83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 346: WCW Launches The Internet

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric is joined by guest host Derek Sabato to discuss when World Championship Wrestling joined the World Wide Web! Eric shares details of his experience working with Bob Ryder to launch WCW into the internet super highway and in turn becoming somewhat a pioneer in internet chatting with fans. All that plus so many more stories from the age where the internet came on a disc on this weeks edition of 83Weeks with Eric Bischoff! 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 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.  LUMEN - Take the next step in improving your health, go to https://www.lumen.me/83WEEKS to get 15% off your Lumen.  GAMETIME - Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and redeem code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. ZBIOTICS - Go to https://zbiotics.com/83WEEKS to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use 83WEEKS at checkout. 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

Hey, before we get going today, I wanted to give you a heads up. Before you know it, Halloween's going to be here, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and the New Year's, and then we're going to have to worry about, uh, how do I pay for all this holiday spending? Let's go ahead and make a New Year's resolutions list. And let me go ahead and guess last year and every year before that, two of your resolutions were pay some debt off, save some money. I can help you do both of those.

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know you can do better. Not only that, did you know that the interest you pay on those credit cards is not only sky high, it's also not tax deductible, whereas the interest you pay on your mortgage is tax deductible. So if you could get a better rate, a greater tax deduction, skip your next two house payments, and come next year a lower monthly payment, what are you waiting for? We're routinely helping our listeners, say five, six, seven, even eight hundred bucks a month. But how much can you save? It's free to find out right now at save withconrad.com. And I want to give you heads up. We're not a banker or credit union. We're not going to say know and treat you like a number and show you the door. We're going to say not yet, but here's

how. You need a plan. You need a friend in the mortgage business. And that's me. Let my family help your family at save withconrad.com. It's no cost, no obligation. And if we can't save you some cash, we won't waste your time. Get a quick quote. You'll be glad you did. Savewithconrad.com. NMLS number 2129, equal housing lender. Savewithconrad.com. Hey, hey, this is not Conrad Thompson. My name is Derek Sabato, and I'm sitting in for Conrad, and I'm here at 83 weeks with the man who has done something no one else has done professional wrestling, the Hall of Fame of himself, the man behind every good thing that is happening in the

professional wrestling business, talk, advertising, TV rights, it all goes back to him. Wow. Mr. Eric Bischoff. Thank you, sir. Okay, let's just, we're good. Thanks, everybody for joining us tonight. I hope you enjoyed the show to all of our sponsors. Yeah, we're just going to replay last week's show. No, but thank you very much. It's good to be here. I'm going to apologize to the audience, first and foremost, because I'm not very good at night. Like, I'm usually in, what is it? It's 8 o'clock my time, 802. I'm on my way to bed in about 20 minutes. That's half hour. You know, and I get up at four. It's not my day early. But I'm not a night person.

Usually when I do these podcasts with Conrad, I've had at least two pots of coffee. I've had all kinds of gimmicks to wake myself up. Healthy gimmicks. You know, I'm in healthy shit. Like medium chain fatty acids. I put a tablespoon of that, MCT oil in my coffee in the morning with a little bit of butter.

Man, that is brain food. But my point is, I guess up. I gear up when I get ready to do these shows. Man, I'm usually in bed by now. So it's up to you, Derek. You're going to have to drag my fat old ass through the show and make it entertaining because I don't want to disappoint anybody. I don't think we're going to have to worry about keeping Eric awake once we start

mentioning all the questions we've got and all the things we're going to talk about today. There is a lot to discuss here at 83 weeks.com. And don't forget that 83 weeks.com is your home for all things, Eric Bischoff. and we are doing a lot of exciting things. Paul Walter Houser joined you recently at 83weeks.com for wise choices. There is a lot of buzz going on with him and MLW, and you two got to sit down and have a conversation. For those of you who haven't checked it out yet, Eric,

what can you tell us about your conversation with Paul? Well, now, have we dropped the entire episode, Super Dave? It is live as of Halloween. morning so yes it is out now after our podcast drops okay so nobody's seen it yet nope so i'm a little confused what we're doing here so is this show live are there people yeah i know we got our ad free shows people here right we're live with ad free shows that's correct that's it we're not nobody else can see us but our ad free show family members right just them okay so let you know right now please don't tweet it out whatever just let the

show take care of itself because it was really cool the way it happened you know i was excited you know to bring paul walterhauser on you know we've talked about different things that we could do unwise choices and maybe who we'd like to interview and i know you know you've listened to me enough derrick i love talking to people who have taken professional wrestling and gone on to apply what they learned in professional wrestling to their next big you know adventure whatever that may be job career. But Paul is doing it backwards. Like he's going on to become a huge film star, like major film star. He had a movie that's a Pixar movie with Disney. I think it was still right number eight of all-time grossing movies. He's done a lot of great stuff. He's worked with

Clint Eastwood, some of the greatest directors out there, some other amazing actors. Anyway, I was so excited to talk to him about his journey and what he's doing in wrestling, and he was a big WCW fan. We got talking about that. And, you know, he basically said, man, I love to see you come in and take over MLW for one night. But, like, really do it, not wrestling do it, like come in from top to bottom, you know, produce or executive produce, I guess in this case, the show and have fun with it. And I said, yeah, whatever, you know, it's a cool idea. and I appreciate you thinking of it, that's a lot of fun, but I think court might have a problem

with that. And he called court. Paul called court right there, put him on a speaker, so everybody heard it, blindsided him with it and said, hell yeah, let's do it. So still got to work out some schedule issues I have, but I'm going to figure it out because I want to do it just because it sounds fun. So you're telling me that you are going to be an executive producer for one MLW show? I guess, yeah, you could call it that. You know, I mean, look, let's make it clear. You know, it's, it's coarse baby, right?

But, you know, when I talked to him on the phone, he said, no, I really want it to be your show. Do it the way you would do it if it was your show. And obviously, there's probably things going on there creatively. It's not like I'm going to come in there and just like, turn everything upside down, but to be able to kind of frame whatever's going on storyline-wise and produce it the way I would like to see it produce. You hear me talking about format. You hear me talk about threading stories through shows. You hear me talking about A stories, B story, C stories, and how I treat each one of them differently and how they're nuanced. And now I get a chance

to do it. So I think it's kind of fun. And it's even more fun the way it all came about. I think that's amazing. On my bingo card of 2024, possibly in the 2025, you executive producing an MLW show was very far down my list. Why, too? You're down to your list. You should be sitting here. I'm blown away, and it's amazing. Paul, especially from what he's done in movies, to what he is going through the journey as a professional wrestling fan and into what he's doing now.

It's an amazing story. You haven't checked it out yet. It's wise choices. It's at 83 weeks.com. You're going to see a lot of it on our social and stay tuned to 83 weeks. You can follow us on X, on Instagram, and on Facebook. We will be promoting when Eric is taking over MLW. You have some experience invading and taking over,

so this shouldn't be out of your capabilities by any stretching the matter. No, you know, I don't, it's not going to be like a hostile takeover kind of thing. I think it's just going to be, I mean, we haven't talked about it yet. I've been thinking about it. We've talked about it a little bit. I know which direction we're going, just put it that way. But to me, it's just like taking whatever stories they have and applying my own presentation to it, whether it's format or anything else, or threading the main event through the show and how you do it, maybe shooting interviews a little differently than we're normally used to seeing interview shot, just little things like that.

But those are fun little things to play with. with. And hopefully at the end of it, you know, people go, okay, well, that was different than what we normally see. If I could make people think, wow, that was really different. And I kind of liked it. That's a home run for me. So we're going to try, we're going to try to be as different as we can, but still stay within, you know, the guard rails. Different than, right? Because that's the airspace. Yeah, it's time to, you know, it's time to walk to walk. I've been talking to talk for a long time six years on this show damn six whole years i've been talking the talk now i'll get a chance to walk the walk now are you going to be competing against a e w or w are you shooting across

the bow at any particular company or is this going to be an m lw central no i no but i do think if i was tony con after watching dynamite tonight i'd really pay attention like tony hey tony fucking watch the show, dude. Pay attention. I mean, oh, let's, you watch that tonight, right? I did. We're, we're going to get into that. Actually, as we're taping this, it is, it is for, we'll peel back the curtain.

It is Wednesday night. We are taping this directly after dynamite. But the funny thing is, we stick to our schedule, and we started at 10 o'clock p.m. on time. AEW dynamite is still going on as we speak. So they are in their overrun That AEW enjoys so much We will get to a little bit of AEW dynamite Shortly

I have to ask before you go any further Have you heard about Bubba the Love Sponge And his response to you From your conversation on Conrad In the Dixie Carter episode Conrad sent me a clip And I started listening to it I was out doing errands

So I was kind of listening to it I had my earbuds in. And I don't know, I listened to like the first five or six minutes of it, I think. And then I got distracted with something. And I haven't gone back to listen to the rest of it. It is a interesting conversation based upon your conversation from the Dixie Carter episode where Bubble Love Sponge, former or I guess current radio host, I'm not sure of he still still on radio or just a podcast host, basically confirms what you discussed

on that episode that he was talking about. to deal with, that he was hard to deal with, and that you were correct in your assessment of him. It's odd in 2024 to hear somewhat agree with someone's, and I want to say negative assessment, but not the most positive assessment you had on Bubba. And I thought that was very interesting. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I'm torn. Not to get heavy or too heavy, but, you know, I try every day to be a better person, a better Christian, just to be better, right? And I know that, you know, holding grudges isn't a healthy thing to do, isn't the right thing to do, no matter how you look at it. So I try real hard to forgive pretty easily.

And, you know, I think I can forgive anybody that, you know, if he acknowledges, you know, certain things and really feels badly about it, then, you know, who am I not to forgive him? You know, it doesn't mean I'd want to associate with him because there's also, you know, a trust thing for me. I can forgive somebody, but not necessarily trust them enough to, to get close to the begin. Sure. Or just to choose to be around someone like that. You know, I don't like being around people I can't trust. Even though I may not be holding a grudge, I still don't trust him. So it's kind of a fine line for me,

and I have to try to manage it my best. But hey, if he's, you know, just a point in his life when he's looking back and, you know, doing some inventory, like, you know, I have, certainly. We probably all should at some point in time on a regular basis. But maybe he's just had something happen in his life

and, you know, whatever. He's trying to deal with it the right way. If that's the case, that's great. I'm happy for him. that's about as far as it'll go for me. I think that's commendable that at the end of the day, if he's bettering himself, that's what you're hoping for.

And I think that's what everybody wants at that point in time. Bygones be bygones and years go by, it's not a bad thought process or mantra. That puts in the past is in the past, and if we're not going to trust each other, it's okay to go amicably separately. There you go. There you go.

Speaking of amicable, I have a question for you. this a lot on Twitter in the last week or so. Motor City Machine Guns, two weeks into their WWE run, and they were recently the new WWE Tag Team Champions on SmackDown. There were a lot of comparisons made on the online discourse, as there always is, about how quickly they won the titles, and how people were comparing it to when AEW put Will Osprey and ricochet in the ring together.

You got it a little bit involved in the discourse. I know it was in your tweets, and I know landing on your radio. radar. What would you say to the people that think, is AEW treated differently with that hot shot, quote unquote, compared to the Motor City Machine Guns, all campaign winning champions within two weeks. So when did they get their title shot? They got to the finals of the tournament for the tag team championship. They were debuted as being put into the tournament for them. Okay. So no real back story, no story at all. It happened. as a result of a tournament, which is usually the reason you have tournaments is because you

really don't have any stories that you're going to continue. There's nothing really you can go back to to try to have another version of. It's all too familiar. And that's the thing. You get this talent roster and now it's up to you to mix and match them as many different ways as you can for as long as you possibly can. That's your job, right? As a writer, head of creative. Maximize their talent. the problem is you start running out of things to come up with that feels fresh sure you can always just make matches you know like whatever you can always just make matches and throw soap up against the wall but if you really want to try to tell stories you just run out a rope when you do that usually

you have a tournament because it's kind of like okay let's just erase everything we've done okay fresh and clean let's have a tournament we'll figure out who we want to win we'll bury a couple storyline seeds along the way so that when the tournament's over, now we've got some fresh stories to tell. So, boy, I just spent a lot of time on that.

But look, here's my, here's how I respond. What's happened since they won the titles? Nothing yet. Just happened this past Friday. All right. So let's see. If it's just fly them in, drop them in, they get a big

splash and then there's no storyline, nothing going forward, the attention that they're getting right now and a little bit of the controversy that can typically create cash if you know what you're doing. You know, there's a little bit of buzz just because of this. Well, let's see if what they did by dropping them in like that was actually part of a plan. If there's a story moving forward and if the story has something to do with the fact that they just dropped in and won the titles, it didn't really earn them. If there's anything that sounds similar to what I just said as the inciting incident of an act one,

then it was a plan. And I think it was a good idea. If there's no story and there's nothing going on, then it was, yeah, then I think there's a reason to compare the way people react to the two. Speaking to something going on, we know what we're about to talk about right here, Blue Choo.

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for more details and important safety information. We thank Bluechu for sponsoring 83 weeks. You did that really well. Thank you. I can't do those things live. I can record them like on garage band and send them if I have to. But it takes me like 10 takes. I am used to doing, I used to do our car commercials for a couple of the dealerships that I've worked at before. So I'm very used to reading that script and going line by line by line by. You're damn good at it. I appreciate it. This is going to be a tough transition from Blue Chew ads to this.

But Vince McMahon. It has come out reported by Mike Johnson. I knew it was going to be trouble. and I saw the list of ads and I'm like, do I have the balls to do this? Yes, I had the balls to do this. According to PW Insider has been putting together the idea, semblance of an entertainment company. I don't think this is a surprise to people, Eric, and I don't think it's a surprise to you. And I'm sure there is going to be a lot more that comes out. But there were a lot of WF employees that left the company within the last five to six months that it sounds like

for going to be involved in this company as well. I've been sitting on this one. I've been sitting on it. And I don't like spreading rumors. I don't like being the one that breaks something if it's not a 100% thing. So I've glad somebody else came out. And by the way, Mike Johnson, I think, is he's got as much integrity as any professional I've ever worked with. So when he comes out with a story, I'm pretty much, I'm all in, if it's a Mike Johnson break.

So shout out to Mike Johnson and Dave Sherer, P.W. Insider. Great guys. So, yeah, when I heard it, my reaction was, okay, but why? It's going to be really tough. I mean, look, Harvey Weinstein. And I don't mean to compare the two cases or even the two individuals, but it's the same general kind of thing, right? It's people's reaction to that type of controversy is not good. And I just can't imagine, you know, there's going to be a lot of people

that are going to be interested in going into business with Vince McMahon at this point. Because of the backlash that it would create. I mean, you don't even have to be very astute when it comes to business of public relations or current events to understand that, you know, you've got advertisers that will react. You've got a large part of the audience that's going to be very vocal and just a shit show of disaster. So I can't imagine how that's going to work. Maybe there's a way of maybe I'm dead wrong. Maybe there are people out there that just don't care. I do know that, or I do believe, I should say, that Vince has purchased a bunch of property of Santa Monica, some studio space.

Santa Monica is not a cheap place to buy property. So if that's true, this is kind of a long-term play. You know, he's not renting studio space if he's buying property. Again, that's what I've been led to believe. I don't think it's confirmed anywhere, so don't take it to the bank. But, yeah, he's making the move. Also, understand that there's nothing really going on right now.

There's a project that sounds something like another version of the Monday Night Wars, I guess. Again, I don't know who'd be interested in that, how we'd put it together. But whatever, more power to him. You know, that's the thing, a guy like Vince, he's not even the whole old is now, 84, 86, whatever. He's just not going to stop.

He will die trying to get back into the business again. That was, that's my follow-up. Do you see him attempting to get back into the professional wrestling space? Because the conjecture online right now, it's an entertainment company. You know Vince loves that word. Based on what I think I understand, it's not really wrestling. It's broader. And I don't want to say too much more.

Like it's a big secret, but I just, you know, this is so speculative at this. I don't want to add any more meat on the bone than I should. Is it something you think at the end of the day he has to do for? himself as just this bigger-than-life bravado between the documentary that we covered extensively on 83 weeks.com to just trying to move on with his life, rectify maybe some of his ego in the long run? I just, again, you know, I don't want to suggest I know Vince very well at all. My impression of him in the basis of a little bit of time that I spent with him,

He is just so profoundly driven in ways that most of us can't understand that I just don't think he has, his brain doesn't function like everybody else's brain. You know, relaxing, going on a long vacation, you know, experiencing things that you have an experience in your life because you've constantly been working and grinding. it's just not Vince. Right. He's going to work until the day he drops dead. But I don't think he's interesting getting back into wrestling.

I think he wants to stay in the entertainment business. I'm going to ask this question because it's my own personal question, and I want your opinion on this. Do you think he always wanted to be in the entertainment business and wanted to step into it outside of professional wrestling, considering all his work? and branding took wrestling pretty much out of the lexicon of what the company was trying to build. Do you think this was always his end goal? And he just, now we can do it without the

wrestling monkey on his back, so to speak. Well, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't know him well enough to suggest how I would feel about that. I mean, it's always possible. But look at, you know, just look at his past. Look at his history. You know, he made that, uh, whatever that movie was with Hulk Hogan. No Holds Bard. No holds Bart. Took a script. There's a reason. Forget the name of that. We don't like that, but basically copied it and made it their own, you know, over the course of 48 hours with whatever else was going on. And he came up with the script and he produced

his own movie. You know, the bodybuilding thing, you know, the XFL, you know, Vince has always, I think, wanted to penetrate more deeply into the entertainment business in a more generally, as opposed to just being, you know, a wrestling company within the entertainment genre of business. So I think he's always wanted to do more, but I don't think it was like the goal is to be a Hollywood guy. I got the impression from being around him. He just detested Hollywood people.

Of course, he would do business with him. You know, he wouldn't wear his feelings about Hollywood on his sleeve. I wouldn't think, again, not to suggest, I was ever around him, but just knowing him the way I think I do, he probably just detested them and resented having to do business with him, but did because it was a lot of money. And I'm sure there were exceptions. He probably made some friends in the business that he got along with.

But for the most part, Hollywood's a weird culture, too. I mean, it was fun. I liked it. I liked playing in it. I miss part of it. And I'm kind of slowly, I guess, getting reeled back here over the last couple months. but it is a very different culture. You have to get really used.

You have to get very comfortable knowing you're around the phoniest people you've ever been around in your life. And it's just the way it is. I mean, professional wrestling and the entertainment business, phoning kind of goes hand in hand, does it not? I'll be honest with everybody talks about how bad. I'll eat darky. It's a wrestling business.

Like it's the darkest, most manipulative. you know, den of thieves in any, you know, industry. And by the way, it's freaking romper room compared to Hollywood. All right. It's daycare. Maybe preschool. Maybe compared to Hollywood. It's just different.

It's a different kind of manipulation and culture. But, yeah, it is what it is. You know, parts of it were a lot of fun. Speaking of culture, speaking of fun, crown jewels this Saturday. Eric, 1 p.m. start time on Saturday. Well, Eastern. For you, I think it would be 11 a.m.? Free Central.

I always get this confused by you know me. No, what time is it at Eastern one? One. 10. 10. 10 a.m. 10 a.m. professional wrestling on a. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, it's 11.

have you watched a lot of wd tv recently no i've been really busy the last three weeks i've been busier than i have in the last two and a half years it's just it's been nuts no i remember when you said you were going to slow down it's not going to happen i've determined it's never going to happen and now i'm fine with it i used to try to resist it i used to try to manage that because I thought maybe it would be nice not to just constantly be going and I tried it for a while. Hate it.

Never going to do it again. Crown Jewel is coming from Saudi Arabia. On the top, it looks like Cody Rhodes is going to be battling Gunther. A champion match for this own title from Saudi Arabia. I don't know. I feel like this is a big,

match, but I feel like the goofy champion versus champion doesn't do it for me. I feel like it's just kind of a miss. I'm not as excited for WWE PLE as I had been for a long time. You're not watching the product, but here's the good news. If you watch the show on Saturday, you'll get 75 video packages so you know exactly what's happening on what's going on. You know what, though? I'll tell you what, Derek, that's a good point, because the last PLE we covered because I don't watch regularly. And even if I'm not traveling or busy, my wife has got something to say

about me hog on a television for three hours during prime time on a Monday. It's not as easy as it sounds. And I could go up to my room, but, you know, we didn't stay married for 40 years plus because I did shit like that. That's true. So, I don't, I typically don't watch a lot of

WWE, but one of the cool things I like about their PLEs is if you turn into the pregame show, whatever they call that pregame show, they do such a great job of taking you through each one of the stories in an entertaining way. So it's kind of bringing you up to speed. You get with the program. And ultimately by the end of the pregame show, you know exactly why you're watching every one of those matches and what the drama and the backstory was leading up to it. And you also know what the stakes are for each one of them. It's really kind of a cool thing. thing. It's something that, again, Tony should think about with his pay-per-views because, again,

for someone like me who may tune into an AEW pay-per-view, but if that pre-game show just kind of sort it as a good job, setting up the event, you're missing an opportunity. I have watched a couple of the AEW pre-game shows, and it's not that they're bad. It's just that they're not very effective when it comes to bringing a sometime viewer up to speed so that they're that he or she can enjoy the pay-per-view as well. Speaking of things you've been doing and watching, Eric, me and you actually have been doing a couple fun watch-alongs over on ad-freeshows.com of old WCW Saturday Night episodes. I think we should make that like a regular thing, you know, maybe monthly at this point.

I kind of dug it. Yeah. There's a lot of good stuff in there, too. We could spend some time with it. Absolutely. Last week, you look back at a WCW Saturday night from June 9th. 1992, which was a really looking back a new leadership show, Bill Watts, taking over a new direction for the company. Let's take a listen. We are doing the WSW magazine update right now with Eric Bischoff,

who is announcing two of the new rules for WCW. One, no moves off the top rope. And two, no running your opponent into the ring post. You're the one delivering this message, not Bill Watts, as part of the magazine update. We talked about the top rope, but what did you think about the ringpost idea. I mean, I was cool with it because, again, I understood why. I understood why. Bill was essentially laying out parameters, rules, so that later on, the breaking of those rules could become potentially part of a story and controversy. So I understood it. I didn't really judge it too much, to be honest, whether running or someone's head into the turnbuckle or ring post should be or shouldn't be, you know, illegal. I didn't really give it a much,

much thought. I just kind of approached it holistically, which is, okay, this is what they want to do. My job is to sell it. You know, I'm still getting a check every two weeks. My boss is telling me what to do. I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. And I didn't really think too much of it beyond that. You know, Eric, I got to be honest, it's weird watching us watch each other back, but it's kind of cool to see that. Yeah, it reminds me, you know, a couple years ago, I was in a hotel room and I don't sleep very well when I'm on the road. I evidently I fell asleep watching ESPN. This was several years, quite a few years ago now.

I fell asleep and I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, whatever, and ESPN's on, but I really wasn't quite awake, but I could hear the TV. And I hear this voice. I'm going, God, the voice says familiar. I'm trying to, you know, come to a little bit. And I finally look at the television and I go, God, I don't have my glasses. is out, you know, in bed. God, the guy kind of looks familiar.

That voice. Where do I know that voice from? And it was me from like 1989. You know, but that was weird. This is almost as weird. Check out the WCW Saturday Night Watchalongs and tons of other exclusive bonus content and interactive experience with Eric. He was just on the other about 20 minutes ago before we started taping with Jason

Hervey over at ad-freeshows.com. And if you've been on the fence about giving ad-free shows a try, now is the time, Eric, exclusively for our 83 weeks listeners. Use promo code Eric 25 at checkout to get 25% off your first month on ad-freeshows.com. That's code Eric 25, one word altogether, E-R-I-C-25 at checkout, and get 25% off your first month of ad-freeshows.com. Give it a try. You'll be glad you did.

How am I doing so far? I am so impressed. I appreciate you. impressed because if if super david would have said okay you're going to do it Derek but you know he doesn't usually read you know ad so here's what we'd have to do we would we would have recorded straight through and then i would have recorded each one of the spots and try to transition into them to make it sound like it was part of the show right i'm just here to make your life easier eric you are you're just like a hot knife through

butter man it's awesome one of the other things that's come out in the past week is that WWE is launching a new program to help assist with the development of independent wrestlers. WWID is the program, as it's called. Eric, have you seen this and are you aware of what their goal and program guidelines are going to be? I've seen it. I've read a little bit about it. I've read a lot of reaction to it. I don't know how much detail is out there in this program.

I haven't paid too much attention to it. I just know that they're doing it. I kind of have a pretty good understanding as to why they're doing it. And I haven't thought about it too much beyond that. What are the details that you know? So the way it was announced was, and I'll read it directly from the WWE press release under the program, WWE will provide prominent independent wrestling schools with the WWIID official designation, with the goal of providing new trainees and existing talent at these select institutions with enhanced developmental opportunities.

Now, the really interesting part of this personally to me is the selection of schools. Knox Pro Academy out of Los Angeles, Elite Pro Wrestling Training Center out of Concord, New Hampshire, Seth Rallens, Black and Brave Academy out of Davenport, Iowa, Booker T's Reality Wrestling in Houston, and the one that stuck out the most to me, Cody Rhodes Nightmare Factory in Atlanta, which is co-owned by Cody and QT Marshall of AEW. you. Now, the point they try to make in this press release is that W.WEID will identify top independent wrestling prospects with an official designation and support their developmental journey by providing financial opportunity and assisting with training, mentorship and development,

including access to world-class facilities, best-in-class ring training, athletic trainers, and more. So essentially, it's developmental for developmental if we consider NXT developmental. I've seen this happen before. They did a lot of this in Europe when the launch of W&NXT, UK, happened. This sounds like just another breeding ground for them to get more hands-on talent as quickly as possible to stop the companies like AWMLW and TNA from fostering some of the younger talent out there. Does that seem like a fair assessment to you? It's dark.

I mean, it's coming from. from a pretty negative angle, and I'm not suggesting that it may not be true, necessarily. But I also am not so quick to jump onto the reason why, according to you, they're doing it. I don't think it's necessarily a preemptive strike to get to talent before anybody else. That's the dark part. I do think that WWE realizes that given the trajectory of expansion, the amount of programming, particularly international programming, that they continue to add,

that they're going to become a talent incinerator. They're going to be going through so much talent and require so many more talents coming through the system because out of every hundred that come through the system, you might get two that are potential big stars, maybe three, and the rest will cycle through over time. So if you're thinking about building stars for the future, you've got to be thinking eight years ahead, 10 years ahead.

You can't look at your current, the youngest crop of your developmental talent and go, okay, that's our future. No, you've got to be thinking about a half a generation behind them. So if the idea is, wow, we're going to continue to grow, we're going to continue to need more talent, how are we going to do that? Because we've only got one, you know, NXT, we've only got one place in Florida and we're not going to, you know, build training facilities all over the country. So how do we get more hands-on access, direct access to some of this emerging talent without

having to build, you know, training facilities and schools all over the country. This makes sense to me. This is really a franchise model, is what it is. It's not, you know, anything new. It's a little different because it's wrestling, but it's a pretty good idea if you're concerned about building talent. I think it's going to be interesting. I was on the Indies when they first started

their exploration into United Kingdom and there were some talent that were that are currently on the roster that was still working in these and there was some pushback for finishes there were some pushback for well I can't do this I can't do that I don't I'm sorry here's here's what here's the downside

there's going to be an upside for WWE because I think the idea is a good idea if like I said we're building talent you know for 10 years from now um here's the downside and you've already you've touched on it you've experienced it already you're going to get talent you're going to get wrestlers who are working the indie scene but they can't take a loss because wwee's looking at me i'm kind of connected here a little bit i've got to be a little careful about my finishes whether that's true or not guys will say it of course it'll you know it'll

it's true in their mind so out with out a little calm and they make themselves believe it like if they go to school it's got the w w i d and there's you know my my trainer knows you know some my trainer knows terry taylor and oh yeah they talk twice a week and you know maybe i got a shot here so i can't go out there and do a job for that guy maybe a run-in so whatever but that'll be shitty because that kind of stuff ruins it right it it quits being collaborative and it starts being selfish not that it doesn't exist anyway it's natural to a degree but you have this layer of work because that's what it's going to be working to it it's going to make it it's going to make it a lot harder on independent producers do you think in the long run I don't think it's a

bad thing for business I don't know that it's a good thing for business or a bad thing for business. I think it's good for talent to get paid and if they're going to be getting paid, that's always the plus here. In terms of growth, they are very set in their ways of how they believe in the product should be presented. And you as a competitor brand know face to face head to head, sometimes different is better, different than. Is that a thing that really they can box a lot of people into, which won't allow growth in that form? I guess I'm not sure I understand a question, Derek. So they're a very particular word, their training and how they want things done.

And, you know, the common joke on the Indies for a long time was, if you don't know how to work the hard camera, you can't be on TV, learn how to work the hard camera. If they're starting to get guys that they are bringing in that do not fit that mold and want to retrain them into that, and then that starts going down to the lower levels, are you going to see the same formula from top instead of the middle and the bottom, the evolution of the business sometimes happens. You did it different then than what WWF was doing. Will this make a product possibly homogenized from top all the way down, do you think?

Only if they're really successful, which, by the way, I don't think they will be over time with this. I think it's a good, I don't think it's going to fail. I just don't think it's going to, and I don't know why I feel this way. I guess I do. I'll talk about it a minute. I just don't think it's going to have as much impact as people are afraid or think it will. I think it'll be there. I think it'll provide, you know, like Knox Pro, I know those guys.

You know, that my son trained there. Really, really talented group of people, Kishi's team, family, so many cool people there. So these are good schools. And I'm not familiar with the rest of them, but I'm sure Booker School is top-notch. so it's going to be good for them but I don't think outside of those particular schools where there's a lot of direct

connected tissue anyway I don't think it's going to change much I don't know I wouldn't worry about it if it's going to be here's my take it'll be tough on the independent promoters once you know guys start using that as leverage to try to get what they want in front of their

wives and girlfriends that's what it boils down to my mom's in the audience She drove 40 miles to get here. I can't lose. There'll be a lot of that going on, but I just don't think it'll have that much of an impact on me. Speaking of things that need an impact, fellas,

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We missed the main event overrun, but just to let you know, and by the time everyone hears this, you're going to know Bobby Lashley has made his entrance in AEW coming aboard and attacking Swerf, Strickland, and Prince Nana. Bobby Lashley is going to be part what seems like a new Hurt business where the Hurt syndicate, I guess, is probably what they can actually call themselves considering the Hurt business as a W.E. product. MVP, Shelton Benjamin, Bobby Lashley.

What do you think Bobby Lashley brings to the table for AEW? First off, he is a great guy. A freak of nature physically. I don't think he's ever been injured. It's rare. It's been rare in his career. Yeah, I mean, he's, he is just physically. physically such a supreme athlete, and a rare one.

Like I said, I mean, he's intense. He's incredibly strong. He's capable of doing so much, but he's just never been hurt. That's amazing to me. But he's smart. He's very, very talented, and he's very motivated. This isn't, you know, as long as Bobby's been around, you would think,

he's probably, you know, kind of tired of this and just going through the motions and maybe get one last ride. That's not, that's not that guy. This guy's got a big heart and he wants to go. So I, I'm excited for him. It's a good, it's a, you know, let's hope Tony does something right or does something right. I want to be sound like he's never done anything right. Although, you know, what?

Maybe. Well, carry on. What else happened on that show? That was a horses show. I watched the first few minutes of it. And I thought, okay, I'm just going to watch this. Open my mind. I'm going to lower my expectations.

I'm not really here to critique anything. I'm just going to watch it in case somebody asked me a question. And I got a shot. It was like when I, because I got started late. Got in about after the first half hour. So the camera comes swooping down into the entrance. And I see this Fekka, the Halloween set just. It looked like they went to the dollar store and only had eight bucks.

So they bought like little plastic pumpkins that they could set around and this green shit that they duct tape to the floor. And you could see the tape. It was horrible. It was the worst thing. And I'm thinking, this guy's pounding his chest about the $175 million a year he's getting for this dreck. And I'm thinking, we could have. please dressed up the set for crying out loud you themed the show around Halloween and you got $37 with a garbage on your set for your theme fuck don't he got to try just try begging you

did that make it it made it hard for you to get into the show at that point in time You know, because, you know, like I said, I went into it, I managed my expectations. I said, just try to enjoy it, see what happens. And I saw like five interviews back to back and each one got worse than the one before it. It was dreadful. And then, and I'm watching the crowd because I know I'm biased. I'm not, it is when it is. I just don't like the show.

And I don't like the approach and I don't think there's any vision. And I think the psychology between what they're doing and booking this thing for cage match rankings and what the fuck they're doing is just such an awful way to try to build a business. But whatever, have it, Tony. It's a party. But the thing that stood out to be two things in addition to all that. One is I watch the crowd pretty closely because when you watch the crowd, it, you know, it'll let you know whether I'm being, you know, bias or whether, you know, I'm actually kind of right when I make a statement like I've been making. And when you watch the crowd and they're not reacting to the big

moments they should be reacted to, you know, the talent are out there and they've got their mics and they've got their story laid out and they're, they're delivering. And I think Moxley did a great job technically, but the audience just didn't care. There was no real interest, at least not the degree that you would want for something at that level. The rest of the, you know, stuff that I was able to watch, kind of same thing. You know, you get your young bucks, you know, high spot pops, but that's real slow and, or not real slow, but it's real short. You don't get a whole show of that.

And that match just ended so lacklustily. Is that a word? Yes. All right. Well, if it's not, it is now. It was so flat. It's like, uh, no, maybe there was a great story going into it or maybe something good will come out of it. Otherwise, it was about as anticlimactic as anything I've ever seen.

And my last mental note is that talent needs to learn how to dress. And it sounds really weird coming from a guy like me because I never really give two shits about how I dress or how anybody else dressed. normally, but everybody that walked out from backstage looked like they're just wearing their street clothes, which they were, but they're like shitty street clothes. Your mucker fathers are making more money than you've ever made in your life. At least go buy some decent looking shit. Don't go to this, you know, mall t-shirt shop for your freaking wardrobe.

And you're all wearing the same shirt. shit. Y'all look like you work at a store and it's a uniform. Some pride. Look like a star. Everybody that walked out of the tunnel from backstage, if they weren't in the ring gear, looked like they might as well have just walked out of the, over the rail and from the arena. They looked the same physically. Dressed the same. It was like, what the fuck are you guys, TV stars? You know, you call yourself an eight. You don't. me star work when do we get to see the star part where where's that well i got i got to ask derby allen came down from the ceiling just like sting did to attack the john moxley crew which

looks like it's going to be called the death riders would you see it would you think of derby coming down off the scene i thought it was part of the Halloween theme game a gimmick i thought it was one of those pink little spiders that are coming out and it was going to have a bunch of legs and shit and fall down on moxley and it was going to be a spot lighter like a tarantula with a pink tarantula it's getting late dude you've not done a show with me at night it's that's okay it's a journey so you weren't a fan of it look i get it now whom i what do they say um when they when they copy you they're flattering you imitation is the most sincere form of flattery or some shit like that but at least do it so it looks good it just didn't

look good. It just wasn't bad. The audience reacted, so it worked. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think. Did it work? Yes. There you go. We'll just leave it at that. I got to say something positive. It worked. I'll take positive. I think there was a lot of social interaction today from AEW, which is not something that they're known to be for. They put out a couple promo videos ahead of time. They were working to build the show. Probably would have been better served Saturday for collision. But I think there are some steps. I think they're hearing some of the criticism. I can only hope that they will continue to build on what they're doing because we do, and you do want a good product because it's good for the business. You know what's going

to be interesting? When Mike Mans, you know who Mike Mansour is. I do. He's going on maternity leave. Oh, good for him. Congratulations. I know. He's a great guy. Congratulations, Mike. Who's going to be taking your spot when you're gone? I'll just let that hang in the air. It's called the softball. There's the clickbait headline that we've been waiting for.

Speaking of people, and one of the things I want to discuss with you today, I am, and I'm going to date myself when I say this, I grew up as an internet wrestling fan. I grew up learning the internet, learning wrestling. And one of the biggest names that had something to do with that was Bob Ryder. And Bob Ryder was induct. into the TNA Hall of fame this past week and a bow for glory. And unfortunately, Bob was not alive.

He passed away last year, I believe, to see his induction. Bob had a tremendous impact on professional wrestling from TNA, from WCW. And one of the things I think that is good about what WCW walked into. And it's funny to hear where we're at now with the Internet and where we were in 1996, when WCW really got started with it, is the difference. in 1995 at the launch of Nitro, one of the biggest things you stepped into was getting involved with the internet. Was that something that you pushed for or something that Turner pushed for?

What do you remember about getting involved with the internet in late 95, early 96? I really didn't get involved. I mean, the internet was such a new thing. I think it kind of reported to marketing. So it may have been under Mike Weber or it may have been under PR. I really don't know because it was kind of new. And we were behind the curve quite a bit. Now keep in mind, and this gets more interesting as time goes on.

But one of the big challenges we had, you know what, I'm going to save this because this is an important part of the story, but I'm putting it in the wrong place. place. So let's just keep going. One of the big things is AOL was not what it was a couple years later. And there were different ways to get on the Internet at the time. You had a miracle online. You had CompuServe. You have Prodigy. The hard part of that was everybody signed up for a different servers just like they do for cable. But you had to get signed up with one of them to be involved. Now, if you were an AOL customer, you got the WWF because that was their agreement. If you were a prodigy or CompiServe customer, you were involved with WCW. But Bob,

Bob Ryder, supposedly, and again, this is the story that's been told, that he was the one who originally pushed towards WCW with his website, OneW Wrestling.com, and Prodigy. Do you remember any of that aspects or how you even met Bob Ryder? Yes, I believe this story, as you've just described it, is likely to be true. Okay. Or mostly true. There may be, you know, other details to it that I, you know, that you didn't cover that I don't know. but I do remember my first real contact in the Internet space and looking to find things to do in it and content to create

was through Bob Ryder. However, Bob got to WCW, either through Alan Sharp, who would have been a head of PR, or Mike Weber, who was, you know, head of marketing at the time. However, he got there, when he got there, he was pitching, you know, doing stuff on Prodigy, right away. Speaking of Prodigy, and one of the amazing things that we found in our research, you were one of the first ones to start doing Prodigy chats in 1996. And for those of you who

don't know what a Prodigy Chat is, it's kind of like this podcast, but you'd sign into a chat room and type questions and wait for Eric's response. One of these things just does not seem like the other. And here we are almost 30 years later, and we're still in the same interaction. conversation just now with video, what do you remember these prodigy chats of why did you decide to do them? What is, you know, I felt like it was a good idea to have a dialogue with the audience, to be accessible, to provide access into WCW that in ways the WWE wasn't doing because we were the underdog. I mean, we were just at number two. not so much in 96,

but we had been a distant number two for so long that the opportunity to kind of be out in front and be able to speak directly to the audience was a valuable opportunity, in my opinion. And I like Bob, and he seemed like he knew what he was doing. It's one of the first cases of, I don't want to say,

KFA being brought down, but here you are, you're the executive producer of WCW and you're answering questions from fans. And we found one of the first chat transcripts you did. Oh, well. August 31st of 1996. And I'm going to save the one question for a second.

But one of the first questions you got asked is great job at the current angles. Do you expect the NW angle to eventually lose its luster? This is August of 96. We are two months into the story. And you're already being asked if the angle is going to lose its luster. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Somebody would even ask that?

When you're sitting there in 1996, we all know. It's predetermined. Everything's written. It's all scripted. But you're really pulling back the curtain. Did you have any hesitancy? Did you sit down and go, what did I really get myself into? No.

You felt comfortable. Oh, yeah. I've always been comfortable doing interviews. Look, there were times, especially when, you know, 96, 97, 98, yes, I'm a character on the show, but guess what? In real life, I'm really the president of the company, too. So I had to kind of walk a really fine line in some cases, but it was an opportunity, like I said, to speak directly to the audience out of character and to be able to have a discussion and open up a dialogue with the audience

about things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to in another situation. So I, I just look forward to it. I wasn't afraid of it. I've always been comfortable with my ability to keep a little bit of the magic alive without pulling back the onion all the way. Or maybe just handling these questions in a way that's respectful enough that wrestling fans don't feel like I'm rubbing their noses in it. Or maybe making fun that they actually get involved in our storylines

because they believe that they're real and, oh, therefore, or they must be a mark. I mean, that's stupid. Right. That's like saying people to get really into a drama series are, you know, marks for actors. No, you just get sucked into really good stories and you identify with characters. And it's escapism.

You could quit thinking about all the fucking envelopes. You had to stuff in a box all day long. You know, that's what it is. But I've always been able to kind of keep a little bit of the magic alive while still being, you know, as open about things as I could be. one of the cool things about the way the product you chat system worked is you didn't actually sit there and type your responses. They would ask you the question and you would respond on speaker and they would type it to the people in the chat room. You're sitting there and one of the first major questions you get and this is the reason why I delete on this.

What is your opinion of Vince McMahon? I'm going to read to you your response. Highly overrated when it comes to creative ability. I give him credit for taking the risk he took. early when he took wrestling to a national television phenomenon. He is taking credit for the efforts of people that worked for him in the past, and now with competition we see his real creative talent. I'm not impressed.

Well, you were that guy. But at that time, I was right. I was right. You were not for all face. He was stuck in the mud. and I'm going to say this, and I don't mean this to sound as disrespectful as it is.

But I don't think creative was ever Vince's strong suit. I think Vince was good. Like, if he brought Vince an idea and he could see the idea in his head, he would grow the idea. He would possibly take it to the

next level and build upon it. Yes. Was Vince the guy that could sit in a room with a like piece of paper and go, okay, I've got to start telling a story. Let's do it like this. He's not that guy. That's why he's always had people around him that can kind of get those first couple gears grinding. And that's not bad. I mean, a lot of people are, a lot of people are like that. Very few people can sit down. You, you bring them into your office, you give an envelope stuff for a bunch of cash and say, okay, I want you to write me a story for these two wrestlers.

If you don't have any backstory, you don't know what's going on. It's a really hard thing to do, right? And even if you have backstory and you know the talent, it's sometimes hard to figure out where to begin. But once somebody comes into you with a, well, what if we begin like this? Or what if we begin like that? And once you hear a couple of those ideas, the rest of your gears start kicking in.

And I think that's where Vince was at his best. just my impression spent four months a lot of late nights staring at a blank piece of paper with Vince McMahon so part of what I'm telling you I experienced um

but like I said I think his creative talents came in after somebody brought him a pretty good idea and he made it better I still feel the same way I've watched Vincent work creatively I wasn't that impressed

I'm way impressed with a lot of the other things that Vince McMahon accomplished, the vision he had for the company, what he did to grow it, the risks that he took, the team that he built, you know, WWE, even to this day, I mean, you look, it's a blue chip company, some of the very best talent in the world at what they do are running that company. And that is in large part because of Vince McMahon. That, to me, I think, is his genius. creatively, still not that impressed.

Do you think Pat Patterson, Bruce Pritchard, those types of people are the ones who really deserve the creative credit when it comes to wrestling, as you say, and writing the stories, and Vince is the fine-tune editor compared to the likes of, say, Vince Rousseau and Ed Ferreira? I think that's natural. I think that's probably the way it is in any creative endeavor. You know, there's no one person that I've ever heard of, and they're probably out there. I can be wrong about almost anything. But there's not a lot of people out there that can just go sit in a room and write amazing stories or write amazing music. There are some, very, very rare.

But the average person, even the very much above average creative person, you've got to be surrounded. It's got to be a collaborative process. There's just no one person that has all the best ideas. But if you put five or six people in a room together that have different perspectives on the same thing, they like the same thing, they like wrestling, but they all kind of look at it from a little different angle, some maybe more from the physical presentation angle, the athleticism, for example, Maybe somebody like Steve Regal, for example, who is very, very focused on the little details of the in-ring work and, you know, the psychology inside of the ring. So you need somebody like that on your team.

You need somebody that really understands story structure and how to keep a story going and where it needs its, you know, plot points in order to keep it exciting and hold the audience's interest. You need somebody to who's really good at, you know, how to end the story. And rest of business, we call it a finish. But, you know, how do you, what's your, what's the last two minutes of your third act? What does that look like? And, and you put enough of those people together in a room that have some respect for each other. And it's the collaboration is where the magic comes in. There's no one person that's going to be that person.

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Now, this is, you know, this is the part of the story that I almost got ahead of. what was really interesting is once Bob and a couple others that were really kind of focusing on the internet and what it could be or what it should be and we're also keeping track of what WWE was doing WWE was very aggressive very early on in the development of their web presence. They had a much clear vision of what the internet was

going to be and how they were going to be able to exploit it, use it. Turner, as a company, was incredibly slow. They were like, yeah, we heard about it, but we're not going to spend too much thinking about it or doing too much about it until it evolves a little more. They were really slow. Now, maybe in CNN, you know, because of the nature of what CNN was, maybe the story was a little different over there, but throughout the rest of the companies, you know, Internet was like, like, eh, and for WCW, we couldn't get a budget.

You know, my budgets were produced a year in advance, basically, probably eight months of advance, probably approved, six. And, you know, there was no money in the budget for Internet that first year. And then the second year, when it was time to do my next budget, probably 97, maybe 98, I put in whatever the number was, probably 250 grand, 500 grand, whatever, to kind of build up and ramp up our internet presence and ramp up our site, try to build it because we had heard that, in fact,

I heard, and I don't know if it was true, it was really Shane McMahon at the time was very much involved in the WWE internet buildout. Right. So I'm hearing, you know, okay,

my competition is, you know, grabbing a whole of this thing and I don't want to get, I don't want them to get there first. So I've got to put the pedal of the metal and hire some people from outside because I didn't have anybody in the company. that knew anything about it. You know, it was all kind of new frontier.

So I wanted to hire some people from out, some tech people from outside of the company who were on the cutting edge. And I got shut down. Because if I was going to hire any internet people, they had to come from Turner IT. But Turner IT didn't really know much about the internet and weren't really interested in working with WCW.

So it was kind of, kind of like, all right. And, you know, ultimately it hurt because WWE got up hard and fast and have been continuing. When you look at where WWE is now in terms of its digital footprint, it's got to be one of the biggest websites in the world. Right. Business.

It's massive. But it's because they started really early and focused on it and committed to it. Were you hoping to be the first one? And I use this phrase often, go to my business. market because you knew that the space was growing and there was an appeal to internet wrestling fans? And is that part of Bob's contribution to that process? I mean, Bob brought the idea. Bob said, here's this world. Here's what I know about it. Let's do some shows together and I'll show you how it works. And then if we can do some stuff together, we can build even more. That's

about as simple as it was. And Bob did what he said he was going to do. I had a blast. I could see the potential just from doing the, you know, the chat that we did in 96. It was pretty easy to figure it out. And I just wanted, I don't think that I had a, I don't think I ever convinced myself or tried to that we could get there before WWE because I think we started out in the hole. They started out so far ahead of us and had so much more money to work with. I couldn't get a budget for it. I had to find money internally the first year, which is why I was working with Bob.

That was as much as I could do because I didn't have a budget for anything. anything else. But, you know, that changed. And then Turner finally got with it. We started gradually building out our site. But the guy that was, you know, the team that was doing it, we're essentially learning on the job. Right. One of the things you did before WWE that you beat to market with was the hotline. You kind of transferred part of the hotline over to the website itself. That is something that at the time was a tough technology because you had to essentially buy. This is how primitive the beginning of the internet was, you had to pay money for the opportunity to pay more money

to hear the hotline. So essentially, you had to pay a $4.99 flat rate to get the 10-minute hotline news update instead of paying the telephone 900 number, the rate of $159 per minute. You are splitting a marketplace, and there were some people that, like myself, it was easier to do it on the internet because I was 12 and I had a credit card compared to my parents getting the phone bill. So there was a bunch of different marketplaces at the same time you're trying to serve. And then you took it a step further and started broadcasting audio events. Very primitive on the internet. And this is with a name that people are going to hear and kind of forget that he did. But Mark Cuban is the man who ran the company, Real Player,

the future broadcast.com, where you had radio style Samuelcast of pay-per-views and actually house shows at some point. How did that deal, together do you remember i do not that might have been mike weber put that together or whoever you know the internet department you know reported to it wasn't directly to me yeah i mean that should be clear to you even by now i'm just not a tech guy so somebody else would i handle that i think it was weber you had the likes of mark madden and jeff cats doing promotional work and also doing the broadcasting itself? Were they just kind of in their own corner? And if you guys mess up, I'm sure we'll hear about it. But as long as you guys don't do anything stupid, we should be

fine type thing. I was pretty hands off on that. I mean, they knew the lines. I tried to be clear about what they could do and what they couldn't do. But I also knew, look, when I hired Madden, he was a pretty bombastic. I mean, he was Mark Madden. And I loved it. He reminded me of John madden you know he just had that that gravity and he was so smart so quick-witted and funny and spontaneous you know i really enjoyed his commentary and it really is a brilliant cat but he's also mark he's going to say shit and you're going to have to accept that once in a while and it's not like he means it he just gets into what he's doing and all of a sudden what he thinks comes out of his mouth. And I get that. I can relate. But he was manageable. And I really enjoyed working

with Mark. He really gets a lot of crap that he shouldn't get and really is a much better broadcaster in wrestling than anybody gave him credit for. It was actually his broadcasting of the live audio broadcast of a Saturday Night House show at the Grey Western Forum in Los Angeles where you guys did a title change. You had Hulk Hogan on top. This was a big, deal. Did you see that as another revenue source for the company getting those internet dollars, or was it to offset what you were spending in startup calls essentially? No, we knew it was a business that would eventually create revenue. And it was more about, you know, planting a flag and building a foundation so that, you know, in the future, if it was going to become as profitable as everybody

thought it was and it did become, then we would position to be able to take advantage of it. But it wasn't uh you know i wasn't under pressure well i was the first year because i had no budget right but you know we we had a by the time turn finally said okay great you guys should have websites um you got enough money to work with to matter speaking of live events one of our sponsors this week is game time now i just went to a 76ers game this past week and was able to get $20 off my first purchase with the promo code weeks. Game Time is a new feature called Game Time Picks that makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier. Game Time Picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats so you don't have to

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Time. I'll tell you what time it is. It's time for me to read as you're going through that. I'm looking through my feed on X. Uh-oh. Here's this cat. His name name is Bad Seed 2023. Uh-oh. He's replying to some guy by the name of Drain Bamager. How people come up with these names? I do not know.

But anyway, this is what Bad Seed has to say. I feel that Tony Kahn is using the original NWO concept for this group, but learning from Eric Bischoff's mistakes. The NW.

You're either with us or against us mentality. Forced the company to water down the NWO concept. I feel this group will have allies, but not so many new members. These are some really smart people. Come back to me, Eric. Come back to me. We got this. We are in the home stretch on this episode of 83 weeks.

Don't do it. Don't do it. Get out of X. I got two more questions for you when it comes to the internet and WCW. And one of the major questions are, in 1998, you're doing it, part, as you chat again. Now, you were the heel character again, leader of the NWO. And the first question you get is about the termination of Sean Waldman. I'm going to read you your response.

And part of the reason why I'm reading it is because I think you were not the same person you were back then. I hired Sean Waltman because of Hall and Nash. and it basically terminated Sean Waldman because of a combination of Hall and Nash and Waltman's neck injury. Both Scott Hall and Kevin Nash have a track record, both in the WWF and here in WCW being fairly disruptive in the locker room. I made it clear to Scott Hall in the very first day he came back that one of the things I was most proud and protective of in WCW was that the locker room and the production team

was a pretty positive environment. Not to say there weren't problems from time to time, but by and large our locker room is a positive place to be. I pointed out to Scott Hall because of his track record in the WF and I told him I didn't want him to bring that over to WCW. Do you regret

handling everything with Sean publicly, loudly, sending the warning shots across the boat of Scott and Kevin along with firing of Sean because in 2024, that Eric Bischoff doesn't strike me as someone

who would fire a wrestler for being injury prone or to make a point to the wrestler's friends who his hiring was a favor to. Is this the time I fired Sean and he went to WWE and started doing the attitude era gimmick? Yes, sir.

Okay, so I didn't fire Sean because of his neck injury. And clearly I was in character. I fired Sean because Sean and I had come to an agreement for a renewal. an extension. Everything had been agreed upon. Turner being Turner, it took, you know, longer than it probably should have for the contract to, and, you know, we had a deal memo. I mean, there was documentation. But by the time the final contract, the sign, the contract we were all to sign, not just the deal memo. By the time that showed up, you know,

it might have been a month later, three weeks later. Well, somehow in the middle of that period of time somebody convinced, oh, I don't know, his name was probably Barry Bloom, convinced Sean Waltman that, yeah, I know we agreed on it. We shook hands and we signed a deal memo, but I think we can get more money than that. Something to that effect. So they came back to me and said, Barry came back to me and said, well, you know, I know, we got the deal memo, but Sean would really like to renegotiate. It's okay. He's fired. Take your client. Tell them to go home, deals off the table. And I pulled the deal that, the deal memo and the deal that we had, I pulled it off the table.

I want to say, I did. Had our attorneys to do it, right? That was it. I was done with him. Because that, and look, Sean and I have talked to a lot about this. Sean's a dear friend. I respect the hell out of them. We're very good friends.

We've talked about this. You know, am I the same person, you know, then as I am? Of course not. I'm mellowed some. I'm a little wiser. Learned different things and different ways to handle different situations. But if something like that similar happened to this day, the result would be probably pretty close.

Because at that point, that's someone that I can't trust. You know, you shake hands, you agree to a deal, you have a deal memo with all the major points figured out, shake hands, boom, we're going to go do it. off we go, we'll plan accordingly. And then to come back and go, I thought about it, I changed my mind. Not somebody I want to do business with.

So I don't regret firing him for that reason. I think if I thought it had just been honest about it, it'd probably been better than kind of taking it out on Scott and Kevin and blaming it on his neck and firing a guy It was, you know, injured in the ring and was injury prone. I mean, I knew that would get heat. That's why I said it. But I don't know that that was the best thing to do.

Speaking of things now in your current 2024 state, Conrad put a poll up the other day regarding questions with you and Brett Hart, and I hate to invoke his name, but one of the questions that stood out to me was, how much do you agree Brett's recollection of events from the late 90s? in the early's 2000s, and more precisely, do you think Brett misremembers things, or does he just have a different perspective than you on how things went in WCW?

I think it's the latter. I think Brett is, he's an honest person. I don't think he is intentionally misleading in any way, shape, or form. He's got a lot of integrity. So that's not the issue with Brett. But one of the things that I've learned, this is one of the things that I have learned that I'm really grateful for, that I didn't really, I didn't have this perspective back

in the 80s or 90s, but you and I could go, you and I, Derek, could be walking down the street and looking straight ahead while we're talking, paying attention, and there could be a car wreck right in front of us and 20 minutes after that car wreck you're going to remember details differently than I remember details sure because you're looking at that moment that those two cars were in contact and you heard it maybe first or then you saw it or maybe you saw it then you heard it whatever but you had a very unique perspective and you remember what was going through your mind at that very moment part of what was going through your mind may have been 15 or 20 different thoughts.

The point is you had your own perspective and you had your own thoughts going on on your mind when you saw the same incident that I saw, but I had an entirely different movie playing in my head because I was looking at that scene from an entirely different angle and I had other things going on in my mind, right? So two people can see the same thing at the same time and have two different entirely they inspect different different perspectives they may agree on some of the things but there's going to be some things that they don't they didn't see the same way therefore they don't remember the same way and i've learned that because of over the years especially during this

podcast i've you know had counterup play clips back or read me things that you know people that are to this day very close friends of mine you know he's read me some of their quotes and things that they've said, and I'm thinking, well, not really. Cool story. I get it, but not, really. And at first it was like, why do these guys say this stuff? Why would you do that? It's not necessary. And then I start, you know, answering questions about things that happened years and years and years ago. And I'm telling the story from my perspective, and I'll have somebody that's really close to me, call me and say, you know, whatever, just want to let you know. It's not quite like that. And I found myself, you know, remembering things differently than

people that were in the room with me, remember them. And when you start telling these stories over and over again, you know, we're entertainers. Sure. Anytime I tell a story, I try to make it entertaining, right? why people listen, hopefully. And over time, as you're polishing this story up and you really don't remember it from the same perspective as everybody else in the room did, you can have different stories. You can have different feelings. You can have different perspectives about the same thing. So I've learned that. And that's why when I hear things that I disagree with and are not the way that I remember them,

my first go-to, my default isn't someone's lying or someone's misleading. I don't go there. He's go, okay, well, that's how Brett remembers that. You know, from his perspective, he believes it. Just he wasn't looking at it the same way I was. Nor it would have been impossible for him to. So I get it.

I saw that you tweeted out that you saw him in Australia. You guys shook hands. I'm not sitting here saying you guys sat down and had a beer and caught up over good times, but there's nothing animosity, nothing in your face, nothing man to man that would be confrontational with Brett, would there? No, no, Brett's, no, no. No, look, I've, you know, certainly reconcile Brett and I are never going to be friends, and that's cool.

It's unfortunate, you know, because there's a lot of things I like about Brett. We have a lot of things in common, believe it or not, you know, outside of my But I respect Brett, and I'm, you know, sometimes I'm disappointed for Brett because he's so dark and there's always somebody he's got to bury and hate and cues of and, you know, criticize. And I just, for me, you know, carrying all that garbage around with me every single day or every time somebody put a microphone on my face would be really depressing. It'd be heavy. I just wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't talk to anybody anymore if it made me that angry, maybe that depressed.

I wouldn't want to talk about it. I'm not talking about my dog. But, hey, that's Brett, man. He's got to live in his own skin. Maybe he's really happy. Maybe he likes being the way he is. I don't know. But he just seems very dark to me.

Look, when Brett came in, Brett doesn't remember things this way. Brett wasn't looking at Brett the same way. everybody else was looking at brett at the time or at least i was but that was emotionally very very defeated the montreal screw job that incident montreal took way more out of brett than anybody realizes emotionally and you know the divorce from vince and wwe i think it still bothers him in some ways. It was very hard. And I get it, not being critical of it at all. Red felt like he was going to be in WWE for life. You heard him in, you know, the documentary. It was tough. It was really hard

on him emotionally. He admits to it. That's what I got. I got a guy that was kind of half ass broken. Still wasn't over the divorce. You were married before. I was married before. I was married before you know that transition yeah it's a tough rebound it's yes yeah it's yeah and that's where brett was now i'm not saying that that was the only reason it certainly wasn't there was a lot you know i didn't handle the creative as well as i could have but people also need to keep in mind it's not like i've been planning for six months to get my hands up brett i got a fucking phone call out of the blue. Brett and she tells me, hey, Vince can't afford to pay me. Do I still have a job in WCW? Essentially, it's not the conversation. Right. And it was like, well, yeah, sure. Come on in.

We'll figure it out when you get here. So, you know, it's not like, oh, I had this great opportunity and all those time to plan. Okay, we've got an entire three months with the paper fuse book. Let's sit down and rebook them because we know we're going to have Brett. I didn't have that luxury. Right. You just dropped out of the sky. so it was what it was i feel bad that brett is disappointed in all of it as he is and whatever i feel pretty good about myself so i appreciate you go be you bret i appreciate everyone hanging in with us on this special edition 83 weeks minus conrad thompson yeah i'm fading bro we better move there's i'm i got five more minutes i got one more ad read i can do five more minutes i

promise i don't know if i'm ever going to have this opportunity again so i I have to ask you, as someone who grew up wanting to be you and wanting to be the guy books and writes and promotes television, what is the single standout moment of your backstage and onstage career? WCW, WWF, TNA, AWA, I don't care, but I would fail myself if I don't ask that question. Well, there's a lot of different answers. I think in the ring, the most fun I ever had, my favorite moment on camera was when I was the preacher and the Chuck and Billy wedding. Yes.

That was so badass, so much work and time and money. You know, the makeup, just the whole thing was so first class. And just to be able to be that character who was walking around all day long, backstage. stage in character, in this makeup, because I really wanted to nail this character. I was just walking around being this guy all day so that when I came time to go out of the ring, nobody would see through it and see it was me. I really wanted to pull it off because the company had spent a fortune on this, what, what, aesthetics and all the shit.

They had to spend 50 grand on that shit. They flew two makeup artists out from L.A. for three days to put the makeup on and take the makeup off to cost a fortune. And I had to fly to L.A. like a month before this to get, you know, fitted, molded for the mask. It was like a big ordeal. And I didn't want to be the one to screw it up, you know. Brian Gowice wrote the segment, wrote a great segment, really, really great segment. And I was in the ring with a bunch of really, really talented people, like really

talented people so it was such a fun segment as a performer to do and the payoff was so good that will always be my favorite you know as far as you know outside of the ring there's no single moment i don't think you know bashed at the beach 96 was a really special moment because you could feel you could feel things were changing underneath your feet and That was a, in terms of moment, that was a big one. But there were so many good ones, and they were all, most of my favorite memories are just collaborating. You know, when you get in that groove, and it's hard, you know.

It's a hard job, just to lock yourself in the room with a bunch of people and try to come up with good ideas. It sounds fun, and it is fun, until it's work and you've got deadlines and you're just not finding that groove. but then all of a sudden you somebody comes up with that one hey what if what if we try this and all of a sudden everybody lights up at the same time because everybody feels that idea and that's when you know it's good you know you've been throwing shitty ideas around for so long you think that's all you're capable of is throwing shitty ideas and all of a sudden

somebody one pops up it's like whoa let's do it and that's fun i got to tell a lot of those i got to tell you a what if with eric bischoff do you know how many directions we can go with that because there are a lot of what ifs oh yeah i've actually i'm working with aunt evans on a kind of a what idea because you're right. You know, you know, I did a radio, I started the day off this morning at 8 o'clock doing somebody else's podcast. There's a guy by the day about, I don't know, maybe you know, do you know Mick Karch from Minneapolis? I know the name. Yeah, Mick Karch was a referee, ring announcer on the Indy C in Minnesota back in the 80s. He ended up working for Vern in 87, the same year I started there. So I've kind of, I've kind of known Mick, you know,

for a while. He and another guy, CM, I don't know what C.m's background is, and Joe Chupick, we used to call him Polish Joe. He was our basically post-production guy in AWA. So they've got a little podcast they do. It's kind of all eight all things AWA. And I did one with them this morning. And we were talking about this scene that I did with the mass because it was so fun and, you know, walking around backstage and fucking with people. I'd walk up to people. Like, I had a full-on conversation with Eddie Guerrero in my giving. I was

young man, what's your name? Talking to Eddie and Eddie's, you know, obviously uncomfortable talking to this creepy old bastard, but I was like not letting him get away. Tell me more about your family, you know. He didn't throw coffee on him though, right? He never, no, I didn't throw it. No, but he never knew it was me. And I walked up to Brad Riggins. Brad was, you know, he was like he was Kurt Angle before Kurt Angle came along. Brad was an Olympic wrestler, Greco, Roman, just as bad as bad could be.

And I've known Brad since high school. He was at a different team than I, but we, you know, we knew each other a little bit through that. And then became friends afterwards. But Brad was standing backstage and he's got these two stepdaughters with him. And I think they were stepdaughters. Maybe they were daughters of his girlfriend.

Either way, girl that's maybe about 12 and one that's about 10 and Brad was just going to take them backstage to meet some of the wrestlers and go to the event we're at the target center of Minneapolis that night and I come shuffling over I'm not you know I've been in this character for a couple hours I'm talking to people that they don't even know it's me it's pretty awesome really and uh I see Brad cycle walk shuffling up to him and I can't tell you what a badass Brad Briggins is he is sure he's just dude so I go walking up film and i go up to the the youngest of the two girls and i i do a joe biden you know i sniff her hair and i

go oh my young lady i have you're such a beautiful young lady what's your name she told me your name and said well i have candy in my dressing room just as creepy as i could be and i made sure I was far enough away from Brad when I laid the, I got candy in my room lying on the kid, because I didn't want Brad to snatch me before I could have hooked you. Pull the mask off. Don't do it, Brad. I'm just kidding. But I walked away from Brad.

And then, of course, that night, you know, I reveal it's me. And then I see Brad backstage with the two kids. He says, you have no idea how close. You have no idea how close. That was a fun. That was a fun night. Speaking of fun, let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to, and I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day.

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remember to head to zbiotics.com slash 83 weeks and use the code 83 weeks at checkout for 15% off. Eric, I can't not thank you enough for hanging in with us for what was a hodgepodge of things I've always wanted to talk to about. No, it's a fun show, brother. I enjoyed it. I had a blast couple last business items to fill out if your business targets 25, the 54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise. I'm right here with us on 83 weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years. Why is that? Because it works. With our super target audience, there's very little waste.

Go to advertise witheric.com and find out more about advertising with 83 weeks. Right now, your home is worth probably more than it ever has been. Combine all your debts into one monthly payment, or maybe all those home upgrades you've always dreamed of, and on top of that, skip two house payments. Put that newfound equity to work by going to save with conrad.com. And don't forget, 83 weeks is your home for all things, Eric Bischoff. 83 weeks.com and Eric Bischoff.com.

Lots of exciting things going on on both websites. We have wise choices with Paul Walter Houser up there. We have the clips of the most recent episodes. We have top fives. We have the Mr. McMahon documentary series. We have something for you regardless of what you're interested in. WCWTNA with a recent episode of Dixie Carter, and it sounds like there's more to come with MLW.

Make sure you like, subscribe, and leave a five-star rating on all podcast platforms. Hit the like, subscribe, and turn all notifications on 83 weeks.com, 83 weeks on YouTube.com. Make sure you visit E. Bischoff on Twitter, the real Eric Bischoff on Instagram, E. Bishawf on Facebook. And yep, that's Conrad and not me, but follow him at at hey hey it's conrad on x or twitter hey hey it's conrad thompson on

instagram say with conrad on facebook you can follow me if you want on twitter and yes i work for dave melzer i am at derrick sabato box of gimmicks.com has all your eric bischoff merchandise as we recently added some shot glasses cutting boards for 83 meets and rally towels we can let everyone know you're an eric bischoff gal or guy and of course the all always popular, wise choice of shirt. Eric, I got to ask before we go, Mike Hoop says I owe him a drink. Mike, why do I owe you a drink? No, I'm happy to buy you a drink.

I'd buy you a drink whether I owed you one or not, but I'm just curious how and why I owe Mike Hoop a drink. Mike Hoop has been asking if you're going to Russell Cake. Can you confirm or deny that for Mike? I don't have any plans at this. Russell Cates is November, right? I believe so. I don't think I'm going

I've got a lot of things going on in November and it's right around Thanksgiving I think I'm going to lay low Well if you want to know what Eric's doing Eric Bischoff.com has all the information you need I want to thank everyone for joining us here on this Hodgepodge episode of 83 weeks And I got to be honest with you

What is Eric and how are going to talk about next week I have no idea but the only way to find out is to make sure you hit like, subscribe internal notifications on 83 weeks.com Make sure you hit like on all podcast platforms. Thank you so much, Eric, for today. And we'll see you next week here on 83 weeks.

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