NFL has like 1,400 players, and they're regularly steroid testing their players, but only like two to three a year fail a test.

So no one is necessarily claiming that the NFL doesn't have a steroid problem, but he's sort of illustrating that, hey, there are workarounds here. But if no one comes out as a test failure from WCW, then people are going to say that it's all bullshit, that it's not a real policy, that this is fraud. Bill Watts did an interview once he was on the outside of WCW, and he said the most recent test, which would have been back in November of 92,

that several wrestlers did test positive for steroids. But there was no disciplinary action taken because while WCW tested, they didn't have a written steroid policy in place. Now, Kip Fry would say, no, we actually implemented a steroid policy before that, but Watts dropped it. This is hokey-pokey. Everybody's playing hot potato. Nobody wants to touch this issue.

What do you remember about steroid or street jug testing? Did we tell the boys ahead of time? Did you think it was a major issue for WCW or do you just need to save face with the industry? Where did you personally land on it? And where do you think Turner really was on it at a corporate level? There's a lot of questions there. I'll start with where was I personally. I honestly, people are going to react negatively to what I'm about to say.

But I didn't really care. It wasn't my issue, to be honest, as executive producer, my responsibility to WCW, whether or not somebody who was out of steroids was a talent relations, human resources issue, not an executive producer issue. So on a day-to-day basis, it wasn't on my list of things to concern myself with

professionally. On a business level, I thought it was a joke because testing at that time was a joke. It was a joke in the NFL. It was a joke in the Olympics. And the fact that Dave Meltzer wanted to make steroids in issues, in the world of wrestling, which they were at this point in time.

There was a federal trial going on, and I think it was right around this point in time. This was 93. That might have been like peak hot for the steroid trial in WWE and Vince McMahon. So I'm not suggesting it wasn't an issue, but to make it a WCW issue was just Dave wanting to create conversation in his dirt sheet. Has Dave ever talked about drug testing in AED? by the way and steroids in AEW and suggests brocheted on certain individuals who have freaky

physique in AEW? I don't think he has. But he wanted to in WCW because that was Dave's M.O. It was an issue but it was an unmanageable issue. The workarounds were evident to everybody in wrestling and outside of wrestling. And the fact that this was merely a reaction to what was going on as a result of the trial didn't make me think it wasn't important, but it didn't, it was a knee-jerk reaction. What Turner was doing was a knee-jerk reaction to something that had a dramatic impact on somebody else being. I didn't think that Turner was going to take it serious.

I didn't think Turner had the ability to take it seriously. If the Olympics couldn't figure it out, why would somebody in Turner broadcasting be able to? It was an ongoing problem. Harvest Schiller, you know, had, I think he was involved in the NCAA, might have been certainly involved in the Olympics at a very, very high level, brought in an expert from the Olympics to administer drug testing in WCW. And guess what? It was full of holes.

Not because it wasn't an honest effort, not because there wasn't a legitimate effort made, but because the testing was so flawed and the ability to work around it was so flawed and everybody knew it. So it was hard for me to take it too seriously and put it on my list of things to think about. I do dig the tie.

I'm wearing in this interview with Harley Race, however. I think I still have it. We're seeing a backstage interview with Harley Race and the Kongs. You're the stick man. And believe it or not, We're about to see Rick Flair and Sting team up to take on the colossal congs. It's going to be a total squash. Nobody's ever got the Kongs off their feet.

It's going to take Flair and Sting two minutes and 14 seconds to finish it off here. We just saw a pretty fun match that the Observer gave three stars to with Steamboat winning the television title from Paul Orndorff. And this has always been a weird look for me, Sting and Flair teaming together. I just prefer them as opponents, but they're here together in 1993, and this was supposed to be awesome Kong versus Sting, but there was a Harley Race Rick Flair altercation on WCW Saturday Night,

which is the A show in this era. And as a result, Flair offers Sting a title shot later this year if Flair could join Sting to take on both Kongs. So they're going to wrestle on WCW Saturday night, and it all starts with this one squash match the colossal congs man i got to tell you i'm sure that looked good on paper but in hindsight it just looks bad that's a great got any idea right there is it Greg was good at coming up with 70s bullshit yeah it does feel 70s that's a great call that was great guy yeah fingerprints all over that i can for sure oh you'd be

be all excited. Oh, these guys, you're going to be great. You try to sound like his dad. You get all excited like for, oh, I just love these guys. Real wrestlers. Oh, Greg. He was so funny. It's spent a little time with Global.

Did you ever watch any Global, any GWF? Did you ever watch any of that stuff? Was that Joe Pedicino? Yes. He was on that. Yeah, I think I watched. You know, I saw a couple episodes of it. I was aware of it, but I, you know, I didn't watch it.

Who's, oh, David Flair, did you see that? I missed it. Well, what time code are you at? Let me, let's sync up time quotes here. I might be a little ahead of you. I'm at 5439, 40, 41. Yeah, you're ahead of me. Yeah, so you missed it around 5420.

There was a shot of Rick Flair and it must have been another former Mrs. Flair. I don't know. It's hard to keep track of them all. Well, in this era, it would have been. Beth. I go back and I'll take a little. Oh, yeah, there you go. I just see a very young David Fair. And that was Beth. Was that Beth? So that's Charlotte's mom. That's Ashley's mom.

Okay. That was before Beth got hard looking. Rick wore her out. Okay, dokey. What's your time code, Eric? I'll catch up to you now. All right. Time code is 54-59. Oh, 5503. 0405. So we're watching Clash of the Champions here. Hopefully you can watch along with us.

We got a bunch of different questions in, and I do want to get to some of those. And we want to thank everybody who's a part of our live studio audience. I know Eric Jones is hanging out with us here from ad-freeshows.com. And Josh Hennie is here, Donovia Smack. I think Josh has got some extended family who've had some challenging life circumstances. thinking about Josh and his family. And happy belated birthday to the Novius Mac. Everybody's hanging out in the group chat today.

I see James Sorenson and Isaac Kristen and Adam Clemens and Coach Rosie, all the usual suspects from 83 weeks.com and ad-free shows.com. I appreciate you guys hanging out. We see Harley three times on this show. Eric Jones says, I want to know how Harley managed three matches. tonight. What did you think of Harley as a manager? I liked him a lot with Vader. Yes. I didn't feel like it made sense with anybody else and

it was just diluting him, deluding the character, deluding his role with Vader. It felt special with Vader. It felt me too-ish with everybody else. You know, me-to-ish and I want to be that guy, too, not in Me Too. Yeah. You know, contemporary. Hey, speaking of Me Too, there's a report that came out. I guess Linda McMahon did an interview somewhere recently, and somehow the subject of Vince came up,

and she made mention of the fact that since stepping away from WWB, I'm paraphrasing, of course, that Vince himself had been deteriorating rapidly. I hate to hear that. I know that, you know, we've learned things about Vince in the last year that are less than ideal, to say the least. But 78 years old, I guess that makes sense that there would be some health challenges. But I, for one, just, I don't know, those words just never touch with Vince because he never sells anything. Did you hear this report from Linda? What did you make of that report?

Yeah, I caught wind of it. You know, I... I, this is such a complicated issue because I have nothing but professional respect and admiration. in so many ways, not in all ways, but in so many ways, events. You cannot be a fan of what we're watched today, anywhere we watch it, whoever we enjoy, and not understand that we're not for the vision of Vince McMahon back in the 80s and going national, eating up the territories, and creating pay-per-view and wrestling. Vince McMahon had the vision to build the model that,

made professional wrestling exist to this day in a very, very high level. And I'll never not respect that. The personal stuff is a different issue. But I kind of feel like I should challenge Vince to a fight right now. Oh, gosh. Because I know deep down inside, he wishes he would have shown up back when I challenged him the first time. And Vince McMahon is enough of a fighter deep down in his core that probably nothing would heal Vince McMan as quickly enable him to get back up on his feet at 100% if indeed he's not,

then be challenging him to a fight because that guy will go down fighting. Why not give him the inspiration? I'm not going to do it quite yet. I may, but only because I think if there's anything, it would make him kick out and make a comeback, it would be something like that. So you can think whatever you want events, but if you're watching professional wrestling right now and enjoy it. And if it's been a part of your life, if there's a part of your childhood, you can despise some of the things that we've been hearing about Vince McMahon, but you can't

deny that he created it. This is the era I should mention where Dustin married Terry. They got married on July 25th in Atlanta. We saw Bobby Eaton earlier. It's written in The Observer that Stan Lane was offered a spot to come back to WCW and tag with Bobby Eaton. They offered him 200. $150 per match. They turned it down. We know eventually he's going. Yeah.

He probably had to pay his own way to get there too. He's going to become a talking head, of course, with the WWF and then go on and do a lot of great things on TV and cable television with racing and whatnot. Take a look at this visual. Tony Chivani standing ringside with the Stinger and the Nature Boy. Rick has in his element standing next to Tony Chivani with a microphone. Does he know it? just looks so natural. Yes.

Like, this is, this is, everything is an equilibrium. This is the world as it should be. Yes. Sting. Tony Chivani, Rick Flair, with a great crowd shot behind them. This is magic, ladies and gentlemen. You didn't always have a lot in common with Oli Anderson, but you did in this era.

It's written here in the Observer. O'I. Anderson completely lost it on the WCW 900 hotline two weeks ago and a tirade against the newsletters. He wasn't, quite as far gone as Bill wants was, although he did challenge any newsletter writers to get in the ring with him for $10,000, saying even though he's 50, he could still take all those skinny guys with their skinny arms and skinny butts and thick glasses. I think he's been watching too many Razor Ramon

interviews. Did you hear about this? Olli Anderson challenging newsletter writers to a fight for $10,000? If I did, I just wouldn't have one or I run out the other because it's stupid. I love it. It's hilarious. I'd love to see you throw down the gauntlet. I mean, what about you and, yeah, come on, a karate tournament with you and Dave Meltzer. Sign me up. That's hilarious. Oh, I'd fight, Dave.

Nobody's going to want to do it. Nobody would want to see it because it would just be ass ugly to see a 69-year-old man up there, pounded him out a dweeb. Oh, but I'd do it. You know, just fun. I wouldn't want to knock him out or anything. I think I would just, I would torture him. Like, not getting it's hard enough to knack him out and end it

Because actually that would stop being fun But just like right on the verge Just just tap them hard enough And especially in the body because, oh, that's the worst Getting hit hard to the body where it takes your air And you're still on your feet You've got to try to protect your... It's just the fucking worst

But that's like, yeah, do that for about 20 minutes It would be fun For charity. charity. We would even do it. Yeah, just have, donate. I want to see the match, donate. We'll do it for charity. Okay. Well, that's never going to happen. What is going to happen is Dustin Rhodes seeming with Road Warrior Hawk to take on recruit and equalizer.

What's your favorite equalizer match? I don't have one. I can't even. I'm, I got nothing. I never understood. I mean, I like Dave Sullivan, but I don't understand, I don't understand this positioning, him and Rick Rood. Doesn't click for me. It doesn't work for me. I don't think Rick thought it clicked either.

Maybe it's an oil and a water thing. Maybe it's contrasting characters. Maybe it's a version of beauty and the beast. I don't know. Kind of looks that way. like if the tag team if they were named Beauty and the Beast I get that

now I got a gimmick I can wrap my head around yes at least it makes some kind of damn sense we we should note that they've been teasing all night that they're giving away a Z28 they're giving away a car here as part of this promotion does that ring a bill can you tell us about that no

they've been teasing the animal is going to be the partner here as he's going to come down driving a Z-28, but Hawk's going to show up, but the reuniting of the road warriors gets a huge pop, Meltzer would say, but once the match started, Equalizer was so bad, it killed

everything, half a star. Let's, uh, you know, listen, I hate to talk about down stuff and negative stuff and sad stuff, but I'd be remiss if we made it all the way through this show and we didn't talk about the fact that we've lost a couple of members of our little wrestling family,

and community. The first of which I want to mention is Dennis Brent, who worked behind the scenes for both WCW and the World Wrestling Federation. He's helped us over the years get a lot of those old radio shows together that J.R. did in Atlanta. He had the old cassette tapes, and we were able to throw some of those up on ad-free shows.com. Dennis Brent, man, a friend of Rick Flair, a friend of Jim Ross,

just a friend of wrestling fans all over the world. What was your experience like with Michigan? I like Dennis and his wife Lynn Lynn also worked in WCW and they were there what I got there they were very much a part of the kind of the politics you know so many people that came over from Jigprocket productions and there was new people you know that were brought in when Ted you know launched WCW so there were there were old faces and new faces and I think I think naturally there were, I don't want to say clicks because that's negative, but there were just factions, right, based more on familiarity or lack their own.

People that didn't really know anybody, they kind of created their own little network in your groups that hung out and had lunch together, went out for drinks after work and stuff. And then you're former, you know, Crockett, NWA, you know, connective tissue. They had their own group. So there was always this sense of, there was politics dominated. And Dennis and Lynn, neither one of them were impervious to it, but they were as close as you could get. They concerned themselves with their work first and relationship second. And I always respected that.

I knew, for example, when I got into management, when I was named executive producer, certainly when I became BP and president, Dennis was not necessarily the most comfortable with that, because Dennis was aligned with a group of people that also felt that they should have had that opportunity. and had been there since day one. And that was Dennis's core group and Lynn's. But despite that, I knew I could trust Dennis and Lynn to do what was best for WCW and do what was best for their positions. And I had a ton of respect for them.

And I maintained contact with Dennis. We weren't close. But over the years, you know, once or twice a year, we'd exchange a tax or something, usually a tax. and nothing but respect for him, and his wife lived. Fond memories, good people. God bless them. We know that Mr. Brent worked on the hotline.

He worked on the magazines. He took a lot of the ringside photos. He helped JR with his cookbooks. He helped Stone Cold with his autobiography. I mean, this is a huge wrestling fan who sold this company to get involved in the wrestling biz, right when Ted Turner sold or purchased WCD. when he took over, man, he's right there. But way back when, he worked with world class.

I mean, so this is just a lifelong wrestling fan who spent so much time in and around the wrestling business, just a friend to all of us as wrestling fans. Let's talk about another name from this era and some news and notes here. Jim Barnett is negotiating with the Prime Network, that's reported in The Observer, because it could be a huge international deal. Quote, Prime has been the leading satellite sports. Network in Asia and the deal would put WCW on TV throughout the world. Crime claims WCW would be on TV throughout the world in three years. In return, they want a long-term deal

of all promotional rights to live events outside of North America and England, all licensing and merchandising rights outside of North America and England as well. This seems like a big opportunity. What do you remember about Barnett and this deal and just Barnett as a businessman to put these sort of deals together for WCW? Oh, with all due respect, Jim Barnett accomplished a lot in the wrestling business during his era.

Jim Barnett had an office in WCW that was, and a salary, that was an acknowledgement of time and effort put in and helping to create WCW with Interner Broadcasting. He was a part of that process, not a big part of that process, but Jim had, Jim was a very political animal. Jim was mostly political and had some skill sets. He was a politician's politician.

I can only imagine what he was like in his 40s and 50s and even into his 60s. By the time I became familiar with Jim, he was well beyond that. and he was he had an office he had a title had a salary but he didn't really have a job he was a consultant more or less and that was more out of respect to jim than anything else Jim wasn't driving any conversations Jim was not a dealmaker Jim perhaps had a relationship with somebody in Australia. But that would have been Sharon Sadello or Turner International

managing any kind of a real deal. If it was real and not some kind of early conversation that was leaked. Because Gary Jester and Jim Barnett were like, they spent all day in their office just thriving on dirt. In fact, every time you would see Barnett, I'd see him in the mornings.

I'd walk past his office to get to my mind. boy, having any dirt today? So Jim Barnett, Gary Jester, Zane Bresloff, love the dirt. And I would say 70% of the conversations with Jim Burnett on any given day he was in the office was about what's going on. What's going on today, my boy? He's a dirtmonger. It wasn't a deal maker.

And I like Jim. It was what it was. I know that Jim did have a, he talked a lot to Meltzer and so to Gary Jester, which is why I don't have any respect for you. It is what it is. It was what it was. But there was, he wasn't driving any prime deal. The details that you just laid out, I don't recall ever hearing.

And by the way, I was the executive producer. I would have been a part of those conversations if they were real. They never were. There might have been a conversation or two, but there was what was leaked to Melston. It was far more interesting of a picture than what was probably really happening. I love talking about this era because, you know, we just mentioned, you know, Dennis Brent, who's working with the magazines and the hotlines, and we saw all the Anderson going off on the hotlines, and Jim Barnett is working deals,

and you're telling me, hey, what's the dirt? Well, my boy. I want to talk to you a little bit about that silly grandstand challenge that O'Leanderson threw out there because it seems like he's not just talking about Wade Keller and Dave Meltzer. He's referencing Miami, which makes us think he's talking about our pal, Alex Marvez. And I guess Mark Madden actually responded to this challenge saying that he accepts he's in. and from what I understand, he faxed WCW an acceptance here

and Oly Anderson goes back on the hotline and starts talking about how fat Mark Madden is and oh, I didn't know the McGuire twins were still with us, blah, blah, blah. So then Mark requests a $10,000 check from WCW saying that we accepted the challenge. Mark Madden, man. How do you not love Mark Madden? He loves to stir it up.

I love it. I just think he's to this day. Yes. You don't want to. You know, I don't have a bucket list. I want to make it sound like, oh, I got this. My clock is ticking back. I'm healthier now that I was when I was in my, for crying.

But there's certain things I want to do. And one of them is I want to go watch a Steelers game with Mark Madden in a Steelers bar in Pittsburgh this year. I got to do it because he's just fun as hell. Yes. He is, I love Mark's approach to life. I had forgotten all about that. In fact, to be honest with that, I'm not sure I was aware of it until you just mentioned

it. It doesn't ring a bell. But it's so Mark Madden. And the fact that he's demanding a check because he accepted terms of an employee of Turner Broadcasting put out in the public airwaves, I just think that's so Mark Madden and I love it. I'm going to call him today and tell them. I'm going to put him over.

He deserves it. I mean, he does come out and say, you know, he is a vice president with a Turner organization. He issued a challenge. I accepted. I'd like the cash. Of course, the result is, only goes on the hotline and says, hey, I was just joshing. These were all just jokes. But the real result is I gave him a job.

Because he's my kind of guy. Hilarious stuff. Of course, Davy Boy Smith is going to be challenging Vader. in the main event here, so it makes sense that you guys have five dates in the UK and half a dozen German dates coming up in October and November. Do you think

WCW was ill-equipped to really capitalize on some of these international opportunities in this era? Because it does feel like... Absolutely. Number one, we couldn't promote ourselves in the UK.

We couldn't promote it in the U.S. We were dysfunctional. You're looking at 8,000 people, 29, 100 of them paid, and that's in the U.S. Can you imagine the success we would have had if we would have tried to self-promote in the U.K. So we were forced to work with promoters who did have relationships with the buildings, with the media, who understood the market, who had ticket distribution and understood that in the market. So we would do deals with promoters, but guess what? These were secondary and tertiary promoters.

These weren't the best promoters in the UK because they had all their eggs in a WWE basket. As bad as business was in the U.S. at this time for WWE, internationally, they could still make some money. So, WWE had been doing great business in the UK for a long period of time and any reputable promoter. The best of the best promoters were exclusive to WWE. So WCW got leftovers. And those leftovers were okay, but they weren't great promoters. They didn't have the best relationships. They weren't in the best venues.

Or if they were in the best venues, they didn't have the right promotion or didn't have enough enough promotion, didn't know where to promote. So it was always an effort, but it was a second and third hand effort. We just saw Road Warrior Hawk here appear. I mean, after Road Warrior Animal drove the car down to the ring, Road Warrior Hawk jumped in from behind, and that was the big reveal that it was he who was going to be the mystery partner for Dustin Rhodes. But the idea that I've seen online, at least in the newsletters, was Hawk was originally going to be that fourth man in the war games.

It was supposed to be Road Warrior Hawk as the mystery partner. But I guess he's slow to commit, even though they've started to talk about him a little bit in some of the promos. They didn't have him on paper. So then they think, well, maybe it's easier to do Road Warrior Animal. Maybe we should just have Dusty. Again, the tag team opportunity

is Sting and Davy Boy, Dustin, and one other. And if you've got two brothers in there, you know, of course, in this era, we were acknowledging that Cole and Kane, Harlem, Heat, they were real-life brothers. maybe father's son across from them could make sense. So it suggested maybe Dusty becomes that mystery partner backing up his son, Dustin.

And instead they go with Dusty's relative, Mr. Fred Ottman. In an alternate universe, if this deal could have been done without any sort of pushback from Hawk, I don't think we see the Shockmaster debut the way we do. So in a weird way, do you think perhaps if Hawk was easier to do business with, Hawk winds up coming out there, shockmaster doesn't take a tumble. The whole thing looks different. I never thought of that, but you're right. Wow.

What a thought. Yeah, it would have been a much different moment when instead of being infamous moment, it would have been a pretty powerful, compelling moment, especially in this story. I mean, in an alternate universe, if it was the road warriors against the Harlem heat with also Davy Boy and Sting, I mean, that would have put Dustin on the outside,

but we know that didn't happen, and it wasn't animal, it wasn't hawk, it wasn't even dusty. And I think there was speculation that WCW did not want Dusty in the ring, but Dusty would keep presenting opportunities and ideas. So maybe when Hawk was difficult, and he says, oh, I'll do it. And what if we get animal to do it?

And, okay, we'll just go with Fred Ottman. And the shockmaster was it. And it was thrown together maybe because Hawk wasn't as agreeable. Now, he still wound up doing the doggone show. We're on the same show where it happened. But by that point, I guess we'd already moved along and said, oh, we're just going to do this. But it is interesting to think that if Hawk is easy like Sunday morning, maybe we don't see that shockmaster moment. Thank God for hawk and animal.

This thing not coming together because Shockmaster's still making money to this day. No doubt. He still is. Well said. Hey, I want to ask you about, because we're getting ready to watch our main event here. So Davey Boy Smith is getting a shot at the World Title, is getting a shot at Big Van Vader with Harley Race in his corner. The World Title is on the line. We're still building towards the fall brawl pay-per-view. But I wanted to ask you, in this era,

You know, we know WCW Saturday Night is the A show. We've also got main event and power hour. Would you have ever predicted? I mean, those shows, what they have in common to me is those are weekend shows. What Clash of the Champions, I think, was usually known for is those shows were on a weekday in prime time. Was it even imaginable to you here in 93 that WCW could have a live show? show in prime time on a weekday?

Exactly the opposite, because in 1993, we were hearing a lot of rumblings from a lot of people within Turner broadcasting that Turner was going to eliminate Clash of the Champions. And I remember it because there was a ton of pressure on us to deliver as big a number as possible and to make it look as good as possible. It was, had been discussed to just cancel Clash of the Champions. I wanted to talk to you a little bit, too, about, you know, the implication of the steroid deal. Because when the drug testing comes out, I just want to remind everybody, we're doing these Disney tapings months in advance. So when that test comes down in early August, August 2nd in Atlanta, we've got TV in the can through November.

Hey, Conrad, I got to ask you. Could you take some questions from the audience? because if I don't get up and take a leak pretty soon, this is Bowman is going to make history. Oh, goodness, gracious. I'll be right back. I love it. Well, we're watching a fun match here.

Davy Boy Smith and Big Van Vader starting off hot, brawling around on the ramp with stiff punches. By the way, we'd love to give some stiff punches for your company here on the show. If you're looking to advertise your product to men that are 35 to 54, buddy, we got them here in Spades at 83 Weeks.com. It's why you hear so many of the same sponsors, week in, week out, because it really works. We've got a super targeted audience

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But a lot of that comes from, where are you right now? We just want to have a conversation. See how we can help you short term and long term. Let's save some money. It's save with conrad.com. We should also mention that, oh, Eric's back here. First of all, thank you very much. I came really close to having a good JR moment.

J.R. moment, of course, being famous for when he ended up losing his water during an XFL broadcast is close. Thank you. All your years, you were, you did commentary at the desk. How many times you pee your pants, total? None. So today would have been the first day? Today would have been the only day.

Well, I have a, you got a goal to watch a game with Mark Madden, and I have a new goal myself. I should have never said that. You're going to torture me. speaking of torture it's rumored in the observer Terry Taylor will be introduced as the fourth horseman

certainly has more than enough ability to fill the top spot but Taylor's credibility as a headliner has been destroyed by both promotions for five consecutive years I know that Terry Taylor was a friend to the newsletters he was a fine in-ring performer

but I think Terry Taylor and the four horseman probably would have been met with the same response that Paul Roma got I don't think that's fair, but he didn't feel like a horseman guy by this point. I don't even know what that means, if I'm honest with you. I just think that the same fans who would have booed Roma would have booed Terry. What say you?

Well, I 100% agree. In fact, I think it would have been actually more so, which I also agree is really unfair. I have, I had a weird relationship with Terry Taylor because on one hand, I, into the A ton of respect for his instinct. Yes, he had great experience, and he was around people, and he was very active in an important era, the evolution of the product, even as we see it today. So there is a tremendous value in Terry, probably more so now than ever. But back in the day, in this period of time, Terry also had. the ability to, he was his own worst enemy, let's put it that way, in certain respects.

And I think because of that, Terry never really reached the level of success that he was quite capable of achieving. He had a great look, understood psychology, he was believable in the ring. He could cut a great promo. It's just always that something that was quite, that was missing from him quite, getting to that level that he, where he should have been, it could have been a part of the horseman, and it would have felt organic and natural, and it would have, but the audience would have accepted it. Just always something missing with Terry. Tremendous performer, though, and

probably to this day, a very, very valuable asset to somebody. WWE, he's crushing it down there at NXT, helping a lot of guys. It doesn't surprise me. And if Terry, like all of us, you know, I'll throw myself into that group as well. As you get older, fortunately, one of the great things about getting older or decent things about getting older, as you do grow out of certain bad habits that really slow you down from achieving certain levels of success or growth and opportunity, just growing up, maturing and focusing on the right things instead of the wrong things. And I think Terry's probably at that point, which is why he's

killing it in WWE. We're watching Vader have a great match here with Davey Boy Smith. It gets three and a half stars in the Observer. Cactus Jack is going to show up and it's going to be a wild finish. This is a fun time for WCW.

I know that a lot of folks, even Tony Kahn really loves this 1993 era of WCW. I wanted to, I know I'm being sincere. Like I think this is one of his favorite periods of his fandom, like 93, 94 to WCW.

That's right. I laugh, but there was certain, you know, to me it's not because I know what was going on inside the walls. So it's different for me than it was for anybody outside of that period of time, who even if they were watching during that period of time, didn't understand how the sausage was not being made. But take all that aside. I'm watching Vader right now with you,

with all of us that are watching and watch along. What an underappreciated performer he was. Oh, my God. As appreciated as he was, because I think everybody recognized at that time, this is somebody special. But looking at him now, I think even more, even more so. For a guy as big as Leon was, Big Van Vader was, some of his stuff was so amazing athletically and vicious and belief. And he was stiff from what I've heard. Obviously, I was never.

But I've heard that he could be really stiff. I also have heard that he could be as gentle as a baby, depending on who he was in there with. But, man, what an amazingly talented guy. Well sad. I'm glad we're giving Vader his flowers. And unfortunately, we're going to end on a bit of a downer today. I wanted to close with this because I know how we're

important he was in your life and certainly became a friend of mine over the last 10 years or so as well. Over the course of the last week, we lost the late, great Kevin Sullivan. Just a genius wrestling mind, an incredible in-ring performer, such a creative force. But I think really most of all, to me, his legacy will be what a friend he was to the wrestling business. He loved to talk to fans. I mean, he would talk to a new fan he just met for the first time,

like they were his long-lost best friend about their favorite wrestling memories. And he loved to teach people about the history of pro wrestling. But his influences even felt today, Eric, I think there's so many guys in AEW and in Ring of Honor and in TNA and in WW and even on the independence who would count him as a mentor. because he was there to offer wrestling advice to offer fatherly advice just a real friend of professional wrestling

and you work closely with him for a long, long time I wanted to give you a few moments here for us to pay homage to our friend Kevin Sullivan it's so fascinating to hear some of the people who have been influenced

like Karen Cross recently WWE, so many people that have paid respect to Kevin and connected their own career path and trajectory to Kevin and some of the things that in some ways he directly helped people with, as you pointed out. In other ways, just people who studied him and looked at some of the things that worked so well for Kevin, not only as a character, but in terms of what he did behind the scenes. And there's a new book coming out, Mark Romaldi, who's a friend of ours, obviously, it's got a new book coming out.

I think we've got a, there's a shot of it. I just saw it today on social media. How professional wrestling's New World Order changed America. Say hello to the bad guys. I can't wait for this to come out, but guess what? Let's keep that up there for just a second while we're talking about Kevin Sullivan. And if it's possible to do a split screen, because we're at not for Kevin Sullivan, there is a good chance that this new book is not coming out.

just Kevin was instrumental, so much so that we sequestered Hulk Hogan at Kevin Sullivan's house in Daytona Beach to prevent Hulk from changing his mind the night before. Not exaggerating. There is a good chance the NWO didn't happen. We're not for Kevin Sullivan because there was a real risk. This wasn't like a kind of a risk and maybe Hulk might change his mind. There was a 50-50 shot that it wasn't going to happen depending on what was going on in Hulse's world 24 to 48 hours before.

And Kevin prevented anything bad from happening. So there you go. Here's another thing about Kevin that I'll always remember. The way he treated my son. It was like, it was like Garrett was a part of Kevin's family. Kevin would get so excited about taking Garrett lobster diving. It was back when Kevin lives in Florida, and he loved the, Kevin loved the water and he loved the fish. And when he would talk about lobster diving, he would come to life in a way that I had never seen Kevin's element come to life before.

He would get excited about wrestling when he was talking about wrestling. He'd get passionate. You know, if he's laying out a finish and he gets sucked into the finish, even if he was laying it out for somebody else, You get all emotional, passionate. It was fun to watch. Even more fun to watch him, talk about lobster diving. And he wanted to take Garrett a lot. Never did.

It never happened. My fault. But he always was always encouraging me to send Garrett down to Florida. Lobster diving. Brown. Lobster diving. Big lobsters. Catch him.

Eat them on the beach. I'll miss him. We're all going to miss Kevin Sullivan. We're going to be talking about some of Kevin's great moments through the rest of the summer and finish out the year. We could talk about Kevin Sullivan as long as we do 83 weeks because he just gave so much to professional wrestling. The territories, WCW and then just independent wrestling out the Wazoo ever since. I mean, there's so many people who counted him as a mentor, as a friend, and he will be sorely missed. and I think Tony Chivani said it best.

He never thought he'd say this sentence, but today there's a devil in heaven. And we'll see you guys next week, right here on 83 weeks.com. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey, guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa.

Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast.