83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 355: Finger Poke Of Doom REMIX

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

On this REMIX edition of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us back to the infamous "Finger Poke Of DOOM!" episode of Monday Nitro. Find out what Eric thinks of this angle with the benefit of 20 years hindsight. We address the rumor that Goldberg shot down the first idea for his angle with Liz and how Eric thinks Goldberg and Liz did in their acting roles that night. Plus, Conrad presses Eric to defend the silliness of a "Hogan running for President" angle, clarification on Kevin Nash's role behind the scenes, why Eric put him in that position, when the plan was in place to hand Hogan the title, who got Goldberg a 1000% raise from WCW, an incredible story you've probably never heard before about a huge mainstream deal Turner turned down, and a tidbit about a word you couldn't say on WCW TV that you just will not believe!  Of all the things on this episode to discuss, only one decision made that night really mattered and it led to 600,000 folks changing the channel. Conrad breaks down "butts in the seats" in detail and makes Eric own it. Oh and Eric buries two legends in the business to the point it leaves Conrad speechless. Eric is fired up and ready to breakdown the FINGER POKE OF DOOM!  ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/83WEEKS TUSHY - Over 2 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with code 83WEEKS at https://hellotushy.com/83Weeks #tushypod 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

SavewithConrad.com. My name is Catherine West from Bicelia, California. And for many years, my husband has listened to podcasts. And so every time I am stressed about anything, he has said, well, we need to call Save with Conrad. We ended up in a situation where we thought this would be helpful for us. We were struggling with some credit card debt that we had. We knew that we had some equity in our house that we could possibly access to get some cash out. and refinance, consolidate some of those things.

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we can hopefully start saving now. In that alone, we'll save $1,400 a month. And it didn't change our house payment, maybe even like $50 less. I feel like we are far away. in terms of like the United States but we I don't feel that far away from you guys I always feel like you're a phone call away you're an email away and always like available to me Diane Raver is who we worked with and every time I needed her I was

able to reach out and contact her and she was always getting right back to me that I felt heard I called with real concerns I really just needed some help and to figure out how to make this work I never felt like I was getting this because you just wanted business. Like I felt like you genuinely care about what I need and you heard what I needed and then you found a way to make that happen. And so I recommend you guys wholeheartedly. I feel like you'll be honest and helpful. And feeling hurt is just what every person wants to have done when it's in a situation like this. My name is Catherine West and I saved over $1,400 a month with savewithconrad.com.

At all that number 212, non-equal housing lender. Savewithconrad.com. all right you ready i am ready to you want the synopsis first yeah i know the synopsis first okay i'm a count us in three two Paul Kogan said the finger polka dune was the beginning of the end of WCW and no one really disagreed Let's pause for a second

If you can do me a favor And just hit me with a little more energy How about your signature Hey, it's Conrad Thompson, welcome to 83 weeks Kind of thing Just hit me with a little bit of juice A little bit of Conrad juice Okay, all right

You may just take it from the top Yeah, let's take it from the top And three, two Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks. Paul Kogan, I said the finger-poken do was the beginning of the end of WCW, and no one really disagreed. Hey, let's pause for a second. Hey, let's pause for a second.

I hate to break your body. That's a second time you've taught me there. Yeah, let's go ahead and mention about the new year, excited about 83 weeks for the coming year, and we want to hear from you out there on our community page that, 83 weeks.com let us know what you want us to talk about this year of 2025 and um erics and join his vacation blah blah blah blah blah blah and okay here we go in three two hey hey it's conrad thompson and you're listening to 83 weeks without eric bischoff he is away on vacay we have got a special remix for you today but we are so thankful that you're with us here

at the beginning of the year we've got a big 2025 headed your way if you haven't already Go hit the subscribe button right now at 83 weeks.com. Eric and I are going to be live this coming Monday night. That's right. Immediately following the WWE debut on Netflix, Eric and I will be live and you don't want to miss it. This is your chance to ask Eric Bischoff anything you want. And of course, discuss the latest and greatest in professional wrestling.

Can you believe it? Monday Night Raw, not on USA, not on television. It's on Netflix. Eric Bischoff and I will be there. And we want you to join us. at 83 weeks.com. That's our YouTube. That's your home for all things, Eric Bischoff, and it's totally free. That's 83 Weeks.com.

You greatly appreciate you hitting the subscribe button and turning on that notifications bell. And don't forget to check us out this Monday night immediately following Monday Night Raw on Netflix. I can't believe that's the thing. Eric Bischoff is going to be with us live at 83 weeks.com. But as for today, Paul Kogan has said the finger,

Pocodam was really the beginning of the end of WCW and no one really disagreed to them or did they find out what Eric thinks of this angle with the benefit of 20 years signs I'm sorry you were such on a roll and I'm so happy um wait I what did I miss I mean I hit I hit the live from YouTube and I talked about raw and I talked about Eric being on vacation and I brought up the energy for me like what what do you want bud like what else do you need for me really can you do me do me favor. Everything was great at the beginning. Thank you. I thought some. I just

think it's some of your best word. I nailed it. Yeah. Thank you for the Edison. Yeah. Yes. But I would like you to just use the little synopsis notes that I sent you kind of as a as a base of just a reference point for you, but use your own words.

Feel it. You had this conversation with Eric a while back and about the finger poker do. Use your own words about describing this episode. It's chock full of good old fashioned you and Eric discussing and budding heads

about what happened back in those days use your own words feel it embrace it you know you lived it so take us through there just on a quick journey

just introing it don't give us a whole big long 45 minute diatribe of your interactions with Eric but just give us a quick short synopsis of the show from your words

from your words do I have to pick it up from the top and do that whole oh no oh no I wouldn't put you through that no no sir I can add it all this together in three so just all right we go okay in three wait and hang on hang on you want me you just use my own words right yeah just your own way well let me just if you're not too much to ask you just sort of why don't you just give me can I just hear your words like you just want to take one crack at it just like I can kind of hear I just want to kind of hear what you're looking for and then I'll try to see if I can nail it. Can I just hear like what you

would like if you were me and you were doing this? Like what would you do? Can I just hear that in three, two, one go. When we think of the finger poke of doom, we usually think of the end of WCW, the demise of WCW. Pretty much like Tony Chivani always calls it, the coffin on roller skates, which was WCW at this time. And with the benefit of looking back over 20 years at this event, we can't really say anything different. This is pretty bad. Well, on this episode of 83 weeks, Eric and Conrad will break it all down. Eric will defend his decisions, will defend the situation of the company, will defend his part in all this, him on commentary, carrying on like nobody else with even when Hogan sprang the NWO on Goldberg's back and he's

like, shh, shh, oh, Eric, classic EZE on this episode. of 83 weeks plus the guys talk about hogan running for president they talk about kevin nash's role in the company at the time they talk about the rise of goldberg and was at the time to finally beat him they talk about all that plus the infamous butts and seats moment and eric tries to defend that situation this episode is crazy this is a real nail bider folks enjoy this episode of 83 weeks Wow. Okay. Folks, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, it's a remix of the Finger Pocodooleum episode without Eric Bischoff. Happy holidays. 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 doing, I'm outstanding. I've had a really, really great week so far. I couldn't ask for a better week. Yeah, and a lot of that is because of you guys. man. We debuted at number one on iTunes and the sports and recreation category and number two overall. Beating Joe Rogan, Oprah, and a lot of stuff, one of the strongest wrestling debuts maybe in the history of podcasting. Bravo, Mr. Bischoff, Bravo. Well, you've got a great team. I'm happy to be a part of it. I mean, I'm not just saying that to blow smoke. You really do have a great team of people, and that's what it takes. And by the way, I'm hoping we see a shirt pretty soon that says, Oprah.

a killer on it. I like it. I like it. I guess we should shout everybody out. Of course, our man Steve Kaufman is helping us over on YouTube. You can keep up with us on YouTube at 83 Weeks.com. The man behind all the magical graphics is, of course, Mr. Dave Silva, Dave Hancock, helping us with some social media action. We had Justin Vigil and Matt Coon help us with the music. We've got a tremendous support team.

A whole host of folks helped make this show happy. and we appreciate your support. If you haven't already, hit the subscribe button. Be sure to leave us a five-star review. Tell your friends. Of course, last week's episode was all about the creation of the NWO. You can follow us on Twitter. If you haven't already, please do.

That's where you'll get your updates instantly. It's at 83 weeks. Of course, we're over on Facebook, Facebook.com forward slash 83 weeks. I want to thank everybody for their overwhelming support last week. It was the buzz of the internet. It's not possible with, um, I mean, without you guys, it's just really not. And there's rumor and innuendo, as I like to say, and Bruce likes to say that we're not

the only ones who are back and better than ever, isn't that right? I was waiting for the song to play. Really? I'm ready to kick your ass. Are you ready to take your licks today, Mr. Bischoff? I am so ready. Come on, bring it. Let's talk about it, man.

I got to watch this show for the first time since it happened. And it's such an interesting show. of course it goes down on the January 4th, 1999 edition of Nitro, there's just so much meat on the bone. And I want to apologize in advance because I know a lot of people have been looking forward to this and when they see this topic, they probably think we're covering Starcade 98, but we're not. We're going to save those for some other time because this would be a six hour long show.

But I do want to lay a little bit of the groundwork for how the hell we got here. 1998 was such a much bigger year for WCW than 97 and that's even hard for me to swallow because 97 was my favorite year as a wrestling fan but WCW 98 just saw tremendous increases across the board attendance was up 46.7 percent television ratings were up 56% percent pay-view buy rates were up 17.7 percent they're selling out house shows at a clip of 48.8 percent compared to just 40 and a half the prior year. And your average house show gross is $166,190 compared to only 87 grand the prior year. So that's like over 90% of an increase. And critically, I would think that a lot of people would say, Eric, WCW had their best storylines in 96 or 97, but 98 was just

a sensational year for business. Why do you think business was up so much? What do you attribute that too. But I think really, you know, the uptrend in business doesn't necessarily relate, you know, immediately to what you're doing on television. It takes a while to build. It takes a while to kind of build that awareness and get people excited. And you really start realizing the benefits of what you did two years ago this year. It just takes a while to build. Just because you do something great on TV on Monday night doesn't mean the following Monday, all of a sudden house show business is going to go up, you know, 20, 30, 40%. You've got to be consistent. You've got to do it over a period of time. And I think what you're pointing out is, you know, by 96, 97, we started cranking out

some good stuff. And it really starts building its own momentum into 97 and 98. Well, you guys did a lot of stuff in 98 that I think a lot of people have sort of glossed over in hindsight. I know I do, because you did so much, it sort of just all runs together. But that's when you did the stuff with Leno, with Rodman, with Malone, of course, Goldberg became a megastar. But Meltzer and everybody else sort of criticized the product and saying that you guys didn't create any other new stars. And the product had started to, I don't know, maybe turn stale. Is that a fair assessment in hindsight? You know, in 2020 hindsight, I can understand why somebody would take that position. But there

were a lot of things going on in 1998, you know, and while the numbers were really good, while, as you pointed out, there were a lot of things happening behind the scenes that began to take its toll on the property. From a creative perspective, we were starting to get handcuffs put on us. We were jumping through hoops at the corporate level that we had never had to jump through before, meaning with standards and practices and mandates from corporate in terms of what we could do and what we couldn't do. So we were constantly trying to find new ways to do the things that we did in 97 or even in 96 that we really couldn't do anymore from a creative perspective because we

were becoming more sanitized. You know, corporate wanted us to be more PG. And it started out as being kind of a pain in the ass, quite honestly. And it really started out in August of 98 is when it really became, it started earlier than that, but in August of 98, it got so bad that I almost quit the company. I really did. And it got progressively worse so that, you know, by January of 1999, we were in a really, creatively, I was really frustrated. And so was everybody else. Well, I'm glad you brought that up because, and I had this later in the four, format, but I feel like I should just get to it right now. I want to read this excerpt from the death of WCW book. But the sins of 1998 began to take their toll in 1999. Even worse,

1999 was the year that WCW made some of their most horrendous decisions, yet decisions that instead of turning things around is hoped actually sped up the company's decline. Consider this. Just two years earlier, WCW was the number one wrestling company in the entire world. In the 365 days of this year, they managed to lose no less than $15 million, more money than any promotion had ever lost in the history of the business. In a way, it was shockingly similar to the Jim Crockett promotions and the way they had booked themselves into oblivion nearly 10 years earlier. They hired a booker, Dusty Rhodes, in the mid-80s, Kevin Nash in 1998, who put himself and his friends over at the expense of all the other talent. They booked

screw job after screw job, run in after run in, show after show until it drew the infamous wrong kind of heat, the kind that drives fans away. They put all the old stale talent on top and pushed them hard despite the fact that the ratings made it clear that the fans wanted new blood. And all that exciting young international talent that Bischoff had scoured the globe for in 1996 had become so far booked into oblivion that they were pretty much unsalvageable. At least with JCP, the wrestlers worked hard and did their best even as the ship sank. But in WCW, things were so bad by mid-year that virtually everyone, from talent to even office personnel, had mentally given up.

Is that accurate? It sounds accurate based on what you just said. No, it's not accurate. And first of all, you said a lot, you covered a lot of groundnaires for me to say, you know, yes, that's accurate or no, it's not is a broad statement. Let's pick it apart just a little bit. Sure. Who wrote that book?

I think that idiot's name was Alex Marvez. Is that right? I think it's R.D. Reynolds and Brian Alvarez. I can be wrong. Brian Alvarez. Brian Alvarez. First of all, neither one of those clowns ever had any conversations with anybody with intern or broadcasting or WCW that had any knowledge of the financial situation.

They wrote a book based on second, third, fourth hand information or something else that they read off the internet. So I don't know where they got that number of $15 million. And I'm not even going to say it's accurate or not accurate because I don't have the balance sheets from 1998 at my fingertips. But I do know for a fact that neither one of those clowns ever had a conversation with me or anybody else that was anywhere near the nucleus of the operational side of Turner Broadcast. That I know for sure. As a matter, fact, just a side note, that is the only book that I refuse to sign. If somebody used to me with that, no, I'm not kidding you, because it's, there is so much

course shit between the cover, the covers of that book that I refuse to give it any, I refuse to sign it to give it any sort of credibility. Let's continue. Here's what I'm curious about, though. I love the parallel that they brought up, but I know you hate everything about this book. but the parallel between this with dusty sort of running Jim Crockett and Nash sort of booking WCW I mean they're 10 years apart you know the old famous dusty finish and now

we've got the finger poke of doom it just seems so fucking perfect and you don't see the you don't see how there may be parallel no they're too no absolutely not look whatever's name is Brian Alvarez and that other douchebag. They wrote a book, you know, they had perfect 2020 hindsight supported by a bunch of fictional nonsense that a bunch of second and third hand, you know, people fed them. And it's really easy to write a book and sound like you know what the hell you're talking about when you do that. I could write a book about, you know, the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots a couple Super Bowls ago and make myself sound like I could probably be a head coach somewhere after the fact.

It's really easy to do that kind of thing. And that's what pisses me off with guys like that. Here's, let me set it straight because we have the time to do that here. What was going on in WCW at that time? And we're going back to probably early 98, not exactly clear. But when the Time Warner AOL, excuse me, Time Warner Turner merger, started to manifest, meaning it started to becoming a reality. We all knew it was coming.

We all read about it in the paper. You know, we all knew about it. And it didn't really affect business at all. We were still operating as we always had. But by about August of 98, I keep going back to that point because I remember that moment so clearly, because it was a very decisive moment for me. I got called into a meeting, and I've talked about this in my book, I won't spend a lot of time talking about it, but WCW was still rocking. I mean, things, as you just pointed out, from a revenue point of view, things were going great.

We had established our budget or were pretty close to getting finalized and approved for 1999, because we usually did that. You know, we started working on the budget, usually in the spring, had to have it kind of turned in and approved by the middle of the summer. And then by fall, it was finalized, and that was our operating budget for the following year. So right about in the middle of that summer period, I was just about getting ready to go on vacation for a few days. And I got called into a meeting over at Techwood. Now, Techwood, in the Turner Broadcasting Culture, back at that time at least, you know, all, you know, Ted's office was at CNN, WCW, you know, all the major operating, you know, units were all in CNN. But a lot of the core executives and offices were still over at the original TBS facility, which was called TechWIT, over by UGA. I think it was UGA.

I got called to a meeting that I knew nothing about. Nobody had given me a heads up, almost spontaneous. And they said, hey, did you mind coming over to Techwood? Because there's some people here, you know, we'd like to talk about WCW. when this, again, was a part of the manifestation of the Time Warner Turner merger, if you will. Actually, it was an acquisition. It wasn't really a merger. And I said, sure, no problem. You know, I'd hair halfway down to my shoulders. Those were in cowboy boots and jeans. And I think I rode my Harley to work that day. So I wasn't really, you know, didn't have my corporate outfit on.

But I jumped on my bike and I headed over to Techwood. And I got, you know, I walked into the, there was a big conference room. There's like 15, 16 people that I had, half of whom I had never met before. I didn't even know who they were. Very corporate, which was not really the culture at Turner. Turner up at that point, it was a very entrepreneurial, kind of laid-back, relaxed culture. You had your suits. You know, you had your finance guys, you know, would always have their suits on and, you know, the lawyers and all that. But for the most part, you know, when it came to the operational side of all of Turner,

It was fairly relaxed and entrepreneurial, probably much like a tech business would be today. So I walked into this room, and all I saw were dark blue suits, white shirts, red ties, and brown wingtip shoes. I said, geez. Somebody should have given me a heads up. I would have bought a uniform, you know? And I sat down and everybody went around the table and they introduced themselves. And in what seemed like just a matter of minutes, after everybody told me who they were, I'm listening to all these people go around the table to tell me how I should start running WCW.

And I was disoriented at first because are you people kidding me? You know, where have you been for the last two or three years? In fact, where were you six or seven years ago when this shudhole was leaking sewage all over Atlanta? You know, and now that we're making money hand over fists and we've got ratings that are through the roof and we're getting written about in a Wall Street Journal, a bunch of people I've never laid eyes on before are now going to tell me how to run my business. And that's the point where I knew I was in the ship. That's the point where I knew this merger was going to have a bigger impact on me personally, but also WCW than I ever anticipated. And that manifests itself in a lot of different ways. You know, the budget that, you know, we had been working on got slashed, got hacked,

even though we were, we had thunder dumped on our lap. We were, you know, mandated by Ted Turner to expand the business. There was a lot of pressure on us to grow the unit. And all of a sudden, they're gutting our budget. They're telling me how to operate the business. And all of this didn't happen, by the way, in August of 98. But that's when it started. And then it got progressively worse.

Now, the truth in Alvarez's book, and I think it's, you know, I'll call bullshit when I hear it, but I'm also going to point out facts when I hear them too. You know, the truth is, you know, office staff was demoralized. You know, yours truly probably more so than anybody. And it ripples down. It does. Talent was frustrated.

They couldn't understand why we went from, you know, reinventing the industry and going from the sewer, you know, to the big house in what felt like, you know, overnight. and then all of a sudden we're not able to do a lot of the things that we used to do to get us there. It was a very frustrating time, indeed. So I think that portion of Alvarez's book is correct. And I would support that. With the losing the $15 million, that's a far more complicated financial picture than that idiot would be able to reflect accurately in a book. I love that you just went around the block twice to call him an idiot.

great stuff. Um, is it fair to say, is that not good information? No, that insight that you didn't know before? I mean, I'd heard you say the story before, but I did my homework on you. I don't, I mean, I appreciate you sharing it with our listening audience. Absolutely. But I love your, your attitude towards the Navy blue suits and the brown wingtip shoes and the red power tie. I mean, you paint a very vivid picture of what it was. And here's your hippie ass. So, yeah, you know. it was never going to work the uh the line here that he finishes the the uh the paragraph with and wcw things were so bad by mid year that virtually everyone from talent to office

personnel had mentally given up so you just told us sort of the inside into you sort of being i don't know fucking burnt is it fair to say that the talent was as well is it is it the undercard talent who feels like they've been held down is it the top talent who feels like you know we've hit the fucking iceberg. I mean, how are the boys feeling at this point if you had to gauge? I think, look, I think overall from just from, from, from 100 feet looking down, I think everybody was frustrated. And it does roll downhill.

I was frustrated. We were all frustrated. The office was feeling it. Everybody was fatigued. We were producing two, you know, prime time shows, live shows during the week. We didn't have additional resources to do it. everybody was burning up there's so yeah i think that part of it is true um but it nobody gave up that's bullshit you know that's some creative liberty that that douchebag decided to take

that's not true we all worked twice as hard as we worked the year before but it was very frustrating especially when we started the slide especially when we started to lose ground as far as the boys look as long as they got their paychecks they were happy for the most part. They were all going to bitch and moan anyway. If we would have been on top of the mountain and we would have been continuing to have the success that we had in 97 or even, you know, late 96, they'd still be pissing and moan them because they would want more money or they would want more spotlight or they wanted to be in the main event. So, you know, was the talent any happier or less happy? Yeah, probably less happy because again, the general feeling was

stressed out, frustrated, disappointed, and fatigued. Let's run through the ratings in December. Of course, the Monday Night Wars are pretty close here. We know that WCW dominated for 83 weeks, the name of the show here, but that tide had sort of turned a little bit by the end of 98. So let's run through December 98's rating. The seventh saw Raw do a 5.15, Nitro does a 4.2. The next week, on the 14th, Raw is up to a 5.2.

Nitro is still a 4.2. On December 21st, Raw's way down to 4.7, but Nitro just does a 4. Now, December 28, the night after Starcade, Raw does a 4.9, and Nitro does a 4.6. And it is sort of telling here that the WWF is winning the ratings war for both the go-home addition of nitro for Starcade and the night after Starcade. I mean, are you guys really starting to panic here? You can feel it slipping away here. Can you not?

Yeah, panic wouldn't be fair or accurate, but definitely concerned and definitely aware. And I think what would be helpful here, and I didn't have time to do it, I knew we were going to be talking about this, and I just, you know, really started getting my head into this a couple hours ago. But I think what would be a really interesting look, and maybe we'll do this. this on Twitch.t.tv.4 slash 83 weeks. But it would be really interesting to see creatively what was going on in the WWE at that time. Because that's really what the whole story will tell you. As we are becoming more creatively restricted, the WWE is pouring it on. They're going way over

the top with some of their content. Now, I'm not sure about the timeline. I don't, I can't tell you right here on this podcast, but I'm guessing that what was going on, at least in my head, based on what we're talking about here, is the WWE has finally, you know, they got rid of their goofy shit, you know, they got rid of their garbage men and their dentist and their leprechauns and their cartooning bullshit. And they started doing more and more and more of what we were doing in terms of the adult kind of 18 to 34 year old content, reality-based content. And they not only did what we were doing, but they started doing it better than us, because they were were able to go farther than us. So while they're putting their foot on the gas and using

nitrous oxide, we're having to pump the brakes and use lighter fluid from a creative perspective. And I think that's what was really frustrating me and what concerned me the most. The cleaner we got, the more sanitized we became, the less likely it would be that that core audience that we had built at that point would choose us over the WWE when they were putting, you know, like I said, they were putting, you know, pedal to the metal. Yeah, and they really were. I mean, they set company records in 98, but you guys did too. WCW grossed 49.6 million off of its 12 pay-per-view events at 98. The WWF did approximately 54.7 million. Both of these are records for each company.

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when you use the code 80%. 83 weeks at checkout. That's 10% off your first biday order at hellotushy.com with the promo code 83 weeks. That's hellotushy.com and the promo code is 83 weeks. Let's get some shit done. And even though the WWF does more, I'm curious when you're bringing in that kind of cash when WCW never really has before,

does the attitude from the Turner execs change towards wrestling? I mean, it sounds like they almost wanted to control it more based on what you talked about earlier. Are you getting any sort of credit here, or is it really just, okay, now that, thanks for getting us here, Eric, but now that it's a thing, we're going to put our hands on the wheel. Now, and this is where, and it's really hard for me. I know I've talked about this before, and I know you've done your research and you, you know a lot about this stuff, but again, context is king. and what people ask me sometimes, you know, what was the highlight of your time in WCW? It's really hard for me to say because there were many of them, and it's hard just to pick one because they all affected me in different ways.

And it's hard to quantify those feelings, especially, you know, 20 or 25 years later. But there's one moment in time that I think really meant the most to me, and still does to this day. And it's when the head of finance at Turner Broadcasting, not WCW. I'm not talking about Bill Bush, you know, Don Nott's. I'm talking about a guy by the name of Harry Anderson, who was the chief financial officer and on the Turner Broadcasting Board of Directors and executive committee who oversaw all the finances for all of the Turner entities. And I was in a meeting with him, I guess in 90, I'll get the year wrong, so I'm not even saying. The Whatever the first year was that we turned a profit, the summer before that, because that's when we were setting our budgets, I was in a meeting with him and Bill Shaw, who was at that point the executive vice president of WCW, or president, I guess.

And in that meeting, we were going through the budget, and I predicted that we would turn a profit for the very first time since Ted Turner had bought the entity, we were going to turn a profit. And Harry looked at me and laughed. And he wasn't disrespectful, but he couldn't believe that I had the audacity to suggest this entity, which had never turned to profit under anybody else's management, was going to turn a profit, especially under me. He didn't have any confidence in me. But like I said, he wasn't disrespectful, disrespectful. I was. I said, well, Harry, I didn't call him Mr. Anderson. I said, Harry, and I did this right in front of Bill Shaw, who was really my boss.

I said, I'll bet you a dollar that I do, that first dollar of profit, I'm going to deliver it to you next year when we close the books. And he laughed. And I said, when I do, you're going to come to the Christmas party that we're going to have before the end of the year and you're going to get down on your knees and you're going to hand me that first dollar of profit and you're going to apologize for not having confidence in my team. And he laughed and it was a bet.

It was an informal bet. And he was a very good nature guy. He didn't take offense, he didn't, none of that. Fast forward, we were well into profit before, by the beginning of the third quarter that year, everybody knew we were going to make money. And sure enough, we had a company Christmas party, a little Mexican restaurant, not too far from center stage where we used to do the old WCW Saturday night shows, and all of the directors and, you know, as many employees could come were there.

and Harry Anderson got down on one knee and handed us that first dollar of profit. That to me was the highlight of my career. And from that point, all the way up until the time that we're talking about right now, things were awesome. We were getting that kind of corporate high-five. People, executives were proud to associate themselves with WCW. And again, putting this in context, when I first got to WCW, nobody was. Nobody in that entire CNN Center wanted anything to do with WCW. It was an embarrassment.

They wouldn't even talk about it. Nobody wanted to be associated with it. If we were to go across the CNN Center and ask CNN to cover a piece of news for WCW, they would laugh us out of the building. That was the tone and tenor. We were like the red-headed stepchild that nobody wanted at the picnic. And that was everybody except for Ted. Ted was the only one, and because it was dead, people had the toe to the line and go along.

But from that time, when Harry Anderson handed me that first dollar profit to the period of time that we're talking about in August of 98, there were executives I'd never even heard of before that were calling WCW offices asking for tickets so they could take their kids to Nitro or showing up in a pay-per-view or a couple of times asking if we could send a wrestler to go out and play golf with some executives or sales. people. That kind of shit never happened prior to that. But it changed dramatically about August, September of 1998, when executives who had no affinity for WCW whatsoever didn't even really want it in the Time Warner portfolio, that's when we started really feeling the squeeze. Let's circle back to the end of December here, 98. When you see, you know, this go-home edition on Ice Road, Luzterall, and then the night. after Starcade loses to Raw.

I mean, are you feeling the pressure here? Like, man, we've got to come up with something to fix this and fast. You know, it's hard to say what was going through my mind. I know my nature. And, you know, it's funny. Today I was reading through the websites. And I'm not going to mention the new site. But I was looking at one of them.

And it's, you know, Smackdown ratings, you know, down again was the headline. And I looked at it. And, yeah, ratings, you know, this week compared to last week, we're down about 100,000 viewers, which, by the way, is a rounding error of a rounding error. Nielsen is not that fucking accurate, okay? It's a guess at best. And I look at that and I just shook my head and I do what I always do when I see those kind of clickbait headlines is I look back to.

to what was Smackdown, you know, year to date, previous year. And Smackdown was up $100,000 compared to what it was year to date. And that's how networks look at things, by the way. They don't look at things week to week. And to answer your question, neither do why, especially over the holidays. Holidays is a jump ball. I mean, people are going, I mean, holiday parties, people are shopping, people are traveling. So the weeks leading up to, to answer your question, the weeks leading up,

to Starcade and even after the pay-per-view. Sure, I was aware. I was disappointed. No question about it. But to me, in the month of, you know, from Thanksgiving to really the middle of January, I don't give two shits what the ratings say. Because they're going to be all over the map.

Wow. You know, I apologize for cutting out Starcade thinking if I leave it in, it's going to be a six-hour show. But since we're getting a goddamn dissertation with every answer, buckle up, boys and girls. You want detail, brother. That's what I do. about you. Yeah, listen, I'm not mad at it.

Give you the fluff. You know, I like to bust balls. It's what I do. It's sort of my deal. Let's talk about Starcade 98. We're in the main event. We saw the undefeated WCW World Heavyweight champion Goldberg defend the title against Kevin Nash. And of course, Nash earned the title shot by winning the six-man three ring battle royal at World War III, the prior month of November. And I know we're going to discuss both of those shows later in much greater detail. but a lot of people jump to conclusions here and say that the reason all this happened is because Kevin Nash booked himself to win the three-man battle royal and then to be the guy to beat Goldberg at Starcade. I'm curious. I need you to sort of clarify it for us. Was Kevin Nash

the Booker when all of this happened? I mean, he's never come out and said, yes, I was the booker, but it's certainly what everybody else says. I think it's mostly true. You know, I never hand, you know, I never gave him a raise and said, okay, you're the booker now. I never completely threw up my hands and said, okay, I'm just going to let you run with it. You can do whatever you want. That never happened. But I did, you know, I will say this, you know, Kevin, look, Kevin and I, we had issues, man. There were times when he wanted to kill me and vice versa. He would have been able to, I would do. But, you know, there were times when, you know, we were both just so fed up with each other and frustrated with each other. And it got ugly.

you know, any number of times. But when things started really getting tense for me and I needed somebody whose judgment I could trust creatively, Kevin was there. He didn't come to me and say, hey, do you mind? Can I kind of get more involved with booking? Can I have a little bit more voice in the room when it came to creative? I came to him. And I said, look, brother, I need some help.

I'm fighting. You know, we've got a battlefront going on over here with television ratings and creative. And we've got to make sure that thing is just tight. as great as it can be, but I've got another battle going on over here behind me that you guys never see, that I have to fight every single day, and that, again, being, you know, the office and all of the changes that were being forced down our throat as a result of the merger. So I needed help. And it wasn't just because I was tired and I was frustrated and I was fatigued.

I know that's a narrative. What was happening is I went from fighting a battle on one front, which was television and television ratings and paperview. to having to fight two different battles, one on the creative side and one on the business side. And I needed help. And Kevin was there. And I trusted Kevin's judgment. Even if we didn't get along, you know, and even if we battled over shit and he pouted and, you know, threatened and whatever it is, you know, that happened during that period of time, at the end of the day, we came together and there were so many good ideas that he had that I, you know, I looked around

in the room and I said, okay, who can I trust to really help me here? and Kevin was the guy. So let me ask a different way here. Why was Kevin Nash chosen to face Goldberg? Does he sit around one of these booking meetings and say, as Bruce Richard likes to reference, what if, how does this first come up and how is it met with everyone else in the room? I can't speak for everybody else in a room, and I don't think anybody overreacted. And you've got to understand the mindset of the people that worked in creative at that time.

We talked about them, you know, last week. And they were probably the same people at that time. Look, I was surrounded by a bunch of yes men. Right. Some of them were friends. Some of them still are friends. But it doesn't change the fact that nobody really challenged me too much. In fact, nobody really challenged me at all creatively.

Everybody kind of just got along to go along, make sure they got their check in the mail. Talent would challenge me. Don't get me wrong. I'm talking about the guys, you know, writing the shows on a Tuesday. that are going to, you know, air the following Monday, or Wednesday, I should say, to air the following Monday, those guys, that team, the creative team, they didn't really challenge me much. They throw out ideas, don't get me wrong. It's not like they sat there like freaking turn-ups and didn't do anything. But if I had an idea where there was something

that I wanted to do, there weren't too many people that would say, oh, man, it's the dumbest idea I ever heard. When the idea of Kevin, you know, and I don't know whose idea it was, It's impossible for me to tell you, other than a few creative beats that I know for a fact were mine, which I'll take credit for if I need to. But for the most part, 98% of the ideas that you ended up seeing on TV were the result of a collaboration of a bunch of people, including the talent when it came time to do it in the ring. So it's really hard to pinpoint who raised their hand and said, hey, why don't we have Kevin do it? I'm sure it came up. It might have been Kevin. It was probably somebody else.

Kevin was hesitant. Kevin saw what happened when Rick Flair was the booker. And Rick Flair was booking himself. No, it made sense for Rick. He was Rick. He was Rick and Flare. But he was also the Booker and he got a lot of heat for it. It's a bad position to be in. Kevin Sullivan, same thing. Bad position to be in when you're a Booker. Even if you write something that's great and it's for you, you know, you got guys around you looking at you go, why didn't you write something that great for me? That's a tough spot. So I doubt it was Kevin. idea, but when I heard it, I went with it. And if you think about it, step back, you know, forget about all the Dave Meltzer bullshit and Brian Alvarez bullshit and all the 2020 hindsight that people live off of. And just look at the, look at it. You got Bill Goldberg, who we have built as a monster, who has mowed through everybody. Who's he going to be? That would be credible. Kevin was the biggest guy on the roster for credit. He was seven foot. He was 350 pounds. He looked awesome. If anybody on our roster was going to present a believable challenge to Bill Goldberg, who else? I ask you, Conrad, who else if you were booking? Who else

would it have been? How about not baiting him yet? We'd run through everybody there was to run through. How do you keep that character alive? I mean, how do you keep that streak alive? There's nobody else left he's got to beat somebody or get beat by somebody he's got to be a character there's got to be a story you've got to put that baby face at a disadvantage in order to create a story where he's coming back up the ladder again because that's what people want to see they want to see the baby face chase the championship you don't want to see the baby face hold the championship indefinitely unless you're a Hulk Hogan yeah i mean business was so down that's what we were recapping let's talk about beating goldberg another time Kevin Sullivan wrote this

though. He was on the booking committee at that time. Was he not? Yes. He wrote, It was like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. I can tell you the exact night it died. Goldberg getting beat by Kevin Nash. Goldberg, his matches, they looked semi real. We drew a million dollar house on free TV. Forty-three thousand people there. I went to Eric and said, please do not beat him. And he said, people are going to get sick of him winning and they're going to turn it against him. I said, we've got a million dollars out there, and they showed that tape over and over again. We had the golden goose, and we strangled it. Of course, hindsight's

2020, but a lot of people buy into what Kevin Sullivan's saying here. Your response? He's trying to put himself over. That's what wrestlers do, especially aged ones that don't really have anything else going on. Look, I've done it myself. I'm not knocking just Kevin Sullivan. But guys like Kevin Sullivan and so many others, they've told the story so many times that they start believing their own bullshit. Kevin Sullivan never came to me and begged me not to do it or asked me not to do it. Kevin's full of shit. This is just Kevin writing things and saying things to make himself sound smarter and more knowledgeable and and astute than he really was. Kevin Sullivan was happy to get a paycheck. Kevin Sullivan was half messed up. Kevin Sullivan was half messed up.

up three quarters of the time when he showed up to TV. I mean, it's, come on. Dungeon of freaking doom for crying out loud. That's Kevin Sullivan. It took 44 minutes, but you're fucking kicking ass now. Meltzer reported, in the biggest wrestling deal made in this country in recent years, Eric Bischoff put together a deal with NBC to begin airing two-hour primetime wrestling telecast beginning on February 14th with a live show from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas,

and a second show that will be broadcast live head-to-head with the WWF's WrestleMania on March 28th. Now, Dave would lay out that you essentially negotiated this deal over a two-week period and wound up landing spots head-to-head with WWF pay-views on NBC. So that's going to be the February St. Valentine's Day pay-per-view and, of course, the next month against WrestleMania. There's going to be six shows on NBC. The first one on Valentine's Day was going to be called Love Hertz.

And Dave speculates in the observer that securing this deal, likely meant that you would speed up the return of both Hogan and Savage to WCW, who were still huge stars in the mainstream. And there's even rumors that there's going to be crossover appearances from other shows on NBC like Friends, where they would actually appear on these primetime specials. Of course, none of this actually winds up happening because it was essentially the backup plan for NBC if this NBA lockout happened, but it wound up not happening. What can you tell?

Okay, what can you tell us about this deal? we had the deal we had we had the we had we had discussed a six event package if indeed what portion of it is true i apologize for that you off a portion of that is true meaning we had talked about what's what's plan a if this lockout continues excuse me what's plan b if the lockout continues but plan a was we were going to we're going to do that valentine's day show i mean that they had to fill the schedule and if the lockout would have ended, they wouldn't have started back up again until after Valentine's Day. So they committed to have us do a show on Valentine's Day.

And then we were going to kind of take a wait and see attitude or position subsequent to that. What happened, and this would have happened even if the lockout would have continued, is Turner Broadcasting killed the deal. What? Tim Warner killed the deal. I had to deal in my the NBC called me I had become very friendly

with a gentleman by the name of Gary Considine Gary Considine was the executive producer for the Jay Leno show and that's how that all kind of evolved, he came around, he was a good friend and we got to know each other really well and whenever I would go to Los Angeles I'd go over to visit Gary

because we had a lot of other things that come and got to know a lot of the other executives there So when the NBA lockout, lockout happened, I got a phone call from Gary, who was working with the sports people and said, hey, what do you think about doing this? And that was going to be that live love hurts or whatever we're going to call it, event. I said, sure, we can do that. I started putting together a couple different ideas. One of them was to have Dennis Rodman and Carmen Elektra get divorced because everybody else does weddings, you know, wrestling weddings. Right.

I wanted to do a wrestling divorce. Harmon was in for it. Dennis was up for it. NBC loved the hell out of it. And we started working on a little bit of the creative. I pitched the idea to Turner because I had now, by this time, I had to get permission. Had it been a year earlier, they would have found out when I watched it on TV. I wouldn't have had to ask permission to do it. I could have done it. But now, under the new corporate regime, I had to run it up the corporate flagpole. And the brain trust above me decided now that's a. bad idea to have a Turner, Time Warner property on another network. So we don't want you to do that. That's an example of what made me freaking crazy. Well, let's get back to your favorite book, which sooner or later were selling autographed copies of. It's the death of WCW. And he would write, seemingly rejuvenated by the news of the deal, Bischoff came up with a master plan to quote, restore WCW to its former glory. He would revolutionize wrestling just like he'd done in 1996 by, yep, you guessed it,

doing everything he'd done in 1996 all over again. The scene was the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, home of the now legendary Hogan v. Goldberg bout. The date was January 4th, 1999, and as Bischoff had hoped, WCW truly revolutionized the wrestling business on this date. Unfortunately, it wasn't a positive revolution, but a new example of just how quickly a formerly successful wrestling promotion could fail. In hindsight, this show was probably the single most destructive nitro in the history of the company.

Yes, other shows were far worse, but this was the one more than any other that started the ball rolling towards the company's inevitable doom. It's a cliche, but this program was a disaster of epic proportions. Now, we're going to address the actual finger poke shortly enough, but let's briefly touch on this. This book, which you've already said is bullshit. basically insinuates that the decision to make this angle came after you booked the NBC gig. True or false, when did you guys first come up with this finger poke for shit? I can't tell you. I can make some shit up. I can tell you that, but I'm not going to do that, you know, I can tell you that the, obviously the NBC thing was kind of spontaneous. I mean,

It happened as a result of the lockout and the strike. So it's not like we had six months to prepare for that. Those conversations didn't evolve in the fall. They happened very, very quickly. So I would suggest to you that the two weren't really connected. I'm almost 99% sure that that is the case. They're just not connected. They may have looked that way to geniuses like Brian Alvarez.

with this 2020 high sight makes them sound smart but the truth is I would bet everything I own that they weren't really connected let me ask you this did the finger poke idea had it already been laid out

by the time Kevin Nash beat Goldberg at Starcade no okay all right see that's that's going to be fun we're going to get into that in just a minute let's sort of take a right turn for a minute around this same time

it comes out that WCWCW sued Titan for over $3 million for going out of their way to stop high road productions in Canada from releasing its documentary, and in doing so, kept Turner broadcasting in WCW from attempting to acquire the rights to the movie. Now, allegedly, this was even covered in the Hollywood Reporter, and it was saying that Turner was trying to buy the rights and release it as a pay-per-view movie, and then eventually release it as a primetime special on either TBS or TNT. Now, I'm mentioning all of this to you, because the movie we're talking about is of course wrestling with shadows the brett heart documentary what do you remember

about this situation eric i've never heard about you guys suing w w ewe for interfering with the release of the movie and and your plans to push it out what can you tell us about wrestling with shadows and suing w c the w vb the w e over it nothing i mean if there was a lawsuit on behalf of turner broadcasting i had nothing to do with that and and And I'll be, you know, again, I hate doing this because I know people hate hearing this. But so much of this, you know, the way you're positioning this question is allegedly and assuming and as reported by, honestly, I don't, I don't know how true it is. I don't know how accurate it is.

I don't think anybody's trying to lie here or mislead, but I just don't have the facts to be able to respond honestly or accurately. milzer would write about the situation quote there was nothing legally preventing wcdb from hyping the movie on its own but that was a decision made by eric bischoff and i have the announcers or anyone on television acknowledge the movie either before or after because he felt the portrayal of mcmahon in the movie was too close to the television character and therefore he felt the movie would actually help the wf you know that's i mean i don't even understand the question bro so bro did i just say bro you did i can't believe you

did that. I'm going to hold on. Hold on one second. That was me pounding my head on the corner of the table. I don't even, you know, I just don't understand the question. So I decided, I'm going to rephrase this the way I thought I heard it. So Meltzer is suggesting that it was my decision not to hype the movie before or after because the character in the movie, the Vince McMahon character, was too much like who, like Vince or like me? Like Vince McMahon. The idea being, you know, if you promote it, because it does sort of shine a shitty light on the WWF, that it might actually help because Vince McMahon, the character,

Mr. McMahon, is over like Rover here as a super heel and that movie sort of reinforces that he's a heel, and maybe you thought better of that. You're saying bullshit. I'm saying none of this makes any sense to me. Okay. Let's move along. There's no way WCW initiated any lawsuits against anybody, really. We would have, if we had to sue somebody, when Rick Flair and I got into our pissing

contest over his contract, I'm giving you an example. This has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but it's important that people understand and how WCW operated. If there was an issue that I had with talent, like I had with Rick Flair at one point, we've covered it before. WCW didn't sue him. Turner Broadcasting did.

And once Turner Broadcasting initiated a lawsuit or began defending a lawsuit if it was the other way around, I had nothing to do with that. Now, if there was an issue with that particular production, and if I had a reason, but it would have been a really good reason. I would have had to have just cause.

Turner Broadcasting just didn't file lawsuits because of my ego or for marketing reasons. There would have had to have been damages involved. We would have had to have cause in order to file a lawsuit. So that's why none of it really makes any sense to me. And I would love to know more about that lawsuit. I'd love to see some documentation and see what the justification for a lawsuit would have been. But without that, I can't really comment on it. I'd be guessing.

Well, let me get you to comment on some things I don't think you can justify. The December 28th, Nitro from Baltimore, one night after Starcade, where Goldberg, who was undefeated, lost the world title in his first match. And it's a sold-out show. Here we are. We're opening Nitro with a shot of you in the back of the limo, celebrating with the NWO, talking about your win over Rick Clare at Starcade, not about, I don't know, no. Goldberg fucking finally losing. How can you defend this silly shit?

Story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. If you go back and look at a lot of our shows, we didn't open with the hottest thing on the night. We wanted the audience to anticipate that. We saved that. We built for that. It's not, you're not going to put your hottest stuff right up front. There were a lot of times when we would open up a show with a match that really didn't matter. And then we would do the hot open of the show. And then we would come back to the announced table to really set the show up because that's how we hooked the audience.

And by the way, it had been working pretty well up to that point. I wasn't the most important thing. I wasn't trying to put myself over. I was an important part of the story, as was Rick Flair, as we will see or as we would have seen, going forward past that point when Rick Flair took over the company and all of this stuff started, you know, that story started really unfolding. But the fact, I know it's easy for people to go, oh, why would you put yourself in the front of the show? Because I wasn't the most important thing. And we wanted to build anticipation for the story to hook people to stay with the show and see what was going to happen. later on we're going to talk about this Rick flair stuff another time because there's so much

to talk about here but let's briefly touch on this Nitro after Starcade Nash comes out and tries to do got to give me a date got to give me a date December 28 okay Nash comes out and tries to do a baby face interview but the fans aren't going with that he's challenging Goldberg to a rematch on next week's Nitro and says he didn't want to win the title the way he did So let me just hit pause here for a minute. When you have the decision to beat that, to beat Goldberg at Starcade, obviously you have a plan of where you're going,

but maybe you don't know about the finger poke yet. Was the decision made prior to Starcade, okay, we're going to beat Goldberg here. We're going to set up the rematch the following night for a week later. So eight days after Starcade is when the rematch is going to happen. Is that already sort of laid out before the finish comes at Starcade? Yeah, we had a pretty good idea. Look, we knew what we had to do.

We knew we wanted to bring the Wolfpack, the Red NWL, and the Hollywood NWL, our NW Hollywood. We had to bring them back together again. You know, we were really positioning at that point to do our best, to turn over Nitro to NWL, and to turn over Thunder to WCW, headed up by Rick Flair. That was the arc that we were trying to achieve

and bringing everybody together the way that we did on the January 4th show was a part of that process. So, yeah, we knew before December 28th, we knew that Kevin was going to win. We knew that Kevin was going to try to con the audience and swerve everybody to sucker Bill into that match. And we knew what Kevin was going to do with Hogan so that we could get the belt back.

back into NWO Hollywood and bring NWO back together again. So you didn't know prior to beating Goldberg that you were going to do the finger poke, but you knew essentially we're going to do something to get the belt back on Hogan at that point. Yeah, I didn't know if it was a finger poke or what the execution of the swerve would have been. But the story we had pretty much figured out. We knew what the beats were, not the details. This is worth mentioning here. I'm sure we're going to talk about it at another time,

and I'm not going to get into much detail because we're going to save it for an Eddie Guerrero show. But this same weekend is when Eddie Guerrero suffers a horrible accident. It's on New Year's Eve, just a handful of days prior to this show. And Eddie Guerrero is in a bunch of pre-taped skits here with the LWO on this edition on Nitro. I mean, what can you tell us about this wreck?

How, when, here, you know, what did you hear? obviously and I heard from Janie Angle my assistant she was really she she kept me in the loop probably more than anybody and she had more access to me than anybody did uh Janie was the one that told me she got the word first and got it to me right away I didn't have a lot of details when I first heard it I was real concerned about it but I heard shortly I don't know if it was a couple hours later I heard that he was he was live he was going to be okay um and his prognosis for you know being able to come back it was good so it wasn't it didn't stand out of my mind as a very dramatic moment it was for a couple maybe an hour and a half two hours but i got word shortly there after that he was going to be

okay let's get to the show um as we mentioned before january 4th 1999 we're in the georgia in Atlanta. They're going to draw 34,788 paid folks here, a total of 38,809 in the building. The building was actually set up for 46,000. The gate is an incredible $930,735. So close to a million here. I'm sure with merchandise, it was well over. The prior trip to the Georgia Dome was July 6, 1998. They had over 41,000 fans there, a $906,000 house. Of course, that's when Goldberg first became the world champion beating Hulk Hogan. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that match another time, but I've always been curious, why was the Georgia Dome always a nitro and never a pay-per-view? I ask because the rumor is, you really like strutton that ass for all the

Turner execs and sort of bringing them in, since it was a local show to sort of show off, look at what you've built and look at what's on your channel. that's so fucked up it just it says childish bullshit it's not true you know

why was it never a pay-per-view schedule-wise probably had more to do with it than anything the pay-per-views were relatively tightly scheduled there was only so much pay-per-view real estate available and the WWE and WCW

were competing for those prime dates and if the Georgia Dome wasn't available on that date. It's not like we can say, you know, fuck the playoffs. I know you guys, you know, I know the NBA playoffs are going here and the Hawks are playing, but you know what, go play somewhere else because we want to do a pay-per-view here because that'll make Dave Nelson are happy. It's so stupid. We schedule the buildings according to availability and according to a schedule that was laid out a year in advance. If it coincided with a pay-per-view, great. We do it. There was no reason we wouldn't want to do that. We'd get just as much enthusiasm for a pay-per-view in the

the Georgia Dome as we would for a nitro it's that's that's such a it's such a well I mean you say you would but you don't know because you never fucking did it profound bullshit that's what that is there's lots of bullshit going around on this show uh the show opens with footage that really sets up Kevin Nash and the Goldberg rematch and then Tony shivani Larry Zavisco and Mike tonight introduced the program as balloons start to fall to celebrate the beginning of Rick Flair's reign as WCW president. And they tell us that Hulk Hogan is going to be here, well, Hollywood Hogan, and he's going to address the crowd regarding his retirement and make his first appearance

since announcing that retirement on the Tonight Show in November. And he's also going to announce who his running mate is for the presidency. Let's touch on this silly shit here. The fake retirement angle, the presidency angle, please defend this. I can't. uncle yeah i'm not mad at it i mean listen there's not sometimes it's okay to just say fuck that suck i can't help that um flare and his family come into the ring with the horseman the wcw office employees are here to cheer for him he addresses you and then says you can now work for

tony chivani what a rib that is and then he hires back randy anderson for double the salary and then sets up a tag match with Rick and David Flair taking on Kurt and Barry at sold out. I'm sure we're going to talk about this at some point in the future, but how the fuck did David Flair wind up in this spot? Look, David wanted to follow. It would probably be good for you to talk to David, but David was in a power plant. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps.

Rick wanted it as well. It wasn't me. I didn't force it down anybody's throat. they came to me with that idea. I didn't judge whether or not, you know, David Flair was ready or not. I like David. The fact that he was Rick's son had a lot of, you know, storyline potential from my point of view. Keep in mind that when it came to in-ring stuff, I never tried to be the final say.

I relied on people that had a lot more. experienced than I did. Rick being one of them, Arm being another, Kevin Sullivan, Terry Taylor. There are a lot of people whose opinions I valued a lot more than my own when it came to judgments regarding who's ready, who's not ready in the ring. And when they came to me with a David Flair idea, and I'm sure somebody was blowing smoke up Rick's ass at that point and probably talk Rick into it. I looked at it from a storyline point of view. I didn't look at it from a ring ready point of view if that answers your question sure proved it it's my it's on me you know nobody forced me to do it i chose to do it but that's why i chose to do it you also approved having

chris bonois beat horace hogan in about four minutes here with the crippler crossface eric i've always been curious and wanted to ask what's your favorite horace hogan match that one you get me brother i got your prosecuting attorney shit down hey let me ask you this how much weed did horace have to carry for hogan i don't know you have to ask chorus here's the silliest of silly shit here we go the police surround goldberg here on this show and say you're under arrest he of course protests and says it's going to take all of their guns to take him down and then he says something like this to officers Jack that he says he's known for years.

Whatever it is, whoever charged me with whatever it is, everybody in this city knows I do nothing but positive things in this community. I do things for the kids and fallen cops and nobody can take me in for anything I didn't do. Whatever it is, I'm innocent. None of you guys can take me downtown for something I didn't do. I don't like being wrongly accused. I stand for good in this community and no one else can tell me otherwise.

Eric, you had to watch this this week. How fucking painful was this to watch? Really bad. Oh, God, it's awful. You know, and I see this to this day. If I was producing a wrestling show tomorrow, I would go at it from the point of view as less is always more. Leave a little to the imagination.

Show a lot of emotion, but don't talk too much unless you're really, really good at it. And as I'm watching this, I'm thinking, And who in the hell produce this? And why did they just shut that down? I do nothing but good in this town. I save people for fires. I work for fallen soldiers. I walk old ladies across the street.

I mean, the only thing you didn't do was heart transplants in that scene. It's just, it was horrible. It was just horrible. I felt bad. It's awful. I mean, you've got to go watch this. It's the most wrestle crap thing ever. after the commercial, they show Goldberg being taken away in a squad car, and Nash walks

out yelling, what's going on? I have a match with him later. And Hollywood Hogan laughs at Nash and says he is a law and order politician now, brother, and he believes in the guilty doing their time. And as Hogan enters the arena, Elizabeth is standing nearby talking to what looks like a couple of detectives. I assume this was all shot live that night. Yeah. Let's get to the incredible Monday Night Jericho version of Chris Jericho. He has an eight-minute match with Saturn. Eventually, it goes to a DQ, but it's kind of fun because I kind of forgot about this Monday night Jericho with Ralfus and how much I enjoyed him.

Good stuff here amongst all the bad here. Next after that, we see some cameras from WCW that were apparently allowed into the fucking police station where Goldberg has been informed here. This is all on TV, which is just great. mention a disbelief, real tide, that Elizabeth has filed charges against him for quote unquote aggravated stalking. And of course, Goldberg denies the accusation, not even recognizing her name at first. But back at the arena, Liz is telling the detectives that Goldberg has been following her everywhere from the buildings, the arenas, the hotels, even the gyms,

and she says she feels threatened by him. Eric, I want you to sort of set the record straight because as it's been said for years now, the original idea for this angle was to have Liz accused Goldberg of rape, but Bill shut that down. True or false? False. Wow. That's amazing to me that this was the original idea. I would have really rather you said, yeah, we wanted to accuse him of rape, but he got so offended. He went with, I helped Paulin cops. I help old ladies cross the street. I'm an innocent. I'm a do-gooder. Don't you see my cape? But instead, you're

saying no he just fucking freestyleed all that silly shit over stalking no he didn't he didn't freestyle well look let's we'll go back and when we watch this on twitch tv we'll we'll analyze that scene a little bit look i i i agree with you that scene when the cops had him surrounded and they first told him that he was he had to go down to the police station and they had to arrest him that was a fucking horrible scene it was just poorly executed poorly produced poorly acted the cops weren't actors they were real cops jack really was a friend of Bill Goldbergs. That's how we could get all those cops who literally had loaded weapons on their hips. These weren't like fake, you know, gimmick cops from the costume Halloween store.

These were real cops, and they were friends of Bill's. That's why we're able to do it. But they weren't good actors. That's what happens when you don't use good actors. But no excuse. The scenes sucked, whoever produced it, whoever walked him through it, should have been shot. I think a lot of it was probably Bill's nervousness. You know, Bill at that time was super sensitive to his perception in the community. So I think a lot of that insecurity of, you know, people in Atlanta seeing him being arrested probably made him a little nervous. And I think that's why he overcompensated as much as he did. That's my take, knowing Bill. I didn't produce the scene, so I can't tell you for sure. It's worth mentioning. This came out in a court, all the court

records when you guys were sued years later, the actual payroll figures that everybody got. And I've always and fascinated by this, because Goldberg was selling some fucking hell of merch in 1998. And in 1998, he made $16,278. So let's get back to the money here for Goldberg. I'm just fascinated by this. 16,000 and change in merch in 98, 32,000 in change in licensing. 462 was his salary, a total of 511. So let me run through that.

The year he wins the world title becomes a fucking superstar, 511,1.1.1.1.1. $148. His 1999 total, $5,191,191,132. Fucking 10 times the money. And so I say all that to say, as much as I wanted to make fun of Goldberg for all this do-good or bullshit he did in that promo, for $5 million, I'd be super fucking protective to. When I hired Bill Goldberg, I think I hired him at 125 grand.

when we first picked him up, he got bumps along the way, but when his contract expired and he got that big contract, he also got Hulk Hogan's attorney, a gentleman by the name of Henry Holmes. Now, Henry Holmes was Hulk Hogan's attorney. Henry Holmes didn't represent any, I think he may have represented Randy Savage, and that was because Hulk wanted to help Randy out. So other than Randy and Hulk, at that point when you're giving away Hulk's, or excuse me, Bill Goldberg's merchandise and contract amounts, Bill didn't have Henry Holmes. But when the time was up, when Bill knew he was going to negotiate a big contract and Hulk knew that Bill was going to get a big contract, Hulk went to Bill because they were close.

They were pretty good friends. It's, you know, Bill looked up to Hulk and kind of leaned on him for advice because Bill was very green and he needed somebody to kind of smarten him up, if you will. So he leaned on Hulk a lot and Hulk kind of took him under his wing and introduced him to Henry Holmes. So now, and I don't know how Barry Bloom factored into that. I'm not sure who brought Barry Bloom into the equation, but all of a sudden I got this guy who's making about a half a million dollars a year. he's our world champion things are going great i wake up one morning and find out that he's represented by henry holmes who by the way also represented guys like george foreman and other really big chris everett and you know some pretty big names barbara stricana at one point um the bay watch chick

whoever she was i can't remember her name when she was hot um henry was a pretty high power attorney and i had dealt with him with hulk and he was miserable so when i woke up one day and found out that Bill Goldberg is now being represented by both Barry Bloom and Henry Holmes, I knew that shit was going to get bad for me really, really quick. It got brutal. We were at that point now, I think wherever it was in 1998 when his contract came up, and now Bill is playing hardball. He went from, golly, gee, Eric, it's so good.

I'm so glad to be here, kind of like the guy that, you know, helped old ladies across the streets when he was talking to the cops. he was so easy to get along with so grateful for the opportunity and now all of a sudden he's a till of the fucking hunt it was brutal and we came close a couple different times i'm going to tell you one really quick story because it was funny as hell i knew henry because i had to go through a couple battles with henry when he came to hulk's contract i didn't have to fight too hard for randy or with randy but with hulks deals it was it was always a gride and i developed this kind of love-hate relationship with Henry. We respected each other, but when it came to fight, I was clearly outdubbed, to be honest about it. So now we're fighting back and forth. We're pissing all over each other, just going back to forth for a period of a couple weeks, maybe even a month and a half or two months. So finally, everybody agrees we're going to have a sit down. Henry Holmes and I are going to meet somewhere in Beverly Hills, and we're going to try to

come to an agreement on Bill Goldberg's contract. He was incredibly important to Turner Broadcasting at that point, and WCW, obviously in the position we were in, we could not afford to lose a guy that we'd spent so much time building, and from a storyline point of view, he had me over the barrel. There's no question about that. And everybody knew. Harvey Schiller knew, everybody knew we were going to pay dearly because we hadn't seen it coming. We didn't do a great job, you know, seeing this freight train coming as a character, and we didn't plan the head. So we knew it. Long story short, I get to Los Angeles and, you know, Henry wanted to meet one place. I wanted to meet another place. So I said, look, Henry, I'm represented by CAA.

CAA is one of the biggest talent agencies in the world. I said, why don't I meet you there? Neutral ground. I don't want to meet in a restaurant. I certainly don't want to meet in a bar. Let's all meet at CAA, you and Barry and whoever else you're going to bring. I'll be there. I'll have an attorney or two there. And we'll just hash this up. So I get to CAA early, and I tell my agent, I said, look, because I know Henry Holmes at this point, the first thing Henry's going to do when he walks into the room, and I told everybody in the room, so the first thing Henry's going to do is he's going to tell you the George Foreman Grill story and how much money he made selling the George Foreman Grill, because he brags about that to anybody that will listen to him. So that's the first thing he'll do. And then I told my agent, I said, look, I want you to find every interest. in CAA, that's not doing something really important. When Henry Holmes walks in this room, I want to see, I want him to see a table on my side of the table lined up with what looks like 25 or 30 agents.

I want to outgun him, outman him, I want to try to at least take him off his game a little bit. So it was one of these really long conference rooms. It was like 40-foot-long table, and I had 20 feet of it was nothing but guys in suits that look like really powerful agents, really interns and accountants and people that had nothing to do with the business. Henry walks in, you know, and he's all of about five-foot-five, and he walks in this room and he sees all of these agents sitting on both sides of me. He sits down right in front of me. We start talking. It's all niceties. Everybody introduces himself.

And Henry says, you know, last time I was in CAA, I was here negotiating the George Foreman Grow, something along those lines. And the whole. room busted out laughing. Henry got pissed off, got up, and left. And I had to go meet him in an Italian restaurant, Beverly Hills down the street because I embarrassed him so bad. It was funny to me, Conrad, I could tell you're not sharp. So let's move on. No, I like it. I'm just, I'm just sort of shocked at what a fucking dickhead you are. And we're going to get along great. You have no idea. You never met Henry Holmes, have you? You know, something Eric Bischoff was never really known for back in the day saving money he was all a t m eric just giving stevie ray an

eight hundred thousand dollar contract given master p millions of dollars hope his bodyguard learned how to wrestle you know the story well some of its rumor in innuendo but it's no rumor in innuendo that you've probably signed up for some subscriptions that you've constantly forgotten about i know i had i didn't think i had i usually prided myself of being on top of this sort of thing But at the start of the pandemic, my wife and I both signed up for the same streaming service, but we watched television together. I paid for that for over a year until Rocket Money told me, hey, you got two of these accounts.

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where Goldberg is still handcuffed. I was trying to get you off of that. was what I was trying to do. I was hoping you would have gotten all about it by now. No, I mean, you did have me in a, in a trance there, but I woke up. I thought we were doing the J.J. Dillon podcast for a minute, but I'm still here. You're a dick. An officer explains that Liz has claimed that he's stalking her at these various locations, that he's at the same arenas as her, and he's at the same hotels as her,

and he's even at the same gym as her. and of course Goldberg says I'm at the same arena because we're both at work I'm at the same hotel because the company books us all together and I'm at the gym I'm always at the gym she's at because she comes to a gym I own so because I own it I'm there that keep in mind WCW's promised the biggest possible main event with a rematch of their biggest show of the year Nash and Goldberg and now it's seemingly off O'Kerland, meanwhile, interviews Kevin Nash, who says as far as he's concerned, at Starcade, Goldberg got screwed, and Nash calls Liz's charges, quote-unquote, trumped up. He said he knows that Hogan's behind it, and he asked that the president of WCW, Rick Flair, allow Hogan to get in the ring with him tonight. He knows that Hogan, despite his retirement, is still under contract, and Natch has had eight

days to review the contract so he knows he can make it happen. Blair walks out and agrees with the understanding that after he beat Togan, he's got to take on Goldberg tonight in the main event. And they replay this Nash Goldberg video package. So we've got our matches set. We're going to have Hogan and Nash and then we're going to have Nash and Goldberg. We see another detective ask Liz to repeat the details of the incident and she protests. I'm the victim here. Do you understand that? Now, I've always been curious about the decision to go with Liz here, because Liz has been familiar with wrestling fans at this point for more than 15 years. And in all that time, we never really saw her talk or act as much

as we did on this night. Was she nervous about doing it? Who had confidence she could pull it off? Why was Liz the right lady for this role? I had 100% confidence in Liz. And you're right, I did look at this episode prior to the show. And I was so, I was so impressed with her performance. If you compare her, forget about whether you like the storyline or whatever, you know, if you just look at the performance and judge it by itself, she did a phenomenal job. She was so believable, and she was acting. That's not just, you know, a bullet point promo in the ring. When I say you next week, I'm going to kick your ass right here in a nitrogen, I'm going to take your belt.

That's easy shit to do. But to be able to tell a story and to do it and bring emotion and appear that you're really troubled by all of this. and you're in on the con, I thought she did a phenomenal job, number one. Number two, I had a thousand percent of confidence in her because we had done a couple things with Liz prior to this because I had never really seen her do anything from a speaking role point of point of view. And prior to this, we had done a couple of things with her and Randy, some vignettes, and I saw her perform in those.

and I knew that if we could just get her a little bit comfortable, and we gave her more and more and more, you know, as time went on. But I have a thousand percent confidence in her. And I will say after seeing that scene, you know, tonight getting ready for the show, I thought she did a phenomenal job. Okerlund, of course, introduces Hulk Hogan, and he's going to be out for a promo. And he calls Hogan the most popular wrestler of all time, but the fans are booing him here.

And he's supposed to be here to announce his retirement and his, running made for the presidency. That's right. Instead, he calls Goldberg a sexual deviant and said that Goldberg's actions make him sick to his stomach. And then he talks about Nash and says that Nash has been huffing and puffing and he owes the fans one last retirement match. And after he beats Nash and retires with the world title, he says, you can call me Hollywood

the big bad wolf. And he refers to Nash as a spoon in this promo too. I'm always wanted to talk about this. and I'm sure it's going to be a theme through our shows. I have forever admitted that I am a wrestling fan because of Hulk Hogan. I think he was the best baby face ever. I think he was the best heel ever. But man, he sure does get a lot of criticism,

and I think a lot of it is with cause for always finding himself in an advantageous position politically. Is that the case in him inserting himself into this night? Was the decision influenced at all do you think by the NBC gig, Was it Nash's idea to get the belt to Hogan? What sort of led to, okay, we're getting it back to Hogan? You sort of laid out that we knew we were going to get the belt to Hogan, but we didn't say really why. No, we did say why.

You just didn't pick up on it. We wanted to bring the original NWO back together again. If you remember, if you go back and look at the shows preceding this for a couple weeks or a couple months, there was heat between the Wolfpack, the red and black and the black and white Hollywood Hogan. NWO. This was an attempt to bring the original NWO back together again so we could set up the NWO versus WCW-CW-Nitro Thunderfute. That was the purpose for bringing the Hogan back together again with Nash and with Scott Hall using Elizabeth. All of that was a was a part of that plan creatively. I guess my question and I did a poor job framing it there for certain is was that how

Conrad one, Eric won. Was that Hogan's pitch, or is that something? I mean, does Hogan say, brother, we just need to do what we did back in 906, man. We let the territory on fire. So, I'm going to refrain from describing how I feel about that. That is so typical with, that's such typical thinking for people who weren't there who just want to be negative, who just want to, who don't like Hulk Hogan and everything they see that may not make sense to them or even if it makes sense they just don't like it, they're going to put it on Hogan's politics. It's bullshit. It didn't have anything to do with the NBC deal. That's a figment of some idiot's imagination that's trying to make themselves sound smarter than they really are, or at least just to have a conversation about something they really don't know anything about and we're part of. But they had nothing to do with it. People are connecting dots that don't exist. It's bizarre to me. So it was Nash's idea to just take the belt off him and put it on

Hogan. Hogan wasn't involved. He's sitting at home thinking about how he wants his vice president to be. When you guys ring him up and say, we need you at TV, you're going to beat Nash for the title. It doesn't work that way. We were all involved in the creative. I was involved in the creative. Kevin Sullivan was involved in the creative. There were a team of people, just like there are right now in WWE. Sure. There was a bunch of people involved in creative. I had the final site, even though Kevin was probably the driving force and probably tried to harness as much of the creative as we possibly could so that we could all sit down when it got close to being finalized to present to me. But at the end of the day, it was my decision.

And it was still my direction in terms of let's bring the NWO back together again, because the overarching theme needed to be NWO takes nitro, WC, WCWNR, Claire, take thunder that was the mission and that was the creative that everybody not just me not just kevin not hulk for politics had nothing to do with nbc that's just a bunch of marks creating dots that don't fucking exist to make themselves so smart okay dope all right let's talk about one of the most famous moments for this shit up conrad you wanted to get me going no you did i mean listen every now and again you totally redeem yourself and remind people they're not indeed listening to JJ. So I know we're up past your bedtime, but we'll try to power through

here. This takes us to one of the most infamous moments in the history of the Monday night wars. And a lot of people argue maybe the turning point. Tony says fans as Hollywood Hogan walks away and you look at this 40,000 plus on hand, if you're even thinking about changing the channel to our competition, fans do not, because we understand that Mick Foley, who wrestled here once as Cactus Jack, is going to win their world title. Huh, that's going to put some butts in the seats. And as soon as Tony said that, about 600,000 people changed the channel, just so they can see the title change.

Now, Tony says in years since, you fed him the line, obviously hindsight's 20-20, but can you defend this? Nope. Okay. I did it. It was my judgment. And I'm not trying to defend it. I'll explain it.

Sure. But in the explanation, I'm not trying to defend it. I want to make that really clear. I get it. My modus operandi, operandi, at that time, or prior to that, I should say, what got Nitro on the map, what got us to the point where we were beating WWE and we'd gone from where we were to where we were, where we were, where we started to, what we had become in 97 and 98, was the fact that I did stupid shit like that, from giving away finishes to jump starting the show a couple

minutes early, just doing things that people never expected me to do that they would talk about the next day. Like, oh, my God, you believe he did that. That tactic worked more often than it didn't. Unfortunately, this time, it really didn't in a big way. But that was that was the rationale behind it, but obviously it didn't work. And I can't defend it. It was a poor choice. So you regret that one? I don't regret anything, man. It's so easy to to look back and say, oh, if I wouldn't have done this or if I would have done that. But again, that's hindsight. Right. None of us have that when we're in the middle of doing it. You know, the people that criticize this kind of stuff. And I get it. It's okay. You know, we're making money right now.

We're having fun, you know, looking back and critiquing and you're busting my balls. And I'm I'm up for it. I'm up for the challenge. I enjoy it too. But for me, and I know I say this a lot, context is king. If you're in the middle of that fight, you're in the middle of that war, you're going to make choices. You're going to make decisions creatively and business-wise. And anybody that's ever said, you know, I've never made a bad creative choice or I've never made a bad tactical choice, has never been paid to do it for a living. You know, sometimes you're right. Sometimes you're wrong. And this was a perfect example. But I never regret making mistakes like this. I learn from it. And by the way, I see Mick Foley on a regular basis and I do some things in the ring with Mick, you know, at independent shows. And every time I do, he uses that as the good guy, bad guy premise for him and I. Every time I see him, he tells that story over and over again. So if nothing else, I've given a gift that Mick Foley will cherish for the rest of his fricking life. Well, Mick was pretty upset when he heard Tony say it.

He thought they were friends and it upset him to the point that he even called Tony and said that it sickened him to hear him say that. And when they finally did talk, Tony blamed you. Did you ever have a conversation with Tony about that call with Mick? I mean, I know in your sense you've talked to Mick, but what was your conversation like with Tony after he said, so Fully called? I wasn't hot. I can remember.

You know, Tony would have a better recollection of it that I would because to me it wasn't a big deal. To me it was just business, just like giving away the finishers and jumping the finishes and jumping the shows. I just didn't register on my emotional scale in one way, shape, or form.

And I didn't consider Mick. You know, I had worked with Mick in WCW. I knew Mick. um i you know i mick decided to leave wcd because i didn't want him to do all the crazy shit that mick wanted to do to get himself over so when mick left wcdb and i didn't want him to go i just didn't want him throwing himself off freaking balconies either because of the liability you know i mean seriously it's laughable in a way but that's what he was into he felt like in order to get his character over he had to do the most bizarre shit anybody

he'd ever seen and you know he had lost an ear in the rain for crying out loud he'd done some damage to himself when i was legitimately concerned but once he made the move to wwee it's not like i had a you know any kind of relationship with him so yeah uh i heard about it i knew it you know i found out later it upset nick and knowing mick now like i do i really can understand why it upset him because he's a very sensitive guy especially you know he thought it was tony's idea. I could really understand it, knowing Mick more now than I did then. But I wasn't mad at Tony. After Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell do a promo, brings Conan out, eventually Conan gets a win by DQ, and Chivani again reiterates that Mick Foley is going to win the

WWF title on a pre-tape show. And he acts disgusted that somebody like Foley would hold a world title. And it almost feels like, especially when I watch the back this week, you're almost begging your audience to go watch Raw. I mean, you've sort of promised you're going to deliver Goldberg Nash and now you're saying, hey, that's not happening because he's in custody. However, there is a title change on

the other channel. It feels like this idea in hindsight really sucked a dick. Yep. I love that you just own it. That's my favorite thing. You know, what people ask the entire time we've been promoting this show,

Man, do you think you guys are going to be able to do this? And all I can think about was the very first time we did something like this on Flair's podcast, Woo Nation. And you were my favorite guest because you let me pick your brain for two hours. And I'd give you this shit. And you just say, yeah, that sucks. I wish I had that one over again. So I'm having fun with this.

At least you're roll with the punches with me. I may be, I may need to drink a fifth of whiskey when it's over, but I'm happy to roll with the punches with you now. So back at the police station, Liz is changing. her story multiple times, and finally, after being threatened with perjury, she admits she made everything up. This is directly from the book, Death of WCW. So the race was on. Could Goldberg make it to the Georgia Dome in time for his main event? The unintentional comedy here was that earlier in the show, it had been revealed that the police station was directly across the street

from the arena. Goldberg was somehow unable to get back in time, even though he had 30 minutes to walk several dozen feet. Maybe the cross light brought, the crosswalk light was broken. Buffer introduces both of the guys here, and this is quite the intro man. Huge, tremendous pyro display,

long, detailed intros by Buffer, Hogan's in street clothes, and Kevin Nash sort of mocks him by tearing the shirt off like Hogan used to. I guess we should set the stage. Hogan doesn't come out along. It comes out with Scott Steiner.

And then Kevin Nash comes out alone. incredible pyro display and he sort of throws his arms back to the entrance ramp and we see Scott Hall is back and this time he's wearing a Wolfpack t-shirt instead of the black and white that we've been accustomed to and Hogan in the ring is shocked by this and then the bell rang about a minute into the match Tony Chivani starts yelling this is what World Championship Wrestling is all about this is directly from the book truer words have perhaps never been spoken Hogan touched Nash in the chest with one finger, and Nash took this enormous bump like he'd been hit with a cannonball.

On the bright side, it's probably the biggest bump Nash would take all year. Hogan covered him and won the belt. Afterwards, Hogan and Nash hugged, revealing that it had been a setup all along. Goldberg finally arrived and laid waste to everyone in the ring until being attacked by his newest foal, the old, immobile, washed up Lex Lugar. fans had paid a record $930,735 to see this show and they were outraged by what transpired and that would be a strong understatement well that's the end of course they're going to handcuff Goldberg to the ropes hall's going to zap him they're going to spray paint him

they go off the air and raw does a 5.5 nitro does a 5 a 5 a taped raw beat a live world title change at the Georgia Dome, and Nash has come out and said that it's one of those things that got everybody. He says the smarts hated it because most every one of them were just bending over because I told them, no, the dollar bill's a little further, and then I stuck my whole foot up their ass and took their balls in with it. And he says this was really done just to set up the new NWO, set up a new line of heels for Goldberg to run through, and eventually have Goldberg regain the world title, but of course, none of that happened because Goldberg messed around and got himself hurt. Your turn, Eric.

Talk about me going JJ Dillon for crying out loud. I almost had to have my wife bring me breakfast. I didn't know when you were going to end that. Let's, I mean, you covered a lot of ground. Let's, I'm trying to remember it all. I'm going to have to start taking notes when we go through this. First of all, when I look back at that, and look, I knew it. It's a hot topic. Figure of Pocodum is almost a running joke when you talk to wrestling fans. But if you look at that show and you forget all the urban narrative and all of the supposed facts that everybody's using surrounding that and using this show to predict, you know, was the beginning of the end for for WCW, which it had nothing to do with why WCWCW came to an end.

Nothing at all to do, really. But let's just break down the scene as Brian Alvarez laid it out and you repeated in so much detail. Number one, it was, as I've said now a couple times on the show, that entire creative was designed to bring the NWO back together again and to fuck or get heat on Bill Goldberg. to fire him back up again so he had somebody to chase because since the beginning of freaking time that has been the most reliable formula the baby face who's gotten heat on him chasing the heels kind of always works for the most part now if you look at that show like i did thanks to you when was the last time brian alvarez or you or anybody else saw as much heat

it from the audience when we swerved them and they realized that Hulk and Hall and Nash were all in on it. There was garbage filling that ring and I know the really smart marks out there we're going to go, oh yeah, but that's go home heat. Well, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. None of them know the difference between go home heat or very few of them and real heat. That was real heat. At first they were shocked because they were shocked because we fooled them.

We swerved them. That angle was executed very, very well from Liz, the setup, including the bad acting by Bill in the front where he got arrested, all of that, I thought, for the most part, was executed very, very well. Now, the little shot in the dig about, well, Bill, you know, we said early on that the police department was right across the street from the arena, but if you go back and look at that scene, guess what? We put him in a cop car and drove him away. So we established that there was some distance between the police department and the building. Otherwise, they would have walked them to the police department. And then that bitch or that nitpicking shit probably would make sense to me. But it doesn't.

He had to get back to the arena. We established with a shot intentionally that he had to be placed in a police car and driven to that location. So I don't think anybody watching it that didn't have the keen creation. sense and intuitive directorial skill of a Brian Alvarez, really shit on that. I think that's just another opportunity for somebody to sound smarter than

they are. Overall, I thought that angle was executed very well from an in-ring perspective. Overall, from a creative point of view, it took us where we needed to be. And people can laugh about it. They can make fun of it. They can shoot holes in it. Whatever they want to do.

If I had to do that whole thing all over again... Oh, don't say this don't say this don't say what are you about to say you would fucking do this over again the same way yeah i would yes i would man thought you were a smart guy i am a smart guy but if you were in that situation if you were faced with the same things that we were faced with if you had the same creative choices that we had available to us and you had the same mandate that we had creatively and business-wise. I'd like to see what somebody else would have come up with. Look, television, Nitro, were not pay-per-views. It wasn't, television was used as a, is a chapter

one, chapter two, chapter three, pay it off in chapter four. This was the very first show of the year. This is the very first show coming out of a starcade. Second, it was chapter two in a four-chapter book. It wasn't designed to be a big blow-off. and it said everybody home happy like you would at a pay-per-view. That wasn't what it was for. Do you think that this hurt the credibility of the title? Probably. You know, there's other instances we're going to get to through the course of these shows that, you know,

bring that credibility into question. But to me, this is the first time. It's like, oh, nobody cares about this fucking thing at all. That's not true. The title, and look, here's where, you know, want to be smart guys, you know, want to be bookers, you know, want to be experts can talk about the title being. How many times have we heard that? How many times have we seen it in WWE?

How many times have we seen it in WCW? The title gets hurt when guys walk to the ring dragging the title on the floor. How many times have we seen that? The title gets hurt any number of ways that we've seen a multitude of times in WWE and WCW. The title gets hurt when you have too many of the damn things. Christ, you need a computer and an assistant to keep track of the number of titles right now in WWE. There's always something that we can point to that says, oh, that devalued the title because that makes you sound really smart, like you know something about the business and have an intuition that the average person. it doesn't have. But I got to tell you, every time somebody says something like that,

you can build a story and create a situation where the title means everything. The title means everything based on the story and the stakes and the investment in the characters you put into it. That's what makes the title. Let me ask you this, and I'm not trying to be Jim Cornett on you. But wouldn't it have made more sense in terms of quote unquote protecting the business and you still would have gotten your angle across if Nash just would have laid down. down for Hogan, much like Jared did, a bash at the beach.

And suck, too. Oh, no, I agree it sucks, but here's what I'm saying. When he touches him with the finger and he sells it like he died, is that not making a mockery of fucking professional wrestling? No, he's making a mockery of the audience. That's what that scene was.

That's where guys like, whoever, Cornette, you name them. If that made a mockery of the business, I want to talk to the guy with a fucking tennis racket, running around throwing baby dust in people's face, tell me about mocking the business oh i mean how believable is that shit

fuck yeah come on brother i don't know what to say to that i i didn't i don't know what to say to that i i didn't expect that you got me uh speechless here here's my thing i don't understand how you can really defend nash taking a big bump like this not sort of insulting the intelligence of the audience i know you're saying he's doing it to get heat with them and to mock the audience, I get that. But isn't that sort of like saying, can you guys really believe this silly shit? Look at this. I'm flopping around from a fucking, I mean, I guess, let me fast forward.

Let me switch gears here. Where are you with the dick flip? With the what? Joey Ryan does the dick flip on the indies. You're familiar with this. Yeah, I am. I just, I didn't, I thought, I thought we were talking about Nitro. It's January 4th,

1999. I'm sorry. Yeah, you were doing a different kind of dick flip back then, but I'm talking about Joey Ryan present day does a dick clip. Are you for it? It's not my cup of tea. But here's a difference. I understand it. It's a comedy spot on an indie show. By the way, I wasn't for Katie Vic either. There's a lot of things that we see in wrestling that are designed to get a laugh or not to be taken seriously. You know, The Clown wasn't necessarily one of my most, you know, memorable protective

business moments either. There's a lot of, there's so many things. It's so easy to pick on one thing that you want to use to justify a perspective that you want everybody to think, you know, strengthens their perception of you as a knowledgeable person. You can pick a million things. And I saw a lot of shit there that didn't make any sense. that didn't protect the business.

Isn't that sort of a cop out, though, to be like, yeah, but there's a lot of bad stuff. This is just another one, but I'm going to defend it. Well, why not make good shit? What's wrong with arguing for good shit instead of defending bad shit? There's nothing wrong with that. But I just don't agree, despite the urban narrative 20 years later, that that story and the execution of it within the context of what we were trying to achieve. And by the way, the heat that it created, the real heat that it created,

for the NWO was as horrible as everybody likes to think it. Well, let me ask this. There's an old Dusty Rhodes phrase that I've heard, where was the money? Where was the money in this? It didn't, business didn't go up. Business went down and yet you still defend it. Yeah, I will because the reason that business didn't go up had nothing to do with this storyline, despite the fact that that's what guys like Brian Alvarez and Dave Meltzer

and everybody else that you get your information from thought at the time. The reason the business didn't go up is because Time Warner, AOL executives, Time Warner primarily at that time, wanted a family-friendly, PG-rated show why we were watching, you know, people giving birth to hands and all, you know, Steve Coat, Stokel, Steve Austin, flipping people off chugging the beer and a ring, doing all of the adult edgy shit that we used to do, they were turning up the gas on that content that appealed to the audience that we used to. to have what we were trying to be sanitized for television. That's the reason WCW went down the tubes, not because of this freaking angle. It's so juvenile. Honestly, it really is. Still pisses me off. Can you tell?

Well, I mean, business went down because some dumbass told 600,000 people to change the channel because he was so caught up and poking the bear and beating the other guy and sort of poking fun at what they, what shortcomings their program had. was focused on that instead of the inconsistent bullshit he was putting on the screen here. That's my opinion, and it's actually not my opinion. It's a fact. 600,000 people change the fucking channel because you swerved them by saying, we're going to give you Goldberg and Nash.

No, fuck that. We're not doing that. But hey, there's a title change on the other channel. And everybody left and you're like, it was fine. Business was bad because we couldn't have old ladies give birth to a hand, which hadn't even happened here yet. It happened in 2000. Well, Mike Tyson had happened, everything, you know what I'm talking about.

You can pick it apart, and you're right, but I did say earlier on when you asked me to defend that shit, you know, as far as the McFoley and, hey, there's something going on over there. There's going to be title change, bads. I told you, can't defend it. It was a choice. It was a tactic that had worked previously. It didn't work this time. My bad.

Not trying to defend that. Well, putting words in my mouth. Let's talk about the silly shit that, that national. tries to use as an excuse. And for the record, Nash is the most charming intellectual dude in the history of wrestling who can convince you that anything's a good idea. So I get why he was in this spot and how everybody put it in there. I mean, Nash is a hell of a salesman. I'm co-signing. However, he says, well, the idea was we're going to make Goldberg run through all of us, but that didn't happen because he hurt himself. Well, that fucking

injury happened in December of this year. So that narrative is off base. Hulk Hogan even goes back and says, despite what you're saying here, this angle, the finger poke of doom, this is the beginning of the demise. I mean, you know why Hulk says that? Because that's the narrative. And that's kind of the pattern there. It's really easy to jump on that bandwagon. And so, man, that was the beginning of the end.

I had nothing to do with that. That wasn't me. Man, they wanted me to do that. It's the Kevin Sullivan disease. You know, it's really easy when you're trying to make yourself. look good or when you want other people to take the heat for something to distance yourself from it i can't justify what he did what hulk did or didn't say or what kevin did or didn't say because i wasn't there i didn't hear it all i'm telling you is nobody that was in that ring

and that particular night said me eric i don't think this is a good idea that's that's my next question when everybody comes back through the curtain is everybody all high fives everybody thinks hey man we did it this was great i believe they did because of the heat that it got that's the thing you know you can break this thing down you can talk about it with 20 20 hindsight 20 years later and you could be a brilliant you know commentator on this particular subject 20 years later but if you go back and you look at that scene and you put yourself in that moment and you look at the heat that n w got scott paul you know Kevin um when they when they had him handcuffed to the ring, and I was doing the play-by-play and the sound effects of the

spray paint can and the electric, you know, cattle prod and all that. That ring was filling up with garbage. That was real heat, regardless of what, you know, want to be writers say, that was real heat. And anytime you can get real heat, which is so rare, I'd like anybody to go back in the last 15 years, and give me an example of real heat that we've seen. You have it. You see Pavlov's dog heat. You see heat that, oh, okay, well, that was what was supposed to happen. That was interesting. The wrestling was really good, and that's part of a story. But when was the last time you saw as much heat in the last 15 years as you saw in the last 60 seconds of that match? Death of WCW here again. Nitro had settled into a pattern of finishing a point or so

behind Raw every week. As you can imagine, Bischoff was not pleased and decided that changes needed to be made and fast. Unfortunately, these changes had nothing to do with fixing the atrocious shows the company was presenting. No, a completely different plan was in the works. The time was right, he believed, to beat Goldberg. Actually, that had been the plan for a long time. Hogan would drop the strap to Goldberg at the Georgia Dome and then he'd win it back at Starcade. But somewhere along the way, there was a change in plan. Perhaps you're thinking the change in plans was for Hogan not to beat Goldberg after all. Perhaps you'd be thinking that Goldberg was such a good ratings draw, a house show draw,

and merchandise seller that it would have been foolish to take the belt from him and put it back on Hogan, whose drawing power had waned over the past several months, but you'd be wrong. The change of plans was to have Goldberg drop the title to a horrible wrestler, not named Hogan, but to a horrible wrestler named Kevin Nash. Nash had just been named the head booker for the promotion, and once this happened, everything backstage went into disarray. It went into disarray for fake reasons, however, not real reasons.

Confused? So he runs through the rest of the narrative here that we've already presented, but he does address the rumor and innuendo, and that's what I wanted to get to here, that apparently there was a gentleman's agreement of sorts that when Hogan dropped the belt to Goldberg at Georgia Dome, they're going to have a rematch where Hogan gets the win back at Starcate. Was that the original plan?

Does he see how he knows that? Where did he get the, where, what does that information come from? Thin air. I'll say. So that was never discussed. No. Okay. Bullshit.

Here's what he writes. Basically Nash, Hogan, and Bischoff came up with a scenario to work all the boys. No, not to work the fans in an effort to make money, but to work the boys in, well, an effort to make them not so miserable. You see, pretty much everyone on the undercard hated Hogan. they saw a guy who was past his prime and needed to step aside to make room for the new stars. Nash, however, was such a great politician that everyone liked him. In fact, no matter what he did, you'd be hard-pressed to find a person backstage.

You didn't think he was a really cool guy. So the plan was to give Nash the booking position, and Hogan, quote-unquote, outraged with his loss of power, would pretend to quit. He'd disappear for a while. Nash would make everyone happy and morale would improve. Of course, the long-term plan was to eventually. bring Hogan back and put the belt on him again. Also, Hogan needed time off to film Muppets in space. Yes, we're serious. So chat me up here. I've always wanted to sort of pin you down

on this. Hogan's getting paid to sit at home here and retire, quote unquote, and plan his presidency. Was there some sort of understanding that got a little heat backstage, brother, need to go away for a while let nash turn the morale around was that randy savage or was that hulk i don't know that's bruce's deal i know bruce could do him right i can't i can't do good impersonations again you covered a lot of ground there um hulk's contract was structured in such a way that he was on i remember the first one i don't remember the subsequent ones originally he was to do four pay-per-views a year. And he got less than Brock money to do them, substantially less than Brock money. His deal was structured very similar to the way Brock's is structured right now.

So he was scheduled for a certain number of paper views a year initially four. It might have gone up to six by the time we're talking about here. And then he would be paid a much lesser amount of money to do a certain amount of TVs leading up to that pay-per-view that he was scheduled to be on. That was the structure of his deal. So when he went home for any period of time or when he was off television for any period of time, he was not getting paid to sit at home. He was getting paid according to the way his deal was structured just like Brock Wesner is right now. Sweet deal. Not saying it's not. But the idea that I'll just go home or go make a movie and we'll pay you anyway is just more urban narrative bullshit. That's number one.

Number two in your dissertation, we weren't trying to swerve the boys or work the boys. Again, that's somebody observing the fact that Hulk Hogan is gone and coming up, you know, smoking a joint and coming up with their own nonsense and trying to make themselves smart by writing it. It's not true. I needed Kevin. I needed to take a little time away from creative. I need somebody to grab that ball who I had confidence in. I didn't have the confidence in Kevin Sullivan to come up with the type of stories that I needed at the top of the card.

I just didn't. I needed somebody else. Kevin was there. Kevin was willing to do it. I've already covered that. There was no working the boys involved in it. That's just more, you know, fictional nonsense. Let's finish out this bit from the book.

So Nash got the book and as most bookers do, he began to write storylines designed to make himself the center of attention. his main idea was to set up his big win over Goldberg for the belt at Starcade. Step one just to put himself in a three-ring number one contender battle royal World War 3, a show that ended up better than expected, seeing as it was expected to be the worst ever. Step two was to book himself as a man who then ends the win streaks. Incidentally, there was another man on Nitro who had been on a win streak lately and was starting to get over. His name was Wrath. Nash beat him in four minutes and 45 seconds.

it's the next night and that was the end of him getting over when did you think and i'm i can't wait for you to tap dance around this shit when did you realize that nash had hurt the company was there sort of what alcoholics would call a moment of clarity of oh fuck we're in trouble there was a there were a lot of those moments of clarity but it had nothing to do with kevin nash it's brian alvarez's perspective it's not mine Kevin nash did the best kevin Nash could do. I went along with Kevin. Put it on me. Don't put it on Kevin. Kevin might have been the Booker, but he didn't have the final say. I did. To me, that story with Kevin and Bill and Hulk leading up to January 4th, which would have taken us into the plan of NWO Night Show, WCW Thunder.

To me, that plan made the most sense, and Kevin was the best guy because he was believable. we turned Bill into a monster who else was going to beat him and by the way despite alvarez's you know amazing amazing perspective wrath couldn't string a sentence together he couldn't cut a promo wasn't believable just because a guy can have a good match doesn't mean a guy is a big star and we've seen that over and over and over a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute you're paying bill Goldberg five fucking million dollars here and he can't deliver seven sentences and you're going to shit on wrath? What's the difference between Goldberg and Rath except one you fucking paid $5 million to? Big difference. Bill could cut a promo in

the ring. He wasn't good outside of the ring. He wasn't good in a scene like we gave him because he didn't have that much experience. Okay. Wrath couldn't cut a promo in the ring. What's your favorite Bill Goldberg promo? I don't remember. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Everybody who says, oh, he was a good promo, fucking give me one. Bill's character didn't require a promo. Believe a guy.

You can laugh your ass off if you want. You can't tell me that you can compare wrath and his character to Bill Goldberg. You can't. Even if neither one of them were required to string a sentence

together. They were two different characters. One was believable and intense and the other was a big guy. One was booked to be believable and intense, and the other one was not. Says the man that's never had to book a show. What are you booking these days, buddy?

Let's move on. Mike Mooneyham wrote in the January 10th, Charleston Post and Courier regarding the Georgia Dome Nitro. Most of those 39,000 fans were there to watch hometown favorites, Goldberg and Nash in a world title rematch, and by not delivering that bout in favor of Hogan's attempt to put himself over once again. the torch had this to say on the positive side for wcw they clearly have a game plan and a set of leaders who were steering the ship on the negative side hogan has returned to the top position at a time when it seems that fans would like to see anyone other than him in that slot let's go to the end of his write-up here he says the idea of nash landing hogan the title had been rumored for a couple of months

that the angle played out that way shows that Nash and Hogan indeed chose to unite rather than fight behind the scenes. That may lead to more stability behind the scenes, or it could mean Hogan has no opposing power base to keep him in check. Is this idea of let's sort of collaborate on this creative? Is that really an effort to try to just create peace in the back where maybe there had been, I don't know, some sort of an upheaval. We've heard, we're through the dirt sheets again, that Hogan and Nash at times had a bit of a power struggle and you were sort of caught in the middle. Was this some sort of way to maybe get everybody back on the right, you know, a line of thinking? No.

Okay. It wasn't. It looked, again, it's so often as the case with a lot of this stuff, there's a kernel of truth to a lot of it. Right. Even the Alvarez stuff, as I pointed out, you know, throughout this, throughout this podcast. There's always a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and then it gets it, you know, it gets built upon and built upon it built upon. Here's the truth. Yeah, there was often issues between Hogan and Nash.

I can tell you stories not on this podcast because I don't want to go J.J. Dillon on you, but I can tell you a lot of great stories or interesting stories about extremely tense moments that took place between Scott Hall and Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash and myself in the middle. Some of them that I thought were going to get violent, as a matter of fact. So there were those moments, but they had nothing to do with this moment and this strategy and this creative. So again, it's somebody taking a kernel of truth from something that made happen six months ago and all of a sudden connecting it to a dot that they see over here and trying to convince everybody they got a three-dimensional picture because they have that much vision. It wasn't. At that time, we were all up against the wall. We knew that there were changes being inflicted upon us creatively.

We had things we could do that we couldn't do. There were things we couldn't do that we used to be able to do before. We couldn't call each other stupid. In a promo, I couldn't say, Conrad, I'm going to kick your stupid ass. Because I couldn't say that. No, I mean, if we're working together in WCW. Because a lady by the name of Terry Tango would have come down on me and said, you can't use a term like stupid.

it. You can't use a term. By the way, that's another reason why the whole rape thing, you know, and that story about it originally being a rape scene, it would have never happened. Turner would have never let that happen. They were politically correct before it was correct to be politically correct at that time. Well, let's let everybody know the next week we're going to be arguing for a long time about Brett Hart and WCW and how Eric really fucked that up from the word go. And I can't wait to do that.

And in the following week, we've got Bash at the Beach 2000. We invite you to ask your questions. You can do that on Facebook or Twitter. If you'd like to ask on Facebook, it's Facebook.com forward slash 83 weeks. We've got a handful of questions here. We're going to rapid fire them. And we got these directly from Facebook and Twitter. Are you ready?

I'm ready. Chris wants to know, how did you get the spray paint off of everything all the time? I don't know. I didn't do it. somebody backstage yet. I'm guessing there was something like paint thinner or something. Evan Worlds wants to know. How did Hogan feel about this finish, brother?

He went along with it. So I guarantee if he wouldn't have liked it, he wouldn't have gone along with it. Did Hogan ever say, I can't wait for you to deny this too. That doesn't work for me, brother. Hell no. He said it a lot.

There we go. And usually when he said it, he kind of leaned forward. He sick that gigantic chin of his. out and he starts stroking that Fumann shoe, he'd stroke it about three or four times. He looked like that statue of the thinker, the guy

that sits in a rock with his forehead on his fist. He kind of get that pose to him and he stroked that Fumann shoes. Doesn't work for me, brother. It would either be that or can't make that one which means didn't want

to do a shot, whether it was a house show or a European tour or something like that. So yeah, no, he said that a lot. I heard that often. Jude wants to know. Who is the agent for the finger poke of doom match? Terry Taylor. I really hope that's true. Edward wants to know.

I don't know if it is or not, but I'm going to put it on Terry. What are right? Why do the stunt on the same night as Rock Mankind for the WWE title? Because I didn't have my 2020 hindsight goggles up. I left them at home. If I would have brought them with me, I wouldn't have done it.

Nishad wants to know. was this done to infuriate WCW fans or get a good laugh at the competition? Was what done? I'm sorry. The fingerpup of doom. It was done to get heat. It was done. Look what we did.

Again, going back to what happened, if you look at the entire show, what happened? Rick Flair came in, his very first night, president of the company. He got that by defeating me, right? Put me in my spot. He gets his big entrance. his family's there. He's firmly in control. He's now put the four horsemen in a great position.

NWO and everything that Rick Flair hated and despised, including me and the NWO, is now on the bottom and they've got to work their way up. And what did we do by the end of the show? We fucked over Goldberg. We fucked over Rick Flair in front of his family. And we got control back by grabbing the title. I'm sorry. I'm still digging the story.

He may not have liked the execution, but the story still worked. Ramon asked a great question. Why don't I just have Goldberg drop the belt back to Hogan? In what way? And how would you do that? Well, I mean, you could have had Goldberg take on, get his rematch at Starcade with Hogan, and you just do this sort of swerve thing with Kevin Nash at Starcade. And instead of having Scott Hawke him in with a shockstick, there's Nash.

looks like he's going to, you know, do something against Hogan. And in fact, he does it to Goldberg and jack knifes him and ta-da, Hogan's the champ. Doesn't work for me, brother. Uh, Lee wants to know, this is worth mentioning, was Billy Silverman smartened up beforehand? Sure. Chris wants to know, was Hogan's future presidential aspirations taken into account

when planning the finish? sure Tom wants to know how quick and severe was the backlash from the fans and the locker room from the fans and the locker room from the fans in the locker room were there fans in the locker room no there were no fans in the locker room they hated us too it wasn't you know this is something that's kind of grown in you know in disdain over the years it wasn't as nearly about then as it is now. Well, Joshua Pope writes this. I was in attendance that night and had not missed the nitro since before the NW. angle began. But when I left that night, I drove

the four hours home and I didn't watch wrestling again for 15 years. What would you say to me, Eric Bischoff? What was the question? What would you say to me, Eric Bischoff? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Oh, my. gosh. Drew has the best question of the night. Can we all at least agree that this is the best flatback bump Nash has ever taken? You know, if it's not, it's got to be damn close. Well, we're hoping that you're damn close to hit the subscribe button, leaving us a review. Get all the details by following us on Twitter at 83 weeks. And we're going to have some incentives for you if you start hitting that follow button on Twitter. I'm trying to boost those numbers

there. Don't forget to check us out on YouTube too. You never know when there. is going to drop some exclusive content over there. That's 83 weeks.com. And don't forget to ask a question. For next week's Brett Hart and WCW discussion, I'm looking forward to that. On a scale of 1 to 10, how frustrated are you right now, Eric? I feel good.

Oh, good. And we'll see you next Monday right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-freeshows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts every single week, starting at just nine bucks. That's less than 20 cents an episode each month. And yes, you can listen to them all directly through Apple Podcasts or your regular podcast apps. How easy is that? Ad-free shows also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content

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