83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 352: The Myth Of ATM Eric

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad investigate the origin of the theory of that Eric became an "ATM" while running WCW. Eric shares his side of the story and debunks the rumors and innuendos of his management tactics during his time in World Championship Wrestling. All that plus his thoughts on the very latest happenings in the world of professional wrestling. WCW Contracts and Payroll Information courtesy of Wrestlenomics: https://wrestlenomics.com/wp-content/uploads/mookie_archive/wcw_contracts.html STOPBOX - Get firearm security redesigned and save with BOGO the StopBox Pro AND 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code 83WEEKS at https://www.stopboxusa.com/83WEEKS #stopboxpod PRIZE PICKS - Download the app today and use code 83WEEKS to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup! PrizePicks. Run Your Game! VIIA - Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viia83 and use code 83WEEKS! HENSON SHAVING - It’s time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that’ll last you a lifetime. Visit https://hensonshaving.com/ERIC83 to pick the razor for you and use code ERIC83 and you’ll get two years' worth of blades free with your razor–just make sure to add them to your cart. TUSHY - Over 2 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Save BIG at https://hellotushy.com/83Weeks  BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code 83WEEKS at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s https://bluechew.com/, promo code 83WEEKS to receive your first month FREE GAMETIME - Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and redeem code WEEKS for $20 off your first purchase (terms apply). Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime. 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

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Make it happen today at savewithconrad.com. Lesson number 212, non-equal housing lender. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm good. I'm real good. We got a little bit about technical issue this morning, so we're doing this a little

later in the day. I appreciate you guys' patience, but I'm looking forward to this one. ATM, Eric, it's all about that. Yeah, it's about ATM Eric, the nickname you earned in the mid to late 90s. I'm really interested to talk about when you first heard that and what you thought of that. But before we do, we should talk about some news and notes of things that are happening right now. Eric, I'm sure you've seen the news. All-in is now officially on sale.

It's the AEW Stadium Show. Of course, we've seen them do all in twice before in the UK and then, I guess really the origin story of AEW starts with all the end back in 2018. What do you think, man? Arlington, Texas, Globe Life Field for the Rangers play. What's it going to look like July 12th? It's going to be quite a side, I'm sure.

Yeah, from what I've heard, by the way, I did see the on sale announcement that you did with Tony Shabani and Brian Danielson and who's the other guy. W. Allen was there. Oh, that's what I saw. I do want the whole thing, I don't think, but good for you.

How was your trip to Dallas? It was great. It was easy. It was, uh, it's been a long time since I've done that. You know, I was there when it first started in Jacksonville and then helped them do the first on sale for the first pay-per-view in Vegas. And that means Starcast is coming back, you know, Starcast was kind of created to support the original all in back in 2018.

And we're jumping at the chance to do something fun in Texas. So stay tuned. That week is going to be more than just a state. show, but it is indeed at EW's first stadium show, Eric. Yeah, this was going to be a fun one. You know, congratulations to EW. They broke a million dollars, I think advanced ticket sales. So that's, that's nothing but a good thing.

That's not a bad day, right? Nothing to make you frown. So it'll be fun to watch how the rest of it goes. That's a big stadium for a company that's, you know, struggling to draw, you know, in smaller markets and smaller buildings. So we'll see, you know, it's an event. That's the thing about a big show. Sometimes it's not even about creative.

You know, don't get me wrong when I make this comparison. Please, I'm using it as an example. WrestleMania has become so big that while we all love when there's a great story like we've seen in the last year or two, even if there wasn't, even when there wasn't, I should say, even when there wasn't, messalania still sold because it's an event and to obviously a much lesser degree same is true here as you said this is AEW's first stadium show yeah and I think people that might not otherwise come to a television taping or a pay-per-view premium live event whatever you want to call it if it's a big event and a cool venue

a lot of people just go for the excitement of live action in the venue. Right. It's great people watching. It's great entertainment, even if you're not a hardcore wrestling fan. But that's a big building. I don't know if there's enough of those kind of people to do it justice, but we'll find out. We will find out. It's going to be an interesting year from professional wrestling in 2025.

But before we get there, we're going out with a bang. Saturday night's main event is back this weekend. It's going to be live on NBC and on Peacock. It's this Saturday night, of course, and Eric and I are going to be live immediately following that show. So as soon as you turn off the main event, which is Cody Rhodes versus Kevin Owens, jump on over to 83 weeks.com.

Eric and I will be breaking it down, taking your questions, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's totally free. It's YouTube. And we want to hear from you this Saturday night immediately following Saturday night's main event. Man, Eric, have you seen the news?

Looks like Jesse Ventura's coming back, possibly other legends. There's rumor and innuendo that a brother of yours may be there. What do you make of this report? Are you looking forward to this? Do you love the nostalgia of this? I think I'm looking forward to this more than anything I've looked forward to on television across the board, except for maybe Yellowstone in the beginning. I haven't looked forward to something like this in a long time.

It's, this is, it's the retro vibe. If it was just another wrestling show, shoot me. But man, and for a lot of, you just heard on social media, you know, I think Jesse did an interview. Yep. At least I took it. I didn't read it closely, but I got the impression scanning it that even the lighting is going to be a little, you know, a bit of a throwback.

And if they can recapture that 80s, 90s, early 90s vibe, fuck it's going to be so cool it will be really cool and i think it'll blow people away because it'll bring in a lot just like we were talking about with you know the stadium show something different something cool this is so different and it's something for that laps wrestling fan and we know there's you know how many tens of millions of them are out there right they're just there's nothing in today's in today's wrestling product that it's going to to get them to go back and check it out. But depending on the level of nostalgia in this show, this could do that.

This could be a monster. I think it will. I think this is leaning into what made the whole Jake Paul Mike Tyson fight so intriguing and so interesting because people want to remember Mike Tyson the way he was. They're not really all that interested in seeing how he is now, but if we can sort of feel transported and now it becomes an experience because everything looks and feels throwback from the music to the graphics to the lighting to the entrance not being a giant LED board it's going to be really really cool to see and i don't know if you saw or paid any

attention but triple h posted video with cody roads where he opened up a brief for one night only and it glowed like in pulp fiction we're led to believe of course that that means for one night only, he's going to get to wear the winged eagle championship, a classic Cole Cogan, Brad Hart title. He's been campaigning for it. He wanted it to return. That is not going to hurt their Christmas rush for last month. Oh, my, that's exactly what I was thinking. Conrad, can I interrupt you for a second? Please. This reminds me of when I first met my wife and we first started, you know, jacking up a little bit. And, And one Sunday morning, I'm making her, we'd have, we'd have fake crab legs and cheap champagne

on Sunday morning's brunch, right? Well, one Sunday morning, timing worked out, we're watching wrestling. While I'm, you know, feeding my wife fake crab legs and wanting to catch a buzz on some champagne so we can have an amazing afternoon, early late afternoon. anyway I digress the memories they just come back to you but I said I looked at my wife says why are you watching this and I said honey because professional wrestling is the purest form of marketing there is yes and this is an example of what I mean in obviously a much bigger way now but it's the same thing man when when wrestling

cool it's so cool and good for Cody and what a great way to what a great way to make that feel special yes I'm excited I hope that you know we see the tag titles use that way I hope the intercontinental titles that way like make it all throwback you know what not to be a towner I hate to be that guy but I do wish maybe more right now than ever that Howard Finkel's here to be a part of this can you imagine how great that would have been to see Mean Gene or Howard Finkel or Bobby Heenan, like, if any of those three could have been there, it just makes it feel somehow even more like Saturday Night's main event.

Not to get too far out there, but you know what? It probably won't be long before we do. Yeah, with AI and all that. With AI or, you know, those holographics and technology. And I remember meeting some people back when I was still at Turner, where I was still at WCW, you, I had some people come to me that were setting up a studio in North Carolina. There was a point in time when there was a lot of film industry moving into North Carolina, the state subsidized it, had tax breaks.

There was all kinds of reasons. And it's a great place to shoot on top of it. But these guys reached out to me and said, hey, we're working on something because, you know, I was in live action wrestling. They wanted to get my opinion on some of the stuff they were working on just to pick my brain to see my reaction. And I went and saw what they were doing and it's obviously nothing that compares to what we're doing today. But it was so far advanced back then.

It was all to do with ways to use holographics and live action on television. And I bet you we'll be able to do it before long. And with AI, it'll, Howard or whomever, Gene will probably be able to carry on a conversation with somebody. It's just crazy. I know that I'm not supposed to think this way because well we know all the recent news but the little kid in me just thinking about programming this show and how excited I am to see it I kind of wish I had gravely Vince's voice over the top of it to get us started I know it's not going to happen probably hey hey hey hey hey hey hey they could AI that shit in oh they could

I know how to do that. Yeah. I figured that out. Yeah, that's kind of half-ass, you know, risky, but the fact that they wouldn't let them do it himself is, you know, is a punishment in a way. Yeah. I think that that should pass the sting test. Well, I don't think it's going to happen, but, you know, those old paper views, man,

they were so iconic with his voice, you know, Rural Rumble and all that. Oh, no doubt. It was just really, really cool. and I don't know why it still stands out, but I think about me and Jean and that silly open from Vince. And I think about Bobby and I think about Howard. And I'm just excited for this man.

I can only assume that they're going to have the red, white and blue look to the ring and the blue aprons and the old school guardrails and the blue mats around the ring. Like the nostalgia for this, if they do it right, they should sell so much Saturday night's main event, merch, retro, you know, merch from back in the day.

Like, this is going to be a big. for them. What an opportunity it is, right? You know what? They've probably just with a little bit of social media they've done so far, they've probably already created a 50, an additional 50 million to 100 million dollars in revenue from nostalgic belt sales. I mean, they're going to come out with new ones or different ones or position, whatever, but just the way they're using this one night only kind the thing and the story behind it.

It's just they're creating a whole another revenue stream or an additional one, I should say. Well, I'm excited to see it and we know some of the card. Let's run through some of the matches right fast before we get into ATM Eric or the myth that is ATM Eric. The main event man, Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens for the

WWE championship. This has been a long time coming. I love to seeing the way they got this kicked off with that sort of fan cam footage from the parking garage it felt big it felt special now it's the first main event for the return to saturday night's main event what do you expect here oh i don't know and i haven't been watching it so i can't tell you conrad honestly well i got to tell you the the wrestling fan and me who loved when the genius and mr perfect wrestled holkogan on saturday night's main event do you

remember seeing that oh yeah yeah so if you recall afterwards mr perfect ran off with Hulk Hogan's title. He went to the backstage area with Maine Jean, and he took a hammer to the belt, the winged eagle. Man, if Kevin Owen somehow doesn't win that title, he winds up cracking Cody Rhodes winged eagle with a hammer.

See, that's what I'd rather hear what you think is going to happen than what I think is going to happen because you, you not only know what's going on, you've got this weird fucking memory and you can remember details of shit that blow my mind. it's it's embarrassing and i've tried prevagen and all the gimmicks every time i've been with you it's like how can he remember all that stuff in the details it drives me nuts well dude it was a big

memory for me and most of our listeners i mean if they do something like that it's going to be about as cool as it gets uh we've also got the uh the women's championship on the line live morgan and eo sky we'll see a triple threat heavyweight title match with gunther Ben Baller and Damien Priest. And then a pretty interesting match to say the least. I'm probably looking forward to this second most. Sammy Zane and Drew McIntyre. I feel like everything these guys have done,

they might be quietly two of the MVPs over the last couple of years with WWE. It feels like they've had one strong promo after another, one strong match after another, everything they're in, whether it's a talking segment or whatever. it seems to deliver these are two uh two studs i'm looking forward to that one i am as well and just is it me um or does drew seem to be getting incrementally better especially at promos

every time he opens his mouth yes and i've been seeing that consistently you know it's not like giant leaps and bounds because he was always started off being decent and he's got better over time, you know, just reps and experience and comfort. But it just seems to me like every time I see him, he's in something that's a little deeper in terms of his narrative. It's got a little more intensely. It's a little bit more of a story. It's a little bit more of a journey than we typically get in a wrestling promo.

It just, it hits you different. And I've noticed he's been doing that consistently. Some people don't do that at all because it's harder. He's been doing it consistently. And he seems to be getting better and better at it, which is probably why I'm noticing it because we're seeing more and more of it. So they wouldn't do if it wasn't working. Protect your talent.

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USA.com. Eric, what did you think of your stopbox? I am really impressed. In fact, so impressed that I shot a video. I think I did that yesterday. When it got to the house, I boxed it. It came with directions. I'm not a big fan of directions, and even I could figure it out within minutes.

And those, where you place your fingers, you can set your own combination. And it tells you how to do it. It's very, very easy. But I went and got a pistol out of the safe and put it in the lockbox. And literally it takes, I don't even know if you can measure how fast it is, but it's completely secure. And the reason I dig it, no, it's Lori and I just in the house. We don't have to worry about it too much.

But I've got a grandson and I've got a son that I know has weapons in the house. So, um, yeah, cool, cool thing, especially for Christmas. And you can get to it fast, man, don't, don't hesitate. All the Stopbox products are made right here proudly in the USA. They've got their own facility. And Stopbox also has a huge range of other products like their vehicle safe, their chamber lock and other essential gear to help protect you and your family. And for a limited time only, our listeners are getting a crazy deal.

not only do you get 10% off your entire order when you use our code 83 weeks at stopbox usa.com but they're also giving you that buy one get one free for their stopbox pro that's 10% off and a free stopbox pro when you use the code 83 weeks at stopbox usa.com discover a better way to balance security and readiness with stopbox so eric we know Saturday night's main event is this weekend it's this Saturday night and we know that you and I are to be live right here immediately following the program at 83 weeks.com, but we've also heard that the next episode of Saturday Night's main event has already been announced, San Antonio January 25th. That's kind of fun because, well, it was around that same date back in

1997 in San Antonio. They had the Royal Rumble. So there'll be about a week away from the Royal Rumble here. This might be said differently, the go home major event, if you will, before the big pay-per-view, known as Royal Rumble. This opportunity and the timing of these specials to be on NBC, it's sort of when college football has wound down. You know, we had all the championship games last week, so it's not going to be as much competition this Saturday night. It's also right before the busiest shopping holiday of the year.

And the next one is a week before the Royal Rumble, like the scheduling here is just amazing. yeah and not so not so coincidental i think there's some smart people working together it's pretty awesome but yeah you couldn't you couldn't wish for a better opportunity it's in terms of creating more awareness for your big event well rumble in this case we're going to uh bring up some awareness from our pal the godfather my buddy cassio kid recently sat down with the godfather over an ad free shows dot com it was described to me as a pretty wild episode i've seen a few clips online that are crazy, but let's take a listen to this clip.

I want to see what you think, Eric. When COVID hit, I agreed to come out to that Andre, the whatever battle royal. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I was going to be, uh, I was going to come out like this, this comma, get eliminated. Then I was going to come back as Godfather. Yeah. And then I was going to, I don't remember what. I know that the last thing was pop.

Shango and the lights were going to go out and everybody was whoever's left was good. And COVID hit. They didn't do it. Oh, that would have been amazing. So that's probably the last time. It was hard because they're so PG and when they see me that the audience was to, yo, we where's the hose?

Yes, exactly. You might see me now that once they go on Netflix, I wouldn't be I mean, I'm still in a contract. I'm still under contract with them. So you got to get some of that next thing. You might see me pop up. How fun would that have been? It's just seeing Papa Shango, the Godfather, and comma.

I mean, I know we got to see McFoly do it that one time, but I kind of didn't even think that Godfather could have pulled the same bit. That's fun. It would have been a blast. But I'll tell you what else. He is fun to listen to. Yes, he is. He is a great storyteller.

He's got a great memory. he can get into the details and he's so good at telling stories it's really a fun listen check it out it's exclusive to ad free shows.com in fact there's over a hundred thousand bonus hours of content that you can't find anywhere else there waiting for you to plus exclusive series from stars like lex luger tully blanchard david crockett downtown bruno and so many more check it out right now at ad free shows dot com hey let's let's talk about some other modern brachsling news before we jump into our topic today, the myth of ATM Eric. Did you see that it's been confirmed now that the WWE is going to receive a

$7.1 million site fee? Thank you for bringing this show to our community. Here's $7.1 million. That's not the WrestleMania site fee. That's the SummerSlam site fee. Goodness gracious. This is a whole new ballgame for WWE in 2025, is it not? It's just staggering.

I mean, how high is up? I mean, how high is up with this company? They're not even getting close to leveling off. Every time we turn around, it's some big strategic move. It's, you know, it seems like monthly we're hearing about revenue records being broken attendance records being there's just so much going on there constantly it's amazing to me

they're getting 5 million bucks from Las Vegas for WrestleMania this is an all time record and it's for SummerSlam it's pretty crazy now I say all time record of course we're not counting Saudi Arabia they're getting 50 million dollars to bring that show but this is a little different I mean domestically the idea

that you know they used to run summer slam they've run WrestleMania in the northeast for nothing paid to be there. And now, I mean, I know nobody wants to think about it this way. The taxpayers are paying WWE to come to their town. My goodness. There's They are, but in a way, Conrad, if you look, now I'm not an expert on this. I never had the opportunity to get involved in any kind of discussions related to the subject. But there's a reason why these cities are paying this money. And of course, reason why it continues to increase

and it's not because somebody there's a wrestling fan. It's no revenue driven. And the city knows, yeah, it's taxpayer money that they're committing, but the amount of revenue that's going to be driven into that community and the taxes on that revenue. Economic impact is what they call it. Yeah.

And there's a math formula there. They wouldn't be stroked a $7 million check if they didn't look at the numbers and go, sure, we can do that. And we're going to make money on top of it. So it's, it's just an amazing phenomenon to see happening with, you expect it with the Super Bowl series or whatever, but wrestling, this is crazy.

We touched on it a little bit last week. I know you mentioned something in passing, but I can tell you didn't really want to spend much time on it. But now it's been announced, WWE has LFG, which I guess stands for Legends and Future Greats. it was that ah it's not how i remember oh no no i was that was no i was somebody talking in car lfg legends and future great so you think that's what it stands for okay yeah did you

hear it stood for something else no no i'm i might have something in passing maybe somebody was just joking around oh btf uh so listen the the launch of wb's greatest moments uh WWE rivals. These are sort of A&E shows that we've seen before and now we've got Legends and Future Greats. So allegedly here's what it says. The former series will

provide viewers with a behind the scenes look at up and coming talents as they attempt to secure themselves at WW contract all while being mentored by WWE icons such as Paul Triple H. Levec and Sean Michaels. Follow legends The Undertaker, Booker T, Mickey James

and Bubba Ray Dudley will serve as regular coaches for WWB LFG as they assess and give feedback on in-ring matches. This is the story from Wrestling Inc. What do you think of this idea, Eric? It's a I know I sound like a

WWE show, but I can't help it. They're doing so much good shit. It's hard not to be excited about it and put it over. No, I'm not under contract. I didn't get paid to say that. But I'm But I'm about saying I didn't get paid for either, but that is such a cool idea.

When I first heard it over the phone, I knew it was about a 20-minute call. I knew three minutes in that it was a winner. And it just kept getting better and better and better. It's a, you know, I just saw one show that I was a part of or part of one show that I was a part of. We're actually shooting over two days for one episode, parts of it. But it's going to be cool. it's no look it's competition elimination type format right we've all seen that format format format's been around forever and all kinds of different shapes and forms the format is

what it is but the way they go about interacting and learning and the pressure that they're under and the challenges they have is really pretty unique because it's wrestling so I think people really do and again I'm looking at talent some of whom had only been in the ring or in training for four weeks and I'm watching them compete on that show and I was I was shocked still have let's uh let's look forward to w a LFG and that definitely stands for legends and future greats and nothing else uh and now let's talk about a little bit of a w business and then we'll finally get to our topic I promise but man the internet has been talking a lot about ray phoenix he actually tweeted out the morning

of the big on sale rally in dallas oh man this is getting ugly uh he's deleted the posts or deleted the tweets now and he's clearly knocking a w he's alleging that he's been treated inhumanly saying that he needed a doctor i guess that means after he was injured i'm exactly sure of all the details there but he hasn't been used since July and as you and I are speaking now about a week from now he'll be doing a House of Glory event in Queens, New York. That's interesting because that show is head to head with the Ring of Honor final battle paper. Oh my God. Ballroom. What can't this kick in any more dramatic? This is crazy. What do you make of

this, sir? It's crazy. It's crazy. It's, you know, I mean, we're Phoenix. He's in Contanamo Bay. Wait, wait, what did you say there? Contonimo Bay. He's, he's, he's a prison. You can't go anywhere. Every time he tries, he's going to get his hand slapped. The fact that he had to take down his tweets tells me everything I need to know. He's, he's got exposure. This is going to be a legal situation. if it clearly is already, which means it's only going to get uglier.

Depending on how much it, you know, Phoenix needs or wants to dig up, he may just go fuck it. I'll just ride it out, take the money, do whatever else he could do under that contract. Or maybe, I don't know him, some people just have principles that go, fuck it, whatever happens, happens. I kind of relate to that. Let's see. we'll see indeed i'm sure as the the news continues to evolve we'll break it down here with

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shows dot com comedy guy big supporter of everything he does and he had this tweet that i wanted to get your take on here eric he wrote at hey hey it's conrad big fantasy booking here don't know if there's enough for you and eb to discuss but here goes sting beats holcogen at starcade 97 goldberg beats raven for the u.s title in 98 goldberg wins world war three 1998 and that sets up wcw's version of the ultimate challenge and that that was the nickname eric so you know of Ultimate Warrior versus Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 6 in Toronto at the Skydome. So the idea here is, Derek suggests this would be Sting,

passing the torch to Goldberg, much like Hulk Hogan was trying to pass it to the Ultimate Warrior. I thought that was an interesting thought. What do you think of that? I really, really like that. It's a pretty good idea. That's a great what if. Yeah.

That should be a series. We should do that. we should do that we kind of already are but yeah that's that's what a great idea that is obviously you got there's a there's a lot of time in between there's a lot of things that have to happen that have to be pretty big and pretty financially successful along the way so that's where the work comes but it's entirely possible but that's where you really have to spend the time working towards that and and building story all along the way cool idea Derek where were you and I needed you bro you're probably 12 I thought it was worth

asking though because it was such an interesting idea like yeah that would kind of because I've said before I felt like Goldberg was like the WCW Ultimate Warrior so when he was like oh ultimate check okay like if Hogan was the the baby face of the WWF Sting was that of WCW so I could see it it'd be fun today we're talking maybe we're going to debunk, or at least that's my belief. One of the most common narratives that we've heard, common criticisms, I don't even know all the ways you would describe this phrase,

ATM Eric. The idea is that you're just throwing cash at everybody. You're just writing blank checks. You've got a bottomless budget from Ted Turner. We're going to run through all of that. but when do you first remember hearing someone say ATM airing whatever reason i don't know if it's a fact or not but it i seem to remember mc foley saying it on eccw and i obviously didn't see it it once a show but i had heard about it shortly thereafter a couple days i think

So when you, when you hear it, when what do you, how does that strike you? How does that make you feel? What was your immediate reaction? I had been hearing it. You know, Vince McMahon started it. It was big, you know, big bad billionaire too and all the press. And every interview he was doing while we were kicking his ass, it was always, you know, Ted Turner is trying to put me out of business.

And he's, you know, spending money just to do so. And, you know, internally at WWE, there are. still people who walk around deep down inside if you really if they're honest with themselves still believe to this day that all I did was spend money got lucky whatever they still won't acknowledge deep down inside what it took to accomplish what we accomplished and it wasn't just writing checks that's a that's how Vince that's the narrative that Vince McMahon wanted out there and then it just carried over right it became true you start hearing it in interviews you know it says it's financial you know Forbes magazine for example or wherever he said it the newspaper

he puts it out there and he puts he's very serious about it and it you know it becomes narrative on the business side and that's what Vince's goal was to look like he was trying to baby face himself he was trying to be the milk toast baby face while the big nasty heel Ted Turner was kicking his ass. He was a sympathetic baby police. The dead turn was the bully. And then, like I said, that narrative just kind of took on a life of its own, certainly in the dirt sheets and even talent, you know, people that were angry, even internally

in WCW, by the way, there were people in WCW in management, midman, that for whatever reason didn't feel like I deserved that job and that their friend or their family member or or whomever, for whatever reason, was better suited for it. So there was some of that internally, but not much, but some, but outside of WCW, it was everywhere, because nobody really understood what it took. It didn't really analyze how I did it. It was really easy to say, oh, it's not that smart. It must just be spending money like crazy.

well let's let's let some of our listeners decide we're going to have a link in the description for today's show that's going to lead you over to the handy tables in the archives of the wrestlenomics website they've actually broken down all the data because there was a lawsuit against the company well more than one and at some point in the year 2000 we were able to access all of the financial records at least contract values from nine 97, 98, 99, and 2000. So the fine folks over at WrestleMania have aggregated all that information.

We have that available for you in the link for today's description of the show. But this whole ATM Eric thing took on a life of its own to the point that there was even a chapter in JJ Dillon's book called ATM Eric. Did you know that before I just said that to you just now? No, I didn't read his book. And nobody mentioned it before this.

It's funny. Well, here's what JJ had to say. Eric was very generous with Tom Warner's money. It gave out huge, guaranteed contracts to the talent. The problem was when the gross revenue streams dropped, they did so to a dramatic extent. The WCW budget remained at an all-time high level. Our pay structure was much like that of the Atlanta Braves.

When business is good and Turner Field is filled with paying customers, the baseball franchise makes money. So higher labor costs can be just, But when the stadium is half empty and business declines, those labor costs become a huge drain on the company's resources. When talent began jumping to WCW for these guaranteed contracts, Vince was forced to offer guaranteed contracts to his talent. But he controlled his labor costs by structuring most contracts with a minimum downside guarantee and still included an unlimited upside. When business was down, the talent would get a minimum guarantee. which would usually allow them to make a comfortable living during those slow business times.

When business was good, they would be compensated at a much higher level. The downside guarantee allowed Vince to adjust his labor cost to the company's income. Let's just stop right there, Eric. I love me some J.J. Dillon. I know we probably have different opinions there, but. No, I'm good with J.J. Last time I saw JJ, we sat down at the bar and, uh, okay, great, wherever it was. And I had a couple of years and talked about old times.

As a matter of fact, you were both in Jacksonville for AW. There you go. How about that? What do you make of the way he's described this? I think I appreciate what he's saying and I think he's describing it mostly correct. But minimum downside guarantee, that's the same as a contract to me, a guaranteed contract. Like it's not going to go below this. What Vince was actually doing back then is he's paying everybody based on the house.

And so you wouldn't really know what you were getting until you got a check. And then, of course, eventually that would change. And you would see these guaranteed contracts. But these downside guarantees that, the word, the last word still means guarantee. I mean, downside guarantee and guaranteed contract. It's the same thing, Eric, to me. It absolutely is. However, where JJ is correct, and I think perhaps what he was trying to communicate was

that because of the structure between the downside and unlimited upside, that's, I, it was, first of all, it's brilliant if you can sell it. Yeah. If you can sell that, it's pretty brilliant because to JJ's point, great, if I'm doing a million dollars a month and my talent budget is only $500,000 a month, I'm good. But if my talent budget is $500,000 a month and bottom falls out, I'm in shit. But with Vince's contract, it might not be a $500,000 guarantee. It might only be $250,

but it still leaves him margin that I didn't have. I made a flat guarantee. I wish I could have sold what Vince was able to sell. Keep in mind, and this is the nuance of people, you know, people that live in the basement will never figure this out or take the time to try to. but WCW had no revenue to share. Vince had a history of having lots of revenues to share. There were people at the top, like Hulk Hogan, for example,

his merchandising checks were legendary. They were folklore. They were so big. And there were people below him that were doing that as well, but still doing very, very well. Well, what does that communicate to the people who are in the middle of the card or at the bottom of the card or maybe somebody that's thinking about coming in? Now, you may not walk in and get that kind of big, big money,

but you're going to get enough money to pay your bills every month, which you've never had before, by the way. And you still have an opportunity to take a crack at the big time. So Vince correctly, and I think brilliantly, I doubt he came up with it, but whoever worked for him, however it happened, there's a really good pay structure for wrestling because of its volatility. I could never have sold that because I didn't have any revenue to,

I couldn't say, hey, I know, you came in here wanting $500,000 a month, I'm going to only offer you $250, but here's how you can make even more money. I didn't have the, here's how you could make even more money part of my pitch. Because they would have laughed at me. It didn't ever happen. We were losing money at the time I was handing out these quote, unquote, big contracts. So that's the nuance between what I was able to sell to be competitive in the industry and to bring in the names I brought in so that I could successfully turn the company around

and make it profitable for the first time in its history and dig out of a six or seven year hole in terms of finances. So ultimately, it was a good strategy on my part. It didn't have an option. I couldn't have attracted that talent to come in on any kind of a revenue share basis like they had come from, the reasons I just described. So I'll never take offense to For example, JJ's example of how beneficial and how so much better structured the WWE contracts were than mine. I agree. I just couldn't have sold it.

I appreciate that you're just being honest about, hey, I couldn't sell that. I mean, do you think, I mean, how much of that is just simply because they're the WWF? No, it's just their church. I mean, Vince could literally open up his ledger. He could go to a spreadsheet and say, this is how much money this list of people shared in upside revenue. Yeah. Oh, in pay-per-view.

Oh, and merchandise. Oh, and how show it's up. And du-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And royalties for all the other stuff that you did two years ago. Zabal starts adding up. I mean, I, you know, they're not big checks, but I still, well, some of them are actually a couple times a year, of the quarterly ones are still quite exciting, to be honest with you.

But it's for stuff that I did 15 years ago that they would have to pay me if I was sitting on a beach and never said hi to them again. Tractually, that's the way their contracts were set up. Nothing special for me, but anybody that's ever been a part of WWE that are featured in videos and all the other things that they do are getting royalty checks, even though they're not under contract. That's an attractive thing. an easy, easier, easier thing to sell. Vince had a track record. WCW, WCW had a track record.

It was horrible. So it was easier for Vince to pitch potential upside than it was for a company that it never had any upside. Well, you're going to find plenty of upside and it's pretty easy to enjoy. Maybe your time, maybe it's ready. Maybe you're ready. Maybe you're ready. Maybe you need a break from the crowded stores, the endless gift list, all the honey do lists we all have during our holiday season. That's restore your Zen and embrace the natural power of hemp this holiday season. I'm so excited about our product, Vea here. I am a regular user. I think you'll find out why as soon as you try it. Baya's premium THC and THC free gummies can help you find your perfect holiday balance. They don't just have gummies either. Vea has also got

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as an unwritten law says that in order to be a successful wrestling promoter you have to keep your labor cost at 25% of your gross revenue. This rule holds true for a huge wrestling promotion like the WWF or even a small independent promotion. Vince's numbers might be larger than the independence, but the percentages are applicable. The labor cost at WCW was closer to 60%. Let's time out right there. I'm sure at certain times when you look at it when it was skewed,

Maybe that could have been true that it was 60%, but I find that hard to believe that during the great years that the labor was 60%, right? Yeah, it was close. If he would have said 30, I would have bit. And I, unfortunately, I don't have those records. Never did have them once I left my office, Turner. But I do recall some of our top line numbers.

And it was probably 98. 298, most likely 98, are before intercompany allocations and distribution to all the other or parts of Turner Broadcasting that we were feeding, some of whom weren't even doing any of the work, Turner Home International, supposedly international video distribution that never happened unless we did it.

But we still distributed a percentage of our gross revenues to these various divisions within, Turner Broadcasting. That's what's called an intercompany allocation. If you go back and watch, who killed WCW? Listen closely to Dick Cheatham and what he has to say about. I remember our number being closer to 350 million. Might have been the best number I remember. And about that time, our talent was either just, below or just above $100. So, I don't know what numbers JJ was looking at, what years, if it was average for

the day one, if it was 1999, all those things would matter if you're talking about numbers instead of a snapshot out of the book, but I think you may be a little off. Have you ever heard that unwritten law, 25%? No, but I imagine, look, Jay J.J. had a close-up view of how Vince structured his company. And the only thing that J.J. Dillon knew about running a successful wrestling company is watching Vince McMahon up close. JJ never ran one. JJ was a talented one, NWA or working for crime, whatever it was.

But he was never, he never ran a promotion, but he got a front row seat, especially on financial side with Vince and I'm sure that's where he's take that's you know that's where the law came from maybe it was passed out from Vince senior I don't know but that's probably where that came I think I've heard you know some old timers say before and maybe even Bruce talked about Paul but there was a specific formula maybe it was something like a third a third third or something like that let's go back to JJ's book here this is the chapter called ATM Eric from JJ Dillon's book wrestler are like seagulls. He would write,

One big advantage to working for the WWF was the income from the separate merchandising and licensing agreements for all talent. It was reported numerous times that some WWF wrestlers made more money from the ancillary sources than they did from wrestling. I can see where that may have been true in some cases. Merchandising is where events really revolutionized

the business. He promoted the extra ancillary forms of revenue and shared the proceeds with the talent. Some of the talent made a lot of money from merchandising. In the WWF, I saw the contracts and the agreements. There was a detailed accounting process put in place that allowed the company to send printouts to each talent, showing exactly how many of each item had sold and the exact dollar amount they would get. It would even factor in return to items. Unfortunately, WCW never had the structure in place to develop a workable merchandising program.

The WWF was light years ahead of WCW in that era. WCW only scratched the surf and setting up licensing and merchandising deals. Even if they had made more deals, the company didn't have the infrastructure to track and manage those revenue sources. They had no way to keep track of what was being sold. Of course, guys like Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who came from the WWF were accustomed to getting an accounting of what was sold, so they were very suspicious over their merchandise payoffs in WCW.

Let's just stop right there. Eric, you've been a part of the WWF now for gosh, over 20 years, which is a crazy thing to say. I know you're not actively working there now. I'm just saying you've had a relationship with them. And at different times have been under contract there. And he's not under contract now. He just said that last week.

But you've gotten these statements before. Can you describe them to us as a talent? Like you can see what's sold and all the revenue and all that sort of thing. It is broken down to the penny. And I get one at least once a quarter. I may get them sooner. But I don't even look at them, to be honest with you, and I'm about to tell you why. Let's say the last quarter one, quarterly one I got, sometimes I'll page through them

really quickly to see where the big numbers come from, if there are any big numbers. In my case, big is a relative figure, but where the largest ones are, just out of curiosity to see what's moving and if it's a new product or if it's a product that's been, you know, consistently doing pretty well for them and ultimately for me. but I spend maybe five minutes doing that, if that, because I'll get a stack half an inch to three quarters of an inch, half an inch thick, realistically, weighs about two pounds. And there'll be thousands of itemized product numbers. And it will tell me how much, if any, I made off each one to the penny.

So you can track it. Now, there's no way in the world, I could tell you the formula. I never asked. No one ever explained it to me. I just said, sure, I'll do that. I mean, my contract is a little different. I was being paid as a television performer, not as a wrestler. So my contract was different.

But it still had a licensing component to it. And I just figured, whatever it is, it's bonus. It's just on top of it. So I didn't think about it. But I still get them once a quarter, and you can go through and it'll tell you everything about it, but you will never know, I will never know what the formula they use to arrive at that statement. That's the complicated part.

And that's where the genius comes in, by the way. When I said that was a genius way to structure contracts, if you get away with it, I mean that. Structuring talent contracts this way. It's so unique, and it's unique to wrestling. You couldn't apply this to tell, you know, actors and actresses. You could, you probably could apply this, I guess, to a professional sport that isn't used to a format that they already have. Unions that fight for and all that.

You could probably figure out a variation of it, but it doesn't really exist anywhere else. So it's not modeled after anything. It had to be created over a long period of time by people like the McMahon's. perhaps senior, perhaps junior, maybe I heard a red, led to believe a lot. It was Linda when she was CEO of the company. Her primary influence was on contracts and the business side, that was not it's a strong suit, it was her strong suit. That's when all that started with her and it is really quite brilliant.

I wanted to ask you something else that JJ wrote here. You know, it's his opinion, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it's his opinion that WCW was never able to really truly capture their licensing, their marketing, their merchandising, the way that the WWE was. They didn't have the infrastructure. What do you make of that? Conrad, I've been saying that for years on this podcast. I mean, it is, but he's exactly right. You know, there's nothing in this, nothing to Jay J.J. said in his book so far, the Hearst, my feelings at all. He's right.

You know, JJ wasn't there for certain periods of explosion of WCW. Quite frankly, if WCW hadn't exploded the way it did, I wouldn't have been able to bring JJ in when I did and how I did. But we were already in a great trajectory. JJ didn't have to experience the challenge of trying to get top talent from WWE who are used to those big merchandising contracts and sophistication of them and the reliance upon them, he didn't have to try to talk to those people to come to a company that didn't have that.

So there's a little bit of a disconnect there, but JJ's observation overall is 100% accurate and truthful. Let's talk a little bit about, well, let me just read it to you. J.J.'s book again, wrestlers are like seagulls. At that point, could the problems with the company have been fixed? I'd like to think so. Would it have been a lot of work? Absolutely.

If someone is taken to the hospital after being involved in a horrible car accident with cuts all over their body, the surgeons have to decide which wound to treat first. Any of the injuries can get infected. Will their efforts work? There's no way to know for sure. You can't know the outcome of your actions, but you have to start somewhere.

The longer you sit around and talk about the patient and argue about where to start, the worst the patient will get. WCW was in that kind of shape. Many of the contracts were guaranteed for two or three years, but we had to start somewhere. When I first went to my first TV taping, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall took me by the arm and said,

let's go to the lunchroom and have a little talk. After steering me to a table in a remote corner of the lunchroom, Kevin said in a low voice, whatever you do, do not tell Eric Bischoff what kind of money we're making the WWF. what do you think of that uh i think i think jay's probably just again because of the timing when jay came in he's probably talking about that period of time in 99 and 2000 when he was actually in management when jay was there he was kind of in management i mean technically he was

but jay wasn't really involved in much you know talent relations type stuff um so jj's window into the details of what was going on prior to or even during that time we're limited while I was there but in terms of the Scott and Kevin I could probably see that I could probably see that it sounds like something Kevin would do he would continue I laughed Scott and Kevin smiled and that was the end of our conversation they told me everything I needed to know about Eric in that one statement. They knew that I was familiar with the specifics of their WWF contracts, and then I knew their earnings while at the WWF. They negotiated a much sweeter deal with Eric, a high dollar guaranteed deal, and they didn't

want anybody rocking their boat. At that point, I didn't know what my role was going to be or what was going to be required of me, so I didn't say anything. There was one particular talent who worked for the WWF when I was there. He was the top name in the business and had a minimum downside guarantee with the WWF that was consistent with most contracts at the time. And after I left and went to WCW, the WWF failed to renew his contract, and he spent one year working on the independent circuit. All of a sudden, I heard that he was being brought on board by Eric. His guaranteed contract was more than double what he'd been making with the World Wrestling

Federation. That was a classic example of someone I could have helped Eric with. I knew the numbers. I knew about his situation. How could Eric justify offering the guy such a lucrative contract, especially without talking to me? Who could provide him with the details he needed to negotiate the contract, even if it was just 15 seconds over the water cooler?

So let's just time out right there. I mean, it seems like, I mean, JJ's putting it in there pretty plainly. Hey, Eric, I could have helped you not pay these guys so much money. and I read that one of two ways. If I was a wrestler reading that, I might be thinking, damn it, I thought JJ was going to take care of the boys.

What the hell? And I also think in that same vein, hey, good on Eric, given these guys raises, making sure that if the company can afford it, we're going to take care of our people. But then I see some people online who get upset

when a guy like Swarves Strickland allegedly signs a multi-million dollar contractor, Mercedes Monet sets a new record with her deal. like why do we care but anyone make well why wouldn't we cheer everyone on for making more what do you how do you make this we could have got him for less Eric why do you respond to that yes that's that's a reflection of JJ having never run a business and just being part of the machine again and keep in mind JJ's writing a book here and yes you know we get a little flowery

I guess in some of our descriptions to try to make things sound a more interesting. His point here is that I

didn't take advantage of JJ and I didn't know how to run a wrestling company because I was spending too much money on talent.

Okay. That's his point and everything he's writing here is to support that perspective. What I did, again,

because I didn't have the opportunity to offer the type of structured deal that Vince did, I had to guarantee people significantly more money than they were used to getting at WW. And let's go back to Kevin as I make this example. And I don't remember what Kevin told me he made. I think I was under the impression that all in,

he was probably around 350, 400 grand a year. after all the expenses that he had along the way because he may have made more money gross but when you're paying a lot of your own expenses and taxes on top of it it doesn't matter as much but i knew i was paying kevin more money than he was making right and i honestly didn't care how much more i wasn't basing my business because of what i needed to do i had to attract that talent. There was no level playing field, JJ, or anybody that thinks like him or thought like him, I should say. There was no level playing field. I had to, if I wanted to buy my way into the market to a degree, invest in my own company and bring in the talent that will allow me to

grow my market share. This is where the running of business part comes in. In order for me to make a decision to take that risk to grow my business, I had to make a commitment that was much larger than I would have had to make if I was Vince McMahon for all the reasons we've already talked about. And JJ discussed. So, yes, I paid more. Now, let's go to why I didn't use JJ. And this is where I was hoping I wouldn't have to say anything to hurt JJ's feelings. And I hope this doesn't, because I've said it before a long time ago. But I brought JJ in under special circumstances that I'm not going to discuss because it was his life, not mine. But because Kevin spoke highly of JJ and Kevin wanted to do right by JJ, Kevin came to me,

explained the situation, and I thought, I'm absolutely sure I could use some help in that area, let's just do it. I never interviewed JJ. I don't believe I did it. I did. It was a show interview. I just did the deal. And I was excited to do it for all the right reasons. Shortly thereafter, JJ came up to me carrying an envelope and pulled and kind of made it known to me that it was a little top secret kind of stuff. And he stopped me right in front of the receptionist, a couple feet in front of the receptionist. He said, hey, I've got something for you. I wasn't expecting anything from him.

And he opened it up. It's WWE's entire payroll. Put my hand on it. I said, don't need a JJ, thank you. From that point on, I no longer trusted JJ. At least I didn't know how much I should trust JJ. because anybody that's willing to screw their former employer at some point in time is going to be willing to screw me because we're all going to be former port we're all going to be we're all going to have a former

relationship at some point in time and once someone crosses a line like that and I know I can't be honest with them or at least truthful with them about some things I just never get close again I can be friendly, and I can allow them to do things that don't involve things that require discretion, but not with me. So that's the reason why. I just got that tingle up my spine. JJ also wrote in this book, My experience was in the management of talent.

He didn't take advantage of it until it was too late. when I started working for WCW, the legal department sent me a print out of the talent along with the details of their money. On my copy, the numbers of key people were blacked out. I wasn't privy to the information of those key people until Eric walked in one day and said, I really need your help. At that point, the information became more forthcoming. Eric's biggest problem surfaced when the talent realized they could manipulate him.

They quickly learned that if I walked into his office and through a temper tantrum, they could get whatever they asked for. I need you to pay for my hotel rooms. I won't fly coach. It's first class or nothing. I want my own dressing room. There was a time of just about everybody on the roster was traveling first class because Eric fought into their song and dance act.

I got calls all the time. Quote, effective today so-and-so flies first class, end quote. The guys with contracts, contracts that were binding on both WCW and the talent, for even able to get their contracts rewritten in their favor. The whole just kept getting deeper and deeper. and behind his back, Eric Bischoff was referred to as ATM Eric. If you push the right buttons, he'd spit cash out at you. The wrestling business had reached a point where the mentality of the wrestler was me,

me, me. I knew that everybody is interested in getting the best deal for themselves and their family, but it got to the point where the talent devoured the carcass of WCW, bones and all, until there was nothing left for anybody. Eric, your response? J.J. is trying to sell a book. J.J. is putting himself over.

J.J. was the guy who knew all along. He could have saved the company. If only somebody would listen to me because I was one of the four horsemen and I worked with this. I never really ran a wrestling company, but after the fact, I can tell you a story that will be really, really interesting and sound like facts. That's what that was. There's a story. it's a you know and I get it I don't hold a grudge I'm disappointed I guess and I shouldn't be because I knew what JJ was back then and we like I said you know I understand people go through

what they go through his life was what his life was try in this book he's probably trying to position himself to I don't know get another crack at the wrestling business someday or at least walk around with his head held up high and trying to convince people that could have been the savior, only given the opportunity if only Eric Hischoff would listen to me. That's what that was. That was JJ putting JJ over. We got to, uh, we got to talk a little bit more about some of the actual numbers. But before we do, let me run you through the numbers at Henson's shaving.

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slash Eric 83. Get you some free Henson shaving cream and the best shave of your life. Eric, let's talk about some of the numbers here. You know, this is all public information now, so it's not necessarily a secret. The first deal you signed Hall and Nash to were $750,000 per year. And if you adjust for inflation from May of 96 to now, that's about $1.5 million in $24. And the narrative that we've heard from guys like Scott Hall and Kevin Nash is they'll was this phrase used in the business known as Sting Money.

He was sort of the measuring stick. Sting money. Does that sound right that these guys would have been making $750 a year and that was close to Sting money? It was Sting money. It was. And by the way, that's another good point as we're talking about this.

Because context is really, really fucking important in this broader discussion. For example, Sting, Lex Lugar, we're making $750 a grand a year in 1990. when I was hired as a C-Squid announcer, there were certain talents who were already in place, and they were higher level, obviously,

but even some of the more, even guys like Johnny B. Bad and others were already making pretty good money when I was put into management. So there was a bar that I had to start from that was guaranteed. That's where that was the top of the roster, and then we started working our way down. But I'm going to go back to, who is at the stock top and why sting money is such an important part of the discussion

as we go to this. Yeah, 750 is right for both. We should mention that this is around the same time that Kevin Nash is coming off one of the bigger runs of his career. It was a three-way house show feud with Brad Hart and the Undertaker that had turned around the WWF's house show business. And around that same time, you were running Rick Flair and Randy Savage on house shows and that was upticking as well.

So it does feel like 750 is going to be a bump from where they are in the WWF, and more than that, it's guaranteed. We've all heard Kevin Nash do interviews where he would say things like, hey, we didn't know until we got our WrestleMania payoff, what kind of year we were going to have. The guaranteed piece of this,

and for fewer dates, that really just goes back to that old rassland saying, money in the miles, right? It's all that we had to offer. it's it's all it's all we had to offer the future was very uncertain keep in mind when scott scott and kevin came back to wcw it it was doing better than it was when they left but it still wasn't making a ton of cash so i think we may have been profitable than the year that they came in yeah we were you are yeah but not by a ton we weren't rolling in it yet oh yeah

Yeah, let me back that up. Actually, you were profitable in 95, just barely. That's the one at the 95 Christmas party where the guy got on his knee and gave you the $5 or whatever. $1. Yeah, 96 was a profitable year. 97 was huge. But there's a report out there.

I don't know if this is true or not. And you may not even remember, but let's try to clear it up as best we can. There's been interviews sometime in the past where Kevin Nash, sort of hinted around at the fact that he maybe had a deal memo, but not an actually signed contract with you, and that when JR had gone on TV, I think this would have been like September and 96, and promised that he was bringing Razor and Diesel back, when he announced that, allegedly, as the story goes, that's when you realize, oh, wait, they just signed deal memos, not contracts, and their agents were actually able to get a little bit of a bump.

and then of course as we're watching Monday Night Raw backstage at Nitro it's not Scott Hall at Kevin Nash it's Rick Bogner and Glenn Jacobs as fake Razor and fake Diesel is that really the way that happened it was deal memos and that's when the contracts got signed or do you not remember that?

I don't remember it that way bro okay I mean how could be me I don't know I don't remember that way you're not saying it couldn't have happened that way or are you saying i think kevin and i just disagree there i think kevin i disagree there okay i'm just trying to be cool about it i got you

i'm thinking up what you're putting down um overall you know do you think that there would have been with the benefit of hindsight do you think that you just became a convenient punching bag with this ATM Eric like it just became an easy criticism that everyone hit like it does feel like in more recent years or more recent months very specifically we've heard a lot of people who are critical of Tony Kahn say why doesn't he just book smaller buildings why doesn't he and so there's these same things that we hear over and over and over again but overpaying talent being a pushover for the talent acquiescing too much for the talent ATM Eric that all kind of gets lumped in the same way. I mean, do you feel like all of this, whether it's Kevin Nash telling a story to be

entertaining or JJ Dillon telling a story to sell a book? Everybody's put themselves over. Kevin's the smartest guy in the world. He's a greatest negotiator all times. Partially true, because that's how he sees himself. But some of these things I'm hearing are just, you know, it's just like JJ. If only Eric would have listened to me. I mean, that's a fucking obvious. and sappy, it's sad, particularly given the role that JJ really had there. I explained why I didn't want to work closely with him, why I didn't trust him. It's on JJ, it's not on me, but it's a comfortable narrative for people who have never accomplished who want others to think if only they would have had that opportunity.

I mean, I got that from, I got that a lot, and it just comes with the territory. Now, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. And you hear a lot of people taking a lot of credit for a lot of the success at WCW, but when it comes down to the way they manage themselves or what they contributed or not, that's not my fault. That's Eric's fault. He just wrote too many checks. He spent too much money.

The talent pushed him wrong. What about the guys that complained of what a trick I was to work with? threw coffee at it's like you hear both sides but depending on what the story happens to be well let's talk about the story that we read in the torch it's uh not until late august 1999 before we hear or see the phrase a t m eric pop up in the newsletter and it is indeed the torch dated august 30th 1999 or for the week of that i guess was technically dated September 4th. Anyway, here's what Wade had to say.

The first weekend ticket sales for fall brawl in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, barely passed 2,000 tickets, a huge disappointment. That market has been subjected to bad pay-per-view events in the past. The lack of enthusiasm first-week-in sales

may be a sign that the poor quality of WCW events is catching up to WCW. Ticket sales are showing signs of lagging across the board. WCW has made money to last couple of years. This year, they're apparently on pace to basically break even. If that's the case, some of the deals Bischoff has brokered will be scrutinized much more closely than if WCW were making tens of millions in profit. The talk is stronger than ever that Bischoff's position as head of WCW is on shaky ground. Some believe odds are against

him lasting much beyond January 2000. The only allies Bischoff has in Turner, some of the wrestlers, but that's for selfish reasons. Wrestlers have nicknames. named Bischoff ATM Eric because of his reputation for generous pay on contracts. For example, Rick Steiner earning nearly a million dollars a year on his new three-year contract. So to be clear, that's not technically correct. It was seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. That was the same as his brother. But good cash out of them technically.

However, it's the narrative. Yeah. It's to say it nearly a million dollars sounds more than. Actually, $750,000. And at this point, I don't mean to interrupt you. I know you're on a flow there. I apologize, but you covered a lot of ground there. Yeah, I'll stop it.

Go ahead. A little while ago, I referred to some of the high watermarks that existed before I even got into management. Sting money, $750,000. Lex making the same. Rick Flair, I think, was at five at that time. I don't recall much below that. that's when WCW's gross revenues were about $24 million a year. So as we became more successful and started generating far more money,

much, much, much, much more. We went from $24 million to whatever it was, probably $100 million in 1995, whatever the number was. I don't remember. It might have been $90 million. I could care less. We made a dollar profit. but by 96, 97, 98, now we're into $50, $250 million in gross revenue, $350 million in gross revenues.

What are you supposed to tell talent when their contracts come up? And they're seeing their friends. Because you have to treat talent and pay talent according to the success we're having. And once you've got a floor, that's really, or when you've got your, your, your, your top-tier talent, that becomes the floor for top-tier talent who are going to be working with each other. So there's a, there's, what I'm trying to say is that there's an attempt at parody. It's easy to say, why would you pay the Steiner brothers nearly a million dollars? Well, you'd say that because you're a dipshit dirt sheet writer that's trying to get attention.

I'm cool with Wade now, but he was a lot like Meltzer back then. He was Meltzer Jr. back then. But what are you supposed to tell guys who are like Steiner, who have been there for day one, who are now working with the stings and the luggers as they always have, but now they see that we're all drawing more money. We're selling bigger pay-per-views. We're selling merchandise.

Are I supposed to go look, guys? Bill Watts was only paying you at $3.50, so I can bump you maybe up to four. What the fuck? You know, that's part of the issue that I had with Wade back then. I'm cool with him now. He's grown up. And the real problem I have with Dave Meltzer is the contortions that they go through without really to make someone or something look like a bad decision

or in some cases a good decision without any. out of all, without any understanding of how it all works, none whatsoever. So it's easy for a guy like waiting back then to say, pay Steiner nearly a million dollars without have no context, no examples of relationship to other talents and perhaps why they were making nearly a million dollars. So people wonder why I get pissed off at dirt sheets of people that contribute to the discussion of the industry the way that way did and melzer still does it's it's that just no context so easy to be critical when you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and and there's no context to

it respectfully how did you land on the decision to pay both scott and rick the same contract amount in 1999 like i know that booker t and stevie ray were once a great tag team but people were critical when you paid Stevie Ray at the same rate you did Booker T. Now people are critical of you paying Rick Tiner at the same rate that you were paying Scott Steiner. You knew the human beings. You knew how they came in, what their deals were structured. Those are fan criticisms though, Eric. I'm sure you've heard them. How would you respond to those? A typical fan criticism, a fan being someone that's never stepped foot into the wrestling business or any business for that matter. That just doesn't understand. So that, okay, so the option in theory would be,

see, you guys are a tag team. There's all the reasons why you should be earning more money. You're working with these top guys who are all making this much money, which is all by the way, kind of where I started from. It existed before me, but I'm growing my business and I'm making more money. So now it's time to negotiate with two guys who've been in the same matches, who are drawing the same money, who the same brand, as long as they've been with the company, they've been one unit.

Now I'm going to say, but I like you better than this one or in my opinion, this one, I think he's worth more. How in the fuck are you going to sell that? Who's going to sell that? Better question.

Who's going to buy it? It's a dumbest shit I've ever heard. Yeah, it sounds good in a dirt sheet or on fucking Reddit, but gosh, embrace critical thinking. Just embrace it. It's good for you. That's how I respond to that. Eric, you, um, I'm sure you've at least heard the phrase before.

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I know you talked about it with our pal Chris Van Vleet. We've touched on it before in the archives as well. There's this narrative. that started to pop up in the newsletters where guys like Wade Keller would refer to you as ATM Eric and a lot of that is coming out of the rumor and innuendo that Time Warner thought you were running a kickback scam. It was nonsense. You were investigated by Time Warner. They did all the auditing and they were able to see, oh, that didn't happen. But in theory, the allegation was you're overpaying talent and then they'd kick you back some. Of course, I had to catch you off guard and

me knowing you piss you off like why would you question your integrity like that but apparently they did uh do you think that somehow that story got linked to the newsletters and that's the reason this ATM eric that's that i know exactly how that happened okay had nothing to do with the dirt sheets not maybe indirectly but um during the turner Time Warner merger, pre-AOL, might have been post-merger, so the merger might have been official or it could have been right before that. I'm not sure. But evidently WCW Nitro was in a major city.

I don't remember which city it was. And there was an individual, the night was over, shows done, people are getting back, Back to the hotel fans at this point. The crews were still there, a lot of them, some of them. But there was a guy there wearing a WCW Nitro shirt. And evidently he was someone who was trying to get on, I think, the ring crew or perhaps to be a referee. Can't remember that detail. So he wasn't an employee, a little bit angry that he was trying to get a job that he wasn't able to score at that point.

anywhere he's wearing his W.W.E. crew shirt that he had been, that he wore, hoping to get backstage to get a job on the crew. It just didn't happen. Anyway, this individual's in an elevator at the end of the night. He's in the elevator, the door opens up, the guy walks in. He says, hey, cool shirt. Are you with WCW? And the guy proceeded to talk about how he he was trying to get into WCW, but, you know, hadn't had any luck so far. And then this individual starts asking him what he knows about WCW. And this individual suggested, I guess, I don't know the details of that conversation, but what I was led to believe is that individual spread that rumor,

which led to, I don't know how. how many months it was, but I found out after it was all over, it was a forensic investigation. Me personally, I don't know how much they got from me personally. I don't know how they would have got my bank records. They might have looked at my taxes and things like that. But not only had I been investigated, but WCW, they had a team of forensic accountants come in.

And everybody went, there's no, there's no, There's no shenanigans going on here. So shortly after the forensic accountants came in and went, no, not happening. I called the Harvey Schiller's office. I'm making money hand over fist for this company. I'm doing things people never thought could be done. I'm having a blast and everybody's working there at that point, is having a blast. Deep, deep, deep, deep into black.

That means we're making money for those of you that read dirt sheets. I go into Harvey's office. No reason to be nervous about anything. Harvey very rarely asked me to come to his office and whenever he did it was usually a fun conversation of one sort or another. I go up, I sit down and there's a guy there by name of Andy Velkov. Andy Velcroft was a corporate counsel. Turner at the time, I believe. And they proceeded to tell me a version of this story that I just told you.

Oh, I started out with Eric. We want you to know. Everything's good. No problems going on here. We just kind of want to talk to you about what we've been doing here for the last couple months. Then they proceeded to lay this out to me. And not a lot of detail, but enough. It's the only way I know this stuff.

Don't worry, Eric, everything's good. Nothing's going to change. I just want to let you know, in case you hear it from someone else. At that point in time, I went from, I'll cut off a body part for this company to fuck you people. Yeah. And that never changed. That, you know, that's why I should have left when I first thought about, it's time to leave and I talked myself out of it but yeah yeah so and I'm look that was

however many years ago is what it is I got to change my life thinking about it now I'm not even it's not even worth getting angry about now but it's interesting and I understand it so I'm not complaining about this but when people wonder why I Pound on Dave Meltzer. Notice I don't pound on anybody else. And there's a lot of other Dave Meltzers out there. They don't get as much traction as he does. But when people spread rumors, distort the truth, lie by omission,

about things that affect people's lives, but get my attention. Maybe partially because of this. And again, this was one small incident, by the way, didn't change anything, right? I stayed like an idiot. I tried to make it work, you know, but the time Warner was piling on so hard, it was becoming more and more evident that they didn't want it to work. So no matter how hard I thought to make it work, it wasn't going to.

That's the stuff that, you know, JJ Dillon and people like him that like to write about the business of WCW who really had no visibility into it. very little and know what they heard a lot of people didn't you know do somebody higher up in wcw that had an opinion but it wasn't j jay dillon was not there again i just got to remind myself that it's 20 some years ago everybody's doing what they got to do to make themselves feel okay with themselves or whatever i don't care it doesn't matter anymore but i do get hot when i see out and out lies and and rumors that have the potential of fucking up people's lives.

Well, let's cover something else since I, we're going down the negativity train right now. Hey, I'm fine, but it's the question. If you ask me a question, I have to be honest with the answer,

but I'm not negative, I'm fine. I'm good. I'm not saying you're being negative, but I am saying, hey, they investigated you for something. They found out it was all bullshit.

They made it up. You were, I mean, nothing happened of that, nothing because, came of that but still it had to suck to go through and I'm sure this allegation did too there's reports out there rumor and innuendo that you guys did a superstar series of home videos on guys like sting and Rick flair and things like that and allegedly that could

have been done more economically in-house than it was when it was farmed out to Jason Hervey and Mandalay all right we're going to stop right there yes I don't know where that came from But again, such a perfect example of somebody writing about something they have absolutely no fucking knowledge of. Like really important pieces of the puzzle relative to the deal that I did with Jason Hervey's company. By the way, it wasn't Jason Hervey's, Jason Hervey worked for the company. It was called Mandalay Sports Entertainment Group. It was owned by a guy by the name of Peter Goober. I think he owns the Dodgers now and half a dozen minor league teams.

Oh, he was a former chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures. Guy with a little bit of credibility in the entertainment industry. And I did a deal with him because Mandalay Sports, because Mandalay Sports was able to get a distribution deal with Universal. So yeah, a couple of guys from tech that learned how to run cameras in a trade school could have probably shot it for less money. but they couldn't have brought the distribution to the table. And one of the biggest challenges WCW had at that time,

even when we were rocking and rolling, is the interdepartmental companies that we relied upon for, like I mentioned it, ironically, Turner Home Entertainment, which handled all of our videos, all of our video business. They did fuck all. They didn't do anything.

But we had to use them. We couldn't go outside of them until I did. And I did because we did, because even though there were percentages in that deal that I wouldn't have had to paid if I did it internally, and by the way, doing it internally means we wouldn't have sold anything. That's how great Turner Home International or Turner Home Entertainment was with regards to our video business.

They didn't even scratch the surface. They couldn't even find the surface. So, yeah, I did a deal with Mandalay Sports because now we had universal home video distribution access. Oh, and Jason happened to be a friend of mine, so this is going to look like a dumb deal. It's hard not to get pissed off about this stuff. Well, I'm glad you cleared it up because it is so nonsense and so cut and dry when you actually have all the information. But the narratives were out there, and that's why we're sort of debunking the myth of A.T. Americ.

I want to remind everybody that Eric cut loose, Sean Waltman, Eric cut loose, Steve Austin, Eric didn't give the crazy bump to Chris Jericho. There were plenty of examples of you not being ATM, but perhaps none bigger than Goldberg. It's written here in May of 1999 in The Torch. Goldberg's relationship with WCW has never been worse with his main beef, being that he's overworked and underpaid relative to the other top stars. He's now playing hardball with WCW. He's changed his home phone number and isn't speaking to anyone in management.

He's demanding a new contract for more money, said to be like Brett Hart money, and fewer dates on the road. His current contract reportedly pays him in the neighborhood of $800,000 per year. He's said to be willing to sit out until his demands are met. He's rumored to be taking advice from his agent Barry Bloom, and the booker Kevin Nash. Nash, who also employs Bloom as his agent, is being accused of playing

both sides. He's giving Goldberg career advice, but is said to be bad-mouthing him to Bischoff. Also, Nash pushed Goldberg out of his scheduled Tonight Show appearance in favor of himself. Goldberg is scheduled to show up at the night show to take part in the Nash Brett match

and then have surgery on his injured knee after that. Some wrestlers believe Goldberg's injury is similar to Hulk Hogan, and that it's a nagging injury that's required surgery for some time, but Goldberg has just picked an opportune time to have the procedure done. He also did suffer a minor ankle injury during the angle with Brett Hart at Slambrite.

In terms of payroll, we do have the data here. Goldberg made $116,820. So I want to be clear, he didn't debut on TV until September of 97. So getting paid to learn how to wrestle. and then wrestling three and a half months, not bad for 117 grand in 1997, 16 matches total for that. In 1998, he did 462,000. That is the year where he beat Hulk Hogan for the world title, but boy, it more than made

up for it in 1999. My man brought home $4,650,0009. You got an additional $531,000 and licensing royalties, $10,000 in direct merch sales. So his total contract value for 1999 is $5,191,132. And that was 25 years ago. My God, what a gargantuan sum of money. But the idea that I just want to remind everybody,

you had Goldberg on what we might call that rookie contract. When you see he starts to get hot, you on your own, without him even asking, you go to him, give him the big bump. That's the reason we see that income go from 100 to 400 because that happened midway through 1998. And so he's got the back half of that much bigger deal. And now here in 99, he's saying, nope, I'm ready for another deal. How do you remember this all coming out?

And what do you make of this narrative that Kevin Nash was stirring the pot a little bit? That sounds like, you know, creative writing and thinking. and mostly bullshit. Henry Holmes, who was Hulk Hogan's attorney, is the one that was negotiating Goldberg's deal, not very blue. Got it. So that report was incorrect, that aspect of it.

So it wasn't even Nash's agent. It was Hogan's agent. It was Hogan's attorney. Yes. was also Goldberg's attorney. Got it. Man, if I could have derailed that train long before it, Goldberg got out of it, it would have made my life easier.

Look, here's what happened. Goldberg, look at where we were in 1999. You know, had Goldberg tried to pull this in 1998, I would have let him walk. We'd let him sit out. It would work his injury. I would have paid him to stay home. made sure he didn't go anywhere because I could have afforded it and justified it.

But by 1999, to lose a guy that you spent three years building or two years building successfully was a big part of the reason we had the 1998 we did, he had a silver barrel. It was a Harvey Schiller choice. It wasn't my choice at $5 million in 1999. that was $4 million outside of my scope of decision making. There's a fact for you that nobody writes about. Anything that I did over a million dollars had to be signed off on by Turner Finance. I had authority up to a million bucks.

A million and one dollars, it goes upstairs. And at $5 million, that was a Harvey seller. Schiller decision. Not mine. That's, uh, not what, not what everybody says, you know, obviously we're getting to debunk the myth of ATM Eric today,

but if you're curious, Goldberg's contract value in 1999 in today's dollars would be 9.8 million bucks, Eric, 24. Not, I mean, yes, but no. If you look at this, again, this is where critical thinking and just thinking differently, not critical thinking, just look, trying to picture the scene a little differently than what you just read in a newsletter or notes.

by 1998 before this is May 1999 we're talking about this whole thing started in late 1998 it didn't just pop up in May right it had been it'd been building up to the stuff that we're talking about but let's say that Bill Goldberg was at least I don't know you would know better than I maybe top three third from the top in WWE today who would that be probably more than one but so you know it's not Cody see and punk so Cody Roman or one then then punk all right and you've got your and you've got your company today that's pretty much built around that guy yeah and he's says either first of all he made up his mind he wasn't going to work for the money that people

are making on the opening match he wants a raise are you going to give him that nine million based on today's money all in merchandise guarantees all in are you going to pay that guy that money is tony con going to pay him that money probably would they 100% would Yeah. There's guys who are making close to that now. I mean, there's guys in the $10 million range now. And again, it's all relative, right? Everything's bigger now. I get it.

You could go down this mathematical rabbit hole and come up with just about any answer you really want to justify because there's a lot of different answers. But if you look at it from the perspective of, okay, these are the top two wrestling companies. That means here's their revenue. it's not really fair to compare AEW to WWE but let's assume that WCW was

maybe 80% of WW at that time let's say 70% at WWE at that time but still wanting to stay in the game and be competitive and your key guy wants that race it's going to put him in the $9 million category which means he's going to be in the same category as whoever would be else other than see a buck

you're going to pay him that money if the company's built around have any choice I wanted to ask you you know does this $800,000 number sound right I mean it's written here in the torts that Goldberg's making around 800 before he signs the new deal and that wasn't what the data necessarily supported which made me think maybe it happened

midway through the year. It's not like it was a January first sort of thing but Bob Ryder even went on WCW Live and he referenced that $800,000 range on WCW Live, which is really the first podcast that anybody listened to. I mean, you don't get enough credit for that either. WCW Live. Does 800,000 sound right to you?

I don't know. It sounds like the way that the numbers are, you know, put together for you there to look at work off of. It sounds like there's some averages in there that, or maybe not, I don't know, I'm not looking at a spreadsheet, so it's hard for me to remember off the top of my head. I don't remember that number, but it doesn't mean that it's not right. his new contract was effective July 1st 1999 it was two and a half million dollars per year

for the first three years and three and a half million dollars in year four of course he did get some of that upside well that makes that conversation we just had a little more interesting yeah in terms of would you make that decision or not there's no doubt I mean that's a no brainer I wanted to ask you though do you remember this story of he wasn't communicating with management he changed his home phone number does that sound right yeah he was oh god he was miserable to work with it oh it's this i get PTSD thinking about it he was such a day and uh very bloom i refused to talk to him that's why that's why i dealt with i never dealt with barry i dealt with with uh henry um it was so tough and even henry and i

I mean, Janie Engel, by the way, I talked to J.D. Engel for the longest time last night. How's she doing? She's doing great. She's happy as hell. She's thinking about coming up here next summer. Oh, great. She actually wants me to let you know that, hey, if you need any help with Starcast, she's happy to help you out.

Hell yeah, that's awesome, dude. How about that? Janie Engel. That's the name we hadn't heard a while. Yeah, we talked for quite a while last night. That's awesome. Where was I? I forgot.

You were talking about, you know, you're so heated with you and him. Henry that Janie would hear. Oh, no, it was horrible. There were times, you know, Janie would like come in and close my door because I was motherfucking people all to it was they were, you know, it was ugly. It was the ugliest I can remember ever talking to another human being and Henry would hang up on me and he called me back five minutes later and scream at me and I'd hang up at here. It was silly. I may have told you the story. I won't belabor this, but Henry had a little bit of an ego. I mean, Henry was a really, first of all, he's a great guy.

But he was a very powerful attorney in Hollywood, sports attorney, celebrity attorney. He had major league clients, heavy A-listers in the sports world actors all over the place, right? He was good. He did the highest-level deals. But he had a little bit of a Napoleon complex. He was a little tiny fella.

And when he walked in a room, and he wanted you to know he was there. And he had this pattern of any time he was in a, with more than two or three people, he'd walk in and everybody's kind of making nice and getting to know each other and just getting the niceties out of the way before they got into business, you know, and bringing up general conversations. And somehow or another, Henry Holmes was always able to steer the conversation. You could ask him about the weather, and he would steer that question and somehow related

to the George Foreman Grill and tell you the story about the George Foreman Grill and how much money he made for George Foreman. And he tried to get it for Hulk Cogan, but Alton didn't answer the phone. So I did the deal with my guy, my other client, George Forman. He tells us a story over time. So because of the tension between us, like there was no let's meet in a restaurant or let's go have a drink together and work this out. We'd gotten so far past that. We would only meet in public with other people present. I'm not kidding you. That's a bad of God. So I was coming to L.A. to do something. And Henry and I decided, okay, we should have a meeting. I don't have an office in L.A. And Henry was in Malibu on that day. So I said, okay, why don't we

meet in my agents? CAA, the biggest, most prestigious agents in Hollywood. I knew Henry would feel good about that. I said, I got some agents there. Why don't we meet there? And we did. So I got there about an hour early. And I told my agent, I said, look, here's what I want to do. This guy's going to walk in here. He's going to tell this story. And I want to be sitting at the table with about as many of you guys as I can get. I don't care if they're fucking interns. As long as they're wearing a tie and look like they could be an agent or an attorney,

I want them sitting at the table. And I said, here's what's going to happen. This guy's going to come in. He's going to command the room. He's going to get to all the attention. He's going to tell the story. I don't care what other questions you ask him. He's going to tell you this story.

And when he does, I want to saw a bustle laughing. And that's exactly what happened. To the T. To the T. Henry got so pissed and so embarrassed. He got up, walked away. You never had the meeting. It was awesome.

But he, you know, we, it's just a shit that. That's how bad that negotiation went. And I'm laughing about it now, but it was not. pleasant because not only was I dealing with the guy that I thought I was being fair to I upped them whenever it was however it was I upped them before I had to I was doing the right thing by him and I would have done the right thing by him I had a I tried to create parody amongst top guys obviously criticized for it a lot but it's the only way that I thought I could manage talent you can't have you know people that have been basically doing the same thing

at the same level for the most part for a long time and pay one guy more than this guy just because you can get away with it like J.J. Dillon would. It sounds good on paper, but once this guy talks to this guy, you've got a shit show on your hands. So, yeah, that was an ugly one. And honestly, it got to the point because the number was so big. I went to Harvey and said, Harvey, you do whatever you want. It's not my call. I can go either way. My answer is it's going to hurt us if we don't have them. That's going to hurt.

But it's your decision. And the fact that I said it's going to hurt us if we don't have them was pretty fucking obvious. But that was the context. And it was shitty. I can't wait for us to talk about. We stayed friends after that, though. Of course, I paid a five fucking million dollars.

We better stay friends. well it's just too bad that blue chew wasn't around back then because maybe you could have gotten it off your mind blue chew is going to leave a lasting impression one that's uh and you're going to be fucking harder than henry holmes negotiating for bill goldberg with blue chew it's an online service that delivers the same active ingredients as viagra see alice and the vitre but at a fraction of the cost and in a chewable form that's right hit her with your spear hit her with that jackhammer too then get on a big streak the process a simple sign up at bluechew.com consult with one of their licensed medical providers

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to the ranch there in Cody Wyoming. Start playing Goldberg's theme and then he has Dave Silva and Dave Silva son who has a mustache now hold up a couple of sparklers as Eric Bischoff can finish chomping down on his blue chew stand right there in the sparklers get standing get full attention and yell, who's next? Oh, God. They're finished. It's the spear. It's the jackhammer. It's the Blue Chew story. Second verse, same as the first. That's right. You're going to go on a streak just one after another. Blue Chew wants me and rock hard. That's what they told me. That's the mission.

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I'm going through a file that I keep in the kitchen. You're a little stand that I kind of use as a desk occasionally. And I looked underneath. There's like three shelves. I looked at the bottom shelf. There's a folder there that I hadn't looked at in, I don't know, decades. So I opened it up and there's a bunch of old WCW stuff in there, emails, MOs, shit. One of the things in there, and it just occurred to me,

as we're talking about this, relating to my limit of $1 million and then the process of what anybody had to do if they wanted to spend over $1 million in the committee of people that it had to go through, or the process, I should say, that it had to go through. I just found a copy of that about two weeks ago. It just occurred to me as you were talking about Bluetooth. Well, how about that? So if anybody doubts the veracity of my version of all this, just reach out. Let's talk about some of the things that's written in the torch here in June of 99.

We know the new contract is going to get executed July 1st. But before we got there, on June 2nd, my man Bill Goldberg gets on the radio. And he says, I hope retirement is not the case, but it becomes a reality without getting myself into trouble, it's a part of negotiating. First of all, my disgruntlement, the onset of it, was not brought about because of contractual differences. It was something totally different. It has to do with why I'm hobbling around right now. You know, it's part of all business. You have to take your peaks and valleys and negotiations. All I can say is I'd like for them to open their eyes and realize this doesn't come around every day. As I said in

USA today, I want nothing but to be compensated in comparison to my worth of the company. I hope everyone in the world hears this. What I'm going through right now is no reflection upon anything associated with greed or anything like that. It's just a reality. It's not that I'm turning my back like a baseball player making millions of dollars and wanting millions more. It's just a different story and I want everyone to understand that.

His comments indicate that his dispute with management was instigated by his ignored request to be given time off to get his injured knee fixed where it required major surgery regarding his winning streak and the intrigue associated with his rise to prominence goldberg's head the direction that i was headed was one that had a lot of mystique associated with it it could have been legendary that chance only comes once in a lifetime especially for me in the wrestling business all i can say is good luck finding the next guy then you went on wcw live and had a different take here with bob rider you said we're not negotiating currently with Bill Goldberg. Again, there's a lot of misinformation out there regarding that. Bill

Goldberg is in the first of a three or four year deal that was renegotiated about a year ago. Bill underwent knee surgery about a week ago, as a matter of fact, and he's rehabbing. He's anxious to get back in the ring. So listen, Goldberg saying one thing on the radio, you're trying to keep this train on the tracks when you're on WCW live. But when Bill's saying, it's not like a baseball player who's making millions of dollars, who's now renegotiating to get millions more. How isn't exactly like that, Eric? It sounds exactly like that.

I guess it's all relative, isn't it? Depends on who you are, what your perspective is. I mean, look, Bill was doing what Bill felt he should do. I mean, Bill's never been one to punches in or out of the ring. You know, he's going to let you know what he thinks, and he didn't have any, he was not inhibited at all. I think it was unfair to the company.

It was certainly unfair to me. Like I said, I had every intention of taking care of him. There was no, there was no arguing his value. I guess we probably could. I'm sure Bill had a much higher opinion of his value. and how he got there than we did. But we both knew and agreed he deserved to make more money based on what we were asking of him at that time

and what the people around him from a parity perspective were making. He was not wrong in that respect. Was he making as much as Hogan? No. Is it realistic given the, given the entire situation, the equity in Hogan at that time, that he should? You can argue it. I'm sure if you're Bill Goldberg, you would have any problem arguing it, or Henry Holmes

or Barry Bloom. And to a degree, I probably would agree with it, at least part of it. But then there's the practical business side of things. he was forcing a renegotiation by threatening a walkout because he wasn't making as much as Paul Kogan. That's what he was doing. You can spin it any way you want and talk about your sore knee and not getting time off and not being treated well.

You can do that. You hear a lot about that, don't we? Even to this day. You can spout off publicly. Sometimes Ray Phoenix, you're forced to pull your shirt. it down because you're exposing yourself legally, which means you're losing leverage, not a good thing. But that stuff went on back then, too.

Some guys did it more, some, some guys were way more comfortable negotiating in public than they were negotiating in an office. It's easier for him. Rick Flare did the same thing, but Rick Flair had his issues and sued me and all, all that horrible stuff that was going on. It wasn't Rick Flair to say it directly, but his attorney. He's had no problem getting people on their side, front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and telling Rick's side of the story.

It works. Bill strategy did work because it worked on Harvey Schiller. Harvey Schiller was the one and others at his level made that decision. And that press that Bill did is uncomfortable as it was for me, arguably. it worked before he actually signs the deal he does make an appearance for you guys at the toy fair in new york and allegedly he's heard overtailing people well it's inevitable i'm going to wrestle steve austin in three years like he was at least espousing in front of licensees and brand partners oh i'm going to the w f in three years this is all a negotiation tactic is it not

yeah and it's shitty in my yeah I don't think we're going to disagree there but I just want to remind everybody no matter what you think of Eric Bischoff and Lord I know my man has earned some critics over the years by the way he doesn't give one fuck he's completely out of him uh but the thing that you're the idea that you're ATM Eric but here you are

pushing back on this arbitrary raise for for Bill Goldberg uh just just flies in the face of that, but I know that other people would point to silly things like when you gave masterpiece bodyguard, swole, a $350,000 a year contract and a $50,000 signing bonus. I know people are critical of that who are quote unquote in the wrestling bubble, but it's hard to contextualize, even now, unless you were there at the time, just how big in the space, no limit records was, and how many number one out.

albums they had and what their penetration and influence was in that market. And if you thought you could rub the WCW brand up against that brand for roughly $30,000 a month, I know that sounds like a lot if it's your, your household income. But for a company that's got a top line gross of millions and millions and millions of dollars, not that crazy. But when people sort of point to Swole as an example of ATM Eric, how do you respond to that? it's a little bit like the kiss deal by the way i found that deal too so if we're if anybody's looking for that i found him why i kept that shit we got to get it up on and free shows

com let's go i mean that the merchandise side of it and percentages and everything it's right there we got to see that um the opportunity to grow your audience to attract an audience that's not already watching your show in this case the hip-hop audience because there was nobody bigger at that time than Master Pete. Well, there may have been here, but he was as big as some of the top performers, artists in a hip-hop community. And he wasn't just an artist. He had a tremendous amount of influence.

So did we want a larger component of our audience to be made up of that hip-hop culture and market. Hell yeah. Still do today, don't we? People are still marketing hard towards that portion of the audience. The rep is represented by the hip-hop culture. It's big money. Yeah. So yeah, it would look odd to somebody that has never been in a situation like that where you go, wow, hey, if I make this investment, there's a chance, not a guarantee, by the way, there's a chance that I could grow and gain some momentum within a segment of the market that I don't already have. Is that a good investment?

Is that a good risk? Every investment is a risk. Is that a good risk? If it is, we take it. If it's not, you don't. And we took it. And I think I would take it again today in a similar situation. Do you think you sort of looked at the Swoldy,

like he was a part of the package deal for Master P, much like Lanyi Papa was. There was no question. Yeah. There was no question. There's payroll records out there because I know that everybody gets excited about the 350, but we've seen payroll records out there that say that Swole actually only got paid $30,890 and he's cut within a few months.

So this narrative that it was 350, maybe that's been debunked by payroll records, but the guy who played Swole. he told Guy Evans in the Nitro book that his lawyers got involved and he wound up being paid out the balance of his contract and I've heard from people who used to be in the newsletter business that if you sued WCW for a certain amount of money as long as it didn't meet that threshold they just paid out it wasn't worth it do you think that Swole got paid through the attorneys like that or is this just a wrestler tall tale I don't know I wouldn't have been involved in the discussion of a buyout like that that would have

gone to turn illegal I might have been told about it after it was all over but maybe not even given any detail so it doesn't sound familiar to me not saying it didn't happen I'm just telling you I don't remember it mostly because I wouldn't have been involved in it here's one that I want to ask you about and we've never really talked about this but Kevin Walkholes, who we knew in the WWF as Nails, or if you were an old school AWA fan, you knew as Mr. Magnificent Kevin Kelly, he was paid almost a quarter million dollars across 1998 and the first half of 1999 for having exactly one match before he wound up being

released. I can only hope that one day people do this same level of dollars per match research on the current product in 2024, because that would be very interesting. things to see. Trust me, Conrad, people already are. What really happened with Kevin Wackles, the former Mr.

Magnificent Kevin Kelly, how did he wind up being under contract with WCW for a quarter million across 98 and 99 and only wrestle one time? Was he injured or was there something else? I'm only hesitating because I honestly can't remember.

I mean, I would have approved him coming in at that time and certainly aware of him, because I, you know, was familiar with him from, from AWA before I even got into the business. And familiar with his role in W, W.W.E. There might have been a plan for him. And, hey, there's a possibility I wanted to do some kind of a silly, you know, spoof on his situation with Vince, because I was doing silly shit like that back that.

It was kind of like giving away finishes. It got people talking and got people watching. Maybe I could see me, you know, saying, okay, let's bring them in, pay them 250 year. We're going to shoot this angle with them and maybe decided against it. What year was this, do you know? 1999. Yeah, I don't know what that would have been, man.

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what time is it game time Eric the uh the biggest piece of all of the ATM Eric stuff is about Hulk Hogan's contract. And we're not talking about the 1994 contract. We're talking about the much more lucrative 1998 contract. It was actually made public during the racial discrimination lawsuits that happened back in 2000. So the data we have is for 99. He would have signed this deal in May of 98. We don't cover all of 2000 in the data. The document shows it was roughly generated in mid 2000. And for 1999, it shows that Hogan made 3.7 million in payroll, 833,000 in licensing royalties, and 20,000 in direct merchandise sale royalties for a total of 4.6 million. But in the contract, he made a minimum guarantee of 4.05 million in pay-per-view payoffs,

and that's more than it's listed at his payroll. So it almost implies that payroll is separate. it may be represents his nitro and thunder payoffs which were $25,000 per show or 25% of the gross after-tax arena ticket revenues whichever was greater between those figures and $240,000 a year as a guarantee for wearing NWO merch in public it looks like he was making about $8.9 million a year in 1999 that's what we been able to put together with the old records, does that sound crazy or out of whack to you that in 1999, Hogan might have made nearly nine million dollars?

I'm not sure. I would have to see the contract. I mean, I know what you, I know, I understand exactly what you're saying, but we're assuming some facts here, I think. We are. We are. And I don't think that those facts are really accurate. And if they're not, it changes everything at a little bit.

Let me help you out why you think about this, by the way. I just want to help you out because the Atlanta Business Journal does a story about WCW in 1999. And in that story, it said that you expected revenues to hit the $500 million mark. So if that's true and Hogan or the company generated, $500 million and Hogan made $8.9 million. That would just be 1.8% of company revenue. Now, by comparison, sort of peak WWF, which would have been 1989 for Hulk Hogan, he was paid 5% of the after-tax gate on house shows, which worked out to about 4.6% of the pre-tax gate. It all goes back to Bruno's deal way back when. I'm saying all that to say, the only

payoff that we have ever been disclosed for Hulk Hogan pay-per-views in the WWF is from the Ultimate Warrior lawsuit talking about SummerSlam 91 and Hulk got $90,000 for that show. The pay-per-view, SummerSlam 91, sold 405,000 buys at a price of $27.95 and with the WWF getting roughly 40% of that, the pay-per-view revenue was likely a little over $4.5 million. That means Hogan's payoff was about two percent. So I'm saying all that to say for the people who jump up and down and say, oh, Eric, way overpaid Hulk Hogan, if you take the 1989 numbers that we know based on the split and then you apply it to the 1991 payoffs, you actually paid him less percentage wise than

Vince McMahon. Where are you when I needed you? I'm just saying, like, if you're just, if we're really trying to have context and compare apples to apples. I know people get upset that Hulk Hogan makes so much doggone money. Don't be upset that he's been able to negotiate a good deal for himself, not just with Eric, but he set the precedent with Vince. Do you think that he showed up to WCW and knew what to ask for as far as percentage of gates? No, that precedent had been set before, and he wanted to see if he could get in the same range, and he did. I just find it interesting that this narrative is out there like Hulk, man, he really took you to the cleaners, but percentage wise, did he really?

I don't think so. No, and that's kind of what I was, and obviously, I don't have these numbers in front of me. I'm just working off memory. And the challenge that I'm facing, again, I'm not saying that the $8 million is wrong. It's just that there were some complexities regarding guarantees. So, for example, do the numbers that you have, have do they reflect numbers that were actually paid or do they reflect the face value of the contracts because if it's actually paid there there's no question about it right which is it

well no that that's what we ran through those are the details from his contract and then we actually gave you the the total payroll so the payroll number would show 3.756-228 in payroll 832, 988 in licensing royalties, 20,846, and direct merch. So the total for payroll is lit all of those line items is $4,610,062. See, that's. But hang on, here's where I'm getting to. There's 4.05 million guaranteed in pay-per-view payoffs. Now, I know we're splitting hairs here, but I'm wondering, do you think that is on a

Turner Home Entertainment contract because the pay-per-view was a separate discussion? And I don't think so. Okay. I don't think so. My only question is, is that number being duplicated in a way or accounted for twice? And that goes to the language in the contract. Well, what I'm saying, the language in the contract set a minimum guarantee of 4.05 million in pay-per-view payoffs, but his total payroll is only 3.7.

So then there would have had to, if it, we would have had to meet him. his minimum guarantee. Yes, but I'm wondering, do you think it was in addition to because we've heard that the paper views were often through Turner Home Entertainment, which would have been that, that is not true. Okay. I mean, yes, the paper views were offered through Tour Home Entertainment, but we didn't account for Hogan's, any of Hogan's compensation through Turner Home Entertainment.

We didn't allocate any of his, his compensation to any other division of the company. And that's what that would be. That would be an example of an intercompany allocation where WCW were benefit. We were often in the intercompany allocation transactions, but we were on the receiving act out of the beneficial end. Let me explain this. If the number is true that it was payroll plus pay-per-view and it really was around 8.9, $1999 in at $8.9 million represents nearly $17 million in 2020.

So in today's dollars, it would be 16.8 million, which again, sounds like a crazy number, but I want to remind you, if Hogan was being paid 2% in the WWF and he's getting paid 1.8% here in WCW, Eric still got off cheaper, even at what would have been today 16.8 million. But if what you're saying is true and pay-per-view was not set aside, then you got Hogan for roughly half of what Vince did, which is just crazy. this whole ATM Eric thing either way does not hold water to me no and I'm I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to get to the bottom of the Hogan thing because it's very confusing to me we did because we didn't not for Hogan not for Bill Goldberg not for anybody else we didn't have different sets of books as fucked up as whatever anybody wants to say about WCW's accounting it was one set of books for WCW and we didn't take Hulk's contract and and enter into one contract for WCW and one contract for return home entertainment. He did have a minimum guarantee and I would have to understand the relationships of those two categories that you explained. It's not clear to me right

now. It could have been a four million dollar figure. If that's what his minimum guarantee was in 1999, we weren't making a boatload of money over minimum guarantee. I mean, I can't see that there would have been any more than that. But again, without seeing the contract, it's really hard to gas, especially 20-some-odd years later. Well, I got to think that there is a separate set of books somewhere. Maybe it's a different, and I hear what you're saying, but when we, when we were able to see the data from these racial discrimination lawsuits, they have no income in there for the ultimate warrior.

And we know the ultimate warrior didn't just show up because he really wanted to wrestle Hulk coach. So he got paid somewhere, and so maybe the hypothesis that's out there. there is, perhaps he was paid through Turner Home Entertainment and not just the regular This is this is like this is a wrestling version of a conspiracy theory. Okay. Or perhaps the answer is you don't have all the fucking records and they're not accurate. This is like a journal constitution.

This isn't like an audit. These are not audited numbers. This is an audit information. So we may be having this discussion based on incomplete or. inaccurate information or partial information. Yeah, I mean, listen, there's a chance that Turner didn't actually submit all the records for the lawsuit. Or they did or they did it and didn't get copied properly for the purposes

of the Illinois internal constitution. No, the AJC, that was a story. That's a totally different. You're conflating two things. We had the lawsuit for the racial discrimination stuff. That disclosed all the income. But I'm saying the way I started doing percentages is, based on an interview in the AJC

that said WCW's top line was going to be 500 million. So if we went with that number, that's how I just derived the 1.8% relative to events too. That's all. The whole ATM thing though, you know, we would hear things like, you know,

the amount of money that Rick Flair was being paid relative to the amount of money that Stevie Ray was being paid or things like that. Even in you know, the year 2000 after you're not in charge anymore, Rick Flair's deal is renegotiated to $500,000 a year plus $4,000 per TV shoot and $12,000 per pay-per-view.

But before that, he was making around $750,000 a year. Even with this new structure, it's not like it's that big of a cut. So you're acquiescing to certain demands, but when you really tally it up and actually put pen to paper, it's hard to really buy. into this narrative that ATM Eric was a real thing. I would encourage everyone to check out the link into the description for today's show. It's got all the information so you can see all these tables and see exactly who was making what and where.

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