83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 338: Sting's 1997 REMIX

Episode Date: September 6, 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! Both Eric and Conrad are heading to our AD Free Show Top Guy Weekend event in Chicago, so this week we're celebrating our WCW Hall Of Fame inductee for Single Star, Sting! The guys have opened the vault to take us back to one of the wildest years in the icon's career 1997. Hear all about Sting's Crow character which had debuted the previous fall, putting him up in the rafters, slow burning the angle between himself, the NWO, and Hulk Hogan, keeping it fresh, who he associated with, thoughts on the character backstage and the way it was being used. keeping Sting out of the ring for the full year until the main event of Starrcade '97, worries about his conditioning and look, and so much more! NOTE: Find out the rest of the first class into the WCW Hall Of Fame exclusively here: https://youtu.be/sAAFU498rQc HOME CHEF - Home Chef is offering 18 Free Meals! Go to https://www.homechef.com/BISCHOFFFAM LUMEN - Take the next step in improving your health, go to https://www.lumen.me/83WEEKS to get 15% off your Lumen.  GAMETIME - Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and redeem code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. BE KIND REWIND - If you love 80s and 90s nostalgia, Be Kind Let's Rewind is the podcast for you. New episodes air every Friday on all major podcasting platforms. Subscribe to their YouTube page @BeKindLetsRewind. BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s https://bluechew.com/, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at https://www.savewithconrad.com ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/join BECOME A 83 WEEK MEMBER NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@83weeks/membership Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For imprint for certain Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm doing great, just adjusting to life under the coronavirus mandate and everybody kind of shutting down and closing up. But, you know, things are good. I feel bad because, you know, it's just not affecting us that much, but we don't live in a big city.

We don't have kids. We, you know, we're not challenged with a lot of things that people are challenged with. And I fully recognize that. But for Mrs. B and I and now Montana, who's here with us in Wyoming, it's more or less life as usual. So just hoping everybody's safe and adjusting. and adapting to this bizarre time. Yeah, it's a weird time, man. You know, we saw record unemployment reports last week

and what a massive effect this virus has had, not just on the sick, but everyone. And we hope that our podcast today is a one constant you can count on. It feels like everything else is being changed or eliminated or canceled or put on hold or postponed, but not 83 weeks. We are recording from the comfort of our heart. home, me in Alabama and, of course, Eric, in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming. So this rundown is brought to you by Lumen. And if you want to take the next step in improving your health,

go to Lumen.me.m. me slash 83 weeks. You'll get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N. dot me slash 83 weeks for 15% off your purchase. Let's, uh, let's jump into it, man. Our most requested topic, I think, I don't think there was a better storyline in WCW history than Sting versus the NWO, and of course, 1997 is when that really gets to a fever pitch. This is probably my favorite year in wrestling, and I would guess probably yours as well. I think so. I think if I had to pick one, I mean, this is always hard, you know, it's like, it's just hard because there were so many great moments, you know, during this time.

And it, it's really challenging. But I think for an extended period of time, meaning, you know, one year as an example, it would be hard to pick another year that was more important, more positive, and I think had more of an influence on the entire industry, as we still see today, than 1997. So it really was fun. It was a great time. and it'll be fun looking back. Well, let's jump into it. Uh, coming off of, uh, 1996, we've got, well, a lot of moving parts. We've covered it in great detail, but the fall brawl paper review in September of 96 was

supposed to be WCW versus the NWO and it looked like sting was a traitor based on the week before as Nitro. And of course, we would find out the truth that there was in fact a fake sting that would reveal himself at fall brawl. And the next day, Sting comes out, cuts a promo saying that you can stick it because you didn't believe in him. And then he started to sit in the rafters. Crow Sting was born.

And that's what we sort of set the pace for for 1997. I got to ask, you know, in the overall arc, you know, that next week when we see Sting in the black and white, you know, crow style sitting in the rafters of the. arena. Did you know, hey, I'm going to ride this out until next Starcade. I know that may sound a little silly, but we've often heard that, you know, Vince, Bruce and Pat would sit around and book WrestleMania to WrestleMania. So they would start with the end in mind. And you've talked a lot about storytelling and, and the three acts story structure and things like that here on the show. Did you know, hey, I'm going to stretch this out for 14, 15, 16 months? No. No. And

you know, it's interesting, when I first came to WCW as an announcer, and there were, you know, a number of people there that had worked in, in WWF, and I would always hear, especially when Gene O'Korlin came in, because Gene and I would spend a lot of time just, you know, Gene was from Minnesota and, you know, worked for years for Vern Gaia, and we, we just had, Gene and I had a lot of things in common. And Gene was always, you know, he's fully supportive of WCWCHA. He wanted us to succeed in every way. He would often offer tips and examples and anecdotes about how WWF would do things versus how we were doing them in WCW. And I had heard many of these same kind of comments or points of view from talent that had also worked in WWF.

Again, when I first got there to WCW. And one of the things that I heard consistently was how WWF would book WrestleMania to WrestleMania or six months out and work backwards. And it was always, it made sense to me. I mean, on any journey, no matter what you're doing or what your business is, if you don't know what your goal is, if you don't know where you're going, you know, you don't drive to the airport and say, I think I'm going to get on a plane and see where it's going. You know, you've got to have a destination and you work backwards from that destination.

destination. So it made perfectly good sense to me. But in early WCW, that just wasn't the booking logic. You know, so much of the influence on the creative side or the booking side, as we used to call it, came from people who, for the most part, came up in weekly territories, including dusty roads, who, you know, we don't talk about dusty much. You know, we all hold dusty in high regard and he was a great friend of mine and I learned so much from Dusty and I think Dusty was one of the most creative people that I've ever worked with.

However, just because one is creative doesn't necessarily mean that that same creative instinct follows a logical kind of trajectory. And I think if there was a flaw in Dusty's approach to booking, at least in early WCW and, you know, when I got there in 91 or whatever it was until 94, was the lack of kind of logic and consistency. The ideas were big and there were great ideas and they were epic and scope as Dusty would lay them out on paper

or explain them. You know, sometimes I just sit in Dusty's office for an hour or two and and listen to him, you know, talk about his vision and his overall ideas. And they were phenomenal. But, you know, and I didn't realize it then, because I didn't have the experience or the understanding of creative, you know, back in the early 90s. But as guys like Gene and others who had worked in WWF, I spent more and more time talking to them about, you know, how the WWF was so successful. and why their stories made so much more sense than ours.

It began to become clear to me that you not only have to have a great idea and a great vision, but in order for it to work, there has to be a plan. I'll often refer to it as an arc. You know, it's a term typically used in the storytelling kind of vernacular, but it's just a plan. It's, you know, how does it start and how does it end? and what happens in between. And ideally, you know,

each beat along the way progresses in a way that captures the audience's imagination. And we didn't have that in WCW. I aspire to it. So as, you know, you fast forward a couple years

from when I would sit and listen to Dusty and others, not just Dusty, but others, but primarily Dusty, and see him attempts a pretty big

ideas, but it became clear to me after a couple years that one of the flaws in Dusty's approach and one of the reasons I think a lot of Dusty's ideas didn't really hit as well as they could have is because of the lack of planning and kind of storytelling structure. That's what kind of took me into 96 when I started feeling more comfortable involving myself in the creative process because it began to crystallize in my own mind again just from watching not from having any experience or you know taking a class or reading a book or any of that kind of stuff just why it's trial and error watching things being thrown up against the wall and asking myself and analyzing why did this work and why did this why didn't this work so that by the time 97 came along now

I've got a year under my belt of being much more involved in creative certainly the NWO idea was an idea that I, for the most part, shaped and managed with a lot of input from a lot of other people. Don't get me wrong. I'm not taking 100% credit for it. But the arc, the structure, the storytelling, who's the third man, the mystery, the surprises, you know, the position that we put heel or baby faces in, all of that was new and fresh. And it was a result of what I had learned over the previous three or four years, you know, watching from the sidelines, the creative process.

Now, all that being said, you know, when the sting character, when we got excited about the sting character, and, you know, maybe we'll cover that later on in the show. But when I got excited about the sting character, we all got excited about it. we had no idea much like we had no idea how strong the NWO was going to become as an idea I always say this I would like to pat myself on the back and you know convinced the world what a genius I was and how I saw this coming and I knew that the sting crow character was going to be a huge success and planned accordingly that would be bullshit because I didn't none of us did and it wasn't until really we saw the momentum a little bit like Bill Goldberg you know nobody had an idea that Bill Goldberg when he first came out for his first couple

dark matches was going to turn into the phenomenal talent that he became or character that he became and this was the same situation it wasn't until watching the the audience's reaction and kind of reaffirming the the concept and validating the actual concept of sting and this crow character that we started talking about okay we've got a this is not just a short term angle we've got to figure out a way to make this work and i would say it was probably three or four months into it maybe maybe last probably two or three months into the you know the debut of the crow character that we began to realize that we had lightning in a bottle and we better be smart and instead of pop into cork and blowing it all at once we needed

to be careful and ration that character in its story over a longer period of time because we knew we could make it stronger so long story short short you know long answer short no we didn't know and it wasn't until a couple months afterwards that we really began to see it and again it was because of the audience reaction it wasn't because you know anybody had a crystal ball and was so fucking talented and was such a creative genius no that was true it was wow this is a great idea holy shit it's working better than we thought let's be smart that's really what it was it's just fascinating to me because you feel like um eventually you're going to see wrestling become more I don't know,

frantic short term. I think there's a term in wrestling, shotgun booking. It feels like you would have taken this guy, put him in the ceiling. Oh, he doesn't know who side he's on. Let's put him in a pay-per-view main event

against Lex Luger the next month. And you had the, maybe you had the patience, but maybe it was just good luck. And you had other plans for a month or two. So, hey, we'll just stick him up here and we'll come back in three months. But along the way,

you see how it's catching on and you think, well, let's see how long we can stretch this out. Well, yes and no. You know, and I've always heard the term, you know, hot shot booking and shotgun booking. It's all the same thing. Keep in mind, though, in 1997, we weren't desperate. You know, we were on a role like no one had ever experienced, not in WWF, certainly not in WCW nor anywhere else on the planet. And we had a very deep roster. And we knew by 1997, the NWO was going to be the anchor creative for an indefinite period of time.

And we had, you know, again, such a great roster and the ability to not be forced into or be tempted, probably more than anything, is being tempted to hot shot and try to, you know, score a big pay per view or score a couple big ratings. It was like, no, man, we've got enough gas in our tank now, you know, to go a long way. Let's not put the pedal to the metal and, you know, go through a full tank of gas in six months when we know we could stretch this thing out and make it last over a longer period of time. And it was, it was, you know, after that two or three month period that it occurred to me finally, after years of hearing about how W.C. or WWF had long-term planning, long-term booking, and booking from year to year. I aspired to that. I really did.

I really wanted to achieve that. That was part of my motivation, I guess, or inspiration for the NWO angle. It was also obvious to me after two or three months that Sting was that opportunity. NWO was strong. We knew that we had a lot of rope still in 1997. There was a lot of things that we could do. we didn't feel the need to rush it or change it or force it it was on its own role it had a life of its own it became a living thing by that point so that sting was that opportunity that i coveted

for so long in hearing about how w wf did it right then it became crystal clear to me that sting is that opportunity and you know i i know i talk about you know three x structure and arcs and things like that because it's it's what i think is lacking in today's product in wwee in aew for the most part you can skip a week and pick it back up and not feel like you missed a thing and i think storytell as great as the athleticism is in aew and it is i mean i'm i'm amazed i think the interviews the promos so much of what i see in a ew um i really like and And the same is true with WWE. It's a little different product.

I don't get as excited about the promos as I do in AEW because I've just, they are what they are. But the physicality, a lot of the characters, obviously the production values, there's so many things I like about WWE. But, you know, of the two products right now, I think they're both seriously lacking in the kind of story that I like. And it's just me, you know, and I want to be clear about that. When people listen to this, oh, Bischoff's burying AEW. We're burying their crepe. Bullshit.

Get that rusty crowbar. You know what to do with it. It's not it. It's just me, this singular individual who's at the stage of life that I am, who grew up watching wrestling and being impressed with it and it capturing my imagination because of certain things, I'll always go back to great story and great characters. Even though I appreciate the athleticism and I appreciate many of the other things that come with today's product.

And I'm grateful and I fully encourage people to support the type of wrestling that they like. For me personally, what's lacking is great storytelling. It's just not there to the degree that I enjoy it. And arcs, three-act structures are part of that, certainly to the foundation of that. But there are other elements as well in formatting a television show. You know, one of the things that I learned after I got out of wrestling, really. And Jason Hervey and I were producing a lot of unscripted shows. We would develop the ideas from scratch.

We would find the right talent, generally celebrity talent, but oftentimes not. We would develop these ideas and we would pitch them to networks. And through that process over a couple of years, I learned a lot, even in unscripted television. Because when you watch on scripted television, like Tiger King is one that's hot right now on Netflix. And I'm, you know, I'm just immersed in that. I was like fucking mind-boggling, by the way. But there's a structure to it. There's an A story, in a B story, in a C story.

And I used to drive that home, you know, as hard as I could, even when I was in, T&A. And usually the people in the room with the exception of, you know, Matt Conway and a couple others would look at me like I was speaking Greek. You know, what the fuck is that? You know, A story, B story. But when you, when you really understand the significance of a storytelling in general, the timing of those stories, because you don't, you know, if you've got a two-hour show, for example, and say you've got 12 segments on the show, or, 10 segments on the show that's filled with talent. You know, you've got 20 pieces of talent or more, depending on the type of matches that

you set up, that are presenting their stories. Well, you don't want all of those stories to peak at the same time. Otherwise, you're starting completely over from scratch after, you know, your next pay-per-view. So for me, ideally, you had my number, my A story. That was driving, and I used to assign percentages, actually. You know, I sit down and say, okay, we've got, you know, 84 minutes or whatever, whatever it was of actual program content. I'm going to dedicate, and I'm picking these numbers off the top of my head because I don't remember them right now. I have to go back and look at some of my notes.

But for example, on a two-hour show, if there's, and again, picking a number straight off the top of minute, take out the commercial breaks. I've got 84 minutes of content, okay? I'm going to dedicate 40% of that content to developing and advancing my A story. And then I'll spend 25% of my content time on my B story. And then the remaining percentages would be kind of delegated down to a D story. And that would start to change every week. And so that my C story all of a sudden started getting a little bit more time as my A story started playing out over that same period of time. So what that does is it kind of it keeps you in a positive cycle.

So you're planting seeds and you're you're beginning certain stories at that C level or D level. You're planting seeds. You're establishing characters. You're laying the foundation for a story, a conflict, whatever it means. maybe between individuals, in a subtle or not so subtle way sometimes. And then as time goes on, you begin to heat that up. And what happens is you constantly have your stories kind of reaching the piece of the respective arcs over an extended period of time.

It's easier to explain this on a whiteboard than it is on a podcast. But it really became, it's really sort of becoming effective. And, you know, although it wasn't. You know, this is going to be in the eyes of many people who don't really study the TNA product or didn't study it or really look at it closely from, you know, the period of time. When I really started getting involved in creative, other than just Hulk Hogan's creative, about a year and a half or two years after I got to TNA. If you look at the Aces and Eight storyline, for example, you know, that's a perfect example of an idea that started as a C story. and then evolved into the B story level. And then in a very deliberate manner became the A story.

And it was, you know, I'm going to say this is relative to T&A, hugely successful. I mean, you talk to Billy Ray, you know, talk to the people that were involved. Go back and actually research the numbers, not only in terms of television ratings, but look what that storyline did for TNA's live events during that period of time. And again, don't take my word for it. You know, listen to bully talk about it or read some of his tweets and the information that supports it. It's a very, very effective way of doing things if you can really understand it and see it and utilize it. And I think that Sting in 1997, as we discussed, you know, wow, great idea.

That was really Scott Hall's idea. It wasn't mine and it wasn't Stings originally. Sting embraced it and made it work and made it better than the original idea that Scott Hall threw out. But when we saw it and I saw, okay, this is the, this is the brass ring. I bet yes, we had the NWO, we changed the business. WCW's fortunes were completely turned around 180 degrees. We went from being a deep dark shithole that Turner was throwing money in to a profit center, you know, making headlines and variety, all kinds of great shit, right?

But Sting was that opportunity to finally get it right, you know, in terms of playing out in a story over an extended period of time. 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 Magic Spoon.

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grams of protein in every serving only four to five net carms in each serving check it out find out why we love magic spoon head on over to magic spoon.com slash 83 weeks to grab a custom bundle of cereal and try the magic for yourself and don't forget to add their delicious treats for on the go be sure to use our promo code 83 weeks at checkout you'll save $5 off your order and again magic spoon is so confident in their product it's backed with a 100% happiness guarantee so if you don't like it for any reason they'll refund your money no questions asked and we thank magic spoon for sponsors during the day's episode. I'm curious, you know, you talked about Scott Hall there and a lot of people have sort of made that a wrestling legend that perhaps Scott Hall was the first guy to pitch the whole crow look. Let's talk about Stings involvement, though. How did he feel about the big change?

I mean, obviously he had started to grow his hair out and it was getting, you know, it was his more natural color, dark hair, not the, not the blue or not the, uh, the blonde flat top but the longer darker hair that had happened ahead of this was that done with some sort of character change in mind i mean was that a deliberate attempt to change from surf or sting or just be more with the times and then how did he feel about sort of moving away from the bright colors and uh now we don't talk and we're we're sort of monochrome it was really interesting you know And Steve Borden, a K.A. Sting, is a really, he's a very smart guy. And he's very intuitive.

He gets it, right? And, you know, again, going back to 96, when, you know, before Hulk Hogan and I sat down in his, you know, movie trailer in the middle of nowhere, California, talking about who is going to be the third man and before Hulk threw his hat in the ring or his headband as the case may be the third man was going to be staying because I thought Hogan was off the table he had made it clear to me the year before that he had no interest in turning heel he was off making a movie he was happy doing his four paper views a year for WCW because that's all he was contracted for um so he just you know Hogan wasn't an option it didn't even occur to me to ask him and as a result of that i went to sting because i

thought sting would be the right guy you know he was a long time wcw you know he was the hero he was the ultimate baby face he was our hood ornament and sting was i know we've covered this before but i think it's important since we're talking specifically about sting to to dig into it a little bit again. When I first went to Sting, he was, gosh, and you have to know Steve to really picture how this went, but Steve is, in some respects, he's a little bit like Hulk in that when you lay something out to, when I laid something out to Steve, Sting, he would sit and he would study. It's like he's listening to every word you're saying to, I think, partly, and this is just

my impression. I don't know that this to be true, and I certainly don't want to speak for Steve Borden or Sting, but I would often get the impression that he was, he wasn't going to be convinced unless he believed I was convinced. In other words, I think Sting having been in WCW for a long time, he'd been through a lot of bookers, he'd been through Dusty, he'd been through Kip Frye, he'd been through Bill Watts, Jim Ross, he'd been through it all, right? And heard a lot of stuff, some of it good, some of it, not so much. But I think with Steve, he didn't really start taking an idea seriously unless he felt the person pitching it was really, really excited. about it. And sometimes, and you know this, Conrad, you know, you work, you train, you teach people

how to sell, you're a great salesman yourself. You know, you, if you feel it and you believe it, the information that you share, the picture that you paint, whatever you're trying to, to accomplish, you know, in a selling kind of a position, is much more effective if you really, really believe it and they're passionate about it, as opposed to representing it. You know what I mean? Sure. And I think so many times in Steve's past, again, this is just me observing, you know, from a distance, I think so many times in Steve's past, a lot of ideas were represented to him. But very few of them had the passion or the commitment behind it.

So oftentimes, I think, Sting's process, much like Hogan's, you know, Hogan would sit back and, you know, kind of stroke that foo man chew and he had big old eyes kind of bore a hole through you like he was listening to every word you say what he was really doing is analyzing every word you said and looking for the weaknesses in the idea or the holes in in holk's case you know he was always thinking two steps ahead okay great that's a great idea where does it go and if you didn't have a where does it go from here answer or the next step in the story or arc is the case maybe you'd often no matter how good the original idea was, you'd hit a brick wall. Well, Steve was very much like that in the sense that he would analyze and hang on every word. He was very quiet. He didn't,

you know, as I'm, as we're laying this idea out, especially when I was laying out, Singh being the third guy, he, he was very, very quiet during, you know, my first couple go-rounds with him laying it out and he got it you know he knew I think he also knew because he was so intuitive sting knew that the surfacing character had run its course it didn't mean it was dead it didn't mean it wasn't successful is just nowhere else to go with it other than a fresh matchup and sometimes that's not enough sometimes a character especially one that's been successful for as long as Steve had been successful the sting character had been successful in WCW, with everything else changing around him, Sting, being him,

including the NWO, intuitively he knew. Look, it's time. I love the Sting character. He was very secure in it. He was making a lot of money with it. He knew that the Sting character, the Surfer Sting, as people refer to it, or I sometimes refer to it, you know, it was a very strong character. It wasn't going anywhere.

But that was the problem. It wasn't going anywhere. It was in a good position. the character was in a good position and it was important but it really wasn't going anywhere and Steve was smart enough to see that there were a lot of things going on

that probably made sense to him to take that next step which is why Sting was willing to turn heel and be the third man because he saw the handwriting on the wall he knew that he didn't know just like the rest of us didn't know that the NWO was going to be hugely successful

but even in the early stage of the NWO angle. What Scott Hall first came down and making Georgia on May 27th, 1996 and interrupted a match with Mike Enis and whoever Mike was wrestling. There was an energy

to buzz that no one had ever seen before, at least in WCW, that caveat. But he knew it, and he wanted to be a part of it. So I think by the time now we're going to fast forward now we're talking about 19 you know may 27th 1996 now fast forward to 1997 sting's intuition was confirmed NWO was hot as hell

things were changing rapidly the entire formula for baby faces and heels was turned on its head anarchy was at the core of most of the story regarding NWO and it was believable and people were a part of it by 1997 sting and he had to your point He had started kind of evolving away from Surfer Sting because the reality kind of approach to what we were doing, at least in our age stories, was so effective that Sting started, I think, on his own. He wasn't directed by me to start letting his hair grow out. I didn't tell him not to either. But that was all Sting because he knew that his character had to evolve. All of them do.

All characters have to evolve. And even a movie franchises characters evolve. even though they're successful characters. They have to evolve in the story and other times. And Sting knew that. So by the time, you know, Scott Hall and I and Kevin Nash and Hulk and maybe one or two others were sitting in a locker room somewhere right before Nitro or a couple hours before Nitro. And thank God, you know, Scott Hall was in one of his moments was lucid. he was motivated he was inspired um inspired and motivated i guess is the same word but or same thing

but he was really passionate about this idea and i think it was scott hall's ability and his passion for the crow character that got sting excited for much the same reasons as i described before because sting was the kind of guy that would sit and really listen not only to the idea but the passion or the inspiration behind it and how well you could paint that picture. And I found in my own, just my own experience, that, you know, when people would pitch me ideas, and I learned, you know, from Hulk, and I learned from others who are legitimate, I say legitimate, but I mean outside of wrestling, storytellers, people that have written and directed, you know, blockbuster movies and, and have been involved in, you know, episodic television outside of wrestling.

And from my own experience, producing television other than wrestling, how significant story beats are in passion and detail is and where things are going. And Scott, in that very inspired, lucid hour and a half or two hours that we probably spent discussing this new character painted a picture that Sting. He was just drooling. He couldn't wait to launch this character. So there was no inhibition, there was no second, you know, thoughts, or he wasn't doubting himself, Sting, wasn't doubting himself or second-guessing himself. The way Hall laid it out, the opportunity that that character clearly had with its relationship to the NWO and how that story could play out. I mean, none, we were all just chopping at the bit to do it. Nobody more than Steve Borden.

How much influence did he have? I mean, we've often heard sort of the creative process, at least from the way Bruce describes it, is they would sit around and say, hey, what if? Is Sting actively involved in that, or is it more he shows up, you guys tell him what to do, he goes and does it? No, not Steve. Now, there were two Steve Borden's. There was the one. Now, this isn't fair for me because, again, I didn't work closely with Sting, or not fair of me, I should say, not fair to me. It wouldn't be fair for me to kind of characterize Sting's involvement in his own creative prior to me getting involved with creative because I wasn't a part of it.

Right. So I don't know how active Sting really got in, you know, with Dusty or Bill Watts or Jim Ross or anybody else that was booking or had an influence in booking at the time. I know with me, especially, you know, in 96, 95 and 96, he was very active in it. Steve would come up with his own what-ifs. And one of the things I love about Steve Borden as a person and working with him professionally is he could come to you with an idea and be excited about that idea. And if it didn't work because of timing or it didn't work. for for any reason and you lay that out to steve it wasn't like oh fuck this place sucks

this booking sucks you're not doing what i want to do which i'm not saying you know people were quite that animated and childish outwardly to my face or to the face of other people you know whether it be dusty or you know bill lots or whoever um but oftentimes that's a reaction that's the way people feel and a lot of that has to do with how you tell them or how you explain to them why an idea won't work but steve wasn't that guy it was like you know if if he came to me with an idea and the timing wasn't right forward or it just didn't fit or whatever you know you listen he laid it out you explain it to him and he was just as positive leaving the room as he was coming in that's the kind of people i love working with

And that's why I love working with Steve Borden so much, because he was that guy. But as time went on, and once he jumped off, you know, the cliff and wrapped himself in that crow character, he was very involved in that. He would come up with a lot of ideas on his own. And he would be included in almost every discussion about the character, especially in the very, very beginning. um so yeah he was very in the for the first six months or so he was very very involved and very motivated well let's just talk about something that we all agree on as dudes we all hate that dreaded what should we do for dinner question that's why my family started turning to home chef man we all like the idea of a home cooked meal but it just doesn't seem easy you know

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That's homechef.com slash bischoff for 18 free meals and free dessert for life. You heard that right. Homechef.com slash bischoff. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. let's keep it going here let's talk about 1997 um we start the year with january 20th nitro randy savage is going to start nitro by taking over the show he's going to hold court in the ring and when random officials try to stop him he beats him up after about 10 minutes or so sting repels down from the ceiling and casually walks to the ring with his bat he pokes savage with the bat hands it over and turns his back Savage throws it back and they leave together through the crowd. Lots to unpack here, but this is the first time we would see Sting rappel down from the ceiling. Do you remember how that idea came together?

And I know you're going to lie off when I say this, but we had seen it as far as I know, one other time in wrestling when Ranger Ross would repel down from the ceiling. He famously did it at Clash the Champion 6 in New Orleans. And now we're seeing a different WCW character do it. And for some reason, God damn it's so much cooler. Yeah, I wasn't hearing you talk about Ranger Ross repelling from the ceiling. This is the first time I've heard that. I don't think I was in WCW at the time.

I certainly didn't watch it. Yadda, yada. But I think the reason it worked, the way it worked so well with Steve is because of the mystique that we created before that repel. I mean, that's the whole. that's the the magic and the god I gotta be careful

how I say this I get excited and sometimes I get ahead of myself and in doing so sometimes I don't paint the picture as clearly as I should

so I'm going to slow myself down just a little bit the just like with the NWO there were multiple reasons that story clicked and part of it was because

there was a believability factor. I know wrestling's wrestling, but this could be true. This might be real. And it confused. When I use, it confuses it the right word, but it's the only word I can think of right now.

But it put the audience in a position where they weren't sure. And you maybe have heard me say this before. I can never remember where I say some of the things I say is I do so many interviews and other podcasts and shit like that. But I've always believe, again, going back to when I was a kid, watching wrestling in Minneapolis. I was smart enough at 14, 15 years old to know that, well, that can't be true. That can't be real. But there were always certain things that would happen during the course of Ferengania's AWA show when I was a kid that even subconsciously I would say to myself,

okay, I know the rest of the stuff is just fun and this is great, but these two motherfuckers really do hate each other. That's the magic right there. Capturing, and it's easy to understand, right? Everybody understands what I'm saying. The differentiation between an obviously scripted for entertainment, you know, presentation,

and then one that feels so real, that it makes you doubt yourself as to whether or not it's true. And that was the part of the magic. That was the foundation for the magic of the NWO. Now, add to that the fact that it was reality-based and they weren't characters. We didn't call Kevin Nash Jupiter and Scott Hall of Mars. You know, there was just so much reality to it that it enhanced the believability or the, I call it the Memorex factor.

Is it live or is it Memorax? Is it real or is it not? And we created that member X factor in a number of different ways with the NWO. Well, we did the same thing with Steve in a different way, but we couldn't replicate the exact same thing that we did with the NWO because it would have been obvious and boring. So with Steve, the essence of that character, and I think the reason it worked is before we did anything,

we created Mystique. Now, I'm not going to go into too much, well, I'm going to hold that. I'm going to save that for a minute because it'll take me off track. But once you've established a mystique that works and connects to the audience, you similar to the, God, is that real? I mean, this could be true. Memor X factor with the NWO because there was so much believability to it. You can accomplish the same thing by creating a mystique.

Because what you're really doing from a, psychological point of view from a storytelling psychological point of view is you're you're engaging the audience and you're forcing or encouraging them to start asking themselves questions which is another thing that i learned through you know just the process that so often in wrestling prior to 96, prior to the NWO, prior to sting. The formula, as it is today, unfortunately, we've kind of reverted back to the formula that existed prior to Nitro today. The formula is to promote, promote, promote, promote, tell us, tell the audience, tell the audience, tell the audience. You know, hype next week, hype next week, hype next week. You're taking all the mystery out

of it. You're taking the suspense out of it. You're disengaging the audience. at least on a subconscious level, because they're not asking themselves any questions. They're not asking themselves, oh, my God, well, what's going to happen next week? Well, wait a minute, I thought this is true, but something else is true. Oh, my gosh, I'm engaged.

That's how drama works. And it's not a secret by any stretch of the imagination, but it just had never been applied to professional wrestling the way we did at that time. So by keeping the mystery around, first of all, an abrupt character change. that was inspired because of the story and what was that story you know from and and i'll talk about that a little bit from the storyteller's point of view as opposed to the audience's point

of view but again you know so much this is all about the NWO but this the crow sting character was a manifestation of the NWO when the NWO hit and all of a sudden it was anarchy the heels were in control. NWO was there to crush WCW. That was the broad-based premise of that. And as a result of the impact of the NWO storyline-wise, a lot of people within WCW were beginning to, the baby faces were doubting themselves. The baby faces were back on their heels, just like they would be in a match, you know? When the heels, you know, get an upper hand in a match and the baby faces selling his ass off waiting for that moment to make their comeback you know it's it's simple shit in a way but applied over an extended period to a storyline it's a little bit different so all of

our baby faces all of the guys that would ultimately according to the you know previous formula would get their asses kick for two or three weeks to get their comeback at the paper view now things were different now the NWO was dominating and they were staying in control and and that caused the WCW roster to start to fracture the baby faces storyline wise started doubting themselves then the question was going to because we started adding people to the NWO right well fuck who's next all right can I trust you can I not trust you on the WCW side of the equation and then when people started doubting sting because of the Jeff Farmer fake sting thing that was a

the final straw for Sting. He had done so much, you know, I'm kind of going in and out of storytelling and kind of remembering history here, but at that time, from a character point of view, from a storyline point of view, Sting was the guy that had always been there for WCW. He was the one thing they could always count on. And now because of the oppression and everything that was going on with NWO, all of a sudden people that were close to Singh started questioning him. And that put the sting character over the top.

That's when he went, fuck it. And he grabbed his dark shit in his bat and his fucking vulture. And we created this mystique with him. The mystique precipitated the drop. So by the time we established this spooky, mysterious, you know, character with all this mystique and the audience was going, What the fuck? What's happened to sting? Is he turning into your own?

Because the crow character was black and white, right? There was doubt. It forced the audience to start to wonder and be curious about what's going to happen next. And it was done very artfully. Some of it by sheer fucking luck, not totally by design. But there was also a lot of, you know, thought behind it and architecture behind it. And it just worked. So by the time we dropped them out of the ceiling, we had already,

invested in the character sufficiently enough to reap the dividends and that's probably why it got the reaction it got well staying nervous about doing the repel spot did you guys have to bring in a bunch of professionals to practice this uh sort of talked me through the the actual execution of of getting it done no well of course he was nervous um anybody in their right mind would be uh it was dangerous uh as we all know, but I had hired a guy by the name of Ellis Edwards, who, by the way, still works for WWE to this day, doing much the same things, or many of the same things that he used to do for me in WCW, which was staging all the crazy backstage shit, car wrecks, any kind

of stunt or, you know, anything that required something other than a headlock and a wrist lock backstage, usually Ellis was involved. And Ellis had worked as a stunt man in Hollywood. He worked on a couple of movies that Hulk worked with. That's how we found him or he found us. So when, you know, we were talking and I believe, God, trying to remember the first time Ellis came to me with the idea, and it really was his idea to repel. I believe we were at lunch somewhere in Atlanta,

and he was pitching this idea to me about having the crow character repelling. and of course I was excited about it because it was easy for me to visualize but not being a stunt person or certainly not being the guy that's going to be repelling from the ceiling it was easy for me to get excited about it when Ellis and I I think pitched it to Steve originally I would say it was kind of a 50-50 thing with him he saw it he loved the idea of it but Steve Borden is a very intelligent guy And he wasn't going to put himself in a situation that, you know, was dangerous, at least sufficiently more dangerous than what he did for a living anyway. So it took a little bit of convincing, but he wasn't like, he didn't like jump all over

the idea and say, fuck yeah, let's do it. Come on. Let's go figure out how to make this work. Nor did he say, uh-uh, I'm not doing that. He was somewhere in between until, again, you know, Ellis did a great job of explaining how the stunt would would go down um how would be executed we went out ellis i shouldn't say we ellis went out and got like a 240 pound crash dummy somewhere that had you know articulating joints in the whole nine yards and you know we practiced the stunt several times with a stunt uh with with

a crash dummy uh and so steve could see it happen before him and then started doing it you know and i think he may have repelled the first time or two with another stunt person just to get the hang of it and get confident and then go through it you know we did that during the course of a day when there was no talent or excuse me there were no fans in the arena and things like that so he worked on it for a couple of weeks before we actually tried to pull it off and by the time we were ready to pull it off after the first time or two he was quite comfortable with it let's talk about the bat such a uh big part of of the character and uh i mean bats have been used in wrestling i guess as as props and fights for a long

time but this is the first time we see it be like a a signature of a guy and it's always a black bat how did this come to be do you remember whose creative influence that was or anything about the bat you know i don't i don't know whose idea it was originally it was something that probably We just came up in a brief conversation. It wasn't a big deal when it was added to the character, at least at the time. Now, it became a big deal because the way Steve used to sing used that bat, you know, it wasn't so much that he'd use it. Again, mystique, that's, I keep going back to that because it was just like reality was the, was the nuclear power behind the end of, W.O. Mystique was the nuclear power behind the crow character, Stings Crow character. It was all

about that. So when he came down the first time with a bat, the first couple times of the bat, he didn't use him on people. He pointed it. It was a statement. It was his way of putting people on notice in a way that wasn't clear to the audience. Again, why is he doing that? What does this mean where sting going how is he feeling what's going through his mind all of those things were very compelling to the audience so do you answer your question succinctly i don't know who came up with the idea of the bat but i think what's more important when we look back at how it worked for him was he didn't just use it like everybody else had used it it wasn't just a gimmick to beat the fuck out of somebody in a, you know, in a free-for-all in a match or in a, you know, in a

no-holds-barred match or a tough man match or whatever. He used it as a prop to intimidate. And I think as a result, it became much more significant to his character in, in the eyes of the audience. The next week, the January 27th, Nitro, Hogan and yourself are in the ring. Hogan is doing a promo, which is, of course, very common in this era. You're, you're helping him poke fun at Randy Savage and Roddy Piper and the giant who've all lost to Hulk Hogan.

And a few minutes later, Savage and Sting are standing in the crowd together. You're trying to sort of sweet talk Savage while Hogan is doing the same. And Sting's appearance only lasts less than a minute here. But it's pretty impactful. It sort of sets the stage for what we're going to see for the rest of the year. And I think this is the first time Sting and Hogan are in the. the arena on television at the same time since uh sting changed to this crow version of this character since uh september of 96 and it's interesting to note that in this era

melzer was saying that the original plan was supposed to be sting hogan at the uh february paper review super brawl but it was decided to hold off on the in ring return until hulk hogan at starcade do you remember there being a plan whether it was against hogan or not for for him to compete in the ring at the February Super Brawl pay-per-view. That was sort of a tent poll event for you guys. I don't know if that's accurate or not. I can't, you know, shit on it because I just don't know. Right.

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Maximize your look with minimal effort. Go to ThriveCosmetics.com slash beauty for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash beauty. The February 3rd Nitro, Hall and Nash are beating up DDP and then Savage and Sting appear and the outsiders leave. The following week, Sting and Savage, come to the ring while DDP is in there and they set him down on a chair and do the bat test with him. DDP doesn't hit them from behind with the bat and then Sting and Savage leave the ring.

This is interesting that, you know, here we are a month into this now and the pairing of Sting and Savage continues. Is this because at the time you felt like, well, if we're not going to let Sting talk, we need a mouthpiece or is it just a way to sort of play hokey pokey with the macho man in the NWO? No, it wasn't a way to play hokey. I mean, it was more true with than. just playing hokey-pokey. I mean, again, the premise of the story, at least at that point, was NWO versus WCW. A lot of the WCW talent, as I talked about a few moments ago, had started to question the character, Sting, weren't really sure that they could trust him, which put Steve

over the edge, which forced him into a state of mind that he had never been in before, ergo the massive change to his character and the mystique that ensued. Now, by, him, Sting, starting to come back, aligning himself with Savage, who at that point was a WCW guy, and against Hogan and the NWO. And then, you know, who else can Sting trust? That's why he did the bat test. Now, all of a sudden, Sting, at this point, Sting is starting to put together teams of people, groups or individuals, that he could trust, that trusted Steve.

And trust was, you know, trust was the commodity that was lacking in WCW because of what NWO was doing to them. They were disoriented. They were confused. Much like society is right today over this fucking coronavirus thing, right? Everybody, you know, people are buying up goddamn toilet paper. We'll quit buying so many fucking potato chips and Cheetos and you won't shit as much. You won't need as much toilet paper. Use your head, right?

That's going off on a tangent. I can't believe. I'm just going to go off on a tangent here. I went into Walmart the other day. I got up at 6 o'clock at a morning, and we're fully stocked here. I mean, again, I know I've got it better than most people, you know, in terms of where I live and how I live, in a crisis like this, right? But I've got a safe full of, you know, rifles and ammunition.

I got deer and out crossing my property all day long. I can look out over a lake that's full of fish. I got water. I got heat. I got plenty of food walking around my property. good you know no matter what hits a fan i'm pretty fucking good as long as i stay healthy um but i do have certain things that we need so mrs b sent me to walmart and i walmart has this thing at least the one here in cody wyoming where senior citizens god i hate admitting this publicly

senior citizens of which i guess i am one because i'm turning 65 in may get to get in the store an hour before anybody else before all the shelves get picked through now I don't feel like a senior citizen especially now I mean I'm getting myself in decent shape I feel good nothing hurts I've got no aches pains issues or anything else but I'm playing well fuck you know according to my driver's license and the AARP shit that I get in a mail every other day I'm one of those people so fuck it I'm going to take advantage of it so I go to Walmart I go right back you know to get you know toilet paper some of the things that I just want to have a few of I'm not going to stock up on it and of course it was all gone already and I get to the counter

because I bought something I bought some razor blazer some shit and I'm standing in line and this lady behind me first of all she wasn't a senior citizen she cheated the bitch but I look at her cart and it's filled like with frozen fucking pizzas and two gallon jugs of mountain do and cheetos and jiffy pop and about everything you could possibly eat that wouldn't keep you alive for three days if you were on an island and what the fuck oh oh and you know she she was she had toilet paper she had got there before i did she had and i'm thinking to myself bitch if you just put all that stuff back your toilet paper's going to last you a long time but whatever i kept it myself anyway sorry side note where were we

you know what happens you know you and i've been doing these podcasts now for for almost two years now maybe over i can't remember but we've learned i've learned and i think you agree um that if you get me in the morning because i'm just fucking jacked up on high quality coffee um it's kind of hard to keep me on the rails or it's hard for me to keep myself on the rails but it's way more fun if you catch me at six o'clock at night i'm kind of beat i've been on the phone all day long i got nothing but these morning shows are great well let's talk about something else that's great february 17th on nitro hogan's in the ring doing another promo sting starts to walk to the ring but savage stops in and then they go to the back the following week is super bra seven sting

and savage are walking to the ring during the hogan piper match but this time sting would stop savage and Sting walks away, thinking Savage is with him, but instead Savage goes to the ring and helps Hogan and joins the NWO. The next night on Nitro, the NWO is in the ring doing a promo, and Sting appears from the back entering the ring between the NWO and WCW rosters, and this is the first time Sting and Hogan are in the ring together since Fall Brawl 96. There's a face-to-face with Hulk. Hulk is going to hug him. Sting remains expressionless, but appears to now be with the NWO as the show concludes this is really talking about your mystique and you know sort of the cliffhanger of what's going to happen next it was and i'm going to step into a little bit of

story about mystique and why i think it's one of the things that's missing and it's also one of the things that's easiest to achieve if you have the discipline to commit to it as we did here we proved it and again part of it was luck part of it was timing but also a part of it was understanding how people react to things and what was missing and some of it goes back to i know this is boring shit right it's not exciting it's not telling a story about somebody who shit and somebody else's gem bag and all the things that happened as a result of it but in the focus group, focus groups because we did tons of them that we did with TNT, we went around a country and we focused group different groups of wrestling fans, hardcore WWF fans, WCW fans, people

that love wrestling that watch it every week, people that used to watch it every week, but don't, some people that just catch it every once in a while. I mean, they did a great job with this focus group. And you get a lot of input, you know, some of it valuable, some of it, Not so much because you kind of knew it already. But there was one consistent theme that I heard in every one of these groups around the country. And that was, we like to be surprised. And that drove so much of my creative, the things that I was passionate about, the things that I had a hand in directly, especially as it related to the NWL. And I think that scene that you just described between Savage and Sting here again, what did we accomplish in that scene?

If you break that scene down, you know, in the weeks previous, Sting finally had somebody that he could trust. He was finally putting together a team of people that trusted Sting and Sting trusted them, only to have one of the most significant characters turned their back on them and betray him. And betrayal is a powerful, powerful tool. to use in storytelling betrayal envy greed the seven deadly sins you know add to the list whatever you want to do but betrayal is a is a human emotion that we can all relate to it's not an intellectual kind of thing you don't have to think through it you feel it you see it you recognize it and it's powerful because so many people have been betrayed or fear betrayal or have betrayed others and that's why it's so easy to recognize so that that was that beat right there let's keep it rolling the march third

nitro sting comes to the ring the n wos doing a promo sting's just standing there he doesn't say or do anything later in the show in the main event lugar and the giant are scheduled to battle the steiner brothers and it turns into a big fight thanks to nw o interference as they feel ringside and wcw guys are in the ring sting has his bat on the outside with their crowd chanting we want Sting and with the show heading off the air, Sting stays standing on the outside of the ring. So we're still stretching this out. What side is he on? What's he going to do? March 10th is the spring break nitro. Sting once again comes to the ring with the NWO who's doing a promo. He just stands there, doesn't say or do anything. The uncensored paper view is just a few days later,

March 16th. And the main event is team NWO, which is Hogan, Savage, and the outsiders with Dennis Rodman on the outside, taken on team WCW, which is Lugar, Giant and Scott Steiner, and they're taking on team Piper, which is Piper, Benoit, Mongo, and Jarrett. Hogan pins Lugar to win the match in the NWO celebrating over Lugar's body, head out of the ring to leave, and then out of nowhere, Sting repels into the ring with his bat, Scott Hall enters the ring, and gets nailed, Kevin Nash follows suit, then Randy Savage, then Sting Giff Savage, the Scorpion death drop while Hogan and Dennis Rodman stand watching in the aisle. Sting points the bat at Hogan, and Hogan actually gets in the ring.

We see Sting and Hogan in the ring again, and Hogan goes after him. Sting nails him with punches, Scorpion death drop to Hogan, and the show is over. This is a monumental moment in WCW. The paper view just sort of was what it was, but the postmatch, my God, it's one of the hottest things in the history of the company. Am I wrong? No, you're right. And again, I sidetrack myself.

in my last diatribe. And I'm going to be really, I'm going to be intentionally vague in general here because I have to be, so don't ask too many questions. But there was a, there was a situation where I was trying to present an idea

for the return of a new character. Not going to say where, not going to say when. Not going to name names. And this new character, or not a new character, this returning character had been very, very prominent, but it had been out with an injury for quite some time.

And I was in a room full of people. And it was like, okay, well, what are we going to do with this character? Do we just kind of bring him back the way he was? Who do we match him up with? What do we do with him? He's been gone for a long time. And this is a great character, by the way, still active in the business. And my idea was for this character,

not to drop out of a fucking sky just the way he left a year or two years or six months or three months or whatever the time frame was because I'm trying to keep this murky as possible not just to pick up where this character left off but rather because I wanted to take advantage of the absence of the heart grow fonder factor

and rather people going oh he's back and this is what he's going to do and this is who he is and this is what the character is just like hitting the, you know, refresh button, not even the refresh button, the rewind button. And my idea was, no, let's, and again, I was thinking the same character, but knowing that you have to do it differently. You can't just copy things blatantly. But you can, you can, you can use an idea and come up with a derivative based on a formula that you know that works. And let's, let's be honest, everything that we watch on television, not just wrestling, everything that we watch

television every movie that we see is a derivative of something that happened before there isn't a fresh fucking idea out there all right there's basically seven and i don't know what the name of the book is but there's basically seven stories that have ever been told in in human history and everything that we watch is a variation of one of those seven stories right so in me trying to explain how this could possibly be set up I got shut down in a heartbeat

in a heartbeat and I was a little frustrated I'm being kind and I looked around the room and there were a couple people that knew exactly where I was going and I just let it go

I just let it go and I wasn't frustrated because oh my idea didn't get you know didn't make the table or any of that wasn't an ego thing it was like my god let do something different you know and discipline bring the discipline with it that we have proven it has been proven i wouldn't even say we or i it has been proven that if you craft a good idea and mystique and intrigue is at the core of that idea and you don't You know, I'm trying not to be crude here.

You don't shoot your load too soon. You don't hot shot it. Let it get, let the audience embrace it and be intrigued by it. It will work. It doesn't work the same way as a hot angle. Doesn't work the same way as driving over somebody with a semi-truck or, you know, setting somebody on fire or, you know, any of the number of other things that people do for attention nowadays. or whatever, but it can work. I mean, that's the kind of thing I, I'd like to see more of.

I just wish, I just wish there is more of it. And the ideas are there, you know, I mean, the ideas are there, the concepts are there. But the layers to the concept, the depth of the concept and the discipline and the, the balls, quite frankly, to risk playing it out. over an extended period of time that's what we don't see and part of that is the pressure you know again i'm going to be fair here so i don't sound like i'm criticizing anybody part of it you know part of the reason that we could pull off what we pulled off with the sting character 97 going back to what we talked about the beginning of this show i had the luxury of time we weren't under pressure we were rolling i had a deep roster we had a plan with the nwo the b story at this point sting

in the introduction of him was a bonus and because the A story was functioning so well and the ratings were doing so well the pay-per-views were doing so well the house shows were doing so well license and merchandising was beginning to do well

sponsorships were beginning to come in there was no pressure on me to go fuck this is a great idea now let's blow it off two weeks from now I didn't have that pressure so I had the luxury of being able to take time which in today's environment doesn't exist. There's a ton of pressure on producers now. Again, WW, AEW, Rural Outer, whoever,

any television series that you watch on television, any dramatic television series that you watch on television, there's a lot of pressure to keep people coming back each and every week. So as a result, sometimes things get pushed faster than they, then ideally they should, but in some respects, you know, you don't really have much choice because you don't have the luxury of saying, okay, we're going to start this on March 26th and we're going to blow this off on December 15th or next March 26th. That's a luxury you don't have anymore.

And Eric, a little earlier, I felt like I cut you off, but I didn't mean to derail you. you were really excited to tell us about Lumen. Tell us what you've experienced firsthand with Lumen so far. I'm going to grab it. Just one second. Hold tight. While Eric's doing that, let me explain.

Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fats or carbs. And it gives you your tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, your workouts, your sleep,

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matters is because your metabolism is like your body's engine. It knows how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. Because your metabolism is really at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of health benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve your metabolic health with each breath. And Lumen's recommendations are designed to improve your pre and post-workout

fueling for better performance and recovery. So you can power through your toughest work. workouts and add on muscle mass. And Eric, I was talking to me in the other day. As you know, she's well on her way in her fitness journey. She's doing competitions and things like that. And she was trying to explain to me, hey, you've seen those visuals

before of like when there's a treadmill at a doctor's office and they're putting the mask on? That's what they're measuring here. But you don't need all that fancy, schmancy equipment of the doctor's office. Now you've got it with you. And it's even been explained to me that like if you've ever looked into fasting, I've heard people who would do like an 18

hour fast. But that might not work for your body. That might not be optimal. Maybe your body responds best at like 10 and a half hours because as you creep to 12 hours or more, what if it starts working against you? You don't want that. Well, this is like a cheat code. It's like a life hack

for all of that. And I know you've been using yours, Eric. What's your experience been like with Lumen so far? Well, while you were sharing the information about Lumen, I actually used it and found out if you can see that. You're at a four to that. That was my result.

Yeah, and I'm burning, according to this, 25% fat and 75% carbs. Now, I typically don't eat any carbs. Very, very low levels of carbs in my diet. I try to keep it under like 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrates a day because I'm a firm believer in a low carb diet. But occasionally, like I'll have, like I have kimchi in the morning with my eggs, just to give it a little bit of flavor. she is a fermented cabbage. It's a Korean food. And I just put a little bit on there

to give my scrambled legs some flavor. But there are some carbs in there, and that's what I'm seeing here. When I do this again, I usually do it three times a day before and after meals. And I'll probably be more on the 50%, 50% range. Why is that important for me? And by the way, I'm going to be launching a whole new initiative called 83 Meats. It's going to be about health. It's going to be about nutrition. It's going to be about meat. Obviously, I'm going to be interviewing ranchers who are into regenerative ranching, and we'll talk about what that means. We'll talk about the distribution of the food chain. I'll be interviewing Dr. Sean Baker, who is one of the leading advocates for the carnivore diet and generally a low-carb

diet. He's a surgeon and an amazing individual. But all of these conversations are going to be about nutrition and low carb and when you can keep because carbs exist and things you don't expect they sneak up on you but when you can get to the point where you're burning body fat instead of carbohydrates for energy you feel better your inflammation improves dramatically so many things happen positively that don't require drugs that don't require ointments i mean it it's amazing and i think this is a fantastic tool i'll be mine will be with me in Chicago, because I enjoy this rabbit hole that I've gotten into, this nutritional rabbit hole, and I was just talking to Mrs. B about this 20 minutes before the show started.

We all are so aware of technology and how far it's advancing so quickly because all of the focus is on the sexy stuff like artificial intelligence and all the amazing things that are coming out of so fast, you can't even really absorb it. Well, the same thing is true with regards to nutrition and health. The advancements in technology are making information and discoveries happen so much faster in the area of nutrition. We've probably learned more in the last five years about nutrition than we had new information in the previous 40. And it's really fascinating. And to be able to take advantage of something like this that can have such a dramatic lumen,

that can have such a dramatic impact on not only your life and how long you're going to live, but how well you live long. I can't say enough good things about it, man, and look for 83 meets coming to you soon. Hey, if you want to take your next step in improving your health, go right now to Lumen.com. Me slash 83 weeks to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N dot me slash 83 weeks for 15% off your purchase.

that's lumen.me. me slash 83 weeks L-U-M-E-N-D-M-E-slash 83 weeks and you'll get 15% off your purchase and we thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring today's podcast. Yeah, I can't agree more. And this is fun because you really think about it. We're talking September, fall for all war games to now the end of March here, as you said.

And it's the first time we really know what Sting is going to. to do. Who side is he on? He's let his intentions be known loud and clear here. He's with WCW and he's going after Hogan and the NWO. At the next night, the main event is the Steiner Brothers versus Harlem Heat on Nitro is ruined by NWO interference, but the WCW guys are here to fight them. Sting repels into the ring, points the bat at Hogan, who's in the aisle. Hogan is not too happy about this and looks scared.

Fast forward to April 7th on Nitro. It's the night after the spring stampede pay per view. Sting saves DDP from an NWO beatdown. He's repelling into the ring with his bat. A week later on the 14th, Luger and Nash are wrestling, but the match ended quickly because of the typical outside interference. The NWO was beating on DDP, Lugar, and the giant when Sting comes to the ring and gives bats to all three, and the NWO quickly bail as the show goes off the air. This feels like it's becoming sort of the formula for Nitro.

We've got to end with the NWO giving a beat down and Sting comes in. When did Sting sort of become your closer? I mean, about this time, and again, it's, you know, it's not rocket science. It was working. The audience was reacting. I mean, it was so visceral and obvious that it wouldn't have taken anybody with a half of brain to figure out, okay, this is working, let's stick with it. You got to modify it, got to change it, you know, keep it fresh, you've got to find new ways

of doing it. Can't just do the same shit every week. you have to do the same shit every week but in a different way um hopefully um but between the ratings and and seeing how we were performing at the end of the show between the visceral reaction that we would couldn't not see uh being in the in the building or in the ring in some cases uh it was kind of a no-brainer i mean if it ain't broke don't fucking fix it Yeah, and it's clearly working here. You guys are firmly in control of the Monday Night Wars.

We wouldn't see Sting again until the May 12th, Nitro. On that show, you claim that you're going to do an interview with Sting. However, you end up interviewing the fake Sting. Of course, during this, the real Sting comes down. It quickly beats up the fake Sting. You run out of the ring and through the crowd as the show goes off the air. On May 19th, you say Sting will never wrestle Hulk Hogan. Then, of course, Sting comes from under the ring, a scorpion death drops you,

we've we've talked a little bit about you and physicality and wrestling uh what did you think what was worse the power bomb from kevin nash or the scorpion death drop from sting uh i mean neither one of them were bad and it's hard to it's hard to say they were both equally um not uncomfortable uh for me for whatever reason the death drop was a little more awkward sure i guess because i mean if you go back and you look at you know the the setup in in june of 96 when scott hall punched me in the stomach so i fold so i fold up and get in position for the power bomb i could see the floor yes it was a little disorienting you know getting you know pulled up onto kevin's shoulders and then thrown backwards it was odd not going to deny that but through

the largest percentage of that process of getting power bombed, I knew exactly where I was on the stage. I could see Kevin's feet. I was looking at the ground. I knew where I was. With a scorpion death drop, you know, I mean, I knew singing was obviously behind me and could feel everything, but you can't see anything, right? You can't really anticipate. It just happens. And I was going backwards. So I guess if I had to pick between one or the other, Neither one of them hurt. I didn't get injured on either one of them. There was no physical, you know, ramifications of either one of them.

But in terms of just being disoriented, I was more disoriented on the death drop just because of the nature of it and not really being able to be involved in the whole process. Once Sting's got you, he's got you when you're going. You're not a part of that process. You just go. Whereas with Kevin and Scott, I was a part of the setup. process so I felt like I was in a little more control if that makes sense we should mention this uh if you want to go check this out it's sort of a random little footnote but it's may 19th 1997 and as we said it's uh I think it's the last segment on the show

this is the only time I think that Sting painted his neck white also normally it was just the face he went all the way into the shirt so it looked like he was uh trying to do the full body paint of course that's not the case but it's a different look for sting the next week you and Hogan call out sting. Of course, the fake sting comes from under the ring. The real sting repels from the ceiling, drops you with another scorpion death drop. The fake sting is begging off. Hogan trips over the fake one who was revealed to be Buff Bagwell. Hogan escapes and the NW were groups and comes after staying and he reattaches the court and then zips up to the ceiling. That's a little different. And we've seen him coming down. Now he's going up. You guys are

trying out some different stunts here. Yeah. And, um, Yeah, it's one of the great things about momentum. You know, when you've got it, you can almost do no wrong. When you don't, you could almost do no right. It's really tough. But at this point, we had a lot of momentum, things were working, the character was resonating with the audience, the sting character, the NWO story was resonating. Everything was resonating. So, you know, you're right.

We had to try some different things. Like I said a few moments ago, you know, pretty much are doing the same thing every week. You've just got to find a little bit different way to do it to keep it. fresh. And I don't know whose idea it was, but the idea of, you know, Sting, repelling back up was pretty fucking cool. You know, one thing I want to, to say here, and I'm not sure about the timeline, but as we're talking about the fake stings and Jeff Farmer and, you know, eventually, you know, we brought New Japan into the fold, I was talking to Muda and Sunny a couple months back. And you know that the, according to Mood, the, and Sunny, the NWO angle in New Japan was financially

the most successful angle in the history of New Japan. And we often talk about it, how NWO changed the business here in the United States and how significant it was for WW, excuse me, WCW and its revenues. but the NWO story and the fake sting and Jeff Farmer and along with Moodoo and Chano and others who eventually went on to become NWO Japan was financially the most successful angle in the history of New Japan according to Muda who was there anyway it's remarkable this is the first episode of Nitro where we see someone from the NWO dress up like Sting and course famously you know back at fall bra we got the fake sting jeff farmer um but let's talk a little bit about dressing buff bagwell up we're going to see other people do it including comically kevin nash uh but buff bagwell as sting that's maybe a little hokey but maybe fun as well because it feels sort of scooby-do like or uh i don't know spider man esk where other people are are taking the sting costume and dressing up but it's a nice little wrinkle to the storyline yeah i'd have to go back and see that because it

doesn't uh it doesn't ring a bell with me in terms of i know we did it but i don't remember why or how so i'd i'd have to go back and kind of look up at the setup for it and to try to determine what the intention was with the conflict in iran global markets are on edge oil prices are surging volatility is spiking and the u.s dollar is under pressure this isn't a distant headline you're feeling it at the pump in your grocery budget, even on your utility bills. When uncertainty rises, many Americans turn to physical gold and silver, tangible assets that have protected wealth for centuries. And with gold recently topping $3,300 an ounce, experts believe the upside is just getting started. That's where preserve gold comes in. They make it simple to get started and offer real

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Head to 4imprint.com to find out more. The June 9th, Nitro will see a big brawl where Hogan is going to attack DDP, knock him out with the WCW title, and in the middle of the fight, of course, sting repels down, takes DDP's body, body, in a sense to the ceiling with DDP attached to him. This is one of the most famous moments in Nitro history, such a stunt. You know, this is not something we've ever seen before.

We've seen him go up by himself, but it does feel like a superhero type move here to swoop in, save somebody, and seemingly fly away with him. Yeah, it was a pretty big idea. And you're right, you've never seen it before. You've never seen it since. And I doubt you ever will. but it was cool as shit oh no doubt about it i mean it was so cool and again you know same idea doing it just a slightly different way we'd seen sting dropping dropping dropping dropping we'd

seen him ascend once before i think and now you're seeing him ascend go up into the roof along with somebody else completely different twists or another twist on something we'd been previously doing as a way to keep it fresh and it was cool as shit page did not page was nervous about that of course i mean and and i don't blame them you know i would have been too um let me give everybody the date again go see this it is seriously one of the most famous things that happened that year with a sting sort of segment it's june 9th 1997 on nitro man it's so famous our uh our buddies wrestling arcade they actually made uh like a video game version of that that I got to send to you so you can take a look at because it had quite the effect

on people it's not something that ever seen before and uh that's that's really what stands out yeah it was it was cool as shit i actually i'm gonna go back and look at it as soon as we're done here because i i remember it but i haven't looked at it in a long time so i'm going to go back and check it out june tv on the w e network of course june 23rd a dd p scott hall main event ends in minutes due to interference from randy savage the nw o beats up DDP for about the 300th time until Sting comes out of the crowd, scares him away. The following week on June 30th, the NWO is beating down DDP and his weekly appointment to get his ass kicked with the fake sting hanging out in the crowd for whatever reason.

And then the real sting repels from the ceiling. Hogan runs away. On the July 14th, Nitro, Luger is in the ring doing an interview with Gene and the NWO comes out and surrounds him. A guy comes to the ring dressed his sting with long black wig and a fake sting mask. he walks through the NWO gets in the ring takes off the wig and mask and it's sting and the show goes off the air I really liked this wrinkle because we had seen you know the the fake sting and buff bagwell dressing up a sting so why not have sting impersonate himself it's pretty fun you would swear we were like eating peyote and shit and we were coming up with this stuff good it was we were just we were just we When you talk, you know, you open up show like 1997 had to be, you know, one of the best times. The way you're laying this out, Conrad, and I'm remembering it and seeing it in my head, it was such a cool time.

And again, I'll say what I said a few moments ago. Momentum is a wonderful thing. Once you've got it, you can almost do no wrong. Without it, you could almost do no right. Well, we had momentum in abundance at the time. And because of that, here's the other thing that happens when you've got momentum behind you. you're willing to do things that you might not do before

or otherwise. You're willing to take a creative chance that you might not otherwise take either for fear of criticism or the audience just not responding or the talent not really being willing a lot of reasons why. It's human nature.

But man, when you got to mow behind you in a real way, not because your ratings went up two tenths of a point this week compared to last week or, you know, that's superficial shit. Those are rounding errors that don't really matter on a week-to-week basis. But when you've got serious momentum behind you, serious, it gives you the freedom to think differently

and to try things that you might not otherwise strike. First of all, you're coming up with ideas that you wouldn't have otherwise come up with because of the energy and the opportunities that momentum provide to you. and secondly just inherently i think humans being humans you're willing to risk things you wouldn't otherwise risk because you know you've got on that um and that's kind of where we were and that's why it was so much fun because you you're willing to stand on the edge of a cliff while you're creating ideas and if you believed it and the kind of anecdotal evidence around you suggested that you're probably going to be right you'll fucking take that leap whereas if you're getting your

ass kicked every week or you're struggling or you're trying to maintain um you don't and that was one of the reasons why 97 was so much fun on the august fourth nitro j jdillon is going to offer sting a contract wrestle curt hinnick sting tears it up walks out of the ring and to the back and later in the show lex luger beats holcogen to win the world title is the highest rated segment ever in the history of nitro a 4.4 uh lex loses it back to Hulk Hogan a few days later at the Road Wild Paperview on the August 11th Nitro, which is coincidentally Hulk Hogan's birthday. J.J. Dillon's in the ring with me and Gene. J.J. says he has a new contract for Sting. Sting comes down from the ceiling. J.J.

tells Sting the contract is for a match with six. Sting once again tears it up. And Jean asked Sting who he wants. The crowd starts chanting Hogan and Sting leaves. We see another version of this on June 18th where JJ is once again in the ring with Jean. Sting comes down from the stealing and this time JJ says, hey man, just tell me who you want. Sting grabs JJ by the tie points to the crowd and Jean says he's pointing at a sign that says Hogan. Sting leaves the ring and gets a sign that says Sting versus Hogan comes back in the ring and holds the sign. Fast forward a week later on August 25th. Let's see. Can we step right there? Sure.

That scene that you just described was 75% laid out, 25% improv. And the most important part of that was Sting going out and getting the sign. Yeah. That was improv. That's the beauty of, number one, experience talent that really get it, really get it, that understand psychology and understand their character at a much higher level than you, typically see nothing critical just is what it is and again the momentum in this case sting had all the confidence in the world that he could make his point he knew what the point was he knew what the

goal was but in a spontaneous way he saw a better way to tell it and to keep the mystique alive fucking cool scene that you just described right there really cool scene no doubt about it very cool scene again if you want to sort of go take a look at that one it's august 18th 1997 but the following week jj now understands it says sting or russell hogan you're in the ring doing an interview with jean ochreland and you're saying it'll never happen sting walks to the ring from the back and as he gets in the ring you're saying it'll never happen and uh you tell jean to tell him that sting is then standing behind you and jean says he'll tell him when he sees him sting puts his hand on your shoulder you drop to your knees jean leaves

the ring and calls you a chicken uh larry sabiscoe on commentary says what's he doing proposing sting pulls out a whole kogan shirt and stuffs it down your throat sting never saying a word but he does crack a smile and it's the first time we've seen him do that on tv uh since all of this started to happen ral can i can i can i stop right there again yeah god the shit you're describing it's so cool exciting because I can see it in my head. I don't necessarily remember the scene or remember doing it. I know I did, but, but the way you describe it is so fucking cool. And it, it takes me back. And again, I don't want to sound like I've got this magic philosophy and it really, really well. But this is the formula that worked for me at this time. Times have changed. Things are different. TV's different.

May not apply anymore. I'm not trying to suggest that people should do what we did. But, I'll go back to story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. If this isn't the most clear illustration of how that Sarsa formula that I use so much during this period of time, if this isn't a fucking roadmap to how to apply that formula, I don't know what it is. again we created the mystique with the story and the character what we were doing right here was creating anticipation the reality was there the surprises each and every week were there in one way shape or form and the action at the end of the show brought us home that when people hear me talk about sarsa or story anticipation reality surprise and action

And, you know, I'm sure, oh, that's just Bischoff talking out of his ass again or whatever. And whatever. I don't really don't give a fuck. It doesn't cost me any money if you think that. So think whatever you want. But if you really look at the things that have worked, not only the NWO and the sting idea, go look at any other story or angle that had legs. I'm not talking about a month hot shot angle or something that's set up a paper viewer, you know, one time or anything. of that kind of shit.

But look at the stories over the last two decades, three decades, four days, I don't give it a fuck. If it worked and it was a long-term story, there are elements of those ingredients in that story. And the more focus and discipline, I think, that people have on really being honest to themselves and saying going through the checklist, okay, what is my story? from beginning to middle to end and all the beats in between because they're important

what are the beats in between how is that first you know I'll call it a first act you know how is that what are we accomplishing during that first act are we establishing the character are we establishing the character's strengths and weaknesses

are we establishing the character's aspirations are we establishing the conflicts with the character that that should be the first act The second act should be the conflict and then the journey and almost failure of the character, if it's a baby face, during the course of that second act and how that plays out over a period of time. And a third act should be, you know, overcoming all odds and bringing it home. It's that fucking simple.

It's just that simple. But for whatever reason, you don't see it all that much in wrestling. like everything is kind of week to week show to show and if there is any kind of a long-term play it really doesn't have the right beats or the elements within the acts to sustain it at the level that it could or should so i i only drill this into only drill into this conversation because i think the potential is there you know in any wrestling organization whether it be the largest or an independent you have the ability

to come up with these ideas and it's really fun people if you're listening if you're a wannabe writer when I say want to be I don't mean that in a divisive manner but if you're an aspiring writer or even if you're currently writing for somebody you know it's not that hard just think about it and go through that checklist

and apply those elements to your story and you'll be amazed like we were how well it can work it may not it may not reach the level that we reach because you may not have the platform or the audience to react to it the same way but it works anyway sorry soapbox let me get off hold on this fucker over just a little bit god damn as fuckers have it okay I'm good man you're going to get to see the angle of your seat with our friends

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last minute ticket's lowest price guaranteed this Sting smile is probably because he knew Raw was preempted that week and Nitra was going to get their biggest rating ever a 5.0 but believe it or not we don't see Sting again until September 29th the NW is beating up WCW guys

Sting walks to the ring and beats up the NWO and never gets hit I'm sorry Conrad I apologize for interrupting. Did you say 5.0? Yep. Okay. Just for our listeners' context, do you know off the top of your head because back then,

everybody compared ratings. Nobody really understood what a rating was or how many people were watching as a result of a rating because that wasn't, you know, the information that was reported necessarily by Nielsen unless you really did your homework. Now, you know, everybody's changed

and all or anybody reports on us. total viewers which is cool but do you have any idea conred how many viewers a 5.0 rating represented at that time no nielsen i think figured there was two yeah one and a half people per household i think was the formula okay so you're probably looking at about seven or eight million viewers compare that to today yeah it's unbelievable i mean it's it's it's really amazing it's just fucking amazing since we're talking about it you know we get some questions from folks who Maybe don't understand the difference between a rating and a share. Run through the brief explanation of what share means.

Oh, God. I think it's a number of households using television at any given moment. Yeah, and the idea is if, let's say there's 100 TVs on or out of the 100%, if you have a 7% share, it means 7% of the folks watching TV at that very moment are watching your program. Right. Let's keep it rolling. We see him show up on October 13th, and this is the infamous Sting Army. A bunch of fake stings make their way to the ring, one by one, only to get knocked down and beat up by the NWO members. This goes on for a bit until finally the real sting is revealed, and he beats up everyone.

The fake Sting Army, man, this was a great idea, and it also created or was maybe born out of a new piece of merchandise, which was the plastic Sting mask that. sort of mimicked his face paint. It feels like a no-brainer. Probably costs a few cents to create. And you guys were just making money hand over fist with it. No shit, right? I wish I would have been a lot smarter about all that.

I could have at that point I could have negotiated for almost anything I wanted, including probably a piece of merchandise and NWO stuff. I wish I would have done that. I'd still be making money hand over fist. Absolutely. Some friends of ours are still doing real well with it. Mucker Fathers. it is weird when you think about the guy who created it doesn't get a taste with the guys

who wore the creation on TV they do but let's move along never never claimed to be the best negotiator in the world which is why sometimes when we're doing podcast business you say hey you handle it whatever you say I'm for it just let me know when to show up well no that's a little different deal I mean look I've my nature my my style if you will or my approach two things is if somebody's better at something than I am, I'm not going to get in a fucking way by questioning or challenging or throwing a bunch of goddamn roadblocks in a middle of a process. So with you, it's like, hey, I've got an idea, Eric, I'm thinking about doing it. Fuck it. Let's do it. I'm not the guy that's created five of the most

successful podcasts in the history of wrestling podcasts. I'm not the guy that's driving a fucking Rolls voice that's parked next to my Maybach. I'm not that guy. So who am I? I to go conrad no i really don't want to do that and uh no no i'd go with the flow brother now if things were going as well we'd both be sitting down over a beer trying to figure out how to make it better but right now i'm happy to be on the ride me too buddy let's keep it going october 20th uh ddp and piper are dressed as sting and attack savage and hogan and then the legit sting repels down beats up the n w to close the show this is fun man we're just having everybody in the fucking company dress up a sting at one point or another it's working yeah i came

home from uh came home from nitro one one night and garrett was waiting up for me and he was dressed up his sting that's awesome oh no mucker father come on kid come on but he had a blast with it and you know it was even cooler is i had kids and we lived in alana at the time our kids were young right they're 12 14 years old or whatever they were at the time 97 Garrett would have how old he would have been 13 years old. So him and his buddies were out for Halloween and Lori and I are handed out candy to the kids. And I've got kids coming to my house dressed up like Sting. And they don't even know me by the way. It's not like they came to my girl. Let's go to Bishops. I was just like Sting. These were like little kids from outside the neighborhood that didn't even know who I was.

And they were coming to our house dressed as Sting characters. It was fucking awesome. Hey, I'm curious. Did Garrett get any shit in school about his dad running the NWO? you know yes and no I'm not bragging on my kid but you know he got his black belt when he was about 12 13 from Ernest Miller

by the way the cat Miller and he had been training in karate and martial arts and I started him you know wrestling as a five year old amateur wrestling and Garrett's a physical guy anyway he's a he's much more of a natural athlete than I ever

was he's he just is and he's yeah he did but he pretty much laid down the law early on in Atlanta and he'd get a little bit of shit he'd whip somebody's ass and he'd get expelled from school and I'd go great let's go jump on a plane and go fishing you know I was like you know because I told them I said you know people can say whatever they want to you they can make fun of you they call your names whatever don't react to it don't sell just move on but the minute somebody lays a hand on you all bets are off do what you need to do just hurt them because it'll eventually the word will get out and people quit doing that shit and i i i basically gave him a hall pass as long as as long as he didn't touch anybody first

or threatened to you can't get away with that either you can so you touch me i'm going to kick your ass that's that's encouraging it but if somebody grabs you or starts pushing you around while they're giving you shit just beat the fuck out of them them and don't let them up until they can't get up on their own and then nobody will bother you anymore and he kind of took that advice and caused some problems in school with him for a couple weeks or a month or two and then after that he had no more issues just as a kid it feels like it would be kind of cool uh i don't know bring sting to show and tell it's fucking hilarious yeah that wasn't going to happen i'm busting ball

no he got his fair share shit but but he also you know got his fair share oh man that's so cool you know probably more of that than you know you'd have bullies and people that you know trying to get attention that would give him shit but i would say 80% of the the people in his school or his classes or people that he knew were all really excited about it yeah i mean wrestling was super hot this this era the n w o shirt specifically and then of course not too long after the Austin 316 shirt it made it cool to wear wrestling shirts to school i mean that was really the first time it wasn't ever quote unquote lame to be a wrestling fan in school that's you know that's another thing and again i guess i am being a little bit critical or not critical it's just

my observation is that to this day you know i look at merchandise across the boards i'm not picking on anybody but nobody's coming up with shit that you could wear to a bar and try to get laid everything has got a picture of a wrestler on it or a, you know, a slogan or catchphrase or, you know, some other graphic image that if you put that shirt on and you're at a wrestling event, cool. You're one of us. But if you wear in that shirt and you go out at night, you're kind of a fucking geek. And when somebody comes up with, with merchandise, that is cool enough that you could wear it to a wrestling event and away from a wrestling event and you're cool, no or what or the shirt is at least you're making money but man i just keep you know the obvious oh let's do a shirt with somebody's picture on it oh fuck like i'm going to wear a shirt with a picture of another guy on it huh especially a guy that looks better than me what the fuck no i'm not doing that well you could wear any shirt you want over at eric bischoff.com we've got a shirt that says yes i am a model it looks just like rick the model martel

We've got the Sesame Street death match shirt. We've got eat, sleep, fire, honky talk, repeat. That's a good shirt. That is a good shirt. Make wrestling unpredictable again. Eric's donkey show where the big boys play straight out of catering. So many fun things on here you've got to take a look at. Maybe my favorite is Eric, Arne, Tony, J.R. Bruce and Conrad.

And then the old, you know, since we're talking about sting, we've got a big bag of thing to be the man. You must be tan. Lots of fun stuff on here. But perhaps the one that everybody is going to love the most right now. The often requested, I hate Conrad Thompson's shirt. So if you're listening to this show, but think, man, this would be better if Conrad Thompson was not on this show. Well, that'd be easy. Go pick up a shirt. I hate Conrad Thompson at Eric Bischoff.com. Well, better yet, go back and listen to some of my earlier podcast before Conrad and I hooked up and you'll feel much differently. let's keep it going the october 27th nitro a match between hogan and ddp ends prematurely there's a big brawl

with ddp getting beat up just for old time's sake sting comes out of the crowd cleans house again and a week later on the november 3rd nitro we see the contract signing between sting and hogan and this is only shown for a few minutes um interesting concept here this contract signing where we've also got I think we we use this contract signing as a way to introduce a T&T movie and then we would cut back all in all this is probably not good for WCW but you're trying to be a good partner right well you've got to be you know what I mean you got to service your client that's what we were doing the November 10th night show this is the night after the Montreal screw job of course we know what happened

there. You and Hulk are in the ring and you're challenging Sting to come down. He repels from the ceiling, walks to the ring. When he gets to the ring, he takes his gloves off and he gets in Hulk's face. The NW.O runs to the ring. Sting turns his back on Hulk to face them. Hulk hits him from behind and the NW. Bits up Sting. Hulks hitting Sting with a bunch of leg drops. And this is the first time that we've seen Sting not just take a punch, but actually get beat up. And it hasn't happened until this point. I guess now that we're sort of on our march to our main event, we've got to let the heels quote unquote get some heat on him, right? Yeah. And the plan at this point, you know, that you're discussing was for Sting to go

over. So getting heat on Sting wasn't a risk at that point. You know, and if we're supposed to just suspend disbelief for a minute, it is worth asking. He saved DDP's ass a hundred and forty-three times so far in 1997 but ddp doesn't come down to save him lex luger doesn't come down to save him the giant doesn't come down to save him and i guess in storyline this should make sting angry at wcdb for not reciprocating the help yeah that was a flaw definitely a flaw because it wasn't you know it wasn't like as you pointed out you know if if this would have been by design if it would have been an error of design as opposed to an error of omission yeah they all should have come down and NWO should have cleaned up on all of them

but they didn't and that that was a that was a bad choice now in truth you know they were all on catering they were all busy eating fucking you know grilled turkey and and because you know it was a holiday season and there's a lot of great dressing backstage and the cranberry sauce was fucking phenomenal. I love good cranberry sauce, by the way. With the dressing and the turkey and the pumpkin pie, there was so much good catering back there that

they just, they didn't make it to the ring on time. Let me tell you, Eric Bischoff knows catering. I fucking know catering. No surprise either. If you're a fan of the 80s and 90s, do you long for the good old days? Do you still too sweet? Every stranger wearing an NWO shirt? But check out the

brand new nostalgia podcast. Be kind. Let's rewind. Join three lifelong friends as they discuss television, movies, music, and pop culture from the 80s, 90s, and beyond. They've covered topics ranging from personalities like Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan to movies like Predator and Happy Gilmore. They also have live interviews with authors like John Finkel and our buddy Brad. How about that? Even have the Batman executive producer Michael Euslin. Be sure to check out John and Brad's books, Macho Man, the Untamed, and the Unbelievable life of Randy Savage.

And how about our favorite, the six-pack from our buddy Brad? It's the six-pack on the road in search of WrestleMania. Join Be Kind, Let's Rewind for weekly segments such as Booze of the Week. Shit stuck in my head this week and the now infamous pizza gorilla and of course

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The lights are going out, and when they come back on, Savage is out cold in the ring, and there's a sting mask on his face. And during this nitro, we see the sting dummy come down from the rafters and go through the ring. I know, right? The NWO guys pick it up and put it on the ropes. But when Hogan goes to take the mask off, it's the real sting and the sting beats up the NWO. By the way, this happened on December 8th, 1997. What a moment this is to see this sting dummy just go all the way through the ring.

A nice little stunt well put together. and then the old switcheroo with the real sting good stuff it was amazing god i can't wait when this shows over i'm gonna go back and watch all this stuff because i think it was some of the best professional wrestling we've ever seen over an extended period of time i really do in 97 the stuff that you're describing you know point to anything you know that's lasted more than a month that was remotely as good as this just i don't think it's happened on the december 15th nitro sting plays more mind games going around the arena when the lights are going out the show goes off the air as sting walks to the ring for hogan a week later december 22nd this is

the go home nitro for starcade you're in the ring doing a promo with hulk hogan a guy comes in the ring and hands hulk are present Hulk opens it and it's oh this is awesome i remember this is awesome it's a fake head of himself and it looks just like him yes it does Hulk is freaking out yelling and screaming jumping up and down sting appears at the top of the entrance zip lines into the ring as the show goes off the air the fake ad was made by Andre freightus at AFX studios in the outskirts of Atlanta Georgia I think he still has it quite a remarkable little uh piece of of artistry because it is a really really good replica I think he even did like a plaster cast I mean it's high quality movie level shit and a nice

little go home piece when do you think you guys started working on this and and i just to catch everybody up there was a big celebration where you'd been giving gifts to hulk the entire episodes it didn't feel weird that he got another one but you're sort of denying no no that's not for me no i didn't do that one i don't know what this isn't i didn't i give hulk a harley yes and ellis accidentally drove your harley to the ring and you could tell that was not no here's a little backstory of that i actually bought that Harley. I mean, it wasn't a stunt gift. It wasn't a show prop. I actually, I had a, I had a chopper built by a guy, a guy by the name of Vinnie Bergman in Long Beach, California. He was one of the original chopper builders before Jesse James and everybody else got aboard

and choppers became kind of a thing. And Vinny Bergman built a chart. It was a prototype called the ground pounder. And I really, really I went to his shop one day and he showed me he said look at this this is a prototype you know it's not for sale or anything but it's a prototype I'm trying to figure it all out and I said no I got to have that

prototype he was running he said I got to have that so he sold me the prototype but I actually I loved it as fast as fuck hard to hold on to though because it was all raked out and you know I got I'm reaching out my arms are fully extended it had drag bars

on it no it had a pinger on it at the time when I first bought it. And now my arms are fully stretched. I literally would have like the tips of my fingers and maybe a little bit of the second knuckle, you know, onto the throttle and the brake candle. And I'd hit that thing and have like an 88 inch cubic inch, no, it was a 96 cubic inch motor on it, which is really fast. But on a chopper, there's no weight.

It's just a frame and wheels. Yeah. And I'd hit that thing. I remember they delivered to, I was saying at the Ritz Carlton and Marina del Rey. California when viny and his team delivered the bike to me and I couldn't wait to get it out so I don't know if you've been to the marina dill way ritz carlton there but it's got that little circular parking lot and a nice road out in front of it I got on that bike and didn't really get a feel for it I've been on motorcycles all my life got out on the main street there that the ritz

carlton was on and I like an asshole said I was going to give it a little bit a little bit of gas I'd never been on a bike that fast in my life it threw me back The torque had a bike threw me backwards so much that I grabbed a hold of the throttle to try to hold on. But because I was falling backwards or, you know, being pulled backwards, I actually, you know, lay more gas on it. I didn't have lost that motherfucker. But I figured it out after a while how to ride it. But it was such a cool bike. And Hulk had actually bought me a Harley for Christmas in 95.

I didn't expect it, had no idea it was coming. You know, I wasn't making a ton of money at the time. I was, I don't know where I was in the pay scale, probably a couple hundred grand, which is a lot of money. I'm not saying it wasn't, but it's not like I had money to burn. Buying a Harley with two young kids wasn't on my list of things to do, nor Mrs. B's. So I was at home one day and got a phone call and said, hey, there's something waiting for you down at this Harley shop. I thought, oh, that'd be cool.

Maybe somebody bought me a jacket or something for Christmas to go down here. And it's a 1995, it was called a bad boy, was the model, it was a Springer. And I thought, wow, that is fucking awesome. So when I finally started making more money, I decided to return a favor. So that bike that I gave him was identical to mine. And I think that motorcycle is in Hogan's beach shop in Orlando. Yeah, we saw it there a couple of times. years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a legit Christmas gift, by the way. Talk to me about the

head coming out of the box and doing a little movie magic here. Well, you pointed out. I mean, that was Andre. Andre Fretas was an extremely creative guy. A little on a dark side, a little spooky, but super nice guy and amazingly talented. And I do believe that was his idea. not mine not hawks it was like hey what if we did this because he was you know smart guy he was watching all the stunts we're doing and the variations of those stunts and ways to keep things fresh and keep the audience off balance and still stay within the context of the story and i think that was his idea and it took about i think it took about six weeks to pull that off really remarkable stuff again if you want to see the head in the box what's in the box sort

of seven style it's december 22nd 1997 and of course six days later, the biggest paper of you in WCW history, Starcade 97, easily the most anticipated match in WCW history, you thought Flair and Hogan was a big deal, man, you took your time telling this story, Sting Hogan for the world title, the biggest. We did a whole episode on it. We don't need to get into the, uh, the ends and outs of that one. Check it out in the archives. Uh, we've already beat this up and debated it so much that I don't think we need to do it

again, but, um, thank God. Thank God. Oh, my, you do. just made my day during 97 sting becomes the number two merch seller in the business without even wrestling one match so to be clear the NWO in 1997 selling more than everybody I know people like to think that the Austin 316 shirt was huge in 97 and it was but it would really take uh to another level stone cold shirt sales would in 98 and 97 sting is number two and he doesn't have of any matches until the end of December who was number one the NWO oh yeah okay okay so the NWO in the entire industry yeah across the board yeah so NWO is number one sting is number two I didn't even know that until you told me that that's really interesting pretty remarkable um melzer would write about the match that we've decided we're not going to talk about it would turn a great phrase to say

the 16 months of work was exposed about halfway through stings walked down the aisle and before he ever got in the ring. The mythical superhero turned human right before the fans' very eyes. It wasn't as if it was a bad wrestling match that did it, although the match itself was bad. But you could see the initial pop after all the hype and special effects didn't even last until Sting made it to the ring. The match itself was a struggle. The finish was totally botched up.

Sting did leave as champion, but after WCW's most successful quarter in history, the record-breaking show raised more questions about the future than answers. then the record revenue will provide. So let's talk about it, you know, do you think, and it's a minor thing, do you think that perhaps the spectacle of Sting's entrance and the way the match starts and he makes his way to the ring and just the overall presentation could have been or should have been handled a little differently? I think it could have been, in hindsight, absolutely should have been.

You know, and I'll take responsibility for that. my bad my fault um not there's nothing i could say to defend or justify it it was one of the things not the most important thing but a very important thing because the you know it's the first act in the match right it's the first it's the beginning well it's also the thing that got fans so fired up they're used to seeing him in the ceiling and repelling down and it's such a cool thing i think there was an expectation that he would do it and when he just walks out from the back it feels a little like he's just like everybody else yeah yep some of the is gone i'll take that criticism and uh and have to live with it it's true let's uh at least

read what meltzer wrote about the match sting won the wcd title for the fourth time beating a polk hogan in 12 minutes and 54 seconds sting in a sleeveless outfit looked really small compared to the past hogan looked lighter than usual as well not much of a match sting through a few drop kicks but mainly hogan dominated Hogan's selling was pathetic. Sting did a no-sell spot on a suplex and then pointed to his crotch a la DX or the NWO so much for product differentiation.

Hogan then tried to use Sting's bat on him, et cetera, et cetera. Fast forward, you know the end of the finish, but I just thought it was interesting that since you and I beat it up so thoroughly before, um, that when Meltzer writes up the match, the first thing he mentions is how Sting doesn't look himself.

no and you know it's it's become kind of a not even an inside joke anymore you know to be the man you got to be tan and we fuck we sell t-shirts yeah yeah and and i know people you know hung on to that and i still get twitter feed you know commentary about that but and i'm not going to get into things personal life that'll be up to steve boredon someday it's not my position love the guy too much respect him too much not going to go there

but it is fair to say that yeah when when Steve showed up in my opinion as well as Hulks not prepared yet the Tian was one aspect of it

but as Dave pointed out visibly to the audience he was not the same guy and there was a reason for it. And it was a human reason. And I understand it. And I'm not trying to deflect criticism. I'm not trying to justify. I don't. I don't give a fuck what people think anymore about it. I really don't. It is what it is. I can't change it. But to really understand it, Those listeners who really want to feel like they're getting a little bit more than just a topical explanations of things, Steve Borden, the human being, was not prepared mentally or physically, as Dave Meltzer pointed out, or emotionally, he was not prepared.

And we had to make a change. We had to adjust on the fly. we had to think about, okay, all this great story, all this great planning, and I don't mean to try to make anybody feel bad. It is what it is, it was what it was. We've all lived through it and prospered, so it's good. But in that moment, it was not the same Steve Borden or Sting in the eyes of the audience that we thought we had, and the rest is history.

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thank Lutu for sponsoring today's podcast. About that match, Sting once said in an interview, quote, very, very hard thing to live up to. You know, they pushed it and pushed it and pushed it and pushed it and and yeah, it was very, very difficult. I was out of the ring for 12 months and Hogan's knees were really bad at the time. See, it was a little difficult and probably didn't live up the hype. And what's sort of weird and stood out to me really in a big way at the time is after the match, which Meltzer gave a quarter star to. Stink's first words into the camera are in Spanish. He says something mamacita. Weird. You just go back to my previous comments. Yeah. There's been rumors, you know,

and we've touched on this before, but I want to just follow up. There's been a lot of rumors because of the way the finish happened were a month that removed or maybe six or seven weeks removed from the Montreal screw job. Brett Hart's going to stop in and say, oh, I'm not letting this happen again. So we're trying to tell a similar story to the quote unquote smart fans about what's happened on the other station. Earl Hebner was a big piece of that. There's been rumors that you guys tried to sign Earl Hebner away from the company in order to be a part of this match, which I guess would have made sense. Do you remember that being even a discussion? it could have been you know it could have come up in a in a booking meeting i when you say you know

we tried to sign them i don't think that's true but it doesn't mean that there wasn't some discussion about it yeah there was at least an idea um let's talk about the next night um they do a rematch the show goes off the air while the match is still going on it's an old trick from the 80s i guess to get fans to watch uh the next week but i don't know it doesn't feel like as great of a 1997 as it was the finish is a bit of a letdown perhaps due to you know maybe we're not paying great attention to the details like maybe stings should have came down from the ceiling maybe we overbooked ourselves with the finish with brett heart and fast count and all the other stuff but you've also got as you said there's an underlying you know he's just

not himself right now if you had to go back is there much you could or would change about the way 97 finished, you know, here in late December was staying? Well, sure. Sure. That's the luxury of either being an armchair quarterback, which most people are, or almost everyone is, or 2020 hindsight, of course, of course. Had I known then, what I know now, of course. How many times have we all said that to ourselves?

Sure. Fuck, had I known that the winning lottery, the powerball ticket was going to be sold in New Jersey last August 14th at a 7-Eleven store, I would have been first in fucking line for it. But you don't know what you don't know, you know. And some of it was, I mean, there were a lot of things. You know, it was, I mean, just kind of look at a couple things that were going on at this point. we self-inflicted some damage, right? Momentum. Bodge finish, bad match, not setting it up properly, as you and Meltzer pointed out,

or as Melzer pointed out, you reiterated. There were some things that we could have done to. But, you know, guess what? The match would have still been the match. The guy wasn't in it. Yes, I used, you know, the fact that you didn't have a tan as an example. One small example, because I wasn't nor will. I now go into great detail, but that was one example of just not being, you know, some of the

basic things, you know, it's, it's like showing up to fly a plane and for leaving your glasses at home, you know, some basic shit you've got to kind of, you know, bring with you to work. Right. And, yeah, that was part of it. Sting was right in his recap of that match. Hogan was hurting. His knees were bad. We should have, in hindsight.

What could I have done differently? What could Hulk have done differently? What could Sting of different? What could we all have done differently? In Hulk's case, you know, rather than trying to, you know, just power through and having the same type of match that he had had in the past or could see in his head, which was probably more of the case, his body wasn't listening to his brain. It couldn't. It's not that he didn't want to. It's just that his body wouldn't do what his brain was telling him to do.

And it was obvious to the audience. And it was because of injuries, not lack of effort or caring or wanting to. put forth the effort. It was what it was. But could we have laid out a match that took those things into consideration as opposed to trying to work around them unsuccessfully? Absolutely. Would that have made a difference?

Maybe. Had Sting been in the right frame of mind and prepared? Maybe. But the other thing that, you know, everybody has to keep in mind is by this time, W.W.E's pouring on the gas. Oh, yeah. All right? 97, they were flogging themselves with wet rolls of, you know, tissue paper.

They were beating the fuck. They couldn't hit their ass with both hands at a compass in 1997, 96. By late 1997, I think it was late 1997, Vince McMahon did his famous, we're going to reinvent, you know, creative and we're going to listen to the family. He knew he was getting his ass stomped and he had to change his, you know, tried and true formula of, you know, character-driven, kind of animated cartoonish storytelling. And he started to adopt what we were doing with the NWO, which later became the attitude era.

And they did it in a powerful way. And by 1998, you know, end of 97, early 98, it wasn't just that we were making missteps. It was that WWE was making big, correct steps and repositioning their product and the way they presented it to their audience. So it was kind of a double whammy of self-inflicted, you know, damage as well as pressure being put on us and the audience being taking away by some of the crazy over-the-top attitude air stuff that was going on in WWE. So it was a double whammy to a degree. We took to Twitter and asked if you guys had any questions for Eric. And if you'd like to ask a question about next week's show, follow us on Twitter at 83 weeks.

That's at 83 weeks. and you could ask a question. So we're going to hit a few of these reader questions, listener questions, and we'll try to do them rapid fire. Eric, are you ready? I'm ready. Cody Lee writes in,

what was he whispering to wrestlers before giving them the scorpion death drop? Of course, he's probably trying to make him laugh in real life, but was there supposed to be a storyline piece behind him occasionally whispering at the guy before he hits him with the death drop?

Not a storyline piece. I think it was just something, again, improv, you know, good part of everything that you saw back then was some very, very talented people, you know, improvving because they thought it would enhance the moment and the character. Barry McPhee writes, after the quite literally insane deafening pop, Sting got taking out all the NWO at the end of March's uncensored pay-per-view, did you question holding until Starcade, or is that what made you hold until Starcade? the answer is neither um had no doubt holding to starcade was a good idea uh nor was it the impetus behind it and we were kind of already committed let me ask you've you've said before i've always thought hey starcate is is wcdb's hallmark event and you and even tony shivani have both said well really it was probably hallowing havoc was there ever consideration to maybe move it up and have him do it a Halloween Havoc in Las Vegas?

No, and the reason why it's such a, I don't even know the word for it. It was an instinct. You know, Sting was about as much of an icon, a WCW icon as Flair, not quite as much. Flair was the guy. But right below Flair was Sting. and because Starcade was historically at least one of our biggest paper views or one of our our longest running tent poles maybe traditional tent poles and because Sting was traditionally a WCW guy that was the reason why I picked Starcade it just seemed to fit better than Halloween Havoc Halloween Havoc didn't need it Halloween Havoc was already doing really really well as a tent pole

it kind of had its own character so to speak Starcade not so much so I think the idea was to hold it off to Starkey because of that because of the history and the lineage and Sting's relationship with WCW and also because Starcade needed something that Halloween Havoc didn't Sean Wolford writes in

did you ever consider having Sting work major market house show matches against members of the NWO to build towards Starcade. Nope. And in hindsight, major market house shows, do you think that would have been a good idea? Nope. Okay. Nope. Number one, we didn't need it. We were printing money. Sure. You were selling out either way, I guess is your point. Yeah, we were printing money. We were selling out without him. Um, when I talked earlier in this episode about discipline and building mystique, that's a part of it.

You've got to be able to abandon the formula to a certain degree in this case. We had to abandon the formula that we would normally use partly, and we could afford it because we didn't need it. But if you're going to commit, commit. Don't kind of commit. Don't compromise. And that's

one of the reasons the angle worked and the story worked and the character work because we didn't compromise it for short-term gain. It certainly wouldn't have done anything to satisfy people all over the country in major markets by giving him something in, you know, in a live house show and then basically giving them something similar on a paper view that you were building towards. So I think to manage the mystique and to maintain the mystique, the decision was a good one. I think the question was more to help Sting maybe work off some ring rust. Well, I mean, that's a very good question. And I'm sorry.

I interpreted it incorrectly. No, that, in hindsight, could that have been a good idea? It would have compromised the character. So, in a sense, I probably wouldn't have done it. Anyway, would it have worked off the ring rust? Sure, but Steve's problem wasn't ring rust. Right. I got you.

All right. That's, it wasn't the issue. We'll move along. Will Coxon writes and hindsight to the fact that the WCW locker room came to the ring when Steen beat Hogan and the fact that Sting jumps into the waiting arms of the giant kind of ruin his character. He sort of loses that you can stick an attitude with me when he does that. Let's say you.

I agree. Spontaneous moment that worked against us. I'm not critical. I'm not critical. You know, an argument could be made, I guess, creatively. I'm not buying it, but it could be made that it's time for that crow scary sting character to hang it up and become the aversion of his previous character because he finally put a stake through the heart of the, you know, the vampire, meaning the NWO.

He finally did what he accomplished after all those, after all that time, and all those challenges and all the obstacles thrown in his way, all of the things that put him at risk. The stakes were high. He finally, he won. He achieved his goal. So arguably, I guess, someone could make the case that it, makes a little bit of sense. 2020 hindsight,

I would have preferred not. Just so our listeners understand, what Stings contract, we talked earlier about how he was the number two merchandise seller, what Stink's contract allowed him to participate in that, or was that all inclusive of his guarantee? Oh, God, this is horrible,

but I don't really remember. I hate making shit up. Sure. It's no problem. Swerve in the audience, but I think I'm going to take a whack at it, but I think there were percentages involved, but much,

much lower than WWE. I think there was participation, but a much lower participation as a result of the guaranteed contracts. Let's talk about bats. Kevin Albus wants to know, were they always prop baths or gimmick bats or sometimes they use real bats? Sometimes we use real bats.

In fact, we didn't start using prop bats until, you know some of our shows started turning into bat fests and then and then you had to or you're going to be killing people see jerk jay wants to know did you have sting work out at the power plant to prepare for his main event with holkoven no all right i mean i'll i'll go back to what i said earlier sure um no there's a lot of uh debate. I don't know that it could really be argued. I think most people think about all the great moments in Stink's career and they would maybe point to different matches. But Stink's best year is

probably 1997 and he had one fucking match or two. Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. Amazing. Remarkable. It just shows you what can be done if you have a great imagination. And you're committed and discipline. And you get lucky and all the things that go into success. It's not one thing. It's really not. I wish it was, because it would be so much easier, and there'd be so much more success. But, you know, some, it's a great idea. It's, it's original ideas, it's planning, it's execution, it's timing. So much of it is timing, which I refer to as luck, but, you know. You've talked a lot on the show about how Kevin Sullivan booked heat.

what role did he play in the West Sting was booked in 97? I mean, it was a certain part of it, you know, but I mean, hard to kind of quantify it. Sure. I'll qualify it by saying yes. He was definitely a part of the process. But was he 75% of it, 20% of it, 10% of it?

Guess what? Any given week, it could change. You know, we were all on that boat, everybody, the talented, you know, Sting and Hulk and Scott Hall and Kevin Nash and any, a number of talents, you know, Savage, Page, everybody was involved and any one of them could have come up with an idea that trumped everybody else's. And in that particular week, he could have been 80% of all the creative in that particular week. And the next week, he didn't even show up. So it depends. I would say across the board, Kevin didn't have a lot to do with the NWO angle as far as the conceit of it, the idea of it, the original premise of it. In fact, nothing to do with it at all.

But what Kevin did do, and I think if it was up to Kevin Nash, when I talked to Kevin, I was in Qatar with Qatar, not Cutter, Mucker Fathers, Qatar with Kevin and we talked for a couple hours and we talked about Kevin Sullivan a lot

and Kevin is a big fan Kevin Nash is a big fan of Kevin Sullivan's and felt that had it not been because you know we had a chance

to spend hours kind of looking back and Nash felt that had it not been for Kevin Sullivan and his ability to manage the talent

and by manage the talent I mean giving them you know emotional and psychological aspirins to get through the fact that the entire formula was being turned upside down and on its head and that the baby faces weren't getting comebacks and at least in the

very beginning and the crucial evolution of the NWO story. It took a lot of convincing and counseling and handholding and babysitting and cocktails and all kinds of other things to get talent through the fact that the formula that they've been using throughout their entire careers at that point was now being thrown out the window and anarchy rules and convincing them that eventually the baby faces will make their comeback.

Not next week. Not next month. Maybe next year. And that was a tough pill to get a lot of talent to swallow because they were completely, they were on unfirm ground. You know, there was no terra firma

anywhere near them. They were walking in quicksand every single week when they showed up because the formula, their experience, all the things that they learned was in many respects being tossed out the window and they were being asked to learn a new psychology. Valentine Michaels writes in, did WCW ever get a cease and desist from Miramax for Sting's makeup being an exact copy

of the Crow makeup? Nope. We probably would today. Sure. Fast forward. If it was, you know, the NWO and every aspect of it was, you know, being revealed today, you'd probably get a couple dozen lawsuits from a bunch of different people. But fortunately, it was.

1997 and we didn't have that issue it's it's so weird to think how much of this is just great timing too because really if you think about it given what we know the tragedy is going to be with own heart you know had that happened before this crow character he never would have been in the rafters to begin with I doubt that you think maybe you still would have we did we we we dropped staying out of the rafters after Owen Hart I just don't think it would been as often as I guess my point. It was a staple there for a while where it felt like every single week afterwards. You know what? You know what? I think though, Conrad, we wouldn't have not done it, but I don't think the audience would have been as excited about it. Yeah. I don't mean that the

risk changed. I just mean, you know, from a, from a, I don't know, sensibility standpoint. Maybe it's not the right thing. I don't, we weren't there. And I don't, I certainly don't mean any disrespect to Owen Hart's family or any heart for that matter but when somebody gets killed on a NASCAR track when Dale or Her and Art Sr. got killed on a NASCAR

track. Yes they made modifications helmets changed there was an analysis done people didn't stop driving yeah you know what I mean and we did the same we certainly you know double checked and

re-evaluated what we were doing for safety issues as a result much like NASCAR did but we didn't stop doing it but i do think your point had timing been different and it's hard for me even to talk about this but if the oh and heart situation would have happened early in 97 even though we may have continued doing it i think the audience would have reacted adversely to it yeah at the very least it wouldn't have been something that they would they got nearly as excited about as they did there's lots of questions about you know sting that day and i know we've sort of tiptoed around some stuff so uh we'll try to answer this however we can but brian derby writes considering sting did not repel from the ceiling nor did he go over cleanly i've heard there were outside of the ring

issues i have to ask in your opinion did sting arrive to starcate intoxicated no yeah i've never heard that's not it that was not it it's got nothing to do with it and if i've ever said anything to imply it i want to make it clear right now um i didn't mean that that was not the it was a personal issue not related to drugs or alcohol marcus steel right writes in on the november 10th 1997 episode of nitro why did eric let hogan show sting without his face pain on on the set of a movie while he was in the ring later on in the night does eric think the NW. beat down of Sting was a mistake.

Maybe he'd do it a different way today. I'm going to pass on that one because I don't remember it. Well, what I do remember is that we've got a lot of new stuff on our brand new super Patreon. It's ad-free shows.com. You could have listened to this show early and ad-free if you were a supporter over on the new Super Patreon.

And right now there is a brand new bonus episode. up of maybe one of our most requested topics. It's the story of Eric Bischoff's 83 days in the WWE. Of course, it wasn't exactly 83 days, but that became the joke. We even sort of tongue and cheek referenced catering a few times here. Eric, we taped this episode earlier in the week. Now fans can hear your side of the story at ad-free shows.com. Do you regret doing it?

Are you glad you finally got some of that off your chest? No, I don't regret doing it at all. you know i had to be um it'd be a little careful how i did it but happy to do it and i'm i'm you know despite how things turned out and we'll talk about it more on patreon obviously but uh if i had to do it all over again i would so there you go tune in for more details absolutely adfree shows dot com you get your shows early you get them ad free you get all the notes and research we do with the show and some bonus content check it out pretty affordable adfree shows starts at just nine bucks a month.

You don't just get this show. You get all five of my shows here on Westwood One. So you'll get Eric and Arne and Tony and J.R. and Bruce, the whole gang. Go check it out today. Adfree shows.com. Don't forget to take a look at some of those shirts. You can check out Eric's new favorite shirt. Yes, I am a model.

That's available at Eric Bischoff.com. And we appreciate all the sponsors support this week on the show. And if you'd like to advertise on the show, email our main man, Dave Green, Hey, Hey, Hey, Advertising at Gmail.com. or just look into it a little more at advertise with conrad.com. Until next week, we'll see you right here each and every week on Westwood One. It's Eric Bischoff. It's 83 weeks on Westwood One.

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