83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 375: The Natural Dustin Rhodes

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad discuss the WCW career of Dustin Rhodes. From Eric's first meeting with "The Natural", to his firing for bleeding on a PPV, Eric shares his experiences with the grandson of a plumber. Eric also has some choice words for a certain wrestling writer, who Eric says missed a couple of facts in his reporting at the time. All that plus some MAJOR news about RAF on this edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff.  The View Never Changes Dusty Rhodes promo: https://youtu.be/rrdZY8xdCbI?si=F8x7h0gpQtty4EZ_  CASH APP - Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/j5ojws30 #CashAppPod *Referral Reward Disclaimer: As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. STOPBOX - Get firearm security redesigned and save 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code 83WEEKS at https://stopboxusa.com/83WEEKS #stopboxpod ROCKET MONEY - Download the Rocket Money app and enter my show name 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff in the survey so they know I sent you! ENVISION - Save money and grow your business with Envision Marketing—visit https://conradsguy.com/  today! BLUECHEW - Visit https://bluechew.com  and try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code 83WEEKS -- just pay $5 shipping. SAVE WITH ERIC - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com/savewitheric/  to learn more.

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We want to get you on a path to making those financial goals of reality at savewithconrad.com. Why not let my family help your family. family, save some cash at save with Conrad.com. NMLS number 2129, equal housing lender, save with Conrad. Dot com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you?

I am good. So much good stuff going on. having a blast weather's great birthday weekend coming up i don't know how things could be better right now to be honest with you so i'm i'm grateful i do want to ask you we've got some uh some late breaking news as you and i are recording it looks like uh there's some chale sonin news do you want to share some of that yeah very excited to to announce this uh we signed chel sonan i've been talking to him for a couple of weeks and we're finally able to hammer out an agreement and so grateful to have him on board. Shale brings a lot of knowledge, experience, credibility,

and entertainment to the table. And I can't wait to work with him. He's just a little bit I've been able to communicate with so far. Um, he's perfect, just perfect for what we're going to do. Jail's perfect for what, Eric? You haven't said what he's signed to do? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, that that would be a good idea. Um, I assumed everybody could read my mind. I I mean, the power of podcasting, I thought maybe there was telepathy involved here. Now, Chales coming on is our color commentator. And he's got a tremendous background and amateur wrestling, knows freestyle, inside and out. The MMA equation, also very, very important in what we're going to do.

So, yeah, he'll be our color. He'll be our, I don't know, maybe kind of Jesse Ventura, Joe Rogan-ish type of. of color commentator, so I'm very much looking forward to it. And I assume we're talking about real American freestyle. Do I have that right? Real American freestyle. Okay. So there's the news.

Chale Sunnan, color commentator for real American freestyle. You heard it here from EZE. Dude, what an entertainer he is. In an alternate universe, Chale Sunning could have been a top drawing trail wrestler, don't you think? Absolutely. And that's what I'm so excited about with Chale for Real American Freestyle because he brings, you know, we know what the

challenges, it's, it's not lost upon us. You know, amateur wrestling is the original sport. It's been around forever. People that have friends or family that are involved in amateur wrestling, freestyle wrestling, you know, they know what's up. But the other 98 or 99% of the country don't. And Chale is going to be able to bring so much insight in an entertaining way to the property and really, like I said, educate and entertain all at the same time. we can't get enough Real American Freestyle Talk. I love a good startup. This is going to be a lot of fun.

We're going to continue to update you as we get closer and closer to the launch. Tickets aren't on sale for Cleveland just yet. Are they, Eric? Not yet. We'll be announcing that. I think today's Friday, sometime in the next week, 10 days. So we will have all your information on how you can see Real American Freestyle Live and in person in the coming weeks.

and to sort of get you ready, I guess you're branching out a little bit recently right here on 83 weeks.com. We went totally live and you had Ben Ascran on. I mean, that guy knows a thing or two about combat sports. How was your chat with Ben? What a cool dude. He's a little edgy. That's what I like him. He is not afraid to speak his mind.

And again, so much credibility. The Olympic team, whatever you were in 2008. I think he was a Pan American champion, 2005, 19 to 2 MMA record. He's the real deal. And like I say, he not only knows the sport, he's not shy about speaking up. The subject of the interview that I did with him is Ben's passion, yes, passion may be a little strong, but he's very committed to a rule change in real American freestyle. And we talked a lot about that.

It said great guy to have on board, knows the sport inside and out, been there and he's done it. We're going to have a lot of fun with Real American Freestyle in the coming weeks. Our topic today is Dustin Rhodes. But before we get there, I do want to touch on some television news because that's right in your wheelhouse. Eric,

since you and I got together, it's been announced through Mickey James that WWBLFG has been renewed for three more years. she says hey that's three more years so hopefully like six seasons this is a big deal obviously this is the grandchild maybe great grandchild of tough enough so it's reality tv meets wrestling it feels like an eric bischoff idea what do you think of uh lfg getting renewed are you surprised that it's enjoying this success not surprised at all i would have been shocked if it wasn't renewed it's great television it gives the audience a look inside of the process What's really cool about it for me, this isn't one thing that, this is the fertile ground that LFG is taking a job.

When it comes to any other sport, and we're categorizing WWE as a sport for this purpose. But we know the process if you are play football as a child, you're exceptional at it, you get picked up by a college, you know, perhaps a scholar. you move on to the draft, and then hopefully, you know, like one-tenth of one percent of the people that go through the process actually make it to the NFL. Same thing with the NBA. We understand the process how someone who's, you know, in their teens, for example, end up becoming a professional in their sport. But with professional wrestling or sports entertainment, it's kind of a mystery.

And people come from all different backgrounds and they find their way into sports. entertainment, so many different ways. But I think the Performance Center, what WWE is doing is creating a process where you get the best athletes, best performers in a deliberate kind of controlled progression. And the viewers get to see inside. They get to understand what it takes to become star at WWE. What is that process? What are the challenges?

Who are these people? Where do they come from? All of that engages the audience in an entirely different level than the action you see in the ring, which is obviously important, or the promos equally as important in some respects, more important in terms of defining and building the character that people care about. And the Performance Center, LFG, gives you an inside look at that to better understand it and ultimately to have a better appreciation for.

Let's talk about some other mainstream Hollywood news. There's a report from Deadline that Roman Raines is in talks to star in the live action Street Fighter movie. We've heard this speculation for years that Roman had as I said on Hollywood. We know that John Cena, Barack and Batista have all enjoyed great success there. This obviously would be a big deal to be involved in a, I don't know, a pop culture movie like Street Fighter. I mean, it has such a devoted following on the video game side of things.

I know you once upon a time adopted, you know, video game characters for the wrestling ring, the adaptation for the silver screen and the inclusion of Roman Raines. That seems to make sense. What do you think about this opportunity for Roman Raines, Eric? I've just, it's just a matter of time, you know, it was, I should say, just a matter of time. Roman, you know, I don't know how good of an actor he is. We're about to find out.

And like any other goal or aspiration, excuse me, he'll get better as. he goes. But the one thing we do know for sure is he's got an amazing presence. He's one of those people that when he walks into the room, no matter how busy you are or what the conversation happened to be that you were engaged in, you kind of stop and look over and ask yourself, if you don't already know, who the hell is that guy? He's got an amazing presence. And if he could pick up the acting along the way and get some great coaching who knows man because he's he's got an amazing look he looks like a Hollywood star batista actually talked about that recently and he was asked about you know how Hollywood compared to being in the professional wrestling

world he said something like being in Hollywood and being on a film set it's long hours but compared to the grind of being a professional wrestler it's just a cakewalk I mean it's night and day. You're uniquely qualified. You've lived on the road, not quite like a traditional wrestler with all the bumps and bruises and a crazy house show schedule, but the touring schedule of the pro wrestling world is something you're familiar with. And obviously you're familiar with long days on the set. Do you think Batista is, uh, is giving us the true, the true answer here is being a wrestler much harder than being a Hollywood star? It's a cakewalk to be in Hollywood by comparison? Physically, no doubt. No doubt physically. Because it's not just a matter of working

every night in the ring and performing every night. That's the easy part. That's the fun part. The hard part is the travel. Which is an unbelievable grind, particularly now. I mean, just in the last five, seven years, air travel is maybe the last 10. It's gotten so difficult that just traveling from point A to point B is a physical and mental grind that you don't have to endure typically when you're on a movie set, you're a fixed location, right? But those long days can be mentally draining because when you, you know, you're on set all day long, you may be on a set for 10 or 12 hours before anybody's ready for your scene or you're aligned. You have to sit there all day long and be ready. And once you hear

director, let everybody know to start shooting, you've got to be in character, you've got to have the energy, you've got to have the focus. And eventually, that's a, you know, sitting around all day long on a set is mentally draining. Being on the road as a professional wrestler is physically draining. So I think Patisse is right, but people can't underestimate the grind of being on a set 10, 12, 14 hours a day and then have it to be. your absolute best when it's your shot. I do want to mention some other news and notes as we get ready for a big weekend this weekend. AEW has a big pay-per-view that's going to be happening this weekend.

And we all woke up to news this morning as we're recording on Thursday that it looks like the, the Triller AEW relationship may be in jeopardy. It looks like AEW is going to have a Triller carry their pay-per-view internationally, but not domestically. I saw some people complaining about that online. I guess there's a lot of people who've fallen into a pattern of ordering on Triller. And I guess one of the pros of ordering on Triller is you have access to all the old

pay-per-views. So I saw some people saying, man, if Triller's in trouble, am I going to lose access to all my old paper views? It's kind of a big story. The, you know, what's going to happen with Triller and AEW. Have you seen any of this, Eric? And can you speak to the importance of having,

you know a pay-per-view partner because obviously pay-per-view was a big part of wcw's opportunity and of course we do a deep dive on that and guy evans new book which we're going to have a lot of detail on in the coming weeks i think it's going to be really eye-opening when they see some of these intercompany allocations that you've talked about for years but maybe the internet wrestling community has maybe let that fall on deaf ears but hearing it straight from turner corporate well that's a that's a different matter. If we try to apply some of that to the current day, how big of a deal is this possibly for AEW and Triller?

Certainly don't know what percentage of AEW's gross revenues are derived from pay-per-view. I can speak to WCW and even WWE to a degree back in the 90s, early 2000s, when pay-per-view was probably, it probably represented 25% percent of total revenues. And I used to discuss this with my team at WCW is at that point in time when things were running perfectly, Rolex watch perfectly. Everything's grind, all those gears are grinding together in harmony, if you will. 25% of your revenue would come from life events,

25% of your revenue would come from licensing and merchandising, 25% of it would come from pay-per-view, and 25% of it would come from sponsorship, ad sales, and such. Now, that's obviously changed dramatically as license fees have become the single largest line item. That was never the case when I was running wrestling. But it is today. So I'm sure that these percentages have changed,

but I have to believe, that a good, I don't know what the percentage is, but if I had to guess, I would say with regard to AEW because they don't have a lot of licensing and merchandising, it's insignificant, I would imagine, comparatively. So much of their license, so much of their revenue is dependent on pay-per-view and license fees. You don't tour. If you don't tour, you're not going to have a lot of merchandising, if any, very little. Their licensing efforts to date have been marginal. I think it best marginal. That's being kind. But that also takes time. Truth be known, you've got to get hot before you're really going to enjoy significant and consistent

merchandise sales. You've got to have a hot brand. That's a challenge right now for AEW. Not that they won't get there, but they're not there now. So when you're look at the composite of their revenue, I would suggest that pay-per-view for AEW is probably the second most significant revenue stream in the company. So it is a big deal. It's an important deal. And it's important that they get it right. I, for one, am, uh, I'm reminiscent of the old fight days. I know they were required by Triller, but it feels like Triller's just been kind of a mess. Uh, I don't think that whole short form video app they've been pushing for is ever really going to happen maybe they were banking on

ticot being banned in the u.s i don't know but the fight here's what i do now you know i had a little conversation with uh bear knuckle oh yeah they're part of trailer yeah part of trailer and you know the the i went to two of their events have a had a couple meetings with david feldman and we were just exploring the idea of me coming on board there uh much in the way i've I'm taking on the role at Real American Freestyle. And I dug a little bit into the Triller relationship because if I were to have gotten involved with bare knuckle fighting, a lot of my focus would have been on television and pay-per-view. And I had to understand the relationship.

I tried. But it was a mess. And if you ask around to anybody that's done any business with Triller, I think they started out with a great idea. things got out of control and it was pretty dysfunctional from what I've heard. So hopefully they'll figure out a way to salvage the platform and the opportunity because there is a lot of great technology there. There's some great people there.

There's some knowledgeable people. I just think that perhaps they were chasing the wrong dog, so to speak. Again, you and I don't know what's really going on, but I know we both think a lot of Mike Weber, you and he go back to the WCW days and we're pulling for them and I guess you know since we live here in America I didn't even really think about this but when this news hit I saw a bunch of comments from people who enjoy AEW program internationally I guess I kind of forgot that they have a program I think it's called AEW plus where you can actually

watch the shows on Wednesday and Saturday live even without the commercial break so you're getting you know more content and you're hearing from the announcers during the commercial break or a real peek behind the curtain that we don't get here in America because, you know, there isn't a TBS and a T&T on every continent, but fight is everywhere, or I guess it's Triller TV. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens there. But one thing I know for sure is that, well, money matters. And when it comes to me and you handling our money, we like cash app.

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I got to ask you about this. Polk Hogan and the real American brands may be making a play to acquire Hooters. I'm not asking for any inside information, Eric, but we are big on nostalgia on this podcast, and I think everyone listening to this has some sort of nostalgic experience visiting Hooters. I mean, I remember once I got my grandmother convinced to take me there. She didn't know any better.

And then I couldn't wait to call my mom afterwards and say, you're not going to believe where grandma took me for dinner. It was fantastic. Later, as a teenager, I watched UFC and even WWE at Hooters. I remember SummerSlam O2 specifically. I was at a Hooters. So it's very on brand for the real American brands, I suppose. We know we've got beer.

Now we've got an amateur slash professional wrestling league. I know that I think there's going to be a score sports bar in New York City. So it does feel like this is in line, but Paul Kogan and Hooters, man, it does feel nostalgia. Do you think it's real? Is this really going to happen? Or is this just publicity for TMZ if you had to guess? Oh, no. Well, I can't predict if it's going to close or not, but I can assure you,

I've got a little bit of visibility into this one. it's real it's damn real so to speak no it's very real and it is a great brand obviously they're struggling now in the restaurant business and you know it's it's much like triller a lot of times you know really smart people with great ideas and decent funding embark upon a path that ultimately ends up being the wrong path and doesn't mean there's not still value there and i think the people that Hulk is involved with in terms of acquiring this brand and rebuilding it are exceptional at that. And I think that there's a good possibility it will close and an even better possibility that if it does close, this is going to be a really fun project.

It feels like a fun project. It feels nostalgic. It feels for men. It feels on brand. I hope it, I mean, I hope they call it Hulk Hogan's Hooters, too. I don't know why. It just kind of rolls off the tip of the tongue, doesn't it? It does. I mean, he can stop talking about the 24-inch pie-time. Or we could go with real American hooters. Oh, well, but you know what?

I don't mind the fake American hooters. Let's move on. Hey, this weekend is Saturday night's main event. I'm fired up for it as you're listening to this. It's tomorrow night. I love nostalgia. Clearly, you know that based on my dedication to talking to old school wrestling five days a week and this is going to be a fun show including a steel cage match

with damien priest and drew mcinty we've also got c m punk and sammy zane teaming up to take on set ralins and brawn breaker we've got j uso and logan paul for the wb world heavyweight title and we've got john sina in our truth i don't know but it sounds like if you listen closely Sort of like if you were to put a sea shell to your ear, you could hear the ocean. When I see that graphic of John Sina and our truth, which I'm sure is just going to magically appear again, I feel like I could put my ear to that graphic and I can hear some adrenaline in my soul. Something, something, Cody Rhodes. What do you expect this weekend at Saturday night's main event, Eric?

I expect to be entertained like freaking crazy. I'm so excited about this one. Are we doing a watch? Are we going to cover this after the show? We are indeed. You and I are live of 80s after here at 83 weeks.com. Join us this Saturday night. It's going to be a blast.

It's totally free. We're going to be interactive, taking your questions, and we want to hear from you. But before we get to the big show, I do want to ask Eric, let's get your predictions on the record. Is it Damian Priest or Drew McIntyre in that steel cage? As a reminder, Drew won at WrestleMania. you. Drew. Okay. CM Punk and Sammy Zane versus

Seth Rollins and Braun Breaker. Do we get a finish? And if so, who's up? I think there's a push to get Ron up the ladder. I think there'll be a finish. I think Brian gets it. See. That's another one

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. So Jay Uso and Logan Paul, obviously Logan Paul is a mega influencer, and we know that Jay Uso has been one of the biggest merch movers of the past 12 months. He's now the world champion. Is this going to be Logan Paul's night to win the world title, or is it too soon? Who do you got here? Jay Uso or Logan Paul? Who walks out with the belt?

This is just strictly business. To me, I'd be sitting out making this decision with a calculator and a schedule in my and I would go with Uso. Last but certainly not least, John Sina and Our Truth. Can our truth upset the world? Would this be the biggest upset in history if he becomes the world champion and he beats John Sina or do you see it going a different way?

You know what? WWE has become, thankfully, fairly unpredictable. Like they're willing to do things now that they wouldn't have done several years ago. When Vince was calling his shots, I know this seems absurd. I wouldn't sleep on our truth. Yeah, listen, I think it's going to be fun. I can't wait to see what happens. We want you to join us live.

Do us a favor right now and go hit the subscribe button at 83 weeks.com and turn on the notifications bell. That'll serve as a little bit of a reminder. Maybe you've enjoyed a few too many cocktails on this holiday weekend. And you forget that we're live. this is your chance to ask Eric Bishop his opinion about the show and well pretty much anything else we'll be live immediately following Saturday night's main event this Saturday at 83 weeks.com our topic today is Dustin Rhodes before we jump in there Eric there was one more piece of news

I wanted to bring your way I don't know that you saw this but I'm sure that it will be a particular intrigue to you Darby Allen who is AEW's unofficial daredevil reached the summit of Mount Everest since you and I've recorded recently. And AEW changed his life. He shared the story before that prior to Tony con coming into his life, he had to live in his car.

AEW has changed his life and he took a banner for AEW to the top of Mount Everest. I thought this was super cool. I'm super proud of Darby for having such a crazy, ambitious goal like this. Super proud that he succeeded in the goal, but how

cool is it that he's showing some love to his buddy Tony Kahn who he gets credit for changing his life. I mean, even if you're anti-A-E-W, and I'm not suggesting you are, Eric, this is just a human, this is a great human story here, is it not? It is a great story. I first heard about this a couple years ago when my daughter was, I don't know what her title was, but she was working in development. She was a director of development at a company called Shed Media, which was a Warner Company, owned by Timorner. And the company she was working with got pitched an opportunity to create a reality

show based on Darby training and attempting to climb Mount Everest. When I first heard about it, I went, you know, I watched a lot of documentaries about people who have attempted to climb Mount Everest. It's not like, you know, something you just decided to go do at a weekend. you have to train for that in such an intense way that I told my daughter, man, I don't know if I would take that one on just because the odds of success are so slim. But he did it, man. Hats off to him.

It's an amazing physical and mental accomplishment. I think mentally it's probably even more so than the physical challenges. I think mentally to be able to overcome that, everything you have to do to get. to that summit it i know he thinks he in he's right it's his opinion a w and tony con may have changed his life but he's changed it as well because he'll take this success and everything it took to get to that success he'll be able to take that discipline that experience and that passion with him and anything else that he does so hats off to him super proud for derby i mean What a cool story.

Our topic today is Dustin Rhodes, and man, that's a guy that you've known for a long time. I think you started working with Dustin first in like 91 and WCW. Will that have been the first time you met him? Yeah, he was there when I got there or came in surely thereafter. I'm not exactly sure on that. But right around that same time, he was very young, was very new. And fortunately, as I've talked about in the Pennist, Dusty Roads, I don't want to use the word mentored, that would be a little too much.

But he really took me under his wing just to help me assimilate to the culture, because nobody knew me. They may have known of me because I was hosting the AWA show on ESPN five days a week, so it wasn't like I was a complete unknown. But for the most part, I was just like, you know, the C-Squod weatherman. in a local television market. The guy that works weekends when all the regular forecasters

or weather people, you know, weekend thought. Dusty took me under his wing and, you know, protection protected me is probably a good way to say it. He didn't want me to get eaten alive, you know, the first couple months I was there. And because of that,

I met Dustin right away. And, you know, I hung out with Dusty after the shows, often as others did. It wasn't just Dusty and I. But, you know, Dusty made sure that after a show. He was at the bar. He called me over and invited me to sit with him.

And again, that's kind of, that was Dusty's way of giving me the rub, so to speak. And Dustin was there. And this is one thing I was excited to talk about once we finally were able to cover this, is watching the relationship between Dustin and Dusty. were so inspiring to me to see a father and a son openly affectionate they would hug each other

doesn't give him a kiss on the cheek or Dustin would give Dustin would give a kiss that you I mean they were so like they were in their home so publicly affectionate and I didn't grow up with that I grew up in the opposite of that actually quite the opposite so to see that was like oh this is such an awesome relationship

and that's the first thing that's the first impression i have of dustin is the strongest memory i have of dustin watching him and dusty adore each other in public just this day i still think is such a wonderful thing. I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but I also have to share with the audience that I don't think everybody viewed it as lovingly as you did, because you're viewing it from a human standpoint. And unfortunately, there were people in the WCW organization who,

well, they were thinking like wrestlers. And they would say, oh, this kid's getting the push because of who his dad is. And, oh, he's a Nepo baby. And there was a lot of criticism even in the newsletters where, you know, fans who maybe took it personally, the Jim Crockett promotions went under and maybe they felt some of the blame was on Dusty, I feel like they were being mean-spirited, even taking it out on his kid. But even, you know, Dave would have some of that where he was clearly not a big Dusty Rhodes fan. And so when his son comes on the scene, as a white meat baby face, he's supposed to have the

the typical they get the heat on me and I make the comeback that's the position every baby faces in but when it's dusty's kid it's probably talked about and discussed with a tinge of criticism and I mean this is the the price of being a multi-generation superstar and following behind someone who was a power broker in wrestling especially if they're still actively employed in the same organization you are like in you you're uniquely qualified to talk about this because I know you at least had to think about all of that and talk through it with the family before Garrett got in. Did you see Dustin being treated differently by some of his peers than maybe he would

have if his last name wasn't Runnels? No. And that didn't, that the tension, the controversy, the nonsense didn't exist in the WCW locker room, at least not that I saw. Keep in mind. I was like a fly on the wall. I was a non-factor in anybody's life. So people would say things in front of me

that they certainly wouldn't say in front of Dusty or anybody in management. So I heard it all. And there wasn't the issue in the locker room. The issue is with the parasites, those ignorant of the real situation. I think Dave Meltzer is the most ignorant of them all.

And because of his, whatever issue he had with died, he also used to bury dusty roads incessantly, incessantly. Like he had some personal vendetta against him. And, of course, that creates a narrative among, you know, the garbage pail, those people who rely on people like Dave Meltzer for inside information, or at least they think they're getting inside information. They're really getting to the musings of a,

fucking idiot is what they're really getting but hang on to that and it creates a narrative I didn't see it inside and if it existed I would have heard about it because people weren't afraid to speak their mind in front of me I was the third string backup announcer I had a little people were a little more they would notice me a little bit more than the potted plant in the corner of the room so I literally was a fly on the wall I never heard any of that. I heard the opposite. I saw the opposite. Now, granted, some of that, some of what I saw, which is the opposite of what Dave Meltzer was spewing, what I saw was a tremendous amount of support for Rod Duster. So none of that was true in terms of what was real. Whatever

bullshit narrative, you know, it is what it is. But the other thing that I want to hit on is following you know, in your dad's footsteps, in this case, Dusty's. I watched Greg Gagnan try to follow in his father's footsteps. Now, Greg wasn't physically impressive at all. I mean, I might have been six foot, one and 185 pounds, no matter what they said when he came out with Jim Brunzel. He wasn't a big physically imposing guy. He wasn't really built. He didn't look like a wrestler back.

back then. You know, wrestlers had a certain look back then. He didn't have that. He was a great wrestler. He had great psychology. He learned from the best, which was his father. So there was a lot of things that Greg had going on for him, but he had this massive shadow. And I watched him struggle with that. I think in some respects he's still struggling with it. It's a really tough spot to be it. I watched what happened with Eric Watts when Bill Watt was in charge of WCW. Again, I'm a fly on the wall, but by the time Eric Watts came in, I had developed some pretty meaningful relationships, close relationships with a number of the guys. So I'd get an even better insight as to what was happening in people's opinions and all that. And Eric Watts was a great guy.

He may not have been cut out to be a professional wrestler. I didn't think he was. Could have been. He could have proved me wrong had he been given. given the opportunity, but when you've got a Bill Watts as your father, not only do you have what's, you know, you've got foot steps you've got to follow and fill, but his dad was a kid. And Eric had to deal with that as well. Incredibly difficult.

You know, some athletes have been able, some performers have been able to break through that. You know, Randy Orton is a perfect example. There are other, certainly. Like Iraq, you know, kind of, you dealt with it, so to speak. So there are success stories, but, man, it's actually three or four times harder to come up in the business that your father was a star in. And in Dustin's case, had the pen, or in this case, the pencil, so much pressure emotionally just trying to fit in and be your own person when you've got this massive. shadow following you, looking over your shoulder, so to speak, everywhere you go. And even if you don't feel it, when people look at you and talk to you, they see that shadow.

And it changes things. It makes it really, really difficult. So I applaud anybody who tries, and even more so those who succeed like Dustin and Bach, or others, I'm sure. It's a tough road. And I, you're right, man, when Garrett said, dad, I really want to do this. I spent six months talking him out of it. Failed, clearly. But I really didn't want him to try to break into the business, not because I had any significant shoes to fill, so to speak, inside the ring. That would have been easy for him. But, you know, the name, the presence and the history would have made it even it did in some ways make it that much more difficult. Let's talk about Great American Bash 1991. Dustin's going to be on this show and

here's what Dave Meltzer wrote at the time. This is why I bring this up to you. The lumberjack match had no reason to be a lumberjack match except it seems to have given Dusty Rhodes one more opportunity to put a son over. Was there anyone who didn't guess the way the elimination match was going to end when they first heard about it? I actually feel sorry for Dustin Rhodes, considering his experience level. He's a very good worker. He has potential down the road to be what he's being pushed as today. But it has gotten really annoying to see him push so hard simply because his father is the booker.

And I just feel like that's unfair. Like, why can't we say he's being pushed because he's a young baby face and he's good and we need that? like anytime he has success people are going to second guess it and i know that sometimes i'm criticized online eric for not being negative about the current product because i usually abstained from sharing my opinion about the things i don't like and i instead talk about the things i do like this is a prime example of why i think because back in 91 nobody would have guessed that gold dust was on the horizon or that dustin would have this hall of fame career but i can't help but think that this sort of coverage, well, it didn't help his career when he was young.

And he is out there learning. And by the way, doing exactly what he's being told to do. I mean, he's a young wrestler who's going to follow the advice of his employers. And if they say, hey, we want you to go out and win the match, what's he supposed to do as a young kid, say, thanks, but no thanks. I mean, he's going to do what they tell him to do. This is a kid barely 20 years old. What is he supposed to do, right?

Right. Again, that's what happens when you have emotionally questionable people commenting on things that they don't know. In Dave's case, I think deep down on the side, he always wanted to be accepted and respected in the world of professional wrestling outside of the low-level thinkers that follow him and pay $15 a month for his garbage. down inside Dave wanted to be a wrestler and he was jealous of guys like Dustin he resented the fact that they had an opportunity that he would never have they were getting tv time they were becoming stars it was a very petty insecure jealous little bitch and it comes across in so much what not just now and it's the same patterns now when you see some some of the negative crap that comes out of him.

It's the same thing. It's jealousy. It's envy because none of it is true. Very little of it is true. Every once in a while, he'll get something right. But it all comes from a negative perspective. And the reason it's negative is because deep down inside everybody else is doing something he'll never get a chance to do.

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is Ricky Steamboat and Dustin Rhodes winning the tag titles from Arne Anderson and Larry's Obisco. They go 14 minutes and 48 seconds. And Meltzer said it was one of the best matches of 1991. It got four and a quarter stars. I have some of my wrestling friends. This is one of their all-time favorite matches. It is a really, really big deal.

because, you know, we're looking for a partner for Dustin Rhodes and out comes this mystery partner. And when the mask comes off and it's revealed that it's Ricky Steamboat, it's a big return. This is the former world champion, the former guy who took Rick Flair to the limit. Now he's back and he's tag team champions with the son of a son of a plumber, Dustin Rhodes. A really fun moment, a fun match and a real highlight in WCW in 1991, don't you think? it was what a great choice i mean rickie steamboat at that point in time i don't think there was too many people as good certainly nobody better and to be able to bring him in as a surprise

and tell me who was it okay it was rickie and dustin but who else was larry zibisco and who was the other person r anderson okay if you wanted to surround a young talent yes with some of the best yes that a that young talent can learn by experience in front of a live crowd, get a sense of timing, learn how to read the crowd and get them to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it, to control that emotion. When you think back in 1991 of three people who are even remotely as good as Arne and Ricky steamboat and who was the other one?

Ricky's team boat is teaming with Dustin Rhodes to take on Arne Anderson and Larry Zubisco. Larry's Obisco. Larry's Abisco was never, you know, he's never the superstar, right? I mean, I guess for, well, unless you ask him, sure he was. But, you know, the height of Larry's career was behind him at that point. Man, he's like, Arn, though. He's one of those guys that maybe he didn't quite reach the mountain. top, but had all the tools and the ability to teach and phenomenal psychology.

It's one of the things I've loved about Larry Sybisco. Even if you listen to him as a color commentator, he understood the role because he understood the psychology of being a good color commentator, how to really get people over, even while you're burying them, he's getting people over. So he's an amazing talent, and I think Dusty did a great job. surrounding Dustin with Arne Anderson, Larry's, Biscoe, Rick, and Dragon, Steve Boat, you're almost assured to have a hell of a, hell of a main event, and clearly they did. It's interesting to think about, you know, that everything's going to change when Bill Watts comes in.

You mentioned Derek Watts. We're going to talk about him momentarily, but before we do, we should give the good news that in February of 92, to Dustin Rhodes, Steve Austin, and Brian Pilman all signed two-year deals. Now, that feels like a big deal because allegedly the WWF had interest in Pilman, but he re-signs here. And Dustin and Austin, apparently, according to the observer, signed two-year deals for 165 and 190, so 165 year one, 190, year two, and they've got an opportunity to make incentives, so it'll push those numbers up.

but being able to lock down a major television contract to be a television wrestler very earlier in your career is the tip of the cap and 165 is pretty good money today but man 33 years ago he's off to a great start is he not errant what would that number be i don't expect you to know this off the top of your head but like what would 165,000 1991 be equal to today i'll just take a wild ask you know i got it i got it i mean here's the thing thanks to our handy-dandy inflation calculators we can actually run the numbers on that it'd be like 375 pretty good 20 years old think about you're 20 years old your name is Dustin and you're making 375 thousand dollars a year the equivalent of 375 000 a year today yeah i see that was a pretty

good deal that's exceptional Shane Douglas is going to come in in uh late august and he's going to be a now television regular here in WCW. And Eric Watts is also going to become a part of the organization. We know when, when Hurd is out, Watts comes in, Eric Watts comes in, and Dustin introduces Eric to television. And I think that's interesting because we're so many people, we're quick to say that Dustin Rhodes was the Snepo baby and was being pushed beyond his talent and blah, blah, blah. In reality, respectfully, Eric Watts was maybe the guy who was going to get painted with that brush.

But Dustin was called the natural as a nickname in wrestling. And I think he did have more of a natural aptitude for the business than Eric Watts did. I can watch some of Dustin Rhodes early matches. Look at his rookie year. 91, 92. Watch his work in the ring and compare to what you see today. He was phenomenal. given his lack of experience.

He was a natural. Somebody didn't come up with that name, say, I got three names here. We're going to pick one. We're going to put it on Dustin. He came by that name naturally. He was naturally talented. He was gifted.

He's a big guy, you know, deceptively big. But he can move, and he was smooth, kind of like, he's like Randy Orton smooth. Justin actually made things look easy. easy it weren't and a lot of that was just because of his timing and his finesse and his follow through his footwork all those things that take years to really develop just brought him to the ring with him he was a natural we should also mention that uh he's a natural tag team wrestler because later that year at center stage september 20th they're going to have a 20 minute match

where Dustin and Barry Windham win both the NWA and WCW tag team belts off of Dr. Death, Steve Williams, and Terry Gordy. This is a big deal. It's going to air on TBS on October 3rd. And historically, we know guys like Doc and Gordy, well, they didn't lose on TV very often because they were trying to protect their Japan money.

But this is what happens. They're going to drop these belts before they go back to Japan. It is a big moment. WCW Saturday night is very much. much the A show here in 1992. And now Dustin Rhodes after previously holding the tag straps with Barry Windham or with Ricky Steamboat, now he holds them with Barry Windham. I mean, if you're going to be a tag team guy, can you think of better partners than Ricky steamboat and Perry Windham? That's about as good as it gets. It is. And I love Barry Windham

and Dustin together. Yes. They were believable. I mean, you would see those two together away from the ring outside of the arena and it just clicked i mean these guys they were such a perfect match i mean they could have made a great buddy cop movie with those two characters both of them say it was very wouldn't i can't say enough of great things about barry wendom as a performer but mostly as a person such a solid guy an amazing talent another guy huge son of a god huge it look easy let's talk about clash 21 clash of the champions it's another opportunity to have a big tag title match very windham and dustin roads are going to go 1552 with Shane Douglas and rickie steamboat and douglas and steamboat get the win so they're

going to they're going to win the tag belts here it's a great story it's a great match I mean the connective tissue with with steamboat and dustin being the former tag team champions together, but now Dustin has a new tag team partner in Barry Windham, and here comes the older statesman Ricky Steamboat to grab those titles back. It does feel like WCW was prioritizing tag team wrestling more in 91 and 92. Is that a dusty initiative? Is that a Bill Watts initiative? It doesn't feel like tag teams were always a focal point, but it feels like they are here because you're not just seeing pre-packaged tag teams. These are individual stars who are creating a tag team and maybe that allows them to move up the card a little bit.

What do you make of this? I don't know who drove it. I know Dusty was big on tag team wrestling. Dusty, you know, it was a regular, um, oh, yeah, Dusty's formats. You know, Bill, I never, I was never in a room listening to Bill talk about anything other than Bill. He liked to talk about himself a lot, but, and what a badass he was back in the day and all the insecure bullshit. But I never really got too much insight into his view of the product.

So I can't speak to anything that Bill was thinking. But I know, I believe, based on my proximity, Lusty was a big fan of tag team wrestling. And also understood it was a great storytelling opportunity as well. It creates the opportunity to bring to, I mean, you got Dusty and, or excuse me, Dustin, And Steamboat had previously been tag team partners. Now you enter Shane Douglas and you've got fertile ground for some interesting

storytelling, even if they end up breaking off into signals action afterwards. So I think that's what Destiny was, was his driver when it came to tag team wrestling, but certainly can't speak. You want to be written about favorably, you should co-op the media. It's not necessarily news, but sometimes people act like that, doesn't exist in wrestling, but it does in every other form of media, so I don't know why it should be any different, but it does

rear its head from the reader pages from December 21st, 1992. Dave was written to by Matthew in New York, who says, with all the uproar over Eric Watts, I did some browsing through old newsletters, and in the 16 months he was wrestling under

Jim Hurd and Kip Fry, Dustin Rhodes did five jobs, two of which were clean. In the six months since Watts took over, I found 11 instances where roads did jobs, at least six of which were clean. I won't swear by these numbers, but they should be close to the actual figures. This seems to suggest that Dustin's most favorite status was done away with when Cowboy Bill came aboard WCW.

This is in spite of the fact that Dustin has become one of the best workers in the company, although his interviews still suck. Maybe Bill still believes in rule by divine right. And Dave would counter this with a little quip. How many jobs did Brian? Pilman and Arne Anderson do during the same two-year period. I bring this up because it's no surprise

and it's not really a revelation that Brian Pilman and Rick Clare were both in very regular communication with Dave Meltzer. So when there's a conversation and a question asked about Dustin Rhodes, the answer is about Dave's friends.

We see this play out today. A couple of months back, we saw bully Ray make some sort of comment about hey, I don't care about five stars. I care about five zeros. I wanted five zeros on my paycheck. That was much more important to me than having a five star match.

And Dave Meltzer went out of his way to respond to that. And he quoted it. And he says, did he also mention that ECW never drew more than $5,500 and it was never profitable? When in fact, the EW this year is going to be the second most profitable company of all time. That's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Bully was taking issue with your star rating system, Dave.

AEW was not in the conversation. And even here, there's a conversation from a reader way back in 1992 about, hey, maybe this favored nations thing that you think, you know, Dustin is working under isn't exactly true. He's lost twice as many as he was before.

But instead of addressing that, Dave says, what about Brian Pillman and Arne Anderson? And it's like, wait a minute. That's not the conversation. The conversation was about Dustin. political bias media bias is a real thing and i think sometimes we just decide that well it doesn't

count in wrestling or that's not fair because i study it i'm not picking on dave i'm just no you should pick that dave he's bad there's bias here right dave melzer is horrible for the business he's a parasite that contributes nothing well takes away from the business by discrediting at it, discrediting it, and spreading his rumors and innuendo and his bizarre perspectives on things. But again, here's the reason. I mean, media bias in general media, it is what it is. We're all getting overwhelmed with it now.

We can see it for what it is. And by the way, people often refer to it as fake news. I had a conversation with Tyrus. I saw him on Gutfeld the other night. This is a couple of weeks ago. And he used the term propaganda media. Everybody's been talking about fake media for so long, fake news, right? Trump came out with that.

Fake news, fake news. And it's become so common now, but it's also a little innocuous. It's almost childish because it doesn't really represent. And I'm going to get to Dave Meltz from just a minute. Backbrown. Fake news doesn't do what's going. on in media justice. It's more evil than that.

And until someone spends time in a country where the media is 100% controlled by the state, as in North Korea, you are clueless, absolutely newborn baby clueless is to how detrimental propaganda news you need to fake news is on a culture Dave is the wrestling version of that and until you've been in the business in the industry at a high level not as a wrestler necessarily although you're going to experience it there too but if you were ever at a high level in the business of the wrestling business. You would understand why people like me, who were at one point, those who still are, have such disdain for Dave Melsa because he's propaganda. He's not news. And this is a perfect

example of that. Dave thinks that people talk to him are his friends. He's a useful idiot. He doesn't have any friends. unless they're people like him. Ponscum generally aggregates in a small pie. It is, but I'm just giving me my opinion. He is Ponscum. He's wrestling propaganda. And he's able to milk money out of people doing it.

And I just encourage people to ignore someone like Dave Meltzer. There's some great people out there. Mike Johnson, Dave Shearer, I've mentioned them before. There's some great coverage going on out there. folks. Incredible coverage. If you really want to know what's going on, but, you know, Dave got there first. All of it is designed to make him feel important. I think he's too stupid or just doesn't care. I don't think he even understands what a fool he makes of himself when he comes up with commentary like this. It's just it is what it is. The people that he thinks are his friends are

smart enough to use him because they know something that Dave doesn't know. They know that if they just give him a cookie and pat him on a head and acknowledge him, he'll do whatever they want. He'll write whatever they want. Well, don't source it. He won't check it out. He won't challenge it. If you give him a cookie and pet him on ahead to say, hey, Dave, there's a scoop.

It's gone. It's out there. a useful idiot in the truce definition of the term. A little stiff there. He's a nice guy, but he's not infallible. He's a piece of shit. All righty. Rocket money is not a piece of shit and you're going to love it. You're going to love saving money and you're going to love me transitioning out of this conversation. Rocket money is going to help you find subscriptions you forgot about or maybe some of you were paying for twice

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don't have to. So go cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Just download the Rocket Money app and enter our show name, 83 weeks with Eric Vischoff in the survey, so they know that we sent you. It's a really big deal for us, and we greatly appreciate it. Don't wait. Download the Rocket money app today. Tell him you heard about them for 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. So let's talk about Dustin Rhodes here. We're going to have a big moment in early 1993 where he actually wins the United States title. He's in the tournament finale with Ricky Steamboat. This goes down on January 11th,

1993 at center stage. Steamboat was counted out because Barry Windham gave him a DDT on the floor. When Dustin sees the tape, he says he's got to give steamboat a rematch and they're going to wrestle for another time limit draw that's going to air a couple of weeks later. But this is Dustin's first singles title and they did it pretty smartly. You know, the tournament is against his former tag team partner. He gets a little help with his second tag team partner giving his first tag team partner the DDT on the floor.

Dustin looks good wearing that U.S. title. I like this story, don't you? I did too. What a perfect, what a perfect position for Dustin to be in at that time. U.S. title puts him in the hunt, elevates him, great decision. And I like the finish that you just laid out. Yeah. Got Dustin over as a baby face.

He did the right thing. That was smart booking, good storytelling. They're actually going to put Dustin in a program with Barry Windham. They're running two sets of house shows. So they got like an A loop and a B loop. Well, that B loop is doing like 500 and 600 paid, not very much. But the A loop is getting 18 to 2,200. And the A loop is where Dustin is on top against Barry for the U.S.

title. So I know that there's criticism about him being a young guy and all of that. But Lord have mercy, you want to talk about A, B testing literally. We put two sets of house shows out there. We put Dustin and Barry on top of one. And it did a multiple of what the other tour did. It's got to be a vote of confidence from the being counters and decision makers in Turner and Dustin, right? I don't think the bean counters and decision makers and WCW were paying too close attention

or they wouldn't have had an A show and a A tour and a B tour because they were losing money every time they went out the door. Well, that's fair enough. I guess we're like, what, a year away from you hiring Zane Bresloff, is that right? I didn't hire Zane, actually. Somebody else did, but it was about a year before Zane came into WCW. Let's keep going through the spring of 93. The U.S. title is going to be held up between Rick Rood and Dustin Rhodes,

and they're going to have a match that airs on worldwide where there's a double pin finish, where both guys get their shoulders up, but there's two referees, and they're each counting the other man down. Somehow, some way Rick Rood leaves with the belt, and we're thinking that maybe they're going to be working towards a best of seven idea that they're going to do, and they do wind up doing that. But I wanted to ask, you know, you've seen these before, Once upon a time, perhaps most famously, it was Magnum T.A.

and Nikita Koloff from Jim Crockett Promotions. Later in the Nitro era, you did it with Booker T and Chris Benoit. And here we're about to do it with Rick Rood and Dustin doing a best of seven. Could that work today, or has the audience and our attention span changed so much that a best of seven wouldn't matter as much? I know a few years ago, AEW tried this with the Young Bucks and the Death Triangle or something like that but it fizzled like our attention spans and i don't know if that's because of social media or or instant gratification because we all live with a cell phone in our hand but can a best of seven really work and matter today erring absolutely absolutely but it's

entirely dependent on storytelling if it's just a best of seven and they're just wrestling matches for the sake of wrestling matches absolutely it won't work because of the reasons that you pointed out accurately, you know, just we've been conditioned to just look for short bursts of dopamidians. Nobody's really interested in long-term storytelling. Okay, let me take that back. Long-term storytelling is rare in today's environment because producers are producing matches for television that are designed to engage, maintain, audience, and short bursts. So you don't see great long-term storytelling too often. Now you do in, you know, in WWE, you see it as you're getting into

WrestleMania and things. But for the most part, television is produced today for an audience that is accustomed to fast, rapid-paced bursts of storytelling. Best of Seven would take a lot of thought and some great story. But if you can create that story, I think a Best of Seven in today's environment would stand out. People would be clamoring for it. But it has to be done right.

You can't just throw guys together in a mash and have a Best of Seven series without a lot that great story behind it. Let's talk a little bit about Shane Douglas. It's going to come up here that he does an interview in Pennsylvania. And he's talking about his career as a teacher. I guess he's trying to leave wrestling behind. But he also says something that in this interview sort of echoes what we read the newsletters.

He's being critical of Eric Watts and Dustin Rhodes, getting where they are because they are. have fathers and powerful positions and he's also critical of WCW bringing back Rick Flair do you think that Shane really believed this or is Shane angling for hey if I come back I know I'm teaching now but if I go back I can come back to a ready made feud or angle here you spent more time with Shane Douglas than any of us did what do you think never got to know Shane real well I always got along with Shane I want to say we were friends we didn't hang out after the show

or visit each other's home on holidays or anything like that. But I spent enough time getting to know Shane. I think Shane, my guess, during that time, he was in a transition. You know, you go for, we've talked about this. I've talked about it a lot. When you get that needle in your arm and you're out there and you're performing and you're connecting to the audience, it's just a different kind of high that you can't get anywhere else.

For whatever reason, apparently, Shane made the decision to get out of wrestling and go into teaching. I think he was having some withdrawals. I think he was a little jealous, envious perhaps, better word. And he started to go public with his thoughts. But I think those thoughts were really driven by envy and maybe a little bit of regret and he made the wrong decision. Clearly, he still wanted to get back in the game or he wouldn't have made those comments. Let's spend a little bit of time talking about the WCWNWA situation. As a reminder, we've got the big gold belt in WCW and we've got the belt that maybe Ron Simmons is most famous for. And we previously have referred to one as the NWA world title and another is the WCW world title.

There were some problems with the NWA. So we start referring to the big gold belt as the international title. So it's clear that there's going to be a plan to unify those belts. and we know that does happen, but it happens in 1994. There's discussion here in September of 93 that it could happen soon. It's being discussed as if when we unify the belts, Dustin Rhodes' name is being touted as being the loudest as they were grooming him for that spot. And a couple of weeks later, the observer would say,

much discussion within the company about the plan to make Dustin Rhodes world champion. Nobody has anything bad to say about Rhodes as a person, and most everyone compliments him as being a good worker. And then he of course says, but you'd be hard pressed to think he's ready for this spot. So let me ask you, you're getting a lot of power for yourself in 1993. Do you remember it ever being discussed that,

hey, maybe we'll unify both of those belts and we'll put them on Dustin? Because Dustin with the big gold belt, that's a visual that I can get behind, but it does seem crazy in 1993. Was it ever close to happening or being discussed as far as you recall? Not that I recall, because I wasn't close to creative decisions like that. I was just focused on production and creative and wrestling relations,

you know, talent relations, all of that report to somebody else. So I didn't have a lot of visibility into those conversations. I do remember them. I remember them because I thought it was a waste of time that there was, and I stand by it to this day, for a period of time, there was such a struggle with identity. There were people in WCW that wanted to hold on to the legacy of Jim Crockett Promotions, as well they should.

Ted Turner bought Jim Crockin promotions out of bankruptcy. A lot of the people that were in Jim Crockett promotions came over to WCW. So there was, including names that people don't even recognize, like Rob Garner, for example, who was in charge of television syndicate. He came over for Jim Crockett. So David Crockett, obviously, Jackie Crockett, our cameraman, a lot of talent. We're all very associated with Jim Crockett promotions. And keep in mind, this was only like five years, six years after things shut down for Jim Crockett.

If that, so it would attempt by WCW and create WCW and bought Crockett promotions in 1988, I think, 88. So we're not that far removed from Jim Crockett promotions. and some of the tremendous things that they did, but it was dead. The real issue for me was not that Dreamcock Promotions was dead. It's just that there was so much cloudy legal issues, so many cloudy legal issues regarding that belt in the NWA, could we use it, could we not use it.

I say, why are we fucking with this? Just move on. Just move on. Why hang on to a past that really doesn't matter? If it's easy, great. Take advantage of it. Use it as a resource. But when you throw in all of the legal issues surrounding the big gold belt

and how could we refer to NWA and all that, it's like, man, we're wasting a lot of resources and time on something that ultimately doesn't matter. Let's talk about the observers right up here from the, fall of 1993. Only Anderson really isn't much of the key decision-making process. Eric Bischoff has the ultimate power, although Dusty Rhodes is thought by the wrestlers is still being most influential since most... Can we stop right there? I hit you interrupt you. What year was this? 1993. That's what I'm looking to see is I believe that Oli was the replacement of Watts as far as

the VP of wrestling operations. And I guess that makes you as like the EP of television and maybe Sharon Sadello is like the head of the pay-per-view division and Dusty is the official Booker. How does the hierarchy shake out here as best you can recall in early? First, let's just start out where we should. Dave's reporting once again, it's not even reporting. That's giving him too much credit. Dave's propaganda and bullshit and masturbatory commentary.

It's completely wrong. Eric, his quote, Eric Bishop, had the ultimate power. Not in 1993, I didn't. You dipshit. And if you knew anything about Turner, if you knew anything about the structure of WCW at that point, Dave, you would know that I had very little, if any, influence over creative. I didn't go to the meetings and get invited to the meetings. My feelings weren't hurt because I wasn't invited to the meetings because I had my own world to try to take care of.

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overbooked show with seven matches planned over two hours another weekly book show due to predictable and uncreative mainly screw job endings and numerous complaints because the only wrestlers who got to score clean pens on the entire show were related to the booker He lists Shockmaster, Dustin, and Jerry Sags as being the guys who get pins and maybe Dave says, maybe the optics on this aren't good. And I have to agree a little bit here. If I was trying to think negatively about anything, and we sometimes do this in business, Eric, where we know that, hey, this might be the right call or this is a fine call,

but the optics of the call may be negative, maybe something. may be something we want to avoid. Is that something that ever crossed your mind, the optics of, because I know it had to at least be on your mind when you were booking yourself as a wrestler or in angles and certainly when Garrett was going to be booked, was it even crossing your mind about the way Dusty was booking? Because I could see how if you wanted to play devil's advocate,

you could say, well, Fred Otman won, Dustin Rhodes one, and Jerry Saggs won. It seems silly, but if you want to look at it that way, But you can, right? Sure he can. Go to your question. Did it ever cross my mind when I was involved with creative? Absolutely not.

Okay. Absolutely not. Not even with Dallas? Not in terms of optics at all. Scott Hollis said that he felt like, you know, you had been reluctant. or hesitant to push DDP because he felt like maybe you would get some black because everyone knew you guys were friends.

No, I wasn't worried about me getting flack. I was worried about him getting flat. I got you. Now, he was going to handle it, but we did it anyway because I wouldn't let optics or what a dirt sheet parasite has to say, or, or subprime intellect of the people that follow him, um, that didn't cross my, I did consider Garrett. in the sense that I didn't want to push him too hard too soon. Yes, he was going to get some heat because his last name was Bischoff.

I expected it, anticipated it, and dealt with it. But other than that, I've never considered optics. Because optics, the only optics that mattered to me was the audience reaction. if the optics in the arena and in television ratings and in the quality of the story was there what pissants like dave melzer and the people that followed them thought about it never even occurred to me hey let's talk a little bit about dusty roads here in early 94 he's had a three-year run and it's written in the observer that based on declining house show business and overall declining television ratings, Dusty is replaced as Head Booker, and now they're going to go with,

and I guess the official word is, Dusty resigned, and there was technically no reason given for the change, but Dave is speculating that Dusty had been overruled several times as of recently, and he feels like he can't really do his job if he's going to be overruled. So now it's going to be a committee who's going to handle the booking. The committee includes Bill Shaw, Eric Bischoff, Mike Graham, Greg Gagne, Colonel Robert Parker, and Rick Flair. And Meltzer would say WCW has frequently gone to committees in between bookers and the result has always been chaos to the point the wrestlers themselves would ask three different committee members what the finish was for a match and get three different answers. Let's just stop right there.

Do you remember why Dusty won it out of this seat or was forced out of this seat in early 1990? I can't honestly say I remember the catalyst. You know, what was the decision that caused this? Probably driven a little bit by Bill Shaw, be my guess. He was the shot caller, as they say. And he would have been the only one that could have forced that. I hate booking by committee, especially when the committee is made up of people

that have no idea what the hell they're doing. It makes no sense. Have you ever heard the saying, a camel is a horse that was created by committee? I can't think of a better analogy here, metaphor, whatever it is. That's what booking by committee means. Now, if the committee is made up of people that have

established track records of success as writers and producers and directors, I'm all in. More eyes, more ideas, the better. But I didn't have any input. I didn't have any input that mattered. Neither to Bill Shaw, he was probably just there observing and trying to create the process more than anything else. It was a bad decision in the first place. you don't do creative by committee.

There has to be one person that is willing to put their reputation and their job on the line and everybody else needs to fall in line and execute to the best of their abilities. And at the end of a run, if your decisions that everybody else fell into line and helped execute, if they did their job and it's not working, then it's your job. It's like I had coach. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. responsibility, but creating a committee of a bunch of people that will never understand a fraction of what Dusty Rhodes knew was a really bad decision in the first place.

It's exacerbated only by the fact that even if you're going to have a committee, once you come out of that committee room, once a decision is made, however it's made, the last thing you want to do is having members of that committee available to discuss finishes, especially when three quarters of the people in that committee have no idea how to create a finish or tell a story. It was set up to fail, not intentionally, unintentionally, but it's a setup for a drastic failure. And Dusty was not the, a couple years ago I talked to you about when Cody Rhodes left WWE. And I heard about that.

I was in the middle of a meeting somewhere, dinner meeting. I saw that come across my phone. I immediately texted Cody and told him how proud I was of him and how much he reminded me of his dad. And this is a perfect example of why I sent that text when I sent it. Because Dusty was willing to walk away before he was willing to be surrounded by a bunch of people telling him how he should be doing his job when none of those people had any credibility or experience to do so.

We've got to spend just a minute here and talk about, you know, what this is going to mean for the booking committee. I guess this means Rick Flair is going to take more of a prominent role here. He's going to take the lead, I guess, if anything. I know he's denied that he was ever the head booker, but that's certainly what people who were there would say. Okay, Rick. You believe that Eric,

that Rick had a lot of creative influence here in this point, right? There was a point in time when Rick, what, I mean, I'm line is going to be hard for me to get accurate here. But when I was promoted and oversaw the wrestling operation side of things, which included creative, I'm the one that put Rick Flair in charge.

Rick Flair could say he wasn't really in charge, and maybe Rick Flair believes that because he was also surrounded by a bunch of other people. He worked with a group of others as well, and maybe he didn't want to see himself as a quarterback in charge. I don't blame him. It's a horrible position to be in, particularly when your name is Rick Flair and you're still active in the ring.

It's a suicide mission. Rick took it because we needed it. I think Rick really believed at the time he could do it. But for a period of time, Rick was the guy, at least in my mind, if not in his. What I was trying to say there is even when Dusty's out and flares in, it doesn't affect Dustin's push at all. It's still business as usual. And there's an interview where it even looks like there's a tease that Dustin might be joining the horseman. Of course, we know that's not going to happen.

Um, the observer in July of 94 would say supposedly the word has come down directly from the top that the heavy bloody violent matches like cactus jack matches on pay-per-view and then that, uh, Dustin Rhodes, bunk house bunk match are no longer to be tolerated even on pay-per-view. The fear is with the national and congressional mood against violence on television. Ted Turner, a major public figure who has to be in step with the times, doesn't want to be caught with an Achilles heel. Since Vince McMahon has also come down hard on the same subject,

McMahon must be afraid that unless wrestling is toned down, a spotlight will shine on him as well. WCW's TV is already edited to death in Europe, where the standards on television violence are already stricter. And as someone who enjoyed those three matches, I don't like this direction, but I also realize in order to survive in business in 94, you can't ignore the outside world. All the complaining about how it used to be doesn't mean diddle,

if it's going to end up costing exposure in a business in which exposure is foundation. This is something that we've talked about at a surface level a lot that, you know, WWE, even in recent years has played sort of hokey pokey with, will we allow blood,

won't we allow blood? But I think Dave lays it out pretty well there saying that, hey, Ted Turner is a major public figure with much bigger business opportunities out there beyond WCW. So, having a bloody wrestling match on the scheme of things might be the 10,000th most important

thing he has to think about. So when you frame it that way that, hey, this is done just to keep head out of any sort of negative publicity, that's probably a smart move at the time, is it not? It was bigger than that. It involved advertisers. Yes. Because average, keep in mind, oh, this is 1994 AIDS. was still fresh on people's minds.

Yeah, Magic Johnson just a few years prior. And the idea of, you know, guys bleeding all over each other in the ring obviously had some real, there were some real issues there. And valid ones, not to dismiss them. They were valid concerns. That was part of it. Advertisers were sensitive to it. Turner Broadcasting was a television company, not a wrestling company.

So decisions like blood or no blood, a lot more to do with the fact that we were a publicly held company and much of what we did was driven by advertising. There was still a tremendous amount of concern, valid concern about AIDS and transmitting AIDS in the course of the match. Now, to that, as you said, Vince was playing hokey pokey. That's kind of funny. It's a great way to say it.

It was a little more serious than that. because Vince would send legal letters and he was doing it to cover his own ass because he was doing a lot of the times he would do the same thing and then he'd come out and he takes his position.

No more blah. Oh my God. W.C.W. Turn a rocket and see a barbitrarians and set the business back a hundred years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then we'd back off not because of those letters,

but in addition to a lot of other pressure, kind of common sense at the point, at that point, for sure. We'd back off and then guess what? Two pay-per-views later in WWE, guys are bleeding all over the place. It was like the seesaw kind of Peter Tudder thing that was constantly going on, but it did become an issue. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that I think Bill Shaw for sure, I don't know about before him because I wasn't close to things that created at that point.

I know Bill Shaw for sure was inclined to, okay, you know, whatever happens on pay-per-view happens on pay-per-view as long as we don't have blood on television. Well, you give people a little bit of rope, and then before you know what the pay-per-views look like, you know, you're working in a slaughterhouse. It's too much. So I think Bill's position was, that's it, no more, no more on pay-per-view, no more on television. If it happens incidentally during the course of a match, I had to tell my handheld camera guys to shoot away from it.

And to tell my director, if you see it, don't take it. Don't take the shot. You see blood, shoot something else. I don't care if we have to look at a crowd shot. Do not show blood, because that was the mandate I was given. and because of public pressure and common sense and partly because we had tried to manage it at WCW but wrestlers being wrestlers you know give them an inch they'll take three miles let's talk a little bit about a fun story it's bash at the beach 1994 we've got terry funk

and buck house buck in a tag team match against dustin roads and arn anderson and eventually when Arne gets tagged in, he DDTs Dustin and puts Terry Funk on top of him. This is classic. It's old school. The horsemen have always had a hard on for Dusty Roads. Now here's an opportunity to take it out on the sun. We know that Funk had,

you know, feuds with Dusty and clearly Arn had fused with Dusty. So Arn turning on Dustin immediately, his own tag team partner, turning on him, DDTing him, I know on the one hand we could say, oh, we made Dustin look foolish,

but on the other hand, just because it's predictable, doesn't mean it's not good stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah, but I do wish if we could go back in time because as you laid that out in the history with Arne and Dusty

and a horseman and dusty, it would have been it would have been so much better had that story been told more effectively, back story, before the match because the way you laid it out I think you know aren't wrestling fans at that time there were you know Jim Crockett fans and NWA fans and early WCW fans they knew that history but the other 60% of the United States viewing audience didn't keep in mind you know

this was back in late 80s early 90s I didn't even know WCW existed until I got a job offer from them until I applied for the job that I got offered because I didn't see it in Minnesota. It wasn't readily available. Had I searched it out, I probably could have thought. But I didn't. I didn't even know it existed.

And that was true for about 90, well, not 90, that was true for probably 65 or 70% of the U.S. But no idea about the horsemen. people that lived in the southeast I can't imagine that that would be the case but it was no different than when I was a kid growing up in Detroit watching big time wrestling on

CKLW Channel 9 Saturday mornings 10 a.m. Right after the Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny that's when they came on right before Sky King was one of my favorite guy flying around a plane save of people. That was awesome. One of the reasons I became a pilot, I think. But when I moved from Detroit

to Pittsburgh, and I looked at, they have professional wrestling, I can't wait. I turned it on and I'm thinking, who the hell is this Bruno San Martino guy? I've never heard of this guy before because it wasn't in my world. It wasn't available to me as a kid growing up in Detroit. And now I become a fan of wrestling in Pennsylvania. I'm all about Bruno San Martino. I moved to Minnesota, and I was like, who's this Vertica Anya guy?

Oh, there's world champions in every city that you live in. Okay, now I get it. Same was true to a degree, lesser degree, but still largely true that the NWA and Jim Crockin promotions and the four horsemen, even Rick Flair, to a degree, was relatively unknown outside of, of the southeastern part of the United States. I know people out there are going to take exception.

Yeah, but what about? Okay. Yes, there was some exposure to guys like Riff Lair or maybe even the horsemen outside of the southeast, but it's very, very limited. Certainly not. It wasn't the exposure to the extent that there was in the southeastern part of the United States

because WCW and certainly NWA Jim Crocker promotions was still really a regional promotion. as opposed to national promotion that the WCW eventually became. I can't wait to talk about what's next because that turn where Dustin was double crossed by Arne Anderson at the pay-per-view and caught the DDT,

that's it batched at the beach, but we do a syndicated taping in Macon, Georgia, where we see them shoot an angle with Dusty Rhodes. Bunkhouse Buck is doing a squash match and Dusty starts slowly coming to the ring and Buck doesn't notice. Rhodes taps Buck on the shoulder, gives him an elbow, and then starts giving Colonel Robert Parker the elbows. At that point, Terry Funk and Arn Anderson hit the ring,

but Rick Steenboe and Dustin with his arm in a cast all come out. And Meltzer would say the angle bringing Dusty Rhodes back was great. Dusty really looked old in the ring, but bringing back old wrestlers in the territory that were over usually works very short term. I want to challenge everyone listening to this. if you've never seen it before maybe you haven't seen it a while I want you to go to YouTube and I want you to just type in

Dusty roads the view never changes we'll probably find a link to that and included in the description for today but it is Dusty and Dustin's reunion from 1994 any of those search terms will find it some people call it Dusty's best promo of his entire career and I want you to think of all the ground that that covers. And earlier this year, I had a chance to catch up with Dustin and he had the news had just broken that he had re-ups and signed a great contract with AW. He told me it was the

best contract he's ever signed. And I sort of said, hey, man, I'm glad you're staying, but I sure would have loved to have seen you and Cody wrestle one more time. And, and he shared his thoughts about that. And then, of course, we started talking about Dusty and how happy Dusty would be to see the success that both of his sons are enjoying and Dustin shared a real moment with me where he said that he'd only seen that promo one time since it happened of course he was in the ring as a young man not really having an understanding of what was even being said and when he saw it like a year prior to him discussing it with me his eyes welled up even talking about it with me and he says I can't watch that now.

At the time, I was just a kid doing my job, and I didn't really understand that although this was happening in front of the world and everybody was seeing this, he was really talking to me. Now, I'm going to encourage you right now, this is bad for my podcast business, but I'm going to play the audio here for Eric, and then we're going to have to clip that out. wwe does not want you to hear that audio on our feed so we're going to have a link for you to listen to it somewhere else because i think it's valuable and it's important and we think enough of dusty that we're going to recommend that you do it but i know it's been a while since you've seen it

and i can't play it for you video wise but i'm going to let you hear the audio and we'll clip it out and post but take a listen to this oh is that not i mean i got goosebumps all over don't you Unbelievable. God, I miss him. That's, that was magic right there. It was real. It was performance. It was magic. Oh, my goodness.

We're reacting to the view never changes promo. I know we can't play it on the show. We're going to have a link for it in the description. But, you know, listen, man. I know sometimes we have to talk about things that aren't always super entertaining. They're not the best. And sometimes wrestling can be a little silly. It can be a little hokey.

It can be a little stupid. But when it's good, man, there ain't nothing better. And that's about as good as best, right? The emotion. That was unbelievable. I was there. But seeing it now. Yes.

I guess because of everything. Yes. Happened since then. just makes you appreciate it that much more. Oh, man. It's a, uh, what a promo. What a promo.

I know it meant a lot to Dustin and he even shared with me earlier this year. You know, at the time he's a young punk kid. He, he thinks we're just, we're just doing a job. We're just doing work. But now as an adult,

as a grown man himself with kids, but benefit of hindsight, watching it back was just, It was waterworks for him and for you. I mean, it's hard not to be, I never even knew Dusty outside of two chance meetings, but it's hard not to feel the emotion in his voice and know, hey,

I know there's some other silliness on that episode of WCW Saturday night, but that felt pretty real, didn't it? Well, it could be because it was real. You know, and I can't speak to Dusty and Dustin's relationship. Dustin was a kid growing up.

I don't have any knowledge of it. Dusty never really talked about it much, and I certainly didn't ask. But I've learned subsequently that it was tough. And I think, based on what I've heard, that promo was about as real as it gets in terms of just the factual premise of it all. Dusty felt that way. That wasn't, nobody wrote that for him. No.

I think Dusty even wrote it. Dusty just felt it. It was in the moment. So it made Dusty so good. I got to shift gears a little bit because I'll get emotional about this. Do you remember the first Dusty Rhodes promo you've ever seen? I don't. I mean,

my first introduction to Dusty, and I know this is sacrilegious to a lot of my wrestling fans, was when he was in the WWF. So he was talking about, he was the common man and he was doing the vignettes where he's delivering pizza or he's a garbage man or a plumber and he's later he's talking about sweet sapphire but once i grew up and i started tape trading we'll call it 1997 that's when i saw the whole hard times promo and i could argue that that's a mount rushmore promo but when it comes to the emotion and if you really

really understand the context, I think it would be hard to beat that Dusty promo. Do you remember your first Dusty promo that you saw? I do. I do. I don't know how old I was or what year it was, but it was in Minneapolis. I was watching the AWA. Again, kind of going back to what I said earlier. I did.

I never heard of Dusty Rhodes before. Never. I thought it was a cool name, Dusty Rhodes. Somebody's thinking, I liked it. But the first promo I saw, and keep in mind, Vern didn't. often do what is often referred to as vignettes, things that were produced outside of the studio. Most everything Byrne did was in the studio. But in this case, Dusty was coming into the territory, and the scene opened with a camera

looking down at a swimming pool, and I held that shot for just a few seconds. And then like a jack in the box, Dusty comes popping up out of the water with a cowboy hat on and, you know, water coming off of it and you can imagine what that look like. And he cut his promo in the pool wearing a cowboy hat looking like a drowned rat. And it was an awesome promo. I'll never forget it. It's as clear in my head as it was five minutes after I saw it. was so badass i'd never seen anything like that before just comes out of the water

just cuts a badass promo awesome as a reminder this is all to build towards clash of the champions which is also going to have Hulk Hogan versus Rick Flair in the main event so we're after bash at the beach we just broke all the pay-per-view records for WCW with Hogan and Flair now we're going to do a rematch and on the undercard is Dustin Rhodes coming back to team with his son, Dustin, right after that promo. The result, record ratings for Clash of the Champions. It's the highest rated television special on TBS for the year 1994. It does a 4.5 rating, a 7.7 share.

It's in over a ton of households. I mean, the old record was like 3.8 million households. We've got 4.126 households here. So 4,000, 126,000 households, which these days, we might say is what, Eric, like 9 million people? Yeah, I think the formula is 1.8 persons per household is the math. It could be different. I don't know. 8 million, we'll call it.

It's the largest viewing audience for any match in WCW and NWA history. Of course, we're talking about the Hulk Hogan, Rick Flair, main event but still the undercard here is a strong one it's dusty and dustin against terry funk and bunk house buck they go seven minutes and 27 seconds of course dusty is uh older he's beat up he's heavier he's not allowed to bleed so it's going to be a challenge for him but you've got old legends in there together dusty and funk i mean those guys made so much money in texas and florida everywhere they went And here they're bringing it to TV.

And in the main event, Hogan and Flair, it's no wonder that a kid who grew up loving wrestling like Tony con, 1994 WCW is like his favorite period. And I think we forget about all of this sort of stuff. I mean, Dusty and Dustin teaming up against Terry Fon is crazy fun stuff.

Is it not? And that's the undercard. That's not even the main event. Yeah. It's a perfect example of balance balance. Yes. whether I heard it from somebody else like Dusty or whether I came up with it myself. I think it was Dusty that said wrestling is like a buffet.

Now you really want to have a little bit of something great for everybody. That was this card. That was this card. A little bit of something. No, it had a lot of bit of something for everybody. The only thing I would have tweaked, and again,

it's a small thing that shouldn't matter. But since it was Arne, who put the DDT on Dustin, I would have liked to have seen Funk and Arne be the opponents for Dusty and Dustin. Not taking anything away from Jimmy Gold and I know we all love Bunkhouse Bug, but it was Arne that turned on Dustin.

That would have been cool, but otherwise, man, it's hard to beat. Speaking of hard, can you imagine how fun if Dusty Rhodes had a podcast his Blue Chew read would be? It would be amazing to hear Dusty talk about, well, you know. How about this?

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in line with the pharmacy. And check this out. You can make your life easier by getting harder and discover your options at bluechew.com. How about this special deal for our listeners? Try your first month of bluechew free. When you use our promo code 83 weeks, just pay $5 shipping. That's promo code 83 weeks when you visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Bluechew for sponsoring today's podcast. All right, Let's pick up where we left off. You know, the Clash of the Champions, uh, November 16th is coming in Jacksonville.

And it's going to be Vader versus Dustin Rhodes. The observer would say it was actually the easily best match on the show. You got Vader bullying Rhodes at first and, and getting him in the corner and, and even spitting on him. Of course, eventually he starts to make a comeback. He hits a bulldog,

Harley race gets on the apron and Dustin goes after him. That allows Vader to, clothes on him and clobber him from behind and eventually he hits the finish but it's a fun match we're obviously trying to build vader we understand what we're doing here and building vader but i think this shows dustin in a lot of different lines i mean we've seen him as a tag team partner the younger guy being maybe more deferential to ricky steamboat and later that same routine with very wind him he steps out of tag competition and gets his first taste at singles gold And then once he's out here as a singles wrestler, he learns who we can and

who we can't trust with Arne Anderson. And when he has no one in his corner, dear old dad in his corner, but now we're back to business and singles action. And man, we've got a bully of a different color here, uh, Vader, my gosh, a different animal, but we're showing the range of Dustin as a performer as we've just seen this evolution and really just a few short years, right? It is pretty amazing when you think about it. And again, it's not that he was for, in the opinion of people like Dave Belser, of course,

he was for his, he was an tempo baby and all that. He earned every minute of TV time he got, period, end of conversation. I'll debate anybody that thinks otherwise. And I'll shred them like a head of cabbage. Dustin Rhodes earned every minute of television time he got. And I think by this point, we're seeing why he was that good. And you think about how good he became. As you just pointed out, over a relatively short period of time, it's pretty amazing.

We should talk a little bit about how things are going to change behind the scenes. I mean, I think we could have very easily continued this Dustin Vader feud, but Hulk Hogan's here now, and we're finally going to start moving towards Hulk Hogan and Vader. So we're going to be moving on there. Around this same time, Terry Funk sort of drifts away from WCW. Arne Anderson is moving on to the TV title and Bunk House Bunk is now transitioned into a tag team with Dick Slater.

So it's going to become almost like a Dustin Rhodes versus Colonel Robert Parker feud. And another guy in that stable of Colonel Robert Parker is Barry Darso who's working as the black cop bully. Now you maybe remember him when he was part of the Russians and Jim Crockett promotions or maybe when he went north and worked for Vince as demolition smash and later, the Repo Man.

But that's what's next for Dustin. But there is some talk that's teased in early March of 95, I want to bring up. This is directly from the observer. Lots of talk over the past week about doing a possible return of the Road Warriors to feud with the new four horsemen. The new horseman would be Flair and Arne Anderson for sure, and probably Steve Austin as a third member.

Name speculated on this as the fourth were Vader, Dustin Rhodes, or Tully Blanchard, the latter considered an extreme long shot. Now, I know there's been lots of discussion through the years. You know, could it have been Goldberg? Obviously, he's not here yet, but in a few years, there was a conversation about Goldberg being a member of the four horsemen. And as crazy as that sounds, it seems almost equally crazy that Dustin Rhodes would

have ever even been considered. Do you remember hearing that that Dustin may have been a horseman? No. Okay. Not, but, you know, in fairness, just because I had, didn't hear it doesn't mean that there weren't some people talking about it it just never reached any level of significance there's a it all comes to a head we'll call it on march sixth flair is upset about some booking decisions he feels like he's been overruled and he's telling everybody in the

company he's going to quit now of course three days later they put humpty dumpy back together again and they fixed it but flare wanted to redo the four horsemen and the road warriors and Hulk Hogan wants to recreate the ultimate warrior with that New England indie wrestler called Rio Lord of the Jungle we're going to learn to know he's the renegade and a new Andre the Giant who we're going to be introduced to is Paul White he wants to push those characters to the moon immediately but with the original Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage

and it's speculated in the newsletters that this is going to mean some of the younger talent or maybe caught in the crosshairs here, guys like Brian Pilman and Steve Austin and Dustin Rhodes. I know that there was a difference of opinion about the way to get there. Hogan had his perspective and Flair had his perspective. Are you kind of the monkey in the middle where you're trying to placate both stars? I mean, clearly Flair is the perennial star here of WCW and the top star, but Paul Kogan is certainly the guy who's just set a,

a class record for you and a pay-per-view record for you. And we know that it gives you something new for executives to, to review in a pitch book for WCW. Having Hulk Hogan associated with your brand is a really big deal. Did you feel like you were sort of pulled in two directions by Hogan and Flair creatively at any point? Not really. Okay.

Because I didn't, I didn't allow myself to get caught in the middle because I didn't want to participate in the creative decisions because I didn't believe I had anything to contribute. So I tried to stay as far away from those discussions as possible. So I can't really tell you, I can't explain the dynamics of how that all came together and what the issues were because I really wasn't there. You know, it was in the company, obviously, but I wasn't in the room. I wasn't on the phone with these guys. I think perhaps much more has been made out of of Hulk Hogan's desire to push, for example, Renegade, it was Jimmy Hart.

It was far more enthusiastic from what I remember. Like Hulk never really, Hulk and I never really talked about Renegade. If we did, it was kind of in passing, oh, and this is going on too. I do remember Jimmy Hart on the other hand because he was obsessive is too strong a word, but really, really committed. I had to say there was any influence on Rick, from my perspective, admittedly not in the room or on the phone, but observing what I saw,

I think it had a lot more to do with Jimmy Hart and Hulk was supporting it than it had to do with Hulk wanting it. Let's talk a little bit about this next, kick up in Dustin's career. Uncensored. I mean, when I just talk about the uncensored pay-per-view, Eric, do you want to roll your eyes? Do you want to crawl under the couch?

I mean, is this your least favorite WCW pay-per-view ever? Or is it World War III? No, it was World War III by a mile. I think uncensored gets a little bit of a bad rap. If you go back and you look at some of the economics surrounding it, you know, the first one and even the second one, look, it was a newer pay-per-view. It was one of the newest pay-per-views in our schedule.

It hadn't built up any kind of a reputation, as some pay-per-views do. I think the idea and the concept, as lot as it was from the get-go, it was the first one. It was a completely different approach to pay-per-views, really, at least aesthetically, and from a brand position. But that's exactly what I wanted. I didn't want a pay-per-view that looked kind of like the rest of the paper views. It didn't make sense. It still doesn't.

I believe that, as I do now, that each one of those paper views had to have its own distinct personality and reputation. It had to be its own character. And uncensored was created in my head to be as different. from the rest of our paper views as it could possibly be. I think had we done a better job, I'll take it, but had the runway and consistency to go along with it, stuck to that brand position, I think uncensored could have been one of our more successful pay-per-views, but it wasn't because it was relatively new and it didn't get a lot of runway and I don't think that I we did a great job of focusing on the branding of that particular

paper view the way we could have it should have the idea here as a reminder this is the very first uncensored pay-per-view and we're trying to show you things that we could normally never show you in WCW you're going to see matches and crazy things that have never existed before like a leather strap match with Hulk Hogan and Vader like a False Count Anywhere match with the nasty boys in Harlem Heat, like a boxing match with Johnny B. Bad versus Arne Anderson, like a martial arts match with Sonny Ono as a referee between Ming and Jim Duggan.

And perhaps most famously or notoriously, Blacktop bully and Dustin Rhodes on a King of the Road match. Here's what was reported in advance about the king of the road match. The Dustin Rose blacktop bully match Uncensored this week will actually be taped and spliced into the show. They didn't want to take the chance of doing the match live because of the possibilities of a disaster production-wise and performance-wise of trying something live

while in the back of a moving truck going down the highway. They're going to have video walls in the building for those live and those on pay-per-view to pretend it's going on live on the streets of Tupelo, but it was actually taped in Atlanta. And if you're wondering, what the hell does that mean Tupelo? Yeah, this show at WCW pay-per-view, this is before their big time, of course, is Tupelo, Mississippi, 5,700 fans in attendance here in Tupelo, Mississippi, and we're going to pre-tape this match where the king of the road is basically two guys fighting

on the back of a flatbed truck. And they've got some caging up there. I guess that would normally be used to keep livestock from flying out. they've got some hay in there, but literally there is a pickup truck with a camera sliding around trying to catch the action. This is a crazy out there idea. Who deserves the credit or the blame for the king of the road match concept? Well, I have to take both the credit and the blame because I allowed it to happen,

but I couldn't honestly tell you it was my idea. It may have been or it may have been born out of a conversation where somebody throws out idea and hey but what if we do that instead we do this and if we just add a little bit of that i got a better idea let's do it on the back of a moving semi that's how ideas oftentimes come together and anybody is in the room is probably qualified to some degree or another to say oh yeah it was my idea i actually don't know who came up with this idea um but i allowed it to happen I encourage it to happen. I was excited about it happen because it was so

different than anything else and that's what we needed. The show was called uncensored for crying out loud. Why would you not have a wrestling match in a back of a rolling semi? Well, here's the thing too. When we're saying uncensored, I think what is implied is we're going to see things that we can't see on TV. Even though you don't say it's going to be a bloody match, I think there is an expectation that if it's uncensored,

we're going to see some extreme violence because they can't show that on TV. We are going to see some blood. And we did. Mouser would say that blacktop bully beat Dustin Rhodes and the pre-taped king of the road match when he climbed up and honked the horn that was on top of a cage-like mesh fence. This was absolutely horrible to watch because of the way it was shot and edited negative two stars.

But as a reminder, this was filmed ahead of time. So the actual pay-per-view uncensored actually airs on the 19th. But this match was filmed near Atlanta five days prior to that on March 14th. And here's directly what's written in The Observer. According to the story we've heard, Graham, who was the supervisor of the king of the road match, not only told the two wrestlers to both juice, which is supposedly strictly forbidden under the company policy, but actually brought the blades with him for both to use.

Dustin Rhodes is 25 Bulley is 35 and they pursued to do a 20-minute match with both juicing heavily and the few who actually were there during the filming claimed it was an excellent match. The match was edited down to 13 minutes on television although blood was visible at times

it was de-emphasized in the editing and never mentioned on commentary. The nature of the editing and foreshooting of the match turned the match into a total travesty that aired on pay-per-view but both Rhodes and bully were fired because supposedly they should have known despite the request or order from their superior

that doing so was against company policy. The big controversy is that Hulk Hogan bled just over two weeks earlier in his Chicago match with Vader, which those who believe Rhodes and Bully were made scapegoats because the company was under orders for major budget cutting. That's been brought up saying that in defense of this specific company policy, they violated by doing juice,

well, this was the uncensored nature of advertising the event that perhaps Graham's orders were because this was an exception to the usual rule. There's also a talk that the company had to knock half a million dollars off their budget. Between the Rhodes family and the other two, the annual savings would come in at slightly more than half a million dollars. We mentioned this because Dusty was supposed to do commentary for this pay-per-view and instead he was pulled off of commentary. And I guess he's pissed off about it. I know eventually you put things back together with Dusty and he is going to appear at Slambury. But this has been a story that's

been discussed a lot through the years, Eric, that, hey, if we really are banning blood on TV, why was Hogan allowed to bleed two weeks ago? If we really are banning blood on TV, why would the agent tell the wrestlers to bleed and bring the blades for them? And if the wrestlers were following their superior's orders, their agent's orders and bleeding. How could they be fired for this? And maybe most of all, if the doggone thing was filmed five days prior, why don't we just, I don't know, not fucking air it or do it again. What really happened, Derek, set the record straight here on this.

You covered about eight miles of territory there. So let me back up. Yes. for anyone to somehow equate budget cutting as a motivation for the decision to fire Dustin and bully, which was, by the way, my decision. It wasn't an accounting decision. It wasn't nothing to do with budget.

So once again, Dave Meltzer, he never misses. his premise is factually flawed as it always is. Some of the other parts of this, or your question, I guess, it does make sense. I can't speak to the Hogan thing two weeks earlier. I have to go back and look at it. That's to familiarize myself with it. So to tie that in without any opportunity to go back and see what actually happened, was it incidental?

Was it juice? I don't know. But I'd like to at least have an opportunity to look at it before I commented on it, either to defend it or not. Remember off top my head. It had nothing to do with this. This incident had nothing to do with anything other than I specifically said, don't bleed.

No blood. Mike Graham's not here to defend himself, so I'm not going to go there. The ultimate responsibility comes down to the performers at the end of the day. For me, in my decision-making process, when I look someone in the eye and say, don't do this, please don't come to me and say, yeah, but he told me to, because that just doesn't fly with me. If I had not been explicit, if I had not taken the time to be clear, I would have accepted that. That wasn't the case. I looked them both in the eyes and said, do not bleed.

I don't care who the fuck comes out of nowhere and says, here's some blades do it anyway. Not an excuse. Mike Graham wasn't their supervisor. He was an agent. He didn't have the power to fire or hire anybody. He was a part of a process. So when I looked someone in the eye and say, don't do this, and here's why, by the way,

it wasn't just subjective opinion on my part. And then they do it anyway. I don't really care who told them to do it. it doesn't matter so that's why i fired him now i will also tell you that i have very intention to bring him back but i had to make an example out of them and i did now low-hanging fruit like meltzer and the dipshit's that follow and pay him 15 bucks a month so they feel like they know something they really don't but it makes them feel good about themselves um yeah but oh good two weeks before yeah but fuck you i made the decision i made because i was clear i communicated

clearly and they did the exact opposite of what i communicated to them don't give two shits what mike graham said to him or anybody else it's the way i work but i also knew that i had to do something what was i supposed to say to my boss sorry bill this shit happens my bram told them to. Again, truly in the legitimate use of the term, the word ignorant, lack of knowledge and information. If you look up ignorant, it's lack of knowledge or information. That was Dave's position on this. Ignorant, as it almost always is. Do I regret having to make the decision? Oh, hell yes I do. Did it cause a rift between me and Dusty, someone who I loved at that point and respected and was a close friend of mine? Of course. But at the end of it all, I had to make a

decision and not only make a decision, take action, fully intending to bring them back. I got to ask, am I to believe that you would have had a conversation with Hulk in advance of him blading against Vader and you guys made the decision together that it was okay for the clash? No. Okay. Absolutely 100% don't even have to think about it. So Hogan bladed on his own, but he had the leverage.

As I just said, I'd like to go back and look at it. You kind of had you're asking me to comment on something that, no, I haven't seen in sure. For sure. Yeah, of course. So let's just, let's just be realistic. I know there's a need. to tie the two together and the what about this maybe hogan was so you know you favorite hogan

more than deep whatever it is whatever emotional fucking gaga is going on and people's minds i'd like to at least have the opportunity to look at it and familiarize myself with the situation before i either defend or as i do often on the show follow my own sort i want to be clear i'm not i'm not approaching the subject as a gotcha for you. I understand that no matter what we think of Dustin and you and I both love Dustin, this was the opening match on the pay-per-view and if you're going to open your match, open your pay-per-view with blood in the match, where do we go from there as the show progresses?

Whereas if this is the biggest clash of the champions, that's going to set a record that nobody's ever seen before with Hogan and Vader on top and, I mean, Hogan and Hulk on top, you'll get it. Hogan and Flair on top, but we also know that we're going to follow that up with Vader. The main event, I mean, we get exceptions made. I mean, years ago, we saw Randy Orton at SummerSlam get busted open the hard way by Brock Lesnar because blading was banned.

So they just opened him up with a concussion and a split forehead. That was not a good decision, but because it was Brock Lesnar and it was more high profile, there was an exception made. So I understand that. Um, but it is fascinating to think that as criminal as it seems now that Dustin was fired, it was a huge blessing in disguise because later that same year, we would see gold dust. And gold dust allowed Dustin to really for the first time ever step out of the shadow of his father and blaze his own path.

And he became an iconic Hall of Fame performer. But respectfully, despite his. enjoying success as both the tag team and then later the intercontinental champion. There's one belt that still eludes, Dustin, and that's the world title. And we've seen him do commentary recently where he says before he retires and he thinks this is his last wrestling contract that he signed with AW, he'd like a shot at the world title. And he specifically called out the Ring of Honor of World Title, would you be an advocate

of seeing Dustin Rhodes chase the world championship one time? Sure. There's a story there. You just laid it out. There's the premise of a great story. What's a premise? It's just like four or five sentences that set up where you're going to go. That's a great story.

Could be, I should say, potentially. Executed properly, it is a great story. It would do Ring of Honor, a tremendous service, something meaningful, entertaining, memorable. And it would certainly be good for Dustin. So I'd be 100% supportive of it. I'd even watch it. That would be the first time I've ever watched Ring of Honor, but I would watch it.

I think everybody would check out Ring of Honor if Dustin was challenging for the world title. Let's sign up for the bandwagon. We're on it. We want to see Dustin Challenge for that ROH world title. And we want to save you some money at Save With Eric. Tom, you know, with all the economic turmoil going on these last few weeks and all the uncertainty it brings, there is one thing that is certain.

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Eric, I had a blast today talking about Dustin Rhodes and I'm pumped because this Saturday night, immediately following Saturday night's main event. You and I are going to be live right here at 83 weeks, talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Saturday 9th main event has a big fight feel. I'm looking forward to it. How about you?

Me too, man. I like, I like doing this kind of thing on a Saturday night. You know, and a nice thing is it's not like a pay-per-view where we have to get on and go live at midnight. Yes. Cross-eyed and tired and whatever, whatever, but yeah, this will be fun. I'm looking forward to it. And Saturday, you know, it's just, it's got a nostalgic kind of vibe to it. It makes me look forward to it more.

So I can't wait. I'm really looking forward to it. doing it with you. Join us this Saturday night immediately following Saturday. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson. Here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early and ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcast every single week, starting at just nine bucks. That's less than 20 cents an episode each month. And yes, you can listen to them all directly through Apple Podcasts or your regular podcast apps.

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