83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 359: The WCW Reboot REMIX

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

On this REMIX episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad go back 25 years to watch the "reboot" attempt of Monday Night Nitro. WCW Monday Nitro was live April 10th 2000 from the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado to introduce the New Blood vs. Millionaire's Club! Eric shares his experiences working with Vince Russo to formulate the new direction of the company.  NOTE: This episode was originally recorded on April 14th 2019 while Eric was on location and under the weather, besides all that he powered through to deliver this powerhouse edition of 83 Weeks.  Watch along with the guys on Peacock season 10 episode 15 BLUECHEW- Try your first month of BlueChew FREE at https://bluechew.com/ CHUBBIES - Chubbies is here to help you take on 2025 in style! Get 20% off @chubbies with the code ERIC at https://www.chubbiesshorts.com/eric #chubbiespod SAVE WITH ERIC - Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at https://www.savewithconrad.com/savewitheric/ ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to https://www.podcastheat.com/advertise now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/join BECOME A 83 WEEK MEMBER NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@83weeks/membership Get all of your 83 Weeks merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At savewithconrad.com. Hit a while that's number 212-9, Equal Housing Lender. Savewithconrad.com. 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? Actually, I've got about two quarts of Benadryl and a fistful of stutophedy in me. So I'm dragging a little bit.

And if I'm not my normal, quick-witted self, you'll know why. Well, we appreciate you soldiering through for us. I feel like everybody got sick on the heels of WrestleMania. I've seen Hurricane Helms and everybody in between. I say that they weren't feeling all that well. Sean Waltman and our buddy Dave Hancock. It's going around, man. It's the WrestleMania Blues.

And by the way, before we get into this, I just want all of our listeners to know that you are a fucking warrior. To go from the craziness of New York and all of the things that were going on there. And by the way, what did you do? Two or three live shows? I did three, yeah. Three live shows. The last one being at like midnight on Monday night and then to jump on a plane and fly to,

well, originally Las Vegas, but spent a little time in L.A.X and having lost luggage and all the rest of that. And then to go to Las Vegas, which is exhausting in and of itself, even if you're just going there for fun. Hats off to you. You're a tougher man than I am. Well, I think you were on this crazy schedule on Spinaw. And I guess it's my turn now. And that's what we're going to do today. We're going to visit a crazy time for you.

Let's get back to April 10, 2000. And this is supposed to be the dawn of a new era in WCW. Of course, we're in Denver. There's 9,074 fans here, 6,027. of them paid a gate of 168 grand. But the real story is Vince Rousseau. He's been running things from a creative standpoint since October of 99. Of course, famously, you went home in September of 99.

And a lot of people would think that maybe this wasn't the best time for WCW. There are a lot of people who believe that maybe Vince's creative was not exactly what WCW needed to tackle the WWF and in his first month in power do want to mention this the average attendance is 4,628 per show and the nitro rating is around a 3.08 that's the average the Havoc Halloween Havoc buy rate was 0.52 by January so a few months later attendance is 3,593 ratings are a 3.1 and the average buy rate is down to 0.26. So the rating is up a T tiny bit from a 3.08 to a 3.1.

But there's 1,100 fans fewer and your buy rate is roughly half. So now here we are. There's a bit of a shift in power here. The concept of this show is to lead a new WCW with the return of a new but old face to the company, Eric Bischoff, and he's going to join a returning Vince Rousseau. So sort of catch me up here. You know, when did you get the call?

How did you get the call? You know that Ed Ferrar, you know that Vince Rousseau are there. You've been gone for a little while. But now the call comes in for you to come back to WCW. Sort of carry us through that process. yeah you know it was it was kind of bizarre i hadn't really been watching nitro i would drop in every once in a while for 20 minutes and just to kind of get a feel for what they were doing um but you know my my head just wasn't in wrestling i pretty much made up my mind that it was time to move on

to a new chapter in my life so i i wasn't really looking very closely at what russo was doing now i i did have you know people like ddp and and others who that i thought talk to pretty regularly, would call me and fill me in on what's going on or give me their opinions. So I have a general sense. But what was really interesting is I was coming home from, you know, my home here in Wyoming was down to a second home. And I had my own plane at the time. And I had flown my brother and sister and my wife. We'd come out to Wyoming for the Super Bowl, just to watch it and hang out together and whatever. And I dropped my, my sister. just turned my brother off in Minneapolis.

And Lori and I decided to lay over, rather than fly on back to Atlanta, we decided to lay over in Minneapolis. We went off to dinner, I think we ate at Chili's or in the Applebee's or some fast food chain like that, or not fast food, but some chain like that. And they had TVs all around. And I remember sitting there, I couldn't hear what was going on on Nitro or WWF at the time. I'm sorry, I said Nitro, I meant WWF. WWF was on.

It was a Monday night. I was on. And while I couldn't hear anything, I could see what was going on. It wasn't paying too close attention. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eddie and Chris Benoit and Perry Saturn show up. And I said jokingly to my wife, oh, my God, the wheels are really falling up. I wouldn't be surprised if I get a call. And I said that jokingly because, you know, when they, they meaning,

the executive, you know, the management team at Turner Broadcasting opted to pay or play me, basically send me home with two and a half years on my contract, that was a big decision for them. And it was a controversial one at the highest levels. But that was the decision that they made. And they bought, you know, they brought Russo in because Bill Bush bought his bullshit, you know, and let me say this right out of the back. Rousseau, for all of his fault, is probably, can be one of the most charming people you'll ever meet. And he believes his own nonsense in his own bullshit.

He actually does believe it. It's a pathological kind of thing, I believe. So he was very convincing, and of course, they bought into the idea that, you know, Fitz Rousseau was solely responsible for, you know, the resurgence of WWF, and that was all Bruce so. They bought into that. And they figured it out really quickly. In fact, this, I think he lasted now a month or two before he collapsed and had to go home. And I got the call from Brad Siegel. It coincidentally, about a week after I got back from Minneapolis, strapping my brother and sister off and jokingly saying, I wouldn't be surprised if I get a call back. And I

really was joking when I said that. And sure enough, Brad Siegel called me. And Brad and I always had a pretty good relationship. He called me, and we made a little bit of small talk, and he said, you know, what would it take for you to come back? And that's really how that conversation started. He was clearly not happy with Rousseau, and he was in a bad spot because he had just signed him to a contract. Let's tag in for a minute.

He bought into the, you know, this Rousseau story about him being solely responsible for turning WWF around and he had egg all over him. You know, he had made a big decision to bring Russo in and now he's calling me to try to fix it. So it was a very bizarre conversation. I do want to mention that

Russo actually goes home in January and that's when they start to do a bit of a committee. So the same group of folks who were so excited about Russo coming in now want him out. This is according to the observer, but that list is like Bill Bush, Gary Jester, J.J. Dale

and Kevin Sullivan, they're all fired up about Rousseau coming in as the savior just one month after you leave. But that's in October. By January, they've already decided, hey, we don't want to do anything with this guy. So at that point, Bill Bush decides to go with Kevin Sullivan, which is what Dave Meltzer would describe as a morale mistake. And we've talked about this before, but that that decision is what leads to Crispin Juan, Eddie Guerrero, and all those guys jumping ship from WC. to the WWF. And allegedly, this is almost like a pro wrestling storyline.

When you get the call from Brad Siegel, eventually it comes up that maybe he puts together two unlikely performers and forms one creative tag team between you and Vince Rousseau. I think it was made official that you were hired on March 22nd. But chat me up, when you have this conversation about when is that and how far into the talk, Does it come up that, hey, what about trying to work with Rousseau?

It was almost immediate in terms of working with Rousseau. You know, my phone call with Brad was probably in February, end of January, early February. And, you know, once we started talking seriously about me coming back, you know, he brought up Rousseau. And he said, you think you can work with him. And I didn't know Rousseau. I had never worked with him before. I had, you know, previously had one conversation with him. It was a very short conversation about a year or two previous to that.

Kevin Nash set it up. Kevin knew Rousseau from WWF and Rousseau's work on the magazine. And Kevin said, you know, do you want to talk to this guy? I really wasn't interested. And this was before I left in September, obviously. I wasn't really interested. But out of courtesy, I said, sure, I'll talk to him. And I talked to him on the phone while he was still employed by WWF.

and, you know, I wasn't impressed, and I wasn't unimpressed. It was kind of an ambivalent type of a conversation. I didn't really feel one way or the other. That was the only conversation I had had with Rousseau. And then when Brad said, you think you can work with them. And at that point, I was in a pretty good position. I had two and a half years left in my deal. There was no way they could bring me back under my previous agreement,

because once you, you contractually, once you, make a decision to pay or play somebody, you can't force them to come back under the terms of that agreement. So I knew that they would have to write me a new agreement, and I knew that for them to call me, for Brad to pick up the phone, and that's almost because of Brad. Like I said, Brad and I always had a pretty good relationship. But the people above Brad, for them to go, okay, Brad, call Eric back, let's see if we can get it back. That was a really strong indicator to me that there were a lot of people, not just Bill Bush, who Kevin Sullivan and JJ Dillon,

and those people didn't really matter in the big scheme of things. But for Brad to call me and ask me to come back under the circumstances, I knew that there was a big problem there, and I knew I had a lot of leverage. But I didn't want to abuse it. I made up my mind that, you know,

if I can come back as a consultant, then it's one of the first things I told Bradts. I no longer want to be an employee of Turner Brut. Because things were so, and it wasn't just with WCW, it was Turner Broadcasting as a whole, was in just unbelievable disarray. There's a great book written by an author by the name of Nina Monk called When Fools Rush Yeah, and it's probably the best book I've ever come across that really gets into what happened with the Time Warner and then AOL merger. and its overall impact, again, not just on WCW. WCWCW was a pimple on a pig mask with regards to Turner Broadcasting. But the entire company was in disarray, and I knew that.

And I had no desire to come back and be a part of it. So what I told Brad is, number one, yes, I can work with anybody. Now, as long as I trust them, I can work with them. I don't have to like them. We don't have to go out and have dinner, anything like that. I just need to know it's somebody that I can trust. And I said, I have no reason not to trust Mr. Russo. Sure, I can work with him.

I wanted to meet with him first. I wanted to spend a little time with him and try to get a read on him to see where his head was at. And Brad arranged that. And that happened probably in mid-February. I met Rousseau, you know, off-site. I didn't want to be seen with him at Turner Broadcasting because I didn't want the rumor mill to start if indeed I decided I didn't want to work with him. But, you know, I met with him, and, you know, we chatted for a while.

Like he said, he was a charming guy. I was in a really strong position. I was no longer an employee. I was a consultant. They had to pay me out of my previous contract and write me a new one as a consultant. So I got a big chunky cash and a new contract that included a three-picture deal with pay or play provisions in it. So I knew that was guaranteed money. And I, you know, Brad wanted me to come in and oversawks.

see creative and basically look over Vince because in Brad's own words, he's too dark and he doesn't understand storytelling. So I said, sure, I'll come in and I'll work with them because I felt like I could contribute. And I didn't have all the responsibilities that I previously had and had a pretty good chunk of cash in my bank account. So after I met with Rousseau, I called Brad back and said, sure, I can work with this guy. Let's try to make it work. It was written in The Observer that Bill Bush apparently told Brad Siegel, if Bischoff has brought back, he'd quit. And it's written, quote,

Siegel apparently believed it as much as Bush believed Benoit, when before being given the title, said he'd refused to work if his career was in Sullivan's hands, and he hired Bischoff. He planned to keep Bush in charge of the business and of the company. Bush then quit, resulting in Siegel, having worked half days at the wrestling office, until a successor could be found from outside.

what do you remember about that but you know i don't know you know i wasn't a part of any of those discussions obviously i wasn't there um you know bill bush and i it's really you know it's unfortunate looking back because i i thought of bill bush as a he was a confid up you know he had a direct line to a woman by the name of bickie miller who is turn of finance that he was really um pulling all of the financial strings of Turner Broadcasting, again, not just WCW, but Turner Broadcasting as a whole. I believe she was on the Turner Broadcasting Executive Committee, so she was that far up the food chain. And Vicki Miller and Bill Bush had a great relationship, and I relied on Bush because I'm not a finance guy. I never pretended I was one. I didn't

try to be one. And Bill was good. He was really good. Bill was instrumental in us, especially at around 93, 94, when we were in a, you know, cost-cutting mode, because that's really what the first two years of my management was at WCW, was really just cutting every cost we possibly could. And Bill was really good at that. And he had a great relationship with Vicki Miller. So I relied on Bill a lot. And we became friends. He didn't live far for me.

It sounded like we went up to dinner a lot or hung out on weekends or anything. But there were, you know, I threw Bill in my plane, you know, he and I spent the weekend in Charleston, you know, South Carolina. And, you know, we did spend some social time together, and I trusted him. I found out later that, you know, Bill was really the guy who, you know, I got let go on September 10th, 1999. On Thursday night, September night, I was pretty strung out, just beat up and frustrated. And I, you know, I talked to Bill, and it was late in the evening. 7.30, 8 o'clock, we were still in the office. And I, you know, I shared a lot of my feelings and frustrations with him.

And I let him know that I was considering resigning. And Bill immediately took that to, I believe, I don't know this as a fact, but he immediately took that information to Vicki Miller, who, I believe, called Harvey Schiller. And Schiller called me into the office Monday morning and told me to take some time off. So I think Bill was probably very instrumental in that, and that's probably one of the reasons why, because he knew that I knew what was going on. And I'm sure he didn't want to face things. You know, what he did was pretty, I want to say treasonous, but it was pretty underhanded to share a private conversation like I was having with him and use that conversation to make it a move, which is exactly what he did.

and it worked for about a month. And that's probably, I'm guessing, I don't know this is a fact. I've never talked to Bill subsequently, and I've never talked to anybody else about it. But that was my impression, and it makes a lot of sense why Bill didn't want to work with me because he knew that I knew what he did.

What do you remember about Bob Mold? Allegedly he quits the day that Rousseau was hired, feeling like his input is not valued. They talk him into sticking around, and then when Rousseau was brought back, here and he pitches some more ideas and again is sort of dismissed he quits again it's a pretty interesting name because he's more of a rock name it's the same guy and he's just a big wrestling fan and apparently knew gary jester so he has a cup of coffee in wcw did you spend any

time with him i did not you know if i've ever met him it would have been very brief um and as you pointed out he was gone when I got there but it was you know it was a typical WCW move a Gary gesture move all this guy's a big wrestling fan and he knows rock and roll so you know let's put him on a creative committee I never heard much about

him I knew who he was I believe he was with a band called Husker do I think it was kind of a punk band for Minneapolis at the time but I knew him by reputation only and don't really have much comments on other than that.

I just knew who he was. Let's talk a little bit about when the changes are announced. Brad Siegel calls a staff meeting at the offices in Smyrna. And he basically puts Kevin Sullivan on ice, is the report from Dave Meltzer. He says that he's sort of in the same spot Russo had been in, where he's under contract for another two years but sent home. J.J. Dillon's going to be in the same position.

And is that TV tapings. Juster is expected to keep his job. job, but his power is limited to booking buildings. Carrie Taylor, who quit WCW because he was tired of being Eric Bischoff's whipping boy, that according to the observer, um, returned with Rousseau, Jeff Jarrett, Ed Ferrara, and Bill Banks in the WWF Exodus in the fall, and they're all expected to stay as well. So are you in this meeting when they announced the changes or is this meeting held without you? No, it was held without me.

let's talk a little bit about that band of characters there you know it's in the observer who quit WCW because he was tired of being Bischoff's whipping boy now we know where that quote would have come from that means Terry Taylor was calling the observer how would you have classified your relationship with Terry Taylor it's complicated because Terry, my opinion of Terry at the time

was he was capable of really contributing a lot There was a lot of things when it came to creative that I liked about Terry. But his mouth just always got him in trouble. He had a pension for saying the absolutely dumbest shit at the worst possible time as anybody that I had ever met. There were other issues that I'm not going to go into because it's not really important. But added to the tension between Terry and I, I wanted to keep Terry. on board because I did value some of his input, but the negatives often

outweighed the positives. And that put a lot of stress on a relationship, and I was hard on. Not because I liked being hard on him, not because I needed a whipping boy, necessarily, but because he brought so much of that onto himself with his

personal behavior and some of the things that, the way he conducted himself in a corporate environment, and the fact that he just would say that dumb as shit, the worst possible time for the wrong people. It made dealing with him really, really tough. So I'm,

I'm sure Kerry wasn't excited. There were probably a lot of people that weren't excited about me coming back. And I'm sure Terry was at the top of that list. Let's talk about the phone call with Rousseau. You talked about, you know, you wanted to talk to him before you could commit that you could work with him. Give me the gist of that conversation.

And then let's follow up and transition right into what you guys talked about. you know, with, hey, if we're going to work together, here's what we need to do. Because it does feel like a bit of a departure to hit the reset button. And that's really what you're going to do on this show. Well, again, you know, not to retrace this, but the level of chaos and dysfunction, I didn't even realize how bad it was. I knew it was bad before I agreed to come back, but I didn't realize how bad.

and when I met with Russo, I didn't want to talk to him over the phone. I wanted to look him in the eye. So I had arranged for him and I to meet at a restaurant about 30 miles outside of Minneapolis, or excuse me, outside of Atlanta. And we sat down and had lunch and I know it was probably about a two-hour meeting. And we just talked generally. And not specifically about, you know, what he wanted to do or what I thought should be done. We didn't give him to any kind of granular discussion about creative.

I was just trying to get a sense of him. and determine whether or not I could trust him. That was my only prerequisite was I had to be able to trust him. And we talked generally, and, you know, he shared some of his experiences in WWF, but I listened. I wasn't trying to judge him. I was just trying to read him. So it was a good conversation.

Like I said, you know, in the beginning of this, Vince could be very charming and disarming when you meet with him. And he did a good job, you know, convincing me that, you know, I could trust him and I could work with them. And I didn't have anything to lose. I had everything to gain. So I thought, well, why not? Why not try to make this work?

It's a different situation turned broadcasting with WCW. It was an entirely different company, entirely different structure, culturally, politically, economically. Everything had changed over the course of, you know, the year before I actually ended up getting since home and then returning. And I thought, well, as long as I'm not stuck into that, you know, vortex of chaos and dysfunction and I'm simply, you know, watching over creative. I felt it was something that I could do.

And like I said, I felt good about this in the after that first meeting. And I called Brad back and said, okay, let's, let's make this happen. We finished negotiating my deal. And that took a couple weeks and we're off and running. I've always found Vince to be, and I know a lot of our listeners who don't know him, we'll call bullshit on this, but I think you'll, you'll back it up. I've always found Vince to be a rather engaging and charming guy. when he wants to be in your meeting with him well see he's sort of deferring to you about you know

hey i know the great success you had bro you were kicking our ass bro and if we could work together bro i think we could do something great is that sort of the gist i mean i wasn't there i'm just freestyling? No, he wasn't trying to put me over. My impression immediately, when I first sat with him, was that he was a little shell-shocked. Part of it, I think, was what he had been through, because evidently, and he know more about it by reading, you know, what Mouser wrote. I'm sure Mouser knew much more about it than I did at that time.

But I think, you know, based on everything that he went through and the fact that, you know, He lasted about 60 or 90 days before he had a emotional breakdown and had to go home. He was shell-shock is probably the best way that I could say it. He was deferential. You know, he was cordial, deferential, but shell-shock is probably the best word. When did you guys start to discuss the mechanics of, you know, storylines and ends and outs of storytelling? You know, you've sort of said that the words you guys,

was that he was too dark and didn't understand storytelling. You guys are going to have a major overhaul here where you actually take a week off of TV and run a clip show and then promote that this is going to be, you know, the next big thing here. And we're going to talk about the show in a minute. But how did we, whose idea was this, a real reset?

More mine than anybody's, but I think, you know, Rousseau was in agreement, obviously. And Rousseau, I think, was trying to make it work, too. Well, I don't want to constantly beat up on him. I think in his mind, he thought, okay, this might, he probably felt the same way I did. Because after talking with him for a couple hours, you know, face to face, you know, by the end of that two hours or whatever it was, I want to have two hours, I was actually kind of excited to work with them. You know, I didn't really have a lot of people that I could collaborate with. And I really like collaborating with people when it comes to creative.

It brings out the best than me, and I think ideas are generally end up being better, working with a couple people that you vibe with, than working in a vacuum. So I went at it, you know, pretty excited, and I think Rousseau was too. And we immediately, once I called Brad said, okay, let's make it happen once we basically agreed to terms, even though the contract wasn't written, we both knew we were going to move forward. I immediately reached out to Vince and we started talking about, okay, what do we do? But the idea of, you know, the restart and the picking a week off and all that and the hype because everybody knew, you know, that's another thing. Well, I'm sure we'll get into this as we go. But so much of the problem in WCW was because the public, you know, not only was our product,

the WCW product had been suffering for quite some time for a lot of reasons. But the public knew about it. You know, there was so much conversation about morale and everywhere you turn, you know, the young guys were complaining about the older guys keeping them down. That was like the running narrative surrounding WCW for a long time. And recognizing that, I think both Vince and I agreed that, all right, let's take this negative, which is the dysfunction and the political stuff. all the, you know, the Dave Meltzers of the world, making sure the world knew about it. Let's turn that negative, if we can, into a positive. And we, I think we both were excited about the idea of the new blood, you know, kind of storyline.

So it was a, it was a collaboration. It wasn't just my idea. It wasn't just his idea. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, a lot of times when guys get a second chance, they go into something like this and they say, I'm not doing things, how are you? used to did you have that approach here did you think you know there are certain things that we are just going to do differently this time did you did you have a moment you know to sort reflect on your time working on nitro before and realize hey if this is going to work we need

to avoid x y and z and i'm going to do you know a bc differently than than last time you know I don't remember thinking that consciously. I did make up my mind, I think, for my own well-being. Again, I'll use the term getting sucked into the creative vortex or the corporate vortex. That was the only thing that I was really conscious of, is not allowing myself to get caught up in that part of the business. But from a creative point of view, though, it was obvious that we were in a triage mode. It wasn't, for me at least, it wasn't, okay, well, we made this mistake last year or we made this mistake since months ago or whatever. Let's not make that mistake again.

It was really triage in the sense that, okay, here's where we're at. This is what we've got. You know, this is what the general public thinks of WCW. How do we fix that? That was my first and foremost thought, is how do we try to get this? thing back on track again. My thought going into it was, and again, working with somebody, you know, overseeing

somebody was a little bit different for me. And I wanted to be a little bit more remote in that process and see if I could get whatever Russo had to offer. And I didn't know at this time. You know, I didn't buy into the, you know, he was the guy

who solely turned WWF around because I had people in WWF that I was still talking to that laughed at that. but I thought you know what maybe this guy has some maybe maybe there's a fresh look or a fresh approach to this that he sees that I don't so let's try to make it work so I don't want to say nurture him but I did want to see if I could get the best out of him

and see if he could challenge me and get the best out of me that was really my only conscious thought going into the process have better sex with Blue Shoes the original brand offering chewable tablets These erection enhancing tablets help men achieve stronger, harder, and longer-lasting erections for sexual activities. Here's what no one ever wanted, weaker, softer, shorter erections. Now, Blue Chew is going to get you where you need to be. Blue Chew is putting its money where its mouth is and even offering you a month for free.

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Okay, got it. So catch me up. Did you have any, when you're home, you're sitting home from WCW, did you have any conversations with guys at the WWE about maybe coming back? Like, there? No. Okay. No, absolutely not. All right. So let's get to it.

Let's talk about what we're here. It's April 10th and it's 2000. And the show's mostly remembered for two things. And we'll get to the second one in a minute. But the first one that everybody remembers is all the titles are stripped. So all the champions forfeit their titles and new champions will be crowned six days later at the next pay-per-view spring stampede that's important to the story so if you were a champion before this day you're not anymore and this is the go-home show for a pay-per-view spring stampede

sid vicious had been the world champion for 76 days jeff jarrott had been the u.s champion for 84 days the harris brothers had been the tag champs for 22 days brian nobs had been the tag champ for 22 days the artist formerly known as prince iacaa had been the champ for 10 days Hacksaw Jim Duggan had been the champ for 54 days. He didn't actually win the title. He found it in the trash after the champion. Scott Hall threw it in there. So he just proclaimed himself the television champion and it became official.

You know, there are some wrestling purists who took great offense to this because they, you know, really respect the lineage of a wrestling championship and the heritage of it and they celebrate it. even though you know we sort of know how wrestling how the sausage is made did you think that you would get any pushback on stripping everybody of the belts and and was there a conversation with anybody you recall it was a champion who you had to sort of talk into this or sell the idea to I mean obviously they're going to do what they're told I get that but on some level it does feel like some of the guys would have been like no wait what are we doing uh I wasn't worried about any pushback.

That was your first question. It was more important, again, given the circumstances, you know, we wanted to convey creatively that this was a new era and this was a new WCW to the best that we could. You know, ideally, you know, looking back, we would have probably taken a month off or two months off to build some of that anticipation and buzzed and get people wondering, you know, how it was going to be new. indifferent, but we didn't. We rushed it. And that was more of a Brad Siegel decision than mine. I wanted more time.

Brad didn't, for whatever reason. And we went with that. But in terms of the tripping the titles, no, there was no, look, things were so, it was in such disarray and the morale was so low

at that time that everybody was kind of frustrated, shell-shock, insecure. Who would agree? You know, and there wasn't really, anybody came to me and said, well, this is wrong or why do I have to give up my time? I don't think the talent really cared. You know, what they cared about was keeping their jobs,

renegotiating their next contract. I think the talent looked at it pretty much from a selfish point of view, and we're willing to go along with just about anything that remotely made sense because nothing had been making sense for a couple of months leading up to this. so the show here starts with a bunch of the boys in the ring and several more walking to the ring and jeff jerrick cuts a promo talking about how he left the w w f and he was he's the chosen one for wcw handpicked to be the next world champion by the powers that be and the power is vince mcman's best kept secret Vince rousseau and rousseau comes out to iron man which is i don't know

what it is. And then he starts cutting a promo about how, you know, after giving six years of his life to the WWF, he came to WCW with one thing in mind and that's to beat Vince McMan at his own game. And the new blood was helping him do that. But the old school way of thinking here, the good old boys network in WCW wouldn't allow success. And he even name drops. Benoit, Guerrero, Saturn, Malenko and Douglas, they all knew that. And that's why they left. And then you came out and said, are you done yet? And I think a lot of people assumed you guys were going to maybe have words, but instead you said, no, we have more in common than you might imagine. And you start running through the mistakes you made with Scott Hall and

Kevin Nash and Sting and DDP and Sid Vicious and even Hulk Cogan. And then you start to talk about the new blood and eventually DDP comes out. Let's just take a pause here. This opening segment, you watched it again for the first time in a long time. What did you think here? You know, given the circumstances and the goals, more importantly, given the goals and the narrative surrounding WCW and all the challenges that the company had been having for really a good year, I thought it was a pretty effective segment. It created the energy and the interest, I think, than what we were about to do. I intentionally, you know,

swerp the audience a little bit and teased a confrontation between Rousseau and I until, you know, we hugged or whatever we did in the middle of the rain and made it clear that we were, you know, working arm in arm. So from just a purely production point of view, a storytelling point of view, I thought it was a decent way to achieve what we were hoping to achieve, which is, okay, this is a new company, this is a new approach, and we're going to do things differently,

and here's how we're going to do it differently. I thought it was pretty effective, actually. One of the things that got a lot of people talking here is when you start running down the different wrestlers and you're insulting DDP as, you know, being sucking down beers and some redneck bar in Florida or whatever. But then you get to Sid, and there's a line he slipped here that maybe the live audience didn't catch,

but people at home are certainly talking about it, and it was all over the internet where you said something like, do you want to lay me out while you're waiting for a response? You said, what's the problem? Can't find your scissors? Which is an inside reference to his stabbing incident with Arne Anderson seven, eight years prior. Is that a Russo line?

No, that was me. That was me. And, you know, that was again, and looking back on it now, I definitely was almost old. going to say possibly, but definitely I allowed myself to get sucked into the dirt sheet universe a little more than I should have. It was a cute little line. I knew it with, you know, people that knew would know the vast majority of the audience would know what the fuck I was talking about. But I did it anyway to try to achieve what I thought at the time was the best way to change

the narrative and to get people talking again you know part of part of the formula for success at least i believe at the time and i still do to a large degree is if you don't get people talking about what you're doing um the chances are they're not going to be watching it for very long and i was doing everything that i possibly could just to create the chatter and get people talking about wcw again get people asking themselves you know oh my god what's going to happen next week. You know, that was my goal. And, you know, looking back out of now, I probably wouldn't do something like that today. But then at that time, given the circumstances, I thought it was a good idea. Given that you guys, you know, and you've talked about this a lot on the show,

the standards and practices for Turner are changing. seemingly, if you believe, what we've read over the years, pretty regularly, you know, what was acceptable a month ago was not acceptable today. In this promo, Vince Rousseau calls Rick Flair a piece of shit on the bottom of his shoe. He says he's going to scrape that shit off and flush it down the toilet where he belongs or something like that. I mean, you guys said shit right on T&T. Is that something you run past the network or just hope you can ask for getting us and out of permission?

No, that was Rousseau going off reservation. He took that upon it. It was totally inappropriate. And I think it was a perfect example of why Brad Siegel had to pick up the phone and ask me to come back. You know, that was Vince Rousseau. You know, his creative approach to things, and I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the crazy shit that he did

and Scott Hall throwing a title in the trash. I mean, there's so many things that Rousseau did. If anybody goes back and looks at it, it was just fucking asinine creatively. You know, he called it crash TV. Other people call it hot shot. There was no rhyme or reason to it. There was no formula to it.

There was no structure to it. There was no arc to it. It wasn't leading to or building to anything. That was Vince Rousseau at that time. And that's what Brad recognized, and that's why Brad brought me back to try to create some formula and some structure and make some sense out of this. But additionally, you know, standards and practices was a big deal. We've talked about this before.

In July of 1998 or August of 1998, I was called into a meeting at Techwood and sat around, you know, in a room full of executives, many of whom I had never met. before. I didn't even know. I didn't even know their names, most of them. And they proceeded to tell me how I was going to change, creatively change, the way we're approaching the product and the audience that we wanted to target, which I knew was a mistake. I knew it when I heard it. I challenged it in the most probably unprofessional way one could challenge something in a room full of executives that you don't even know. And I knew it was a mistake. But now, Fast forward for that August 1998 meeting, which is when the creative standards and practices,

that was the first time I met Terry Tingle. Every time I say her name, I chuckle because she sounds like a stripper. But it's a perfect stripper name. But that's when it started. And then it got progressively more intense and dysfunctional and inconsistent. They're all over the map with it. But, you know, dropping, you know, shit in the middle of the live broadcast on T. was typical of what Russo thought was a great idea.

As you guys go to commercial, we see Hulk Hogan arriving to the arena. And when we come back, Tony Chivani, Scott Hudson, and Mark Madden recap everything that's just happened. And then we cut to Hogan's locker room where we see him taping his wrists. Sting comes in to talk to him, says that you're on to him, and says he's not ribbing him. which is interesting that we're now using an inside term you know it's not that big a deal i guess but it does feel like a bit of a departure from the way you had done things before ribbing him or when you see some of these inside you know wrestling lingo appear in the show

are you thinking that you know is there any hesitation there or is it hey let's just because it is weird because i mean you acknowledge you were a little in the Dirt Sheet universe, but was there a time when you realize, hey, maybe that's too much, or are people really going to get that? Is that too inside baseball for the mainstream? Or is at this point, are you just sort of pushing all your chips in on, let's cater to that audience? No, I certainly wasn't pushing all my chips in and catering to the audience, but I was

acknowledging that portion of the audience. Again, looking back, not a good idea, wouldn't do it again. but at that time, again, you know, the narrative surrounding WCW, the challenges that we had were so obvious to so many people that I thought it was appropriate to throw some of that in. I wish we wouldn't have. I think it was a big mistake. And what it really, you know, again, looking back at it now, a lot of that was the result of not having really good story. If you've got really good story and people are hooked on the journey, then you don't need that. It's a Band-Aid.

It's not a remedy. It's just a Band-Aid. And I was willing to use the Band-Aids. You know, we were coming out of the shoot with something new. I had hoped that over the course of months, because you can't fix everything overnight. You know, it's not like you can walk in with, you know, wipe everything off the chalkboard, grab a piece of fresh chalk and start all over again. and instantly be where you want to be. It was a process.

And my hope was that by starting off with this new blood kind of storyline and the angle and creating a battle, if you will, between the veteran camp and the new blood camp, and interjecting some of the inside references, it was my hope that it would give us enough momentum to be able to start figuring out a long-term story arc for a lot of the talent in a definitive direction because that's the one thing WCW didn't have. And it wasn't just under Vince Russo. It didn't have it under me either leading up to me leaving in September. It was just a lot of chaos.

And I thought, okay, let's just get this thing started. Let's definitively have the new blood versus the veterans, you know, take advantage of the narrative that's out there, I try to turn, you know, chicken salad or chicken sugar with chicken salad, and then move forward with the more formal or structured kind of approach to storytelling. You guys announce that there's going to be a tournament to crown a new World Heavyweight Champion for the now vacant championship. Six days from now, Spring Stampede. Match one is going to be a quarterfinal between DDP and Lex Lugar, and this is a nice little touch.

When these guys come out, their music gets cut off. get pyro and when they get in the ring start to flex and pose the spotlight is removed the lights come back on but during the match buff bagwell makes his entrance gets all the music all the pyro starts talking to liz so a fun little deviation here that but really adds to the storyline um of course buff bagwell distracts lex luger he gets nailed with a diamond cutter and penned four and a half minutes or so his music plays for a little bit and then it gets cut again and then Backstage, we see Hulk Hogan knocking and opening doors looking for you as we go to commercial. And when we come back from the break, we see Kurt talking to Vince Rousseau about why he isn't in the tournament.

And Rousseau says if he can beat Jeff Jarratt tonight, he'll take Jeff Jarratt place in the main event at Spring Stampede and then more of Hulk Hogan looking for you. But then Tank Abbott's music plays and he comes to the ring and says he doesn't know the difference between a wrist lock and a wrist watch and calls out Goldberg and he says he's going to beat up innocent victims until Goldberg finally accepts his challenge. He makes his way

over to the announce table and attacks Mark Madden. He rips Mark shirt off and tank throws him into the ring and punches him until security breaks it up. I wanted to talk about this segment because this is a segment that Mark Madden has said

he didn't want to do and was basically threatened with his job by Vince Rousseau if he didn't do it. You are friendly with Mark Madden. Obviously, you guys have had a different relationship over the years, but what do you think of this segment where you know there's a guy who's, you know, a heavy set guy who probably doesn't want to be on TV without his shirt?

And he's, and he's not his place. He's an announcer, but he's asked to do this, expresses that he doesn't want to do it. And ultimately he's made to do it. And then, you know,

he's in an angle with a guy who's, not really a pro wrestler and more of an MMA guy. Not a good spot for Mark Madden to be in here. What do you remember about this? I hated it. I didn't, let me read it enough to drop a hammer on it, but I didn't like it. And again, this is going to sound like I'm making excuses,

and maybe I am. No, I'm not. I'm just going to be honest about it. My goal was to try to work with them, try to have a good collaborative working relationship. I knew going in, and you've been around me enough, Conrad, you know, when I get passionate about something, I can come off a little strong sometimes. It's a strength in some cases for me, has been throughout my life, and it's also a liability. and I began recognizing that a while back and I didn't want to come in I knew if I came in and hammered Vince right off the bat and shut him down when he had ideas I knew that

that collaborative relationship wasn't going to work it would it would burn out really quickly and this you know by this time I spent enough time around Vince to realize he's kind of a fragile guy, he gets, you know, S-CHAP really easily, and he kind of collapses emotionally. And I think, you know, looking back at his career, you know, you can pick a number of times that happened in TNA, it happened in WCW, it probably happened in WWF, I don't know. When he's under any amount of pressure or you don't agree with something that he wants to do, he doesn't take it like a man, he doesn't handle it all that professionally. he gets he takes everything really really personally and i knew that i thought i figured it out

pretty quickly with him and i didn't i didn't drop the hammer on it i wished i would have it was the type of thing in the style that Vince was so like that wasn't working but i went along with it i i didn't stop it so i regret that it's a horrible position to put madden in you know i'm i'm I regret it. You know, there's only a couple of things that I've done in wrestling with characters and storytelling that I really regret. And that's one of them. And that's not to say that, you know, I didn't make a bunch of mistakes or poor choices

or whatever. That's a different kind of thing. I don't regret those. Those are just, you know, that was life. But when you put somebody in a personal situation that is really degrading to them, on a personal level, and they're not up for it. You know, I've done a lot of things that we're, you know, I've done a lot of things creatively that were, you know,

people can interpret as degrading to me. But I have a different approach to that. It doesn't bother me to do that kind of thing. When May Young, you know, gave me the Bronco Buster, you know, it didn't bother me when I took a distinct face from Rikishi. It didn't bother me because I looked at it as, okay, this is storytelling, the audience is going to get a big pop. It's going to be effective.

but with a guy like Vince when you shut him down creatively or a guy like Mark Madden when you're asking him to do something that he's not comfortable doing and he's not that type of performer. I think that's going, that's crossing the line. And that's one of the things that I do regret. Mark is a good guy. He's controversial. I'm sure he's got a lot of people that think he's great.

There's probably a lot of people that think he's not. I happen to think that he was right. I hired Mark Madd because I knew what I was getting with him. and I wanted it. I wanted the fact that he was a little bit of a loose can and controversial and spoke his mind. I thought that was a good thing. But to put him in that position, though, it's very, very regrettable. So let's talk a little bit about the next segment.

We see Jeff Jarrett talking to Vince Russo about having to wrestle Kurt. Russo assures him everything's okay and just says, trust me. We see Tori Wilson confronting Billy Kidman about what he's about to do. and then we cut to Hulk Hogan asking Terry Taylor where you are and then we go to commercial and we come back Hogan's finally found you and you invited him into the office and then Billy Kidman's music plays he comes out to cut a promo talks about how he's been giving a get out of jail free card because he's been held down and so as the rest of the new blood for many years by the egomaniacs with their fading careers and tonight's his night and he wants to address the biggest

egomaniac of him all. Hulk Hogan. And he says for weeks, Hulk Hogan's been bad-mouthing him, talking about his size, and he may not have the body he does, but he's got heart and, et cetera, et cetera.

He's calling him out. And he says something like, it's time to see if your balls are as big as your bald spot. Hogan hears what Kidman has to say from a monitor backstage and makes his way to the ring to confront Billy Kidman. Of course, he hits him with the old, who the hell do you think you are?

This is an interesting pivot because for years, the rumor and innuendo in the dirt sheets was that Hogan was a master politician and always kept the top spot for himself and his buddies. And the maybe smaller, more talented in-ring performers like the Eddie Guerrero's and the Crispin-was and the Dean Malinkos, they didn't get an opportunity because they weren't. you know from the land of the giants like Hulk Hogan when you first heard about this

Billy Kidman Hulk Hogan pairing whose idea was it what you think and how did you present it to Terry you know I can't I'm not sure where the original idea originated it was obviously something I supported I had no because it's so funny

when I hear the rumor in any window and people talking about Hogan's politics, and I'm not suggesting that he's not a, he wasn't a political person. He was. Most wrestlers were. So was Rick Flair. You know, so was Roddy Piper. So was Randy Piper.

The guys at the top learned to be that way. That's how they built their careers. So it was inherent in their nature. And, but in this particular case, I sat down and talked to Haltz. It said, look, this is what we want to do. this is who we want to do it with and he was fine with it i got no resistance from from home he he wanted to kind of reestablish himself i guess he wanted a little bit of a fresh start too and again he was just as a well he was just as aware of the narrative uh and in the

the complaints if you will that were out there about him and you know who he worked with and all that so he wanted to try to fix it he went into it with a really open mind and wanted to contribute. There was no pushback at all on Hulk's part. In this promo, he says something like, Kidman, you're always wanting to know, when am I going to get the push? So even Hogan is using some insider language here. And eventually this leads to a match. You do a run-in with a chair in hand and you actually crack Hulk Hogan over the head. Hogan gets color and you count the pen. Billy Kidman pinned Hulk Hogan here after your chair shot led to a bloody Hulk Hogan.

Cogan, what do you remember about that creative? Pretty much my idea with Hulk. You know, that was, that finish was Hulk's finish, not mine, not Rousseau's. That was all Hulk. And the only thing I remember about it, you know, specifically being in the ring, was that I really was not comfortable hitting anybody with a chair. You know, and that may sound funny to some. It's odd as it may sound.

I don't like hitting people, unless properly motivated, then I thoroughly enjoy it. But that's outside of business. That's outside of the regular. I should say, I used to be. I'm not that way anymore. But when it came to making contact with people, and I had this problem even in WWE, and then when Hawks said, now, brother, you've got to hit me with this chair. I mean, you've got to really lay it in there.

That was all him. I really didn't want to do that Not because I was friends with Hulk And that wasn't the reason why I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it because I was insecure In my ability to do it and make it look good Without doing some serious damage I was really uncomfortable with that

But that's what he wanted We go backstage And we see Rick Claire pulling up in a limo And then we go to commercial And when we come back Hulk Hogan is going nuts backstage throwing everything and actually cursing quite a bit which it was like something you guys would have discussed before he's pretty old school and then we got to rick flair who's watching

some of the things that happened earlier in the show he comes out and talks and talks about of course Vince russo and you know he's referencing a lot of the sports athletes and how they don't put up with this type of stuff and he's even mentioning his real attorney and saying how much he spent fighting you and then Scott Steiner comes out and of course Scott Steiner for years had been cutting promos on Rick Flair you know here and there just for no reason not for storyline and so now the natural pairing is if we're going to sort of blur the lines and maybe cater to a smart audience well here's one Scott Steiner is here and he says Rick Flair you old bastard I'm listening to you into the back on the monitor and quite frankly

you're boring me to death last time I came out here and did anything on you, you obviously listened because you gritted your teeth and they're still crooked as hell. After I did that interview, you and your old bastard friends tried to get me fired, but that didn't surprise me none, because if you look at the WWF now and see who's champion up there with the exception of one person, they've all come from here, except you and your old bastard friends ran them out so you could be a 14-time world champion. That don't mean shit to me.

The fat ass in the front row with no teeth could be a 14-time world champion. if he had all his friends pulling the strings. What did you think of that? You know, I mean, you're openly referencing the competition or cursing again or sort of tongue in cheek that, you know, hey, this is all the work. Major departure here and one that, I don't know, I wouldn't have imagined that you had anything to do with, but clearly you did.

No, I did. And, you know, I'm going to draw a parallel here. that is a little bit unfair, but if you look at some of the recent things that WWE has done, for example, with Becky Lynch and Rhonda and Charlotte to a degree, the type of dialogue that's taking place in social media is along the same line. Now, this was exaggerated, there's probably rougher around the edges, and yes, it was on TV, not social media, social media didn't exist back then, but the psychologist.

is the same. It's put as sharp of an edge as you possibly can on what you're doing to the point where it feels dangerous. And you said, you know, it was a departure. Yes, it was a departure. Everything that I had done that was successful was also a departure from what had previously been done. So departing from the norm or departing from a, you know, the tried and true formula was nothing I was afraid of. Referencing WWF was certainly nothing that bothered me, fuck, I've been given away their finishes on Nitro.

You know, it was, and calling out Vince McMahon. So, you know, acknowledging the competition was really not a departure for me. But the edge that I thought it was, you know, look, from a production point of view,

it was a pretty solid promo and achieved its goal. It reinforced the story that we were trying to tell it reinforced the strategy of old guys young guys you know scott was somewhere in the middle of that obviously but he was taking the young guy's side obviously but but it reinforced the overall you know creative strategy that we were launching with and if you got a novelty mug this christmas instead of the chubbies you really wanted well we've all been there but it's not too late to treat yourself for what you truly

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two hours late is this a crutch that that russo used too often or was this somebody else in the in the writing committee. Yes, looking back, one could criticize that formula. I don't have a problem with it. You know, when you have a two-hour show, you're going to commercial breaks, you know,

getting people, conditioning people to want to sit through a commercial break because something exciting is going to happen, something new is going to happen, something unpredictable is likely to happen. Those are not formulas that I could, even today, find fault with. Now, how you do them and how you execute them and how often you do that and how you vary that formula up so it doesn't feel repetitive and redundant

is the key to making that work. But the basic approach is not one that I would, even today, have a problem with. When you're challenged with holding an audience, particularly when you're going head-to-head, against somebody who's basically producing the same kind of show, you've got every trick you can possibly find. You know, every rabbit you can find in any hat possible, you're going to want to pull it to hold that audience. So he probably went to it too often.

Logic would suggest, but why are these people all showing up late? There's a lot of holes in the approach, I guess. But, again, I mean, you know, audience retention perspective, I don't think it's as bad of an idea that probably got credit for. We see Bradhart sitting in the crowd doesn't seem like anybody really notices

and then 54 minutes in we get to our second match also a part of the world title tournament this time at Sting and Sid Vicious Sting gets a win in six minutes and 17 seconds by countout. During the match the referees knocked down which allows the wall to run in and hits Sid in the back

with a chair after Sid had just power bomb sting. Then the wall choke slam set through a table on the outside and that causes him to get counted out. So it's DDP versus sting against the winner of Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Henning for the world title in the main event of Spring Stampede. And then Flair enters the ring and challenges Shane Douglas to a match later tonight and we cut backstage and Hogan's still on a rampage throwing a box of ice at the camera. And after commercial we see Hogan asking people where you are and he's throwing them into a fence and then tony talks about the premiere of ready to rumble at man's chinese theater in los angeles this is pretty what a time for wcw at this

premier david arquette hit jeff jared over the head with a guitar because jarritt had said he was going to crash the premiere match three is a world heavyweight championship semifinal with Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Henning. Jeff gets the win in four and a half minutes. Another ref bump. Ref goes down and that caused Sean Stasiak to come out using Kurt's old music. Scott Hudson tells us that Stasiak used to be meat in the WWF. Stasiac attacks Kurt, hits him with a move, and then Jarrett uses the stroke for the three.

What do you think of, you know, in the middle of all this, you've also got to promote the movie, ready to rumble. what a time in wcw is it not it really was and ready to rumble was a time order movie forer brothers actually which was time order and it was actually a movie that that whole process was something i initiated months before i got let go um that that process started between myself and a producer at the time by the name of leonardo de bonavatura who today is probably one of the top producers. I think he's still with Warner Brothers, and he's gone on to make some fantastic movies,

and he's built an amazing career. But I actually started that process, was scheduled to play myself in the movie, got sent home, and now as I come back, one of the first things we have to do is promote the movie that I originally launched and got started.

So, yeah, it was weird, it was out of place. But again, you know, again, you have to kind of, I think a corporate perspective, not just a wrestling perspective. You know, corporately, this was a movie that probably had, oh, I'm guessing, I don't know, I wasn't involved in the finance side of it, but I'm guessing at that time it was probably a $50 to $60 million movie, which at that time was a pretty substantial movie,

a pretty substantial budget. And we were obligated to promote it, and we did. As awkward as it may have felt, or out of price as it may have felt in some respect, it was our corporate duty to promote our now they were the Warner brothers with our time Warner was it wasn't a merger they took us over so when they even came down to promote that movie

we had to do it the best we could the movie debuted on April 5th this show of course is on April 10th so it's five days old Brian Robbins was the director the budget for the movie was 24 million and oh at the box at the box office it did 12 and a half so it like everything wcW was losing money in 2000 um Hulk Hogan is looking all over for for you and uh he's even going in the skyboxes in the arena asking fans where you are

rick flair is backstage prepping for his match with Shane Douglas and Kevin Nash is on the phone to someone and we get a promo with main jean and sting match four is Rick flair versus Shane Douglas both of the guys oddly enough, wrestle in street clothes, but it's not a street fight. Rick Flair gets the win by DQ after three minutes when Vince Rousseau hit Rick Flair with a baseball bat. And after the match, Shane Douglas

attacks Flair with Rousseau's bat while Rousseau steals Flair's Rolex. He leaves with Douglas. What did you think of Vince Rousseau inserting himself into a storyline using a baseball bat stealing Rick Flares Rolex, you know,

over the years, people have been very critical when the guy sort of calling the shots puts himself on camera. I think the first time, you know, a lot of people who are quote unquote dirt sheet readers started to hear about that is when Dusty Rhodes was the booker of Jim Crocky promotions, but he would put himself in the main event

and sometimes he would win and people would not respond kindly to that and say that's not something you should do. and then of course Vince Russo famously is going to make himself the world champion and etc etc and you were a part of that as well where you became you know the turncoat for wcW when you joined the NWO I guess it maybe is a little harder for you to be critical of this or was it what did you think of Vince Russo attacking Rickler with a baseball bat and stealing his watch interesting question and an interesting point um

It wasn't unprecedented for someone who was calling the shot to put themselves in the main event. Dusty Rhodes is one example. Vergina was another example. I'm sure there are many others. Wrestling historians that are listening to this can probably give you a long list, or at least a short list, of others who have done it. Keep in mind, you know, I had been a television personality, at least, or character, if you will, since 1989. I came to WCW as an on-air talent.

And when Nitro launched, I was, you know, one of the play-by-play people and had that position on camera. When I became president of the company, everybody knew I was president of the company, but I had also been on camera for years. So I think there's a subtle difference between, not a subtle difference. I think there's a significant difference between what I did and what Russo did. Nobody knew who Russo was. he had spent very, very little time on camera. He may have had a couple, you know, small segments in WWF, you know,

talking about the magazine and shit like that, but he was not a character or a personality that people really knew. And I think, you know, him to throw himself, and for me not to, by the way, stop it, I, there's much responsibility for this as Rousseau does. But there is a big difference between a guy that nobody really knows or acknowledges as a character, at least a meaningful one, to interject himself and put himself in there as much as we did.

I say we was a huge mistake. Vince got a, you know, to this day, and he's got a huge case of, you know, I need to be on camp. Probably not to the stay, because I think he recognizes that time, like I do, is long past him. But at this time, he desperately wanted to be on camera. he desperately wanted to be a character. Now, he would, you know, he would privately, and this is where, you know,

where the charm and the bullshit comes in, you know, he would seemingly be reluctant to do it, but at the same time, would do it at every single opportunity he could in some of the highest profile situations he could. And I know there are going to be, you know, my critics out there, and I know there's plenty of them are going to, you know, yeah, but you did that. Well, again, I did that, but the situation was quite a bit different.

The circumstances, at least, were quite a bit different when I did it. So it was a mistake. It was Vince trying to be Vince McMahon, who, by the way, was calling the shots and put himself on TV quite a bit creatively, following my lead, I might ask. But for Vince to do it as much as he did was a huge mistake. And he just had a real, I need to be on camera disease. He couldn't help himself. Let's talk about the next segment here.

Kevin Nash makes his way to the ring on crutches. He says he's got a broken ankle, uh, ankle. And, uh, he's calling you and, uh, Rousseau, a couple of jackoffs who were trying to, uh, ruin everyone's career, play God with their career, and then play wrestler. And he wouldn't be doing that if Scott Hall were here. He got off the phone with Scott and Scott's clean, Scott's sober, and Scott's pissed off because neither one of you guys, Russo and Bischoff would be here. here for weren't for them.

Rousseau would have been decapitated by Sean Michaels had Scott and Kevin not saved him in the WWF and you would still be working for Vern Gagne in Minnesota, getting him coffee. But they came down and saved WCW with the NWO. And then all of a sudden, Mike Awesome comes in the ring and attacks Kevin Nash with crutches. And this is one of the more interesting things that happens on the show. Mike Awesome is the current ECW world champion and Tony Chivani even points that out and before Awesome talks he flips off a fan and then says something like when I heard Bischoff and Rousseau were back in the saddle here in WCW I knew it was too sweet of an opportunity

to pass up and the fans start to chant asshole at him this is a big moment on the show and I know you're probably going to debate that but it is really sure. strange and unique and interesting to have an ECW contracted wrestler the world champion in fact for that promotion appear on nitro and of course Meltzer would write all about it before we talk about what Meltzer discussed here check me up how in the world did this come to be and is the rumor in innuendo correct that all day you guys were back and forth with Paul Heyman negotiating how to make this deal happen because Heyman believed he had a contract. Shut me up.

He didn't have a contract. You know, first of all, Mike Austin came to us. We didn't go to Mike Austin. Mike Austin came to us like so many people who did from ECW because he had issues with getting paid and honesty and transparency surrounding that issue and couldn't take it anymore. Whether or not he had a verbal agreement with Paul or Paul had signed the agreement, but like Boston hadn't, there was a lot of back and forth over that.

I wasn't directly involved with it. I would have been a Nick Lambros kind of situation or whoever, you know, maybe a Diana Myers situation. I think Diana Myers at the time was taking over a lot of that stuff. So there was there was some confusion as they're often. often is with contractual issues, there's no doubt about that. I did try to work with Paul, you know, to try to find a solution if there was one other than a legal one. So, yeah, there was some confusion.

There was some dialogue. I think it's been blown way out of proportion. I think if anybody that's ever worked with Paul Heyman and ECW is going to be really honest with you, they've all had those types of problems in the past. The check was always in the mail. The contract's always going to be sent next week. um but there wasn't a contract and we didn't go to mike mike came to us i do want to mention that um there is a little bit of heat on mike awesome because he no showed uh ECW shows that

weekend and the first one uh he just missed the flight or so he said and it was sort of forgiven because he had never missed a show before the next day uh people believe that the flight was delayed and he was in touch with jeff jones a great friend of the show and jeff jones told the locker room. Hey, he's landed. He's on his way. He's just going to be late. He never actually appears though. But he does pop up on Nitro and I think Bob of the Love Spunge actually talked about it on the show saying that WCW had made him an offer and he was going to be appearing and all the rumors start to get going and then apparently there's some back and forth about who does have a contract or who doesn't have a contract. And in the end,

Heyman tries to put all the heat on Mike Awesome for being unprofessional and not making his weekend appearances and not returning the ECW to drop the belt. Now, of course, we know a compromise is going to be made in Indianapolis. We'll talk about that in a minute. But rather than drop the belt before he appeared on Nitro, he just appeared on Nitro. And on April 8th in Buffalo at the TNN tapings, Heyman is showing off what looks to be a three-year contract for just over $600,000 and saying, hey, this is what he signed.

talk to me a little bit about in your opinion if you cared because you've said before hey I wanted Brett Hart I didn't care if he had the belt is it kind of cool since you're embracing this new

hey we're shooting brother hey this is not a rib brother oh you want the push since we're talking inside does the idea of having the ECW Royal Champion appeal to you I'm only positive because I'm trying to reflect back

what my thinking most likely was obviously it wasn't a big deal to me or I'd have a much clearer recollection of it. I would say, I feel comfortable saying it really didn't matter to me. I was never,

you know, I certainly wasn't, and I remember having the conversation with Red Heart about not needing the belt, and I felt pretty much the same way here. And the other thing that was, was, I think, more germane to the issue is that we had already gone through a ton of litigation with WWF regarding belts and trademarks and likenesses and things being confusingly similar

and all kinds of Harvard MBA legal kind of shit. So we didn't need it. And even if we felt we wanted it, it would have, I would have been, we would have been hammered by legal. So it was just never, anything more than probably a passing thought at best, or, or something that was said in jest, because we knew it was never going to happen. Even if we wanted it to happen, Turner Legal would have just been up our ass with a flamethrower, but it just wasn't going to, it just wasn't that important. So allegedly, the story is he was presented a contract, he never actually signed it, but Heyman says, no, he did.

The rumor and innuendo over the years is Hayman just forged the signature and Mike Awesome himself never signed it. I'm not going to say that Jeff Jones told me that, but somebody did. I do want to ask about the compromise this made. It's reported in the observer that the compromise, is, you know, they even tried the day before to get a restraining order to keep Mike awesome from appearing on the show. That doesn't work, but it says temporarily, you guys maybe second guest having him appear because of everything he just laid out. So this compromise is WCW would pay, quote, a figure reported in the low six figures to give Alfonso a

release from his deal. And in return, he would not bring the ECW belt on television, would appear in street clothes to do his angle with Kevin Nash, and WCW would allow him to wrestle in Indianapolis on April 13th to drop the title in the ring. Do you remember such a compromise where you guys wrote a check? No belt on TV, street clothes, any of that? No. Is that all, is that all, um, haman feeding that to Meltzer to safe face? In your opinion? I just know that it wasn't true.

So what Paul's motivations were or what he did, I can't speak to it. I don't know. It was not unlike Paul, all that kind of stuff. It's funny. There's probably not a lot of people that I have more respect for in the business today than Paul Heyman in many respects. But at that time, if you go back and look at the way he was conducting business, again, across the board. And here's one of the reasons I respect.

Paul. This isn't one of the smaller reasons, but, you know, he had a unique, he was, he was like a savant in the sense that he could, you know, not pay people light of their face. They knew that he was lying to their face. And they still would, you know, go through Helen back for him. He inspired that kind of loyalty. And it's one of the things that helped make him so successful. It's one of the things that made ECW successful, because his own company kind of personified, his him. It was reflection of who he was.

And just like he was able to convince people to go out there and perform and risk their lives and do crazy shit to themselves and oh by the way the checks in the mail, you know,

he would do whatever it took to get himself over or get his company over or stay faced, as you put it. I think it's all one and the same. But, you know, in terms of what his motivations

were, who he talked to, I don't know. let's uh let's keep it moving here i do want to put a bow on this how in the world do you guys allow mike awesome to appear at the indianapolis show for the for ecv to drop the belt and when did you know that he would be dropping it to a w wf performer tas not an ecb wrestler this is like the weirdest story ever that a wcd wrestler wrestles a wwee wrestler for the ecq title at an ECW show? It was just something that we worked out with Paul.

I didn't really care. You know, I know it, I know that sounds strange to people, but again, it sounds like I'm taking a shot of ECW and I don't mean it to sound this way. By this time, they were on, you know, eventually became the Paramount Network and previously was the Spike Network, and previous to that was the National Network. work. But their footprint, the size of their audience, was still relatively small. I didn't feel like in the long run. It was really going to matter all that much. And it was just something that we worked out with Paul, you know, so that we could not be going back and forth and spending time, you know, with attorneys. There was a lot of time spent with Turner attorneys trying to figure this situation out. And it was quite honestly, I was just tired of it. It didn't have a long-term implication to me. it was weird as fuck no doubt about it um it didn't matter to be whether he lost to a wwee guy or an eccw guy or anybody you know he was going there to perform we were going to wrap this thing up

put a bow on it get out of this mess and move on and that's kind of the way i looked at it and none of the rest of it really mattered to me next up we see Hulk Hogan on the phone in his limo and he says he's going to eat your ass and then uh Well, that doesn't sound appealing at all. We see the camera and slam the door and then, or he sees the camera and slams the door. And just then a white Hummer smashes in to Hulk Hogan's limo. You get out of the driver's seat and you're joined by Billy Kidman, who was riding shotgun. And then after commercial, we see Billy Kidman riding N.B. on Hulk Hogan's chest.

And he says he should get a tattooed. Of course, NB is for new blood. What do you remember about this limo? Hummer incident. This feels very WWF. Yeah. Well, I take exception to that. You know, we talked about a couple

weeks ago, the Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, running the Steiner's off the road. We had done this type of thing before. It wasn't, I guess we hadn't used a Hummer, but it wasn't, you know, we did monster trucks, we did motorists, we did all kinds of

crazy stupid shit, long before the WWE did. So I, I'd take exception to suggesting that we were copying something that we originally kind of started in our format. But, you know, it's funny how this segment in particular has its own legacy. I mean, to this day, I get people, you know, in social media, asking me, who's driving the White Hummer? And the truth is, I don't even know. It was probably Ellis Edwards. You know, who was driving it wasn't as important as well. happened after the Hummer crashed into Hogan's limbo and he got spray paint it with the new blood

tag that was what that segment was supposed to do it was supposed to help get Billy over it wasn't the the mystery surrounding the driver was never a part of the equation but it lived on this day I'm sure after this show drops I'll spend most of Monday trying to answer this question with social media that's a that's okay i've gotten pretty good at it's been happening now for about 23 years not quite that long this is 2000 so 19 years next up we see the heavyweight championship semifinal between diamond dallas page and sting page gets all his music and pyro this time and before the match starts jeff jarratt's music hits he goes to the commentary table and joins tony and scott more

interference as jeff jarrick goes after kimberley which distracts page the reference goes after Page to get him back in the ring, which causes Sting to be attacked by Vampiro. Vampiro hits the nail in the coffin and leaves. Page hits the diamond cutter and gets the win in just under four minutes. So the main event at Spring Stampede will be Jeff Jarrett versus DDP for the world title. And after the match, Jarrett goes to hit Page with the guitar, but Paige ducks out of the way,

and Jarrett ends up hitting Kimberly with the guitar. And we go to commercial and we get a recap, Jeff Jarrett hating Kimberly with the guitar and we see Diamond Dallas Page carrying Kimberly to the back and then we see Jeff Jarrett Vince Russo and yourself who are all smiles and Jared comes back out to the ring and says that's right six days and counting until the chosen one realizes his destiny and um he has to get this line in and page this Sunday if you want to bring your wife back along there's going to be a real man in the ring who can show her some more wood what the fuck Eric

yeah that was you know I mean I don't know what to say you know it's first of all the idea of getting Kimberly with the guitar

even by you know the standards that existed back in 2000 I think it's over the top it's shock value for shock values fake. And yes, it would have, you know, the idea was to put heat on Jeff, you know, to get sympathy on Kimberly and indirectly on page, you know, to properly motivate him.

You know, what's he going to do when he gets Jeff Gerard of the rain? Now that Jeff Jared has assaulted his wife. The line about the wood is a typical Vince Rousseau kind of thing or was at that time. Regrettable, not cool. should have never happened I don't know what else to say this time you see me you get me in the balls if you want

it's uh we're not done let's tell you about the last segment oh shit I thought we were done DDP's music hits it charges the ring to attack Jared then Scott Steiner runs out to attack page Lex Lugar runs out and attacks Jarrett Steiner and Bagwell

are also involved here the wall and vampiro come out they're attacking Lugar and page Sting runs out and tries to clean house but it's cut off by Booker T and Ernest Miller so the new blood beat up Sting, Page, and Lugar and stand tall as you and Vince Rousseau

come out and shake each other's hands and are grinning from ear to ear and just then Brent Hart appears from behind you guys and Nitro fades to black Do you remember the ending of this show? I mean you saw it for the first time in a long time. What did you think?

not a bad finish to a show. I mean, look, I like, and it still would to this day. Now, I would go about it differently. I wouldn't do the same thing. And I would probably architect it to be a lot more interesting. But the idea of ending a show on that kind of chaos and heat, again, keep in mind what the goal was for the show. What the goal was for the next two, three, four months at this time was to firmly establish young guys and the old guys, right? That was the premise.

It wasn't any more complicated than that. I think the individual personalities out of it, they're interchangeable to a certain degree. The idea was, let's create a storyline with new blood, these veterans. And this segment established that. You clearly knew who was on whose side. You know, you didn't have to look at, you know, the data on the driver's license to figure out which side somebody was going to be on. It was manifesting in front of you creatively. So this finish to this show, you know, it achieved a couple things.

It left us, you know, we left the air on a real high note, which we typically, if you go back and look at a lot of nitros, some of the best nitros we ever did ended up that way. We would go off the air in some kind of intense, chaotic, you know, beat down scene as often as we possibly, could because it worked, as opposed to, you know, going off the air with a three-count in the middle of the rain. Let's do a quick interview with me, Gene Oak, and okay, we'll see you next week. Let's talk about how it worked. You know, obviously everybody has their opinion on this show. There's so much that happened on this show.

The Hulk Hogan lost to Billy Kidman, you know, stripping all the champions of the belts, the attack on Mark Madden, Mike also making a debut. You know, we're getting the Vince Rousseau, Shane Douglas, Rick Flair thing, there's just a lot. And then, of course, the Hummer attack that, for whatever reason, people are fascinated about busting your balls about. And I'm sure Bixen's fan is really mad that you still don't have the answer to that. The rating comes in. And Nitro gets a 3.06. That's the average, of course.

The first hour was 3.58. The second hour fell to a 2.64. but then the rating comes in for raw and it gets a 5.68 for the first hour and a 6.61 for the second hour. So interest as the show goes on in Nitro certainly falls. It rises for raw. The final rating, Nitro 3.06, raw 6.17. Do you remember if you get back in your way back machine, how you felt when the rating comes in is that, I mean, obviously you guys didn't expect to win, but you certainly expected to, you know, do a little better.

Were you pleased with this rating, or do you recall? I wasn't pleased and I wasn't disappointed. I mean, we all knew Brad Siegel and I had talked about it. It wasn't like I was going to come in, wipe the slate clean, have a fresh start, and be right back in the saddle again. It was going to be a long-term process. We knew, I knew, at least going in, it may take us a year or more. to regain some of our footing.

At that point, I mean, again, keep in mind where WWE was at that point, and the things, the crazy shit that they were doing, and the fact that so many of our, the audience that we previously owned, in 96, 97, 98,

that 18 to 34 year old demo, maybe even 25 to 54 demo, which is, you know, a key demo for advertisers, that audience left us. And they went to the WWE. The WWE did a great job of satisfying them with the type of content of the WWE was doing at the time. Now, I don't know what their show was.

I do you have to go back and look at that. But they were on a massive role. And nobody, you know, Brad Siegel, myself, I don't know what a bit of this Russo thought, but clearly my conversation is with Brad, even going back to when I decided to come back, I made that really clear. You know, I didn't want to go back if I didn't understand or agree with their expectations.

If the expectations of Brett Siegel or the executives at Turner Broadcasting was that by me coming back, we were going to immediately start regaining ground, I would have never done it for any amount of money because you're just setting yourself up for failure. So I didn't, you know, I know I talked a lot about ratings, you know, and, you know, pounded my chest when we were winning. But I knew, you know, given the circumstances, it would take us at least. the year to regain some of the ground that we had given up to WWE. When you watched the show back for the first time in 19 years, nearly 20 years later,

you probably are able to see it and appreciate it in a different way than you could when you were in the weeds at the time. What did you like? What didn't you like? Again, I'm looking at it from the context of where we were, what we were trying to accomplish, what we were trying to overcome, and how we utilized

the talent that we had at the time. And honestly, two things come to mind when I watched the show. There was too much. You know, sometimes you can have so much going on that none of it really sinks in. When people start talking about the show the next day, hopefully if they're going to talk about the show the next day,

if there's just too much to talk about, I guess it's like going up, you know, at the dinner and just eating too much food, no matter how great the food is. If you eat too much of it, you're uncomfortable. It's not a memorable occasion. You don't look back at it fondly. If you eat so much, you make yourself uncomfortable. And I think looking at the show, you know, clearly I understood what the goal was.

Again, looking at it from a perspective, almost 20 years later, having produced a lot more television and other things it was just too much I think we would have been better served to focus on you know

an A story and a B story and not crammed so much in it was still too chaotic I don't think the audience left this show

at least I didn't when I watched it back I didn't leave the show feeling like wow I can't wait to see how this angle turns out. You know, there was nothing in this show that stood out so strongly that it was compelling

enough to make me want to go back and see what happened the following week. There was a lot of great stuff in the show. You know, I mean, I think, you know, as you isolate each one of those segments as we just did, and, you know, I go back and look at it or, you know, listening to you, reflect back on it,

there's a lot of good stuff here. You know, I think the idea of of the new blood versus the veterans was a great idea because we the veterans got the sympathy and despite what a lot of people thought at the time and the prevailing narrative at the time started largely by wwee going all the way back to you know making fun of you know randy savage and hall kogan and you know they're too old you know the audience doesn't care about them anymore that had been you know a branding mission for the wwf for years ahead of this right so the idea we were trying to embrace was to take advantage of that. Those guys were still big

draws. Rick Claire is still a big draw. Hulk Logan was still a big draw. People recognized them. They had built loyalty for decades in some cases with the audience. There was still a tremendous amount of value there, but we had to make them baby faces. We had to get sympathy on them. The new blood had to be the heels. That was the goal. And I think, you know, knowing that goal, as I did then and as I do now watching it back and listening to you talk about it, I think we checked that box. You know, that's one of the things that I think

the show was successful in doing is clearly establishing, you know, the battle lines and getting sympathy on the veterans, which is what we were trying to accomplish. So I'm not only happy with the show, unlike some of the shows

that you asked me to do with you, some of them I go, to it for days going, oh, I'm going to dread this. Oh, he's going to beat my ass. Oh, I'm going to be embarrassed. You know, I do have those feelings to this day because my fingerprints are on it.

But this is not one of those shows. You know, again, it sounds like I'm making an excuse and I'm not. But to really break this down and to really put yourself in this moment in April 2000, you have to understand what the circumstances were and what the goals were.

And I think aside from the fact that we crammed too much in, aside from the fact that I cringed some of the language and the inside references that I think were obviously a mistake in hindsight. Overall, the format of the show, the mission of the show, what we were hoping to establish and move forward from, I think we did a pretty good job, and the show was relatively entertaining. Well, hopefully you guys were entertained by this show. We got in our way back machine and checked it out.

If you haven't seen this show, we actually decided to do a double header with it this week. So join Tony Chavani and myself later this week on what happened when where we're actually going to watch this and do a watch-along. We'll learn about some of the things that Tony remembers about this show. You can also probably check us out on Patreon over the next week or so. We'll have Eric answer some of your questions about this show. So if you've always wanted to pick his brain and beat him up about this Hummer situation, then do that over at patreon.com forward slash 83 weeks.

As always, we appreciate you checking us out here. Hit the subscribe button, tell a friend. we appreciate you supporting the show somehow it gets bigger and bigger every single month and we appreciate all of your support and we would love to have your interaction he is at ebishoff on Twitter he's very active and we'd love to hear your suggestions about what you'd like for us to cover in the future of course i am at hey hey it's conrad and we are out of time we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks hey hey it's conrad thompson here to tell you a little more about what adfree shows dot com is all about get early

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