83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 345: The Russo Era Begins - Nitro 10.25.99

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad take a look back 25 years to the beginning of the Vince Russo era in WCW. The guys discuss how the first Monday Nitro under the control of Russo is undoubtedly the return of "crash tv" to professional wrestling. Eric shares his thoughts an viewpoints of the product after he left the company and recognizes now why Turner executives were calling him begging him to come back. Watch along with the guys on Peacock season 5 episode 42 TECOVAS - Get 10% off at https://www.tecovas.com/83WEEKS when you sign up for email and texts. CHRIS VAN VLIET - Check out "Insight" with Chris Van Vliet as he welcomes wrestling superstars each and every week for an in-depth interview about their life and career. You can find "Insight" with Chris Van Vliet wherever you download your podcasts. TRUE CLASSIC - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic https://www.trueclassictees.com/?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=83Weeks&utm_campaign=podscale ! #trueclassicpod LUMEN - Take the next step in improving your health, go to https://www.lumen.me/83WEEKS to get 15% off your Lumen.  MANSCAPED - Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code 83WEEKS at https://www.manscaped.com/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADOo6mBNOS9rQrvdC12xrAUD0RTNU&gclid=Cj0KCQjw05i4BhDiARIsAB_2wfAGbDtnZO9wsa0cjliySeXtGu6FZwnbXWr-bgCa04NzQNnboAQQ_b8aAjKREALw_wcB.  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 MAGIC SPOON - MAGIC SPOON - Get $5 off your next order through https://magicspoon.com/83WEEKS , or look for Magic Spoon in your nearest grocery store! SAVE WITH ERIC - 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/savewitheric/ 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

Save with Conrad.com. Eric Ward and Franklin, Tennessee. I first heard about Save with Conrad through a couple wrestling broadcast I listened to. 83 weeks and what happened when with Tony Shibani. And I decided to reach out and I'm so glad that I did. It was an absolute fabulous process. I was in a transition mode. I recently sold a home and I was looking for a mortgage on a new home purchase.

And Diana and the team at Supreme Lending was there to help him. They were absolutely fabulous and worked with. They were knowledgeable, responsive, and made the process incredibly smooth. And I'll tell you this, the online portal was an absolute game changer. It provided regular updates at every step, giving me full visibility into where we were at in the process. And on closing day, everything moved so fast and even my real estate agent was shocked. I'm telling you, I couldn't have been happy with the experience and would highly recommend

say with Conrad anyone looking for a seamless mortgage process. I'm Eric Bort from Franklin, Tennessee, and I got into my dream home with Save WithConrad.com. NMLS number 2129, Equal Housing Lender, SavewithConrad.com. 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, Conrad. Great to be with you. Am's Super Dave, and I'm looking forward to an exciting day in the middle of nowhere Wyoming hey it's going to be fun we hope you guys are joining us we're going to do something pretty special today we're going to watch the very first nitro of the vince russo era it went down exactly 25 years ago today and you can watch along

with us over on peacock at season five episode 42 i can't believe it's been 25 years eric does it feel like it's been 25 years to you no it feels like it was yesterday it was september 10th it's 1999. I'm driving down the road. I'm on my way to my office. Nothing particular big happening that day. I think I was going to roll in around 930, 10 o'clock. And I get a phone call from Harvey as I'm on my way to the office saying, Eric, come up to my office as soon as you get in. And the rest is history. But I remember it well. It's crazy to think, too, there's like this lame duck period about six weeks after your exit before the very first Vince Rousseau Nitro. Of course, this happens at the very end of October, October 25th.

We know, though, that Rousseau met with WCW on October 2nd, signed his deal and informed Vince McMahon on October 3rd. Vince McMahon was returning from a UK-only pay-per-view rebellion when he finds out that his head writer had signed with WCW. And that's what we're going to be talking about here today. This is the three-hour era of Nitro. So without further ado, let's get going. Get your peacock ready.

October 25th, 1999. That's season 5, episode 42. I'm locked and loaded on my side. Eric, you ready on your side? Ready to go. Here we go. And three, two, one, play. Man, there's that cat's ass logo.

You've said before that's a Jay Hossman thing? Jay Hathman, yeah, Nick Lambros, who was originally assigned to us as an attorney through Turner Broadcasting, ended up coming to work for me at WCW. he was my vice president, but he was an attorney that wanted to do more than just being an attorney, which I understand, being kind of an administrative entertainment attorney is not always the most exciting job, but came over to WCW, left Turner Legal, came to WCW as vice president and really wanted to expand into other divisions of the company. He wanted to be in charge of different divisions and one of them was marketing. Hence, the decision to rebrand WCW in terms of its

logos and sets. And it was really Nick Lambros who hired Jay Hasman to come in and rebrand WCW. We're doing this show from Phoenix. There's 9,630 people who were there. They paid $217,857 at the gate. And we just opened before we saw the open of the show here. with Sting, the real life Steve Borden. I say the real life Steve Borden because my man wasn't wearing any paint. And he's in the backstage area, throwing chairs. He's clearly upset. As a reminder, this is the night after Halloween Havoc, 1999.

What did you think of showing Sting here, Sands, costume, or makeup? I mean, I wouldn't have done it. I understand why Rousseau thought it might be a good idea if he wanted to somehow maybe connect with viewers at a different level by letting everybody know that there's a real person behind the desk. So I get that, but it's a bad idea. It's not that it doesn't make sense in some ways, but overall, if you had to put a positive weight in one hand and a negative weight in the other, the negative weight would weigh out. It just doesn't give you a good return on your investment.

The character doesn't feel the same anymore. Sometimes the audience doesn't want to know what their fantasy really looks like or what their hero really looks like under the mask. So I think they kind of blew it in that respect. Briefly, while we're hearing Sting do a promo here, I want to run down what exactly happened at Halloween Havoc 99, just to give some context. Disco Inferno retained the Cruiserweight title,

pinning Lash LaRue in seven and a half minutes. It was announced before the show that Ray Mysterio Jr. was injured. So the tag titles were held up and they're going to be decided in a three-way match here with Harlem Heat regaining the titles for exactly one night when they beat Conan and Billy Kidman

and Brian Knobbs and Hugh Morris. That just feels like a mess. Hey, he can't defend the titles. So here's three new tag teams and somebody's going to win them. That's what we did. Eddie Guerrero over Perry Saturn by DQ. Brad Armstrong over Berlin.

Yeah, Brad Armstrong won a match on pay-per-view at four minutes and 23 seconds. We would see Rick Steiner regain the WCW television title from Chris Benoit. Lex Lugar beat Brett Hart in seven minutes and 46 seconds. They're going to do a Hogan sting angle next. Hogan at first isn't going to come out when he finally does. He's in street closed. He's going to whisper something to sting. lay down and then Sting covers him and the ref counts three. No bell ever sounds.

Bill Goldberg is going to beat Sid Vicious to win the U.S. title. Diamond Dallas Page beat Rick Flair in a strap match and Goldberg beat Sting and was given the WCW heavyweight title in a whole three minutes and eight seconds. And that gets us to where we are now where we're seeing Sting sort of dressed down J.J. Dillon. And this, feels i'm not saying it is but it feels like a heel version of sting i mean he's even going to wind up putting the scorpion death lock on j jillian and j j j's going to tap out of course it's not a match i don't know why he's tapping out but what do you make it's just it's muscle memory that's all it's just muscle memory he had a flashback to the four horseman days

i don't think they i don't even think tapping out was a thing in the four horsemen days but still i get your point. What we're going to do here is we're going to have JJ say, hey, I agree with you, but we're going to strip the belt because he attacked Charles Robinson after the match and we're going to start a 32-man tournament starting with this television show today. And we're going to crown a new champion on November 21st in Toronto. So on the one hand, you know, he's giving him what he wants, he's agreeing that Goldberg shouldn't be the champion. But we're announcing a 32-person tournament. With the benefit of hindsight, have tournaments in wrestling ever worked? I don't think they've ever drawn. We'll talk about that in a moment, but I got to

point something out. This was essentially what the issue was at Bash at the Beach. Not the issue, but the plan, if we've talked about this before, people will probably remember. remember, you know, Vince Russo has his version of what happened at Bash of the Beach to this day. I have mine and Hulk's. But the idea that we pissed that eventually was kicked out, right? Brad Siegel sided with Russo and Russo went into business for his own. Russo got his way. He got to shoot his version of what he wanted to do at Bash of the Beach instead of what Hulk and I wanted to do at Bash at the Beach.

instead of what Hulk and I wanted to do at Bash at the Beach was to end Bash at the Beach in some kind of a controversial finish where, you know, Hogan walks out the door with the belt. WCW's forced to create a new world title because Hogan's gone. He ain't coming back. And then we have a tournament to create a new champion. Here we are. It's an interesting, it's just an interesting comparison.

It's really the same idea. it's still weird for me to see sting not in the backstage area not wearing paint but just out in front of the camera without it here comes goldberg full head of steam he's like a bull in a china shop out there with sting what do you make us see in goldberg back in the wwee scene you know we we thought it was a one-off but boy there sure is a lot of rumor and innuendo that maybe he'll be at crown jewel or maybe there's more plans with goldberg do you think we've seen the last to Goldberg and WWB? You know, I don't know.

I keep hearing these little tidbits. You know, they laid a little, they planted a little bit of a seed. And I think it's the kind of thing that they can decide to water that seed and, you know, keep it growing and keep it alive until they make a decision or just, you know, let it dry out and die. I don't know. Here's my bet. Like if he said, you've got to make a bet. You've got to make a bet.

I would bet that we'll see Bill again. I would bet most likely it'll be in Saudi because the Saudis have a very large appetite for characters from the 90s. That's what their audience is Saudi is most familiar with or had been for such a long time. So I think to me it seems like Bill's one of the last of that era of major talent that can still get in the ring and still go. Everybody else, and I know this because I was there. for a minute in wwee every time that we would go through the list of legends that are available

for an event particularly for saudi because that's what they were looking for they were all on do not touch lists meaning you know that was their category they can't they could be at ringside they can run their mouth they could do promos they could do all that stuff but you can't touch him bill's not on the do not touch list at least he wasn't in 2019 and i suspect he's still not so maybe but i think it'll be and Sonny. We're seeing Tony Chivani looking all suited and booted here. He's got a colorful tie on. He's got a window pane blazer on.

Like, how about Tony getting all dolled up here for the first Nitro of the Vince Russo era? Yeah, not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. It's a new look for Tony. It looks good here. Drop some weight. Got a nice suit on.

Looks like it actually fits them. Usually Tony wears. suits like the suits fit them but the arms are like three inches too long yeah he goes to michael hayes taylor uh huh he uses michael hayes tailor but he needs well there you go all you see is tony's fingertips out of the bottom of the cuff of his suit coat so this would fit him really well looks good on them so there you see one of the brackets uh and there's the second bracket and look medusa is in the bracket against a mystery opponent that's real david flair has a shot to be world champion.

So does Brian Knobbs and Medusa. Oh, wow. This is right. Like, what are we doing? Like, I didn't even realize this.

I didn't watch this. So there's no way that I would have noticed it. I don't think about it. So there's no way I'd remember it. So this is like freaking news to me. Medusa getting a shout at the World Heavyweight Championship. Wow. How progressive is that?

Well, you got to remember he's fresh off of China being in a pretty high profile spot. That's a good point. Right before he left, you know, he was programming China versus Jeff Jarrett. And we know that, well, Jeff Jarrett's going to follow Vince Rousseau to WCW. And China is going to be the intercontinental champion, not to be outdone. Okay, you got a lady who's the IC champ. What if we had a lady who was the world champ?

And we know eventually that did happen in TNA for Tessa Blanchard. Backstage, we're catching up with the former outsiders. And look who it is. It's Kevin Nash and Scott Hall with a big cooler. and there's Mike Graham telling them they're going to have to wrestle tonight. These guys are going to act like they're maybe a little tipsy, make some short man jokes at Mike Graham's expense. Yeah.

It's interesting because it wasn't that long ago. Kevin Nash was out there making fun of Arne Anderson for having a cooler at the shows. And two years later, here he is with his own cooler. The wrestling business will get you eventually. You can try as you might to, walk that straight and narrow to be that straight ed's character that punk has been successful with you can try very few people can succeed it's no surprise they're coming to work with the case of beer well here's the macho man randy savage doing a slim gym commercial and i'm sure

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And now here comes Bam Bam Bigelow coming to the ring. This is a sad era of my Bam Bam Bigelow fandom. I didn't like when my man was wrestling in T-shirts. I need the full fire body suit. It looks cool. I just don't like this look as much. much. And I know it's a silly thing, but I can always tell, uh, which era of Bam Bam it is based on what he's wearing. And this is probably not my favorite version. Is it just because of his,

or is it just because you don't like the kind of stories he was in or the people he was working with or nothing compelling? I just don't think Bam Bam ever was all that great in WCW. I don't think he was ever positioned all that great. Like I loved his work in ECW. And that's what thought we were going to get and we just didn't. Now, I do love the idea of this match in particular. I mean, this feels like you talk about styles clash, Norman Smiley and Bam Bam Bigelow. Come on. That's fun. And it's fun for us because it gives us a chance to see just how good Norman is. And by good, I mean, the ability to work with different people, different styles and to be able to adapt and to do it really well. That's the mark of a real pro. And I think that's,

I don't know. I don't remember seeing this match, but I would imagine that's what we're going to see out of Norman here. You're not going to see very much. Bam Bam's got a hurt back here. So it's only going to go like a minute and a half. And maybe that's why he's wearing the t-shirt too. He just,

he's injured, he's hurt. He's not feeling it. But hey, we've got a show to do. Man, look at those mustache on Nick Patrick. It's gracious.

What a mustache. Yeah, I think he was doing porn on the side at this time. That would make Tom Selleck jealous that mustache he's got right there. Nasty, nasty Nick Patrick. Oh, was that the deal nasty nick yeah he was an aspiring porn actor oh goodness gracious

listening just kidding nick come on now he's got a good sense of humor what was his finish would he count to three let's move on he made every match of no holds bart what are we doing never kicked out but he always pulled out oh well we got to move on uh hey we should mention go too far over the weekend of course we mentioned Halloween havoc the day before was Halloween Havoc, but two nights before in Las Vegas was a Mike Tyson fight. And allegedly you were at that Tyson fight with Hulk Hogan in Las Vegas, the same town where Halloween havoc was happening the very next night. Do you remember that? I don't. Do you remember ever going to a Mike Tyson fight? I've never been to it. Was I in a Tyson fight? Well, that's what was reported.

I'm asking. I don't recall ever being at a Tyson fight. fight. I'm actually sitting here going, man, it was it one of those trips to Las Vegas with Hulk where I maybe don't remember some stuff because there were more than one or two of those. But I don't remember going to a Tyson fight with Hogan. I'd remember that because Hogan would have gotten freaking mobbed. That's weird. Just the first time I think I'm hearing about it. I hope somebody could come back and say, here's a picture of you and Hulk at the Tyson fight so I can call Hulk and ask him how it was. But I don't really. remember it so i can listen to you um yeah i guess it was against orlin norris if that rings

a bell i don't even remember that ghost writer we've got a backstage interview now and it looks like kevin nash has a cold one in his hand he's got fubu he's wearing a fubu jersey and there is uh scott hall looking too cool for school as they're doing a little promo with mike teney we just recently passed Scott Hall's birthday. I saw you give him a shout out posthumously on social. Anytime I see Scott Hall, you know, his, his anniversary of, of his birth or his passing, is it weird that I just think of Kevin Nash first? No, it's not weird. Same thing happens with me, you know, when I look, when I think back at moments or times

that I, you know, look back at finally and sometimes even the ones I don't. And they were inseparable. They were almost one and the same. They truly were brothers and in many ways still are. And I miss Scott. You know, it's really interesting because I was really not that close to Scott. I mean, we didn't socialize away from the business much. We did a few times.

But not what people would think. But there's something about Scott that makes me miss him a lot. And I think it's because I got to say. a brief look into who Scott Hall really was and what he was capable of being. And I think it's just the missed opportunity that gets to me a little bit, not my opportunity, but Scott's opportunity. And, you know, the business is opportunity because if Scott would have been consistent with where he could, how well he could perform mentally and creatively,

he could have had an even bigger impact on the industry. So we're seeing some clips and some highlines. from what happened the night before we see the filthy animals here getting after Rick Flair. I know it's a silly thing, but I am seriously trying to see if this happened to jog your memory. It was one round that Tyson fight, and I guess Tyson threw a punch after the bell, and that took down Mr. Norris. Mr. Norris did not get off the stool to start round two, saying that he had hurt his knee in the fall. Tyson accused Norris of faking the injury, and then,

Then he filed a $2 million lawsuit against Tyson saying, you know, I was promised to rematch. I didn't get it. I would imagine if you went to a Tyson fight and it was a non-finish, it was a no contest, and his opponent didn't start the second round, you might remember that shit. Yeah, screw by Tyson. I'm, I'm, I'm watching what's walking down the aisle right now. Tori Wilson looking fine. Billy Kidman walking behind him with a video camera while she passes him by and gives him

A nice little strut. This is pretty fun. No, but you're right. I would generally, I would remember that, but here's what I'd really remember. I would remember getting to the building with Hulk because it would have been a lot of work. It wouldn't have been just, oh, where's our tickets? Let's go grab a seat. There would have been crowds.

There would have been, there would have been a process. I don't remember that. Now, it's possible. It's possible. When I was younger, yes. Especially at this point in time, I was in kind of a celebratory mood. by this point, it is possible that Hulk and I went out and I was there and I just don't really remember it because it went by fast, but I don't think I was ever there.

I don't think that event ever happened. And I'm anxious to find out if I had too much fun that night or if there's somebody out there writing bullshit that never happened. We got the filthy animals in the ring right now. That means a little promo time for Eddie Guerrero, Billy Kidman's here, Ray Mysterio's here, Konan's here and my goodness Tori Wilson is here

if you haven't watched this episode this is already one of my favorite episodes of Nitro and it's just because of Tori Roll Tide it's my favorite entrance of all time nobody tag Mrs. B in that on social hey we we got to mention

some other little news and notes from the time I can't believe this is real but this is what's written in The Observer there's been talk of Bischoff returning to either manage Hogan or manage Hall and Nash, according to one of the aforementioned three. It was even considered a debut him this week, but it was decided it hadn't been enough time since he was gone. The plan was also to keep Holland Nash in the crowd and not do angles or wrestle until December, but that's been rushed as well. Eric, I somehow don't believe that that you were ever in talks to come back as just a performer. It's just more Dave Meltzer bullshit and fiction.

that never happened. Nothing that could be misconstrued, nothing that happened that could be misconstrued even ever happened. It's just, it's nonsense. And just so you know, how little Dave Meltzer understands,

it's not like WCW could pick up the phone and say, okay, Eric, we want you to come back as a manager. I was done. Right. The payer played me. That bullet left the fucking barrel.

Once that bullet, the payer play bullet, leaves the barrel you can't put the bullet back and tell somebody to come back to work you just have to pay them and that's where i was so the idea that i would come first of all to manage anybody bad take anyway it's not unlikely i would have done that two i didn't need to do it and legally there's no way they could make me do it the conversation never happened a conversation should have happened when we were doing this angle we just were shown see the billy kidman video camera footage of burying Rick Flair in the desert.

We've heard about this in years since, but I don't think a lot of people remember one of Vince Rousseau's first creative decisions in his Nitro run was let's bury Rick Flair in the desert. Of course, we saw the filthy animals stuff him in the back of the ambulance there, runoff with the ambulance to the desert, and now we're going to bury him in the desert. And listen, I get that from a Las Vegas perspective. You take a look at, you know, really popular movies like casino and there's lots of conversation

about burying people in the desert in Las Vegas, you know, gangs and mafia and blah, blah, blah. I get all that. I think that makes sense. But it is a little silly to see a guy in his wrestling boots, his wrestling trunks, his knee pads, strapped to a gurney, and then we're going to pretend to bury him in the desert. But then show it on TV the next day. It's a little weird. It's a little stretch.

what do you think of that creative oh it's just awful it was this it Vince Russo likes to entertain himself um he writes for himself and this is the kind of humor and we're also you know you you connected it to to mob movies the the idea of burying or you know whatever bearing somebody in the desert and hiding the body but there's also the burying of rick flair whether it's in a desert or anywhere else so there's you got a double double entendre going on there, which I'm sure stimulated the fuck out of the neural pathways inside of Vince Russo's skull.

And that's probably why he did it. He didn't do it because it was part of a great story or it was an element of what could be a great story. He did it because he got a kick out of it. He is literally burying Rick Flair. It's written at the time in The Observer that this was borrowed from the movie Very Bad Things, which is a,

bit of a cult classic i don't think it was a hugely commercially successful movie but it's a wild one shame douglas here is uh well he's here in the aisleway and they're kidnapping tory how about that that's asia who's kidnapping tory and you see uh shame douglas there has his arm in an elbow cast they're doing an angle as a reminder here that if kirk henning loses a match by pinfall he's fired and we're seeing him discuss that now with Mike today something you and I got to discuss because I can't wait to get your take on this we've got breaking news while we're recording right now Eric I'm going to give you the news and let you process it for a minute here Brandon Thurston has tweeted out that

TKO will no longer consist of just WWB and UFC TKO has announced it is acquiring professional bull riders on location and IMG from Endeavor and TKO has also announced a stock buyback program. So essentially, Endeavor is selling its sports assets to TKO for $3.25 billion. So now it's WWE, it's UFC, it's on location, it's professional bull riders, it's IMG, they're all together, another $3.25 million deal. This is going to be something people are going to be talking about for weeks. And I'm sure there's going to be a lot of different takes on it. And if you're looking for some different takes, can I recommend Chris Van Vleet? If you love wrestling podcasts, and clearly you do because you're listening to this one,

don't let the fun stop on this episode ends. Have you ever checked out my buddy Chris Van Vleet show? It's called Insight with Chris Van Vleet. And man, he's doing some of the more interesting and in-depth interviews that you'll find anywhere in the wrestling space. And with big time stars, The Undertaker, Cody Rhodes, Drew McIntyre. Even Jesse Ventura. Hell, even I've been a guest there.

it is a who's who of big stars though not me because like dave batista and adam copeland and ray mysterio and booker t and christian cage and literally hundreds of others i'm a big fan of his work i have been for a long time and if you've missed it man you've been missing out and you got a lot of catching up to do look for insight with chris van bleat on youtube spotify apple or wherever you're listening to this and because i'm from alabama i'm going to spell it for you VL-I-E-T, Insight with Chris Van Vleet on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you're listening to this. Eric, what do you make of this T-K-O announcement?

I love it. The PBR, I've been real familiar with PBR for quite a long time. A very close friend of mine was the executive vice president, legal operations there for a long time. And we talked often about the types of deals he was trying to make in terms of sponsorship, television deals and so forth. Jason and I actually produced. show, a reality show, for the PBR at one point.

So we went to a lot of their events, got to meet a lot of the people, meet a lot of the bull riders. I'm a big rodeo fan here in Wyoming, obviously. There's one every night during the summertime. But that is a great business that's never been managed properly. A lot of the backing behind it was venture capitalists who really didn't have any passion about the product. And then it changed hands a couple more times.

but I think in TKO's hands, the market is there. It's just somebody that knows how to operate that business and promote that business. And I think it's going to explode. This is great news for PBR, for the fans of PBR. And I think it's probably even better news for TKO because the upside on this property is fucking huge. By the way, here's how closely connected it all is to wrestling.

I don't know that everybody knows this or talks about it. But my understanding is the C.O. if you will, the head of operations for AEW, Mr. Cochay Irby, he's actually has a PBR background. And I think a lot of the team at AEW now, they too have a PBR background. And now that organization is working with WWV. Man, what a small world it is, right? Live touring.

Yeah. That's what this is, whether it's wrestling, whether it's bull riding, whatever it is, TKO is they've got, I mean, and that's the beauty of the, the, the, the, the, the WWE acquisition, because with that acquisition comes a tremendously, a large promotional footprint, but a very mature infrastructure that really knows what the fuck they're doing. That is probably going to be a big benefit to UFC, although UFC does a great job.

WWE's been doing a great job for a lot longer, and they're just better at it in general, my opinion. That same benefit is going to happen with, with PBR. This is such an, this is an exciting piece of news. We've got a, uh, a match going on right now with the former Mr. Perfect Kurt Henning taking on Lash Leroux. And as a reminder, Kurt has to retire the next time he loses a match by pinfall. So Kurt being pretty smart grappler, he's going to go ahead and get himself DQed. So technically he didn't lose by pinfall and he can't be

fired. I like that as a smart workaround. hey i just thought of just yes i do as well and i don't mean to dismiss this match too much but i just thought of another little interesting point my good friend um left pbrr gave me a call and said hey do you know anybody at wwe i reached out to vince mcman and my buddy got hired and worked for wwee for quite a while he's he's not there now he left a couple years ago but he was there when i was there in 2019 So that that weird PBRWWE connection is there's more to it than I even realized when you broke the news. Well, there you see it. There's the DQ.

So Kurt Henning is going to live to fight another day. Coming up next, we've got the Nitro Girl search. Jeff Jarrett is going to try to run them away a little bit. And he's also going to say that the tournament is all the work. And he's going to win because he's the closest with the mysterious superpowers. what what could you read that again well you're about to see it in just a minute but the idea is we're already acknowledging on the very first nitro that Vince Russo's here that the tournament is a work and I'm going to win because I'm the closest with these mysterious superpowers

of course he's referencing Vince Russo in the backstage area we see Brett Hart limping in hobbling in and a nice tight shot as it looks like if I had to Yes, that's Goldberg tightening the boots. Yes, it is. Good call, Carter. Those little short boots, man, those were Mike Tyson inspired. And here's the segment we were talking about, though, where you see Kimberly front and center there with goodness gracious.

What a cast of characters you guys had back then. You know, backstage was cool. Scenery was great. You know, because you go to these arenas, and that backstage area is just about as bleak as conditioned. be. I mean, it's just nothing but freight elevators and just gray, gray block walls and you can always smell the garbage from the night before. So yeah, they have the nitro girls walking through there. You know, they look great. They smell great. Beautiful hair. They're colorful. It just

adds to the pizzazz of the backstage environment. We, uh, we're hearing from fire here right now. I want to take just a minute here and talk a little bit about where we are with the ratings for this show because that's what everybody is going to want to know. On October 25th, Monday Night Raw did a 5.58 rating that was from a 5.54 first hour and a 5.62 second hour.

That represented an 8.2 share. Nitro was up to a 3.51 which meant a 3.99 first hour and a 3.34 second hour and then a 3.24 3rd hour that represented a 5.2 share. And as a reminder, Monday night football is alive and well. This is October. So we've got real competition here.

And that game does a 12.52 rating and a 20.8 share. My goodness. When you think about that, that means. If you compare, if you combine W.W.E and WCW. Nitro had to head against Monday night. football, you'll understand why the NFL took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to remind everybody that Monday Night Football is still pretty good. They pointed out the top five of the top ten programs and all of television were either

WCW and at the time we were top of the list as number two and three against Monday Night Football and WWE was not far behind us at the point in time that this article came out, not necessarily at this point in time in terms of what we're watching. But, you know, I love reading today, you know, Dave, Dave Meltzer's garbage and the spin he puts on stuff, talking about competition. Like, Raw and Nitro never had any. We were up against the same things.

But in this case, 8.8 million, excuse me, a combined 8.8 rating, which would equate to approximately 12 million people based on the formula at the time, against Monday night football. How freaking awesome is that? And this is WW, excuse me, WCW in a very weak in state.

It's crazy. Crazy. What's interesting to me is, is just little things that you catch here and there. Like Dave wrote in the Observer at the time, probably the most significant stat of all is that Rawls rating didn't increase from last week when it was well below its average over the past few months,

which could be explained by both the Yankees. in the playoffs on Fox and the New York Giants on ABC being an important games on network television. This week, the only explanation is that Nitro is starting to close the gap. So you weren't heads up here with a World Series game, but this is the year where it was the Yankees and the Braves in the World Series. It's interesting. You know, what's old as new again. The Yankees are in the World Series this year in 2024 against the Dodgers. I know you're necessarily a huge baseball fan, but you got a prediction? You go in Dodgers or Yankees, Eric? I'm going to have to go Dodgers just because of Shohei Otani. I love his story.

I'm not a huge baseball fan. I'm not going to be able to tell you, talk about stats or anything like that. But I love a great story, especially a sports story. And there's been enough controversy in the Shohei Otani story, but the performance of this young man is just unbelievable. So I'm going to go with the Dodgers for that reason alone. The entertainment factor for the Dodgers is much higher for me personally than the entertainment factor of the Yankees. And I know everybody in New York is going to hate me even more than they already do for making a statement like that. But you know what? It's my show.

So there you go. Rob was going to double Nitro's head to head in a 45 minute period. The strongest rating segments for the WWF were a 6.19 rating rating. for the China and D-Lo match where they wrestled Chris Jericho. And what's written here as transvestite Stevie Richards. That's exactly what says in the observer. And that went ahead to head with a 2.70 rating for Nitro. Oh, wait a minute.

Was Stevie Richards, like, was that as was a transvestite gimmick, his gimmick? Or is this Dave Belzer editorializing on, on Stevie Richards? you know they were trying crazy characters i'll say that but i just i don't know we've uh yeah i don't want to talk about it about that so we're not going to all right i'll go i'll go with that we're not going to talk about it we're going to talk about the fact that there is halloween havoc in nxte now i don't know if you knew this eric but halloween havoc which was your baby you've said on this program many times that Halloween Havoc you consider to be the WCW version of WrestleMania, I and a lot of other fans thought, well, that's Starcade.

And I have come around and I agree with you. I understand Halloween Havoc certainly was the biggest show. But now it's back. And of all the brands that WWB borrowed, they used Starcade as like a house show event in Greensboro, I don't know, like eight years ago or so. And Great American Bash, man, that's been around for like 20 years in the WWE. But Halloween Havoc, it exists in WWE, but not NXT. And they're doing a pay-per-view this Sunday.

What do you think of them breathing new life into the Halloween Havoc brand in WWE and NXT? I love it. I mean, it was my favorite event. It's my favorite time of year. It's, you know, October is a great month for pay-per-view. It's one of the reasons why, you know, because you're right, Conrad, in the eyes of so many wrestling fans at the time, Starcade was the, the, our WCW's version of, you know, I don't even want to say WrestleMania, but it was the biggest pay-per-view of the year for

WCW. It had been for a long time. It was branded as such. People talked about it that way. I just didn't feel it, and I hated a pay-per-view around Christmas time for a lot of obvious reasons from a financial business perspective. It kind of had an impact on us. I loved October, and that's why.

why I wanted Halloween Havoc to be our version, not Starcate, from a business perspective, it made more sense. But I love the, you know, the legacy. That's why we're doing the show. People love the legacy. They love the nostalgia. And for me personally, for WWE, even if it's through NXT, to shine a little light, tip a little hat, tip of the cap.

I love that. Makes me feel good. We just saw a backstage interview with Sid with, uh, Mike today. I feel like we've used Mike today a lot. What do you think of the use of him? as the backstage interviewer got me and jean in the ring with the nitro girls earlier but we've seen multiple mic teney cutaways in the backstage area whether it was from the night before or here tonight on nitro what do you think of the use of him as a stick man

depends on the situation i think if it's an in-depth interview where you're not trying to get a character over but perhaps trying to advance a story and subtly you know help the character get over at the same time. But if it's one of those sit down in-depth type of conversational interviews, there's probably nobody better than Mike today at the time. If it's a promotional interview that's designed to try to create urgency and get attention or be really highly entertaining, Gene would have been your guy.

So it all depends on what kind of a backstage promo was. Eric, I'm going to be honest. I don't know shit about wrestling and I know even less about TV. so I ask myself why do I feel this way but as a fan I feel like this is a misstep we just saw the big filthy animals promo they had Tori Wilson looking as only she can look as the nature boy might say they revealed the big video of them burying Rick Flair in the backstage area and now they're coming out to the ring again almost serve as a distraction for Perry Saturn so Eddie Guerrero can make the attack but when

Whenever you see the same act come down the entrance way a second time in the show, not like two hours later, but a couple of segments later, it feels like they're, we're doing the talent of disservice because I as the fan, I think I would say, wait, why are these guys back out here already? Like, it feels like you're coming out to diminished returns. Like it's too soon. Like, I understand that you might have an angle where you need them out there, but shouldn't you have a little more distance? like shouldn't that be like two hours later not two segments later it's funny how you say you don't know anything about wrestling you don't know anything about tv but you're pointing out something that most people wouldn't pick up on you're diluting the talent every and and what's interesting is if you're in the arena if you're producing the show especially because you

should be listening to your audience if you're producing a show if you're so focused on that little fucking monitor sitting in front of you and the crap that's going on inside your headsets and you're not feeling and hearing the audience, you don't know what you're doing. You're not good at your job. And if you are listening to your audience and you are a good producer, it's blatantly freaking obvious how bad of an idea this is. You should only make this mistake once in your entire career,

maybe twice, unless in case you were distracted the first time. But it's so painfully obvious that when you do exactly what you said, you're bringing them out and you bring them out again very shortly thereafter to, to extend another angle, you lose about 50% of the reaction or more. And God forbid you do it again. I've been guilty of this.

I learned the hard way, folks. It's a horrible idea. If you see someone do a horrible, execute a horrible idea, and then you get an opportunity, don't do a horrible idea that somebody else has done and everybody knows about it. It's kind of crazy. It's like walking out in front of a moving vehicle

in the middle of an intersection. Why would you do that? You know what's going to happen. That's what we're seeing here. By the way, there's smoke coming out of the ringposts here in the middle of the match. I don't think that's, I don't think that was the plan.

Why would they smoke? I don't know, but they are. I mean, all of a sudden. What are they grilling hot dogs on the ring post? I mean, they filled with charcoal or what?

Oh, you know, I don't know the actual pyro term, but they've got, oh, no, yeah, they got pyro in there. That's fine.

They got something in the ring post on the corner and all of a sudden just in the middle of the match. It's not like Kane came down from the other show or anything and all of a sudden it's getting a little smoky in there. We're going to see Saturn beat Eddie Guerrero on Nitro, which I know sounds like, hey man, that sounds like a good match I'd like to see. Three minutes and 39 seconds is how long they go here. David Flair is going to lay out Eddie Guerrero with a crowbar. Here he is right on cue. It's a three-minute match in about two minutes and 45 seconds of it took place outside the ring. Yeah.

It's not the best. Oh, and it's Eddie Guerrero. It's not like he can't have a good match. And, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Eddie Guerrero and Barry Sadden, do you want to see that? Crash TV, bro. People don't want to watch matches. They want to see backstage stuff.

Got to get matches are just wrestling doesn't matter. Well, thankfully, we know that Eddie. That was been true of philosophy. feet. We know for sure that Eddie Guerrero is chiseled out of granite because that's the third run-in now from the filthy animals. So we've seen them come down the ramp three times in the first hour of the show. I don't know if you noticed, but when he swung, when David Flair swung the crowbar at Eddie Guerrero, Eddie Guerrero is so jacked and so chiseled, it bent the crowbar. I didn't notice that. And we found out from Eddie Guerrero.

you can get hit in the ribs so hard you pass out. Now we're in the backstage area, and we see Kevin Nash maxing and relaxing with his buddy Scott Hall. And he's letting him know I'm going to strip naked at the top of the hour right here live on TV. And Dave Meltzer said, if they had Kimberly say that, they'd probably keep their audience in the first quarter of the second hour. Oh, Dave. I don't know about us having wrestlers say,

I'm going to get naked at the top of the ship. what that's that's that's different it's a day you know better than different than less than okay this was less than but at least they tried something so now we've got a broom closet here with asia and dean malinko and peri saturn and i know what you're saying didn't we just see peri saturn run through the crowd before the commercial break yes but now he's in this broom closet and he's not sweaty at all and he's got his gym clothes on i don't know what the hell we're doing anymore here Eric. Already this is off the rails. But Chris Benoit realizes that they're in that broom closet area,

and he's going to lock them in there. And now he's got Dean Malenko to himself. Who just beat Benoit at the pay-per-view? Oh, that's a good show with it. The, uh, Rick Steiner is the WCW TV title. Okay. So now that, so that story's just gone. Yep.

Finish that story, which happens. And we're starting another story. So this must be Chris Benoit's act one. Unless there's an ongoing feud. It's hard to keep track. But it's kind of weird that, you know, he lost a belt to Rick Steiner. And now he's going after Dean Malenko. Unless Dean had something to do with it or the filthy animals had something to do with it.

That would be typical. Yeah. So, uh, Douglas has Tori Wilson as, uh, his hostage, I guess. Malenko was just going to the bathroom. But he got jumped. And we just saw the most hardcore thing ever. Dean Malenko took a bump in cardboard boxes, the brutality. It knows no bounds.

Hard to believe. Look at the pain. You can barely walk. By the way, is it just, why do we, why do we insist on putting guys, like, why aren't we playing to their strengths? I love me some Dean Malenko. Wrestling matches. Why are we doing hardcore stuff with Thane Malenko? Why don't we just let him...

Because Rousseau doesn't like wrestling. He just, he doesn't relate to it the way the audience relates to it. He doesn't, he never related to the product the way the vast majority of the audience did. Vince Rousseau was writing for Vince Rousseau. What, see, what Vince Rousseau had, I'm guessing I wasn't there, but WCW's kicking in WWE's ass for a long time, you know, like a couple of weeks where Vince McMahon would have been a long time. Two years is a really long time. And that provided an opening for Russo. Rousseau was able to look at the things that were working in WCW on Nitro, particularly with

the NWL, and because of the position he was in convinced Vince McMahon to give some of these ideas a try. Vince probably would have never given those ideas an opportunity, those ideas that are basically derivatives from the NWO would probably not open the door for those opportunities if things were going well for WWE. But things weren't. So Vince had nothing to lose. So he lets Rousseau play a little bit.

That shit starts working. But all of it was a version or a rip-off. Everything's a derivative of something. Yes. But it was inspired greatly by some of the things that Vince Rousseau was seeing on Nitro. Now Vince Rousseau's in that chair on Nitro, and he's got nothing to look back upon and get ideas from other than what's going on in WWE, which would be pretty obvious. Now he's left to his own creative devices, and he's a vapid mucker father when it comes to ideas.

He's not that good under the hood. That's where it becomes evident to me. That's why you're seeing some of the things that just don't make any sense, because Rousseau doesn't look at the product the way you is a bit. fan did or do. By the way, this is, if you're keeping track, the fourth appearance from Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in the first hour of the program. We saw them unloading their cooler at the top of the show, and then we saw them doing an interview in the backstage area with Mike Tene. Then we had a candid shot where we were led to believe they didn't know a camera was right at their feet on the coffee table. And now they're out here doing a promo. And this is technically

the crossover. So I get you want to have big stars here to make sure they're they're not tuning in to Monday Night Raw at the start of the second hour. But I wonder, you know, again, I don't know shit about wrestling. I don't know shit about TV. But if I've already seen them three times, why would I think that seeing them the fourth time would make them sticky? Wouldn't I build some intrigue on the first one? And now this is the payoff.

Why would we feel the need to do it two times in the middle? Am I over analyzing this? I mean, no, no, not at all. It's blatant. It's just blatant. It's just blatant lack of understanding how to produce a format. And I'm really, I would imagine, I obviously wasn't there when this show aired. I was here in Wyoming fishing down the road over that way and not paying any attention.

But I can't imagine that the talent, I mean, right off the bat, this is Rousseau's first show. I think somebody would have, and a lot of these guys knew Rousseau. Kevin Nash asked me to sit down and have a conversation with Vince Rousseau over the phone a year before all this or a year and a half before all this. So Nash new Russo, you think he'd pull them aside. He said, dude, what the fuck you're doing to us here? For a time one night? Why is anybody going to care?

And maybe they did or maybe they did in a week or two after it kept happening. I don't know. But it is weird. You're absolutely right. It's a good call. Well, this is a good call. It's checking out True Classic. I am a big believer in this.

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The trouble is, once you realize you love that pair of pants, you can't just go get them again because, well, the company's already moved on. they got some sort of new style out and it's just not the same that's what i like about true classic man when you find something you really like why don't we get like six of them i saw my wife wearing some pants the other day and i said baby you need those in every color well now you can thanks to true classic it's premium products at an affordable price shirts that are designed to accelerate your best features for that perfect fit it's snug in the arms in the chest with just the right amount of room in the midsection for guys like me and they've got all the fall must haves you

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at trueclassic.com slash 83 weeks to save. That's trueclassic.com slash 83 weeks. Shop now and elevate your wardrobe today. Eric, we, we just saw Goldberg cutting a promo from the bleachers. So he was responding to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who were in the ring, but he was doing it from the crowd. I kind of like that. I mean, I know that that was sort of DDP's thing once upon a time. I don't know that I necessarily would have done it right there because I feel like such a big part of the Goldberg character is the entrance. But, hey, we saw him.

Oh, my gosh. I forgot that. It's on this show. take a look at what we're seeing now the macho man randy savage is coming to the ring with gorgeous george and this is where he's wearing the sequined outfit i mean just head to toe in red sequins a top hat a blazer the pants and of course gorgeous george dressed to the nines in the exact same material this promo we've seen clips of even in some of the vice documentaries about the randy savage gorgeous george time together uh what do you remember if anything about the gorgeous

George, Randy Savage relationship? It was interesting. I don't be careful how I characterize it because I have a lot of respect for Randy. Randy was very excited about it. He, I mean, he, he helped trademark gorgeous George or helped at least attempt to get a trademark. Randy had a vision for this. And I don't want to imply that there was any, you know, fun stuff going on.

And there may have been, I don't know, that never really came up in me and my conversations. No, it's his real life girlfriend. Oh, I didn't even know that. So yeah, it didn't start out that way. But Randy saw something in her. And I don't know if it's because he was attracted to her or if he saw something that the rest of us didn't quite see. But Randy was, I mean, let's look at him. He paid for that stuff, not me. He spent a lot of money and a lot of time on this idea of Gorgeous George and himself. So he was passionate about it, evidently in more ways than one.

Good for you, Randy. This is the interview where Gorgeous George alleges that perhaps Randy was under the influence, that perhaps they were partying a little too much. As the story goes, she was an exotic dancer when they met. I believe that's the way I've heard it. and uh randy really liked what he saw and so here we are and allegedly i forgot about all of that

i forgot about all of that my god allegedly uh randy's supposed to be talking about how the writers consider him different than flare and hogan not in the same league and then he's going to start talking about passing the torch and melzer would say which i presume means himself with a new character but it ended up going nowhere. This is what most people regard to be has absolute worst promo. And we would love to let you hear it. WWE does not want us to let you hear it.

So you know where to find it. It's on Peacock, season 5, episode 42. We're about the 56 hour mark. Remember now the commercials have been removed. So we're into hour two here. And speaking of hour two and three, before the show on this particular day, Bill Bush told the rest of,

that it's official. Nitro is going to two hours in January, finally. And that's a change for the better. He said that which two hours would air and reports out of WCW, or I'm sorry, he never said which two hours would air and reports out of WCW are contradictory. Russo wanted it to be 9 to 11 with the idea that they could get more raunchy, but if WCW gets hot, it would be giving up a great advantage by having the first hour unopposed and build angles for a strong second.

Now, let's talk about that. If you had your druthers and you could pick, do you want to go unopposed for the first hour, head to head for the second, and let Raw have the third hour of the evening unopposed? Or would you just want to go head to head the whole time with Monday Night Raw? I'd go ahead to head the whole time. If I,

but if I was forced to move to a two-hour show and a three-hour show, for example, I wouldn't give the, I would rather give them the hour at the end of the window than the hour prior to the window, meaning I wouldn't want them to have a 60 minute head start on me. That's a bad idea. Plus, going later, 9 to 11 in Rousseau's case means you're out of prime time. Prime time stops at 10. A lot of people, a lot of households using television, it's called hut levels. Nobody really talks about it much because they don't understand it all that much. but or the impact that it has but your hut levels go down significantly after 10 o'clock so if I'm

going to give up time I'm going to give up the time that's least valuable not the time that's most valuable which is the beginning of prime time that makes sense now I see Medusa getting ready here she's in this title tournament and she has her chance to be the very first female WCW heavyweight champion. Now we do not know where our opponent is yet, but wait till you see Eric, because I know you don't recall. So we just saw a thread, if you will, and I know that you've talked about how important those are, an A story, a B story, and so forth, where the filthy animals were now where Tori Wilson was locked up, where Shane Douglas was holding her captive. She's no longer there. Then we can do a cutaway, and we see Shane Douglas talking to Dean Malenko. Now they're in

some sort of little office in the backstage area so now it's a function of hey what's going to happen here with the revolution and the filthy animals and medusa's making her way to the ring rocking all uh red white and blue and she's got the plus two's in this era even the red white and blue hair uh you like that phrase the plus twos i'd never heard it before so it got it got a chuckle yeah i have a uh a person in my life who got their own set of those years ago and started to refer to them as uh plus twos and i thought okay i'm gonna steal that so listen uh most recently we saw medisa getting uh stripped down by what who is going to become molly holly of course she's uh miss madness

in this wcd era but now we find out who medusa has to face to advance in the title tournament for her shot to become the new owner and manipulator as rick flair would say of the big gold belt and who is medusa going to face it's ming ming versus medusa was a match on the very first nitro of the viz russo era look at medusa's face that tells the story here's what melzer had to say ming no sold everything but was stopped dead in his tracks when he took a gander at Medusa's bikini top and oversized implants. Medusa was wearing a short dress and this was clearly just a bad excuse to get some panty shots of Ming carrying her over her shoulder.

Why the monster Ming didn't rip her clothes off and instead tried to kill her with his move was never explained. Evan Courageous helped Medusa up. He's probably young enough to be her daughter. I mean son. That's what's written in the observer about this recap. By the way, I love this look of Ming. this is the coolest looking gear he ever had the crazy hair i agree i agree this is

this is so stupid i can't look yeah i about i do love this version of ming though i mean sign me up for this but ming versus medusa for the world title tournament is a little silly something that's not silly though is our friends at loom Ehrick is a big fan of this. I know I am too. 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 fat or carbs. And then it gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, your workouts, your sleep, and even your stress management. All you got to do is breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism,

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you know this is just a profoundly stupid fucking idea but i got to hand it to me he's telling a story and it's a tough story to tell it exceeded all expectations Huh? It exceeded my expectations. It did. I mean, it's still stupid. I mean, it's almost silly, but Ming did a great job of telling a story in that match. Yes, he did.

And so did. And so did, by the way. She tried. And that was the idea. She's tough. She's not going to give up. She was facing a monster. And she stuck to it.

I still wouldn't have done it, but I admire the work that the talent put into the match. Here comes Evan courageous. Tony Chivani has a big heat with Evan Courageous Why? Because he had an angle with Medusa

and Tony Chivani wanted that angle with Medusa. He wanted to be able to carry Medusa to the backstage area. I get it. Hey, Eric,

we got a live studio audience and we're getting all kinds of questions here. I'm going to ask you some, but we also have a private chat with the way we produced our show and I asked a question an hour ago. I'd love for you to take a look at

when you get a minute. In the meantime, Chris North wants to know the Cruiserweight division went from Benoit, Eddie, Ray, and Jericho to disco? At one point, did you know the cruiserweight division had jumped the shark? That's interesting because I think most everyone listening to this would say, man, the cruiserweight stuff in 96 and 97 and 98 was fantastic, but it does feel like by 99, 2000, 2001, it's not positioned the same way. Is there a point

where you feel like it jumped the shark? Was there a jump the shark moment for you for the cruiser weights i think when they just started when they lost the focus on the cruiser weights and began putting the cruiser weights in other divisions it just didn't it for me it personally just didn't mean as much anymore we see uh all the sudden with no fanfare no entrance music none of that uh malinko just slides in the ring grabs the microphone so man we've got a big we have seen now Scott Hall and Kevin Nash for the fifth time there's so much exposure on this show for the revolution for the filthy animals for Holland Nash

like if nothing else we got to compliment Russo on he's trying to have a thread through the whole show and he's got three that we know of but I'm wondering if there's too much he feels like he's just hitting us over the head with it yeah he is he's forcing it and they're not that well produced they don't move the story

in a compelling way it's just a reminder of what's going on. And I get it. He is overdoing it and he's underproducing it in terms of the quality. Hey, I know there's some questions about whether we're going to cover the new lawsuit in WWE, this one related to the quote unquote ringboys. The answer to that is no. I have a real issue with court cases or legal cases, whether they be civil or criminal,

playing out in the media and there's already enough of that going on. I'm not a lawyer. I wasn't there. I'm not related to anybody involved or having an association with anybody involved. So because I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about because I'm not a lawyer. And I just don't want to engage in that crap. The answer to that will be no. Yeah, we're getting pampered with that this morning.

And I, uh, it's not a field of expertise for you or I. And I recognize it as a very sensitive subject. and yeah, I for one am hopeful that everybody gets the resolution that they're looking for, but I don't have direct access to any of that. So I don't really know how to how we would even go to handle that on the show, Eric. No, it's not not doing that. We'll leave that up to the day balcers of the world and the people that like to,

the people that don't know anything about the subject matter of the reporting on, but feel the need to report it. They can have it. We just saw a great little segment here where we see Brett Hart getting some medical attention. We saw him limping in the backstage area when he was first unloading in the loading dock area and getting his bag and all that together out of the car. He was limping pretty bad. And now we see a trainer working with him as he's seated on the couch getting dressed. They're really working over that ankle. And here comes Lex Lugar with

Miss Elizabeth. Man, I just, I don't know how anybody could not know the Lex Lugar story and have just a ton of respect for Lex Lugar today. But boy, in this era, did he look like a million bucks or what? I mean, he looks like he's, he looks like the real live action version of he man. He did. And he's a different kind of he man now, but he still is. But that physical, you know, he was a physical specimen.

No question about it. I for one think it's long overdue. And I hope this next year is when we get Lex Lugar into the WWE Hall of fame so deserving and uh i think it's long overdue i hope it happens is it weird for you knowing uh you know what the end of uh miss elizabeth's life look like to see her on nitro here does it make you sad to see her again i mean there's so many folks when we watch old wrestling together where i'm like oh man they're not here and he's not here and she's not here i never got to meet

miss elizabeth does it still something you think about when you see you're in old video like this not as much anymore but you know and but i'm glad because when i thought of her in the past and i'm talking you know 10 12 years ago eight years ago ever i was angry i resented lex i resented the situation um you know again i wasn't that close to elizabeth but my wife was Elizabeth had been out to our house and Cody with my wife on a girls night trip and things like that or a girls weekend trip out here to Wyoming. So my wife was pretty close to her and I guess I felt a little differently about Elizabeth as a result of that relationship.

But hearing Lex, understanding Lex, listening to his testimony, spiritual testimony, not legal, I began to understand it. And now I don't feel good about seeing them together. It doesn't bring back fond memories. But it doesn't, I'm not angry about it anymore either. And I prefer that. Here he comes, Rick Steiner coming to the ring with the TV title. I think when people think about Rick Steiner as a single,

they more often than not probably think about him early in his career before the Steiner brother's run. I do. For whatever reason, Rick Steiner as a single here towards the end of WCW, I just, I don't know, it's a blank spot for me. Like, I know it happened, but I couldn't tell you any, any of my favorite matches or promos or moments. I mean, I remember the whole Chucky bullshit y'all did.

But outside of that, I just, maybe I prefer Rick as a tag team wrestler. I mean, the Steiner's were my absolute favorite tag team as a kid. But, yeah, him as a singles guy here, I just, I don't even really remember much about this besides the Chucky nonsense. Well, he didn't, he didn't, excuse me, Rick never really got the focus as a singles performer that Scott did. Yeah. Scott, when the NWO changed Scott as a performer, Scott reached a character or found a character in himself that we hadn't seen up until that point. like he was just more effusive there was more of scott steiner and and we found out that he could

be funny he had a great sense of humor his timing was pretty excellent it was a lot of his promos were you know he's making fun of himself in a way at times but then he could also turn it on and just you know rip you live from limb live on television so much like curt angle scott discovered that ability to kind of have fun and be playful with his character but also be deadly and dangerous with his character. Rick never found that singles version of Rick as a character. Rick had always, even if you go back, you look at them as a tag team, Scott was the one that was doing the crazy shit off the ropes and, you know, the physical, the imposing, the more aggressive and

intimidating one in the ring. Rick was the guy that got the job done. He was the solid kind of backbone of the team in the sense that he was grounded. And a lot of his stuff was was in the dirt, so to speak, where Scott was more of a high flyer for a big guy, like the Frankensteiner for crying out loud. He made that kind of crazy shit famous way before anybody else did in the U.S., including some of the luchy stuff that we see. Only Scott was a big, big man in doing it. But Rick was always that solid component.

And I think once they split up, Rick was still that solid component but didn't have the flamboyance or the kind of over-the-top character. that Scott did. So that's just the difference. And a lot of that is, you know, Steve Austin went through the same thing. You know, he was the ringleader or the ringmaster at WWE. But he got the opportunity and remember that he,

Steve Williams, Steve Austin's real name, found the Stone Cold Steve Austin character in WCW or in ECW. And it had the opportunity, timing is everything, to bring that character to life at WWE. Vince liked it a lot more than he liked the ringmaster, which wasn't working. It's timing. Scott had his. Rick never did find his groove, but it was just really because of timing.

What a great. Go out of your way to watch this match with Lex Lugar. This is one of the funniest Lex Lugar moments in wrestling history. Lex is going to win the match by countout. During the middle of the match, Jeff Jarrett comes down. He's got a guitar. And by the way, when he did his promo earlier, he said, by the way, it was not me who swung that guitar at Liz.

Liz was, had been attacked by the guitar since Jarrett's been there, uh, in the company. And of course, there's, uh, some connective tissue when he comes back out.

So she's clearly upset. Oh my gosh. He's back and he's got the guitar. Well, he goes to swing it. And instead of hitting Rick Steiner, instead of hitting, uh,

or instead of hitting Lex Lugar or hitting Liz, he hits Rick Steiner. He held, he high tails it out of there. Rick Steiner. staggers after him and Lex goes to check on Liz when all the sudden he realizes wait a minute the referee's counting I'm about to lose the match by countout he throws down a limp miss Elizabeth slides in the ring and starts celebrating that he won the match by count out and to see Lex

over the moon that he just won the match by count out leaving his lady outside boy just hilarious stuff go out of your way to see it and now we see another backstage interview and then what do you know buff bagwell showing up to the building late i like the backstage vignettes we keep seeing a lot of these this does feel like a vince russo trademark we saw this some in w w e as well but we've seen multiple guys you know getting their boots ready taping up their ankles taping up their fists i mean i like these sort of here's here's what's to come it feels very boxing you know before we see the guys make the big walk to the ring we see the them getting ready in the backstage area.

I like that we're seeing that with so many characters here. What do you think of that? No, and it's also a reminder. It's a very subtle reminder of coming up later on the show. And that's always a good thing. That's one of the things I think that Tony Kahn could take a look at. It's funny not people are just now starting to talk about it. Even Alvarez, Brian Alvarez, your buddy, Dave Meltzer's cohort in crime pointed out

recently that, you know, Tony needs to start promoting his matches differently and promoting his matches throughout the shows. And what he's really talking about, because he's too stupid to know it, is a format, which is one of the things I've been talking about for, I don't know, three years now with regard to AEW.

They need a format that keeps the audience engaged and the device that Rousseau's been using here that you're referring to is a very easy, very affordable, non-intrusive way to do it. It takes about 10 seconds. And it helps keep the audience engaged in what's coming up. it's really fundamental television formatting, like really fundamental.

Like if they teach a high school television class, probably on your second or third day, you start talking about formats and this kind of thing would be at the top of the list. Simple shit. But failure to do it results in losing audience throughout your period, whether it's a two-hour show or three-hour show. If you look at your quarter hours and you constantly see them going down every quarter hour, you know you're not doing something right it's really simple not counting backstage skits i think

this is the fourth time we've seen billy kidman and conan make the way down the ramp and that's evident when you look around the crowd they had a big reaction the first time they came out but now fans are just sitting on their hands and it's not because they don't identify or understand the conan character they don't like the filthy animals they don't like billy kidman none of that is real i just think man we've probably overexposed them at this point the audience is sort of burn out I mean, you even see a guy sitting in the front row with his arms crossed right now. Like, okay, we're going to see these guys for the 17th time tonight. Yeah, it's kind of like, okay, I love you enough already.

Leave me alone. You know, it's just enough. Billy Silverman was out of a place early in the match and nearly got collided in the ring. And then it happened in storyline. And man, he just took one of the better ref bumps to the outside you'll ever see. Now with no referee in sight, here come the Harlem heat and street clothes. And they're laying both dudes out. Signed me up for the Harlem Heat being badasses.

I like that. Good reaction from the garage. Everybody's on their feet. Because this is the first time we've seen them. Like this isn't their seventh time walking to the ring. And now they delivered. They showed up and did some shit. Eddie Guerrero,

who was just rendered unconscious because they bent a crowbar over him. He's making a run in to make the save along with Ray Mysterio. All due respect to Ray Mysterio, I don't know that I would run head first real fast. into a fight with Booker T and Steve Ray, if I was framed to stereo. Oh, my goodness. Hell, if you were anybody,

you wouldn't want to run head first into a fight with Stevie Ray. Not without a gun. My goodness. Gracious. You better have backup. It's like, what was that old joke? Call an ambulance,

but not for me. Hey, by the way, I think I figured out a new name for our show. I know you're pretty, I know you like 83 weeks. I like 80. 83 weeks. It's a good name. And you have branded it every time you've done an

interview. You're either wearing the shirt, you got a hat, you just plug it naturally through your speech. I appreciate all that. But, you know, it took a lot of balls to go head to head with Vince McMahon. It took a lot of balls to come out and say, yeah, give me Nitro and I'm going to give away his taped results on my live show. It took a lot of balls to say, let's have Hulk Hogan turn heel. What if we called our new show Bearden Balls? What do you think about it, beard and balls. We've got some great sponsors that would probably love it. Yeah, hey, if you want your grooming routine to be a one and done deal, well, let me tell

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or dealing with subpar results. Just efficient, effective grooming wherever you need it. manscape.com and use our promo code, 83 weeks. Do you think as far as wrestling goes, Buff Bagwell was a real trailblazer of manscaping? He probably was.

Oh, he was so far ahead of his curve. I'd never seen a man pluck his eyebrows before until I met Bagwell. He literally, and there's back now, people do it all the time now. There's actually a technique. I don't know what it's called.

But you go to the eyebrow lady and she does these things with your eyebrows and they come out and are like, perfect they looked like they were painted on bagwell was so far ahead of that curve it's not even funny i mean look at the way he's got the v in the back of the hair he's his sideburns of the v he's got the goate trimmed up i'm just saying how how is he walking around this earth without a manscape sponsorship you know what i agree with you we should try to make that connection because he could be the face of manscape he's buff he trims his stuff using the lawn morph

i just see it that's right there Listen to you go. You found your calling. You should be an ad copywriter. I mean, I have done some pretty terrible ad reads here on the show before. And terrible. It was awesome, though.

The segment that transition from commentary into that, that spot was, I just sent your message, man. That was a beautiful thing. Hey, here he is. Buff Bagwell's doing an interview.

And guess what he's talking about? The writers. Oh, God. Buff says he's not going to do any. more jobs and then two bald guys in suits we know him as ron and don harris they're going to come out and destroy him and melzer would say great now they're recruiting six foot eight guys who even titan doesn't want they ought to compare and and what you're seeing here in a lot of this is because we know what happened rousseau is making himself the star of the show absolutely

that's and it started the first night so as much as russo will put you know say that wasn't the case, and he didn't want to be a TV star, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was forced to do it because he's such a great character. I mean, he's literally said this shit that, like, he was one of the better performers in the entire roster. He said that. His words, not mine. It's ridiculous.

But he can't, he, Vince Rousseau came to WCW with the idea that he was going to be Vince McMahon or he was going to be Eric Bishop. of that's what he saw in his head when he got there and everything that we've been watching so far leads to that end in fairness because i agree with you i mean when we saw jeff jarrick come out and say he's got you know more stroke with the superpowers and now you're seeing here and by the way the superpowers are vins russo and ed ferrara uh and ron and don Harris here are clearly the henchmen for these superpowers and even Meltzer would say they ought to compare the quarter hours that the DOA which is what they were called when they were the

disciples of Apocalypse over in WWE what they did head to head with like Hovintude Guerrera so Meltzer's just saying hey Ron and Don Harris fans don't want to see them whatever but I will stick up for Russo in this regard what had worked so well in WWB had been positioning, by the way, I don't know if you saw that, but we just saw Chris Benoit standing still waiting for a countdown and then he started walking towards the camera. It was made to look like it was, hey, we caught a candid moment and we're taking a look at him, but he was still sitting flat-footed and then he started walking, but the camera just caught it all. It's not like the camera just caught him walking. It's a little thing, but I know we're trying to say this is

reality TV and it's crash TV, but not if it feels forced. And again, I'm I know that we just talked about this a minute ago. I love Chris Benoit's in-ring action. I don't love what he did as a person. We all know that. But Dean Malenko, same thing. Man, Dean Malenko, in the confines of a pro wrestling ring, sign me up. But instead, on our first night here, we're going to take them out of that, and we're

going to make it Benoit and Malenko in a street fight. Now, don't get me wrong, I've seen some great street fights with Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan, iconic matches that WCW fans will never forget. But I'd rather just see a regular freaking wrestling match with Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko. I agree. And again, it's Vince Rousseau's take on wrestling. He liked the backstage stuff. He liked the hardcore stuff.

He liked anything except a traditional wrestling match or anything that looked like it. Where I was getting on the Rousseau thing is the thing that got so much success for the WWF was stone cold, rallying against the system, rallying against the boss, rallying against the man. It was Stone Cold versus Vince McMahon. That's really what tipped the needle, tip the scales, rather, in WWE's favor. So I get why you would lean into that. And at the same time, you know, they were really just copying the whole WCW versus NWO. And then you became the evil tyrant heel boss long before there was a Mr. McMahon.

So I get why, hey, we've got to have an authority figure that. that they can rally against because it has proven to work. But I think what WCW was looking for here with the benefit of hindsight is a new idea, not reheated leftovers, because that's what this whole thing feels like to me. You know, before we sat down and do this show, I talk to myself as I often do before I do anything.

And I thought, you know what, I'm not going to bury Vince Rousseau. I don't care, to be honest, I don't care about Vince Rousseau, nothing he says or does is ever going to affect me for more than a brief second when I first hear or read about it. But it's also hard to do a show like this without pointing out some of the things that I've said years ago, and then we're now seeing today. When I met Vince Rousseau, the very first time I talked to Vince Rousseau, Kevin Nash encouraged

Rousseau was a writer for the magazine at WWE. Nash had developed a relationship with him before he came to WCW. This is like in 1997, probably, and Nash, because we were tight, came and we goes, bro, I just want you to talk to this guy. Just talk to him. So he put Rousseau on the phone, and I spent about a half an hour just hearing what Rousseau had to say because Rousseau wanted to come to WCW. And I listened to him.

I was polite. I had never met him before. I didn't have an opinion. of him before. I didn't even have an opinion of what he was doing at WWE because I wasn't watching it. But I, but Kevin endorsed him so I listened and I listened to him for, I don't realize, 20 minutes, half hour, whatever. And I hung up and I said, man, it sounds like an interesting guy, but in my mind, there's nothing there. There was nothing under the hood. When I fast forward now, I get sent home. I spent a couple months off. Brad Siegel caused me, asked me to come back

because Rousseau shit the bed. Brad knew it. Brad had just hired him and said, oh, here's a guy. He's the one to turn WWE around here. We're going to give him a contract. Probably a lot of people in Turner were reluctant to do so for their own reasons because they just wanted WCW to go away anyway.

They didn't want somebody to come in to save it, but they went along with it. And they brought Rousseau in. And within 30 days, Brad knew he fucked up, which is the only reason he had to eat shit and call me. Not that Brad isn't the one that fired me, but you know what I'm saying. Turner Broadcasting would have not brought me back if there was anything under the hood with Vince Rousseau.

All Rousseau was capable of doing is seeing something that works somewhere else, find a way to add his own sauce to it, and call it original. It doesn't work that way. And yeah, you could go back and say, well, Stone Cold Steve Boss and Mr. McMahon was the thing that turned things around at WWE. Absolutely. But fuck, McMahon had been a character. on TV for 30 freaking years. This wasn't just

some guy coming out of a writer's room that nobody had ever heard of before and trying to make that guy an authority figure. That isn't going to work. Nobody's going to buy that. Not quickly, maybe over a long period of time, he could figure out a way to make it work. But just

to introduce this guy and this character and he's a fucking writer and all of a sudden he's got all the stroke, it's such a self-serving narcissistic view. from a creative perspective of what you bring to the table. But I knew that. When I fast forward, I go to work, back to work. Brad single calls me, I go back to work because Brad said,

do you think you can work with Rousseau? I'll feel it out. I felt it out. And I told Brad, there's nothing really under the hood there. He talks a good game. He's a charming some bitch. He can sell you anything. But there's nothing under the hood.

And that's what we're seeing here. Nothing under the hood. well it's an interesting time in wrestling you know there's so much going on that we don't really even talk about with the benefit of hindsight i just want to add some context in this same calendar month where rousseau is jumping ship we also see gorilla monsoon pass away we see the wb come to Atlanta and run a show at the georgia dome with 33,000 paying customers like an 850 some odd thousand dollar gate or some ridiculous number and we also have the company go public and i don't know that there's been enough time really spent on that but that's a rarefied

error that people couldn't even wrap their head around and i still don't think that maybe a lot of our audience has really wrapped their head around how different than that makes wb from an operational standpoint a decision-making standpoint i mean A publicly traded wrestling company sounded make believe in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and even the 90s, I'm sure. And now here it is. I mean, let's not forget, we are just a couple years removed from you thinking you're going to be able to put a stake through the heart of Vince McMahon because, hey, man, they're pulling the water coolers out of there just five years prior to this. I mean, they're running shows in high schools four years prior to this. and now they're a publicly traded company

and it took Vince from being a millionaire to a billionaire and that all happened in this same calendar month and I know we're talking about WCW creative but boy the tide has shifted here in a major way and the earth is moving beneath our feet in a pro wrestling landscape a publicly traded wrestling company with just they were already leading but now they've got a war chest of cash It's a crazy dynamic in October 99.

And really, we should do a show with somebody who's really familiar with the transition from private to public companies and all of that entails. I'm not that guy. I know a few because in my opinion, as a layman, I guess, I think that this month that you're referring to in the chain of events that took place during that window are probably. the most important thing that's ever happened to WWE, including being sold to TKO, including the massive deal that they got with Netflix. Because those things are a direct result of the decision and the ability that WWA had to go public in 1999.

That was a balsy move. It was an improbable move. Nobody saw it coming. It would have been hard to anticipate. And it changed everything, everything because of the cash infusion. And Vince talked about it on the Mr. McMahon series over on Netflix. There was a portion of one of those shows where Vince talked about going public and the impact that it had out of him.

He didn't go into great detail, but one of the things I do remember taking away from it was what now, as you pointed out, they had a massive war chest and the ability to do a lot of things that they would have never been able to do before. On the other hand, and this is another interesting aspect to this, from an operational side, the officers of the company, the vice presidents, the presidents, executive vice presidents, if you're a secretary, treasurer, whatever, you're an officer in the company, you have what's now called, or you may have not heard the word before your company went public,

but you now have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. What does that mean? It means you don't get to fucking do anything you want to do. You have to be careful now. And all of a sudden, the scrutiny that is on your company goes from, fuck, we get to do whatever we want to do, as long as we don't piss off the network, to, oh my God, I may be guilty of an SEC violation and I didn't even know it.

It just changes everything so dramatically. it would be a fascinating deep dive for one of our shows really well i can't believe this is real but we just saw eddie guerrero and the filthy animals come to the ring for the 9702 time uh edie guerrero of course he just had a crowbar bent over his ribs he held him for a second on the way to the ring so and by the way it's not his fault he was booked to run out 15 times after i mean hypothetically eric if somebody hits you as hard as they could in the ribs with a crowbar would you run down and pick seven other fights within the hour after no you know when I was a kid I actually broke a rib I was hanging over a fence

at a go car track and somebody lost control of a go cart a go cart hit the fence and I happened to be hanging over it right where my ribs are and I have never ever ever been in so much pain as I was that afternoon and weeks and months to follow like if I was I was a I was scared to death that I would have a hiccup. That's how bad it was. So yeah, it's kind of unbelievable to say the least. The filthy animals, um, they came down and just beat the,

the, the tar out of, uh, my goodness, Tori Wilson here. I'm distracted, uh, beat the tour. Wilson getting into a Cadillac. It's kind of fun to watch. Just is. We are just,

we are gross and horrible human beings, but, uh, I got distracted and I'm sorry. I'm an honest human. beat the shit out of Dean Malenko and then out comes Perry Saturn and Shane Douglas and they've got Asia holding Tori Wilson hostage and they're saying hey you're going to leave Malenko alone or else she's going to get hurt so they reluctantly agree they stuff are in the back of a Cadillac and speed out of there and now not to be out

done the filthy animals jump in a white Cadillac on their own and give chase that's where we are thankfully since they left the building maybe they won't run out four more times but we'll stay tuned and see what happens next up it could be your new your next wcw world champion baby not jimmy hart but his man nasty boy brian nobs that's right brian nobs he's got the exact same chance of being the wcdb world champion that medusa does and he's coming to stake his claim and his opponent won't be ming, it's sting. Yep. Wow.

Listen, I just don't understand the idea of a tournament like, no disrespect to Brian Knobbs. The nasty boys were a guilty pleasure, favorite tag team of mine. I love their stuff. I think they're criminally underrated and never have been given their props. But nobody, and I mean nobody believes that Brian Knobb, is going to beat Sting in a world title tournament. What are we doing?

You know, and it's just, you know, we're sitting here watching it. No, granted, we can't hear the audio or I can't, but this doesn't feel like a tournament. It just feels like a series of matches. I'm not getting the vibe, the tournament vibe. A tournament can be done really well. I think we had a pretty good time with a tournament that we did for the Bound for Glory series. I really like that creatively. it was super, super challenging.

But I think of all of the tournament setups and the way a tournament is presented, I think we did a pretty good job in T&A with that. And a lot of that had to do with a young man by the name of Matt, who worked on a creative team. But Matt was really good at figuring out how to structure this thing so that we got creatively where we wanted to go with the drama we wanted to get there, but was able to do it in a legitimate tournament. format that took place over a series of eight weeks but we still had a great build we had

challenges we had stakes we had all the things along the way but it's a lot of work to make it feel like a tournament and deliver what you need to deliver from a creative perspective storyline wise this doesn't feel like any of that this just feels like we're just going to have a bunch of matches to call it a tournament by the way the match is already over uh sting hit brian knobs twice with the baseball bat. The bill never rang to start the match, but it did ring to end it. Then we see Kevin Nash and Scott Halt again in the backstage area.

And now another stick man job by Mike Tyson or Mike Teney. I was talking about Tyson earlier. Mike Teney with Brett Hart. And I don't know why, but I've always thought these guys had great chemistry. Like, sign me up for whatever reason for Mike Teney doing the promos with Brett heart. I think it was Mike Tenei when he dropped the whole who are you to doubt L. Dandy.

I just love their, I feel like they both have dry wit and humor. Like give me them every time. I love this. Yeah, they were, they were definitely good to go. They were kind of similar in a way. Their sensibilities were very similar. Oh, goodness. I can't believe this is real.

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Now, I know what you're thinking, Eric. You're looking at the program right now and you're saying to yourself, self, didn't I just see Conan and Billy Kidman wrestle each other? Yes, you did. Didn't I also see them speed after Tori Wilson in a white Cadillac in the very last segment? Well, yes, you did. Then what the fuck are they doing back out here again?

How were they still here? Bro, bro, bro, bro. It's wrestling, bro. It's okay. It's just, fuck. How many segments have we seen Kidman and Conan in this goddamn show? They just left the building. They've already had a singles match.

Now a fucking tag match? What are we doing? Bro, bro, bro. And the crowd went mild. By the way, Billy Kibben could have been a big star. And he's not. And you know, he's not? Vince fucking Russo put him in 19 segments on the same fucking show.

They're not going to pop the third time. Much less 4 through 19. How is this lost on everybody? Can he cut a promo? Yes. Does he have a good look? Yes. Does he have a good match?

Is yes. Does he have charisma? Yes. Does he have a hot wife? Yes. Can we get him over? Not if we put him in every fucking segment. He just left. He's in a car chasing his wife. Now he's back for the fucking tag titles. Are you serious? Annie buried Rick Flair. Annie wrestled Conan all in the same fucking show. This isn't like over a month of Nitros. It's the same fucking show. Bro, bro, bro. That may be the most fun thing I've ever heard on a podcast. Why is he here? Why is Conan wrestling? I can't lose you here, big man. I cannot lose you here.

Keep your head on your shoulders. I've lost your thoughts of you, the Sherpa fucking guismen of podcasters. Without you, I am lost into fucking wilderness. Please take a dork, breath. I mean, people run around and they say, well, Billy Kidman's career was cut short by Hulk Cogan. Hulk Cogan fucked him around.

No, he didn't. Hulk Hogan didn't say, stretch your ass out there every fucking segment. I'm going to crack a fucking crowbar over your fucking partner's ribs. Have him run to the ring and not even sell the shit and pick 19 other fights. He's the same hour. God. I mean, it's like nobody cared, Eric. And by the way, we're just saying Rousseau over and over and over.

What the fuck was Ed Ferrara doing? Could he not format the ship to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't have the same guys come down the ramp? Nine times in a fucking show! They're so used to doing it with Stone Cold. They think that there's no glass break. There's no Pavlovian response. We're not passing out stoners to everybody. We got life feeders and we do shit.

And he hadn't spent two years. getting the character over. No. And by the way, you put Billy Kidman in there with Hoving 2 Guerrera. This whole crowd's on their fucking feet. Everybody listening to this knows that. But is that what we're doing? No.

But what are we doing? Well, we're going to have him fucking bring out a camera and we're going to show where he buried Rick Flair. Oh, that's cool. And then we're going to get the writer over. Over and over and over. Like, let this guy come out and have a match and hit a fucking shooting star press on somebody and everybody be like oh my god what a talent i can't wait to see him wrestle next time

not like in four more minutes again it's stupid and you know there's there's two ways well there's more than two ways but there are two very easy ways to bury talent one is to just never let them see a camera just bury them put them in a witness protection program kind of like other people do time to time the other ways to over expose them The end result is exactly the same. Dead is dead. A dead career is a dead career. There's two ways to get there.

Under-exposed a talent, over-expose a talent. One's not necessarily better or worse than the other, and that's what you're seeing here. Assassination of a character. And it's not that, I don't think it's that Rousseau didn't care. It's that Rousseau didn't and still doesn't know. If you don't know what you don't know, it doesn't matter how much you care or what your intentions are.

You don't know what you don't know and you fail because you haven't figured it out or taken the time to figure it out or have people around you like Conrad you would have even back then early in your fandom but as a common sense guy that's pretty fucking smart you would have said hey Vince this doesn't make any sense Russo didn't have people around him like that he had Ed Ferrara who had less of a feel than Vince Russo did that was a good writer technically he understood elements of storytelling and could write that way. But he was so overpowered by Rousseau, which is why Rousseau liked him around because he didn't challenge Vince Rousseau.

Ed Farrar was not an obstacle. Ed Farrar was a facilitator for Rousseau's bullshit. So Rousseau had nobody around him. Brad Siegel didn't know what the fuck he was doing, nor did he have any interest in trying to figure it out as the head of TNT. Bush is a math guy he wasn't even really in finance he was an accountant he's in the finance department but he was an accountant he's a low level accountant he's a numbers guy he's not going to have a feel he's not going to understand the audience he's not going to have the

psychology to sit down and write story there was nobody around russe who calls bullshit by the way we just talked over it billy kidman and conan are now the tag champs they just beat Harlem Heat. Wow. And the crowd. Look at the guy sitting there. They immediately cut away. We don't even get the celebration.

I don't mean to cut you off. But we cut off the celebration and we're backstage for Mike Teney and Bill Goldberg. And here's what Dave had to say about this. Match wasn't any good, which says something because I can't even remember Kidman's last bad match. The title change had no impact as they couldn't even sell. their huge win they cut away after the pin to Goldberg in the back so listen I appreciate that we're trying to push the young guys but this is not the way to do it like just having them have a bunch of TV time with less than creative and

less than story as a reminder the filthy animals were stripped to the titles the night before it was held up it was a three way the Harlem heat have been the champion for exactly one night because Ray was too injured to compete the night before. So tonight, we had Kidman and Conan just slide in and take it. But after they'd been on the show over and over and over, it made no fucking sense. And that's the reason that got killed in the ratings. It more than doubled. I mean, here's what we're talking about. We had on the other channel, Bubba Ray Dudley versus Kane. Respectfully, half of a tag team and Kane got a 5.55. Harlem Heat and Kidman and Conan got a 2.35 and it's not because the Harlem Heat aren't over.

It's not because Kidman and Conan aren't over. It's because we had seen it over and over and over and over. There was a tuneout factor because we've seen it. We haven't seen these stars on the other channel, so we'll go watch that. It's unbelievable to me that that's, it's, I don't know. I don't know shit about wrestling or TV, but I don't have to wonder. why that segment got killed. And it's not an indicator of anything that Kidman or Conan or Harlem Heat did

wrong in my opinion. It's not that they're not over or they had a bad match or whatever. The crowd was dead and no one gave a shit because we had seen these characters so many times. It was just burnout. It's audience fatigue. Trying to force it, trying to rush it. And again, I hesitate.

I'm trying to think of new ways to say, but I can't. you have to have a fundamental understanding of how to format a television show. And even if you've never worked in television, you could just sit at home and watch any successful television show that's been on for more than two seasons. Use that as your barometer of a successful show. And look at that show and look at it in terms of how that show is formatted. What do they accomplish in the first 12 minutes of a one-hour show?

What happens between 12 minutes and about, I don't know, 40 minutes? It's usually your second act. And then what happens in your third act? How do they structure this story? And if you look at that and you can figure that out, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to it, you don't even read a book to do it. You can just kind of sit there and figure it out if you do it enough.

Then you think about, okay, how can I apply the wrestling formula to this, given what we do? It's not the narrative word. It's a physical word. So how do we tell that story? And before you know it, you've got it kind of figured out, or at least a rough idea. Russo is just doing segments.

He gets excited about a segment. If the segment works, therefore, in his mind, the show works. But those segments, there has to be a continuity. There has to be a thread. There has to be the elements and an organization of the elements that create an emotional response. That's the art of producing. television, one of them. And Rousseau doesn't have, never has had, still doesn't have

any feel for that. He's decent at writing segments that get some kind of a reaction as standalone segments. But to format a whole television show, he's freaking clueless. So clueless that you're about to see what you're about to see. You got little nations are referee it's another match in our world title tournament diamond Dallas page and Rick Flair DDP comes over opens up the nature boy's robe the black and silver robe that David Flair was wearing and of course he pulls it off as soon as DDP turns his back and David Flair nails him with a crowbar and he hits Diamond Dallas page and the ribs with the crowbar yes the exact same crowbar routine that we were doing with

with Eddie Guerrero. Now it's DDP's turn. DDP is going to suffer this crowbar attack, the same one that Eddie Guerrero suffered. And Eddie Guerrero was able to come out and make a baker's dozen more run-ins on the same show and the same hour. But when DDP gets hit with that same crowbar,

he has to do a stretcher job and leave in an ambulance. This is the same weapon, the same perpetrator, The same style attack in the same show. And the cruiser weight, well, he's got that fighting spirit. He's got that Latino heat. So you're damn right. He can wrestle matches and have 15 more run-ins. He just drips Latino heat, David Flair.

I'm talking about Eddie Guerrero. I know. I'm just saying Eddie Guerrero, he got hit with this same crowbar and he did 12 more run-ins in the same hour. DDP gets hit with the same crowbar, and here comes the stretcher and the ambulance. I mean, you want to talk about continuity and consistency. We are totally fucking devoid of any common sense, any fucking logic, and maybe some of this can be chalked up to a report in the observer.

I can't believe this is real, but here it is. In regard to the baby face heel confusion stemming from Nitro last week, Russo said to various wrestlers something to the effect that there are no such things as faces and heels. The feeling among the wrestlers is that that's what they want out of television matches or high spots with no psychology used, although that hasn't been totally made clear. Although Russo did make it clear, holding any hold for more than 15 seconds, he believes gives the viewer the excuse to hit the clicker.

In the WWF, they used to mock the idea of faces and heels publicly saying they no longer exist, but any examination of the TV shows in 90% of the cases, clearly delineated face and heel characters. Even if faces often wrestle faces or heels wrestle heels. There is some confusion if they actually have no faces and heels playing roles for fans to get emotionally involved with. It'll be difficult to get crowd reaction. You fucking think.

And listen. Where is that logic in his coverage of AEW, by the way? Let me just say this. And I, everybody knows where I land on this. and so I'm going to, you know, you know who I am and you know what I like and you know what I watch and you know who I'm friends with and who I pull for. But there's one wrestling company out there right now that has pretty clear heels and faces. And there's another has a lot of great matches.

We see what's working better. That was evident in 1999 and it's still working today in 2024. My God, Eric. how is this like i can't even imagine i'm not a wrestler so i don't know anything about wrestling but i can't imagine how do you wrestle a match if there is no face and and like from what i understand the heel has to call the match the heel is the one get the baby face has to work from underneath if you strip all that away how do we decide do we flip a fucking coin no it doesn't matter all you do is go out there and you you let each other have their their high

spots. You get your shit in, I get my shit in, we do it for about six, seven minutes on TV, and we go home. It's all we have to do. There's no other thought. That's it. You may convince yourself or an agent or an executive may convince themselves, oh, that there's a story here because you're just obsessed and certain types of matches gets you so excited that you're willing to look beyond the fact that you're blind and you're not seeing the big people. picture. Matches for the sake of matches against people who the audience doesn't care about one way or the other. You're not a baby face. You're not a good guy. You're not a heel. You're not a bad guy. There's no protagonist. There's no antagonist. There's just motherfuckers wrestling. It's like going to a

movie because you like action movies and you're going to this 90-minute movie, which is the typical format of a feature film nowadays, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, typically around 90 pages or 90 minutes, as the case may be. And you decide this action film, I'm the director, I'm going to give people what they want because I know what I like. And I know everybody else likes what I like. And I love car chases. So I'm going to do 90 minutes of nothing but car chases. We don't need story.

We don't need characters. And we got people driving the cars, but that's all that matters that they can drive the car. The cars are the characters. The action is the star. We're going to do a 90-minute car chase. And nobody gives a fuck who's chasing who because they don't know why they're chasing each other. They don't know the stakes. They don't know the backs.

They don't care. They're just watching a car chase. Are you watching what we're watching? They end up with a car wreck. That's the way certain wrestling companies and the talent in them, because let's face it, they're running the show, regardless of what anybody wants to say or think or admit out loud. The talent is running the show in companies like that. Notice how I'm not using any names here.

I'm working really hard to try to be as fair and balanced as I can be. but a fact is a fact and all you need to do is look at the program and look at the results of the program. Are you watching this? Hall and Nash are wrestling, if you want to call it that. Their mystery opponents are three strippers, one of whom is a tiny woman with breast that had to weigh more than the rest of her body, according to Dave Meltzer. She's wearing a WCW crew shirt and she's about to do the big reveal.

Holland Nash are doing a spoof of a match. with the cell and the fiery hot tag spots. One of the semi-normal-looking women was grabbing her own plants and shaking them in front of the guys. Hall had his face smothered in them, and she basically shoved her crotch in his face. The ridiculous-looking one tagged in, and they basically told them she'd take off her shirt if they laid down for her, so they laid down. She teased showing her stuff forever until Goldberg ran in and speared Hall and Nash. And listen, as much as I want to say, this isn't wrestling, and this is bad for the business, and we should, should be better than this and this isn't entertaining and it's certainly not family entertainment

and we're so far removed from what made wcw successful during the height of the nitro era with cruiser weights which we haven't seen much of on this show and with the nw o now we're doing this but look at the crowd as much as i want to hate this the fucking crowd's on their feet and they were losing their mind and i get that this is the wrong kind but i just don't know like if i'm If I'm a sponsor, I don't want my commercial in this. I don't want my next, like, I don't want you to crash to break and then be like, the all new Fisher Price play set from so, come on, man. And not even kids products.

No, very few advertisers, even if they're targeting 18 to 49 year olds, want to be associated with this kind of slop. This is not high art. Not that wrestling necessarily is, although it can be when the stories are great, the characters are great. Look at Scott Hall having a conversation. with the girl on the I mean one of the strippers is on the corner he's laid underneath and he's communicating to her and she's leaning down saying what'd you say he's selling dead because he just

got speared but he's having a conversation this is cosplay wrestling what we're seeing right now the first Vince Russo Nitro featured some cosplay wrestling and and I hate to say it but it's with two of my favorites and Kevin Nash and Scott Hall and again they didn't book it and ain't their fault they're out there doing what they're told and I know that people are going to say well, you're just saying that because you're friends with Kevin. No, I'm not. That dude was in WCW for a long time before this, and we saw every other thing that Kevin Nash did,

and none of it looked as silly as what this was. This was what was booked, bro. This is how Vince thought they needed to compete with the WWE. But goodness gracious, this is not the WC, if that would have happened in the WWE, sure, I get it. It would have popped. You would have had Val Venus there. You'd have a pimp character and a porn star character.

I get it. But that's not what made WCW great. That's not what people who grew up watching Jim Crockett promotions and then the transition into the Nitro era with the cruiser weights and the NWO. We didn't want that. Like this is just, it's out of place. I agree. And it's,

it's hard watching this not to continue to go off on Russo, but I think this has been, this show has been a great representation of why for some, for so many years, I've had a problem with Vince Russo. This show should tell everybody everything, at least how I feel. And I think based on your reaction today, how you feel, it'll be interesting to see how Vince Russo reacts to the show. He'll probably never want to, you know, be a part of any of your events again.

Because he's a sensitive soul, you know. No, listen, I, I, I like Vince Russo and I appreciate his work. But I can also say, I mean, because he had a lot of great shit. This is a miss because he's trying to, I feel like he's trying to just say, say, hey, here's the attitude playbook, and I'm just going to drop it in WCW, that wouldn't work. Like, and we're seeing like, that happened in Alabama college football. We're seeing a new head coach come in and try to implement a new system with somebody else's players. It doesn't work.

Like, you got to have the right. The audience is not conditioned for this. Like if I bought, if I took my kid, I don't, I didn't have a kid in 99, of course, but if I took my kid to go see their favorite wrestlers in WCWC. and they're doing all this, it would be like, boy, that's, this is a little far removed from staying in the rafters and all the shit that made us a fan of this originally. And I understand it's got to evolve, but to the point where we're mocking, wrestling and having girls that we don't know, I don't know any of those girls, they're not professional wrestlers, they're adult entertainers.

And it's, it's not like this is a crossover segment or in the first hour. This is right before the main event. where it's Goldberg and Brett Hart. It's just unbelievable. It's not the wrestling I grew up on. And I'll tell you what, sometimes we got to evolve, and that's what Magic Spoon did.

I mean, as an adult, we realize that we don't need all that sugar first thing in the morning in a big bowl of cereal. But then my wife found that Magic Spoon, man, it gets us the protein we need first thing in the morning, but it's nostalgically delicious. It tastes just like my childhood favorites. And if you're already a Magic Spoon fan,

here's some big news. Magic Spoon has turned, their super popular cereal into high-protein treats. They taste just like those classic crunchy cereal bars, and I love them. They're crunchy. They're crispy. They're airy. It's an easy way to get 12 grams of protein on the go.

And for the first time ever, magic spoon treats are available in grocery stores with delicious flavors like marshmallow and chocolatey peanut butter. But my favorite, and I double dog dare you to try it and tweet me and say you don't love it is double chocolate. And you can look at me and know, I know where the good eating is. It is double chocolate. It tastes fantastic. And dude, 12 grams of protein?

Come on. Get you some. By the way, Magic Spoon cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar, and four grams of net carbs. You can feel good about what you're eating. The most popular flavors are fruity and cocoa, but there's so many more. Man, I've loved the cereal for a long time,

but these treats, it's like I discovered fire at my house. I love the marshmallow. I love the chocolate peanut butter. I love the blueberry muffin. But dude, double chocolate, hard to beat. My wife really likes the chocolate peanut butter. What's your favorite flavor, Eric?

Chocolate peanut butter without a doubt. Although the cinnamon, I'm into the cinnamon cereal right now. Not bad. Not bad at all. But you know what's really cool? You mentioned the crunchiness because a lot of the reason that we like snack foods is the texture. I mean, foods are designed and engineered for the

what they call it the bite as well as the flavor. I love this product because it's a quick snack. I can get that crunch. I can feel like I'm actually having a snack, not just eating a piece of cheese, but it doesn't spike your insulin. There's no sugar, negligible carbs, four net carbs is almost like air. So you can enjoy a treat without spiking your insulin or your glucose. And that's a really good thing because it keeps your energy level all day.

Get $5 off your next order at magic spoon.com slash 83 weeks or look for MagicSpoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. that's magic spoon.com slash 83 weeks for $5 off magic spoon hold on to the dream hey and listen i know i just said they're available to amazon and in your grocery store but it'll really help the show if you'll save yourself some cash hit that QR code right there or just go to magic spoon.com slash 83 weeks use that promo code 83 weeks it'll be cheaper than amazon it'll be cheaper than the grocery store you will have to wait a couple of days but it'll save you some money and really help out the show that's magic spoon dot com slash 83 weeks so here it is man goldberg and brett heart in the main event and fans are

standing this is how you position stars you know i i don't know that i necessarily love the idea of the last segment i just want to recap what happened we saw kevin nash and scott hall in a tag team affair was a handicapped tag team match against three female strippers and Goldberg came out and speared everybody in sight and then he went back to his locker room and we shot the whole entrance from him walking out of the locker room

with surrounded by security who weren't just fucking there in the very last segment like the idea that those two segments touch to me Eric makes literally no sense how do we have a special entrance after he just ran out by himself

what do we do doing? Why wouldn't he have just stayed down there, picked up the mic, and call out Brett Hart? Why don't we go all the way to the back, spray ourselves down, headbut ourselves on the fucking deal, strap on our belt, find J.J. Dillon's ass, get a couple state troopers, get our pyro going. What are we doing? We're having fun. We're out there pretending that we know how to write a wrestling show. And I think Russo may have, I wasn't there, but I've heard others who were there when Rousseau was there in WWE. And I think you've heard the term filter.

You know, I think Rousseau as a part of a much more experienced creative team could be an asset. Yes. Russo in charge of a creative team is a fucking disaster, which is what we're watching. Therein lies the difference. Russo could be a part of a team, a good part of a team,

because he does think in terms of big moments, he's got some good instincts. He just doesn't have enough experience producing television and understanding how to tell stories to be much more than a segment producer. That's the difference. He was surrounded by people that knew more than him. In WCW, he was surrounded by people who knew less than him.

That's it. man i um i do like a lot of vince russo's work and i appreciate some of his genius ideas and i just like him as a human being i mean i've had a lot of really good conversations with him and i think if he lived close like we'd probably hang out and watch sports together like i like him and i know that that upsets a lot of people and you want to cancel me and that's fine i just treat people how they treat me and whatever but i will say dude the and again i said at the top of the show. Don't know shit about wrestling. Don't know shit about TV. But the format or lack thereof of this where, I mean, we set ourselves up for failure here just on the format alone.

The talent that's on the show is incredible. The presentation of the lighting and the pyro and the ring and the set and the entrance way. And I really like a lot of the little things like the threads throughout the show for these individual angles and stories. I like that. I like that we're getting some backstage use. I do like the job they're doing with Mike Teney positioning him as the straight man interviewer. I like the little preview of seeing guys get ready for their matches. There's a lot of good stuff on this show.

But there's certain things like Goldberg just doing a run-in and then going back to his locker room for the elaborate entrance, man, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. We've already seen him now. Formatting would have made such a big improvement on this show. And it's just those little things, I think, it took this show from where it could have been a great show or at least a very good show to where it's more of a head scratcher when it's done and i and that's one of the things i harp about you know what people wonder why are you so negative why are you always you know cutting down this

a w for this or for that and it's because this is a simple fix or it would have been a simple fix a year or two ago it's going to get much harder as they continue to lose audience gary considine tell me once once your audience decides to vote with their remote it's really tough to get them back. And AEW is getting to that point if they're not already past it. But the solution is a lot of what we're talking about here. A lot of the flaws in this show that we're talking about and reacting to are the same flaws that exist in AEW right now. How many times have people heard me talk about formats? And I understand that a lot of times people that are hearing me don't necessarily understand what I'm talking about when I say format.

It's more of a, it's not an insider term. But to someone who's actually producing television, they understand the absolute necessity of a great format if you want to grow and build your audience or build and grow your audience. And I don't see it in AEW, just like we're not seeing it here. And it's one of the things that frustrates me the most. And it probably comes off as anger or whatever. It's not. It's just not that hard. Just do it. Just acknowledge that you have a problem.

Keep an open mind to the fact that maybe there's a way to format your show so that you don't have to, you got great talent, you've got all the assets, you've got everything you need. You just need to figure out a way to present it in a way that holds people's imagination because what you're doing is compelling as opposed to throwing matches up. Or in Rousseau's case, he's not necessarily throwing matches up because he didn't give a shit. about great matches but he loved great segments he loved great backstage stuff he he loved those scenes where people are chasing each other with cars and shit that was that's how he got his jollies that's what he wrote for that's what he had a sense of anything else to do

with the television show he was fucking clueless and still is tony go back and look at this show ask yourself honestly if you can am i making some of these same mistakes and if I am let's go fix them matters I can't believe this is real but there's another ref bump I think that's the third one Bradhart's on the outside of the ring Goldberg is now going to field Holland Nash who were just attacked by him and now they're coming hit coming back to return fire and they've brought Sid along with them said hits a big boot Scott Hall hit a choke slam on Bill Goldberg and now here comes the big power bomb from Cid.

It's our first time seeing Sid in person. He makes his point. Big Power Bomb, Hall, Nash, and Sid powder. The ref is still down. You see Brett Hart on the right side of your screen. He's on the floor on the outside. Everybody's just left laying here.

And I could hear Rousseau pitching this show. I don't even know if he had production meetings. I'm assuming he did. I could just see him up there passionately pitching how phenomenal this show is going to be because all this is going to happen. And then bro, bro, bro, bro. And right out we crash and bring him, boom, this happens. And he would get so excited about it.

He would be passionate about it. Anybody within 50 feet of them would catch some of that enthusiasm. He couldn't help it. He's really good at that because he's convinced himself, which he's really capable of doing quite easily. he can he's convinced himself that this is great television bro and then he's capable because he's a charming some bitch capable of convincing others around him to give it a try like i said 60 days later i got a phone call from brad zigo going whoops how about coming back and we just looked at the reason why did you see that at the finish where brett climbs in the

ring covers goldberg one two kick out Ruff counts three, we go off the air. Oh, stupid. What was the goal? Like, what's the intention? You know, when you do anything, if I get up in a morning and I put my foot on the floor as I'm getting out of bed, there's an intention behind that. I'm going to go take a leak.

It's the first thing in my mind in the morning when I wake up. So when I actually come to consciousness and I take my foot and I put it on the floor, there's an intention behind it. I would like to know what the intention was behind what we just saw. What do you hope is going to result from that? Because you're doing something, you're taking your foot off the mattress and putting it on the floor, you're taking an action, therefore you anticipate something. There's an intention behind it.

What the fuck is it? I'd be curious. Well, I'm curious what you think about what we've got planned. I can't believe this is real. Jason Hervey is joining us live at ad-free shows.com. We recently talked about you and Jason reuniting after not seeing each other for like seven years. But he joined us on.

I didn't know. I got a call from Evan Polisher who runs the ship over to Adfrey shows and said, hey, Jason Hervey is going to be doing a Q&A. And I thought, well, that's cool. I didn't know I was going to be on there with him. You're not. He's going to talk about shit that I don't want people

to talk about or know about. Do you want to be on it with him? He's got the beans, brother. He can spill bees all fucking day long. Don't miss it. It'll be a lot of fun. Wednesday, October 30th, live ad free shows.com hosted by our main man, Cassio. He joined us in Chicago.

And if you missed your chance to see him at Top Guy weekend, he's going to jump on with us. He's the cat from back to the future. You ever hear of that one? What about the wonder years? how about those old clash of the champions we're going to talk about the good the bad and the ugly of his experience he did some peewey herman movies all that stuff and all the wrestling stuff wcw t and a and so much more it's ad free shows dot com if you haven't already what are you waiting for go check it out and listen it seems like every time i log

into social media i'm seeing more news there is news coming out feel it feels like hourly it like we're back in the Monday Night War era, and every time he turn around, Samantha Irvin's leaving. There's a new lawsuit against Vince. There's this new merger inside of TKO. I mean, on and on and on. There's some sort of news. Eric Bischoff is reacting to all of it live and in real time, and you can join the conversation at 83 weeks.com. That is your home for all things, Eric Bischoff. It's 83 weeks.com. And when I say live, I mean live, live, live. You have your opportunity to ask him questions, pick his brain, and you don't want to miss it. You can't get this kind of access anywhere else.

It's 83 weeks.com. Go right now. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Do yourself a favor. Hit the notifications bell. So the next time Eric is live, you won't miss it. That's 83 weeks.com.

If you've got a question for the show, it's easy to ask over on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. It's at 83 weeks. You can also find Eric on Instagram at the real. Eric Bischoff or on Twitter at E. Bischoff, but for the show, it's 83 weeks everywhere you do your social media in. And in our real life, Eric, we're helping people save money. And boy, we've been doing it left at right at save witheric.com. Before you know, Halloween's going to be here.

And then Thanksgiving's right behind that. And then Christmas. And then we all wake up in January and say, oh, man, I got to get it together. I need to make like a New Year's resolutions list. And somewhere on that list, always in the top five will be pay off some debt, save some money. Why not go ahead and kill two birds with one stone right now at save witheric.com? You can even skip your next two house payments, which means if you haven't already, you won't have to make your November or your December payment.

What about a little holiday break from house payments? You're done until next year. And come next year, you're going to have a cheaper monthly payment. Listen, you can look it up, and I'm sure you've been feeling it yourself in your household. American families are in more credit card debt right now than ever before. And my grandfather used to say, the only good snake is a dead snake. I don't know if I agree with that. I've got friends who have pet snakes.

But do you have pet debt? Well, let me tell you, Grandpa, the only good debt is no debt. There's no such thing as good credit card debt. Let's get rid of that doggone debt as soon as possible. Now, if you're feeling stuck making minimum payments, that's probably harder than it sounds. Or so you thought. but not at save witheric.com. We're routinely helping our podcast listeners take all of their high interest rate credit card debt

and consolidate it into one low monthly payment. See, the solution you've been looking for to have more money at the end of the month, it's been in your house this entire time. It's not in your drunk drawer in your kitchen or your attic or your basement. It's actually in the equity in your house. You see, your house is still worth more than ever. And once you owe this money to the credit card companies, how you pay it back is up to you.

So do you continue to play their game and pay 28, 31% interest? You know you can do better than that. Not only that, but the interest you paid a American Express or Discover or whoever, man, that interest is not tax deductible, but the interest you pay on your mortgage is. So if you could get a better interest rate, a greater tax deduction, and did I mention a cheaper monthly payment? That's right. We're routinely helping our podcast listeners, say five, six, seven, even $800 a month. Earlier this week, I saw us help a family say $1,400 a month.

Not $1,400 once or annually, monthly. Think about how much money you'd have to earn, pay taxes on. How much would you have to earn to just net $1,400? Give yourself a raise. Go right now to Save Witheric.com. It's no cost. It's no obligation. And if we can't save you some cash, we won't waste your time.

And I want to be clear, this may be the first time you're hearing that Eric Bischoff can help you with your home loan, but it's not news to us. He's been licensed in doing this for more than three years. We just wanted to make sure he was good at it before we started bragging about it. No brag, just fact. We're going to save you a boatload of cash, and it's fast and easy to get started. There's no application fee. There's no credit report fee. And if we can't save you some cash, we won't waste your time. Get a cheaper monthly house payment. Give yourself a holiday break from house payments. Get rid of that credit card debt and make it happen for your family with my family. join the team at save witheric.com and I want to be clear we don't say no we say not yet but here's

how I can't tell you how many people we have found who had goals and they shared those goals with us but they weren't ready right then they needed a plan we want to be your mortgage advisor for life so we might say hey we can't do anything right now but here's how we can do it if you'll do a B C and D and then give me a call back in two months you'll be good to go that works that's what we do. Now get that at your bank or credit union. You won't. They'll just say, sorry, you don't qualify. Next, we're not going to treat you like a loan number. You're going to be a part of the family because you're really dealing with my family. Oh, and Uncle Eric. Go find it out right now. Save with Eric.com. NMLS number 21, 29, equal housing lender. Save witheric.com.

Eric, I never know what to expect when we click record, but I had a blast today watching the first nitro of the Russo era. What did you think? Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. It was fun watching you react. So that was the most fun I've had a long time. I think I've laughed that hard in a while. Well, listen, if you hear it, if you listen closely enough, the filthy animals are doing another fucking run in. We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Pischoff.

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