83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 360: The Nail in WCW's Coffin

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us back 25 years for a wild episode of Monday night RAW featuring The Radicalz, Triple H, The Rock, Cactus Jack and a whole bunch more. Eric discusses the impact of WCW losing The Radicalz and how he new that was the nail in WCW's coffin. He also shares that Verne Gagne alerted him about a college wrestler with big potential, and Eric talks about never really seeing Dallas as a true wrestling territory. All that plus his thoughts on the Royal Rumble and so much more on this edition of 83 Weeks. BILT - Start earning points on rent you’re already paying by going to https://www.joinbilt.com/83weeks TECOVAS - Get 10% off at https://www.tecovas.com/83WEEKS when you sign up for email and texts. VIIA - Try VIIA Hemp! https://viia.co/83WEEKS and use code 83WEEKS! ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to https://www.rocketmoney.com/83WEEKS MAGIC SPOON - Get $5 off your next order at https://magicspoon.com/83WEEKS . Magic Spoon—hold on to the dream!  BLUECHEW - Try your first month of BlueChew FREE at https://bluechew.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In a lesson number 2129, equal housing lender. Savewithconrad.com. Hey, hey, it's And you're listening to 83 weeks with their fish off. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I can't wait. I'm still, I'm living off the top guy buzz from this past weekend in Huntsville.

So I'm, I'm riding high. Man, it was such a great time. So awesome to hang out with. you and awesome to spend a little bit of time just brainstorming with you here in north Alabama it's been a minute since you've been in the north Alabama that was a fun visit man I'm glad you got there and I was really excited to see your lake house really excited to see that and you and Megan have done a great job with that house and a lot of work and time went into it what a beautiful place beautiful setting I don't know man if I was there I told you what I was

there I don't know if I lived there if I'd ever leave the property. I would make everybody just come to me. Well, we had a lot of fun having everybody come to us last week. Man, what a time it was watching the Royal Rumble with all of our folks from ad-free shows. Effron does such a great job with the top guy Rumble and so much drama there for that. I mean, it's one thing to watch the Royal Rumble. It's another to watch it with your friends. But when you're watching it with your friends and WrestleMania tickets are on the line, that was pretty fun. Wasn't that Eric? That was talk about some mistakes man people took it seriously it was a lot of fun and blast effort is amazing

effron really needs to have his own game show i don't know what that is but there's there is no justification for effron not having a high profile game show gig he's really awesome such a great personality huge personality and i agree undiscovered talent there i do want to ask you your feedback on uh the rumble of course we saw I guess it's the third most commercially successful W.W.E. show of all time, something like that. Only behind night one and night two of WrestleMania last year. Otherwise, this is the biggest show in history. Over 65,000 folks, the biggest gate, the most sponsorship. You know, listen, I know it sounds like a broken record with all the success WV's been enjoying.

But I don't think even I had it on my bingo card, if you would have said to me last year at WrestleMania. Hey, you know, besides today, next Royal Rumble will be the most successful WW event in history. That would have just, well, that can't be. It can't be bigger than all those other WrestleMania made events, but it happened for a Royal Rumble. Are you shocked by this, Eric? Yes and no. I'm, I don't, shocked isn't the right word. Amazed is. Amaze is a good word. I'm amazed at the growth, the success, and just the velocity of all of the positive things that are happening in WWE. I think, you know, we talked a long time back when the TKL merger first reared its head, and everybody speculated about the synergies and how it would affect WWE and what new opportunities may come our way.

and I don't think any of us had all of this on anybody's bingo card. It is just amazing how fast they're growing. And I think Netflix internationally is only going to accelerate that growth. It's pretty fun to watch. Parts of me, Conrad, deep down inside, if I'm honest with myself, I'm envious. I'm not jealous. That's a different thing.

But I envy those people who are involved at any level, but particularly on the creative side, on the management side, when your job is to improve and grow and expand, that's a lot of pressure. How many times have you heard me say it's a lot easier to create momentum than it is to maintain it? Yeah. And I think what we're seeing here is just an amazing, amazing, fuck, I hate saying this word, but synergy in a way that nobody anticipated. I mean, you talk about the sponsorship, you talk about the venues that they're able to leverage now and so many things are happening so fast that I envy those who are involved.

I don't know that I'd want to do it. I know that's why I say jealous isn't the right word I wouldn't want to if I could go back in time 25 or 30 years ago yeah I would just to be a part of it but at this stage of my life man I'm digging just watching it it's so satisfying to see the industry growing and expanding um makes me even more proud to have been in it at one point so it's all good man I'm just excited excited for everybody there. I'm excited, too. It was a fun show to watch. And, uh, of course, we always get our mixed bag reviews online after. I think some people were disappointed in the predictability that Charlotte Flair returned and won the rumble.

But maybe some of those same people were upset that they didn't get what they predicted with John Sina winning the men's rumble. Instead, it was Jay Uso. I even saw chatter online when people. were saying how disappointed they were that Jay won and I kind of couldn't believe that based on the merch reports we've seen and live reactions he's gotten and the way the crowd has responded to him and then we saw the in-ring promo from both Charlotte Flair and Jay Uso on Monday night and I felt like Jay was pouring his heart out and the fans ate it up

and well maybe when Charlotte tried that the fans weren't very receptive to that what do you make of these responses to our Royal Rumble winners, Eric? Oh, I find it interesting, you know, trying to figure out the psyche of the internet wrestling community is always a fascinating journey into the abyss. But I think it comes down to it's, I think it was Raj. Raj posted something online that if you booked for the internet wrestling community and to satisfy them, you'd be out of business very quickly. And I think what that says to me, the way I interpret that is,

and we've always talked about this, you have such a small percentage of the audience that is active online. I'm not talking about casual viewers like me who check in every once in a while in social media just to see what's going on and kind of keep their finger on the pulse a little bit. I'm talking about the people that spend six, eight hours a day commenting on professional wrestling, most of whom have accomplished nothing in their lives,

really don't have much going on personally or professionally. And they're very quick and you're very loud to be critical because that's how they get, that's their dopamine hit is being negative and critical. But unfortunately, that very, very small percentage of the audience tends to make the most noise on social media. So you really can't, you know, you want to listen to social media a little bit. You know, you want to follow the trends if there's a trend, certainly.

But to try to create an event or I hate to use the term of book, but creatively to produce a show like Royal Rumble and hope that you're going to make the Internet happy. good freaking luck and if you do you're probably going down the wrong path I've said this before about Dave Meltzer and I used to I used to say this all the time back in the 90s if if you want to give yourself the best chance of success do the opposite of what Dave Meltzer proposes and the odds are you're probably going to be successful more often than you're not and that's true with the wrestling community and Raj pointed that out I think in his tweet, because you can't book for them.

You know, if John Sino would have won the Royal Rumble, because everybody predicted it, then you would have had a whole bunch of people on the internet, oh, I can't believe John Sini's a part-timer, he's not even full-time. Somebody else deserves that spot. I mean, you know the garbage that you'd be reading, right? So you just, like I do, you know, you scroll through your social media and you laugh and you chuckle. Sometimes you'll see something that'll make you go.

maybe but 99% of the time it's just garbage takes well we hope that we have a little more than some garbage takes today we're going to be watching an old episode of monday night raw we'll hope you'll join us uh of course you can see uh one of the more iconic episodes of monday night raw if you go seek out February 7th 2000 it went down February 7th 2000 at the reunion arena in Dallas, Texas. Do you think of, you know, Dallas as being a wrestling town, Eric? I don't.

And I know there's so many people going to be pissed off at me for saying this, but please understand. Dallas, you know, that market really, first of all, I wasn't even aware it existed as a wrestling fan. Again, this was back in the territory, and back in the day,

back in the days of the territories, where someone like me who was in my teens or late teens or late 20s. And I'm a wrestling fan. I live in Minnesota. That's all I see. There was no wrestling on cable back now. There was very little. There were no dirt sheets.

There were, you know, the wrestling mags or wrestling mags. I never read them anyway. So you were kind of isolated in terms of what you knew and who you knew about. It wasn't until really I got to Atlanta. Now, before I got to Atlanta, obviously what I was with, the AWA, I became very familiar with a lot of the territories and their promoters and worked with some of them, by the way. So it's not that I didn't know regional territories existed back then. It's just that I had no familiarity with them until much, much later.

So when people talk about wrestling hotbeds, where do I go naturally? I go to Minneapolis for obvious reasons. That's where I got my start. the long list of top talent in this industry, Hall of Fame level talent that started or came through or were developed in the AWA, including, by the way, Holcogh.

To me, that was the hotbed until I learned about the impact of Florida and how much was really going on here in Florida and some of the, again, same level, Hall of Fame level, WWE Hall of Fame level, of talent that were involved in Florida that had such a significant impact. So when people talk about the hotbeds of wrestling, Dallas isn't one of my go-toes for the reasons I just explained, but clearly,

clearly had a big influence on the industry. Well, I want to do a PSA right now for anyone who rents. If you haven't heard of Bilt, you're about to thank me. Earning points on rent is now a reality when you pay your rent through Bilt. You don't even have to check with your landlord to start earning points that you can use towards flights or hotel stays, fitness classes, even your next rent

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we sent you. That's joinbuilt.com slash 83 weeks to start earning points on your rent payments today. So Eric, I'm looking forward to this. We're going to have a lot of fun watching this episode of Monday Night Raw from way back when February 7th, 2000. But before we jump into that, I do want to ask you about, you know, what you've seen with WrestleMania and what your what your guess is for WrestleMania right now. We mentioned that there were some fans who were less than enthused

that John Cena didn't win. I was happy to hear that they've already announced he will be at the elimination chamber at the Skydome in Toronto. Hey, if you're going to have a John Cena farewell tour, bring him to all your big dome shows, even the international ones, it makes sense. So I see why they may be saved that,

but there's lots of speculation. What's Cody going to do at WrestleMania? What's Roman going to do at WrestleMania? What's CM Punk going to do at WrestleMania? What's Drew McIntyre going to do at WrestleMania? Eric, if you had to put your fantasy booking cap on, do you see any clear path that you think, no matter what, they've got to do this.

Does that exist? Is there a must-see match this year? No, I don't think there is. I think WWE has done such a good job of mixing up the very top of the roster so that it's very hard to predict and anticipate everybody has it's kind of like johnsina winning the rumble everybody's invested oh i think jell's going to win and maybe they wanted him to win maybe they didn't i don't know but it's the prediction they're invested they've made a decision and a commitment and they've done some they wwe has done such a good job

of keeping so much potential impossibility in terms of matchups that it builds anticipation just like we have right now. What's going to happen? When you can get, again, I'll go back to what worked for me and what didn't work sometimes, but one of the things that always worked for me was believing that if your creative is successful in getting people to speculate,

If you can get people to ask questions, you own them. It's when they're not asking questions because they don't care, that you're really in trouble. And I think there's so many possibilities. I still think the Rock's showing up. I do. I don't know how it's going to fit. I don't know where he's going to go. I don't have any idea what the story might be.

But I will be surprised if Rock isn't some. somehow heavily involved no reason for it other than a gut instinct and my gut is usually often I would say often more correct than me you know thinking through something my instinct says rock's coming back so we'll see beyond that no idea I think rock being involved creatively from a storyline standpoint makes a lot of sense are you suggesting you think we actually they might see the rock wrestle or wrestle money yes yes okay well when i say well do i think there'll be an official match with a bell two bells one to start one to finish i don't know but i see strong physical involvement in and in meaningful interaction whatever that interaction is

whether it's physicality he's going to throw a monkey wrench into something i just don't know what it is I agree with that. I do think that we have not heard the last of the Rock this WrestleMania season. On the lady's side, does anything jump out to you? I mean, you know, there is a fork in the road here. We don't know exactly which direction Charlotte's going to go and the other opportunities that creates. Does anything jump out as a marquee matchup on the lady's side, do you think? Not so much for a matchup, but I do think there will be a full-blown heel turn.

for Charlotte kind of see that coming in some of her promos and some of the stuff I've seen online from her I think she's going to embrace her healed them which I think will be awesome for her because I think she's a much she's a much more natural heel than she is a natural baby face I think the heel thing will come so easy for her and she will become so comfortable with it, that that's, that will be her destiny. I also wanted to ask you, you know, any sort of news and notes if you've been keeping up with anything happening on the AEW side of things. Of course, we know we're on a countdown to their big show in Australia, as I guess

once upon a time was in a stadium and now it's in an arena and I guess that's created a lot of discussion. And I think some fans maybe once upon a time hope that this might be a pay-per-view, although I don't technically think AEW ever announced anything like that. I do think fans sort of jump to the idea that, hey, this is going to be a premium live event. Now, they've loaded the card up. Maybe it's not as heavy as a pay-per-view,

but they're making it feel like more than just a TV show, but it is going to be a Saturday night special, but I guess they're still calling it collision. And I saw Dave Meltzer recently talk about this, and he said, perhaps just calling it collision hurt. Maybe he was incendiary. that much like you uh sort of grew to not love the idea of thunder and by grew i mean hated it from the very beginning well davis freestyling do you think just the brand name

collision has been damaged to the point where maybe fans in australia aren't excited to see it because it's called collision that to me was like wow i i never even considered that fans may have lost confidence in just the show name? Is that a real thing, Eric, already at this point, do you think? No, I don't think so. I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think,

look, whether AEW intentionally allowed people to believe that this was going to be a pay-per-view, and you can allow people to believe whatever they want to believe if you don't want to correct them, or if you're marketing and your promotion is intentionally ambiguous and vague. It's easy to understand why people in Australia fans who reacted initially to the,

oh my gosh, 50,000 seed stadium show, I've got to be a part of that. And they took the leap themselves. Well, this must be a pay-per-view. Because who would just do a collision, which is a C-show for TBS or T&G, whoever has, I don't even know. nor do I care because it doesn't matter. It's easy to understand how fans allowed themselves to believe that this was going to be a big stadium pay-per-view show and they were going to be a part of something special because that's the way it was projected and presented. And now you find out that, well, it's not going to be a pay-per-view.

I know we never said it would be, but we didn't say it wouldn't be. And we understand you just assumed that it was because it's in the stadium and it's an Australian. blah blah blah blah but to go from that to a smaller arena and and and now making it clear which they should have done in the very beginning because now people have a pissed off taste of your mouth right they're pissed off because they felt like they were deceived they weren't they deceived themselves but you know that's a little bait and switchy to be honest and Dave was one of the ones that and rightfully so I'm not criticizing it, good for this.

But the minute there's any change in a card or a schedule, particularly if it's at the top, his go-to was always, you know, false advertising, very misleading. Well, that's kind of what's going on here. But now that they've come out and said, okay, we're going to move to a smaller arena. It's not going to be a big stadium show. Sorry, folks, we overestimated our own popularity. So we're going to move to a small arena, so it doesn't look like shit. Oh, and it's going to be called collision because, well,

It's a Saturday night TV show with that nobody watches. Well, hang on. Hang on now. You're getting real negative, but I mean, they call this from the beginning grand slam Australia. And if you recall when they first started using the name grand slam, it was because they were running Arthur Ash.

And that was just a quote unquote regular TV show. They would double up a taping. They would do a dynamite and a collision. But you got, you know, two nights of Grand Slam, but it just meant, hey,

it was a cool venue in Arthur Ash, which is a tennis stadium. and I like that they called it Grand Slam. So I kind of never assumed that it would be a pay-per-view, but there was speculation when they first announced this. Oh, that's after the first of the year. Might this be a Mac special? I mean,

I don't think we're that far away from AEW pay-per-view being a thing of the past, and maybe they're all Mac specials. It feels like that's the way the industry's going. So I guess I'm not piling on AEW here. I was really shocked to hear that maybe Meltzer felt like the brand, name of the show was damaged because I know you weren't high on Thunder, but I think most rank and foul ticket buying

casual wrestling fans just saw thunder as a quote unquote WCW show. No, it wasn't Nitro, but it was a WCW show. I get that Nitro would be the A, but just the idea that there was a brand name of a show that who felt like was second tier already with AW. I don't know. It feels like a weird thing to be disappointed in.

I would be happy if I'm getting my first show in Australia, and they are going to give me a good card. I don't know. It feels like at times we look for things to be upset about. Like, well, we thought it was a pay-per-view, but no one said it was. And they've been running Grand Slams in America using that same name.

Like, it feels weird to me, right? not to me and I think again going back to Dave Dave is always looking for new excuses new reasons new spin to to avoid the reality that AEW as a brand is deteriorating right before our eyes so it's Dave's go-to to oh it's the it's not it's not aEW it's not the fact that they didn't promote the show well it's not the fact that they shouldn't have announced it in the first place it was a bad decision to be begin with. There's a lot of reasons why this thing should have never occurred in the first place. But Dave wants to assign causation to the name of the show versus the fact that the

company and the brand fucked up. They just did. Whatever goodwill they had in Australia, some of it's going to be diminished because of just the bad taste that they left in people's mouth because of changing the venues and whether it was fair or unfair, you know, allowing people to convince themselves that this is going to be a pay-per-view. None of that has anything to do with the fact that AEW is struggling, and this is the result of it. I don't think the name of the show, I think we're trying too hard to justify disappointment. It is what it is.

There's very weak television in Australia. you, we've talked about this before. One of the reasons of AEW was successful in the beginning and was able to put whatever it was, 15, 18, 20,000 people in Arthur Ash, whatever it was. I remember when it happened, I was extremely ecstatic about it and posted all kinds of stuff on social media, putting it over and putting Tony over because it was really quite the accomplishment. It's a new company, a new brand.

But with that new company and that new brand is new anticipation, new hope. And at that time, 2019, there were a lot of people looking for an alternative to, to WWE wrestling fans, hardcore wrestling fans. Well, now they've got it, but it's not much of an alternative. And it's just kind of atrophying for our eyes. Well, we're all going to be paying close attention to see what happens. I, for one, am looking forward to, uh, seeing AW for the first time in Australia. You know, you, you went to Australia with, uh, WCW.

you did you consider that and I know there's a rich history of wrestling in Australia we mentioned earlier that you didn't really think of Dallas as a wrestling town do you think that Australia represents a big opportunity for wrestling as a whole just as a genre there's certainly a market for it there but Australia is kind of hard to get to unless there's going to be a local promoter or promoter in Australia that's going to be able to build a build a promotion and have weekly television and stabilize over a course of a couple two or three years. I don't see anybody other than WWE being able to drop into Australia once or twice a year

and be successful doing it. WWE can for obvious reasons. They've been in the marketplace for a long time. They've got an established history there. People know what to expect. But other than WWE, I don't think there's any, I don't think we'll see TNA making its way to Australia anytime in the next 10 years or, or any other wrestling organization for that matter. It's number one, it's really expensive. You know, flying a crew and production and everything else to Australia is incredibly expensive. That fact alone makes it prohibitive for midsize or small promoters to say, Let us go over and we'll show you and see how that goes.

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slash 83 weeks. Tocovus.com slash 83 weeks. See site for details to Covus. Point your toes west. So listen, Before we go, I just want to shout out. I just went over to the comments. Josh Henny's here.

Josh, it was great seeing you again, man. Matthew Presley. Isaac, man, it's been a minute. I hope you're feeling better. Not feeling too good today. But I really want to thank everybody from every shows, the top guys and gals who showed up.

Just had so much fun. And every time I go to one of these, I'm so grateful that I'm a part of it. So thank you, Conrad, and your team. And everybody that showed up because it was a blast. man I had a blast it was a lot of fun you know just to catch everybody up we we have a couple of get-togethers for ad free shows.com every year we have something called top guy weekend and then we have top guy rumble the top guy rumble was this past weekend and we combined it with

a wrestling fantasy camp for you actually got to go in the ring and roll around with jerry lynn and learn how to lock up and run the ropes and it was really really fun and then after that we booked our own private, independent wrestling show. We got to play the Booker and put together an entire card and run some matches and it was just a blast. We had game shows and opportunities to win

WrestleMania tickets, a comedy show, a double taping of wrestling. Really, really great stuff, but before you know, I can just drone on about it, let me let you hear what other people are saying about the time they had at Top Guy Rumble. I knew from the great

state of contract, and I've been a TopGal for a few years and I have made some of the best friends that I have ever had. And here I've gotten to spend time with him here at the TopGy Rumble. We have had an absolute blast. The last two days have been really exciting. We have, number one, again, all got to be together. We got to talk to Jerry Lent. We got to do fantasy camp.

We have to get in the ring and show us some basic moves. And then we got to put together a match. We got to meet independent wrestlers and we got to ring announce. We got to be managers. We got to be the timekeepers. We had commentary. We had a show and we got to put that on. But just the fact that I'm in here hanging out with all these guys that love wrestling just as much as I do is worth every penny that I spend.

If you love wrestling, you need to do it. This is a community beyond anything that's out there. And I just really feel like if you were to put the money towards being a top guy, give these experiences that you know you're going to love. How many people can say they got in the ring as a wrestling fan and was taught by professionals on how to do, you know, different moves and lockups and show you the right way to do it? I mean, I know a lot of people that do fantasy football camps

and they go to, you know, they do the NASCAR and all that kind of stuff. You don't have a lot for wrestling. You have it here, and it's professionals, legends. You know, like I said, Jerry Lane was here, and he walked around with every one of us, and he interacted with us, and he talked to us, and he showed us how to do things, things not to do, and why you don't do it.

I mean, you just don't need that anywhere else. And I just think that it's worth every penny. It's just worth the money. And plus, not only the experiences, it's who you get to do it with. Whether it's your, you know, you bring a partner or the people that you meet here. I just think it's worth that for too. Playing fans,

Dream Weekend, be sure to be a part of it next year. Join us over at ad-freeshows.com. I want to encourage you, try using our promo code Top Guy 50. It's going to give you a little hookup, save you a little bit of cash, but man,

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We hang out a couple times a year and I just can't stress how fun it is. Go check it out. You're going to love it. It's ad-free shows.com. All right, Eric, so we're going to do a little countdown and then we'll get going. Here we go. We're watching Monday Night Raw from 25. years ago, February 7th, 2000, in three, two, one, play.

Here we are, the old iconic open. And does it feel like it's been a quarter century ago, Eric, the year 2000? It seems like 2000 was yesterday. It's such a head trip. It really is. Whenever I, we do one of these shows, we go back in time and say, oh, it's 15 years ago or 20 years ago some of it seems like a lifetime ago and some of it seems like last night it's it's really incredible it's incredible to think about how much wrestling and and the entire industry and

the people in it have changed but some things remain the same like we see dean malinko in the ring right now and we know behind the scenes he's a coach for a e w and john walton still making regular appearances and just saw triple h he's going to be a big part of of the show. We know he's steering the ship. Isn't it interesting that for so many this becomes a lifelong career? Like, that is not the case in traditional sport. You know, I mean, most folks are in the NFL for a handful of years and then that's in the rearview mirror. But pro wrestling affords itself to be, you know, a decades long career for a lot of performers. But I don't even really think that most of them maybe even consider what do I do post active

competitor? Is there still a place for me in pro wrestling? And it's nice to see this from 25 years ago and realize, wow, there's a lot of this influence still felt in the industry today. Yeah, I was thinking about Triple H the other day. What a, I mean, if you look at the last 24 months of this cat's life, maybe 36, I mean, his life has been pretty, amazing up to that point, but to go through everything that Paula Beck went through to end up where he's ended up. And oh, by the way, we're going to put you in a Hall of Fame too. It's like, I don't know what the next two years are going to look like, but it's setting up to be kind of a letdown with all the stuff that's been going on in his life. It's been, it's been, it's been

amazing. That's the only word I can think of. And I wonder if Paul ever thought, about what's in this business for me after I get done in the ring. You know, do you go in, do guys go into the industry thinking, okay, this is going to be my career for a lifetime, or is it more like, wow, I get this opportunity to do this now and I'll worry about what comes after after. But here with Triple H, you got a guy that worked his way up. I mean, he started at WCW for crying out loud and made his way to WWE. And it wasn't necessarily a super high profile player.

certainly not in the beginning. It wasn't like he was pushed down anybody's throat. I think towards, you know, over the last seven or eight years prior to Paul retiring, I think he was shoved down our throats a little bit. But the guy really does study the industry, not just from a wrestler's perspective, but from the business perspective. I used to, you know, I hear people refer to him as a student of the game. okay, that's a cool gimmick.

It's not a gimmick with Paul. It's real. He does study the business. He knows its history. He understands the audience. He understands the business of the wrestling business. And now he's surrounded by some of the most powerful, influential, successful, and experienced people in media and entertainment. And the guy like Paul is only going to learn that much more.

So his future is obviously very bright. I kind of joked about the next two years. but what an amazing journey this cat's been on what do you make of i don't know if you saw this but when it was revealed last week that triple h would be the headliner in this year's russomania i did see some snarky comments online about all vince would never allow anyone to put him in the hall of fame and hunters had the seat for a year and he's already a mark for himself and i was like oh god why are we doing that like are you arguing that this guy's not worthy of the Hall of Fame like there's no argument there's no basis for that argument like it it was

really a head scratcher to me like can we have any positive news without there being some negativity attached to it or is that just in wrestling you can't of course not of course not wrestling is all based on emotion or it should be and logic unfortunately doesn't factor in too much but did you think of anybody I can't think of anybody off the top of my head. If I'm being objective, but let's be clear. It's not like Paul Levich and I are tight, right? I'm not here putting over my friends, so to speak.

I'm over friends, more friendly than friends, but it is what it is. But can you think of anybody right now who is more deserving of a Hall of Fame nod than Triple H? Right. I can't. And you can argue the timing. You know, do Paul? I don't know if he knew about it.

in advance or not it's hard to say i can i could understand though how paul when he found out kind of went oh maybe this isn't the right time because you don't want to you don't want to you know you don't want to lose any goodwill you want to keep that audience behind you and supportive of you and right now i think the vast majority of actual wrestling fans people that watch it on a regular basis, um, who aren't internet wrestling community arcs. Um, I just can't think of anybody that's more deserving. But unfortunately, you know, you're going to always have that loudest 2% of the audience or 5% of the audience that's going to jump on the internet and bury anything and everything. I guess you can't really react to that. You just got to move forward

and do what you think is best and do what you think is going to create the best emotion, the right emotion. And if the internet wrestling community shits on it, so be it. Who cares? It don't, it doesn't really matter what the IWC thinks because they're not thinking. They're reacting based on emotion. Well, we're seeing a pretty emotional promo here. Of course, we are just one week into this radicals move. Just a week prior, all of a sudden, the radicals showed up on WWF programming. And then it was the talk of the industry. We know that they wrestled on Smackdown and unfortunately Eddie Guerrero broke his arm on a frog splash but now we're seeing an in-ring promo here from the radicals and talk about bad luck man make your big jump you got

your big moment and in your very first match you break your freaking arm god can you imagine what was can you imagine what was going through Eddie Guerrero's mind at that moment no I mean leaving In WCW, there was a lot of, and I wasn't there, obviously, so I can't speak from experience perspective, but based on everything that I've been told by people who were there, that was a very emotional decision for all three of these guys, four of them, to leave WCW and jump to WWE. Talk about jumping into the unknown and the abyss, and then you finally get there and break your freaking arm.

man that had to be tough on Eddie when you here comes Mick Foley now and uh it said here Benoit wanted to thank the man that brought them here cactus jack so here he comes but before he can say anything well triple H and Stephanie

they're going to rear their ugly heads here as part of this story um the whole you know, you weren't there, but you were certainly keeping tabs a little bit on what was happening. And when you see this movement of not just one guy, because, well, respectfully, we'd seen that before. We'd seen Waltman go from the WWF to WCW and back again. We had seen Jeff Jarrett go from the WWF to WCW and back again. So we had seen some of that

before. And of course, most famously, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash. So none of this is really new, but it feels different when there's four of them. Does it, did it feel like the beginning of the end or the straw that break the camels back? Was it a significant point in the road when the radicals jump or was it just business as usual with that? Oh, no. I think it was definitely significant to me when I heard, well, first of all,

I told the story before, I won't go into it again here too much. But the week before, Lori and I were flying home from Minneapolis, we'd spent the night in Minneapolis dropping off my brother and sister and we were going to leave the next morning and we were sitting in a Chili's or Applebee's, whatever, a restaurant, and the monitors were up on the wall. I could see Monday Night Raw, but I couldn't hear it. Obviously, we were in a restaurant. And I remember sitting there, and when we saw that camera shot of those four, I looked

at Lori and said, this is big. And I said to her, I will not. not be surprised within 30 days if I don't get a phone call asking me to come back because it was such a big move and it came at absolutely the worst time for WCW. WCW was a cracked egg just waiting to spill its guts out. It was broken. It was fractured. There was no leadership. The creative was a mess. Turner Broadcasting wanted to make it go away. And amongst all of that drama for your top guys and they were the cruiserweight division eddie dean chris perry to a degree not to the same degree those guys were they were front and center on

nitro for a long time and as a part of the cruiserweight division and and benoit went on to have you know great matches outside of the cruiserweight division i think that made it a more significant move and and that is why it didn't fall into the category, even though Scott Hall and Kevin Nash at that time, when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash came over, yeah, it was a big deal. It didn't become a really big deal to later on. But I think this move in many respects

from a business perspective was more significant. It was the nail. I think it was the nail in the coffin. really do once I saw that I was like there's just no way they can't come back from this we're seeing triple H year with the uh it looks like a brand new world title it looks fantastic and we've got a very young Stephanie McMahon 24 years old I think when we're watching when you uh when you think about you know I mean it was often talked about in this era and certainly in the five or six years that passed this that

hey, this is going to be the power couple of the future. And this is around the same time you started to hear people say that, oh, Triple H is trying to saddle up to the boss's daughter. But I mean, all the conspiracy theorists, all the naysayers, all the haters,

it's really hard to argue with Triple H's success right now. And I know that there's, he's still got a lot of really loud critics out there, which I kind of scratch my head about. Like, I don't know what he could do better at this point, uh, to prove that,

you know, he's trying to be an advocate for pro wrestling and he cares about the industry and yeah you know he he he does represent a positive change from Vince McMahon but even that negativity Eric people were still talking about it back then you think and I know this is a long drawn out way but to ask this question do you think perhaps triple H has a little bit of residual heat from the way Sean Michaels was perceived because for so long long Sean Michaels was viewed as a guy who had a bad attitude was difficult to work with and he tried to mess with guys in the clique and you know he was just a menace and maybe

sometimes he had some personal stuff going on and we've just heard a lot of negativity absolutely true the way all of which is factual but we don't hear that about you know like we didn't hear that triple h had substance issues and some of the challenges that some others did But it often feels like he gets painted with some of that same negativity. And I'm wondering, is that because they didn't like Kevin Nash or they didn't like Scott Hall or they didn't like Sean Michaels? How did it get on Triple H here? Is it guilt by association?

Probably a little bit. I think a lot of it has to do, though, just with the narrative, again, within a wrestling community. And none of those people who knew Polovac or worked with Triple H, the character, Nobody really knows him. I don't really know him for crying out loud. As long as I've known him, I don't know him well at all. So you end up listening to what other people say.

You try not to. You may even consciously be aware of the fact that it's too easy to pass judgment or have an opinion, not even past judgment, have an opinion of somebody without ever having any contact with him. The narrative, and look, the reason you've never heard about his substance abuse problem, This guy doesn't drink and he doesn't smoke. He doesn't do drugs. That's right.

And he's kind of, you talk about straight edge, this cat, I remember the first time I ever was with him in a social environment. It was at Diamond Dallas Pages house. It was a Christmas party for wrestlers. So you can imagine what was going on in his house. I mean,

there was no debauchery of any kind, just people partying and drinking and do what, you know, doing what people do at Christmas parties. And I looked over at Paul and he's sitting there with a bottle of water. Everybody and he's having a blast. Don't get me wrong. It's not like he's sitting here kind of, oh man, I'm the only one here that's not drinking. This is kind of miserable. He was having a blast, but I noticed he was drinking water when everybody else was pounding, whatever

they were pounding. And I think with Paul, much like others who have been successful in the industry, there is always going to be resentment, either from other talent or in some cases fans, people that write about wrestling, there's always going to be a bias there. And when you have 20 years, 15, 20, 25 years of people spreading the rumors and kind of framing someone is selfish or manipulative or greedy, it takes hold. It becomes fact just because it's been repeated so often, it shouldn't say fact, it becomes the narrative that everybody accepts. Even though it's not a fact at all. Is he different? Sure. Did he have to work really hard to protect his character, to protect his position? Sure. Guess what? So does everybody else in the

business today? Absolutely. Everybody in the business today has to watch out for themselves. They have to protect their own character. They have to do what's right for them or what they feel is right for them. You've got to balance that with the fact that you're getting a check and you have a contract. There's only so much influence you have. But to be aware of your position, to be deeply involved in your creative, to want to understand the process and why you're being asked to do something is all part of the business. But I think in the case of someone like Paul Aveck or anybody else, maybe not everybody else, but so many other people that have reached that top level, there's always, yeah, but he's really a dick, but he's only got

there because he's really selfish. Paulovac only got that job because he married the boss, his daughter. All of that garbage becomes reality, in fact, in the minds of a lot of people that just should know better, but don't. Yeah, it's just weird because I never even really can. considered that until recently because I was having a conversation with someone and they they lumped him in with the click and they said well you know it's what people always say about him and I'm like well what what did they say because we've heard reports of you know Scott hall or

Kevin Nash or Sean Michaels in that era I don't recall hearing any specific sort of quote unquote bad behavior from triple H in that regard and it I just found it interesting because then in a more modern era it's like maybe he took some blame for the Vince McMahon stuff and I just feel like it's just guilt by association like when I really try to pinpoint that don't get me wrong there's some creative differences along the way where I would have said well I don't know that I would have done it that way but as Jeff Jared always reminds us on his podcast Eric creative is subjective and man we can get out there with some crazy ideas and maybe if you're looking to get some out there ideas

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our show and tell them we sent you this year enhance your every day with Vaya. So listen, we just set up a big match here. That entire opening segment, which is 20 minutes in running right now, turned into the radicals making the jump. And, hey, we're thanking McFoly for setting this up. And of course, well, McPoly gets left laying in a heap.

Radicals are raising their hands with Tori and Xbox. and Triple H and Stephanie. Now we've got a collision course for no way out. It's hell in the cell and Mick Foley's career is on the line. What did you think about those? You know, I know you're big on stakes, Eric, but a career match just being made in a promo like this, you went to this kind of early in the Hulk Hogan-Rick-Flare feud.

In 1994, you set all kinds of records with Bash at the Beach. and we know that you're going to try to run it back at Halloween Havoc. Maybe it's stalling compared to what happened in July. So we make it, hey, Rick's going to put his career on the line. We knew we were going to bring it back. I know you're big on stakes, but this retirement step, it's a stake that almost no one believes. Did you guys kill that stipulation?

Was it already dead when you found it? What do you think of that retirement step? Yep, Eric. I don't think we killed it because it still exists, unfortunately. But I know I've said this a lot over the years, but sometimes you learn more from mistakes than you do from success. And putting one's career on the line probably falls into that category. It's an easy go to because the stakes are relatable. It should matter. But as you pointed out correctly, Conrad, nobody buys it. You're setting up stakes that nobody believes are going to be true. Or they're not, it's not real. And I remember Rick Flair. Now, Rick was,

Rick was a challenge at Halloween Havoc. That was, I think it took place in Detroit, had Muhammad Ali there. And it was a great night. A lot of great boxing per tummy. Burns was there. Sugar Ray Leonard was there. A lot of great boxing talent was there. Then I was excited to meet. But Rick was beside himself. And he was beside himself for a couple reasons. One is Rick wasn't exactly sure what his contractual status would be afterwards. And he was concerned based on his history that he could be put in a position where he loses any leverage at all. And I kind of understood that, but I didn't accept it because I knew, I knew, what I was going to do.

There was no way I was going to take advantage of Rick and be forced into a retirement match and then not re-sign them. That was never going to happen, ever, ever, ever going to happen. I wouldn't be that manipulative. But Rick was also concerned that these are stupid stakes. Nobody's going to believe I'm going to retire. And he didn't want to be involved in something that he knew the audience wasn't going to buy into.

Now, I didn't realize it. I didn't give that conversation with Rick enough weight at the time, but it's one of those things that I learned, not once but twice, is just not a good idea. You want to create stakes that are believable. You want to create stakes that people say to themselves consciously or subconsciously. You know, this could matter. This could affect his career. This could affect whatever.

But to have fake stakes like that is a bad decision probably always. Now, here's an exception. If we knew, for example, that Rick Flair was on his way to Tibet and he wanted to become a monk and he was never coming back, then great, do it. Because then it's real and it matters. But to set a guy up, get a retirement match that you know is coming back, coming back just pisses the audience off. They know you're just fucking with them and they get out about that. So don't do it. I learned that the hard way, twice.

I like when you can drop a little knowledge here. Hey, let's talk about what we're seeing on the show here. We're seeing the Dudley boys just plow and Edging Christian through these tables. We also saw one of the most overacts in wrestling in the year 2000. The new age outlaws out here doing their rap. Did you ever get a chance to catch the new age outlaws? What did you think of their stuff? the idea of road dog and, I mean, the former roadie, one half of Jeff Jarrett's act and Billy

Gunn, you know, one half of the former smoking guns, it felt like these guys were just sort of drifting along aimlessly as the roadie and Rockabilly. And they come together and it becomes a happy accident. Ryan James is an entertaining son of a gun and man, they were over like Rover in 2000. out of nowhere and still to this day people know the entire wrap all the way through were you surprised how well that caught on no i wasn't now i really wasn't following a road dog or billy gunn too much i wasn't really they're familiar with their careers like i didn't have an opinion one way or the other until i saw them together and i think together especially now after

so much time has gone by you can look back and and i think at least my opinion that these two individually, for whatever reason, just eh, but together, it's like one plus one equals four. And they just, the chemistry, they had fun working together. And it's always, it's always a big factor, right? If you enjoy the people you're working with, if you enjoy the chemistry and you can feed off of each other, there's nothing more fun. And if you're having fun, like we're seeing.

right now if you're having fun in the ring with your character it's pretty hard for the audience not to have fun watching you firm believer in that if you're if you're in a match if you've got a tag team partner for example that you just prefer not to see until you absolutely have to the chemistry is not going to be there you're not going to enjoy it and neither is the crowd but every once in a while you connect to people that you know otherwise maybe would have been lukewarm and the magic happens because the chemistry happens and all of a sudden you've got a superstar team on your hand. It's pretty awesome. It is fun to see how the tag team division in WWE is changing.

You know, this is an interesting time because for so long, tag teams have not been a priority with the WWF. But now you take a look and all of a sudden you got the new age outlaws, you got the Dudley boys, you got Edging Christian, you got the Hardy boys. You know, if you had to think about, the heyday of WCW tag teams, you know, is there one? I mean, this feels like maybe one of the bigger booms for WWE tag teams, but was there ever a WCW tag team era, Eric?

I think in the early 90s, WCW tended to rely a lot more on tag teams. Certainly you think of the Snyder brothers, Harlem Heat is two of the most prolific teams in WCW, two of the most prolific teams in professional wrestling for that matter. We're obviously a big part of WCW, but when I started getting control of WCW, particularly during that period of time where I spent a year,

two years cutting costs, I just took out a calculator and went, wait a minute, I've got to make a decision. Are we going to build the tag team division or are we going to pair it down? reduce the size of it. And it was just a financial issue,

as I'm sure it has been with WWE over the course of their history. There are times when you just look at your roster and you look at the math that comes with it and you go, wait a minute, if I'm going to have a tag team division that actually matters, and it's not just a filler match to break up the monotony of singles matches during a two hour, three hour show.

But if you really want to build a tag team and get a tag team over, they're going to need a bunch of opponents. They can't go out there and wrestle each other every week. So now you're building a summit of your roster that has twice the cost, the cost of goods, in this case, talent is twice as much than you're going to have in a singles match. And it just becomes a math problem. But for that reason, I personally got away from tag team wrestling because it just didn't fit in the budget, to be very honest, in the beginning. Now, later on, 96, 97, 98, you know, the financial issue wasn't as big of a deal.

But by that time, we kind of minimized the tag team division over the previous couple of years. And it just didn't, it just wasn't high on my list of priorities. And I don't, I would imagine WWE has gone through that, again, who knows how many times over the past 30 or 40 years. You just got to look at the numbers and go, oh, this isn't working. I've got to make a change. I do want to ask you about the Dudley boys. We see them out at the commentary desk with Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross. I know you've become big buddies with Pooley Ray through your experience and T&A and your sense.

But way back when, when they were in ECW, once in a time, it felt like a lot of talent left ECW and came to WCW. Guys like Stevie Richards, guys like Raven, guys like Sandman, guys like Bam Bam Bigelow and Mike Austin. on and on and on the Dudley boys opt to go to the WWV I guess my question is was there ever any discussion that you recall with yourself or Kevin Sullivan or Terry Taylor or any member of the team about the possibilities of the Dudley boys in WCW not that I remember I would have been a Kevin Sullivan thing Kevin and Terry Taylor both were pretty focused not focused but they were very much aware of what was going on in ECW on a daily basis. So there might have been conversations between those two. There may have even been a conversation between bully and Devon with

Kevin Sullivan or Terry Taylor. I don't know, but it never, it never came to my desk. I for one, I'm a huge Dudley boys fan and always have been and can't imagine that I won't be because I just loved all of their ECW stuff. But I did not imagine that they would enjoy the success they did in the W. if I didn't think Vince would push guys in tie-dye t-shirts and shorts and I just thought you know this is he's not they're not his cup of tea but they enjoyed a lot of success there

and you know I wonder you know when you think about their importance long term because I've heard some people say oh they were just a modern nasty boys and I thought well that's a compliment I like the nasty boys back then too but I do see the Dudley Boys and all their success as being a more viable up the top of the card tag team than I do the nasty boys when you think about the Dudley boys legacy what do you think of Eric tables yes just tables every time I see what was it last it was last fall during the NFL season maybe during the playoffs and guys are putting each other through tables or people out in the in the tailgate area have tables set up and some of them

we're on fire and guys are jumping off the back of pickup trucks and under their flaming tables. Where did that come from? I was a Dudley Boys. You know, they really made the table spot. I know other people have done it. They probably did it before and maybe did it better or whatever. It doesn't matter. The Dudley Boys made it famous.

And I can't see a table spot today without thinking of them. But, you know, a couple of things I want to say. First of all, Devon, amazing. talented guy, a fun person to work with, always positive, very, very talented. Universally loved. He is one of the, he's one of those people that when you see him from across a convention center or arena, I personally will go out of my way and want to do a big crowd to get to him just to say hello.

Because he always makes me feel good. I always feel like a shot of energy every time I just shake his hand and say hello. And you look at Bulley. I was just watching Bulley last night on a clip of social media. He's doing a busted open radio show with Undertaker. We talked earlier on in this episode about, you know, guys that are able to extend their wrestling careers after the ring. Ringtime is over with them.

And Bulley is exceptional on a mic. I always knew he was good on a mic. I knew that working with him in WWE is when I first met bully, certainly working with him in T&A is where we became really close friends, I think, during that period of time. I knew then he was really good on the mic, but he's got a real feel for what he's doing now

on Busted Open. I just cannot be happier for his success. He deserves it. He is focused. He's got a tremendous work ethic. And he's bursting with talent. I can't wait to see where he goes. I can't wait to ask you about Kurt Engel in WCW, but before we do, I want to remind you

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That's what it feels like. Mark Henry, who was in the Olympics that year, as a lifter, he is in there right now with Kurt Angle, who we know won the gold medal in 1996. Now, bring all of this up because those Olympic games in 1996, well, they're in Atlanta. When all of that is happening, is it ever on your radar? Do you have anyone like a Jerry Briscoe? I mean, I know Briscoe did it for the WWF, but was Kurt Angle even on your radar when he was in Atlanta in 1996? He was not.

He was not. 96, I was so focused on other things. We had plenty of talent. I wasn't actively pursuing talents. Actually, it was the opposite. Talent was pursuing WCW. Yes. So I really wasn't looking to.

to be honest. Did you remember ever having a preliminary conversation or discussion about Mark Henry, about Kurt Engel, or about anyone on that Olympic scene? I guess I'm just trying to see was there some sort of a pipeline or discovery process like we had with Jerry Briscoe on the WVE side? Was there anyone like that? Because we've heard,

you've told us before that Kevin Sullivan had his ear to the ground in ECW. Was anybody looking in amateur sports? no no and that was uh that was clearly a mistake in our part you know the only the only one example i can give you of a decision i wish i would have made differently in this regard was virgania called me i don't remember what year it was i'm going to say 95 could be off on that but vernonia gave me a call and said hey you got to look at this kid Brock lezner Vern was very active in the University of Minnesota amateur wrestling program, stayed very close to the coaches of the team and supported them financially and in other ways.

And Vern called me and said, this kid is amazing, and he's a big kid, he could move, and he gave me all of Brock's credentials. And I thanked Vern, but at that time, it might have been during the cost-cutting phase of my career. I just, I wasn't looking for talent that needed to be trained and turned into a star. I was looking for people that had equity from day one. So I let that one go. Not that I could have signed them anyway, perhaps might have been able to, but I would have, I would have liked to have given that a try, to be honest.

Take a look at what we're watching right here. Just so, yes, that is my young, taking your top off. and of course Mark Henry is he's nervous because you know this is his baby's mama he's got her he's got her impregnated here why are you laughing at that

Eric that's the storyline Mark Henry has There's nothing wrong with it It's just it's wrestling It just makes me laugh What's your favorite pregnancy angle in wrestling Eric Got a favorite

I can't think of one did you help me out here was there others there's been so many and i've never enjoyed a single one i don't understand why it was ever a topic the second time a fragile pregnant woman vulnerable needs a hero and i understand them i understand the premise of it but yeah well can you explain the premise of uh mark kenry getting may young pregnant Vince McVam That's just a Vince McMahon thing

He loved that quirky shit Was this Mark Henry's sexual Yeah this was his sexual Chocolate era Yeah this is when he impregnates May Young and she's going to give birth to a hand Eric

Yeah I remember the giving birth to a hand gimmick Because there was a lot of conversation about that But did you see the shape Mark Henry was in in that shot? Yes You know, you see this guy walking around today, and he's obviously, he's a massive dude. And you know, but you just know he's the strongest shit. But look at him here.

Yes. I mean, he looks like he could throw a car over a cliff. What a monster. Again, super nice guy. Have you met him? Yeah. Great guy. Great guy.

Really smart, too. You should, you ever have an opportunity to sit down and really get into an extended a conversation with him about anything that doesn't have anything to do with wrestling you'll be amazed how well read how smart he is he's a really really bright guy we've talked a lot about football we've talked a lot about bobo brazil i mean uh mark is mark's a good dude i got to know him a little bit from hanging around w w and a e w and of course he's doing a fantabulous job over on busted open and now i'm watching john bradshaw layfield one half of the accolites just beat the ever loving snod out of crash holly here

Man, I've had a lot of fun doing Bruce's podcast with JBL these last couple of months. And, uh, this is a pretty ass kick and match here, man. You've got the hollies, hardcore holly and crash holly against the APA. Man, I don't know that there's two people I'd want to mess with less, I think, than Bob Holly and Ron Simmons. Look at Ron Simmons helping himself to a little beer tap love there. This is hilarious. It is fun.

Well, the AMA as a presentation, did you get it? Did you like, you know, Ron as a as a badass tag team? Because we've seen Ron as part of Doom. We saw him as a single star, obviously WCW World Champion. But it just works for me, Ron, as a part of a tag team, whether it's Doom or it's APA or it's the nation of domination. I kind of dig that for Ron. What do you think of that presentation?

I do too. Well, I've always been such a massive fan for Ron from day one, my first day in the job at WCW. He was, look, when I first got to WCW, nobody knew who I was, very few people knew, even knew who I was or where I came from

for why I was there. And then once it became obvious, whoa, he's an announcer. He's a backup to the backup of announcers. Whenever anybody would have to do an interview with me, it was usually not that important of an interview. It may have been for one of the syndicated shows or maybe, you know,

the Sunday night, TBS show, things that just weren't really priorities for either Jim Ross or Tony Shabani because they both had a tough workload. So I would get it. And then inevitably the talent will go, I get the C Squad guy. So evidently this isn't that big a deal. So guys would do it. You know, they knew they had to do an interview or they were doing it with me.

And they would show up and it would get through the interview. But you could just tell. It's like, oh, I get the new kid. What the fuck? I'm not good enough for Jim Ross. or Tony Chavon anymore. Now they're giving me to this kid. The fuck. That was nobody ever said that, but you could feel it, right? Not with Ron. Ron was the exception to that rule. It's almost like he knew how awkward I felt and out of place I felt. And he went out of his way

to make me feel really comfortable with him. He was not intimidating at all. He was just, just a classy, classy performer and a pro. He became friends with them afterwards. We're still friends to this day, but he's one of the, he's one of the few people in the very beginning at WCW that he didn't take me under his wing by any stretch of the imagination,

but he went out of his way to make me feel comfortable when a lot of people didn't. Well, here's another one of your pals coming down to the ring. Chris Jericho is the Intercontinental Champion and he is going to wrestle Vicerra. You know, well, there's been a lot of jokes, you know, that I guess really since the beginning of 83 weeks about, oh, Mabel was the third man nonsense. But did you ever meet the real life Fisera at any point, real life Mabel?

Did you ever meet him? I don't believe I have or did, I should say. Yeah. My apologies to his wife. But I don't think I ever did. So, Eric, I wanted to ask you, you know, in an. alternate timeline and an alternate universe, if Mabel had come around,

if Vissera had come around and say the mid-80s and not the mid-90s, is there any doubt in your mind that he would have been in main events against Hulk Hogan? No, absolutely none. He would have been cast perfectly for that position because Hulk like larger than life characters and heels to work against.

And Viceris certainly would have fulfilled all. He would have checked every one of those boxes. Absolutely. You just think about, you know, all the big guys that he had matches with, whether it was King Kong Bundy or Andre the Giant or Zeus or, I mean, any of the big lumbering figures that, you know, we needed a heel factory, whether it was a keen, the African dream or the one man gang, or it was the big boss man or it was earthquake.

We need a big fella to work for Polkogen. And man, what a look that we see Vicerra had. And how about that? It's six foot 10, 500 pounds. I think it was like a spinning heel kick or wheel kick, whatever it is. It's a lot more agile than you imagine for a nearly seven foot 500 pounder. Quite the athlete for sure. What did he pass away from?

Do you recall? I don't, but I'll, uh, I'll take a look at that. Because he, he passed away very young. Yeah. was uh 43 years old wow we uh we got to spend a little bit of time and talk about what's going on in the rest of the wrestling world we know later on on this program we're going to see uh luna and miss jacky and i we haven't spent a ton of time talking about women's wrestling i do know

that Luna was with WCW just for a cup of coffee. I know that Miss Jackie was actually there before she was here. Why don't you think, you know, there was a better fit with Luna in WCW, given her relationship with Kevin Sullivan? I don't know other than there was just never a lot of meaningful room on the roster for women during the WCW era, all the way up. until the day it closed. Yes, there were women on the show. Yes, we had women's matches. Yes, we had Medusa. Yes, we had some other, you know, we brought in some Japanese women that put

on a hell of a show. But there just wasn't the depth of talent necessary to sustain women's wrestling on a regular, consistent basis in a way that was compelling. We just didn't have the talent. So I'm sure it was frustrating for people like Luna and even people like Kevin Sullivan that We're trying to create those opportunities because, again, you just didn't have the women to work with. It's not like we could fly people, women over from Japan every other week, you know, so that we could have women's matches. It was just cost prohibitive. And it wasn't like there is today. I mean, you go to the WWE Performance Center.

I was there a month or so ago, and you walk through the back, you look at all the people training. And I would say 50 to 60% of them were women, which is awesome. And by the way, the all Division I athletes, incredibly talented people, but that wasn't the case back then. You had an occasional woman's wrestler would come your way, but it was more of an attraction than it was a meaningful roster position.

I've always been fascinated by Luna. And I think it's interesting when you take a look at her WCW experience, what that looked like. You may not even recognize. call, but she worked a dark match against Medusa in April of 97 in Philadelphia. And the result is she got a pay-per-view match against Medusa following month, Slambury in Charlotte, North Carolina in May of 1997. And in June, you guys used her on three international tours, as you made your way

through Deutschland, but it was Medusa and Luna over and over and over again. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think you were so overzealous to, maybe, maybe that's the wrong word, but you were so excited to have this moment with Medusa and the belt that what are we going to do with her once we have her here with the title? It was almost an afterthought because it does feel like she almost had no one to work with the entire time. So good question. However, the whole, you know, to suggest that the only reason, not the only reason, but perhaps my focus wasn't so much, okay, Medusa's available, she's a great talent, what do I do with her? What is her program? Instead of thinking along those lines, your question suggests I was thinking more, well, what the fuck?

I don't really care what we do with it. As long as she comes over and drops a belt in the garbage, we're good. that whole dropping the belt in the garbage was an afterthought. And it was Medusa's idea, not mine, by the way. She'll go to her grave telling everybody it was my idea, probably because she doesn't want to get on the bad side of WWE again for another 15 years. But it was her idea.

I hired Medusa because she was a friend and she was talented. And when she called me and said, hey, I've just been let go. Is there any room for me there? The way I would with anybody who was a friend at that time and a talented person, and if there was a room in my budget, I would say, yeah, get here, we'll figure it out. I can be criticized for that. It's probably not the best way to make a decision, but I knew she had talent.

I was familiar with her because I had worked with her back in 1987 we started working together. So because I was so familiar with her, I knew she was a talent and she was a, friend, sure, I'll make room for you, Medusa, we'll figure it out. Oh, and by the way, I'm bringing the belt. That's kind of how that went. So was I remiss and not trying to determine what I would do with her once she came to WCW? Absolutely. But it wasn't because I was overly motivated about dropping the belt into garbage. That would be misleading. Well, something that we're both pretty far enough about is Magic Spoon. You know, as a kid, I loved eating cereal, but as an adult, we realize we don't need

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or go look for MagicSpoon on Amazon or in your nearest grocery store. That's MagicSpoon.com slash 83 weeks. You'll get $5 off. Magic Spoon. Goes great with Viya, too, by the way. We just saw Gangrel here. And, of course, we know in real life, he is the real life husband of Luda B'Shaun. And he's been around wrestling for a long time.

And some of these characters have become iconic characters. like we're watching the entrance right now that a lot of fans believe to be maybe the best entrance of the attitude era gangrail coming up through the ring of fire on the stage everybody loves that brood theme song i get that this is an out there persona but man something about vampires and vampire movies i mean whether it's the lost boys or twilight it feels like or what was that true blood hbo show america was the nest for a while with vampires, what did you think of this presentation from Gangrel, a wrestling vampire? Not my cup of tea personally, aesthetically, creatively,

creatively, however, I recognize that it worked. And I think one of the reasons it worked as well as it did is because of David Heath, gangrel. He lived that gimmick. He still does. I saw him a year ago in Australia. I was there for an event. and he's still wearing a fangs during public appearances,

you know, autographs, and things like that. He's still, he's still living that gimmick in a way. He's an interesting cat. You want to talk about him, taking a trip, sit down and have an hour or two conversation with that guy. You really want to hear some crazy stories, particularly about Luna. get gangrel on a show sometime maybe we should do that i mean really fascinated guy i mean he's been around a lot and you know just listening to his story growing up as a child and where he grew

up it's it's a it's a wonder he's still alive fascinating guy really it's going to be interesting to see um what you think of our main event because i don't know that you've seen this before but It is going to be quite a spectacle in this episode of Monday Night Raw. It's Triple H and Sean Waltman and Chris Ben Maw and Dean Malinko and Perry Saturn. We're going to be taking on Cactus Jack and, well, we'll see who else. But first, we're seeing Luna and Miss Jackie do their thing here. You know, we know that these are serious professional wrestlers here. This is not the divas era.

I mean, Luna and Miss Jackie. Jackie would not necessarily be described as those types. I mean, they were traditional ladies wrestlers. Why do you think that switched? Because we did have Medusa and Jackie and Luna. We didn't have a lot of wrestlers, but we did have lady wrestlers. And then all of a sudden it feels like there was a switch overnight. And it became about, hey, we need Playboy models.

And it doesn't matter if they know how to wrestle. I don't know. I wasn't there, but based on conversations I've had with just about everybody that was, Stephanie McMahon was the one that pressure may not be the right word, but pressured, for lack of a better one right now, Vince, into using women in a more athletic way so that they were on equal footing, so to speak creatively with men and we're not just there to give birth to hands or you know provocative sexual stuff flashing her tits in the ring and all the stuff that

worked so well you know i mean that was the attitude era you can go back and look at the clip of triple h encouraging some woman to flash your tits on tv that was what it was it was all about the sexual innuendo that was the core of the attitude era that's what shocked the 18 to 49 year old audience out of watching Nitro into watching WWE because there was some crazy shit going on there. But I think that probably wore itself out after a while. There's only so far you can go. There's only when you're, even as wildest things were back then on television and as much

latitude as everybody out, there were still limits to what you could do. And I think after you spent a year or 18 months, exploring all of the options you have to push the envelope sexually as far as WWE did. You get to a point where, okay, well, let's try that. Oh, we did that two weeks ago. I know. We'll set up a scenario where this happened and this happens and then this happened. Shit, we did that three months ago.

You just run out of rope. And perhaps it was that. Perhaps that was the catalyst for Stephanie to go to Vass and say, perhaps we need to do things differently with women and attract a broader female audience because that was also a big part of the wrestling the business of the wrestling business is there was a time when advertisers it's not today because 18 to 49 year old males are as anybody that reads variety magazine or multi-channel news knows the key demo that everybody likes to talk about like they know what the fuck they're talking about um is 18 to 49 year old

males. Back in my day, advertisers were a little leery of a program that was so dominantly 18 to 49 year old males, and they were looking for more females. So perhaps it was driven by economics as well. And the USA Network said, hey, look, I get it. We're attracting a big male audience, but we need more females. How do we get them? Not by bringing out playboy model want to be wrestling in their underwear or crawling around on their hands and knees in a thong with a bark collar on, maybe we need to present these women as athletes. Maybe they need to be aspirational characters for young women. Maybe then more women will watch the show.

Seems to have worked. But I don't know what the catalyst was, to be honest, I wasn't there. I just think it's interesting to see how the evolution. of women's wrestling has changed you know you remember seeing those old posters from way back in the day you know where in the territory days it would list all the individual matches and then at the bottom it would say you know and this isn't the language we use now plus midget matches and girls matches so those were like two added attractions at the bottom where they didn't necessarily get specific on names but they knew because we've heard

from dusty roads type say before hey a wrestling show should be like a buffet there's something for everybody and that's the way the women were positioned as this special attraction now there are a more regular part of the show i mean now there's conversation about hey we didn't have any women's wrestling an hour one or we didn't have enough wrestling an hour two or whatever it may be there is a big advocate for more women's wrestling on tv what i wanted to bring up to you though though, is I find interesting that whereas that became more in fashion, it feels like little people matches are no longer acceptable on mainstream television, but I know for sure there's multiple tours going around that it do really, really well.

Do you think there is ever going to be an opportunity where we see, I'm not going to say a little person division, but a more regular place in mainstream professional wrestling for little people matches or why is that so out of fashion and i understand that there is a political sensitivity and that sort of thing but i could almost go the other way and say there's a lot of really passionate wrestling fans who happen to be little people who want to live their dream and be a professional wrestler aren't we kind of oddly discriminating against them by not allowing them it feels weird to me it does you know if you take the current kind of public attitude towards things.

And we're not talking about political correctness, although I know what you mean by that. I think we're talking about societal correctness, and I think society has just gotten to the point. People are easily offended. And many people feel like, for example, if I'm a little person, and I'm one of those people that you're referring to.

And my dream is to be a professional wrestler, and I'm training, and I'm getting as many independent shots as I can, trying to develop my skill. And I go to a place like WWE in particular, or maybe even AEW, because they're on a major network cable outlet. You're going to have management of that network. they're going to be more sensitive to the societal implications of something like using little people because you're going to get resistance at that level.

Nobody wants the heat. And I think that's what we're experiencing now. We have in this country over the last several years is nobody wants any negative press. You know, everybody is so afraid of social media and, being called anything with an ist at the end that they won't go near it. And it is unfortunate for if I was a little person who had that dream, I'm probably not going to get that shot unless I'm traveling around and what is a modern day version of a traveling circus as a part of a group of other

little people. I'm going to call midgets because I actually produced a midget wrestling show. And the midgets that I worked with were not offended by him being called midgets, just for the record, not a one of them, not a one. I don't want to say they were proud of it, but I think several of them that I worked with and got to know a little bit, kind of were proud that they were able to get as far as they had gotten and proud of the fact that they were going to be on television, just like anybody else would.

but because of our culture they're probably not going to get that opportunity to be on a main stage and the other part of that is you have to be careful if you're going to use someone a midget wrestler a little person for those of you who are still so sensitive you got to be careful you don't do it with it can't be comedic because now you're making fun that's right now you're laughing at would there be anything wrong with seeing two little people going out there and tearing it up? Absolutely not. Would it be perceived culturally as a negative? Probably at least enough so that network executives are going to no, not that.

We don't want to go there. But it's really just because of social media and everybody being so, fearful of it. Rock just did a promo talking about Poon-Tang-Pai, Eric. Did you ever think you'd hear people talk about Poon-Pang-Pai here on the program? No, no. I remember hearing that word for the first time of that reference back when I was a little kid.

One of my cousins was talking about this girl he was dating and hoping to get some Poon-Tang. I didn't know what it was. I asked my dad. Dad, what's Poon-Tay? Oh, God. don't ever let me hear you say that again you say that for your mother she's going to slap you right in your face godfather's got six ladies here i think uh respectfully and affectionately he referred to them as his hose

and now as we're talking about rock talking about food and tang pie and we've got the godfather here with his ladies feels like a perfect time to mention that today's show is sponsored by blue shoe blue shoes the original brand offering chewable tablets and we want you to roll this fatty for that pimp daddy this erection enhancing tablet is going to help men achieve stronger harder longer lasting erections and blue shoes putting its money where its mouth is they're giving you a month free process is simple to you to sign up the blue chew.com you consult with one of their licensed medical providers and once you're approved you'll receive your prescription within days. Blue choose tablets are made in the USA. They're prepared and shipped

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unquote hose i mean is there any scenario where you could have gotten this approved through standards and practices in wcw depends on when i think in the mid-d 90s, even 96 and 97, probably could have got away with it by 98, 99, definitely not. So instead of working on Godfather and Valvenus, instead of having your own porn star and pimp, you just went with Mortal Kombat instead. Yeah, I want a glacier. Yeah. I mean, really, when you think about it, doesn't that make so much more sense? Blood runs cold, brother. Blood runs cold. unfortunately so did the ankle too well I set myself up for that one this is a fun match

we got the Dudley boys taking on Godfather and Delo Brown you know Godfather of course is a regular part of what we're doing at ad free shows.com cooler than the other side of the pillow but Delo Brown man another guy that I can't help but think man what could have been for whatever reason I mean I shouldn't say for whatever reason we know the reason I feel so bad that all that happened with draws, and I can't help but wonder, did that permanently derail his career? What would his career have looked like had that tragedy not happened? Because I don't think anybody ever put any sort of fault on Dilo, like another universally beloved guy, total accident. But man, in an alternate universe, I love me some Dilo, man.

Everybody loves that bobblehead and the chest protector. That's good shit. He used to love watching him. He'd make his entrance, man. He'd come down and around. he was just strutting his stuff. I often wonder, and I see D.Lo every once in a while, and I may ask him next time I see him if I remember this, but I don't know if it derailed his career in the eyes of Vince McMahon, for example,

or anybody else that he worked with, perhaps. But I wonder what it did to him. did it derail delo in other words did he carry that guilt around with him did he was he hesitant did he start second guessing himself in the ring in order to not have another situation like that that can that can derail your career it depends on how delo was able to handle it we we've still got our main event to come and eric it's an interesting match and story that's going to develop uh we're going to have the involvement of rikishi and too cool to try to even up the odds so you're going to have cactus jack the rock rikishi and two cool on one side

with triple h john walton chrispin juan malinko and perry saturn on the other side and I as a fan at the time I admit that for whatever reason I never really got into Too Cool but I was sort of blown away to hear that my buddy Cascio it was his favorite act he absolutely loved Too Cool and wanted to be part

of that he wanted to be in the room when that happened and I just think about how silly some of that is and what really connects because I know that a lot of times in wrestling we take ourselves very seriously especially in this more modern era but when you really break down the too cool act

it's guys who were wearing goofy hats and goofy glasses and goofy clothes dancing down to the ring doing the worm and then exposing a plus size posterior and dancing it around in someone's face

and the place goes bananas like I know that sometimes we over complicate this Eric we overthink sometimes sometimes I thought wrestling can just be fun why don't you go out there and fucking dance and the whole crowd get with it like I don't know why we don't think about wrestling like that more often it feels like sometimes we just take it too seriously is that making sense to you err 100% sense and it's because we don't think about the crowd we're thinking about the dirt sheets we're thinking about four star ratings we're thinking

about whatever it is we're thinking about getting over with the internet hoping for that big cage match ranking we're not thinking about the crowd again how many times of you while we're reviewing shows like this and we're looking at a match that dame melzer says sucked and gave it one star and the crowd's on their feet going nuts it again it kind of goes back to what i was saying before you've got such a small percentage of the audience that make so much noise that unless you know better, you assume everybody thinks that and they don't. The crowd loved it. Cody wrote not long ago, a year or two ago, we were talking about something. And we were talking about the Hogan Sting thing in 97, right? And Cody said,

I mean, I'm paraphrasing all this. I don't want to put words in his mouth and force him to have to defend any of these comments. But essentially what Cody said is, Eric, I don't know how old he was in 1997, 10, 12, 14, whatever he was. He said, I'm at ringside. I'm watching this, that match, and I loved every bit of it. I had no idea that there was controversy until the next day. And that's one example. The fingerbook would do another example.

If you listen to guys like Dave Meltzer, how it was the beginning of the end of WCW. Actually, it wasn't. It was a beginning of a record year in 1998 or whatever year it was. We had some of the highest ratings we ever had and financial success like we'd never experienced before after the fingerpunk of doom. But if you listen to the dirt sheet narrative, the internet rustling community, as they prefer to be called, they're really just dirt sheet marks. If you listen to them and go by that loudest voice on social media is horrible. And I think talent, in some cases, promoters have lost sight of the fact that their jobs are to make sure everybody in that arena has a freaking awesome time. Yes.

And you have to go back to Dusty's buffet thing. You have to give that audience enough of what they're looking for in a variety of what they're looking for so that then when they leave the building and go, damn, that was fun. I can't wait to come back. as opposed to this is awesome because somebody's doing some crazy shit and busting their heads open we just we've lost i think some promoters obviously wwee is not falling victim to this they're going the opposite way they're making sure everybody has a great time so that more people come the next time it's a very simple formula by the way it's no different than throwing a dinner party at your house, inviting 10 of your closest friends over, and you serve up an amazing meal,

you have cocktails, you've got music, you've got a nice, you know, if you've got a lake home with a beautiful patio overlooking the river and a lake, it's just everybody's going to have a good time. So when you invite them over next time, guess what? Absolutely. And do you mind if I bring a friend, right? It's just building it. But you've got to make sure people have fun and are entertained. And sometimes we spend so much time, as you said, Conrad and I agree, we take this shit so seriously that we forget to have fun. Fun is the name of the game, and Mick Foley is not talking about fun here.

He's cutting a hell of a promo talking about the stakes here as he gets ready to put his career on the line at no way out. And he says, don't count him out. night or in 20 days he was never even supposed to be here because 15 years ago he was told he wasn't even good enough to be in the business and now he's ready to go one on five but he's not stupid enough to turn down Rock's vote of competence and he says he's going to WrestleMania so we think when we're going to the break here when we come back it might be cactus and rock against five guys or maybe it's cactus one of

on five, but we know it's going to be Rakeshi and too cool. I like the storytelling of, hey, we don't know who's going to be his backup, but we know it's coming. Now we see the guys getting ready on the other side. What do you think about this view and this positioning? What I mean is, I've seen some criticism online of the WWE and the way they would shoot backstage vignettes. Like, I know when AEW first launched, there were some.

people who had used to work for WWE and they didn't like the way that looked at times. Was there a pet peeve of yours that you felt like WWE once upon a time under the Vince regime went to too often and you thought this just doesn't feel real or genuine or it feels phony and I don't like it? Was there a shot that WWE did that just really rubbed you the wrong way? Just about everything they did rub me the wrong way backstage. Wow. Now, the skits, you know, highly produced stuff, there were some good stuff, right?

There were some bad stuff, Katie Vic, but there were some good stuff, a lot of it. But the backstage interviews where you got your announcements, to this day, it still gets out of my skin. Like, if I was ever hired for a week to work in any wrestling company, the first thing I would attack would be the way. they do interviews, including WWE to the stay at some points. AEW is off the charts horrible, the way they produce their backstage interviews. They're doing it like they did them back in 1980, only with less talent, people with less ability. They're still talent.

They just don't have that ability. The, the, the, Gene Okerlin, I'm standing here with the so-and-so and coming into the, We're going to interview this. Standing there, you know, you're a stick man, your stick person in this, in today's cases often. It's such a just boring, ineffective, waste of freaking time. More often than not, talent would be better off not doing an on-camera promo than they are doing one.

Because the content that they're given, particularly under Vince, because Vince was ridiculous about this stuff. He had to approve every single word. And God forbid, 15 minutes before the show, because Vince McMahon demanded rewrites up until the very last minute because he couldn't make up his mind what he really wanted. So he just kept making people throw more shit up against the wall until he found something that he liked. That was pretty much Vince's process, at least the process that I saw in the four months I was there. It was fucking insane. But he would literally, you take somebody that would spend two hours working on a promo, get it to Vince. It's a draft.

It's a fucking draft. It's not meant to be published for commercial consumption. It's a draft. Just to make sure, Vince, in this case, we want to make sure that we're on the right track with this and you like the way it finishes. But if there was a comma missing or. a word spelled wrong because half the time these writers are backstage. I mean, they're under the gun. The clock is fucking ticket. Their talent's going out to cut this promo in 12 minutes. And you still haven't had it approved yet. And you don't know why they didn't like the first

one you turned in. But now you have to write another one. And God forbid, you forget to spell check it before Vince sees it. Otherwise, he'll get to one word that was mistyped or a comma that was missing, blow his fucking gasket, and toss it, make you go back and write another one. I saw a lot of it. And in the four months I was there, I saw a lot of that. More than I care to remember, I think it's up PTSD as a result of it. But the net net of that is that talent would often get promos backstage, including the stick person who had no freaking clue what was going on because they didn't have time to get

familiar with it. literally handing the talent and the announcer a script that was still warm from coming off the copy machine because it just got approved. And now you're asking them to make it feel real. It was insane. It was such a waste of time and talent. That's the one thing. Can you tell that still pisses me off a little bit?

When I see backstage interviews and segments that are so poor. poorly produced that they don't accomplish anything telling you say oh i got a promo on tv today yeah like just by virtue of the fact that you're showing up on camera somehow your stock goes up in most case in many cases in some cases in particular every time you open your mouth up your stock goes down the audience likes you less you're less of an attraction you're less of a brand your contract value far exceeds your real value and part of it is because you're put into positions as a talent that you shouldn't be in you shouldn't give people who aren't really comfortable on a mic standing there in a sterile environment with content that

really doesn't matter you've had no time to prepare you have no time to figure out a way make it your own and you're not allowed to make it your own anyway because if you don't repeat the exact words that we're on the format or on the promo you get an earful it's just it was such a unproductive way of doing things and I still see it today more so in other companies than an AEW but it still happens it's unfortunate because it really hurts the talent doesn't hurt anything out it just hurts the talent and the overall feel for the product the crowd is going bananas for this. If you guys have never watched this with the sale, I want to encourage you check it out. February 7th, 2000, you know, you've got these brand new guys right off of

WCW TV here, Chris Benoit, Dean Malinko, and Perry Saturn, and they're teaming with two of the tippy top guys, most overacts. I mean, we've got Sean Waltman, who's been the secret sauce of the NWO and DX, and of course, Triple H is running roughshod. He's one of the biggest, mean as nasty as heels and he's got the world title and their opponents are the rock cactus jack rickishi and too cool and literally every time anybody does anything fans are going bananas i mean this is supposed to be fun and i don't remember like when you really think about these big five and ten man tags like this this is supposed to be a cluster fuck this is not supposed to be fun but you don't know what to expect when you've got this many people out

there and it looks like chaos and everyone's established and everyone's over and man the uh an embarrassment of riches here for the w f in early 2000 it's interesting too isn't it not that i want to spend a whole lot of time trying to get into Vince McMahon's head um but clearly Vince was committed to getting these guys over talking about the radicals. They've been there a week. And he's got a broken arm and look who he's in the ring with. Yeah, they got the rock and Triple H and Cactus Jack.

With a very hot setup at the very beginning of the show, they spent 20 minutes set in the heat for this, getting people to look forward to it, building it. We saw a promo earlier on in the show. So they threaded this whole segment through the show to build anticipation and they put these four guys from WCW who supposedly Vince typically you know always shit on those guys for quite a while before he gave him a real opportunity he thrust all four of these guys into the most high profile position he could possibly put

them in seven days after they showed up fairly impressive I I'm loving to see in this era of Cactus Jack I know that he's ultimately not going to retire but I loved Cactus Jack and the WWB. Were you surprised that, you know, after seeing Vince require Mick Foley to be mankind, were you surprised that he eventually allowed Mick to do Cactus Jack? That does feel like not a Vinceism.

Vince always wants to own the IP. Were you surprised that he let Foley do Cactus Jack in WWV? Not really. I mean, it does go against what we thought we knew of the grain. of Vince McMahon. I think Vince had a lot of respect for Mick. He may not have light necessarily the Cactus Jack character because he didn't create it.

I think that's a part of Vince. I think just about everything we look at with Vince over the years, even currently, is all about control. Vince is one of those people that just absolutely has to have control of everything around him. And the exception here, I think, was Vince was willing to compromise once he develops the respect for you. And I think Mick Foley, to his credit, earned that respect and that latitude. Not, you know, another guy that I noticed that with was Chris Jericho. When I was in W.E. as a talent now, it was before 2019, when I was there just as a talent. I'd be back in the dressing room, getting ready for my segments, whatever,

and I would see Chris Jericho and Brian Goertz going over, whatever it is. Chris was supposed to do that night in terms of verbiage. And Chris was right, it was right in the middle of it. And if there were things that he wasn't comfortable with, he was, I'm going to say aggressive. He wasn't unprofessional, but he was very assertive. and Chris was the only guy I saw in WWE while I was there as a talent that had that latitude. I'm sure others did. Steve Boston, rock, whomever, obviously.

They always do no matter what anybody tells you. They always have creative control. And anybody that tells you different has never been in the wrestling business. Period. End of conversation. But I saw Chris and I think Mick Foley had that same level of respect. it's interesting to take a look back and see what a period this was in pro wrestling because you know this is the era where ECW is brand new on TNN and they're full of optimism

well maybe not super full we're five or six months in at this point but by God ECW's got TV and WCW is about to reach out to Eric Bischoff and say hey man why don't we put the band back together and we know you guys try to reset the deck here in april of 2000 it does feel like at this point though the die has been cast for both wcw and eccw to fail you know we're on the death march for eccw they've got left than a year less than a year left uh wcd not much better they're going to be around um i don't know another uh 13 months i guess when Do you think about the year 2000, do you think that there were any, if you had it to do over again, could you have changed anything that would have avoided the inevitable

or was it always going to wind up exactly how it did? In 2000, I'm asking. No, and the biggest mistake, and I thought this is where you're going, one of the biggest mistakes I've made personally in my life was agreeing to come back to WCW in 2000. That was career-wise. That was a huge mistake in my part. Financially, it was good for me. Made a lot of money.

But money's short-term. You know, money, you end up spending that shit pretty quick. So the decision to go back in 2000 was just one of the biggest mistakes I made professionally because there was no chance in hell that things were going to end up any different. They finally got rid of Ted Turner. Ted Turner was sitting in an office in a corner of CNN Center with no responsibilities and no influence. Ted Turner was the only one that wanted WCW in the entire company. And once he was gone, I didn't know that. I didn't know that Ted didn't have any power. Ted didn't even know he didn't have any power at the time.

Read the book. It's amazing. Ted woke up one day and went, wait a minute. My name's on the building, but I don't get to vote. Can I realize how much they minimized, minimized, minimized? Ted Turner in 2000, I would have not gone back. Because I thought I went back with, I don't want to say an asset, but with a friend in my corner, somebody that cared about the same thing I did. At least I could have a conversation with it.

But the conversation never took place. So no, there was no changing. Nothing, nothing would have changed other than the fact that I would have not made the amount of money I did, which in a long run would have been just fine, probably better. Because my career took a pretty good hit as a result of that. And it took me a year or so to kind of regain my footing. I wished I wouldn't have gone back. I wish I would have known then what I know now.

but it is what it is. But nothing would have changed. Not a thing would have changed. So what a moment this is, just absolute chaos in the ring. You've got the new age outlaws down here with weapons. All of a sudden, the lights go off.

We get a new, uh, a new video, a new lighting effect. Here comes Paul Bear wearing a red jacket. And it's the big red machine. Kane is here. And what a,

what a class. of characters that you've got here. Kane, Triple H, the Rock, Rikishi, Mick Foley, the New Age Outlaws,

the radicals. This is quite a Hall of Fame casting crew here. What do you think of the creative, you know, when you've got all these bodies flying everywhere, and here comes Kane, just chokeslamming everybody inside.

I think it's pretty exciting. I think it's, look at the crowd. It doesn't matter what I think. What does the crowd think? Yeah. They've been digging this from Jumpstart. That's the only thing that matters.

My opinion, your opinion, Dave Meltzer's opinion, Vince McMahon's opinion, Tony Kahn's opinion, nobody's fucking opinion matters. The only opinions that matter are the people in the audience, and they loved it. Our jobs, as anybody's job who's a current promoter or producer, is to recognize, okay, what are the elements that it took to get people where they're at? What are they responding to?

What is the psychology that they're responding to? Because if you can understand that, you can replicate it. If you don't understand why they're reacting the way they're reacting, because you really had nothing to do with it, you just got lucky. You're not going to be able to recreate that or rinse and repeat it. But if you understand the basic psychology and the basic elements and what it took for you to get to that moment, you can file those elements and figure out a way to use them again.

You have to do it differently. Seven basic stories. Human beings have been telling the same basic stories since the beginning of storytelling time. The variations within those stories is what makes them interesting and feel fresh. But if you understand the elements of those stories and how to rinse and repeat them without looking like you, doing the same things over and over again, chances are you're going to be successful. So while I may not like the cluster of having all those bodies in the ring, because I like the visual dynamic and the storytelling and the psychology of two guys

battling it out or two women battling it out, that's personally what I like the most. But if the audience is getting off on this stuff, I'm going to figure out a way to rinse and repeat it, at least attempt it. well we're going to attempt to do something pretty fun next week here on the show Eric we're going to be talking about what if and it's one of mine and your favorite things to do we want you to encourage you to join us here on the show next week it's 83 weeks.com we're looking to solicit your ideas about the great what ifs in wrestling we've had some fun conversation preliminarily here you know and Eric and I have talked about this a million

in different ways like what if buff bagwell stuck with wcw and scotty riggs joined the nw o'n or what if paul cogan wasn't the third man and it was someone else or what if sean michael's did make the jump there's a million what ifs in wrestling and we want to hear from you what are some of your biggest what ifs in wrestling we're going to be talking about that next week here on the program because that's what gets really interesting Eric, it's not to think about, and certainly we have had a lot of fun breaking down what did happen, but to think about what was possible that maybe we didn't see at the time. This will be a fun topic next week, Eric.

I'm looking forward to this conversation. And actually, I'm going to ask Derek Sabato to give me notes a little sooner than normal because I really want to spend some time prepping for this one. I think this could be one of our better shows, and I'm looking forward to doing it. In the coming weeks, we'll be talking about selling rights. wrestling television. We're going to be doing another ask Eric anything. We'll be discussing Ravens flock this year, stars that could have been. We'll even touch on WCW video games. A whole lot more coming your way this year on 83 weeks. And Eric, you and I've been working on

some pretty out there ideas. And is it just me or does it feel like that some of these projects we've been working on? They're taking shape. And you and I are both getting pretty excited about it. We are. This is a lot of good stuff going on. And it's, you know, even being down there with you in Huntsville, I know we only had literally a few hours to really put our heads together and riff, but sometimes that's all it takes is to focus on one idea that you're really excited about or in this case too, and just start moving forward. Momentum creates momentum. You know, it's hard, it's hard to create momentum. But once you do, and you get a little bit of it behind you, all of a sudden the ideas open up, your confidence

this goes up a little bit, you find yourself doing more. And it gets really exciting, real fast. So those couple of days I spent down in Hounsville were very valuable. But yeah, we've got a couple really cool things going on. We'll talk about it when the time comes, but we're getting close. Fingers cross, stay tuned, boys and girls, maybe some big news around the corner for Eric Bischoff in 83 weeks. But in the meantime, what is your biggest?

What if we want to hear from you, join us on the conversation online. It's at 83 weeks. on Twitter and Instagram and anywhere else you enjoy your social media. But of course, your home for all things, Eric Bischoff is 83 weeks.com. It's totally free. That's our YouTube.

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