83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 354: The Last WCW Starrcade

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

On this REMIX edition of 83 Weeks, WATCH as Eric and Conrad revisit Starrcade 2000, which took place on December 17, 2000 at the MCI Center in Washington DC. This was the 18th and final edition of Starrcade for WCW before the sale to WWF. In it, we'd see Scott Steiner vs. Sid in the main event for the WCW Championship. Plus, Goldberg vs. Lex Luger in a No Holds Barred Match, Terry Funk vs. Crowbar, Mike Awesome vs. Bam Bam Bigelow, and more! 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. VIIA - Try VIIA Hemp! https://bit.ly/viia83 and use code 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 ROCKET MONEY -Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/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. 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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Save up to $800 a month. You don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket. And did I mention no payments until March? So don't make saving money a resolution next year. Make it happen today at savewithconrad.com. on lesson number 212, non-equal housing lender. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man?

How are you? I am. I'm doing well. I'm on a bit of a role. I'm excited to be here. I've been doing so many of these shows with. you as we're stacking them up trying to get ahead for the holidays so I'm going to be traveling and you know oftentimes when you travel you think oh well we'll stop a hotel room and they'll have

Wi-Fi and we'll be able to do our podcast from there and you you get all plugged in you get excited everybody you stand everybody's ready to go and then you found out that you have a Wi-Fi signal that's not as good as the one you could have gotten a Taco Bell earlier in the day and you're screwed so we decided to avoid that situation we're just going to stack the hell out of these so i'm i've lost track of time i don't know whether i'm in 96 95 91 99 2000 i don't know where i am but it's like a magical mystery tour of wrestling and i'm grateful to be here wherever we are can i just tell you for a minute how fun the visual is to think about you at a fucking taco bell screaming it was fucking

daytime yeah really can you imagine the people because i lose myself in the commentary. You know, when you and I get into this, I get so zoned into what we're talking about and go off into, you know, another world in a way. But can you imagine all the people sitting around there trying to stuff their face with a chalupa? Looking over at me going, you know, that shit fucking crazy over some Dave Meltzer comment. Oh, I would probably get escorted out. Well, I'm excited that we're here to talk about Star Tate 2000 today. This is the The final Starcade, boy, that's sad to say. Yeah, I know the WWB brought it back and made it a house show in 2017, I think it was.

But this is the end of an era man. And it's kind of sad to talk about the end of WCW. And so many of us never wanted it to end or could it could even imagine it ending. But Starcades coming to a close here, December 17th, it's right before, you know, the major collapse overall championship wrestling in March. We're going down to the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., and boy, it's a lot different than it was a few years ago. I'll never forget, StarK-97, that's one of our more famous episodes, but one of the most

important WCW shows in history in this same building. This time, though, there's only 6,596 fans there, and about half of those got in for free. only 3,465 tickets sold for this Starcade, which is just depressing, $157,000 at the gate. It's pretty remarkable to see where we were in 97 compared to here for 17,500 fans at that show. Yeah, I mean, 97 was a watershed moment, obviously, in massive numbers. I don't know what the numbers were for Starcade 98. huge 99 I'm not sure about

but you know we'd have to go back and look but by 2000 the wheels were off they were not only wobbling they were off they kind of went off into the ditch on this side of the road off on this side of the road into the ditch and the frame of what was WCW was literally bouncing

down the highway and slowing down at a rapid pace ready to be picked up by the rest of wrestling wrecker and hauled off to the junkyard of wrestling promotions. Sad but true. It's pretty remarkable to take a look, just sort of side by side, 97 to 2000. There's $543,000 at the gate then, as I said, 157,000 here. That show in 97 also drew 640,000 buys on pay-per-view.

You want to guess what StarCade 2000 did here? Eric. If 97 to 600, I'll give this one 115. 50,000. Whoa, that's TNA. Well, that's a little better than TNA, but yeah, 50,000, 647,000 buys down to 50,000 buys. Yep, down to 50,000 buys. Wow.

Wow. It's no wonder that executives. sitting around a boardroom who maybe have a casual interest in wrestling but probably not and they see these numbers and they're like we just got to flush this thing right you know it's certainly understandable isn't it if you're and you know i've been i don't think i've been critical of people like jamie kellner or brad segal or you know anybody in in tbs at the time who really made the decision to just pull the plug on the whole thing, not even entertain a $67, $61, I think it was $67 million offer from Fusion Media to purchase WCW.

And a part of that purchase deal was a guarantee of distribution on the TBS and TNT network, meaning the show WCW would continue to air on TBS and TNT as a licensed property, much like any other show. That was a part of the $67 million acquisition deal. When Jamie Kellner came in and pulled a plug on that, what he essentially pulled a plug on is like, you want to buy the company for $67 million. We'll certainly sell it to you for $67 million.

No problem. However, we just don't want to air wrestling on our network. And as much as that, you know, affected me personally and professionally, financially, certainly, and a lot of other people, with numbers like this and in a downward spiral, not just a downward trend, we are in a fucking death spiral at this point. When I say we, I mean, WCW, I wasn't there at the point at that point, but it was in a death spiral. And it's really hard to argue with that decision, you know.

Now, if you were deeply entrenched in the wrestling business and you understood the why of at all. And if you understood why WCW was in a position as in and therefore could analyze a plan or a plan that would, you know, right a lot of those wrongs, you might make a different decision. But if you had no interest in professional wrestling, period, which was certainly the case of Jamie Kellner and the people underneath Jamie, who saw that beachfront property on TNT and TBS, because that's really what it was from a television perspective. perspective prime time on cable TNT especially because it was kind of like the patina network that's where all the original movies the dramas the comedies all went to TNT or not the comedy so much comedies went to TBS but TNT was the drama network and that's where the budgets were were in dramas big stars big writers big directors big movies of the week that type of thing and series and they're looking over here at wrestling which from their perspective because they weren't wrestling fans his things just died lying. It's been on life support now for quite a while. And there's no hope of the patient

recovering. So let's do the right thing and just pull the plug. And that's what they did. And it really is hard to argue, given the death spiral, as I said a moment ago, that WCW is in. I'm fortunate as it may be, can't really blame Jamie Kilmer. Just hard to imagine that it's really going to end. But to your point, I think if you and I were given, you know, the same opportunity to make decisions for a major corporation that had all these different branches, and let's say one of those branches was, I don't know, a restaurant division. And we look year over year, and the thing is hemorrhaging cash, and it's not even like we can cut spending.

There's no top line growths. It's just not there. Eventually, we just have to wash our hands of it and stop throwing good money after bad. And that's the decision they made. Absolutely. And again, it wasn't that WCW was going to be. spending money had they sold to Fusion Media. WCW, Turner Broadcasting, Turner Broadcasting would not have spent any money.

They would have been on the receiving end of money. So it wasn't that WCW, in your analogy, didn't want to keep funding a losing proposition or trying to find ways to cut expenses or increase revenues. That wasn't the deal. Turner Broadcasting would have been out of any decision-making process and would have only been on the receiving end of whatever. you know, cash was on the table in order to make the acquisition. It was just, you know, from Turner's, not to be redundant, but to be clear,

Turner's position was, we have beachfront property. Why would we want to put a mobile home on a beachfront, on a piece of beachfront property that could be, you know, a six-bedroom, you know, palatial estate? Why would we use that property in an inefficient, ineffective way when we could use it more effectively? And that was the analysis, I think, by Kilner, is the property, the primetime spot was worth way more than whatever the deal was that was on the table for Turner Broadcasting. And he put a valuation on it. And the valuation didn't make any sense.

And that's understandable. let's uh let's talk about the show itself the tagline here is unedited unpredictable unreal which is nothing at all i guess like uncut uncooked and uncensored monday night ross's first slogan the logo for starcade was also changed this year the two rs faced each other over a small star plus we have the new wcw logo looking back it's just sort of a minor thing but we get lots of questions about it what did you think of the new starcade logo and version two of the WCW logo? You know, I wasn't a fan of either.

It's a matter of taste and opinion, so I don't think there's any right or wrong. And probably it's because there was no legacy. There was no, it didn't represent anything. It was just new and different for the sake of being new and different, and it didn't do a thing for me. I think we're almost all in agreement there. Let's talk about the news and notes heading in here.

course, WCW is now, uh, up for sale. The speech front property, uh, is being reallocated. Brad Siegel addresses the department head, department had the WCW on December 8th for a meeting that a lot of people expected to either be the announcement of a sale or the announcement that someone knew was being put in charge of the company, but none of that happened. And Messerwood Wright is believed that Terry Taylor, Johnny Ace, Craig Leathers, and Tony Chivani were all pitched to be in charge of the company. There was done deal with Eric Bischoff's group for press time, but for whatever it's worth, the feeling seems more positive that it will eventually happen.

Talk to me about, you know, where you were in your planning stages here of trying to pull the nose up on this thing. It wasn't the discussions that I was in with Brian Bedal, and by the way, I'm still in touch with Brian Bedal, maybe we should try to tee him up. up for an ad free shows conversations with conrad something that would be an interesting conversation for sure um but you know it wasn't about the discussions we were having at that time the best that i can recall is not not so much about how do we pull the nose up on it it was on wcd as a on a week to week basis it wasn't as much creative this is what i'm really

trying to say i haven't had enough caffeine yet i'm working on it so bear with with me. The conversations we're having weren't as much about creative as they were about strategy. We've touched on this before. You know, how do we find a home base? How do we find somewhere where we can attract a crowd, have the high production values, make it feel like a big show from a national perspective, but yet find ways to reduce cost with regard to traveling the show from arena to arena. Obviously, ticket sales by virtue of what you just touched on as we opened up. Ticket sales didn't justify traveling the show. So we had to kind of go back to what I, a strategy that I embraced probably about 94, 93, 94 when I went to

Disney, which is, look, we're not drawing. We're not hot. Let's use our resources as efficiently as we can. And part of that was finding a home base. So we were in negotiating. early-phase negotiations. It didn't get heavy and deep, but we were in initial conversations that were meaningful, but we hadn't started dotting eyes and crossing T's at this point

with the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. They were seriously considering building us a big arena on top of one of their existing parking decks that was adjacent to the Hard Rock that would have held about 5,000 to 7,000 people. Obviously, we would have been the resident attraction there.

Our cameras would have stayed there, or our staging would have been there on location. We would have to have to roll it out and set it up, but it would have been stored there so that when we came into town once every two weeks to do TV, and that was the plan, I believe, at the time, that all of our stuff was there,

which would have saved a lot of money in the long run. And while we weren't in that arena, a hard rock would use it for smaller concerts. Not your, you know, not Fleetwood Mac necessarily, but, you know, your smaller, you know, acoustic type of events and smaller concerts with smaller acts. So that plan, you know, was one that we were developing. Another thing that we were talking about and really beginning to analyze was the talent. You know, who do we want to keep? Who can we afford to let go?

You know, what's the status of their existing agreements? Will they want to resign? Because we weren't necessarily buying all of the contracts. We weren't assuming all of the debt. So there would have been some, you know, people who were under contract that may or may not, you know, would have had a job despite their contract with Turner Broadcasting. And there were some talents that had a contract with Turner Broadcasting that may or may not want to move forward with Fusion Media and the new group because they may have, you know, wanted to explore opportunities in WW. So there was a lot of that kind of analysis and strategy discussions, a strategic decision. discussions as opposed to creative levels.

What were you, you know, obviously there are things you want to be wary of. You know, anytime you're going to dump a bunch of cash into this and really make a go at something, you're going to lay out the pros and cons and you're also going to identify the risks. What sort of major hazards did you have an eye out for? Like, what were your initial concerns? I mean, obviously, you know what the opportunity and the upside is everybody listening to this was aware of it.

that at the time but hey here's what this thing was so it could be that again you remember one or two things maybe that you were potentially nervous about that you thought could be a risk that would sink the whole attempt are you referring to at the attempt to make the deal happen or an attempt to resurrect the brand yeah once you got your hands on it this can go one or two ways you know, it can go up or it can go down. And we need to be careful not to blank. I guess what I'm asking is, were there lessons learned when you were working there,

but not owning the thing that you as now an owner were going to be mindful of. Great question. Several things. To me, the biggest risk was the Achilles heel was television. If you didn't have to, you know, a wrestling company without television, is going to have a real hard time surviving more than a month or two.

Look at TNA, you know, when the original plan was, well, we don't need television. We're just going to do a pay-per-view every week. I know that sounded good on paper to somebody, and I know there was a reason to want to believe that that would work. But the very idea was fundamentally flawed at its core because you need television to drive that audience and give them, television is your storytelling opportunity and you funnel a certain percentage of that audience who is very passionate about their product in that story, you're able to move them or corral them into purchasing a pay-per-view. For me, because television was a part of the contract, well, I say me, all of us, Brian Bedal,

Steve Greenberg, the rest of the people that were involved in, in Fusion Media. The biggest risk was whether or not we had television. If Turner would have, for example, when we entered into this agreement and this letter of attempt, which we obviously did at one point, executed that letter of attempt. And we announced the acquisition, you know, on a Wall Street conference call to all major investors and venture capitalists and things like that. So we went very far down the line, assuming that this deal was going to close based on the letter of intent. The biggest risk was television.

And we were able to mitigate that risk vis-a-vis the cost. contract that Kellner eventually tore up and walked away from, or the letter of intent that was the foundation or the basis for the contract. So it wasn't so much what a risk analysis as it was, look, here's what went wrong. And part of that went wrong under my watch, admittedly. And myself and Brian and Steve Greenberg, we talked a lot about that, you know, what were some of the things that we did or didn't do in 95 and 97? and 97, that we could have done and should have done that would have changed the outcome.

And let's make sure we don't repeat any of those mistakes. And that would have been the analysis, I think, for the talent budget, certainly. But there were other parts of the business that we talked about as well. But to the core of your question, it wasn't like, well, boy, if we do this, there's one big risk we got to worry about. It was a combination of much smaller things that weren't really risks as much as they were just internal challenges. And to me, and to no surprise,

anybody listening or watching here on ad-freeshows.com, it was about the writing and the creative. Yeah. You know, so much of what I learned, I learned on the job starting at 94, 95. And really 95 is when my journey into creative started. And certainly by 96 and 97, I was knee-deep in it. And that was all, I was learning on the job.

I was trying different things. I was trying to filter some of the best ideas that I thought I was listening to. And as I grew in that role, your perspective of creative changes very quickly, you know, because you're immersed in it. You're dealing with different ideas and six or eight different people, you know, pop in ideas to, you know, booking media, you know, throughout the day. And you have to learn to analyze them and begin to understand from my own, perspective what worked and what didn't work. So by 2000, I had a much different perspective of creative than I did in 98 because I had the advantage number one of more experience under my belt and 2020 hindsight. And hopefully I would like to think that I'm an intelligent enough person

to learn from my mistakes. I think I am and I think I was back in 2000. So it was really about focusing on creative and to that end you know we were you know Brian Bedell and I am more myself than Brian because Brian was more on the financial operational side of the equation I was on the creative side of the equation but but Brian was adamant about bringing in quality successful writers

right not not not not to write wrestling stories but to take wrestling stories And this is free advice, folks. This is free advice. If somebody ever figures out how to do this effectively, you know, things can change quickly in the rest of business. But if you take people who have great experience in creative with the wrestling product, what that really means is you know the audience.

You know what's going to stimulate the audience. You know what the audience really wants because you've tried it. a bunch of different ways. But if you can find the combination of great wrestling, creative people with a lot of expense, some of them former wrestlers, some of them maybe not. Take a guy like Keith Mitchell would be great on a creative team. Not that because he was ever a wrestler, but he's had decades of experience watching what's worked and watching what hasn't worked.

But if you could amass a team of people like that, When I say a mask, find three or four. You don't need 20. And then you can find traditional, what people that really understand how to tell a story. They understand the architecture. There is an architecture. There's a formula to everything. If you're a stand-up comedian, chances are you have a formula for writing your material.

You find Jerry Seinfeld has a formula that works for Jerry Seinfeld. other comedians have the formula. It's something that allows them to kind of, once their set is done, and they've been out on the road and they've been using that set, now that set's kind of tired and they need new material. Where does that, where do those ideas come from? Well, there's a formula for them. Just like there's a formula for wrestling or a formula for writing a great movie

or a great television show. But if you don't understand that formula and you don't understand the architecture that that formula provides, all you're doing is slap, stories up against the wall and hoping they work. That's really what wrestling has been doing for 30 years. Well, that's 20 for sure. And it's okay. It can work.

And it has worked. It has worked really, really well. But the way you increase the odds of it working and you're able to more consistently, not 100%, because creative is creative. It's a fluid thing. The audience is fluid. you're never going to hit, you know, 100%. But if there's a formula you know that works,

and then you've got some really good wrestling people that are maybe coming with the big ideas or the interesting ideas, it doesn't even have to be big. And then you can have a couple people that say, okay, here's how we take that idea and play it out over a four-week arc or an eight-week arc or a three-month arc, whatever it is your goal is. That to me was the solution for WCW.

I still think today it's the solution. I think there's been several attempts at doing it. I know there was in WWE because I was there and watched it. But they've never really, the wrestling side of things always seem to overwhelm the writing side of things. In other words, the architecture of the formula always suffers at the hands of, no, no, no, no, this is what we're going to do instead. And then the whole house of cards collapses and it doesn't work. And everybody says, see, having Hollywood writers. doesn't really work.

I beg to differ, whether they're from Hollywood or whether they're from Peoria, Illinois, it doesn't really make a bit of difference. But what does make a bit of difference is understanding the audience and understanding how to tell a story. It's the single thing that in 2000, when we were looking under the hood and trying to figure out how we take this broke down, wheels fell off, you know, frame and shell of what WCW formerly was how do we get it back on the racetrack and win a race or at least be competitive? And I think everybody agreed it was creative and the approach to it. And I think that that challenge still exists today.

I know a couple weeks ago, I made a comment and it certainly read more critical that I wanted to when I said it. But I referenced the fact that neither WWE or AEW are really doing anything any different than has been done 20 years ago. Right. They're doing it with different people, with different outfits, and the production values have,

in the case of WWE, they've mitigated a problem, i.e. COVID, with some pretty creative solutions, which is really cool. But nothing has written, other than that, which was a necessity to stop the bleeding

more than anything else, it certainly didn't advance the product, either AEW or WWE, are coming up with anything really new, at least not new enough, or really big, or at least not big enough, to kind of have the same impact that Nitro did in 1995 and 96 and 97, because we essentially changed the way the product was being presented. We changed the audience that we were marketing to, you know, back in 95 and 96, when I sat in a room, you know, by myself in August of 95, when Ted Turner, you know,

basically sent me the marching orders and said, go do prime time, sitting alone trying to figure it, okay, well, I can't be better than WWE at what they do. So how do I do? Well, I'm different. Okay. How can I be different? That strategy of being different worked. The strategy of going after males 18 to 49, this is back in 95 before anybody writing a dirt sheet knew anything about a demo. But when we went to our, said to ourselves, look, we can't be better at targeting kids than the WWF. So let's not even try. And I think in your interview with Jim heard, that was the fatal flaw that Jim made when he had the opportunity because he tried to compete for an audience that he just couldn't compete for. You didn't have the tools.

But we went for 18 to 49 year old males. Well, guess what? The world changed. Two years later, guess who was going after 18 to 49 year old males? because the world changed. The WWF followed our footsteps. And the entire industry grew. We grew, and it started with Nitro, started with yours truly.

When Nitro launched, Nitro immediately started growing the audience. We weren't just taking away from WWE. We were adding to the overall audience. The industry all began to grow, not just WV. WCW, not just WWF, both companies began to grow. The Monday Night Wars grew the audience to a point where on any given night, there were 10 million people watching wrestling because we grew the industry as a result of making significant changes in the way the product was presented,

the audience that we were trying to attract, and the reality that came along with all of it. And just the inherent competition between Coke and Pepsi, WCWWF, WWM, whatever you want to be, Ford Chevy. People, you know, our culture likes competition, which had a lot to do with the overall growth into the audience. None of that exists today. And that thought process that I just laid out about growing the audience

was core to all of the discussions between myself and Brian Badaal and Steve Greenberg at that point was how do we make it better? And I believe then, as I believe now, after this long-winded, around the weeds. It was all about improving the quality of storytelling. Right. We're going to get back to our rest of episode here in just a moment. But before we do, I want to talk about what are great sponsors here. Thank them so much for supporting 83 weeks. We're talking about game time. And if you've been following this for any length of time at all, you've heard us talk about game time. But just recently, I had the opportunity to really take

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simplicity and ease. Head to 4imprint.com to find out more. For imprint, for certain. I love you. Let's talk about that day. Was that good? Or am I, have I numbed your brain? No, it was good. The only way that whole story

could have ended any better would have been, and I love when you say, oh, after that long winding walk through the weeds, and I said all that to say this. It was just one word that would have been so funny. Let's talk about David Copperfield making nitro disappear. There's a ton of internal heat over the December 11th Nitro, not airing until the next day because of this David Copperfield special that was on TNT.

WCW never mentioned the time slot change on either Nitro or Thunder, and virtually nobody in the company was even aware of the switch until the 7th. That's four days before. As the story goes, Craig Leathers sent a memo to Terry Taylor on November 6th to inform him of the one-week time change. But Taylor never told anybody. If Leathers knew and he's in charge of production, you'd think they'd have done some inserts for the show telling the audience about the time slot change. It's really sad when you compare one company where they have pride in their product they present in the rival company where people literally do as little as possible with no concern for how the end product looks. and those who do have enthusiasm to present the best product

get shit on so badly and see the people who are the most manipulative and least caring rewarded the most. It's beaten out of them and they feel like marks for caring and ultimately after a few months with the company, join the crowd and stop caring as well. Ultimately, apparently, TNT had gone back and forth for some time before making the decision. WCW had gone back and forth about booking the show

for either Monday or Tuesday, finally settling on Monday when the word was put out, let the show would air. Then after the building was booked and pub was put out, it was moved to Tuesday. That doesn't excuse why no announcement was made on television last week to alert viewers to the change. This is a fucking disaster, Eric.

This is, you know, the wrestling equivalent of who's on first. Is this on Craig Leathers? Is this on Terry Taylor? Both? What a story. You know, I don't even know. I had a hard time tracking that.

It was so all over the place. There's a lot of information in there for me to track. And clearly, I wasn't in WCW, so I'm not sure, you know, who should have been on first and who should have been on second, whether they were or not. You know, one thing I'm curious, it's two things. I'd like to, you know, kind of break this down just a little bit and have fun with this. You know, after reading it, Conrad, you probably could understand it better reading it that I could understand listening to it because there was a lot of information there pretty quickly.

Who, at the end of that commentary, who benefited the most? Or did anybody benefit? That's a better way of saying it. David Copperfield benefited. He got a great plot on T&T. No, I know that. I know that. But with regard to the narrative there,

did that, did, is Terry Taylor positioned in this narrative as, you know, the guy who really cared and he's being shit on and, you know, he's trying really hard and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. or or is it Craig Leathers that's that's being positioned it came off kind of negative to me about Craig Leathers in other words I think Craig kind of took a hit in that narrative so so by default Terry come on okay on this you think not to me he knew about it way ahead of time but I understand where you're going and I guess I know but and let me just say one thing but that wouldn't have been Terry Taylor's job

you know, Bill Bush was running the company at that point, or was Bill Bush still even there? This is 2000. Bill Bush may have left, right? I don't know. Bill Bush, when did I come? I came back to WCW. They let me go on September 99,

so I would have come back around April of 2000, right? Yeah. And that lasted for a month or two, and then I was gone by July, and that's when the. acquisition deal started. Okay, so Bill Bush wasn't in the company. I don't know who is running the show. Whoever was running the show should have called that shot. It's the other thing in your, in the stuff that you read me was, you know, the timing of the information, how could

W, and I'm not defending anybody here, okay, but I'm just trying to present, you know, a what-if scenario that kind of makes sense because everything that you just read me doesn't. But if WCW of Nitro didn't know the week before, how could they have promoted a change? In other words, if the debate was still internal within TNT, how could

Craig Leathers or Terry Taylor or anybody else come out with an announcement? Well, they knew about it on November 6th. The show happens on November or December 11. So they have five weeks to make the announcement and promote it on TV and they did none of that.

So it was just a surprise. You go to tune in and watch Monday night show and it's a goddamn magician you know that's then there's absolutely no way to I would put it on Brad Siegel it's his freaking network it's his real estate and while he wouldn't have been responsible for making sure things were inserted in the show it would have been Brad Siegel's response especially now I'm convinced it was neither Terry Taylor's fault nor Craig Leather's fault now you may be able to say you know either Terry or Craig should have gone to Brad. Yeah. You know, and, and, and yeah, that's arguable, you know, that's defensible,

that position. But at the end of it all, that's Brad Siegel's real estate. And if Brad Siegel or people associated with Brad said, hey, we're going to put David Copperfield in a nitro time slot, Brad Siegel and the people who run that network, not the people who produce the show for the network, the people who run that network should have taken on the responsibility of informing their network's audience. That's not the responsibility of the producer. The producer is responsible for reacting to it. Once Brad Siegel says, here's what I want to do. Oh, and by the way, since we're shifting your time slot, we know you're going to take a hit because anytime you move a time slot, you're going to suffer to some degree. It's never a net gain. It's never a net gain.

gain, it's never even, when I say never, almost never, a net gain. It's almost never a neutral proposition. It's almost always a situation where you're going to lose audience because people forget or they're busy or their schedules don't allow it or whatever they're, or there's something better on, you know, so it would have been the responsibility of Brad Siegel, first and foremost, and anybody who worked with him to make sure that not only was the announcement made in all of TNT programming. And it's adjacent to programming the week before.

If you're running, you know, night show the week before, there should be promotion from the network, not from WCW, from the network announcing the time change and reminding, because it's their audience. It's not WCW's audience. It's the network's audience. WCW benefited from it, AEW benefits from the audience, WV benefits from the audience.

Because it can drive them to pay-per-view. It can drive them to arenas. They can engage in sponsorship sales. There's all kinds of reasons why the audience, or excuse me, the producer, benefits from it. But that audience belongs to the network. So it would have been, Jesus, I just, why can't I just answer a simple freaking question? I ask myself that every week. What, why, what is it about me?

What, what flaw, what weakness in my, game, forces me to go such a long way around the block to answer a simple question. I'll give you the answer. The answer is I'm passionate about this shit. The answer is it's fun to talk about it. You challenged me with something that I didn't have an answer to, and I had to work through it in my head in order to share it with our audience, because I feel like that's my responsibility. We live to enlighten here at 83 weeks, and I can't just gloss over an answer or throw something

out that sounds like it makes sense. I've got to dig into it and analyze it. Otherwise, I feel like I'm cheating the people that support us. And I refuse to do that. So there's your answer. When people want to know, why does he talk so freaking much? It's because it's important to me. And it's because you ain't got no neighbors.

It's because I got nothing else to do. It's me and this is B, baby. If I didn't do this podcast and hang out of a land-free show, shows. I'd be like, I'd be a hermit. Yeah, well, you kind of are. You're doing both of those from your house. You're not at the Taco Bell. No, I'm not at the Taco Bell. Let's talk about some more trouble on the horizons for WCWN T&T. Meltzer Wood report, for Christmas and New Year's week television, here's how things stand. Christmas was always going to be preempted for Nitro and Thunder on the 27th, which was going to be a Best of Thunder 2,000 highlights program.

That may be intriguing to watch just to see if there are two hours worth of good or even decent stuff in the last hundred or so hours of that show. The January 1st Nitro was scheduled to be a Best of Nitro 2000 show, but then in the last week, T&T finalized the decision to air Greece,

the movie in the Nitro time slot in pre-emptus show. The January 3rd Thunder will be taped on December 22nd in Memphis. And because WCW has international obligations to provide Nitro weekly, the foreign consumption would be Best of

Nitro 2000 that won't air in the States. The idea is to tape top caliber, top caliber matchups, but not further the storylines on that show. And he would continue, and this is a big deal here. The fact that TNT is preempting the show three times in four weeks in its regular slot, basically giving up the go-home week of Starcade and killing the promotion of the January 14th, thin pay-per-view has led many to believe the deal has been done. and the company will be sold because Nitro's priority in the TNT universe has seriously plummeted. Not that the company has any momentum and this is really going to hurt because no doubt a lot of fans are one step away from giving up.

When they don't see the show for several weeks, it'll feel even less important and they'll come up with a new weekly routine. Who, a lot to unpack here, man. Consistency is super important, which is why we do everything we can to drop our show on time, single week. Monday is 6 a.m. And if we start missing weeks, it's inevitable. People are going to lose confidence in us to get a new routine and slowly but surely their fandom erodes. And when you see your numbers already way, way down and you realize, wait a minute, we're going to miss three of the four weeks. We're dead. Are we not? Absolutely. Dave was right on the money with that analysis.

Yes, you could mark that down. It happened again. It happened again. But I try to be honest. And that was a very accurate assessment was an opinion because of some stated facts that were in there. But to suggest that anybody had any real desire to try to find a way to keep WCW alive and keep it moving would be a joke. So they walked away from it. When those decisions were made, it should have been clear,

and it clearly was to Dave Meltzer, that from Turner Broadcasting's perspective, they were moving on. They just didn't care. A rerun of Greece. Yeah. That had probably by 2000 aired five or 600 times on that network

maybe that's that's exaggerating for a fact and I'm sorry for doing that but I bet you the grease had aired no fewer than 50 or 75 times within you know three or four years preceding this I mean it wasn't necessarily a hot piece of property

but man death knell for WCW that's for sure let's talk about Dustin Rhodes you want to talk about one of the reasons WCW is going out of business not his fault check this story out Dustin Reynolds was at Starcade, having been called by management to return. Reynolds is reported to make $750,000 per year, but the company isn't using him,

and he's mainly wrestling for his father's Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling Group, which his friend's sold shows in the Georgia Smaller City. When he got there, they told him they had no plans for him, and he went back home. And I looked up his contract, and sure enough, he started his contract in August of 99, Got $500,000 the first year, $600,000 the second year, $700,000 the third year, and he got a $50,000 signing bonus. Now, I want to be clear. I'm a big fan of Dustin.

I like him as a performer. I like him as a person. However, and by the way, I'm all for him getting $700 a year. Roll title on that. More money for the boys, I'm in. But it sure does say a lot about the company who's hemorrhaging cash, who's paying a guy, I had a ton of cash, and they have no plan for them. Yeah, that contract would have been under,

if it was in August of 99, that might have been one of the last big money contracts that I executed. It started August 2nd, but you were there. I was there for 30 days after approximately, because I got like going September 10th of 99. So that, that contract would have happened under my watch. It would have been my decision. You're welcome, Dustin.

But the fact that they had nothing going on for them and asked him to come to a survey, meaning WCW and the brain trust that was running it at the time, the fact that they weren't using them, I have no explanation for it. I wasn't there at that time. Yes, I executed the agreement. It was my choice, my decision.

Got a lot of Dustin still do. thought a lot of them as a performer, forget about how I felt about him as a person, because I've always been very friendly with Dustin. We were pretty close at one point in time. Did some hunting out here in Wyoming with Dusty and Doug Dillinger and my wife and, you know, had amazing, amazing time. In fact, I think Dustin actually got his very first deer here in Wyoming on that trip. So long history with Dustin, but set all that aside.

He was a great talent. It was a great talent. Why they weren't using him at this point in 2000, I have no idea. I mean, there's so much watching this show. And I'm probably not going to be as critical. I'm going to be critical of it as I would if it was something under my watch, by the way. But there was absolutely no direction here. Zero direction.

This, Matt, this show. is a combination of unconnected moments. It was just, it was, there was no continuity in the show whatsoever. It just was there. It was a hot shot show. It was just slapped together. And I think that was probably, again, I wasn't there. I don't know.

That was probably consistent throughout WCW in terms of strategy and creative and direction at that point. And look, I think the word was out. I don't, again, the timing, I have to really go back and spend some time and dig this up and do some research. But clearly the acquisition hadn't been announced yet. But I'm sure the word was out. I'm sure some people knew. There was enough people that were close enough to me that kind of knew what I was up to, even though it wasn't official,

that I doubt it was a secret within WCW. And you might have had people that were running the company just, effectively throwing in the towel and waiting for their checks to stop arriving. You know, that sounds like what was going on based on what Dave read or what Dave wrote, what you read and what I watched this morning. I saw another piece of news here and we have a stand helping us with some of the show formatting now.

My God, this cracked me up. A show for little girls seems like the wrong place to put WCW wrestlers, but that's what was happening at the time. Booker T, Scott Steiner, and Buff Bagwell taped an episode of the WB series Charm for a February 1st air date. Steiner and Bagwell have also

got an appearance on the show Jersey on the Disney network. I assume this is because WB and WCW are both Warner property, but why in the world are there wrestlers on a show about three sisters who were witches? that had to be some kind of you know really really bad attempt at synergy that was the word

you know that was like that word it kept you know obviously I knew what it meant it's you know it's common word but the use of the word synergy was almost required by by management in turn back in 99 and 9899 by 2000 everybody was scrambling so that they could check their synergy box

but the thing about synergy is it needs to make some sense otherwise it really doesn't work at all and in some cases could hurt you i.e. Scott Steiner would come to the ring of prime time with this freak

and she was hot by the way when I say freak that's because that's what he called her not what I'm calling her. Medasia. You know, I mean, talk about a, I don't know, I don't even know how to, I can't even use my imagination as pumped up as I am now on my very, very special tea. Did Cassio tell you I'm sending him some special tea?

He did. He said, my group chat, man, is it just me or is Eric Bischoff the nicest guy ever? And I said, well, that's nice to be. He's very misunderstood. I agree. He's like, oh, I talked to him yesterday, and he's shipping me tea today. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. Well, it's not just tea.

It is a very special tea. And I'm not going to promote it here because I'm just not for a variety of reasons. There's a little bit of controversy around this place. It's perfectly legal, by the way, perfectly legal. Is it, is it like, you like squeeze a toad in it or something? No, man, that's not that freaky. It's, uh, you know, I'll tell you, it's cratom is what it's called.

And it's a, it's a tea that's, comes from Indonesia, not from China. I don't put anything in my mouth from China. Nothing. I just won't. I won't feed my dog anything from China. If I buy my dog a toy that I know she's going to chew on and it says made in China, I'm not buying it. That's not a political statement.

you, that's just an awareness. Now, you don't know what the hell is in anything that you get from China. There's no, I mean, you don't. Anyway, not to go off on that. But this tea I found a couple of years ago, and I've tried different, you know, brands of it. And it's from a plant that's grown in Indonesia. And if you, it tastes horrible. It's not a pleasant tasting product.

But for me, it, it just elevates my energy and my, more importantly, clarity of thought um so yeah i gasey and i were having a blast i did his podcast with him and i was having so much fun you know because he's he's a funny guy i mean he's he's a stand-up comedian he's a funny guy and i was i was making him laugh i thought well if i can make a comedian laugh you know i got to keep whatever whatever i'm doing to get into the state of mind i have to keep doing and i looked down and there was my creative tea and I thought okay that's it I'm I talked about it with Cassio and went out and bought some form put a nice little box and it'll be in his house on or about November 30th excited about that what the hell why are we talking about that so so he got

the tea like three weeks ago yeah and I'm anxious he hasn't he hasn't he hasn't he hasn't told me yet obviously we're taping this advance now my time I don't fucked up I have no idea where I am. I don't even know what date it is today, thanks to this show. Bach, I'm talking about stuff that happened 20 years ago. We're recording an episode that's going to air four weeks from now, but I'm relaying things to you that happened yesterday. So I don't know where the hell I am. All right, back to best of, just a few moments.

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For a limited time in the holidays, Vaya is offering 25% off sitewide, plus up to 50% on select items and bundles. If you're hearing this post-sale, you can still save money by using the code 83 weeks for 50% off after you purchase. tell them you heard about on 83 weeks let's talk about a crazy theory boy don't you love these

Goldberg is on the man cow radio show shout out to man cow friend of the show long time friend to erics uh it's out of Chicago and he says that what happened with Hulk Cogan and WCW was a travesty and he blamed it on Vince Russo

who he called an idiot for booking himself in a match while suffering from a concussion he actually suggested WCW bring back Scott Hall because he thought a match with him and Scott Hall would draw money and he'd kill him and actually said that on air he thought Russo might have been a plant

sent by the WWF to ruin the company and Meltzer would say it's not like many people haven't suggested that as other wrestlers have off the air told radio host the same thing but I didn't think anyone seriously believed it as opposed to something just conspiracy theorists like to say but this is wild. This is something that fans said for a long time,

but to hear that Goldberg actually said it on a nationally syndicated radio program, that's something else. It's not surprising, though, Bill's a very outspoken guy, and I've been on the receiving end of it, some of it. So I know from, you know, from where I speak here on that topic, but he has no filter. And, you know, I don't think back then he cared. He just didn't care.

There were no fucks with which he had left to give at that point. And you reach that frame of mind. And then you combine that with the fact that even in a best-of-case scenario, you know, Bill Goldberg had a tendency to be pretty, you know, straightforward and aggressive in his commentary, whether he was promoting the show or not, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's a little silly,

you know, to think that Vince McMahon would actually do that. It wasn't that. I understand why people said it. People still have those kinds of, make those kinds of comments every once in a while I see them, but, you know,

it wasn't that at all. No, of course not. The Go Home episode of Nitro that aired again on December 11th. this is such a weird time in WCW. Meltzer would say it was an overall entertaining show. It was a good crowd by current standards

and the crowd was hot for most of it. It's interesting to see how this is such an important show, but we're shuffling it around because we got other priorities on the station. The main issue as we lead into this is, of course, centered around the main event, which is Scott Steiner, who's now one of, if not the biggest wrestling stars in the world.

They've really pushed him in the year 2000 to be the world champ and the top guy. And creatively, at least for my taste, I like that decision. But he's working with Sid Vicious and a singles match on top. Sid is, you know, a multiple-time WWB champion in WrestleMania main event. But on paper, that doesn't seem like a Starcade main event to me. Do you disagree? No, and that was my impression, you know, when I finished watching the show this morning, is there was nothing wrong with the match.

And we'll go into more detail about the match itself later on, obviously. But my feeling was, you know, the match itself entertained me. I liked it. I even like the finish 98% of it. the last 2% I think could have been a little different but it didn't matter you know that's nitpicking and you know fine tuning just for the sake of fine tuning I guess but the overall match I found to be really entertaining but I sure didn't feel like a main event right and that is no disrespect to Sid I think Sid did a great job in this match I've always got along with Sid I know he's a controversial cat but I always got along with Sid from the day that I first flew to his home in Mississippi to discuss coming to WCW to all the time while he was working there. And to this day, when I see Sid, we, we hang out together for a little while and there's a genuine affection for each other there in a very positive way. So I'm not,

what I'm about to say is not a reflection on Sid, but it just, it didn't feel like a main event because it wasn't built to be a main event. There was no story behind it. There were no state. There were not going back to architecture and story and planning. You had arguably a huge name, as you pointed out, in Sid Vicious. WWE, WCW, look like a million bucks, was capable with the right person of having a decent slash good, maybe pretty good match, as he did here with Scott Steiner. You had Scott Steiner who, you know, this is 2000. Things were a little different back then.

But, you know, Scott was just jacked up and impressive and larger than life looking as a human being could probably achieve without benefit of, you know, digital effects and graphics and so forth. But he looked massive and could move and had a large fan base that he had built up over the years in WCW and in WW. So there should have been a much bigger feel to this match. But the reason there wasn't, and the reason when I walked away from this show this morning to prepare to do this podcast is because there was no story behind it. It was just a man. It was thrown up there. Remember what I said earlier about just throwing matches up against the wall, hoping they stick,

hoping the audience goes, wow, that was really cool, or wow, that felt great. That's what this was. This entire pay-per-view was a series of creative mud balls that they threw up against the wall and hoped some of them would stick. Some of them did. Some of them I found to be really entertaining at different levels of the match or different moments of the match for different reasons.

So there was a lot of good or enough good on this show to make me glad I watched it this morning. But the takeaway was there was just no consistency. There was no thread through anything. The backstage scenes were shot just to do a backstage scene because I guess that's what you're supposed to do.

Or probably because Vince Rousseau and Ed, and Ferrara thought they were really good at it, and they sucked. They sucked. Those backstage scenes were as bad as anything I've ever. I've done indie shows in a last couple of years and have gone backstage because I was asked to help or asked to give an opinion and coach some people through some backstage scenes that were way superior than anything, not just one or two of them, anything that I saw on this show. Sorry, don't get me going. I don't want to start ripping this thing up. It's not my goal

here. I'm trying. I know people, you know, bustle my balls on social media go, you keep saying, you're going to try and not to go off and Dave Meltzer and then you do. Well, I do try. It may not seem like it to you because you don't know me. You don't know what's inside of my head. You don't know what's inside of my heart. You don't know how I've lived my life. So it's easy for you to be critical. But when I say I'm trying to be a better person, I sincerely mean it. And some days I am. Some days I pat myself on the back and I'll walk away from a podcast or an interview where I have every opportunity to go off on somebody and I don't.

I take the higher road. And I'm consistently getting better and better and better at that. But there are moments when I sit in front of a screen, whether it's my laptop or my television, and I watch something and I just, I shake my head and disgust and anger over certain individuals that I know could have done better, should have done better. including myself once in a while, but I try, I try to communicate my perception of things and my reaction to things in a more civilized, culture, appropriate manner. I'm trying really hard not to say fuck.

See? I'm trying. I'm trying not to swear as much because I think it, it lessens the integrity of the show with the credibility of the show overall when in my passion and my enthusiasm, I'm dropping F-bombs all the time. Somebody should tell you Conrad, you should tell me to stop doing that.

But I fucking like it. You fucker. Let's talk about the first match here. Man, you want to talk about a spectacle. I can't wait to get Eric's take, but let me put it over for you. Go watch it. It's the best thing on the show. It is a car crash. It's 13 minutes and 51 seconds.

It's three. out winning a three-way ladder match over the young dragons. Jamie knows. That's a young dragons, not the Jung Dragons. Jesus. You may know football, but you certainly don't know Chinese. That's the way it's spelled. I know it's the way it's spelled, but it's, it's young dragons.

I'm going to keep playing. The J is a Y phonetically. Why don't we just make it a fucking why? I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. Should have pointed that out. Shouldn't have been able to be.

Jamie Noble's here with Evan Courageous. Meltzer would say this must have set the all-time record for the number of ladders used in a match. It didn't start out good with Moore and Hayashi badly blowing their first spot and the crowd less than one minute in started loud, boring chance. He would say that Chavo Guerrero did commentary

and the announcers were doing their best to give some credibility. here. Ultimately, he liked the match. It was very dangerous and he sort of details some of the different maneuvers that were pulled off. Some of it though is probably beyond the English language. You just got to see this thing.

He would wrap it up by saying match had a ton of innovative spots of big bumps. These guys deserve all kinds of credit for putting this one together and hopefully they'll get their due from whomever is running the company. About had a strange finish where Morin Helms were on the top and one together, each holding the contract

four stars. The idea is whoever wins get a title shot tomorrow night on Nitro. This is quite a spectacle. It's been over the years, highly debated. Was it just a quote unquote spot fest

or was it actually good? I liked it. Where do you land on it? I enjoyed watching it. So the passive viewer in me, you know, the passive just fun to watch, you know, sometimes it's fun to watch things, just for the sake of the fun of it.

I had fun watching this. And part of the fun that I had was watching Shannon Moore because he was so early in his career at this point, and he looked so good. There was so much great talent in this ring, obviously. Like Dave, here we go again. Maybe it's the holiday season. Maybe that's why I'm feeling more generous with my, it's not praise, but at least acknowledgement when Dave is right about something.

I kind of feel the same way that Dave did when he wrote about this. You know how I feel about these types of matches, but these guys made it really interesting. These guys, all of the participants in the ring, made it really interesting. some of the moves that I saw Shannon Moore in particular at one point there was two

I think two ladders propped up and then they had position one horizontally so it was kind of a ramp if you will and Shannon went up and did it did this kind of skin the cat move and took his opponent down it was just I'd never seen anything like that

so there was a lot of really innovative to Dave's credit or point There was a lot of really innovative moves. The execution of those moves were outstanding, in my opinion. Kaz Hayashi doesn't get enough credit for being as good as he was. I didn't even notice the blown spot. So if the audience did the first minute, I doubt that was the case. But Dave certainly would have recognized it and pointed it out.

I think it had absolutely no negative effect on what we saw thereafter. So it really doesn't mean anything other than the fact that Dave had the ability to say, Oh, they blew a spot. But the match itself, I thought, was the participants made it fantastic. Shane Helms, fantastic, fantastic. Hi, Ashley, I just put it over, everybody in it did a phenomenal job. Jamie Noble was fun to watch. He was a blast to watch.

I think if they would have eliminated 25 or 35% of the, the spots with the ladders, it probably would have really come off well. I think they overdid it. It was overproduced inside the ring, the talent themselves, because I'm sure Rousseau or whoever said, ah, well, we want to have a ladder match. Go figure it out. So it was the participants in the match. I'm 99 and 910% sure are the ones that laid that match out.

And maybe there would have been an agent or somebody working with them. But they did a phenomenal job, I think, if they would have just cut back, 25 or 35% on the high spots on the ladders, it would have actually meant more. We saw a little bit too much of it. But, you know, as far as the controversy, the two guys going up and grabbing it, my first reaction was, but then I liked it. After it was over and I thought about it for just 30 seconds away, you know, that was probably a good choice because anything else would have been very predictable, right?

you would have just assumed, you know, Shane and that team is going to go up and we're both going to reach for it. One of them was going to, you know, blow, blow the other. And then now you've got heat. Now you've got a story. Okay. Been there, done that a million different times, a million different ways. So at least this left the, the finish of this left the door open for an interesting

story that one might not expect. So for that reason, I'd like the finish, even though it was a little weird. I kind of dug it. One of the other things that I noticed, nobody should have allowed Chavo on commentary. He wasn't ready for it. He wasn't comfortable doing it. And because he wasn't ready for it,

because he wasn't comfortable doing it, it did him absolutely no good as a talent. He exposed himself just like botching a move in the ring. You know, you take somebody who even just because you're good in the ring, and maybe even you can cut a promo, doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be good sitting at the desk commentating and Chavo wasn't and did as much harm to himself like I said as you know a series of moves that would have exposed as an experience so that that was

unfortunate but the match itself I kind of dug you know what else I dug a Doug Mark Madden's commentary I miss Mark Madden's commentary what a missed opportunity. And part of that was on me or during my period of time when I actually had control over Mark. Not that I had control over Mark Madden, but I could have. And Mark and I got along really, really well. So I could have had I asserted myself a little more than I did and coached Mark, and that's really what I'm talking about, not telling him, this is what you can do and it's what you can't do, none of that, managing him creatively to get the best out of him. But I love Mark Madden's style. I think if he would have been directed, coached, mentored a little bit more than he

went down a little bit, a lot more than he was. His mark would have been open to that. I think all of the strengths in Madden's abilities is the abilities that he's honed as a broadcaster for a long time. If he could have just been polished up and guided a little bit, I miss Mark Mann's commentary. He was really good. I enjoyed listening to him this morning. Do you think he'll ever do anything in wrestling again? I mean, it feels like he's carved out a really good life for himself, doing radio and some other things there in Pittsburgh. But he, you know, it is one of those deals where rarely do you see someone really just leave the business?

And it feels like that's where he's at and maybe he's content to be there. Or do you think perhaps some of the companies think he doesn't have the right TV look or he's too controversial or he can't be bridled or what's your take on that? I think he should be working in wrestling. I don't think he will. I certainly don't see him in WWE. He absolutely doesn't fit the stereotypical, you know, look and sound of what WWE is looking for, which I think is a mistake.

John Madden was a horse face. John Madden was not built for television. nobody that would ever look at John Madden who was in the television business who didn't know John Madden nobody would ever say oh that guy should be on TV John Madden had

what is commonly referred to in the entertainment world is a radio face I don't think there's ever been anybody better on television talking about football than John Madden

I think he's the best. He's entertaining. He's real. He's believable. He's passionate. And he's just got a way of saying things that even if the subject of what he's talking about isn't that interesting, he makes it interesting or made it interesting. John Madden was one of the best. I think Mark Madden is wrestling's version of John Madden.

That's my opinion. Now, would he need a little coaching? Of course he would. But, man, I think he would add credibility and entertainment. Maybe not every week. Because Mark's strong. Mark can overwhelm a booth because he's just got that strong delivery and personality. But that's what makes him gold.

So I don't know. would like to see him back in the business. I don't know what his goals are, desires are. He could be perfectly thrilled with what he's doing right now and not be interested at all on getting back into the wrestling environment. But if he was interested in doing it and somebody was interested in Mark, I would love to see that happen. How do you feel about Mark, Matt? I love him. I think he's a voice that's missing from wrestling, and I hope that, you know, we see him do some stuff he needs a podcast you need you know a radio show about wrestling he needs to be calling wrestling there's a lot of why why is he why is he not under the the podcast king's banner why do we not have

that how do you know i wasn't given a piece i don't know are you so in the second match lance storm seven minutes and 24 seconds most would say the gimmick was that jim dougan wanted to be a face but Storm told him the only reason he still had a job was because of the team Canada gimmick and when he leaves he'll be unemployed Mrs. Jones has the most charisma of any woman left in this company

had at one point hit Storm with a bottle Mrs. Jones high kick referee Mark Johnson, major guns did a decent drop kick to Jones finally Duggan comes out with a two by four to a big baby face pop Dougan runs into Save Storm, changes his mind, puts down the two by four,

and closed lines Cat, who then rolls over into Storm's Maple Leaf Finisher. Cat actually tapped before Storm even got the hold on, and to make things even more confusing, Storm and Ely Skipper attack Duggan after the match, and guess who made the save the cat? What the fuck did we just watch here? I don't know, but I got so dizzy watching that that I almost fell out of my chair. I mean, I got vertigo. You know what vertigo is?

It's like when your brain just loses sense of what's upside down and what's inside. I mean, you just literally, you feel like the room is spinning and you lose all sense of equilibrium. That's how I felt trying to figure this match out. This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. And there's a, and well, it's not the most bizarre thing I've ever seen because there's other bizarre things just like it throughout the show that I, I think should tell everybody that knows anything at all about Vince Rousseau, this should tell you what Vince Rousseau's real abilities are all about. This is one example.

There are several on this show. Did you notice, you know, so many of the women on that show. Actually, a couple of them are porn stars. Tileen Buck. I mean, it's not the most attractive woman in the world, but she definitely had some high dollar cans on her. in a pretty decent rear end. No talent whatsoever, but boom, she's front and center.

Who is the other one that I saw early on in the first match? Leah Meow comes out dressed up like some BDSM chick that you'd be paying $400 an hour for to walk on your balls with spike shoes and whip you as you whine. This was Vince Rousseau's idea of entertainment. And it's throughout the show. Now, what was it, Mrs. Jones? Pretty classy.

She didn't have that BDSM thing going on. She wasn't over the top. But, man, you could almost kind of tell what Vince Rousseau's life was really like by virtue of what he felt was entertaining on the show. And it's just fucking ridiculous. This match, though, talk about them. And there's others, like I said, that make no sense at all the finishes. like zero.

I don't know who could have been in a room talking about laying this match out and not raise their hand. It's like, guys, this is insane. And this was so bad, this is so bad. If you're a fan of Vince Rousseau, if you're constantly hammering me on social media because I point out what a fraud Vince Rousseau is, he calls himself a writer. He's not a writer. He's just not.

But if you think that Vince Rousseau is a good writer, go back and watch this show. Go back and watch the layout and the build-up to this match. It's the most absurd shit you'll ever see in what's called a wrestling show, because this isn't wrestling. This is just nonsense. Next up, we've got Terry Funk, who's 56 years old, and he's going to win the hardcore title from friend of the show, Crowbar, in 10 minutes and 21 seconds.

Meltzer would say a typical backstage weapons match probably due to Funk knowing what to do and win, it seemed to cut above the usual overdone backstage brawl. The announcers talked about Crowbar as a kid seeing Flair Funk match from the New York Knockout Show and it was one of the 100 or so retirement matches that Funk had in his career. They brawled inside a truck

Probar took a bump out of the truck through a table They tried slamming a door on each other's head Funk slammed it on Crowbar's head five times And then borrowing the controversial spot And the Rock Foley match Funk handcuffed Crowbar And started hitting him with chair shots

Of course they're not as brutal as the ones Rock delivered And Funk faced them better Crowbar came back with two chair shots to the head Then he did a Pascato onto a table for a near fall and Funk winds up winning with a chair to the head followed by a pile driver on a car door two and three quarter stars

listen to probably not everybody's cup of tea probably not yours either but goddamn how fun is it to watch Terry Funk yeah that's I mean you read my mind Conrad it's like when this thing first started developing I was like I can't even watch it I was just going to fast forward through it

pick up a couple spots so I could figure out if there was anything that resemble the story in this match, which there usually isn't. But as soon as it started and I saw Terry Funk, I went, nah, I got to watch this. Because Terry's just so entertaining to watch. I could watch Terry Funk paint his garage and probably get a kick out of it. So I did watch this.

But it, you know, it's what you would expect. It was as entertaining as a match like this could possibly be thanks to Terry. Nothing against Crowbar, but it's Terry Funk for crying out loud. Sure. So, Drew Barr would say that too. Yeah, no, and I, but I just want to make sure the audience says and I think I'd pick it on it because I don't mean to be. Terry Fong's Terry Fong, like I said, if, if he lived not too far from me

and I heard he was going to paint his garage, I'd go over and watch him just because I knew it would be fun. You might even pick up a brush. I'd help him. That would be even more fun. Let's talk about. He'd be yelling at me, Bishop, God damn it, who taught you how to paint? You can't even paint a freaking garage.

No wonder you ran WCW into the dirt. Give me that damn paintbrush, you morrow. I can just hear it now. Cutting a promo on me. It would be fun. Then you'd hand you a course light and everybody would be happy. I know, right? It'd be fun.

It's fun that y'all drink the same brand too. We're going to be back to the show in just one moment, but I want to talk about one of our long, long time sponsors here at 83 weeks, Blue Chew. And we want to thank Blue Chew. for helping bring 83 weeks to the world. Does Blue Chew work? Come on, man.

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Let's rethink that for a second. Try it for a free for a month and find out you're going to love it, your partner's going to love it, and it may open your eyes. See, it's all about performance. It's not a question of whether you could go or not go. The question is, how long can you go? And you can be missing out of the best part of your sex. Like with Bluetooth men everywhere are excited to see the postmen.

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That's right. said free, just pay $5 for shipping at checkout when you visit Bluetooth.com. That's bluechew.com to receive your first month free. You and your partner are really going to be happy you did. Visit bluechoo.com for more details and important safety information and we thank you for sponsoring three weeks. This is my second favorite match on the show, by the way. I don't know if it's because I know both guys or I love Terry Funk,

but I thought it was a fun match, especially for what it was. The next match, well, I can't say the same thing. Meltzer would even write, who knows who won with Cronic versus Big Vito and Reno in that Reno

pinned Vito to win the match. So the storyline here is somebody is paying Cronick to take over Vito and Reno. The announcers bring up Marie, thereby eliminating her. The bookers have to be one step smarter than the predictable story, so it ended up being Reno. However, Adams throughout the match kept chasing Marie looking for the money,

even though the job wasn't done while Marie denied it. The crowd was totally dead for all of this, and it was the second time they'd done a swerve on the show, and unlike the first time, nobody cared. After Reno used his roll the dice on veto and pinned him, he threw the money to Chronic, who weren't even the ones who got the job done. He was.

Dudd. What the fuck is this? This is the second time in this show. I'm asking that. And this is the second time in the show I don't have an answer for you. Look, I watched it. I've just listened to you, recap it from Meltzer. And I still can't figure out, even using my imagination, what they were trying to do.

Classic, classic writing from the mind of Vince Rousseau. That's all I can say. it's rousseau it's wild is what it is it's well wild wild infers some degree of entertainment okay when i think of wild i think like of a wild animal or i think of girls gone wild or i had to throw that in there hey joe francis how are you living in mexico can't even get into the united states awesome um you know a wild brawl a wild race, a wild game. It infers some level of excitement and amazement and interests.

This match had none of that. This was just horrible. I don't even know what else to say. Vince Rousse. I'm sorry for getting sidetracked here, but I've got to ask. Are you friends with Joe Francis? Friends. No.

I mean, I was at one point, you know, when Joe first started, Girls Gone Wild. I mean, Joe was a very brilliant guy. He was one of the first people to go out and capture free content. It was almost free. He gave away T-shirts and beads and got people to do crazy stuff, girls in particular. And that wasn't unique. There's nothing unique about that. Interesting, yes, but nothing unique that hadn't been done before one way she'd perform.

But what Joe innovated and did before anybody else and did so well was his infomercials would, you know, for only $9.99 a month. And you'd subscribe. And oftentimes, you know, kids would subscribe for this kids. I'm assuming that most of them were kids, although who knows. But, you know, people that had a credit card that were not at 18, 20, 21, 22, you go of college, you know, era. They'd order this stuff thinking they were just buying one for $9.99, not really paying close enough attention to all the little details in that ad. And they were actually subscribing for one a month. And Joe Francis made a fortune in the direct sales business, direct video

sales business, a fortune. Fortune. I don't know how many millions of dollars, but maybe not a hundred but close and had a great life, but he lost complete control of himself and did a lot of really stupid shit, like getting into a major pissing contest with Steve Wynn over a gambling debt. And he had a mouth on him. Joe would say anything.

I mean, I hooked up Joe Francis and WWE to do a show, to do a pay-per-view. Joe Francis, I set up a meeting between Joe Francis and Linda McMahon, because Vince was interested in buying Playboy. Joe Francis was also interested in buying Playboy for different reasons, so they both had different goals, but they were both interested in the same property. So I got those two together, and Linda had a meeting in Los Angeles with Joe as a result of my relationship with Joe. Was I friends with him? Did I hang out with him? No, absolutely not.

Joe was the kind of guy that I could not be around. Just couldn't. But he was in his own way, super ADD. Oh, my God. It's really ironic. Like half of the people I know that more than half that are really, really successful all seem to be ADD. I don't know what it is. I almost wish I had it.

Can you put ADD in a pill and get it? I don't know. But Joe was all over the map. You'd be in a middle of a conversation. You think I'm bad? You'd be in a middle of a conversation with Joe thinking you're talking about his new Ferrari. And within six or eight seconds, he's talking about something completely different. You still think he's talking about the Ferrari.

No, I'm not friends with Joe, but I've done business with Joe. And in some ways, very few. I respect some of the things that he innovated in the direct sales business because he did. Seems like a creepy douche to me. He probably was, you know, as he's gotten older. And I don't, I don't, I haven't talked to Joe in 15 years. So I have no idea. I know where he, I know he's living in Mexico in a big mansion because you'll see

the Kardashians and a bunch of people will go down there and party with Joe down in Mexico. So he still has that network of Hollywood types that he likes to party with and hang with it. They've all going to come down to Mexico now because he can't get into the United States without getting arrested. Let's talk about Mike Awesome and Bam Bigelow. It's next. It's an ambulance match. Mike Awesome gets the win in eight and a half minutes. Meltzer would say awesome is apparently in the process of dropping that 70s guy gimmick for the career killer gimmick. Bigelow's knees were clearly hurting. Trab was dead for the match. At one point, Bigelow punched his hand through a window and his forearm was all cut up.

I hope it was gimmick, because after what happened to Goldberg and seeing the cut, while only Myler, minor, I just couldn't stop thinking about all the unnecessary injuries due to wrestlers being asked to do dangerous things and how they've hurt company momentum constantly. It was a very loud, boring chant during the match. They ended up on top of the ambulance, and Bigelow fell through the roof, supposedly, since we never actually saw it. And that's how he lost.

One star. it's really disappointing when you've got two performers that I know you and I really enjoyed. I mean, what an awesome specimen both of these guys were and how incredible things they could do at their height and weight.

Just phenomenal stuff. Legends. This match, man, it's just too much gimmick. I'm starting to see why you had such a disdain for gimmick matches, but hopefully at least this is the end of that 70s guy and we're getting a more

traditional Mike Awesome. What did you think watching this one back? It was so hard to watch. And again, you know, I agree with you on this, on your point. You know, you've got a lot of talent. You know, Mike Awesome was a very talented dude and capable of doing some pretty amazing things. Bam Bam, can't say enough good things about him for a guy.

He's, his size, amazing talent in a horrible match. The idea of this match was a bad idea from the very very. beginning. There was nothing these two individuals with Awesome and Bam Bam. Regardless of their talents and experience, there was nothing they could do to make this really entertaining to watch. And part of it was, what have we seen now? A ladder match that had more ladders in it than, you know, a typical hardware store in a small town. There's ladders everywhere just for the sake of but we had the hardcore match. Got a match for a tag match

where his own partner beat him. Yeah, but that's not a gimmick match. That's just a stupid finish. That's just a bad match. But you've got so many gimmick matches already. What are we not even halfway through the show yet? We've had three gimmick matches. It takes away.

That's what we talked. You and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Notice I didn't say when because I have no idea where we're at. But, you know, part of the magic, and laying out a good pay-per-view is in the format and recognizing I was thinking about this the other day because I was thinking about this very subject about formats and the art of creating a good format because there is an art. And if you think about a format, which is just the order of things you're going to do, makes it sounds like it's something really unique and special to the television industry.

It's just a list of shit you're going to do. That's what a format is. But in creating that format, I believe if you think about that format and you, as a roller coaster ride, what do you want to do in a roller coaster, you know, when you get on one? I don't know. I've never studied really cool roller coasters. I know people do, right? There's a lot of people that really are into roller coasters. But I would imagine that when you're designing a roller coaster, you want to slowly get up.

Slowly get up, slowly get up, boom, and then you want to drop, you know, because you want that adrenaline rush. That's why people are buying a ticket to go on that roller coaster ride. It's because they want that energy rush. They want that adrenaline, anxiety, fear, all combined. It's a fun experience for many people. And then you come down, and then you come down, and then you come down, and boom, you're going to take this hard turn to the left and maybe drop down. again. It's this rise and fall, this ebb and flow, a specifically designed and engineered way to induce adrenaline, excitement, and yeah, fear into people that love that.

It's not just bring up and down and up and down and up and down, okay, rides over. You know, you've got to take them on a ride and you've got to manipulate those emotions. And when you throw three gimmick matches at the audience within the first 45 minutes or an hour of a three hour show or two and a half hour show, you've effectively killed that rush for that type of a match. You've you've done it so much that none of them mean anything anymore. Any gimmick match that follows the one that preceded it is going to lose the audience interests. It just is. So if you had to, if someone put a gun to your head and said, producer, you need to put three gimmick matches on this pay-per-view. Buck, at least space them out.

Don't put them so close together because you're ruining the ride. Even if people like gimmick matches, you're ruining it for them because you're putting so many of them all together that they all dilute each other. And that's the sign of a moron writing television, in my humble opinion. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to have a CFO, a chief financial officer in your pocket? Something that can watch over your finances, where you're spending your money, kind of give you advanced notices, the price increases on some of the apps that you have, maybe even review your apps for you, and tell me, tell you when you've doubled up or perhaps you're signed up for an app, tried it out for a

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Rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. Let's talk briefly about Mike Awesome. He comes in with the company April 10th, 2000. He debuts as Mike Austin. He's still the ECW champion. Later, he becomes the career killer after throwing Canyon off the top of the triple cage and through the ramp. Eventually, he becomes the fat chick thriller.

and then on September 6th this is all the same year and mind you he started in April he's that 70s guy at one point he's even got a bust painted of a style of the Partridge family he uses that for his entrances

and I guess most famous for nearly murdering half of the insane clown posse off of the top when 2001 starts he becomes the Canadian career killer is this the biggest perhaps the biggest bungle that WCW had. I know we always talk

about, you know, the momentum that Brett Hart had and how maybe that was mismanaged. You've people have been critical of the way you handled introducing him into the company and what you did with him. But my goodness, Mike Austin here, top guy from another promotion that

has a lot of street cred and all the hardcore fans love and he's the fat chick thriller and that 70s guy. What the fuck? You know, in setting up your question, you know, you refer to, you know, is this one of the worst jobs WCW ever did or whatever, however you said it? I think it's important that we identify specifically who's responsible for this mess. It wasn't WCW, the broader WCW, certainly had nothing to do with me. This is one person, just one guy who's responsible for what everything that you just laid out.

and that's Rousseau. That's it. It wasn't the think tank. It wasn't the booking committee. It wasn't Brad Siegel. It wasn't anybody but one guy. And I think once again, everything, if there's anybody out there listening to this

that listens to Vince Rousseau's nonsense on his podcast, this, the narrative that you just laid out, the facts that it's not a narrative, The facts that you just laid out, I think better defying Vince Rousseau than anything that I could possibly say. And I can say a lot. I couldn't stand up next to the facts as you just laid them out and where they came from. And that's all, it's all Rousseau. And here's what I'll say about Mike Awesome.

What a hell of a pro. Yeah. What a hell of a pro. By the way, the little bit, and I didn't work with Mike a lot. Obviously, I was kind of in and out at WCW. this period of time, during this period of time. But I never heard him, bitch. We never heard him complain.

What a pro. He should have throttled Rousseau. Yeah. He should have put Rousseau through the top of the ambulance. Let's go backstage and hear an awful promo from the new members of the new blood. Oh, God. Lombo and Sean Crazyax. Meltz would say they went full Memphis.

Their belts look awesome. Mean jeans says he wants to slap the wise ass Mike Sanders. And out next is Shane Douglas. It makes a reference to it, not taking 36 days to figure out the winner of the next match. That's a reference to the presidential election between Bush and Gore in 2000, going to the courts. It's interesting, I guess, now in hindsight, our history defeats itself. Yeah, let me jump in there just for a second, Conrad. If anybody's interested in.

seeing just how bad wrestling can be, wrestling, writing can be. It's not the action in the ring. By the way, the talent in the ring, God bless each and every one of them. They worked the guts out. They did the best they could with what they had. But the writing, I think, on this show was as bad as writing could possibly be for a major nationally televised show. But what I did enjoy is go back, go to WWE Network, indulge yourself.

You know, here's the good news. If you go back and watch the show on the WWE network, you will appreciate the current product so much more than you already do. If you're a massive fan of WWE, you'll be an even bigger fan of WW. If you're a massive fan of AEW or even just, you know, kind of a fan of AEW, you will bend over backwards to watch more AEW after watching this horrible example of a wrestling show. But one of the things I really enjoyed about watching, in addition to some of the innovation and things that we've already talked about within the matches themselves, was Lance Storm's promo. Landstorm gives a great promo and talking about the word of the day three weeks ago, prescient, go back, watch this promo from Landstorm and then flip on the news this morning.

It was amazing. It was just amazing how he called this. He didn't know he was calling it, but he was calling it. It thought that to be really, it's really the most entertaining thing on the whole show, in my opinion. What do you think of Colombo and the crazy act? I never, Plumbo I got.

I think Plumbo had, he had it in him. He had charisma. Probably still does. Plumbo had the look, his work was pretty decent, but he had the magic, never really tapped into it to its full potential. Stasiak, I don't get it. I never did. Never will, because it wasn't there. He's kind of a weird dude anyway. I just didn't enjoy being around him. For no particular reason,

I can't tell you why. It was just an uneasy feeling. That's all I can tell you. And he didn't really have any talent. He had a good look, by the way. It was built. Look great. But there was something not right about that, boy.

Well, he listens to the show. So thanks for listening when she says here. That is just good. Hey, maybe it's me. Maybe it's my chemistry. You know, you know how it is? Certain people, you just don't work for you. Oh, I got my fair share, as you know.

You're working with one right now. I know it. No, that's not true. You know who's on my list. Next up, General QG. Friction beat Shane Douglas by DQ in 9 minutes and 48 seconds to retain the U.S. title. Meltzer would say another match which lacked heat, both guys had small forehead cuts when it was over,

but the blood wasn't really pushed hard in the call. Meltzer with Play Pro Wrestling it is not a series of endless angles that are meant to mean nothing except the pop when they usually don't get presented in this manner. No matter how hard the talent worked, the scripting at this point was killing the show. This is just another bad match man,

and these are two very capable performers We've both seen Bill DeMott and Shane Douglas have great matches individually, so it should work together. I have no reason to think it wouldn't. Maybe we'd all agree this gimmick is terrible, you know, a huge erection. But man, when we've got Chavo grabbing the chain and throwing it to Douglas and what a mess. At Corporal Cajun's here and I don't, I can't make heads or tails of what we're doing. this point in the show. Neither could anybody else, including the people that wrote it when they wrote it. And again, you know, I beat up on, you know, Liam Miao, not on her personally. She was doing

what she was asked to do. And major guns. Same thing. You know, I don't mean to beat up on them personally as people. As characters, I found them disgusting. Now, I have the same red-blooded American male sexual appetite is the next healthy normal American male. It's not that I'm, you know, standing on some soapbox and and bitching about the fact that they were so over the top sexually exploitive. That's not it. It's just that it doesn't fit. It's like you can look inside of the what I guess is the mind of Vince Russo and see where he's parked his life. This cat at this point of his life was like a 15, 13, 14 year old that walked into his neighbor's garage and found a whole stack of playboys and was living his sexual fantasies in the, in the course of this show.

Hugh G. Rection? Mucker Fother, Hugh G. Rection? That's what you think is funny and entertaining? You 13-year-old, prepubescent punk with a pen in your hand. what in the world did and come on and ferrara come on buddy you and i always got along pretty good couldn't you have pulled vince aside and said you don't want to do this just kind of making you like you're like a creepy purve and you're putting it all out there in a television show from lea me out or bdm scept whatever the fuck it is mistress gimmick and major guns and

I mean, it's just, oh, and I'm sorry, it's just a crime. Is there, what do they call that? Is there a, you know, when so much time goes by that you can't get charged for a crime anymore? Oh, yeah, yeah, statute of limitations. Is there a statute of limitations on wrestling, writing crimes? because if there is, it should be rescinded. They should revisit that law and say, you know what, there is no more statute of limitations on wrestling writers,

just like there isn't on IRS taxes. We should be able to prosecute individuals who knowingly and intentionally did so much harm to the general industry of professional wrestling that they should be able to be held civilly and legally accountable. I'm going to run for office on that platform. Hypothetically. Wouldn't that see you going to jail too? Notice how I use the word intentionally.

Your Honor, my defense is that although he did do it, it wasn't intentional. That usually will get you off, or at least with a minor sentence. Rousseau's case, however, that's intentional. Therein lies the difference. Yes, I have done some things that I probably should stand in front of a judge to answer for, but more than likely I would get off with a reasonably good explanation and the lack of intent. Rousseau, on the other hand, would be doing life in prison for his crimes. Let's talk about the next.

By the way, before we move on, can you believe, G. Reck and got on Turner TV in 2000. That's another thing that just blows my mind. I had Terry Tingle. No, it's not a stripper. Her name was really Terry Tingle, but what a perfect stripper name, right? Yeah. I mean, come on. I can't imagine there's, you know, because strippers, I'll come up with these goofy stage

names, right? I can't believe there's not a stripper out there that has listened to this because clearly a lot of them hung out with Vince Russo and like the wrestling business, but I can't believe there's not a stripper out there somewhere that hasn't, you know, listened to this podcast and said to herself, ooh, Terry Tingle, that is a perfect name for a stripper. But no, Terry Tingle in this case was the heads of, head of standards and practices and wrote me an email one day, or maybe she came to my office. I think she came to my office and said, you know, we've got to be very careful about, you know, when you have wrestlers,

you know, interviewing each other. Well, they didn't interview each other. It was called the promo bitch, but whatever. I didn't say that to her, but I was thinking it at the time. But she proceeds to tell me that, you know, from Turner's perspective, we have to be really careful about, you know, one wrestler calling another wrestler stupid, because that could be offensive to someone out there in the audience with the learning disability. I may not agree, but I understand the logic. And I'll go along with that.

I'm not happy to go along with it because you're kind of taking a tool out of my toolbox. Because I've got to create some heat and some conflict and some animosity. And it's kind of hard to do that if we're always polite to the person you're trying to create some conflict with. And I kind of get it. So I'm going to go with that. And then I tune in this morning and I'm watching huge erection. Where the fuck did Terry Tingle go? Was she off this week?

Was she on vacation? Or was she becoming mind numb to the absurd world of Vince Rousseau? I dare say it was the latter. I don't know, man. It's fucking weird. How about this? We got Jeff Jared out with Ryan and Don Harris, and he's going to beat Conan, Ray Mysterio, and Billy Kidman.

And what was billed is like a street fight and bunkhouse match. Oh, I know, we'll have a gimmick match. Oh, with one of the best talents ever to step inside of the ring. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Conrad. Ray starts using a broomstick in his comeback, and Meltzer would say, it's funny seeing people sell for the dreaded broom bristles. They h-bombed him through a table. Kidman was on top of the shooting star when one of the twins broke a bottle over his head

and Jarrett pinned him after the stroke. so we got all kinds of gimmicks I mean there's there's a dumpster here I don't know why you need that when you've got Billy Kidman and Raymond and Ray Mysterio in the match but that's what they chose to do with them and I thought it was fucking stupid

got a star and a half what'd you think I'm surprised months we'd give it a star and a half I don't know what he gave him a star and a half for for what just because they were breathing while they were wrestling I guess that qualifies for a star, then they deserve that. I don't know where the other half came from.

The one thing I did like was Conan's promo. Conan when he was inspired, it was really good. And he did a great promo, you know, going into this. But the rest of it was just, I don't know, it's just I don't even know what to say anymore. I've shared everything I can share about the fraud known as Vince. and this show is a perfect example of it. I need not say much more early. We also see Lex Lugar attack Sergeant Dwayne Bruce during an interview.

Bagwell does the interview as Oakland did throughout the show. Oakland is actually getting some of the biggest reactions on the shows with his crabby old man lines. That's from the observer. And I agree, you know, this has been all over Twitter for probably five years now. me and jean with a case of the red ass i actually like i know we've been critical of a lot of rousseau stuff i like that what do you think i don't think he was i think it was just jean being real i think he was so disgusted with everything that was going on around him that uh i don't think he was playing a character i think he was just being himself jean when jean would get you know

i wouldn't often hear jean hot you know you wouldn't hear him really going off on anything or anybody But what he did on those rare occasions, he was great at it. I absolutely love Gene here on this show. The next match is kind of weird. It's Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash regaining the tag title from Chuck Palumbo and John Stasiak. They go 12 minutes and five seconds. And Rick Claire came out instead of Mike Sanders takes a step towards the ring and interferes, the titles will change hands.

Of course, this meant Sanders would interfere, not take a step forward to the ring while doing so, or not just do that. Fans chanted, we want Hall, with Nash acknowledging him. He even did a hey-yo after winning the belt, but they didn't mention the guy's name. Meltzer is pretty critical of that. The match itself, he didn't hate, though. He gave it three and a quarter star. I got to tell you, though, I kind of really don't even remember DDP and Kevin Nash

being a tag team. I just always think of them as single stars or Kevin with Scott Hall or maybe Dallas with Canyon or Bigelow, but them his team. tag champs, I guess, was a cool enough moment. What did you think? I like the match as well. I really liked towards the finish, not necessarily the finish itself, but towards the finish, about the last four minutes of the match, three minutes of the match, the exchange between

Palumbo and Page, when they were getting heat on Page in the corner and he fought his way out. Typically, those don't look always that great because it's intense and it's dangerous and, you know, you're throwing a lot of blows and, you know, the timing can be a little more challenging when you're doing rapid succession, you know, blows like that, reaching back and hitting somebody with your elbow and punch them in the face. You just go back and forth and back and forth. Everybody's got to kind of be right where they need to be because you're kind of working blind in some cases or, you know, for a portion of that exchange. I think Paige looked freaking awesome here.

I think Palumbo did a phenomenal job here. Stasiak was adequate, did a decent job. But, you know, and Kevin played his role really well. This match told a good story to me. It created emotion in me. I allowed myself to quit analyzing it and just enjoy it, which is a good sign. I mean, in terms of the way the match was laid out, the quality of the work in the ring.

Forget about what was done setting it up. I don't know what was done setting it up. But the match itself told a great story, was executed really well. I enjoyed it. Shelter in particular was very positive. He says that said this was the second best match in the show because it was basic tag team wrestling psychology

combined with good work. Page and Palumbo in particular, looked really good. I do want to talk about the, I guess I should just mention there. Very rarely in this era was Dave positive about WCW because there's not a lot of positive stuff to go around.

And at different times, he was hard on DDP. He gave him his props occasionally. But it was cool to see Paige and Palumbo here getting their props from Dave because it was a bright spot. I mean, this is better than most everything on the card. I wouldn't say second best for me.

But better than the my expectation one. How's that? No, I agree. And look, Dave has, you know, one of the reasons I bust out of him as much as I do. Well, there's a lot of reasons. But one of them is because Dave is all agenda. You know, if you feed Dave dirt, he'll either put you over or not bury you. He'll protect you in his dirt sheet.

He's done that from going back to 95, 96, 97 all the time. You can almost see the pattern. And I used to read some of the shit or somebody would bring me something that he wrote. I would say, okay, who benefits from that? What talent in our roster benefits from this nonsense? Which is one of the easier ways to figure out who was feeding him, Terry Taylor. So there's everything that so much. I should say everything.

That's not fair or honest. So much of what Dave has done over the years, his body of work, if he will. It's been his own personal opinion and agenda. Page was a friend of mine. Guess what? Guess where that lands him? Guess where that landed Page, you know, on Dave's list of things to put over. But no matter what, at some point, you've got to acknowledge somebody like Page who went from somebody who probably deserved a little bit of heat and criticism, constructive or otherwise.

He deserves some criticism early on. But by this point in time, Bage was so good at what he did and demonstrated it here that anybody that didn't acknowledge it, put it over, would be exposing themselves. But I think that's probably what Dave did more than anything out of a sense of self-preservation, was acknowledging something that he had no ability not to acknowledge because it was just that damn good. I can't help but point this out. I know you're going to love it. I don't mean for this to be mean-spirited or to pick on Dave because I love Dave. But I think his writer for this match has the world's longest run-on sentence ever. I'm going to say this all in one sentence.

Although it wasn't obvious to most people are picked up by almost anyone, comma, Colombo was told by Nash and perhaps paid to wrestle like call with the idea that they can't mention Hall's name, comma. If it becomes obvious, Palumbo is going to do Hall's moves, for instances. They want them to start doing the edge of the finisher under the guys. I'll get heat and get him over, which it will. And more to keep the we want Hall stuff alive

to guarantee crowd reaction and also figuring Bischoff will bring Hall back because there is no guarantee that's the case that Palumbo is set up as a natural feud to come back with a swerve angle where Hall comes back and immediately turns on Nash who spent months. trying to get him back, period.

Can you imagine anything close to this happening in the WWF question mark in parentheses? But he's a journalist, Conrad. Well, here's the thing. I do believe he is. But Lord, every now and again, him having a little support probably wouldn't be the worst thing in this area. I've made jokes about this before. Dave's big deal is over 10,000 words. Well, fuck, if you throw in a comma or two or a period at the end of the sentence,

you'd be, you know, it would actually, some of those words might actually make sense. That's what I'm not kidding. I'm not even trying to be funny or entertaining here. Oftentimes when you read things back to me that Dave wrote, I can't follow it. It would be easier, I think, if I'm reading it because you process things differently when you read them than you do when you hear them, at least I do. But the way he doesn't know how to structure a sentence or communicate a thought, because he just dumped so many words. And he doesn't know how to use them. And I don't mean to, you know, I don't want to pick on anybody. But when you throw yourself out there as a journalist, one would assume that you probably took an English class

somewhere along the way. And that is obviously not the case with Dave Meltzer. So wherever he got his journalism degree from, I'd hire an attorney and get a refund. also say crowd was largely into it except this one guy who was on camera most of the way he's in the fifth row and he was sleeping uh sanders gave page a low blow and stasiak hit nash with a lame belt shot page gave the cutter to sanders and mark chindrach sean o'hare laid page out o'hara went for the swan ton bomb on nash but page proxed him nash comes back with a high kick and a power bomb on palumbo and that's all she wrote three and a quarter stars what do you think of

you know this whole new blood gimmick at this point were you buying I mean I like we've talked about this before I think I like Mike Sanders I like Columbo I know you know you have a different

opinion on Stasiak but at this point was it just DOA do you think oh yeah it it got you know it launched fairly strong and with a lot of

and promotion and it had the potential of being pretty good because it's a story that's, you know, it's an angle, a story, a premise for a story

that most everybody could relate to, right? It's just, especially in the wrestling business. It was a simple, effective premise. But it had been diluted

and miserved from a creative perspective long enough where it had just lost whatever potential it had initially was lost on the audience. And they were just hanging on to it because they couldn't think of anything else. Sanders, it's interesting you bring up Sanders, because I was watching today and I had to go back in my memory

because I didn't work with Mike Sanders a lot. But in thinking about him, he reminds me a little bit of Eric Young. You know, one of those guys who kind of understated in a way, you know, you wouldn't pick him out of a crowd and go, God, I wonder if that guy's a wrestler. You know, not the typical prototype, not the prototype, if you will. If you will, baby. But what a talented dude.

What a talented guy. There's a lot of parallel, I think, between Eric Young and Mike Sanders. You know, if you're born after 1970, there's a really good chance that your first razor was a multi-blade razor. These plastic razors have been kind of like the status quo for almost 50 years, but where's it gotten us? According to a recent study, two-thirds of men expect some kind of irritation when they shave. That's right. They expect it. It happens all the time.

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it's a free henson shave cream when you had to henson shaving.com forward slash eric 83 and use the code eric 83 and yes you can thank me when you see me let's um let's talk about the next match it's bill goldberg and lex luger i can't believe this actually happened uh there's seven minutes and nineteen seconds goldberg gets the win bagwell and bruce come out by this point the question was which guy was going to turn on Goldberg? Luger pulled out the knucks and hit Bruce and Goldberg with him, but Goldberg kicks out of the pen.

Bagwell does the blockbuster on Goldberg. Theoretically by accident, Lugar went to the rack, but Goldberg blocked it. Bagwell then attacked Bruce while Goldberg hit the spear and jackhammer for the pin. And after the match, Bagwell hits Goldberg with several share shots. Of course, Goldberg was fine a few seconds later.

this is not the two best in-ring performers we ever had a lot to unpack though what do you think of the pairing with Bruce here I just I don't know I mean I'm numb to it I'm numb to it the finish made absolutely no sense the whole match made no sense Goldberg take in you go back and look at the chair shot the Bagwell gave them you know Goldberg did a good job feeding it you know meaning he tucked his chin and put his forehead or the top of his head into it right about here. If you're listening and out watching, I'm kind of grabbing the frontal lobe area of my head

because that's where your brain is the thick or your skull tends to be the thickest. But Bill being built climbs out of the ring about a minute and a half later. And by the way, that's a shot that normally puts people out. That's like the end of it. That is the wrestling equivalent of a 357 to the nostril, right? Not built. Bill gets out of the ring, picks up a little kid, special needs kid, smiles, walks backstage. There you go.

Nothing about it made sense from the beginning to the middle to the end. It was just bizarre. And I don't know what else to say about it. I don't want to beat up on anybody anymore. I don't want to beat up on Rousseau. I don't want to beat up on anybody. I don't even want to say Dave Mouser's name again. I don't even want to say Rousseau's name again.

I want to be in a spirit. I want to, I want to be positive. And I can't think of anything positive to say about this match. Sorry. Let's see what we can do with the main event. Scott Steiner, Sid Vicious, WCW title. And Melzer would say one of the few bright spots in the company right now is Morale issues,

Stiner can be a strong champion to solidify and strengthen the belt. He also carried Vicious to a good match while getting himself overstrung at the end. Vicious dig it out of the recliner twice, once with a rope break, once by powering out. Stiner survived a choke slam and a cobra. Siner attacked the referee and hit Vicious with several shots with a pipe, but Vicious kicked out. Jarrett came out and went to hit Sid with a guitar, but by this point, everyone knew Steiner was getting it, but Siner still kicked out. Steiner won with two low blows and the recliner,

but the match being stopped by the referee, two and a half stars. I love these guys. As we said, at the top of the show, I thought Stein was very believable. He was a legit badass, being groomed to be one of the top guys in the whole company. Sid Vicious, of course, has been a spectacle forever and a guilty pleasure of mine. I love watching his old stuff. But dude, all of the nonsense, the ref bumps, another run-in, a fucking guitar shot,

but he hit the wrong guy and low blows the whole show is this way even the main event and i just i guess i went into it not remembering this show that well and thought well we won't have that for this match oh yeah we did what did you think i i i agree with you 100% i don't know what else to add you know it in especially if i'm not going to beat up on anybody what's what's interesting though, is if you go back and watch this match, which I encourage people to do, because I think it's one of Scott Steiner's better efforts in the role that he was playing at that point

as the champion and leader of the company, face of the company. And I think Sid had one of the better matches that I've seen Sid have in a while. Maybe he's had better ones, I don't know. But the ones that I've reviewed, I think Sid looked great here, and a lot of that had to do with Scott

and Sid's effort. The chemistry was good. The crack was good. Those of you that have a Celtic bent, you know what I'm talking about. The crack was good. But the match was so good, it didn't need all of that chaos. Now, you may have needed the guitar shot, I guess. I hated it.

That guitar shot is just not anything that I ever thought worked effectively. but I understand why they did it. And had there not been some of its other schmaws and silliness booking-wise and finishes going on in the matches preceding this, probably wouldn't have bothered me so much. But my feeling when I got to and watching it is why the hell did they have to muck this match up

with all the silliness? The match didn't need it. This match needed no camouflage. The guys in the match were able to execute a phenomenal story and a believable story without so much nonsense. But again, I'll just attribute it to the fact that the people in the creative process felt the need to garbage it up as much as they possibly could, largely because they didn't know how to tell a good story otherwise.

It's one of the reasons I've said this before. It's one of the reasons you've had certain people rely on gimmick matches as much as they do is because they don't really understand how to tell a story. They don't have the fundamentals. You don't have a basic understanding of storytelling. And when you don't have a basic understanding of storytelling, guess what? You're probably not going to come up with any good ideas.

And if you can't come up with a good idea, what do you do? Reach in your gimmick bag and pull out your next gimmick match and call it a spectacle, whatever. But that's what happened here. This match needed none of that. Maybe at the end with Jarrett, I'd get it. I'd probably sign off on that if it was pretty, presented to me, but I would do so reluctantly.

I would ask someone to go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something different because it's predictable. I mean, ooh, I hit the wrong guy. How many millions of times have we seen that? It's just so juvenile as a creative solution or a creative device. It's just like third grade shit. Who else did I used to sit here say, that's, damn, that's third grade. shit heard that before it'll come back it'll come to me but that's what this was it was just

third grade shit that wasn't necessary this big man used to say in meetings that third grade shit and this is the same guy who had a poop truck sprayed in the ring i don't know maybe you know i'll have to you know go back and search my memory but i just remember hearing last third grade shit oh i can tell from the voice that's missy hyatt yeah Missy used to see that all the time. Uh, Beltzer would recap the show by saying the show itself was better than most of the WCW pay-per-view events this year.

Kind of a mixed bag overall. The crowd started off wanting to hate the opener, but the work was so strong they couldn't. Somewhere in the middle, between the multitude of swerves that all looked the same, dead matches and the use of weapons that by late in the show had the crowd numbed. It was looking pretty bad. But a strong tag title and a main event that was far better than anyone had the right to

expect ended it on a good note. In bringing up history, the irony was Tony Chivani talked about the first Arcade where Flair won the NWA title from Harley Race and talked about how far we've come since then before the tag title match. For anyone who actually remembers that show, it was not exactly the kind of comparison that would have been smart to bring up. Kind of like a Bengals announcer saying, now look how far we've come since that Super Bowl year. And their attention to detail department, they said Sid Vicious, who wrestled Scott Steiner in the main event, was having his first match since the spring, forgetting that. he had just wrestled a few days ago on Thunder. Overall, as crazy as it sounds, Meltzer thought the pay-per-view was better than maybe we did.

Can you believe that? It's because it ended strong. You know, and look, talk about formatting, you know, and creating your to-do list for a television show or a pay-per-view. One of the things you really want to do is make sure you end strong. and this show between the tag match and the main event, at least, ended pretty strong. And you tend to forget all the garbage that took place prior. The pain goes away when you can end the show strong

and you walk away from it feeling like, you know what? You know, I got my money's worth simply because of the end of the show. You tend to forget about all the other things that happened preceding it. so I understand that and and I think you know to a certain degree the creative team to put the show together frankly got lucky I guarantee it didn't happen by design that was evident to me but who the hell was that is everybody okay this is why live stuff is so much fun she's a little thing like that a little production glitch gives the audience the sense that this is actually happening in its live. So I like that. But no, it was, how did I feel about this?

Actually, I was so overwhelmed with the nonsense in the show that even though it had a great, a good main event and a good, I'll say a great main event and a good tag match, I still, I, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 4 because there was so much horrible. stuff in it that even a strong main event and a tie semi-main event couldn't get me over the hump how about the next day i know you weren't there but there's major fallout from this apparently on the same show the very next night in richmond virginia sid dd p and kevin nash all walk out apparently this is not an angle and sid was upset that he came to the building for the pay-per-view the day before expecting a double count-out finish is what he was told the finish would be in advance and while he's getting ready for his match someone hands in a sheet of paper and on it it has the finish that they asked for and he did it but he's upset about the way

it was handled someone should have came and talked to him and not just handed him a sheet of paper is that a fair criticism or gripe from your main event i think so look if if I mean, there's no rule of thumb that I think applies to every situation, every situation, every personality is going to be a little bit different. And you need to be able to handle each of them accordingly. So what I'm about to say doesn't apply across the board. But when you've got a guy like Sid, who's been around for a long time, who's relatively easy to work with, who is respectful to you, at least he always was to me, then that person deserves that level of respect. respect and return. And if you've made the mistake, which I think is a mistake, of promising someone to finish or even giving them the finish in advance, which I don't think is, unless it's

a complicated finish, unless it's something that requires some thought and planning by the talent for whatever reason, I'm not a big fan of giving away finishes to talent before it's absolutely necessary. But if you if you've made the choice that I've done it to sometimes, like I said, different situations require different applications. But if you made the decision to give someone to finish and then you're going to change it, you definitely should pull them aside and have a conversation. Otherwise, you're going to end up with someone that's pretty pissed off.

And rightfully so, because whether they agreed with the change in the finish or not, it's disrespectful. Yeah. And that's going to sound weird coming for me because I'm the guy that doesn't feel like I should have to give someone the finish unless they have to prep for it. Like I said, the finish, the creative, the talent's job is to execute, in my opinion. This is the way I approached business when I was a talent. and this is what I would expect in return from talent if I was calling the shots creatively. But, man, if you're going to make that choice and give someone the finish and then not give him a heads up or pull them aside or give them the respect of a conversation in advance to at least

tell them why. They don't have to agree with it. They don't have to like it. Their talent, they're paid to do what they're asked to do and to do it to the best of their ability. you don't have to like it they have to do it but if you're going to give it to him before then what the fuck right I don't know I don't get that

this is also the same nitro where a major happening occurs and I'm sure you heard about this Steiner is supposed to cut a promo hilarious too Steiner asked if he could go first and they let him go out

he just goes into business for himself and cut the promo on dDP and he said something about ddp needing a sex change operation and that's when everyone in the locker room starts looking at dallas realizing he's off script and he's shooting on a guy in the room page gets up in front of everyone and says something like that's it enough's enough and storms downstairs and he's waiting for steiner when he comes through the curtain they get in an argument and GDP throws a punch and some people had said it was a sucker punch

but I don't know how much of a sucker punch it could have been he had to know this was coming and it gets ugly there's a real scrap here it takes a lot of men to pull Steiner off of him it was described that he had a death grip

on page there's a huge scratch around his eye Steiner old school wrestling guy was going to take his fucking eye out and had this gone you know a little a little bit this way or a little bit that way he would have got it now immediately because this is wrestling and wrestling is stupid at times everyone backstage starts to wonder is this a work and it makes it a little worse when nash leaves with ddp because allegedly

nash had been one of the guys who would poke fun at page and have a little fun at his expense because he took himself in the business so seriously but when he leaves with dallas a lot of people wonder are they setting up an angle because let's remember we had a quote-unquote shoot segment in july and bischoff left with hogan et cetera et cetera so is this one of those kevin sullivan brian pillman working the boys thing i say absolutely not what did you hear about this you know no more than you just you know shared with our listeners you know from from melzer's report i obviously i heard about it pretty quickly maybe same day that it happened I don't know who called me.

It wasn't Paige. Somebody else called me. I can see it. Obviously, you know, knowing Scott Siner, it wasn't out of character for him to get out of control and do things and say things that, you know, would create an issue with somebody. You know, it's really hard for me to understand, even knowing, you know, how volatile and how much of a loose canon, with all due respect to Brian Pillman, in a legitimate sense, how much of a loose canon Steiner was,

it was still shocking to me that he would go out in a television segment, live television, and shoot like that, and just go into business for himself. As crazy as Scott could be sometimes and hard to manage as he could be at times, when it came right down to it, he would do the right thing. He may make you suffer along the way, but he'll do the right thing. And that was, that was really uncharacteristic to me for Scott Steiner. Not that he would get in a fight, that's not uncharacteristic at all.

But that he would go out and just go into business for himself on TV. That surprised me. How, how close did this come to happening before? It was in the newsletter that, gosh, more than, a week prior to this, they were supposed to be working in a match with each other against each other on a house show, and they both flatly refused to work with the other. How long had this whole Steiner DDP thing been ruined, do you think? You know, I don't know, because page, you know, page never, you know, again, I wasn't there. So page, it's not like he called me

and, you know, complained and whined and pissed and moaned. He kept his shit to himself. What I remember hearing at that time, or maybe it was subsequent to it. where I remember hearing was that this all started with comments, and I could be wrong about this, so don't anybody quote me or get too riled up if I'm wrong. I'm just telling you what I think I remember from something that happened 20 years ago. But if I remember correctly and accurately, this all started with Steiner making some kind of reference about Kimberly. Yep. that was derogatory and that was kind of like the spark and then every week it you know it turned

into a little campfire then it turned into a bomb fire and now the house was burning down so that's how it all started and that's how it was that was the tension that created it all let's do some questions we got tons of questions about this week's show by the way if you want to ask the question for next week's show it's going to be a fun one it's starcade 1991 we just did the last Starkade. Next week we're going to do Eric's first Starcade. Eric, this card, by the way, in 91. Boy, what a regrettable deal this is. Battle Bowl lottery. Is that right out of the book of bad ideas or what? Yeah,

unfortunately it was. God bless you, Dusty. Let's talk about some questions here. Melly wants to ask, was Sid always the plan for Scott Steiner's next opponent? I've always sir, they were initially going to build to a Steiner versus Goldberg match but Goldberg had to go out for surgery hence the Restre. Do you remember any of that

specifically? I do not, but just listening to that question it would have made sense. So if there was a plan for Steiner Goldberg, I would be really interested in hearing that plan because on the surface just Goldberg

Goldberg Steiner sounds like money to me. Now, what they were going to do building up to it, I don't know. I wasn't a part of that conversation, but it certainly would have made sense. And if Bill did go out with an injury or whatever and they had to make a replacement, Sid makes sense. So it sounds like it's plausible. Kurt wants to know, had you and your investors gotten the deal done for WCW,

would you have kept a staple pay-per-view names like Starcade and Halloween Havoc, with the rumor being that the first big show would be called the Big Bang. I was curious if you'd come over. with all new pay-per-view concept. No, that was never a part of the conversation. We may have replaced some of them. We may have actually reduced some of them. You know, one of the thoughts that I had at the time was that, you know, when TV's hot,

when you're running strong, when your ratings are strong, when your attendance is strong, when your merchandising is strong, when everything is running, you know, at peak performance levels, all your different business units, you know, it's okay to a pay-per-view, but when things are down, it's better to regroup, reassess the use of your resources, focus on what's really working or what has the most likely chance to work, and maybe divest yourself of some of the legacy pay-per-views that really weren't doing all that well. Maybe because of the time of the year. For example, springtime can be a tough time of the year. The April pay-per-view can be tough. I know WrestleMania does so well.

But that's one of the reasons why a non-WWF pay-per-view or WWE pay-per-view tends to suffer in March and in April and even into May because the WWE and Russomania takes such a massive amount of money out of the marketplace because of because of WrestleMania and because it's so strong that trying to compete during that period of time or even survive during that period of time with a pay-per-view may not be the smartest use of resources. Now, it's different when you're hot, you know, WCW 97, 98, different story, even 96, different, well, not even 96, 97, 98, different story. But by 2000, I would have probably probably been looking. In fact, I do recall thinking through this kind of, what do we do with all these pay-per-views process. And I probably would have eliminated March and April and would have considered may. And use that time instead to reinvest in storytelling, to build up anticipation, to kind of go back to what worked, you know, with WWF in particular, and early WCW, although it didn't work as well, is when you had fewer pay-per-views, you could do a much

better job telling better stories for a longer period of time, getting people more invested in those stories so that when you did finally pay it off in a pay-per-view, it actually meant something. So I was looking at the spring paper views. September as well. September was always a tough time. People going back to school. There's a lot of other reasons. You know, football is getting started.

There's a lot of reasons why September can be a challenge. So we were looking at reducing some paper views. I don't think I would have just wholesale, you know, rename them to feel like I was starting fresh. There's value. There was value in Halloween havoc. There was value in Starcade. You know, I think, even though I didn't like the time of year for uncensored, there was some value in that. So some of the paper views had, you know, obviously Bash at the beach had value.

I would have renamed them just because I wanted to start with a clean slate, but I would have reduced some of the paper views that were adjacent to them. A few more and then we'll wrap things up here. The Rosencoaster wants to know, had your investors watched any of the product during this era as you were in the stages of purchasing the company? And if so, what did they think of this version, the current state of WCW? I don't think they were, you know, I think they would drop in. You know, that's a question for Brian Bedal, if we ever get them on ad-free shows with, you know, conversations with Conrad. Because I don't know.

We never really talked about it. Here's my take, you know, looking back, Steve Greenberg and Brian Badaul were primarily financial guys. They were venture capitalists. they would buy broken things and fix them and sell them in turn. And the creative, you know, they obviously knew that there were a lot of problems. By this time, keep in mind, well, not by this point, this point the process was pretty early. But in delving through the books, and that was one of the things, one of the reasons why this process took as long as it did is the due diligence. And Brian Badell and Steve Greenberg are two of the most brilliant media venture capitalists out there at their level.

They were really smart guys. These were the same guys that went around to colleges and universities all over the country and said, hey, you've got a bunch of old footage in your library. You're not doing anything with it. How about if we give you a couple bucks for that? And then within a relatively short period of time, they had curated a vault. of sports footage that turned into the classic sports network and then turned into ESPN Sports Classic.

And along the way, Steve and Brian made a fortune or several. And they done similar things with other media properties. So they were looking at WCW more from a business and a financial kind of analytical perspective. The creative, I don't think they spent a lot of time thinking about. that they were focusing on the things that they knew and, you know, relying. Certainly, Brian was a very creative guy. He was a smart guy.

You know, he made a lot of great suggestions and would have, not that he would have been making suggestions. He would have been the guy calling the shots. And he would have been, he would have been making some great direction. But looking at, as I said earlier in the show, higher quality writers that really understood the product. that could help improve the product. Those are all things that Steve talked about, or excuse me, Brian talked about that we would have done more of,

but they weren't watching the show and analyzing it like a dirt sheet writer or even a wrestling fan. Last one, wrestling historian on Instagram wants to know. What did you think of Scott Steiner as WCW World Heavyweight Champion? It worked for me. You know, I liked Scott at the time.

I liked what he did. do with the ring, his creative or his in-ring abilities were nothing short of amazing. You know, his larger-than-life persona was hard to compare anybody to. The challenges I had with Scott was consistency and his personality. He was volatile in and out of the ring. He was capable of doing things outside of the ring that could have brought great harm to the company's reputation. So that part of me was, even though I like Scott and liked hanging out with him, it was dangerous as your world champion. It was dangerous for anybody that was on television, but as your world champion, even more so.

So I liked it creatively, but from a business perspective, it was not without risk. Well, there's no risk in watching Star K-91 next week with us unless, well, it could kill us. guess. It's one of the worst Starcades ever. I actually enjoyed or found something to enjoy on all the other ones. I don't think there's any redeeming qualities in next week's Starcade. Take a look, watch this week, and then

listen as Eric and I try to entertain yet next week. Of course, you get all these shows early and ad free here on ad free shows.com. Until next time, he is at E. Bischoff. I am a hey, hey, hey, it's Conrad. And we are out of time. I'll see you next week right here on 83

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