83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 348: Why I Fired Him

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

On this episode of 83Weeks, Eric and Conrad dive deep into the career of Disco Inferno! Eric discusses signing Disco and his rise to WCW stardom. The guys also discuss what ultimately caused Eric to fire him from the company. All that plus, Eric reacts to AEW Dynamite and everything else happening in the wild world of professional wrestling. TUSHY - Over 2 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off TUSHY with the code 83WEEKS at https://hellotushy.com/83WEEKS #tushypod VIIA - Try VIIA Hemp! https://viiahemp.com/collections/all#utm_source=83weeks&utm_medium=podcast and use code 83WEEKS! LUMEN - Take the next step in improving your health, go to https://www.lumen.me/83WEEKS to get 15% off your Lumen.  MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo 83WEEKS at www.ShopMando.com! #mandopod ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s BlueChew.com, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE SAVE WITH 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 Hi, I'm Sean Soto. I live near St. Louis, but I listened to a few of the podcasts. Rillen J.R. 83 weeks quite a bit. My wife and I had experienced some issues with credit card debt. I had heard the testimonials of others refinancing and helping alleviate their credit card debt.

And so I just, I had looked into it. And that's how we started. I worked with Larry. He was very thorough and was able to explain the entire process for us and made it about as easy as it possibly could be. It was far more easier than I anticipated it to be, actually. With the credit cards and everything that we had, we were paying the minimum monthly payment every month

and basically getting nowhere for, I don't know, probably the last five years. And after everything was all said and done, we completely paid off all the credit card debt, and we were saving, after paying those off, we were saving over $300 a month. Oh, I would highly recommend it to anyone that's looking, to save some money because that it was a tremendous help. I've already told my other friends

about it. I'm Sean Soto. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, and I have saved over $300 a month with savewithconrad.com. NMLS number 2129, Equal Housing Lender, SavewithConrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks. With Derek, fish off here. What's going on, man? how are you well you know how i am because we got about a 45 minute late start here because yours truly is like the high-tech redneck of all high-tech rednecks and i was having trouble with my setup and my connection and my wireless and it was just a mess but i think i got to figure it out but man that shit irritates me i get so pissed off of myself because i just

i'm i'm almost helpless when it comes to technology and i hate that that with a passion what were you more pissed off about eric uh having a little technical problem this morning or watching a w dynamite last night man i i don't think i was pissed off last night watching it although you know i read back some of my tweets this morning clearly i was agitated but it was just so it's more frustrating than anything it didn't make me angry just like god almighty talk about blowing opportunities like it's it drives me crazy but you know it is what it is you know i am uh i've always been the eternal optimist for a w but i didn't get to watch the show live last night i started watching this morning on dvr when you

were having some technical problems i saw the first half of the show and man usually i can find something that i'm pretty excited about and looking forward to with A.W. And I'm kind of struggling right now to find it. Is there a bright spot right now for A.W? Like, you know, I know that we've established that there's not some magical talent they can sign and that'll turn their, their fairs around. But is there something they can do to reengage this audience and get them excited? Because it does feel like, you know, there was so much optimism around AEW. And it feels like as time goes on, some of that starts to wane. And I think maybe right now justifiably a little bit.

I don't think it's waning. I think what's happened is it was so much goodwill early on. Everybody wanted AEW to be successful. Everybody wanted a fresh alternative. And, you know, there was a lot of promise. Tony, you know, convinced people in the very beginning that this was going to be an alternative and it was going to be a sports-based, you know, wrestling product. And there was a lot of things that Tony hyped, you know, that they gave everybody a

out of optimism and excitement and goodwill. The problem with goodwill is once you, once you crap on those people, once you fail to deliver on your promises, and then over the last couple of years produced such horrible television that goodwill, they don't just fade away. The viewers do, and we've seen that, but the goodwill comes back to bite you and he asks because then people are pissed off right it's like you promised somebody something and then you didn't deliver and all you're doing is making excuses for it and that that goodwill can really come back and bite you in the ass if you're not careful i hope they can turn it around

but you know something i wanted to bring up that i know the internet wrestling communities had a lot of fun with but i want to ask you like i know that the the the base of AEW fans the fan base does not want anything to do with the Costco guys being at full gear I get that but it's a zero hour match against QT Marshall who's pretty valuable behind the scenes for AW he helps run you know the nightmare factory in Atlanta with Cody Rhodes you know a lot of great AEW talent has gone through there like he's the office you know for the company and he's got a match as silly as it may be I can't believe this

is real with with the Costco guys and they are for better or worse pretty big deal virally to the point where they wound up on the tonight show so it's one thing for us all to sort of cross our arms and i've seen a lot of like even my internet wrestling friends pitching an absolute fit that this match is going to happen at full gear but it's like they got on the tonight show and respectfully there's not a whole list of AEW talent who could just pick up the phone and get on the tonight show like whether you value none of them like not one of them well that's my point you finally got a little bit of mainstream attention here as silly as it may be and i'm not saying that the costco guys need to

take over the a w programming but we're not even seeing like aew engage with them socially i don't think to sort of build any sort of hype or story or whatever and i know there's criticism to go around about well they're they're involving children in the viral thing the kids aren't going to be in the match it's with the dad they could have done something but It feels like they're content to not try. And I know that, you know, we look back and we say, well, we didn't like that Jay Leno was involved with WCW. Yeah, but you were courting mainstream attention.

You're trying to get people who don't normally watch the product to watch AEW. So you had Jay Leno and you had an opportunity to go on the tonight show. But it feels like AEW thinks maybe the brass believe this is beneath them to court mainstream attention, but I just don't get why you wouldn't even try. There's so much inherently wrong, and it starts with Tony Con. It starts with the lack of vision, absolute lack of understanding, zero comprehension of what the wrestling audience, the three to five million active wrestling fans, depending on who you believe, that do tune in to wrestling, each and ever,

week. That's your audience. It's not Dave Meltzer's fucking figure four online dirt sheet universe, but that's who Tony Kahn is booking to. Everything that's done in AEW is done from the perspective of Tony Kahn's fandom. And unfortunately, Tony Kahn's fandom doesn't represent the other 98.8% of people that enjoy professional wrestling. Tony's booking for himself in his own fantasy. There's nothing resembling a thought process, creative or otherwise, as you just pointed out, that's a marketing positioning opportunity. It's reaching an audience, as you just said, that you don't normally reach. Right. And it's fun. It should. be fun. It shouldn't be taking seriously in the internet wrestling community, which are the

simps that follow the Dave Meltzer line of thinking about what professional wrestling should be. They have zero creativity. They live in a little bubble. They're only comfortable with people just like them. And they just don't have any vision themselves. And that's who Tony Khan is you know, it's the cage match ranking crowd, along with Dave Meltzer. It's just so, such a waste of opportunity. Tony probably doesn't care about wasting his money. He's got so much of it. It doesn't matter to him, but it matters to the industry.

You know, when people say, oh, you know, AW is good for the industry. Fuck it is. There's nothing good about it. It's good for the people that get to a paycheck that might not otherwise be getting one. in the wrestling business. It's good for them. Of course it is. And I don't begrudge them taking advantage of the opportunity.

But to suggest that it's AEW is good for the wrestling industry. And I'll tell you why. Because any network executives that stumble across AEW and thinking about perhaps getting involved in the wrestling business and they see AEW, it's like, fuck, I don't want to do that. That's horrible. I don't want that on my network. I don't want to anything close to that on my network. It is bad for the business.

It's a bad representation of what the professional wrestling industry can be on television. It's horrible. There's nothing. I mean, from the concrete floor up in that arena last night, I didn't see anything that represented a professional production. The talent shows up wearing their street clothes that, you know, I'm no. fashion mogul, but they're wearing shit to the ring that I wouldn't be caught dead wearing on the street.

It's like white wife beater shirts for like the wardrobe de jour last night. First of all, you don't wear white on television. That's like rule number one. Never wear white on television. And this is like last night everybody's coming out on white t-shirts because that was under the shirt they were wearing into the building that day. Well, hang on. I don't know.

Just everything about it was so low budget, ill-conceived, and stupid were the best wrestle on my ass. It was some of the most horrible wrestling I've ever sat down and forced myself to watch. Some matches were okay. But it was garbage from beginning to the end. And I watched it last night because, you know, I typically don't watch AEW. It's just out of my list of things to do. There's nothing about it that I find interesting and compelling.

But, you know, I heard about, you know, basically a big reset. Actually, take it over TBS. Okay, here we go again. Oh, goodness. You know, NWO version 2.0 and AEW. The first one worked so well, they decided to do it again. And I thought, well, I'm going to give it a shot. Maybe it is a real reset.

Maybe they're going to approach the product differently. Maybe I'm going to see something to get me excited and to make me think that there's hope. and instead I think it was one of the worst wrestling shows I've ever watched from from the concrete floor in the arena up it was so bad so bad I I'm scratching my head to figure out what's next for AW I I couldn't help but notice if you look at their ticketing site AWT I X.com Eric as of now they don't have any buildings announced or on sale for January the only things on sale for 2025 right now are grand slam australia which i believe is a stadium show sum corp stadium the rumor and innuendo is ticket sales are maybe not as robust as they would have hoped all in texas is being marketed of course for july 2025 and forbidden door has been announced for august 2025 but we don't know where tv is happening in january and I've seen some speculation or heard some whispers from people in and around the business.

Are they setting up a residency? Like are they headed towards, do you think, perhaps, an impact model where they're in a soundstage sort of deal? We saw them do this around all in last year where they set up in Arlington, Texas, at the e-sports arena. Do you think that's what 2025 looks like for AW, more studio wrestling? it's so hard to say but if they don't have any buildings booked it's kind of i mean it's the middle of november for all intents and purposes it's the end of november business wise we're getting close you got thanksgiving in there and here's what happens in at least in my world

what was my world in the entertainment business people basically take a month off between thanksgiving and christmas i mean they may still show up to work and they'll do the absolute minimum required. But most people are really not making too many big plans or decisions until after the holidays. It's frustrating, but it's just the way it's the way it is. But if they don't have a building booked, if they don't have tickets on sales, if they don't have marketing in place, if they're not doing any promotions in the local markets

for January and February at this point, I'd suggest to me to the, that they've already made the decision. Probably going to be back at Daley's Place or something like it. They can't keep going to big arenas. You know, they're going to these 10,000 seed arenas, 15,000 seed arenas, whatever they are, 8,000 seed arenas. And they're blocking them off because they can only put about 2,500 people at a live professional wrestling show, live on TBS, which is kind of, it's different.

I get it. I've been there. It's painful. But you can't keep booking big buildings when you can't put anybody in them. Number one, it's economically not sustainable. But again, it doesn't matter with Tony Con because money is not the issue. Fiscal performance is not anything Tony Con has to worry about. But the quality of the show suffers as well.

The perception with television viewers when they're sitting, at home and they can hear guys one person, not like 50 people chanting in unison, but they can hear comments from one guy back in the cheap seats. It's so quiet. There's just no energy. And when you're sitting at home and you're watching a match, it isn't really too interesting to begin with. And you begin to question yourself as to why am I spending any time watching this?

and then the crowd is dead except for the one guy weighing the back says oh go back to room and while moxley's wrestling you know mottler you're mr intensity he's out there cutting a promo of his life or attempting to and you've got a heckler in a back that you can hear from 300 feet away and it makes it to the microphone and you can hear it what does it tell you as a fan sitting at home you're not watching anything that's worth your time is what it tells you subconsciously if not consciously. So, yeah, they're going to have to figure something out because doing what they're doing is clearly not working.

And I don't think there's collectively, I don't think there is enough intellectual horsepower when it comes to how to produce a television show and how to build a brand. I think if you took all of the office staff in AEW and you combined their strength, you wouldn't come up with one person who could figure out how to turn this company around. It's not going to turn around.

It'll keep going until either TBS goes, okay, I know we had a deal. And by the way, we don't know if there's any outs in that deal. We don't know if there's thresholds in that deal. We don't know if there's pressure on Tony to maintain a certain level of audience or perhaps that television agreement won't be a three-year agreement. It might not even be a two-year agreement. if there are thresholds and performance thresholds, which there should be and usually are. But until Tony gets tired of blowing money or until TBS goes, you know, this is just not

working for us. There's a better opportunity somewhere else. Tony's going to keep doing what he's doing because he's just entertaining himself in his group of little IWC fans that help him run his company because that's what it is. All these people are internet wrestling people. That's all they are. They don't have any experience. They don't have any success.

They don't have any footprint outside of being wrestling fans that follow Dave Meltzer on the internet. It's so sad. Such a wasted opportunity for everybody, for the industry as a whole, for wrestling fans who are obviously pretty disappointed. All you got to do is read some of the threads about the show. Forget about mine. Forget about my take. Just go read some of the other stuff. That's that goodwill coming back to bite AEW.

And the question you really asked me early on, is there anything that they can do to turn it around? The answer is I don't think so. There's no big talent that's going to come in and save the day. Every big talent they brought in from WWE, shit the bed. Mercedes Monet, $5 million,

she's got our own writer making seven figures. Are you kidding me? Well, listen, we don't know all that's to be factual. We don't know. I mean, do you think Jim Pepper? I'm an innuendo, and I should have prefaced it by saying that.

There's, but it doesn't change the fact that she came in with all this hype, and she was a big star in WW. There's no question about that. But she gets to AEW. They gave her the keys to the car and she drove it right over a cliff. I don't know. You're all right.

So I'm making sure you finished your monologue there. Good. And that's gracious. man we we got a lot to talk about today we're going to be talking about disco inferno but i do want to talk a little bit more about a w but right now we do have to pay a few bills and let me just give you guys a life hack tushy is what your dad wants for christmas it's what your husband wants for christmas it's what your wife wants for christmas they don't know they want it but they do i am so proud that we have this sponsor on 83 weeks and it's right here in time

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That's what AEW needs. AEW needs a giant, giant bidet. And they could just set the whole company down, on top of it, hit that button, and just start over. Just clean everything out. Start over. Did I ever tell you about my first experience with a bidet? No.

I was in Japan. Actually, Michael Stuttler, who's here with us from ad-free shows watching a long and live, which I really encourage people to do. If you're listening to this and you're not a part of ad-free shows, what the hell are you doing? You could be joining us live and we could share Michael Stutler's story. Michael said, we've had one at our house. We're talking about a tushie.

We've had one at our house since visiting Japan several years ago. My wife insisted and it all worked out in the end. But here's the part. So I go to Japan, one of the first times I go to Japan. And we're staying at the Keoplaza, Keoplaza, which is a pretty cool hotel. And I go in and I'd never seen him a day before. I didn't even know what one was. I don't think I'd ever heard the word before.

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And when we built our house here in 98, we had a bidet put in. It's a beautiful thing. It's a great product. I highly increased, look, you have no idea what happens to your self-confidence when you're walking around knowing that you have the cleanest ass in the building. It just changes things. go check it out right now hello tushy.com be sure to use our promo code 83 weeks so listen man we were talking a little bit before i had to pay some bills there about john moxley's takeover and i have to admit

i don't know what i expected but it wasn't that you know it was said that he was taking over the super station but i've also read interviews where he's saying this hard reset is going to be one of the most challenging things he's done in his career i'm saying all that to say i don't think we've seen the change yet, Eric, I'm wondering, do you think, and I don't have any insight, I haven't talked to anybody, I'm just shooting from the hip here now as a wrestling fan. I just want to be honest. Do you think that there is a chance that the reason some of these buildings haven't been announced yet is because that's going to become part of the story?

Like, do we get to a culmination of the world's end pay-per-view in December and in January or February or what have you? we're doing something that is different than maybe it means we're doing more cinematic matches maybe that becomes the way dynamite is presented maybe it is in a sound stage but it's under death writer rules and the show looks and feels different i don't know what to expect here but i'm having trouble reconciling what we saw in his interview saying this is the most challenging thing this takeover is going to be one of the most challenging things he's done of his career. While also knowing there's no buildings on sale yet for January, it feels like

something's got to fit here, right? I mean, that is an optimistic perspective or hope probably is a better way of saying that. And I can see that perhaps this is not, first of all, if that's the case, I don't think I would have drawn so much attention to this particular show because I think perhaps there are a lot of people like me. They're going, oh, okay, they're going to do something different. I think I'll check it out. That's the good news. The bad news is it was horrible, which will have a pretty bad impact on any potential growth going forward.

If people have already made up their mind like I did, the hard reset was a letdown. It didn't meet any expectations that I think anybody had. It's embarrassingly bad, but you drew a lot of attention to it by cutting that promo. If there is a plan, and that's giving people a lot of credit, if there is a plan in place for a more comprehensive hard reset, creatively, building-wise, cinematic, whatever, production-wise, if there is that, then I think it was a mistake to use this show to set up what's to come. What?

That's, you know, subjective, I guess. Let's hope that there's something. I don't know what it could be because when you say things like that, like there's still the optimistic part of me, right? It's part of being an entrepreneur. I guess it's one of the downfalls sometimes for me, it has been for being an entrepreneur is that you can see light at the end of any tunnel. It's like, fuck God, I can see.

There's a little bit of light there. I'm going down that tunnel. I don't care. I've done that way. many times in my life, still do it from time to time. So maybe there's light at the end of their tunnel, but have they done anything up to this point to suggest that there's any kind of logic, any kind of vision, any kind of plan that could result in that light actually becoming real at the end of the tunnel and being a bright light and being successful.

I haven't seen anything. On the contrary, everything that I've seen them do suggests that there is no thought process, there is no logic, there is no creative, there's no basic understanding of creative and how it works. It's just guys going out there screaming and yelling and wrestling. It's, I don't know. Let's hope. I hope I've said this so many times of the last couple of years when it comes to AEW.

I so hope I'm wrong. I really do. It would be fun for me to be wrong. I'd be on here making fun of myself for being so negative about AEW. I can take a joke. I can laugh at myself. I do it all the time. I enjoy it.

It's fun. But if there's just nothing that they've done, to suggest to me that there's anything remotely close to vision or execution or planning or, but like I said, hopefully I'm wrong, man. Hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel. There's going to be a big surprise and starting in January or maybe before Moxley's challenge, this most challenging thing he's ever done in his career, will start to take shape. We can look back at this and go, oh, see how wrong Eric was.

He's been wrong so often about AEW. right like 98% of the time when it comes to my thoughts about AEW and projections and predictions. But maybe this, you know, maybe this is one of those 2% of the times when I'm wrong. So, you know, I realize that, uh, the wrestling world has changed. I mean, look no further than seeing WWE this week doing double raw and double smackdown tapings. So the performers have more time with their families the week of Thanksgiving. I mean, historically Thanksgiving night was, a really big night in professional wrestling.

So I'm all for, you know, our attitudes towards the performers and business growing and maturing and evolving. But I can't help but wonder, like right now, and I know MJF has been off making a movie with Adam Sandler, and I hope it makes a billion dollars and a huge success and becomes a springboard for him. But I think if I'm Tony Kahn, I'm thinking, and ticket sales are down, it feels like ratings are down, maybe interest is waning a little bit. I gotta have my top stars like I can't imagine a scenario if of this happening in the

WWF where you know you've got a guy one of your top stars making Buku dollars and he's not here the wrestling product is suffering and he's off making a movie but we're still paying him like maybe maybe Vince wasn't all wrong he needed these guys to be involved like I remember when I mean there's a lot of times where they had to structure filming contracts around wrestling appearances. Maybe Rock or Stone Cold or whoever wouldn't be available for all the house shows. But they were on TV. So to see these long absences for guys who were able to perform that you know or bona fide box office,

you know, I know that Jim Cordent famously says, how can I miss you if you don't go away? But every now and again, kind of needs you to be here. We need you, man. Right? There's two sides of that. and I see both of them. I was in that position a couple times in WCW

where talent would come to me and say, hey, look, I've got a movie. This is a big opportunity. And I think, like Tony, it's probably one thing that we had in common, is I looked for a way to make that happen. You don't ever want, I wouldn't ever want, someone working for me that had an opportunity like MJF has

to come to me and just shut them down. Say, sorry, man, we need you too much. We're paying you X, of money a year, your first obligation is here, even if it is, even if it's true. You don't want to put it that way because that talent, I'm going to use MJF. And look, I don't know MJF real well, right? We stay in touch occasionally via text, but it's not like I sit down and have long conversations with it. So I don't know what really makes him tick, right? But if you take somebody like MJF, who obviously has a tremendous amount of talent and abilities, we've seen it in the ring,

and now we're going to have an opportunity to see it on the big screen. You don't want to ever tell that talent, no, you can't do that. You've got to try to make it work. But business is business. And again, financially it doesn't matter to Tony. He just doesn't care. He doesn't have to care. I wouldn't care either if I was him, not knocking him.

But the brand is suffering. And finding a way to accommodate an opportunity is one thing, sending somebody off for 30, 60, 90 days. I don't know how long MJF is going to be out of the picture. But movie making is a long process. And depending on how many scenes he's in, he could be on lockdown for a while. Now you're hurting your brand. Let me give you some context here, Eric. I understand you're trying to defend the opportunity.

MJF has wrestled on television three times this year. Three. Part of that was injuries, right? My point, you're injured, and then we let you go make a movie. So he's on AWPRA all year this year. We've seen the business from the start of the year to now continue to respectfully. It's slipping. I got to have you, man.

You've had three matches on TV this year. And he's not the only talent. I'm just saying, man, three matches this year on TV? And I understand the magic of MJF is his pro. And all that, but he's not even there doing that. Like, you've got arguably what most people think is the best wrestler in the world and and Will Osprey, but it, I mean, I don't know. It just feels like, what are we doing?

We got to have the guys actually there. It doesn't make sense to me. I can't make it make sense. And here's the other side. Now, if I was MJF's agent or manager, I would tell him stay on that movie set as long as you possibly can. Absolutely. Do not get near an AEW.

camera until you're absolutely forced to by court order because the more he's involved in what's going on in AEW right now, the more his stock is going to go down. But that that's the issue. Like when this thing first got going, we were, it was a everybody's a big team and we're in this together and raw, go team. And now I see guys in AW seemingly doing like a lot of college football players right now. They're making business decisions. Hey, it's not in my best interest to show up.

up there. I know things aren't good right now. I don't know how that would be good for me or my brand to be involved, but it's like, dude, there's a few levers I think could be pulled right now because as a fan, you know, it's not the same dynamite I used to enjoy right now. And maybe this is the calm before the storm. If we're going to be the delusional optimist, maybe that hard reset is still coming. Let me ask you, you know, I sort of freestyle something a minute ago. If you had your druthers, you know, would you, would you prefer they continue to do a touring model that they set up a sound stage like T&A did or should they go more cinematic as crazy as an idea as that may be they've got Mike Mansoury there who's quite capable of directing

and producing cinematic stuff so they have the human resource to pull it off they have the financial resources to pull it up again it's going to come down to creative and there's a giant hole that I don't know, I don't know who's going to fill it. Are we going to have cinematic hardcore matches? Yon, you know, it'll be interesting for the first couple times, but it's not going to, it's not sustainable unless the stories are equal to or better than the production values that these cinematic matches can potentially represent. So you're great, you've got a great director, but you don't have a writer. You don't have any performers that are capable of telling the type of story that a

cinematic match would showcase and bring life to. That's real acting now. It's different than going out and having a match. Maybe that would work. Again, I haven't seen anything to indicate that it would or could, but perhaps it might work. Let me make a comparison. We don't want to go back to what you're talking about with, you know, guys managing your business as opposed to being obligated to the company. That's Tony Kahn. In order for Tony to take a position with MJF or anybody else who is worrying about their

brands and worrying about their own business versus the companies, while they're getting a check, that to me is mind-boggling, but whatever. And the only way to manage that is to put a stop to it or at least put some controls on it. That takes leadership. That takes somebody standing up in front of someone and saying, no, we're not going to do that. And here's why we're not going to do it. It's not just because I'm a dick, but I can't let you do what you want to do or you're going to do what you don't want to do because, first and foremost, I have a contract with you and you have agreed to provide services for the amount of money that I'm paying you. And I expect you to live up to that contract.

Number one. Number two, you work for a company, and it's kind of a team. We can't all be our own independent contractors, managing our own independent business. Whenever it's convenient for us, we work in an AEW show. That takes leadership. Have we seen any leadership on a Tony Kahn since he started when he's been under pressure to manage the talent? Because managing talent in a wrestling, in any business, whether it's probably college football,

professional football, any sports. any movie set, you're dealing with egos, you're dealing with people who aren't your average people when it comes to their personalities. It's why they became rock stars, actors, actresses, wrestlers, whatever, stand-up comedians. These people are unique individuals, and you have to learn how to manage them. I did not do a great job at that, and I'll be the first to admit it. I learned a lot along the way and I'd probably be better at it today than I was in 1997 and I was learning on the job and got thrown into deep water real fast. But as a result of that experience, I think I stand on pretty solid ground when I say that in order for Tony to address these issues,

he has to become a leader that so far we haven't seen. A lot of people like Tony. Tony's got a big heart. People put Tony over all the time. Of course, they're getting a check to do it. But not saying that they're not sincere. I think Tony is a nice guy. He is. His heart is in the right place. It is. But that doesn't make him a leader or a writer or an executive.

Here's a cliche a lot of people are familiar with Eric. In the old good cop, bad cop scenario, we've heard a lot of people in WWE through the years when they would leave for whatever reason their run with Vince would end. They would say something like, oh, I got along great with Vince. it was that damn jr that had it in for me oh i got along great with vince it was that johnny ace that had it in for me i don't know that there is a quote unquote bad cop in a w i mean we know that tony con is going to be the good cop he's going to be in the vince macman role i get that but if the speculation is true that he's just averse to confrontation and he's not a confrontational

person it feels like he needs a bad cop is there a bad cop out there in wrestling who could be an asset to Tony Con that you would recommend? I'm sure we could make a list of five or six people that you and I would both agree on would be great in that role. Right out the top of my head, bring in JBL. Not that he would do it, but there's a guy that understands, that gets it,

that certainly understands business, but also understands the world from the perspective of talent. And that's kind of what it takes really. you know, it's funny you say, oh, Vince McMahon is the good guy. You know, there were times, you know, everybody wanted Vince McMahon's approval because that was how he managed to carry himself. And that was his style of leadership. But he would be really hard on you when it was appropriate.

He would be an immovable object when it came to certain issues to when it came to protecting his company. Yeah, people say. I got along great with Vince, but they got a lot of great with Vince when it was convenient and when it was easy. But when it was tough, Vince, there was nobody tougher than Vince McMahon. But if you take a JBL, and I'm not advocating for him, because again, he wouldn't go near to this.

I don't think he would. I wouldn't. I was him, and he doesn't need it. But you take somebody like JBL who's been through it all, who's seen it all, who's dealt with every kind of eccentric personality that the wrestling, business in general seems to attract in any company I'm not being I'm not taking a shot at anybody just is what it is there's a reason you're out there in your underwear performing in a ring because you are different you're you love to perform those people are unique and you

have to be able to deal with them you have to learn how to manage so yeah I'd get JBL in there in a minute I can't imagine a scenario where JVL would want to do that I mean that dude I mean, who wants? I agree. Yeah, no chance. And here's the other side of it because of Tony's, what I've heard from others about his nature and the fact that he doesn't like, he doesn't even like heat. How do you have a wrestling show if you don't like heat? All you want is people chanting, this is awesome.

What the fuck? You don't get that without heat, right? But if he doesn't like confrontation, someone who has a strong, and it's going to take a strong personality. It's not going to take a politician. It's not going to take a smooth talking salesman. It's going to take somebody that can look at you in the eye and say, no. Let me take that back. Fuck no.

How's that? If you don't have somebody like that, it's not going to work. But if you do have somebody like that, can you imagine the conflict that that person would have with Tony? Tony's not going to agree with that approach very often. It's not in his nature. I don't see there being a solution. I've said this and we both agree that it's never going to happen. The only solution that I see for AEW is for Tony Kahn to be a true executive,

a true leader, and step away from the things that he's not good at. And that takes honesty and it's a little uncomfortable admitting that you're not good at certain things that you need to be good at, like me and technology, for example. But it's very easy to find people who can and who would. And Tony should, if I was Tony, if I was Tony's mentor, I would say, Tony, use your assets. You've got the money. You've got some connections.

You've got so much opportunity. Put the right people in place and give them the ability to, make their own decisions. Don't try to influence them. Sure, you need to be aware, but you've got to take a risk. You've got to take a chance on some people that have a track record of success in any aspect of his business, not just, you know, friends that put you over in cage match rankings or on Reddit, you know, the Will Washington's, the people that are in there are just,

they're in this little pool of small-minded thinkers with very limited. if any experience in the world that they're trying to be successful in. How this shit is Will Washington Catching Strays on the show? What did he do? I don't know. Somebody mentioned his name the other day. He's kind of an internet key feeding rumors and shit like that. I don't know if it's true or not, but his name just popped into my head.

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with Vea. Hey, listen, I wanted to ask you, before we move on, we are going to talk about Disco Inferno today. He's our topic. But you sort of

dismissed the idea of cinematic. And I wanted to circle back. Did you watch Lucha Underground at any point? Have you ever seen any Lucha Underground? Yeah. What'd you think of that? I don't know if I ever told you this,

but I almost went to work for them. Almost, almost. I had a meeting, one, maybe two meetings with them and Mark Burnett was involved and I had met with Mark and did some things with Mark previously. So I took the meeting and was kind of interested. They didn't offer me a job, but I love the idea of it. You know, again, it was different. It was taking wrestling in a different direction, not to compete with the traditional wrestling format, but to be kind of added. had value, so to speak. I liked the idea of it. I don't know if it was given enough time or if the people involved kind of hit a limit in terms of what they could do with it creatively or if it was a financial issue. I don't know anything about the end result of Lucha Underground, but conceptually, I really thought it was kind of a cool idea. And I did watch some of it,

and I liked it. Again, it was different. It, it, it, At least it captured my imagination. It felt like it was ahead of its time. And I'm wondering, do you think that could work in 2025? Something like it could. Sure. I mean, there's so much wrestling out there right now between WW, AEW, TNA, whoever else is out there.

There's a lot of wrestling on television and it's all essentially the same. Some of it's way better than others, as we've just discussed, but essentially it's the same thing. And I think if somebody came along and could figure out from a production point of view how to present the product in a completely different way, so it isn't really trying to compete with traditional, traditional wrestling, as we know it on television, but just provides something that's a little unique and different. I think there's an opportunity there. Possibly, yeah. I'd look at it. If I was a network executive and somebody came to meet with an idea that was pretty well thought out,

we're able to answer a lot of the production questions that would come along with something like this because it's a highly intensive production. It changes, you know, one of the reasons that wrestling has been so successful for so long on television is, relatively speaking, it's inexpensive as hell to shoot. once you start going off into the cinematic world, that changes dramatically. The amount of time it takes for pre-production, like Tony Hunt doesn't even have production meetings from what I've heard because he doesn't like confrontation. So we just don't have meetings.

Well, how's that working? That, to go down the cinematic road, which is one of the reasons why I kind of dismiss the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to that with AEWs because for a guy that doesn't even like to have production meetings to all of a sudden go, you know what? I'm going to start doing cinematic matches. Holy crap. You're making little movies every week. And that's a whole lot different than showing up and shooting wrestling matches in the ring. But it would be cool if somebody could figure it out. It's a tough one to figure out. It's expensive. Hi, I'm Chris Getherd, and I'm very excited to tell you about beautiful and honest, a podcast where I talk

to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number, thousands of people try to call, you talk to one of them, they stay anonymous, I can't hang up, that's all the rules. I never know what's going to happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survive mass shootings. Crazy funny ones.

I talk to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today, Beautiful Anonymous. It's going to be interesting to see what's coming, but I'm sure we'll be talking about here. Today, we're going to talk about what was. We're talking about 1995. I can't believe this is a real thing.

Disco Inferno is our topic today. Yes, we're going to talk about Glenn Gilberti, but we're also going to talk about this character, Disco Inferno, because it's always kind of stuck out like a sore thumb. From what I understand, he joins the company in 1995, and this is around the same time that you've been recruiting guys like Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko and Saboo. And you were at least at one point in 95 scouting Al Snow.

but then a guy like Disco Inferno comes on your radar and he was working the Georgia Independence not exactly a hotbed for independent wrestling but they are doing some really cool stuff in Georgia Independence today in 2024 that maybe not enough people are talking about how does he arrive on your radar originally because it does feel like his style of I mean him as a performer he is just a lot different style of performer than you would see with a Benoit or Eddie Guerrero or that sort of thing what was it about disco that piqued your interest you know i don't remember how disco arrived in wcw you know i know i know that there's probably an assumption that everybody that came

through the door and ended up in a locker room was somebody that either i hired or interviewed or was a part of the process and a lot of times i wasn't you know we had a talent budget we had certain people in charge of recruiting new talent or bringing in new talent they they knew what the budgets were. And yes, I would sign off on things, but I don't remember who brought disco in or how we arrived. It could have been Terry Taylor. Terry, you know, Terry did a lot of scouting and was very interested in finding new talent. It could have been Diamond Dallas Page. It could have been any number of people that said, hey, why don't you come on in and sit with Kevin Sullivan, who probably would have been the first stop along the way. And if Kevin

decided there was a place for someone like Disco, then it would end up on my desk. And if it fit within the budget, I'd take a look at it and sign off on it. So I don't know what the process was with Disco. But the other thing I want to point out, Conrad, because you're right, you know, in 95, I was looking for my Cruiserweight Division. I was looking for that more reality-based character, right? And Disco is way outside of that box. But just because at that time when I was active, I was actively recruiting the Benoit and the Guerreroes and the DeMolinkos and, you know, working to get luchadors over and all that, that wasn't the only thing I was interested in.

You know, I said it before, and I think I stole it from Dusty Rhodes. I think I really owe Dusty an apology. When I'd see him next time, I'll apologize to him in a person. But, you know, I think it was Dusty that said, you know, wrestling is like a buffet. If you want a really good buffet, you've got to have a little. bit of something for everybody. And yes, at that time, I was looking for my prime rib in my more reality-based characters and cruiser weights and all that. But it doesn't mean that we weren't looking for desserts too or appetizers. And there were other characters

like disco, certainly ended up on television who didn't fall into the Eddie Guerrero type Chris Benoit category. I want to mention this is all happening around the same time that you're getting ready to launch Nitro. So this is July of 1995 and there's another big change happening behind the scenes. Kevin Sullivan is going to take over his head booker of the creative end of WCW replacing Rick Flair. It was written in the torch and the observer that Flair had some issues with you over well it's just written you guys were at odds over numerous things many stemming from disagreements on booking philosophy between Flair and the Hulk Hogan camp. Does that come down to Flair believed you should have a heel champion and a baby face chasing and Hogan being of the old school

New York mentality that no you needed a baby face champion or was there more at play there in July of 95 it had nothing to do with booking philosophies and conflicts between me and Flair or Hogan and Flair or that's just horseshit I'm assuming I came from Dave Meltzer It's just fabricated. It did. And it may have been something that Rick maybe in some way, shape, or form communicated and somehow ended up in Dave Meltzer's brain.

But it's not true. The truth is, Rick was in a horrible position. He wanted to be, he wanted to have a voice in creative because he understood the business, understands the business. It felt like he could make a big difference. But when you put, I don't care who it is, when you put a wrestler, an active performer in that position,

no matter how good they are, it's not going to work. The toll that it takes on you emotionally. And you know Rick better than I do for granted. Rick likes to be liked. Rick is the life of the party. Rick's not the guy that wants half the locker room because half the locker room is going to lose. Half's going to win, half's going to lose. You've got to be a unique person to walk into a locker room knowing half the people in that locker room don't like you because of what they're not doing or what they are doing.

And I think the stress of that plus, you know, there was a lot of things going on in Rick's life personally. It was commuting back and forth to Charlotte to Atlanta, which doesn't. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was, and he was wrestling full-time. That's what it was. I don't want to say burnout, because I don't think Rick was burned out, but I think Rick just got to the point on a personal level between the commute and the pressure of the job and the toll that it takes on you, knowing that half the locker room is not really happy with you right in any given moment.

I just think it all added up, and it was, from what I remember, it was a pretty amical emicable, you know, decision. It's not like we got into a confrontation about it. No, Rick may remember it differently, but I think it was, Rick decided what was best for Rick. I decided what was best for the company. And we both agreed that, you know, handing it off to Kevin would be the best for everybody.

But there was no disagreements and arguments and clash of philosophy and all that horse shit that Dave likes to make up. Well, let's remind everybody that this is a critical point in WCW history. You've told the story many times before here that 1995 is actually the first year that WCW showed a dollar of profit. And here is what Wade Keller wrote at the time. There are conflicting reports coming out of WCW, however, since some say Bischoff is dead set against signing any new names until the end of the year because the budget won't allow for it. Apparently Bischoff has figured out he has a chance to head up the first profitable year for WCW and

doesn't want to jeopardize such by hiring new names. Once WCW shows a profit for one year, he believes he'll have a much better chance to do what's good for the company in terms of signing new names in the long run. How close is wage report here? If not 100%, pretty damn close. I mean, I don't recall ever telling anybody,

we're not going to hire any new people because we have a chance to make money. I'm sure I brought people in in 95 and hired a lot of people in 1995. But the focus in 1994, certainly in 1995, was to save money. And people, you know, it's so funny, the narrative, and this is the WWE, this is where it started. It's like, oh, he's got Ted Turner's checkbook. Ted Turner just opened a checkbook. Do whatever you want, Eric. Cactus Jack, Mick Foley, called me ATM Eric, because the narrative was I was like Tony

Khan. I didn't have to worry about money. I had Ted Turner's checkbook. That was the narrative. And it's actually 180 degrees opposite of what was true. What was true is I was told when I took the job, either find a way to turn this company into a profit center. It's got to make money and either figure it out or Ted Turner is going to pull the plug.

that was my first day on the job. So everything that I did, even going back to 93 when I was the executive producer and then as I got controlled with the company, certainly by 1995, everything I did was to save money. I even went so far, Conrad, and I was so pissed off at the time. I'm looking at our travel budget. We're flying guys all over the place. And this was before the, you know, computers and the internet and it became very easy to manage things. This was back when paper tickets were still the thing.

Like you'd call the airline, you'd order your ticket, you'd give them your credit card number, and they would mail you a ticket. They'd mail it. And because of travel changes and production changes and booking changes, I myself, when I was a talent, this is why I focused on travel so quickly. It's like the first thing that I focused on once I got some influence. When it came to travel, I, myself, as a talent, they'd call me up and say, okay, we need you to come in on Tuesday. Great, send me a ticket.

I'll leave Monday night. I'll be there Tuesday and I'll come home Wednesday or whatever, Thursday, Friday, whatever, however long they needed me. Kelly Turco was the head of travel. She worked for TBS travel. Kelly would call me, say, okay, we've got a ticket. It's on its way. Look for it in the mail. Great.

Ticket would arrive. Before I was ready to go on a trip, I'd get another call. Maybe from Janie Engel, who was working with Dusty, or somebody else would call me. He said, oh, we changed the plans. We don't need you to come in Monday. We need you to come in Sunday. No problem. I'll come in Sunday.

They would send me another ticket. Now I got two tickets, and they're in my name. And back at that time, if you didn't use a ticket, it was just like cash. You could take it and buy a ticket for. for you and your wife to go to Hawaii if you had enough of them. And I'll never forget. I've said this before, and I'm not going to mention any names, so don't even try. But I remember, I'm like the potted plant in the room.

I was no threat to anybody when I first got there. I think people actually felt sorry for me. That's how much of a threat I was. That's really true. And I remember somebody coming up to me. pulling out a briefcase and a stack of tickets that was at least two inches thick. That's maybe two and a half. Two inches thick of tickets that were unused because of the very thing that I just described to you,

just mass disorganization. And there was probably $15,000 or $20,000 worth of tickets in that stack that this individual could use to travel anywhere he wanted for personal business. Turner never asked for the tickets back. There was no process. There was no check and balance. They just send out freaking tickets. And talent was smart enough to go home.

Well, they're going to send it to me. I'm going to keep it because I can use it down the road. There's like no expiration dates on it. So here's what I did. I know I'm telling you a long story, but I wanted context for this. So knowing this and having experienced it myself, I thought, okay, here's what I'm going to do.

Since we book the talent, meaning the travel, meaning we use the company credit card for it, I want all those frequent flyer miles not to go to the individual because they ain't paying for shit. They're getting paid to get on a plane. Why are they getting bonus miles? I wanted all those frequent flyer miles to go into an account, that the company could use to offset some of our expenses.

I was so excited about that idea because I knew I was probably saving, I don't know, picking numbers out of thin air, $200,000 a year and wasted travel expense. And that was important back then. When you're trying to make $1 a profit, it's not like I had to make a million dollars. I was charged to make profit. And in my mind, it's like, I'm going to make a $1.

I don't care what I have to do. if I have to buy advertising myself somehow, I'll put it on a freaking credit card if I have to to make one dollar a profit. That was my mentality. So I got it approved by everybody in WCW that was involved in the process. I think Bill Shaw got it. He kind of liked the idea because he was my boss at the time. I believe he was. You know who kicked it out? Turner, human resources. He said, no, no, we can't do that. Because if you do that, then the rest of Turner is going to be expected to do that,

and it's going to cause problems. Okay, well, it's going to cost you $200 grand a year to not cause problems, but go right ahead. Eventually, we tightened up the process and the Internet made it easier, and e-tickets made it easier. But the idea that I could just go out and hire anybody I wanted to was just so much bullshit. But it could have, going back to your question about wage, comments, possibly towards the end of the year when we were getting really close i could see me deferring

any hiring decisions until after the first of the year it makes sense that i would have said that or done that the fellow who had the stack of tickets in his briefcase he have a good golf game no okay i bet he was a pain in the ass all right we tried you're fishing brother you're like a little kid down in alabama out on the pond with your little bobber and your little box of worms see if i can get a bite big one i get it trying to get a bite hey listen uh let's talk about something that we do know for sure and we're able to forecast you were talking about would we hit profit if we sign this talent would we not? That was the speculation on the torch. If you want to sort of guarantee the results,

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while, I'll allow myself a few carbs for the right reasons. And an apple, because of the fiber and the apple, and it's good for your digestive system. Occasionally, I'll have an apple or something else that's got, it's high in fiber. But I had no idea how many carbs. But I had no idea how many carbs. were in an apple. So I've got my lumen and I experiment with stuff. I like to see how things affect my metabolism because what people don't really understand, they think everybody's metabolism is identical, like a fingerprint, or excuse me, everybody's got the same metabolism. But like a fingerprint, everybody's is unique. And what affects you, Conrad, may not affect me and vice versa. So you've got to, when you're really interested in metabolic health and

It's a rabbit hole that I just am so fascinated and grateful to be going down at this stage of my life because it'll pay dividends, I hope. But I had no idea how many carbs were in an apple and I was too lazy to just research it and figure it out for myself. I just assumed it was an okay thing to have because of the fiber. So we went to Minnesota a couple weeks ago and visited family and I came back with a giant bag of apples. These apples were big too. I had half of one of those big apples. And then 15 minutes later, I thought, I'm going to check it. see what my carbs are doing. Whoa, I blew the carbs blew everything out of the water.

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I love it. I love knowing exactly what food is going to do to me before it does it. Check it out right now, Lumen.me slash 83 weeks. You'll be glad you did. So just to be clear, at the same time that Disco Inferno is under consideration. Here's what's written in The Observer.

Several names have been bandied about over the past week as being considered. this is all in preparation for the debut of Nitro. Among them are the headhunters, Public Enemy, Eddie Guerrero, Al Snow, Chris Midwa, Shane Douglas, woman, and disco inferno. And even gets a tryout. Let's talk about it.

It's written here in The Observer that on the July 11th edition of Center Stage's tapings, there's 740 fans, and Al Snow gets a tryout. and another fellow gets a second tryout Disco Inferno He's going to come out to the song Staying Alive by the Bee Gees And it's written here in The Observer

Heardy looked great And was already offered the gig The Torch reported similarly Glenn Gilberty received a tryout At the July 11th tapings at center stage He was signed to a contract the very next day His interviews are said to be strong The newsletters don't mention this

but disco's tryout match is against a young guy who we're going to know later as Canyon. My goodness. Maybe we should have signed both of the cats right then. Talk to us a little bit about disco and his tryout match. And when a tryout match goes well, is that Terry Taylor? Is that Kevin Sullivan? Whose initiative is it to start inking some paper? If Kevin, if Kevin had replaced Rick at that point in time,

it would have been Kevin. If Rick was still there, it would have been Rick. Would have. Because again, I keep in mind, I tried to stay away from the wrestling side of the wrestling business up until really the Nitro happened and I was more or less forced to get more involved. So if this go ahead and if Terry Taylor would have come to me because I respected Terry's opinion when it came to this quite a bit. Or if Kevin Sullivan would have come to me or Rick would have come to me and said,

hey, this kid's got it. If it was in the budget, I wouldn't have really second-guessed it. I probably over-delegated in some respects. Not in this case. I think Disco was a good hire, by the way. I don't want to suggest that he wasn't. But just trying to share with people my kind of frame of mind and my approach to the business. I was more focused on the business of the wrestling business.

I left the wrestling decisions up to wrestling people to determine who fit and how good they work. Let's let's keep going here. We should mention that the vignettes are going to start pouring in here. That's going to be the next thing that they're going to start taping or vignettes for disco inferno. Allegedly it's because they're setting up a feud with Johnny B. Bad. And we know ultimately Johnny B. Bad winds up joining the WWF. It doesn't wind up happening. He winds up sort of becoming married to DDP for this whole during. of that feud, it felt like it went forever. We instead get these different disco vignettes, and the current idea, allegedly, is changing,

where we're going to start going Monday night, one hour live, and then two hours being taped for WCW Saturday night. That's what's reported in the Observer at one point. I don't think that ever happened. Was that ever seriously considered that we're going to do an hour live, a nitrous? and then record WCWS Saturday night right after and then air that? Never. Never.

I mean, when I say that, did anybody bring it up as a possibility, perhaps, because it kind of makes sense from an economy of scale perspective. You're already there. You've got your crew there. You've got your talent there.

You've already flown everybody in. It doesn't really cost that much more to tape a couple extra hours as opposed to going to a different location, flying everybody there, setting up production air. It's much more expensive. But it may have been thrown out there, but it was never seriously considered. It certainly never got to my desk. I just find it interesting to me that, you know, at a time where if you really are trying to hunt profit out, why keep center stage?

I mean, you've said before you don't like center stage. You do have the expense of doing the one hour live. it's not like you're not going to do dart matches because if you bought a ticket to that nitro well i don't want to just see an hour long show i got to have some more matches anyway it does feel like you said the economies of scale this would have been a home run idea i mean we know eventually that's what the w f did they do one week on one week off but rather than go set up a whole other you know crew and lighting and all that for center stage in retrospect that may have been an opportunity, Eric? No, because you would have killed the, you would have killed the audience.

You can't go from the energy of a live, you know, Nitro, the vision I had for Nitro was very clear in my head at least. And now you're talking about three hours of wrestling. Like the first hour is going to be fantastic lights because I put a lot of money into production for Nitro that we didn't spend on WCW Saturday night. Keep in mind, I wasn't getting paid for WCW Saturday night. It was a line item expense for me. My bottom line, it cost me money. I wasn't getting paid for the show. But I knew that if we did three hours of wrestling on a Monday night, that people would get real tired of wrestling real quick. I was fearful of that. And I knew that my Saturday night show, so you do one hour a night show, great. Now you got two hours of

of less than talent. If you look at a lot of the talent that was, you know, involved in WCW Saturday night, once Nitro started, they were not the same people that you would see on Nitro for the most part. And I knew I believed I had to keep that separate in order to protect the Nitro brand. The vision for the brand was to be a huge live party, no taping involved that everybody wanted to be a part of. of and doing a one hour live high impact high production value show and following it up with

two hours of it didn't make sense to me may have made sense to an accountant or a data analyst but it didn't make sense in terms of the vision and the creative that that nitro needed and used utilized let's talk about the creative for the character disco inferno can you describe or explained to us what the character disco inferno was i mean you looked like a parody of saturday night fever what was it denny remember the remember the guy denny terrio used to have a denny terio had like i want to say it was like american bandstand was like a disco variety show for a while like right after disco got hot i think dance fever is what Dance fever, that's right.

Dance fever. How the hell do y'all know this? How do y'all know what the fuck dance fever is? I was alive during that. I'm an old fucker. I forget that sometimes, you know. In my head, you're like my age. And I know you're not, but we talk so often that I forget sometimes that you're

technically a grandfather now. I'm older than dirt. That you're technically a grandfather. Yeah, yeah. I just, I've always struggled with because it does. feel like when you when you give a guy the name disco inferno don't you inadvertently put a ceiling on his upward trajectory like there's only so far that i mean could you see a disco inferno headlining Halloween havoc no but i could see disco inferno getting the most out of the

disco inferno character oh he did for a period of time and then something happens something changes and Glenn Gilberty disappears for a couple months, it comes back with a whole different attitude and outlook on life, and ergo a new character. So, I mean, yeah, it does kind of stigmatize you, and I think Disco really got stigmatized, but I don't think he cares. I don't think he cared then.

He enjoyed that character. He was really good at it. You know, I got a text message from Brat Sandration last night. I just saw it this morning. He knew we were going to be talking about Disco. And at the time, Brat lived in India. He lives in Australia now. But wrestling is huge in India.

Like there's 350 million WWE fans in India, right? So it was kind of a big deal. And Barat remembers disco. And he just texted me, it was like, hey, all the wrestling fans in India thought that Glenn was Indian. Yeah, he's got a dark complexion. He's an Italian, right?

They don't know any better. And they love the character. I mean, they love the disco character. So, yeah, he was, he fit, you know, he was on the buffet. He wasn't, that character wasn't supposed to be taking seriously, taken seriously. It was more lighthearted entertainment, but Glenn could go in and wrestle. You know, people make fun of Glenn, because he's kind of an obnoxious, it's part of his gimmick. Like, if you really talk to Glenn, he doesn't come off like disco in furrow.

If you get into a serious conversation with him, he's a very bright guy. And I think he saw that character. He knew that he did it well. It worked to a large degree. But he was a great performer in the ring. And one of the reasons that Page wanted to work with him as long as Page wanted to work with him is because Glenn could make Page look really good. No, no, no. A lot of people like...

DDP was working with Mark Morrow. Oh, with Mark Morrow. Okay. So you're going to set up disco because he was supposed to work with Johnny B. Bad. That winds up not happening because Mark Mero as D. as Johnny B. Bad is married to the DDP character. So instead, I can't believe this is real.

We're going to set up a feud with Alex Wright and Disco Inferno over who the better dancer is. And there's even speculation in the newsletters. Perhaps this is because Rick Flair, who was a huge supporter of Alex Wright behind the scenes and felt like, hey, this kid's got it. He's young and he's already this good, this early. He's going to be great. Maybe everybody doesn't like that. And now he's going to be in a dancing feud. So I know you were shitting on AEW creative, so I'll just be quiet here for a minute and hear about what could have been with Alex Wright in disco inferno.

I don't know. I think they could have had some great matches and it was a lighthearted comedic approach to wrestling. These are not two guys that didn't know how to wrestle. There's a reason why Rick Flair was as high as he was on Alex Wright. Alex Wright was really, really good. go back and watch some of Glenn's matches in WCW from 95 and 96 and 97, set aside the obnoxious character that he was paid to represent and just look at the quality of the work in the ring. Glenn was really good for a long time. So, yeah, Alex Wright, it wasn't like these are two guys that couldn't put on a great show.

I'm not arguing that, but it does make me wonder with the benefit of hindsight, shouldn't they have both been paired with. veterans, more well-established characters who have had more experience in the ring and in WCW. They're both young guys. So to me, maybe you let them develop and become established to the WCW audience before you put them on this collision course to see who can wiggle their ass the best. That's a valid, valid perspective. Wow. I can't believe it. It's a shock. It's like every now and again, when you take a look and you stick those fingers down yonder and you go, it still smells good. It's because of Mando. Mando's going to keep you stink free for 72 hours, you filthy bastard. Do your balls stink? I bet they do, and that's why you need Mando.

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That's shopmando.com. And be sure to use our promo code. 83 weeks. So listen, we're going to sort of fast forward disco a little bit. He's hanging around and really working as more of a comedy character and, you know, he's not really prominently featured a lot until 1996. And then we get to see, well, something that he's actually remembered fondly for with all the criticism that exists in modern day Glenn Gilberti's timeline.

people still remember when he announced that he had a new finishing hold which he refers to exclusively as Disco Inferno's new leg hold which I think is hilarious he's convinced that this reverse figure four variation is the key for him turning things around

and here's where the comedy comes in he can never remember how to apply it properly so he keeps trying it and he keeps losing as a result he's even bringing detailed notes and then finally it clicks and he gets a win this is pretty fun

I know that there's a lot of criticism because he is he's not towing the company line all the time with what the internet wrestling community wants to see he lives to be a disruptor a conversation starter and he's perfected it because people stay pissed off or stomping their foot

about what he says on the podcast or on social media but I like this man I've got this new seeker hold that's going to fix me and I'm going to get all my winning waves back. Here we go. I just never put it on right. That's great. It's got a little bit of a Chris Jericho kind of tinge to it,

doesn't it? I mean, Chris was really good at coming up with those. It was almost self-deprecating in some ways, but Chris was really good about interjecting a little tongue and cheek humor in a lot of the stuff that he did probably still does. I watched him last night. He's got this big ass cheesy smile.

on his face during the promo didn't really say anything until the very end but he kept the cheesy look on the face even though he was talking it was really funny but yeah disco i don't know whose idea that was if it was glens or somebody gave it to him but it's funny as hell and that was his role he was a great performer he can wrestle like crazy in a ring but his character was funny and comedic and self-deprecating and that always works with the audience i want to mention that not that I'm trying to throw stones. Jericho did do a great job of that. In 1997

and specifically in 1998, disco's doing it here in 96. And believe it or not, for several months, he disappeared in 1997. Here's what the observer said. During the show, Jacqueline challenged any male wrestler. Best bet is Disco Inferno, who's about the only guy who can get away with it.

Now, the observer the next week would say, disco was fired on March the 4th when he refused to do a program, which would have ended with him putting over Jacqueline in the singles match and uncensored. The vast majority of the wrestlers were totally in support of disco on that one and felt that putting over a woman in a singles match was a career killer. Way killer added a little more color here, and he says that disco refused to do so and was fired as a result. There was an exchange of heated words between disco and management. Bischel fired him for quote unquote breach of contract since he refused to do what he was told. The speculation already is that disco will show up as Honky Talk Man's

new find. Halky hinted he'd be producing a clone of himself to pick up the intercontinental title where he left off. Of course we know honky winds up taking over Billy Gunn for a little bit and calling him Rockabilly. That was a miss. But eventually we get the new age outlaws. This is something that I remember reading about maybe at the height of the internet wrestling community's growth period in 1997, what do you remember? What really happened with disco refusing to put over Miss Jackie and were there really heated words? Were the wrestlers really behind disco?

What can you tell us about this? I don't know how the locker room felt. I would imagine they were supportive. I don't think they'd be surprised if they weren't. Heated words, I don't remember, if they were heated or not. I think Glenn, Glenn's not a, he didn't yell. I mean, he would tell you how he felt, but he was professional about it. He stood his ground, and so did I.

So, yeah, I fired him. I mean, I've always, look, when you get hired, to me, my perspective, when you get hired as a talent, your job is to perform to the best of your ability. The creative that is designed, approved, and then given to you to go out and perform. I never understood. No, I understand people having issues with things, and if you want to talk about it, if there's a way to compromise, if perhaps somebody just needs to understand the big picture, no problem with any of that.

In fact, I think the more of that, the better, because it enables a talent to really understand and see the big picture as opposed to just. going out and doing something for one night. And I think you get a much better performance long term out of your talent if they see the bigger picture and at least understand why. But once I go through the explanation and explain the why of it, that's it. Your job is to do what you've been asked to do. Compromise?

Sure. Ways to make it a little easier. Sure. Ways to make it better? Absolutely. bring it on but when somebody just says no i can't do that i won't do that that's a different conversation and that's the conversation we had he glen was determined he wasn't going to do what i had asked him to do and i was determined not to let it slide so yeah i terminated him

because it's a it's a slippery slope counter what if you don't what if disco comes to me and no offense to glen gilberti at all because I like Glenn and have respect for Glenn. But Glenn was not Hulk Hogan. Glenn was not Rick Flair, right? Glenn was a new kid on the block who was getting an opportunity. If when given creative that everybody was involved in, not just me, I didn't create it. Kevin Sullivan, whoever else was involved in it, we give that to disco and he says, no, I won't do that.

If I would have let that slide, how do you think? think the other 102 people that work for me as talent are going to respond the next time they see something that for whatever reason they just don't like that's the leadership part when you have to make tough decisions you don't i didn't want to fire glenn i like glenn i thought glad was a great performer but you just can't let that one slide that's a that's a no fly zone when someone says no i understand it i know why you're doing it but i don't want to it's the end of that conversation. What did Jackie think about all this?

Jackie was quiet. I'm sure she talked to Kevin because her and Kevin were pretty close. Kevin is the one I think brought her in and he was very, very supportive of her. But Jackie was very quiet. I mean, we spoke casually, you know, in a friendly way as we pass each other or see other at television, but I never really had a conversation with her about this. It feels like she was way ahead of her time.

Would you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. And she was a pro. She was tough, tough, tough, tough. But she was also really a pro, soft spoken, very professional. I enjoyed working with her. I should mention, and here's where as a friend of mine says, which is especially

appropriate for me, you can tell with the way I sound. Here's where the snot thickens on this whole Disco Jackie story. Do you know their history? You may not even know this. Disco, the real life Glenn Gilberti's first break in wrestling was on Memphis TV four years prior, where he channeled his inner Andy Kaufman and proclaimed himself to be the intergender champion. And he feuded with Miss Jackie. in Memphis

so maybe so somebody stole that idea they had worked together they had done it before they were familiar with each other and my only question is the only thing that makes sense because I've never asked Glenn about this

do you think he dug his heels in because hey Memphis TV is one thing this is national TV this is at that point in 1997 the biggest promotion in the world I don't mind doing it in the Memphis market for the Memphis people to see on TV, okay, but the biggest wrestling company in the world, bigger than the WWF at this point, I don't know if I want to be

become known as that guy. Knowing now that they had done it before, does that change your opinion on anything? Not at all. In fact, if anything, if I would have known that, I would have been more insistent upon it because I know that since they had worked together previously, the quality of the match was probably going to be pretty good. Positioning on the card, you know, listen, I know that people are going to throw rocks at you after this

because I'm sure that somebody struck that old foo man she wants to fun of time and says, doesn't work for me, brother. Or he hits you with one of the famed and then what? And where do we go from there? What about next week? But when Disco refuses to do a job, he's shown it,

she's shown the door. Is this production has its privilege? privileges like the show can carry on we can live without a disco inferno but if i don't draw the line right now and make an example out of someone and i know that's a terrible way to talk but sometimes when you are concerned that hey uh are sean walton and and kevin nash and scott are they getting too far out over their skis do we have any dissension in the locker room are people being lax about the rules and puffing their chest out just a little bit and straying away from the company vision.

I need to tighten the reins. I don't want to fire one of those guys. I need them. That's a big story. Maybe I can make an example out of this guy and business still be here the next day. Does that even cross your mind in that era or are you not thinking that way? No. I was really,

I mean, I understand why you would ask the question and why people would ask it as well. Kind of a big difference. One is, I did have creative control. So if Hulk had started stroked his foo Manchu and said it didn't work for me, brother, then that's a different conversation under those circumstances. Keep in mind, he never did that until the sting thing at Starcane.

But I would have had, to your point, I would have had to treat that differently. But I didn't think about it within the context of Scott Hall or Sean Lulman or anybody else. I did, as I said to you, a few moments ago, recognize that if I let Glencobertie have creative control after you'd been with the company for 12 months or whatever it was, then I would completely lose control of the rest of the locker room. That I did consider. I didn't even consider it very long. It's so like I knew it.

I didn't have to think about it. So I understand why you would ask the question, but it's not really applicable here. This was a young talent. We wanted to do something. It was Kevin Sullivan, creative, not mine. He had a reason for doing it, and the talent said no. There's not a whole lot more to think about it. Yes, I made an example out of him.

I guess you could look at it that way, just like I made out a honky talk when he refused to do something, or I would have made out of anybody else who refused to do something. It just flat out said no. After the explanation was there, after the bigger picture conversation, conversation was there and if they still refuse to do it that there's nothing really to talk about what are you going to do well i got to ask you about this story because it came up in both the observer and the torch uh the observer came out on march 31st the torch came out on april 5th

here's what wade said disco inferno has a no-compete clause that lasts well into the summer even though he was fired so he probably is unable to sign with the w for now. Bischoff told Disko when he fired him that he would never get another job that paid him 80 grand a year. I don't think I did, but maybe. First of all, was I paying him 80 grand a year? I just love the idea that you're like, not only are you fired, I want you to know you'll never have it as good as you had it right here, you dumbass. I may have said that or implied it could have said it but 80 grand i think i was paying him more than 80 grand a year it 75 grand was like power plant money i was pretty cheap back then but i think i paid him

more than that according to the payroll data that uh has been compiled over the years by uh chris harrington and david vixen's fan he's close to i think what you were paying him that year we know eventually he's going to come back in September, but man, I'm sure he was thinking as he's working independence and not able to go work for the WWF. I need to save some money. It's too bad he didn't have rocket money back then. Rocket money will find any subscription that you forgot about. Maybe some that you're actually paying twice for. I know my wife and I were. And I bet if I was to ask you, can you name every single subscription you have? You couldn't do it. I know I couldn't. It turns out like more than 74% of people have at least something they've forgotten about. Rocket Money is a

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savings members up to $740 a year when they use all the apps features so stop wasting money on things you don't use cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocket money.com slash 83 weeks that's rocket money.com slash 83 weeks rocket money.com slash 83 weeks let's talk about Nitro on September 22nd it's in West Valley City Utah we've got 7,923 fans there yes this is the particular show where Goldberg made his debut but that's not what we're talking about disco inferno is back and he wins the TV title from Alex Wright he goes for a cross body block but disco winds up on top for the pin and after the match miss Jackie comes out confronts disco and threatens to tell disco and tell why disco has been gone for six months disco gets hot a hurry and bringing this up so here you go this goes over a lot of the head of a lot of the viewers at home this feels like it's playing towards the internet wrestling

community who knew what really happened why did you bring disco back why did you put him over alex right for the tv title when he comes back and he's still programmed immediately with miss jackie Talked me through this. I think he saw the error of his ways and we had a conversation. And I made the decision to bring him back. There was value in disco inferno. I enjoyed his position on the roster and I think Kevin Sullivan did too. So it wasn't like he didn't have any value.

He had a lot of value. Just couldn't tolerate refusing to do what we asked. And I think enough time had probably gone by. just go ahead some different thoughts about how he approached it and I maybe have I had some different thoughts about how I could have approached it and we reconciled about it well we asked hey do you think you could have ever seen a disco inferno headline a Halloween havoc well he faces Miss Jackie at Halloween

havoc at the NGM Grand Garden arena in Las Vegas I can't believe this is real miss jacky wins it's a non-title match Disco does the job in nine minutes and 39 seconds. Beltzer would say, conceptually this was a disaster, but the work of both involved, which is not making it salvageable, was at least enough to make it not the worst match on the show.

Disco's going to do a lot of running here. Eventually, though, they do some moves. Jacqueline scores a pin using a schoolboy, or I guess in this case, maybe it's a school girl, and it's a quarter start. But now a lady has beat your television champion on pay-per-view. Were any of the old veterans in the backup said about this?

Or did they understand the purpose behind this? I don't know if they were or not. Nobody said anything to me. I'm sure there were some people that thought it was just a bad idea and had strong opinions about it. But nobody really said too much about it. It was an entertaining match. and it

it solved a lot of issues like I said Glenn came back had a different opinion I maybe had a little different opinion he eventually did what we asked him to do

months before and then we moved on from there and it was still an entertaining match I know that maybe not the Dave Meltzer but here's the thing about Dave if Dave puts you over you know you're going down

the wrong path If Dave thinks what someone is doing is great, chances are that person is not someone that's going to be a star. Dave doesn't have, Dave uses, what was the term that I saw the other night? You know, I can't think of the term that he used. But Dave likes to think that he really has his finger on the pulse. And it's exactly the opposite. the guy he's clueless he's absolutely clueless so when when jr said he gave it a quarter star he's like who fuck cares what he belzer gave it if he gave you four stars you've got something to worry about

you're one-dimensional let me ask you about miss jacky you know i said you know were any veterans upset or did they understand you know the purpose behind what we were doing i guess my question is what was the purpose of this and i know that i'm going to sound real Hulk Hoganish when I say this. But we've all heard that his comeback was, and then what? Like, where do we go from there? And where we went from here is one week later, we're going to have a dark match at Nitro in Philadelphia where Disco beats Jackie.

And that's it. She had one televised match in WCW, and it was at Halloween Havoc. But it's not like this starts her for some big push on the women's side of things, or she's not going to continue to wrestle men. we know that, you know, a couple of years later, two years later, China's going to become the Intercontinental Champion and Jeff Jarrett comes to WCW, but we're not really seeing any more matches from her in WCW. Where was Kevin Sullivan on this angle?

I know that he had a soft spot for her and was a big fan of her and made her a part of his presentation, but it doesn't really go anywhere. Why not? I don't know. Could have been any number of things. And one of the things that Jackie wasn't good at was the mic. Yeah. That was a soft spot for her.

That was part of it. There wasn't a lot of women out there in the marketplace at the time. So it was also, how do you push and continue to build somebody when there really aren't that many opponents out there to build her with? That could have easily been a part of it. I don't think it was any one thing. And I think this whole thing with Disco and Jackie, yeah, Kevin wanted to do something. Disco refused. I fired him.

He wanted to come back. I said, great, come back. Here's what we're going to do. You're going to pick up right where you left off. He did. She, for whatever reason, any combination of them, didn't really go anywhere. It's not like this match was designed for her to take her to the next level. That wasn't it.

Jackie was tough. She was credible. She was fun to watch. She was intense. That's what that match was supposed to be. Disco was a comedic character. I don't see fundamentally why it would be so hard for someone, creatively speaking, to look at a comedic character, a heel, that plays a chicken shit as a heel being so

confused as to why we would want to have a woman like Jackie who could probably kick the shit out of most guys in real life beat that character. I don't know. It's not like her world was about to change when that happens. Clearly it didn't. But it was never the intent of the match. It was just, let's have an entertaining match.

He said no. He came back and said, okay. And then we did it. And he went on to do other things and she didn't. There's no more to it than that, really. Disco eventually winds up losing the television entitled to Saturn and then he gets mixed up with Alex Wright again this time as a tag team do you remember their tag team name Eric you know I can't wait to hear it though the dancing

fools and eventually Tokyo Magnum from or Magnum Tokyo I'm sorry from Ultimo dragons gym has his name flipped to Tokyo Magnum you know why it was flipped did it sound too close to Magnum T. I don't know why. I don't. I wish I did. I wish I had all the answers to these questions because I feel silly that I don't. Then I remember, this is 25 fucking years ago and a lot of the stuff I wasn't involved with anyway. So I don't know. Well, listen, I know when you get confused, sometimes you take a blue chew. What happens after you take a blue shoe, Eric? Oh, the blood rushes to my head. Which one? I get unconfused really quickly. I know exactly what I want to do next. If there was any confusion in my mind before I took a blue chew, the blue chew clears all that up within

minutes, really. Use the promo code 83 weeks at bluechew.com if you haven't already. They've got all the information you need there about how Blue Chew is an online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra, the Alis, and the Vitra, but at a fraction of the cost, and in chewable form. You'll consult with one of their licensed medical providers, and once you're approved, you'll receive your prescription within days. Blue Chew's tablets are made in the USA.

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They will not stop until every man is bricked up like a brick house until every tent is pitched until every rod is raised. Discover your options at Bluetooth.com. Eric, do you want to show everybody how chubbed up you are? I know you told us right before we went live that you were, that you would chewed up at Blue Chew and afterwards you were going to go two out of three falls with Mrs. B. Do you just want to show us Eric B.

Bricked up right? Yeah, sure. Hold on one second. No, no, no, get off of that shot. Why are you doing going to him? Don't do that. Every, here's a deal. Listen up.

You can try Blue Chew free when you use our promo code 83 weeks at checkout. Just pay the $5 shipping. That's bluechew.com. The promo code is 83 weeks. and you receive your first month free visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information and we thank bluechew for sponsoring today's podcast and erics weiner hey um i'm fascinated with this insistence on because when you really think about these characters in wcd they change a little bit we started with alex wright dos wonderkin doing the silly dance

we know eventually he becomes berlin it's a whole new presentation disco's character evolves a little bit, too. He goes from the Dancing Fool who's putting people over to the Dancing Fool who's winning, to the Dancing Fool who's the television champion, but can still lose to women. But now he's a tag team in the Dancing Fools. And then

Tokyo Magnum becomes a thing. But maybe the best part of his career, and I've heard Disco say this on his podcast, the highlight he considers of his career was when he was reconstituted NWO as Scott Hall's Lackey. What do you think of him

playing the lackey role. I mean, that, to me, him being the second for Scott Hall, that checks a lot of boxes. I dig that. It worked primarily because Disco had fun with it. Yes. He enjoyed it. He understood the role and he saw the opportunity to be a piece of the puzzle, a piece of a much greater puzzle that was really working. And he did an excellent job at it.

He does a great feud with Conan and one of the things they're talking about in this era is how often do they play in that Conan video? Because Conan had a music video. Disco gets annoyed by that, recreates the video but with himself all over it. Even Dave Meltzer had to say it was pretty funny. And thanks to disco, I now know all of the words.

It's over on YouTube. We can't link it here. WWE does not want us to show it to you. they've had a lot of issues at times with us posting things whether they were on peacock or the network or even social so we can't play it for you because we don't want to promote your shit it would be terrible if we'd oh my god sit traffic there and encourage people to enjoy your products we'll stop that shit right now wrong with you people it's crazy but what i really love and i've never forgotten it is the way disco inferno is doing his translation of conan's music video oil of O'Lay all day, every day. I don't know why it's funny, but it just is.

What did you think of this, Eric? It's great. And that's a perfect example of disco's comedic abilities in the way he took that character very seriously. It was great stuff. He was a very, very smart, creative guy. He doesn't get nearly enough credit because an obnoxious, overbearing disco character still resonates with people today

and overshadows who Glenn Gilberti really is. Although he can still be fairly obnoxious, but in a different way. I appreciate it. I respect his obnoxiousness. I kind of have a little bit of that my own, but people still, you know, they think about the disco inferno character

and it's always dismissive, but he was really, really a great performer. And kind of fearless. Take the thing with Jackie out of the, equation that was a different issue but you know for a talent to embrace the way disco embrace not only embrace the character but come up with ideas to make that character better and more entertaining um it takes a lot of balls to do that you have to be kind of a fearless performer you have to you have to be the type of person that's not afraid to go out and make

an ass to yourself. And I think if you talk to any really good actor or actress, one of the things that they learn along the way is to separate who you really are from who the character needs to be. And it's not easy for people to do. And I think when someone like Glenn looks at it, he's going to be somebody's lackey, it's not exactly the most, you know, exciting opportunity that a lot of people would get because they don't want them so they don't want to look silly they don't want to look less than but if you get somebody that realizes that's not who they really are

and they just want to have a great time portraying that character that's magic and i think that's what that's where just goes head was at that's why i have respect for him you know who else has reminded me of that who this is really going to be oh boy you think i get heat just burying tony con and shit but a j styles He had to go through much the same thing, you know, when he was Rick Flair's protégé. AJ hated that. Absolutely hated it.

When I hooked him up into Claire Lynch story, oh my God, he hated it, but he did it. He worked really hard at it. He committed to it. He learned how to become a character, How to separate A.J. Stiles, the amateur wrestler, Georgia boy, perfect family man. And I say this, and with just more respect than I can convey here, a really good human being. And now I'm asking him to go off and do things that are 100% contrary to who he really was.

And he figured it out. And he did it. He didn't want to do it, but he really poured himself into it. And you can think whatever you want of that storyline or, you know, being Rick Flair's protege, but for a young talent to be put into a position where they have to make a choice and learn how to embrace a character that is so not them, that's, you're on your way to becoming a great performer when you can learn how to learn how to. to do that, as opposed to letting your own ego and your own sense of who your character should be

stop you dead in your tracks like Discos did with Jackie initially. That's not how you grow as a character. It's not how you grow professionally, certainly telling people know, but certainly as a character, if you really want to develop your character and learn how to become more than the one or two-dimensional character that you happen to be in any given moment, you're going to have to give up who you, you're going to have to give up your ego and do things that are contrary to who you really are. And when people reach that point as a performer, I really, really admire them for it because it's not easy to do. And it's what keeps people for being great performers. Most of the time, it's their own ego. There's not much to the dance and fools. So

Alex and disco break up as a tag team and disco is going to be back in the cruiserweight division. he has some fun matches with hoovintude and and billy kidman do you think if there was going to be a persona switch for disco it would have been in this era like this seems like the time when it's like hey he's been the tv champ he's wrestled the ladies been in the cruiserweight division we tried him as a tag team if he was going to get a fresh coat of paint as bruce would call it this would probably be it you would think you know going back because it was such a to creatively. There was more emphasis on, you know, the reality aspect, the NWO thing was working, you know, all eyes were kind of on that type of presentation, a more reality-based

presentation. That's where things were going. And yeah, you would think that if there was going to be a change, that this would have been in. You know, there's teases that he might join the Wolfpack. Of course, that never comes to fruition. The highest profile thing he ever did is probably the run-in at Starcade 98, where Goldberg Street is going to come to an end. Well, Goldberg Street came to an end thanks to Bam-Bigolo, Scott Hall, and the Disco Inferno, which is kind of fun. And clearly, you know, the NWO were rock stars. So even today, the real-life Glenn would say being associated with him is the highlight of

his career. I mean, they were the toast to the town everywhere they went. but his greatest success probably happens when he and Vince Rousseau become fast friends that's where he's going to enjoy being tag team champ and cruiserweight champ and they're going to start doing the chartbuster finish for Disco which is basically the Stone Cold Stunner what you think of that when all of a sudden the most over wrestler in the entire industry is using the move and now Disco is going to use it on WCW programming I mean, what did you think of that?

I don't even remember it. So obviously not very much. I mean, I never really got, again, it's, I say these things and it's people are going to forget. When it comes to wrestling and Eric Bischoff, Eric Bischoff is way more interested in the business of the wrestling business than he is sometimes of the nuance of the wrestling business and nuance. might be somebody using somebody else's finish. First of all, you see it so freaking often.

It's not like it stands out to me. I mean, my God, it's everywhere you look multiple times throughout one show. And maybe it's more so now than it was back then. So maybe it should have stood out to me more. But it just wasn't the type of thing that captured my imagination in any given moment. I didn't want to think about it too much. Eric, we were late getting started today, and I know you've got a hard out. You've got a big call with a big time player in Hollywood in 24 minutes.

So we got a bunch of questions. I want to rattle through as many as we can, as fast as we can. But there's two more pieces of business. So we'll try to exercise brevity here for a few minutes, Eric. Rob wants to know, where to signing and pushing disco rank on your list of top career regrets? One of the primary reasons I didn't regularly tune in the WCW terrible. I've never heard this before. There's never been a performer who was so bad

it would make me not watch the whole show. This can't make the list, right, Eric? Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Robert Bain. I'm sorry I lost you as a viewer, but nobody noticed, so. Wow, there it is. Jason says, I've always heard the Sting was a big fan of Disco's work and that he, uh, and he's the one who went to Eric and got Disco his job back.

Is that true? Could have been. Sting was kind of a, Steve was an honest broker and Steve and I knew each other well enough that he knew when maybe I was being a little firmer on something that I needed to be and he would try to talk to me.

It's how Lex got back. Same thing. RCS 88 says, Was the disco character a better fit in the 90s of the WWF? Disco had a trial in the WWF before coming to WCW. You know, I could totally see that in the era of, you know, there's there's trash men and all these different an occupational, there's a clown.

I mean, a guy who's obsessed with disco right out of that 70s show before that 70 show was a thing. I can see it in the WWF, but the realism of the NWO, I think is what made us all have a little pause. Yeah. And I mean, really, if you think about it, if Glenn would have gotten the opportunity in WWF back in 94, 95 that he got with WCW, his career trajectory might have been vastly different because he really was a professional.

perfect character for, you know, late mid-90s, early 90s, mid-90s, even into late 90s before the attitude era. He was really a perfect candidate for WW. T-Gunk 420 says, Crazy to me when people trash him as a performer. He knew his role. He worked within his limits. He maximized his TV time.

I agree. I think history has been unkind to Disco Inferno. Go re-watch the stuff and take a look. and Riff Fox over on Twitter actually points out the wrestling observer voted Disco Inferno the best gimmick in 1995 Is it safe to say

Dave Meltzer admires disco Inferno I didn't know that How about that Best gimmick of 95 Wow No wonder his career really didn't go anywhere See what I said As soon as Dave put you over

It's a kiss of death great question here from big bot man why is disco the fall guy for critics like bischoff bully ray cornet conan and booker t they all usually share similar ideas but only one modern talent will publicly take offense is di but the only one modern talent will publicly take offense is d i okay so they're saying these guys are all kind of saying the same thing they all have similar critiques of a w and i think a lot of this goes back to maybe six years ago Cody Rhodes clap back on something that

Disco had said about these kids today and the way they're working or the bumps they're taken or what have you. Cody just sort of blasted him on social media and now it does feel like it's become the invoked thing.

Why do you think that is? I don't know. I think maybe Glenn invites it. You know, I mean, I don't know. I can't explain it to be honest with you. I'm not sure I understand the question about Disco, but how it relates to AEW.

I guess I missed that in the question. Well, he has critiques, and it feels like whenever you see someone on the AEW side of things, come out and speak against anything anyone's saying that's critical in the podcast space. They might not say it about Bully Ray. They might not say it about Booker T. They might not say it about Eric Bischoff or Jim Cornett. but they find a way to say it about disco inferno because he sells it okay get attention that's the internet everybody is they're just they're needy people the people who are obsessed with social

media are obsessed because they're very needy people they need attention desperately so they say and do dumb things just to get attention and disco entertains it he throws it right back at him so they have a friend in the IWEC IWC they get attention with the minute they start saying something about disco I ignore them cornet probably ignores them day balzer blocks them I just laugh at the shit and I say I got a whole folder on my phone of like stupid shit that people say that I can have fun with when I do a wise choices or bring something up here so yeah I enjoy it I have fun with it but some people don't we got a live question here from our live studio audience from ad free shows.com.

Eric Green wants to know, was there ever anyone that saw disco being a fit and working behind the scenes at some point? There are other things besides just being in the ring. I didn't then, you know, that's not something that I thought about back then, but I can certainly see it now. I mean, he's, people don't realize how talented Glenn Gilbertie is. He may be obnoxious. You may not like the way he says things to you.

or about you necessarily. But if you just get past all the bullshit and listen to him and try to see things the way he's discussing them, you'll find that he's a pretty smart guy that understands the fundamentals of the business better than most people that are in it today, or at least as much as most people are in today. Is there one match that stands out to you about Disco Inferno as perhaps your favorite?

yeah doing a job for jacky put a smile on my face because i am that guy i am every once in a while that dark side comes out i'm just kidding no there's not you get a lot of great matches just go is a great supporting cast member and there are probably too many great bad if you go back and look at disco's matches glendio birdie's matches as the disco inferno try to pick it apart, compare it to what you saw last night, for example, and pick it apart. I'll be interested in hearing that. I would encourage people to go check out Bash at the Beach, 1996. That's Dean Malenko and Disco Inferno.

I also enjoyed Disco Inferno versus Saturn that happened in November of 97. But even according to Cage Match, the highest rated match that he had from the fans at least, was a triangle tag team match. Alex Wright and Disco against Billy Kidman and Ray Mysterio Jr. And the third tag team was Gingerack and O'Hare. This was at Halloween Havoc 2,000. So those are some Disco Inferno matches you might want to check out. But something that you probably need to check out,

since we've been recording today, Eric, this news came to light that one of the shows that AEW had advertised and had tickets on sale for coming up on December 7th. in Columbus, Ohio has now been canceled, Derek. Whoa. And the statement says, unfortunately, the event organizer has had to cancel your event.

You don't need to do a thing. We'll issue a refund to the original method of payment used at the time of purchase. As soon as funds are received from the event organizer, it should appear on your account within 14 to 21 days. So, yeah, collision, which was supposed to happen on Saturday, December 7th, which is the same day as the SEC championship, I know that because I'm a football

nut. It's no more. Not a good sign when we're canceling TV tapings three weeks out, Eric. That's bad news. There's probably, I would imagine there's something else going on there. Like maybe collision is going to go away, which it probably should. I mean, I can get as many viewers on a YouTube show as they can on collision. Oh, God.

So it's not necessarily doing anybody any good, including AEW. It would be better if they didn't have it and just focus their resources. They're human resources, creative. Focus on your core business. Focus on making dynamite great. You don't need a collision show. So I hope they're putting it out of its misery because it's embarrassing. When you see the numbers and are drawn 175,000 viewers or 200,000 viewers, it's like,

What the fuck are we doing? This is not a good idea. So hopefully it's, hopefully it's a reflection on a restructuring of AEW and TBS. And I'm excited about that. I am too. I'm going to be an optimist. I'm going to hope that they're changing something up and we're going to get some new

exciting stuff in January. Like if there's no shows being advertised or promoted, you got to think something's up their sleeve. I can't wait to see it. I know we'll talk about it here. I'm pulling for AEW. I know you are too. their success would be great for the wrestling business but it is interesting to see how they sort

of march through all of this and i wanted to ask you before we we get going here you know listen we don't talk about politics here on the show at all as a rule we're your escape from that sort of thing but i've seen a lot of conversation over the last week or so about the influence of what some people have called the mainstream media i think i've decided to call it national news aka just what's coming through the television television on the alphabet soup of networks, whether it's CNN or Fox News or ABC or MSNBC or whatever, all of the different networks, people are now realizing that the influence through non-traditional streams, whether that was Joe Rogan's podcast or Twitter or, so now

there's this big debate. And I think it's become very apparent that more people are consuming the non-traditional media. So when people use the phrase mainstream media, mainstream inherently means the thing that people are seeing the most of to me, does this bring into question at all what's happening this weekend? Because this weekend, the former king of pay-per-view, Mike Tyson himself, is having what most people will believe will be his last fight at 58 years old. And it's not on pay-per-view, Eric. It's on Netflix against Jay. Paul do you think we're seeing a shift I mean is there more at play here in terms of how

we consume entertainment is the whole model being blown up like in terms of like I I had conversations with people in T and A a few years ago and they really did believe at the time and this was a different regime that the key to their success was being on a bigger station that's not it I didn't think it was it then and I think think what happened in this most recent election is proof that that's not it. Take a look at AEW now. All due respect, everybody knows I do I do shows with three AEW employees and love them to death and I go to every AEW show I can. I want them to be successful. I'm pulling for those hardworking men and women. But AEW is competing with TNA now more than they are

WWE. And they're on TBS. They're on TNT. You can't find many bigger stations to be on than where they're at. I just don't think that's the answer. I think if people want to see it, they'll go out of their way to see it. And I think that that's been proven now, not just in professional wrestling, but in political elections, just as far as sphere of influence and things. Like, it's going to be interesting to see how wrestling continues to evolve. Because Paper View has certainly evolved. The undisputed kings of Paper View for all of the 80s and 90s were Vince McMahon and Mike Tyson.

And now neither of them are really doing pay-per-view anymore. With that in mind, what do you expect this weekend? end in that spectacle, Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson. I'm excited to find out how many people watch it. I think it's fascinating. I'm actually associated with one of the people that put that fight together. And I'm going to ask him about some insight information regarding the deal and how many people are going to be watching it and all that.

I'll have access to some of that directly from the source as opposed to, you know, reading it peripheral media but i'm fascinated by it i'm you know because i found out this a sanction fight i mean this is a sanctioned fight this is not an exhibition solely an exhibition it's like are these guys really going to fight or not it's one of the things i love about look when wrestling for me when it works for me as a viewer right as a fan or even as a producer as a producer wrestling works when I find that sweet spot where the audience knows this is all scripted, entertainment, none of this stuff is real, except for that, that wasn't supposed to happen. These two guys really got heat.

That's the sweet spot. That's the way wrestling worked originally is, yeah, people weren't really sure how legit it was. Some of it just didn't make sense, but these two guys, these two guys really do hate each other. I'll have fun watching the rest of that stuff, but I want to see these two guys kick each other's That's the magic moment in professional wrestling. That's why the NWO worked. That's why Mr. McMahon and Steve Austin and Mike Tyson worked because it was believable. Yeah, okay, joint the clowns over here, but these two guys want to kill each other.

That's the magic. And that's sometimes too often, frankly, the magic that's missing. Now, in this case, we're talking about Paul and Tyson. I am not sure as I sit here whether that's going to be an exhibition, we'll call it a work, or is it going to be legit? And the fact that I don't know is what's going to force me to watch it. I won't be able to not watch that because I have to know. And even when the fight's over, I still may not know.

But that's the magic. And to your point, though, about AEW, you know, they're not successful. They're on the biggest, look, if they had, if they would learn how to produce a show, if they'd learn how to, all the things I've talked about, if they could write that ship and do the right things, the fact that they're on a major platform is still a very, very important thing because you don't make it to Netflix until you've established yourself on linear television, or unless you're a movie or something like that. But it's not like any company, AEW or any other, you know, MLW, whoever, T&A, none of them are going to make it to Netflix or any meaningful streaming platform until they've established the brand.

Then perhaps move up to a major, you know, streaming platform like Netflix. But, you know, AEW, if they put AEW on Netflix tomorrow night, it's not going to do any better because it's the nature of the product. It's not the nature of the platform. TBS is just fine. It's still a major cable outlet. I'm not arguing that TBS is fine. I'm just saying, guys,

I don't know how often we, I mean, we've said it before, but I just want to say it in a loud and clear voice. If you're an independent wrestling promoter and you think the next level for your business is to get on television, it's not necessary.

It's not required. There are YouTubers who have much bigger followings and have much bigger viewership, like, the world is yours. You just got to go create something compelling people want to see. The platform will not save you is the point I'm trying to save you. I absolutely agree with you on that. And Conrad, I know I've got to go and you probably do too.

But do you remember back when the rumor of AEW and Turner was just surfacing? Yes. I don't know if you remember this or not, but you asked me about it. This was before the deal was confirmed. And it may have, I'm paraphrasing the question, obviously, but it was something along the lines of, you know, you got this new company, AEW, what would you do? What network would you want to be with? And I specifically said, I remember this, I wouldn't put my money on television. I wouldn't build a company around cable television. I would take whatever resources I had and I would start out on a streaming platform. I would look to the future, not to the past. And even five years ago, almost six now, five and a half, everybody knew this streaming was the future. I think, and again, it wouldn't have mattered because the product is still the product. That's the problem.

But I think as you talked about just a moment ago, if you've got a vision for a wrestling company, if you're a promoter, you've got the resources, you've got the passion, and you want to build a wrestling company, listen to what Conrad just said, don't think a network is going to make it work for you. And there are other alternatives. And I absolutely agree with you, Conrad. That's a great observation. You're 100% right.

But you have to, and you also said it towards the end, you have to have a compelling product that people want to watch. That's what T&A did. T&A not that long ago was dead. Nobody was talking about TNA. No buzz couldn't give the fucking tickets away. They turned it around.

They created a product that people want to see now. They're selling a lot of tickets. More people are paying attention. My point is, the holy grail is not the platform. That's not what's going to make or break your success. What's going to make or break your success is do people want to see it? And if they want to see it, they'll pay for pay-per-view, they'll sign up for Netflix, they'll find out what time you're on TBS, they'll watch this shit on YouTube,

they'll buy an app. They will find you if it's compelling. And speaking of compelling, I can't believe this is real. as I'm recording today, I'm surfing through social media to see if there's any breaking news. Eric, you popped up on Fox News and Fox Sports. What the hell's going on? Yeah, that was, I just saw that this morning, too. Yeah, you know, I'm doing the MLW show, one shot show in New York on December 5th.

And they've got a great team of people there at MLW. They've got a great PR team. They called me the other day and said, hey, Fox News, I'd like to talk to you. are you available? It's like, yeah, what do I need to do? Where do I need to go? And we did the interview over the phone. It was great. But yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's, it's, I'm having so much fun with it. And we haven't really, just barely gotten started. But the collect, you know, there's some really talented people there, you know, court, former writer WWE, certainly understands, you know, storytelling. Gerith St. Lorraine is there. I'll enjoy working with him so far. And

David Sahadi will be directing the show and I've worked with David before a lot of respect for David so there's there's a lot of good things going on there talent-wise there's some interesting talent there can't wait to work with Matt Riddle and Paul Walter Hauser that's kind of all started with him I'm doing an interview with him on wise choices and we're talking about WCW and he's like man it would be fun if you kind of got back into it I thanked him for thinking that way and before I know it he's on the phone with court saying, hey, what if we bring Eric in one night? Let him handle the show. And I'm thinking, okay, court's going to thank you, but no, thank you.

And don't ever call me on live television again or whatever. But court, you put it up the phone, said, absolutely, let's do it. And look, it's one night, right? It's just going to be fun. That's the main thing. And I told court right off the bat, if I'm going to do this, not only do I have to have fun, but you know, you guys have to have fun too. If it's going to be just a gig or, you know, forced it, forcing something, I'd rather not.

But I don't want to show up and be the general manager for the night and do some dastardly general manager bullshit. I've been there, done that. But if it's a chance to really get in and work and collaborate with some smart people and have fun doing it, I'm all in. And I can't wait to do it. So far, I'm just having fun with it. We're going to figure out some really cool ways to kind of make this show feel, like my at least my fingerprints are on it that's all it's happening at the milrose ballroom in queen's new york on Thursday December 5th tickets are on sale now m lw nyc.com and by the way if

you're going to go stir it up with disco today take it from our man marcus who tweeted us live during the show today who said not really a question but more of a compliment for disco is one of the nicest people you'll come across in los Vegas and all this co-workers workers have nothing but awesome things to say about him. There you go. Eric, let's get a one shot of you disco dancing. Let's get out of here on a high note.

Disco fever. Disco fever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. We'll see you next week. Right here on 83 weeks with Derek Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about.

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