83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 377: Beyond Nitro with Author, Guy Evans

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

On this edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and host Conrad Thompson welcome friend of the show, Author Guy Evan to discuss his new book, "BEYOND NITRO." The guys take a deep dive into Guy's book and research into the business of WCW and they answer questions from a LIVE audience watching on 83Weeks.com ! Order your copy of "BEYOND NITRO" right now at https://guyevansbooks.com/collections/nitro-the-incredible-rise-and-inevitable-collapse-of-ted-turners-wcw  Sabu Arrives in ECW | NEW Tod Gordon Podcast - https://youtu.be/QmhYpVpTnVc THE PERFECT JEAN - F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code 83WEEKS15 at theperfectjean.nyc/83WEEKS15#theperfectjeanpod 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. MY BOOKIE - What if I told you, you could put some MONEY in your bank this weekend? It’s true! Go to http://MyBookie.website/joinwith83WEEKS  and use our promo code 83WEEKS to make a bet on who you think will win #MITB TECOVAS - Get 10% off at tecovas.com/83WEEKS when you sign up for email and texts. RIDGE - Take advantage of Ridge’s once-a-year Father’s Day Sale and get UP TO 40% Off right now by going to https://www.Ridge.com/83WEEKS #Ridgepod 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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at Conrad at save with Conrad. Give us a call at 8884250105 or get yourself a quick quote, even talk to a live person right now at save with Conrad.com. NMLS number 2129, Equal Housing Linder, let's take a summer vacation from house payments at save with Conrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish Off, Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm so good. guilty about it. That's how good I am. I almost hate to even talk about it, but since you ask I'm going to, it's been an amazing week. We've done some incredible, incredible feature packages

on some of the elite athletes, talent, if you will, for Real American Freestyle. And I've heard stories in the last week. I probably cried more this week than I have in the last 40 years. Just the stories of what it took to get where these athletes have reached and the families and where they've come from. And it's just amazing. I'm so, so excited to share it. I can't wait. I can't wait.

Well, we can't wait to jump into today's topic. We're doing something a little different, something that we don't normally do, Eric. Usually it's just you and I, and we almost have like a no-guess-needed policy. but a new book came out that you and I both think a lot of and I thought, well, this deserves a pivot. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program, the incredible Guy Evans, Guy, how are you, man? I'm doing great, Conrad. Really appreciate that introduction, and it's always great to speak to you guys. So thank you for the invite.

No, thank you for being on with us and making the time. We're excited that you're here with us. The new book is called Beyond Nitro, and it's a follow-up book. And Eric, we first started talking about guys' original. book called Nitro gosh years ago now at this point but Eric you know everybody has written a book about WCW and I mean everybody but I think guy is really the first person to really interview as many Turner executives and not just have a commentary about what people read or about what people heard but inside the towers of Turner and the CNN Center I mean that's where guy went and

that's what you really liked about the book right there you know, I think it's worthy of pointing out early on in this episode that the first Nitro book, what was the official title guy? Give me some of me one more time. It was Nitro, the incredible rise, and inevitable collapse of Ted Turner's WCW. Okay, let's send me write a book call me before you put a title on it because I think I can help. That's a mouthful. it's too much for me to remember let's put it that way

but this book the follow-up it's a sequel is really what it is it's fascinating what I've been able to read so far full disclosure been a little preoccupied and haven't really had time to sit down and read much of anything work creationally but I've read through a couple of specific chapters that I was most interested in

and not surprised at all at the level of specificity, detail, the context, just bringing so much information forward that's never been exposed before. Yeah, everybody's written a book. Well, anybody that's got a keyboard can write a freaking book, and they do,

even though they should. There should be crimes. There should be penalties. There should be fines associated with writing really shitty books. It would save the planet. But this book, as well as the first book, the interviews, the access to the interviews, and I'm sure we're going to get into that as we go on because a guy has talked to people and interviewed people that I never had an opportunity to meet.

I couldn't get a meeting with. Let's put it the way it really is. I couldn't get a meeting with some of these people. And guys not only been able to get a meeting with them, but he's been able to get really, really detailed perspective from them. And it completes the picture. And what's fascinating to me, and we were joking before we went on, you know, and I said, guy, you've done more to vindicate my career that I've been able to do.

He's done more for my career vindicating some of the things about my career in the last couple of years that I've been able to do in the last 25. and it's because of the level of detail, the research, the discipline that goes into to guys' work, and that's why I'm so supportive of it. Whether it reflects well on me or not, I could care freaking less because he put in the work and he put in the time and did such a fantastic job that I'm really grateful to be here talking about it. We're excited to have Guy with us, and we're going to open things up.

for questions and you guys are going to have an opportunity to pick guys brain about this. But, you know, we all really enjoyed the first book, Guy. Why did you think there was a need for a follow-up or a sequel or was the demand just there? What led to you deciding, you know what, let's have another bite at this apple? Yeah, I think you sort of answered the question yourself there in terms of it was the reaction and the response to the first book, which as I've talked about before, I think with you guys, completely blew me away. I mean, the original Nitro book just impacted so many people in such a profound way, I think, who were really taken with the approach, the story, some of the, you know,

many, many untold details that came out of that book. And originally it was my intention, Conrad, to only write one book about wrestling. That was kind of going to be my contribution to wrestling literature, if you like. But based on that response, And based on the fact that I knew I had a lot still in the chamber, so to speak. I mean, that first book was nearly 600 pages. This one is nearly 700 pages. Wow. But in doing the first book, there was a lot of things that just due to time and space constraints

couldn't make their way into that volume. So, for example, and I'm sure we're going to get into this in great detail tonight, the nature of the TBS accounting system and how that related to WCDs, and how that impacted some of the reported profit and losses that we have read about with regard to the company over the years. In the first book, if you notice, you know, I talk about overall revenues, overall expenses and do that essentially for every year of the Nitro era. But because I was telling a story and because it was a chronological, you know,

sort of toward the force of that whole era, I didn't necessarily have the ability to say, well, let's take, you know, eight to ten pages now to really break this down in granular detail and explain how did they come up with these revenues? How did they come up with the total expense associated to WCW as a division? You know, doing that would have interrupted the flow of telling the story. So I suppose, you know, with all of these things in mind, I knew down the road there was going to be the opportunity to put together another book. And, you know, again, because of the success of that book and how many people have been impacted by it. I felt like it was my obligation not to not to leave, not to leave any stone unturned again and come up with this book. And I'm

really, really proud of it. What I'm really impressed with is it does feel like after you did such an extensive job on the first book, it's like, how much more detail can there be? But I think you had over a hundred new interviews for this. Is that right? That's right. So this book, you know, The first book was informed by, I think, over 120 interviews with former TBS and WCW employees. This one, again, over 100 new interviews. There were hundreds and hundreds of pages of internal company documents that I utilized to put this book together, which didn't factor into the first book. And I think the coup de grace was the reference to the actual profit and loss

statements for WCW as an entity under Turner. And I had a significant portion of that back in 2018 when I did the first book. But since then, of course, I've strengthened relationships with pre-existing contacts. I've been introduced to new people as well. I've been able to acquire sort of more knowledge and information about what all happened. And so, you know, that is the aspect of the book, which I think has has generated the most discussion because it brings to light a number of things that have only been sort of speculated or alluded to in the past. And I think, you know, to go back to Eric's original point, if he has been sort of vindicated in that regard,

it's through a process of following the facts wherever they may be. And again, as I'm sure we're going to get into, when you look at those profit and loss statements and you look at, exactly how certain revenues and expenses were being allocated within Turner, and then you pair that against some of the protests that we've sort of heard about over the years in terms of you have to take a lot of this with a grain of salt with regard to how profitable or not profitable WCW was. I sort of break down on a line item by line item basis. Here's what the book said. So it's not my opinion. I don't think you'll find an opinion statement in any of this as was the case in the first book.

It's literally, here's where the facts lead us. And then I'm a big proponent of letting the reader, you know, make up their mind in terms of what they make of it. But no, it's, it's, you know, an entirely new book. It's a different structure that this chapters are mostly standalone chapters. It's sort of self-contained stories within stories, if you will. But there's tons of new stuff that comes to light. I mean, just really quickly, you know, one of the points which,

you know, you will, or one of the stories that you will read about if you make your way through the book is, for example, and I think this is a pretty big deal, the exact nature of the WWF's acquisition of WCW or more accurately certain assets associated with WCW as a brand. You know, we had always heard about these figures, whether they be $2.5 million or $4.2-4.3 million if you factor in all of the costs associated. with that purchase. And what you'll find if you read the book is the actual financial outlay for the WWF at that time exceeded that amount by close to a factor of 10. By virtue of how that deal was structured in a very deliberate way, I would argue to potentially secure the maximum financial benefit for AOL Time Warner at that time. And so with specific reference to the actual asset purchase agreement that the WWF and AOL entered into on March 29th, 2001, I walk you through exactly how that deal was made. You know, comments from Stu Snyder and some other people as well really sort of provide context to that. But that's a level of, you know, detail that wasn't even

in the first book. And that's just one of, I think, many things that are in this book. I've got so many questions. You and I have been texting because I've been just powering through the book. And man, it is the most extensive book on WCW I've ever seen. I think the combination of your first book and this new book beyond Nitro, which if you're watching on YouTube right now, you can hit that QR code on your screen.

That'll take you directly to your opportunity to order the book. Of course, you can pick it up at WCW Nitrobook.com. that's where you can find book bundles signed books and you can learn all about guys other books and we are live here at 83 weeks.com on youtube if you've got some questions we want you to keep those coming but i do want to ask you know one of the things that really blew my socks off on this is how you got access to these confidential financial documents that have never seen the light a day before i mean i've never seen any of this stuff published before and we've heard

the talking heads in the internet wrestling community. They all have an opinion about these numbers, and then you actually cut through it and say, well, here's the actual document. Did you feel like when you got your hands on those, that it was like you hit the jackpot because it debunked a lot of the narrative that had been out there for a long time?

How do you go about chasing those down in the first place? Well, I've got to be careful about what I say on a screen like this when it comes to that. But you're right, and I'm glad. Thank you for pointing that out, Conrad. We're not talking about, you know, figures that have been gleaned from, you know, legal disclosures or other reporting in the past. We're talking about the actual source documents.

And as I mentioned before, I had a substantial amount of that before publishing the first book, but obviously we've been able to add to that since. And, you know, I mean, a huge, a huge amount of detail on really the very, very inner workings of the Turner Accounting system. And so I was able to look at these two factions, which I think have emerged over time, which is you have, I think, those who are more in the camp of, you almost have to take the reported figures at face value

and there's no kind of need to investigate further. So whether it be the $62.5 million loss in the year 2000, or whether indeed it be how profitable WCW was at its peak, you know, I suppose one approach is to look at that and say, well, you know, according to this outlet, according to this mainstream publication, these are what the numbers were. And so, you know, we don't really need to look any further than that. But what I noticed was there was, you know, on the other side of that argument, a group of people who tended to be made off of Turner and WCW, you know, insiders, former employees, people who actually work for the company or the corporation, who had an understanding of how that accounting system worked, who said, you know, you've got to be a little bit more skeptical in terms of accepting some of this stuff. And what I'd like to do, and by the way, guys, if I'm going on and on, please feel free to tell me. But while we're on this subject, what I'd like to do to highlight the importance of this is actually just bring to light a specific example. So people don't necessarily think that we're talking in the abstract or we're just sort of talking in circles here.

So what I'd like to do is just cite something that is discussed in the book. that relates to the year 1999, which is obviously a pivotal year in the history of WCW. I would argue for a number of reasons. And before I address 1999, and I'm sure most people listening to this will already be aware of this, let's just remind ourselves that, you know, 95, 96, 97, 98, of course, which was the peak really in terms of profitability, those are all years in which WCW was recognized within that corporation as being profitable. entities. So it had four straight years of profitability based on the methodology that they employed to calculate that result. Okay. So in 1999, the widespread understanding is that

WCW was losing a significant amount of money. And you've seen various accounts over the years and reports suggesting it may have been, you know, $15 million, $20 million, $10 million. dollars. You know, Brad Siegel, for instance, and I mentioned this because this is kind of a data point or an aspect to this that people commonly cite. You know, Brad Siegel in a deposition testified under oath that it was, you know, $20 million. And so I suppose at one level of analysis, you could say, well, that is someone who should absolutely know, and that is a credible person based on his position. So there's no need to investigate further. But what happens is when you actually look at the raw data, you find some interesting things. And one of those

things, it relates to the stated marketing costs that WCW incurred in the year 1999. So prior to the Nitro era, again, according to the methodology that TBS employed, typically if you were to look on the expense side of the ledger and look at how much money is WCW spending on marketing or how much is being attributed to WCW because those can be two different things. That number was typically less than $750,000. So in 1994, for example, it was $747,000. In 1995, the cost goes up to $1.13 million, which kind of makes sense in terms of the company's expanding, nitro starts that year.

Okay, so 747,000 to 1.13 million. 1997, we go now to 2.195 million. And if you look at the sort of overall increase in the budgetary expansion of WCW, that again sort of tracks and kind of makes sense. So now let's go to 1999. So in 1999, the total amount that was attributed to WCW with regard to its marketing costs, And I hope people are ready for this number, if they haven't read the book already, was $23.85 million. Okay?

So we have come from less than a million dollars pre-Nitro to, you know, 1.13 to 2.195. And now in 1999 we're at 23.85 million. Well, according to the Turner Books, they registered WCW or marked down WCW as posting a loss in 1999 of $11.03 million, okay? So if we go back to that marketing side of the equation, if you take 1997 as a baseline, $2.195 million, and you look at the broader expansion of the overall budget from 97 to 99,

it was an increase of 103.84%. Hope everyone's following me here, right? So overall, the cost of WCW's operations from 97 to 99 went up by 103.84%. If you apply that to the 1997 marketing cost, 2.195 million, you get a number of 4.474 million. You can tell I've been working on this for a while. These numbers are still fresh in my head.

4.474 million for 1999. In other words, you could reasonably project, if you were sitting there and looking at this expansion from 97 to 99, this is kind of where, marketing expenses should be based on how traditionally it has been categorized with internum. But you might say, well, hold on. In that intervening period, a couple of things happened. You had Thunder that was launched in 98. You had the WCW rebrand in 1999. Okay, so let's go ahead and that's double that expected cost of 4.474 million, which gets you to 8.95 million.

So let's account for that expansion. Let's double it again. And what you would see is that still in 1999, just based on this one change in cost categorization alone, WCW would have been recognized as a profitable entity. So that is accounting for the salaries, accounting for the increased expense of the operation, accounting for the fact that pay-per-view revenues and ticket sales and so forth declined in 1999. Even with all that being said, just that one particular change, which according to the sources that I have was based on an internal shifting of costs from the television networks to WCW, just that in and of itself was enough to put the company in a position where it was losing money for that particular year.

Finally, because I know what I've been going on for a while, people might say, well, hold on, what did things look like then in the year 2000? Because you've established that the baseline was here, there's a massive jump. So from 97 to 99, that's an increase of 987%. That's pretty big. So what happened in the year 2000? The marketing costs on the books were still enormous in the year 2000, 18.48 million. And even until the very end, the early part of 2001, the company, again, based on what the book said, was still expending an enormous amount on marketing, $2.4 million in the first 60 days of 2001, which is more even when you control for inflation than 1994 and 1995 combined. Remember those numbers I mentioned earlier. So in case people

were wondering, you know, are we just talking in generalities here? And there's other specifics we can get into. And again, I try to be thorough, but please, you know, interject if you want. But I just wanted to highlight that right off the bat to show people, yeah, that's actually kind of a big deal because just that one change changes, you know, the way that we look at WCW, I think, and wrestling history as a whole, if that makes sense. It does make sense. If I could jump in there, because you covered a lot of territory, I think just to simplify that from my perspective.

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And after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. F your khakis and get the perfect gene. So Eric, hearing the way the marketing. that were allocated, allegedly, the idea that you guys were supposed to spend four million, but you spent over 20 million and you reported an $11 million loss. Boy, that is the most creative accounting of all time. Is that just tax avoidance, Eric, or do you make that to be something else?

No, it's what I've been saying for so many years, but didn't have the detail and the information or access to it, the guys had been able to deliver in this book. I knew. I knew what was going on. A lot of us did, but we didn't have access to Turner Finance books. We didn't have any insight, any visibility, any participation at all into our own accounting. So we knew, for example, like I'm hearing these marketing budgets for 2000 and 2001. I'm laughing my ass off because here's what was really happening. What was really happening, starting in 19, 1998, by the way, August 98, I pulled this story a million times when I sat down in a room full of people I never heard of before who were all sitting there telling me how I was going to run WCW. That was the period of time that Turner Broadcasting was positioning for acquisition. That actually probably started in 97. But the first merger, right, Tom Warner. Then when AOL came along, there was so much pressure on all divisions, not just WCW, with in Turner,

or broadcasting. You people have all heard this shit before. Now you're hearing how it happened. You're not just hearing my impression of what happened. You're hearing how it happened. But while we were still producing revenues, still delivering numbers, we kept getting allocated costs, expenses from other departments within WC, other divisions within Turner Broadcasting. We were absorbing their expenses because we were a lost leader line item. If you go back and you look at, you know, TBS SEC filings, you'll never find WCW in there. It was a line item in the books called Other. It was like a holding pot for transactions.

So as the mergers were evolving, developing, and the pressure was on every division in Turner, not just WCW, to show, and I think the number was 18% EBITDA, because if we could show, that across the divisions with internal broadcasting, it raised the stock price. Well, what do you think happens when you raise the stock price before a merger? Especially when stock options all vest on a merger, meaning they all come due. You can cash them in. You don't have to wait five years or seven years if you're getting stock options as an incentive. At the time of the merger, those stock options, if I got 100 stock options on Tuesday and we merged on Wednesday, instead of waiting five years to be able to cash in those 100 shares, I got them

in 24 hours. So all the executives that were holding stock options were all pushing to increase the value of Turner stock pre-merger. And in order to do that, since the goal from day freaking one, when I showed up in WCW, was to pull the plug on WCW. Nobody wanted WCW in a Turner portfolio. Anybody that's listened to this podcast for the last seven years now, last I looked, 352 episodes, something close to that,

I've been saying nobody wanted this company in the Turner portfolio except for Ted Turner and the employees of WCW. This was their opportunity. How did they do it? By dumping other divisions' expenses onto WCW's books to paint the picture for dumbasses like Dave Meltzer that WCW was losing money. It wasn't losing money.

It was, according to the information we've just heard, in 1999 it was making money. And, I mean, it should be illegal. It should have been considered fraud. To me, it is. I mean, for me personally, it certainly was. But there's this thing called gap, generally accepted accounting principles.

And as long as you stay within that framework, you're not guilty of any SEC violations. That's what this was. We need a place to, we want this division to look better. We know this division, WCW, is going to go away anyway because we're going to make sure of it.

Let's dump their expenses onto their books since they're going to go away anyway, and that makes this division look better. that's what this was. I've been saying it for 20 freaking years, but I didn't have the backup, the information, the detail,

the access to it that guys have been able to come up with. I'm sitting here getting half pissed off listening to this because it's freaking obscene. Well, I will say, Eric, I know you haven't had a chance to finish the book yet, but there are some really fantastic gems

that aren't just financial detail. We are going to continue our financial conversation. but Eric there is a fantastic story in here and guy I don't know how much you want to share of the book I don't want to necessarily give a spoiler I don't know how that works when it comes to books but there's a story about the WCW that well Vince Rousseau had an idea to finish a WWF storyline on WCW programming guy I texted you about this is this something we can talk about or do we save that for the book oh absolutely you can you can talk about that. I believe you're referring to, you know, in the year 2000, the famous who ran

over Stone Cold. And of course, that was a big, you know, sort of intriguing storyline for the WWF at that time. And yes, you're absolutely right. There's a couple of chapters about that timeframe and Vince Druso in particular and late 90s, WWF is kind of mixed into that discussion as well. But yes, we do talk about, I think, well, you could probably tell me better than anyone, Conrad, and you would definitely know this. Can you think of a similar situation where one, you know, national wrestling promotion would be finishing a storyline of that nature, you know, not just presenting like a character in a similar way, but actually, before they get a chance to wrap it up, we're going to do so on our program. I can't. I mean, I know

there was an NWO invasion of the WWF, but it was long after WCW had closed. Eric, let me catch you up and sort of close the gap on this. I know you weren't watching at the time, but Survivor Series 99, Stone Cold Steve Austin got hit by a car. And they did that because he needed to take time off for a neck injury and he was going to have to be away and have surgery. So they didn't really have a plan for who was going to hit Steve with the car.

And Tommy Blanchi years ago told us at a live show with Bruce Pritchard that one of the ideas that was pitched is, hey, what if we had the trunk pop after Stone Cold was hit? and some orange balloons floated out, maybe insinuating that it was Taz, balloons and Taz. Thankfully, that didn't happen. That was a bad idea.

But another idea that they wound up going with, Eric, is in the whole who done it, who ran over Stone Cold. And this is something that internet wrestling fans have a lot of fun with, is Rikishi claimed credit a year later and said, I did it for the rock. And it's probably Rikishi's most famous promo,

but a lot of fans were like, ah, this is not good. WCW, before that happened, Derek, before it was revealed that the person who drove the car, wink, wink, that hit Stone Cold and took him out of action for a year, was actually going to show up in the same vehicle that hit, same make and model and color, drive it right out onto the set there on the floor of Nitro and jump out and reveal that it was him who, in fact, had hit Stone Cold Steve Austin with a car. Steve Mungo McMichael. How great is that, Eric? The idea.

Smells like money. It's a Vince Russo idea. It didn't happen. Bill Banks spilled the beans to guy. And my mind melted when I read that. It's like, wait a minute. Something happened on Monday Night Raw and we're going to pick it up on the other channel before they have a chance to finish the story.

And we're going to use the real life ex-husband of Steve Austin's current wife to claim that, oh yeah, he took my wife, so I hit that son of a bitch with a car. I thought it was hysterical. I can't believe nobody's ever talked about this. What's your reaction to that story, Eric? I like it. Isn't it great? I like it. I hate to say it because I don't like to give credit where it's not due, but that's not a bad idea, especially in 2000 when you're doing anything you can to get some eyeballs it's i've heard a lot of really bad ideas in my life and that's not one of them guy it was an unbelievable story i hadn't heard and there's other great nuggets in there that i really enjoyed uh eric there's a whole section about bonnie

hammer and of course we know that she had a big relationship with the wf because she was the head of the USA network but guy you were able to do a deep dive and sort of just draw the similarities of the relationship that the WWF had with their television partner versus the way that was handled on the WCW side of things. But the idea that there was going to be so much context about Bonnie Hammer and her relationship with Vince and what she ultimately did for the WWF, I did not expect that reading a book called Beyond Nitro. How did you happen across the Bonnie Hammer stuff?

And why did you feel like that was such an important piece? Because I, for one, didn't expect it, but I loved it. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. As I talked about earlier, you know, I structured the book in such a way where it kind of gave me license, if appropriate, to delve into what was happening in the WF at the time and how that compared to WCW. And there's even, as I'm sure you know, Conrad, a whole sort of special section of the book talking about the history of the TNA and Spike relationship because of the fact that so many people involved with WCW, obviously, were involved in that effort a different point. in time as well. So it wasn't something that I promoted. It wasn't something I talked about, but I wanted to give that to people as a bit of a bonus that if you read this book, you know, it's 200,000 words long. So there's probably going to be, you know, 185,000 words about WCW, but we're going to include some of this other content as well. But as you were talking that, Conrad, it made me think about something I don't even think I had consciously considered,

which is just the contrast between how the television partners, if you could call it that in the case of WCW were approaching this programming. And with USA, you had someone in Bonnie Hammer who was, you know, highly respected, brought a lot to the table and was willing to sit back and learn and digest the intricacies of the wrestling business and then apply her knowledge relative to, you know, soap opera type storyline in order to enhance what the WBF was already doing. And, you know, Eric could probably speak much better than we could about, you know, the lack of that on the other side of the equation. So I'm glad you picked up on that and that's something I

wanted to give people as a as a little added bonus going into that stuff as well. It's a really amazing book. There's more than just the financial stuff, but I do think the financial stuff is really what people are gravitating to. And there's a big focus on all the details here. You actually include in your book that WCW was running an operating loss of $10.76 million dollars in 1994. That's according to the official TBS books that you were given access to. And Eric, I bring this up because you've told the story here before that your goal with

WCW was to turn a profit. Now, I know that seems silly with the benefit of hindsight, but it had never happened before. They weren't profitable in 88 or 89 or 90 or 91 or 92. And then in 93, when you start to get a little power and start to make some moves, we know that 94 is a banner year. You're going to have a huge opportunity to sign the biggest star

in the history of pro wrestling, Hulk Hogan. You're going to put on the biggest WCW pay-per-view in history at that point with Hogan and Flair at Bashes the Beach. You've got a lot of positive momentum going. Gate records, pay-per-view records, you're not going to out of the park, but you still ultimately report a loss.

But you've told the story before, and I think it bears repeating, your goal was just to show that WCW can turn profit of $1, And after 1994, showing a loss of 10.76 million, you were profitable the very next year in 1995, right, Eric? Yes, we were. I don't remember the number. You know, we beat $1.

And it may have been a couple hundred grand, is what the profit was, were reported. I don't remember. You know, perhaps guy does. It sounds like he probably does. I'm going to look it up. I'll pay my Facebook. I'm surprised us out of the tip of your tongue. But, you know, we didn't make a profit.

And that was the goal, but it was also the mandate. Again, you've heard me talk about this before. But when Bill Shaw, after Bill Watts was fired, Bill Shaw held a meeting and basically told everybody, either this company turns a profit or Ted Turner himself is going to pull the plug. Making it clear that although we knew in WCW that Ted was really supporting us, Ted would tell us that. It wasn't like inferred or assumed.

Ted would tell us whenever there was a company meeting or certainly in management conversations that he believed in WCW and it was his intention to keep WCW front and center and turn of broadcasting. But when you hear, when we heard from Bill Shaw that even Ted believed that if we could not prove that WCW would be profitable, could be profitable, that Ted, our only supporter, was going to pull the blood. So that dollar of profit, a lot of it was just my ego. I wanted to do something that had never been done before.

I liked the challenge. I believed we could do it. But more than my ego and my goal-driven personality, it was about survival. I believed what Bill Shaw told me. I believe that if we didn't turn a profit, But WCW was going to go away. That was clear to all of us.

We knew there was everybody else, every other Turner executive and Turner Broadcast and wanted to pull the plug. We've known that for years. We had known that for years at that point. But when we got the word that Ted himself was of the frame of mind that either this thing turns a profit

or I'm pulling the plug, it wasn't just my personality. It was survival. It was important that we turned a profit. And I was thrilled to be able to hand that first dollar of profit over to Harry Anderson, who was the head of finance at the time. It's a shame that back then when you, you know, handed him that one dollar at that Christmas party or whatever it was,

it's just a shame that they didn't have cash out back then because I know you would have sent him that dollar and you would have made sure to send a funny message with it. Making money moves should be easy. You don't always have guy. Evans there to dig around and figure out what the hell happened. That's why you need a cash app. Its face is fast. It's safe.

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Cash app will actually warn you and make you think twice before you press the send button. It's like having your own personal bodyguard for that cash. You can even spice up your payments with custom text and stamps and backgrounds. I really wish that we would have done that back then for WCW. If for whatever insane reason you don't already have cash app, download it right now from your phone's app store, sign up and enter our code 83 weeks in your profile, and then send $5 to a friend,

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your account terms apply that's money that's cash app so when we take a look at the numbers here guy and we're trying to figure out you know what's real and what's not we all know as wrestling fans who have grown up watching wcw 96 was the best year they'd ever had and 97 just blew it out of the water isn't that the way it felt to you eric that 96 was hugely successful with the creation of the nw o but 97 man you had everything clicking on all cylinders the Sting storyline versus Hollywood Hogan at Starcade, and we've talked about the finish, but that didn't affect business. I mean, business was a booming in 1997.

Fair to say, Eric? I think Eric's muted. But here's what I know. The company achieved a profit of $824,000 in 1997. Guy, that can't be right. That seems silly. That's so low, right? I mean, what happened in 1997?

That can't be the real number. This is the biggest, most successful. successful wrestling company of all time at 1997 and they made $824,000. Come on. That's not real. So let me just close the loop on something we mentioned a few minutes ago. So 95 operating profit, 283,466. So I think, uh, Aaron said a couple hundred grand. He was close. There you go. There you go. Um, so let's talk about 97. And I think this gives us an opportunity. And I really want to make this clear in terms of helping, um, all of the listeners for, appreciate what we're talking about. As was discussed earlier, one thing that's really essential

to understand, and this is where you have to differentiate between what is sometimes called creative accounting and the more straightforward issue of fraud, is that WCW was categorized literally in a category called other, along with other things such as the Atlanta Braves, for example, the CNN Airport Network, incidentally, was in that category. What that meant was, and Eric mentioned when you look at a financial disclosure on the SEC website, you will see that category other without having insight into that category. What that meant was that overall, the revenues and expenses that had been generated by those individual entities could look the same in consolidation without actually necessarily reflecting directly the performance of each

of those entities. Right. So let's just say for arguments sake, there's 10 companies in a category, and they're generating $100 million in revenue. Well, we can report $100 million in revenue, but depending on the priorities of the organization and where we want to allocate certain things and how we want to be perceived as a corporation, we have the ability within accounting rules to move around some of those items, some of those expenses particularly. And in regards to 1997, I'm glad you brought that up, you know, if you look at, once again, the official Turner book. So this is not guest work. This is not filling in the blank. This is not someone told me or, you know, I heard in a conversation one day. This is literally

based on the official TBS books. They had WCW Down as making a total net profit of only $824,000 in the year in 1997. However, when you look into those line items, you find some, some interesting things. For example, under the category of licensing, TBS credited WCW with 1.176 in revenue against expenses of $1.127 million. So that's a net profit line of $49,000 or $942 per week. So let's just take a step back. We're saying 97, the NWO is taking off and everything else and the company has never been more popular. according to the books, we're making $942 per week. Now, when you add some context to that, you learned that it wasn't until October of 97.

The WCW actually had its own designated licensing program. Prior to October 97, the company entered into those agreements under the auspices of another Turner entity called Turner New Media Inc. So that kind of gives you an educated guess as to where some of those revenues may have been recorded. Another thing that I'd like to draw attention to when it comes to 1997, there's two more things very quickly. You look at the category of home video, for example, which had typically been around the $2 million mark. All of a sudden, in 1997, hottest period in company history, it falls to $856,000 in terms of revenue, whereas just two years later, it suddenly rebounds to $12.1 million.

So if you were to accept those figures on face value, you're basically saying that over a period in which WCW's popularity windled, it experienced a 14-fold increase in home video revenues, $856K to $12.1 million. But here's the final point, and there's many that we go into the book, but this is an aspect of this whole affair, which, again, unless you actually look at the source, documents, I don't even think you'd be able to kind of dream this up. And actually, when I

presented this to former Turner finance staff and controllers and people like Greg Prince, who was at WCW and controller, people like Dick Cheatham, which obviously a lot of people saw in the Vice series last year, you know, this took them aback. And they were a very surprised to learn about what I'm just going to tell you, which is the fact that in 1997, WCW's income was offset by an interest expense of $6.79 million. So let's call it $6.8 million. $6.8 million was used to offset, you know, the pop that they were obviously having in 97 in terms of revenue. And in order for that to make sense, if you look at what the lending rates were at that time,

you know, the prime rate was like between 8.25 to 8.5%. Basically, that implies, you know, an enhancement. inherited debt or an operational line of credit of like $80 million in order for that to be real in order for there to truly be that much money counted to WCW in terms of interest on its debt that's kind of how it would have to be entering the year of 1997 when I presented that to former people who would absolutely know you know they said that's that's absolutely impossible that's there's no way at all that we had you know operating debt on the WCW books.

So what that tells you is within that category of other, okay, we're going to take interest that we're paying on debt that relates to other initiatives in our company, and within this category, which we're allowed to do under accounting rules, we're going to shift that to the WCW books. Why are we doing that? Because we have the revenue to absorb it, revenue to offset it.

And what I have found is just over a four-year period, there was $23.1 million allocated to WCW as an interest expense. Notice I didn't say, you know, accrued by WCW, allocated an allocated interest expense of $23.1 million over a four-year period. We talk about in the book there's partial evidence that suggests, you know, the number may in fact be a lot higher and I kind of go through that with some added context as well. But that is like a factor that I don't think would ever come to mind when you think about, okay, let's be skeptical about the WCW's financial performance. You know, you think about

pay-per-view, you think about ticket sales, you think about licensing and merchandising, but I don't think you would think about how much interest was being allocated to its books. And as I mentioned, that number over just four years was $23.1 million. And that's all of what I'm saying is a fact. This is factual data from the books that has been verified, that is documented, that is provable, and again, the reader and the listener in this case can do with that what they may. Eric, what do you think? I'm sitting here thinking, I wonder if, can I still sue somebody? I mean, what's a statute of limitation? that horrible shit, you know?

I don't know. It doesn't, it's, it doesn't, it's, even now, how many years later is this? I've lost track. It's a lot. We're talking decades. It still pisses me off. And it shouldn't, you know, I've done well. I'm good.

But, man, what a, what a, what a, what a horrible thing to do to, to a company, to a division, to over a hundred people that worked there and fought hard and worked their asses off to prove that WCW could be a viable wrestling company and to have executives, accountants, finance manipulators in this case, in my opinion, dumping everybody else's garbage on our dinner table, it still pisses me off. It's not fraud, but it damn well should be, in my opinion. Imagine you're a business owner relying on a dozen different software programs. Each one disconnected, more expensive, and more complicated than the last. It can be incredibly stressful, right?

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so you're talking not just the interest that we know is bullshit Eric but you have used that term a lot here on the program and some people have thrown the flag the inner company allocation and when we would talk to some of the WCW accountants and we've had some on the program through the years and we've obviously seen some fabulous interviews through the five series a couple of years ago like Dick Cheatham he's said this loud and proud that that was absolutely what they did but the idea that that there's no less than $21 million that WCW did not get credit for and other bad debt was dumped on their books. That's what we're talking about here, right? Guy. Yeah. So again, just to be crystal clear, $23.1 million in allocated interest expense over just a four-year period. And of course, WCW under Turner, you know, went from late 1988 to March of 2001. And then from what I been able to verify, and what I am able to say is absolutely documented and, you know, not a shadow of doubt in anyone's mind, because it's literally hair and crystal clear in terms of the money that was allocated into company allocations, close to $21 million, as you

said, $20.795 million. So if you just take those two numbers, you're looking at $45,000.4,000. million, right, for all intents and purposes, just looking at those two things. And we haven't even got into revenues and expenses that may have been recognized at varying levels of the organization. So, for example, in 1994, you have almost 1.9 million being charged to WCW in consideration of its pay-per-view programming, even though those pay-per-view costs, if you look at it, have already been accounted for elsewhere. But the company doesn't actually get credit for any of the revenue. So as we talk about in the book, that that represents a net swing of, you know, 30, I think 13.17 million, let's just say 13 million dollars, just in terms of one year.

So my take on this is, I think it's very clear. And there's quotes from numerous sources in the book. And I think the basic application of logic will tell you this as well, that what was the purpose of WCW within that corporation, it was to function as programming, above all else. It wasn't the idea that we're going to treat this like a standalone wrestling company, because, of course, you couldn't. And that's why it's a fool's errand to compare, again, the reported bottom line values as it relates to WCW in a particular year and compare that to a contemporary wrestling organization or any wrestling organization from the past that had a completely different ownership structure. This is, to, you know, to my,

knowledge, totally unique in the history of the wrestling business where something like this would happen. And so if you think about it, it's kind of unfair that, you know, the standard that we're operating under is this is programming. And so it's not really a big deal if revenues that are being generated get recognized elsewhere, you know, the books of Turner Home Entertainment, for example, in the case of pay-per-views or expenses end up flowing into the WCW books. But then all of a sudden, as the mergers happen and Ted loses power and now WCW is being looked, that in a different light, and you're saying, well, now it's supposedly losing $62 million in a given year, well, anyone with the requisite amount of institutional knowledge about everything

that we're talking about tonight will say, well, hold on. Let's go back in the past then and try to work out, you know, how much of this stuff did we not get credit for? How much of this stuff did we have to absorb in the past? And the final thing that I'll say is just to be totally crystal clear, more than one thing can be true at the same time. And what I mean by that is none of this is to detract from the fact. And I don't think anyone has ever made this argument anywhere, by the way, that no one has ever said in 99 and 2000 that the quality of WCW's programming, and obviously it's subjective, but no one has ever said, yeah, that was far and away better than what it was in 96, 97, 98. And it was just the fact that all of the chicanery

was going on, that is really, you know, it had nothing to do whatsoever with, you know, the programming. Well, more than one thing can be true. We can recognize that as a television show as a property, yes, there was, most people would agree a very obvious decline in the quality of that programming. But at the same time, all of this stuff was happening in the background, and that's why I do think it is unfair to, when the circumstances change, all of a sudden hold the company to this standard, which had never had to operate under before. So you can't treat this like a

lemonade stand where you say, there's nothing more to it. I spent $10 on lemons today, and I generated $20 in revenue, so therefore the profitability of my business is obvious. Sometimes entities within a corporation are kind of treated like that, and unless you actually delve into the books, and it's not just the income statements, by the way, I want to be clear about that. There's plenty of other corroborating, you know, documentation that confirms all of this. And, you know, I've run this by the people who are actually in the business of preparing the books as well, you know, and in order to get, you know, confirmation. So when you look at all of that stuff, you realize the complexity of it is just something that,

you know, again, can't be compared to another wrestling organization. It's, it's, as I said, it's kind of a fool's errand to do that. We're taking your questions here live, and we're going to get to some of those. But first, I want to remind everybody that this weekend is money in the bank. I think you can make some money with My Booky. You know, Drew McIntyre cashed in as a 250-point underdog in his cage match with Damian Priest. And if you backed him at My Bookie, well, you tripled your money.

And that's the kind of value that WWE betting delivers when you're tapped in. Money in the bank is tomorrow. And hell yeah, I'm trying to get some to. Rollins is the favorite in the men's ladder match, but L.A. night has the crowd, and, well, in WWE, as we all know, that matters. But on the women's side of thing, Roxanne Perez, well, she's leading the odds, but Ria Ripley's right behind her. And can you ever really bet against Ria? That's a spot where a small bet can hit big. And if you've been following the buildup, you already have the edge. MyBooky is where that insight pays off. Go right now to my

bookie. Use our promo code 83 weeks and boost your bankroll with a sports book bonus on your first deposit. Extra cash just for locking in with our code. Composite $100, get 50. Go in with $200 and they'll make it 100. WWE UFC cash in when it counts only at my bookie. Hey, let's spend just a minute here and talk a little bit about what's going on with the book. Tyler Dunn is with us here live guy and he wants to know. I love the first book. Will the second book be available on Audible 2? All right. appreciate that question. Absolutely. That's something that's in development right now. I think probably in about six to eight weeks, we'll have that up on Audible. So if actually people can,

you can just email me, Guy Evans, WCW book at gmail.com. And we do have a list of sort of a mailing list of people who are interested in that. And hey, maybe when the audio book comes out, maybe we can have another conversation on here again, you know, you guys tell me. Absolutely. I want to get your take on some of these silly questions that, are not silly questions but silly stories that exist here like one of the things that's in the book eric and i don't even know if you remember this but do you remember ever seeing or hearing about the circumstance eric we're at the height of the nw o paul cogan worked a private corporate gig using the classic red and yellow persona do you even remember that errant no it wouldn't

surprise me um at all and i wouldn't have had any issue with it but i don't remember it Guy, do you want to give us some heads up about CFS mania? Yeah, and I don't know if you remember Eric a couple of years ago. I think I either called you or text you about it, and you said the exact same thing. It wouldn't have surprised you, but it was the first you were hearing of it. Basically, you know, there's a chapter in the book

that deals with this very peculiar event that was filmed. That's why we have footage of it, but I don't think it was ever meant to see the last. light of day, and very few people have ever seen this footage. It was October of 97, and it was actually a week before Halloween Havoc, so you had that cage match between Hollywood Hogan and Roddy Piper at the time, and you have Hulk Hogan in the red and yellow, participating in, I think you could call it probably a kind of like a parody of the presentation of wrestling at that time. It is this sort of event that has all of the tropes of like 90s wrestling, and Hulkster is there.

and Brutus the Barba Beefcake and Michael Buffer's there. And there's this fake match that takes place between these two. This sounds kind of bizarre. It sounds like a fever dream as I'm explaining it now. These two executives for a debt collection company called Commercial Financial Services, CFS, they're based in Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were actually in a position where they had over half of the charge off, of all the charged off credit card debt in America,

and they built this like multi-billion dollar business based on buying this debt that at the time people thought was worthless and turned it into this empire. And they were famous for doing these like really extravagant things that, you know, the main guy in charge, Bill Bartman, he would take the entire company on an excursion to Disney World. He would take them to the NBA finals on a private jet. And one of the ideas they had one day was, you know, it's kind of a little bit of a friendly competition.

We're going to have a mud wrestling match between the two top executives in the company. And then that evolved into, actually, you know what, let's just book the Thomas and Mac Center. And let's turn this into a wrestling card because wrestling is popular right now. And as you hear about somewhere along the line, the idea comes, well, let's get Hulk Hogan, let's get Michael Buffer. And it's like, it's one of the most bizarre things you could ever witness. But it's just really interesting that something like that, could sort of escape notice for so many years because obviously in 2025, the second that something like that happened,

there would be a thousand smartphones out and it would be trending on Twitter, right, if Coney Rhodes or whoever participated in something like that. But it's kind of jarring, you know, to think about like the timeline 97 and then all of a sudden there's Hulk Hogan and all of the antists that took place that day. Pretty crazy. It is interesting that you get all of these little stories, Eric.

So it's not just a. financial book and there's even a chapter i think from late nineteen ninety eight and i know this is probably going to ring more of a bell for eric the whole don't touch that dial story guy can you share some of that and let's see if we can jog eric's memory about this yeah so i i have not talked to eric about this and i'd be very curious if this rings any bells because i i didn't learn about this until very late on in the in the process so there was an idea and i It was actually like all storyboarded out. And in the paperback and hardcover edition of the book,

you'll see the actual storyboards that were used and some of the dialogue that was proposed. There was an idea that in an effort to stop people from changing the channel, we're going to produce, you know, commercials that, or faux commercials that resemble some of the popular commercials that were on television at that time. And like I said, this wasn't something

that was like thrown out in a, creative discussion or something. This was, you know, a Turner graphic design artist basically put together some artwork to reflect what this would look like. This was in December of 98. There we go.

I think we're looking at it right now. Does any of that ring any bells, Eric, because it was one of those things I didn't run by you, but Keith Mitchell talks about it. Neil Pruitt talks about it, I think some other people as well. Does this sound familiar? It kind of does.

And I could be conflated, two different initiatives, but there was a point in time that myself and Jason Hervey actually came up with an idea that sounds very similar to this, so it might be the same thing. Do you remember when Saturday Night Live, you guys are probably too young to remember this, but when Saturday Night Live first started getting hot in the very beginning, they would do a lot of commercial, they would do a lot of skits that you weren't sure until you were halfway through it or almost until the punchline, am I watching a commercial or what am I really watching here? And they were entertaining as hell. And Jason and I were talking

about coming up with skits that were very similar to some of those Saturday Night Live skits that looked like television commercials. And it wasn't so much about, for us at least, it wasn't so much about don't turn that dial it was just how do we create something unique and entertaining within the body of the show now this may have been a different initiative that you're referring to but it sounds very similar to something that jason and i worked up very interesting we got some questions here we want to get and as a reminder you can hit that QR code on the screen right now and pick up the brand new book beyond nitro you can also pick it up with lots of different book bundles, including some autograph stuff and all kinds of other

fun stuff at WCW Nitrobook.com. But if you just scan that QR code, you can pick it up right there from Amazon. And I also want to mention that we're going to be given away some of these books. I think we're giving away three books, Guy. Tell everybody what they need to do in order to get a free copy of this book. Yes. So I suppose we'll probably announce next week after the podcast has been up for a few days, the three winners. But yes, we have three. signed copies of the book that we're giving away to everyone listening to this. So all you have to do to enter is very simple. If you go to the account, I think it says here on the screen,

WCW Nitro Book on X, and there's a pinned post. If you can just retweet that post and then use the hashtag Beyond Nitro to answer this question. Okay, so this is the question. If we look at 1997, 1998, and 1999 combined, those three years combined, What was the total net profit or loss attributed to WCW over those three years? As it says here on the screen, according to the official turn of books. To be honest, if you're one of these people listening who's already read the book, you can probably figure it's out. But what we'll do is the three most accurate guesses, you know, or out of the pool of the most accurate guesses, we'll pick three people.

So according to the official turn of books, what was WCW's total profit or loss for the years, 97? 98 and 99 combined. I'm, you know, I'm really glad we're talking about this because I was going to ask you that very question. That's awesome. So there you go. Go grab the book right now, WCW Nitrobook.com. You can scan the QR code.

It'll take you right to the Amazon page here in a couple of months. We'll have the version up on Audible. And, hey, enter this contest right now. Once again, go right now to WCW Nitro Book on X. free tweet that pinned post and answer that trivia question using the hashtag Beyond Nitro I want to give a shout out to Aaron Manzo

who's with us who has joined us here appreciate you being a part of the club too sweet my man we also want to ask some questions here from AOTV productions we'll go with you on this one Eric on the Monday Night War documentary Vince Russo said David Arquette winning the world title

made the cover of USA today defending the idea your thoughts Of course, Eric, as a reminder, it wasn't actually on the cover of USA Today. It was in USA Today, but several pages inside. Is that a, I mean, is that just something that maybe Vince could have misremembered? I mean, it was technically in USA today, but it wasn't on the cover. Is that a real defense for putting the belt on David Arquette, in your opinion?

Look, I've said this before. I mean, I could have, I was a consultant, right? I wasn't the boss necessarily. I was hired as a consultant to oversee creative, and I had the ability, based of the nature of the agreement that I had with Turner Broadcasting, that if I wanted to throw a fly, if Vince wanted to do something and I didn't, or I did it, Vince didn't, then it went to Brad Siegel. He broke the tie. And by the way, that's not an unusual situation at all. Usually networks in a creative situation where you've got more than one person. as the, we'll call it showrunner or executive producer. If there's more than one of those people, as it was in the case of Russo and I, and if we couldn't agree, then the network is the tiebreaker, right?

It's not unusual. And that was the case here. I could have, should I, if I chose to, I could have either said, no, we're not doing the Arquette thing. It's a dumb idea, it's a bad idea. And if Vince Russo still wanted to do it, and we would. we couldn't come to an agreement, then it would be up to Brad Siegel to make the final decision, which is actually what happened with regard to the bash at the beach debacle with

Hogan and Vince Russo going off on his own and all that was the basis of that lawsuit. But I didn't throw the flag when it came to our cut. I was willing to give that a try. I supported it. So I can't throw rocks at that. I could have thrown a flag and I chose not to. Because I did believe that while it wasn't going to make the wrestling audience happy, and let's keep in mind, David Arquette was beating freaking me.

He wasn't beating a wrestler. He wasn't beating Scott Steiner. He wasn't beating Randy Savage. He wasn't even beating somebody out of the power plant for crying out loud. He was beating me. So, yeah, I knew that wrestling fans, because they're generally – not big thinkers, the ones that like to, you know, criticize for a living. I knew that that would be a problem, but it was like short term.

It wasn't going to really mean anything. I went along with it. And I think part of the reason I went along with it was because I thought it would get mainstream coverage. People tend to forget this or are not really fully appreciated the rationale at the time. But David Arquette was breaking out. in the feature film, but he had done a feel, he had just come out of doing a feature with Kevin Costner.

I think it was a thousand miles of Graceland or something like that. And it was an amazing, it was a great movie, by the way. He was married to, what was his wife's name of the time for a friend? I mean, David was a pretty high profile player in Hollywood at that time. And I thought,

you know what, it's worth the risk. Like I said, He's not beating an established wrestler. He's not even beating a wrestler. He's beating an executive for crying out loud. And a soft, mushy one at that, you know, I wasn't a threat to anybody. So I defended it.

I supported it. And it did get some coverage. Certainly not on the cover of USA Today. That was just misspeaking of, I'm sure. But, you know, it's understandable. Things like that happened. Mispeaking like that. AOTV production says,

I can't believe nobody at Turner Broadcasting cared about WCW even when it was popular. Travis Medway has a great question for you here, Guy. He says, any chance of Guy's books ever becoming a movie? Do you think there could ever be a movie? I mean, that would be tough to do a Beyond Nitro movie, or could you see it as a, as a feature

film? One never knows. Some people may know. I like that. Stranger things that happen, right? Joe is with us here live, Eric, and he says WCW had billionaire Ted, then AOL Tom Warner. Is WWE in dangerous, similar water now with TKO, Eric? Zero visibility into that.

You know, I have no idea. It's the safest way to say that. Is it in a complicated financial arrangement? Of course, it is. It's a publicly held company with a lot of moving PC. so perhaps or not I have no idea we've got another question here for you guy this was from ramy and he says guy whether any executives who you interviewed while credible struck you was dishonest and untrustworthy and whose contributions were admitted I know you're not

going to name names I get that you can't really do that but you know we this question comes from a place of there's a lot of uh well the word they use in wrestling is carney there's a lot of bs and wrestling there's a lot of people who are trying to take advantage uh i think the popular word of the day these days is grifter and so i'm curious do you feel like you ran across some some bad faith personalities and takes as you were doing the course of these interviews or because you were really talking to more i know you talk to wrestling people but you also talk to executives, you talk to accountants, you talk to, quote, unquote, office people, not necessarily entertainment people. Did you run across that at all? Well, I think that speaks

to the importance of having objective data and information that you can use to cross-reference claims that you may be hearing on the other end of the phone or in front of you, in the case of doing an interview in person. That's sort of the way that I tend to operate is, you know, to take everything absolutely with a grain of salt. And there are occasions where you may hear from someone that this is their recollection of a particular meeting or a particular instance, and they're being very explicit about that, in which case you can present that to the reader and say, this is how this person remembers it. But there's a difference between opinions and opinions stated as facts. And so I think, I would like to think that when you look at these

two books in the aggregate, you'll see that the factual basis for the books, I would say is very strong and really is the foundation for it all. But of course, you hear some crazy things. You hear people trying to rationalize decisions that were made. But, you know, everyone has their own perspective. And I think as people who are familiar with wrestling, you know, sometimes we forget that, you know, there are people that this was just like a curious sidebar maybe in their career. They maybe worked in the entertainment industry for several decades and just happened to interface with wrestling

for a few years. And so they don't necessarily have the historical knowledge of how successful wrestling has been over the decades when they were looking at that property. But, you know, as I think I've said before, one thing that did surprise me, and I find this in doing both the books, is Eric mentioned it has been a long time since all of this happened, but I think there is still a level of vitriol on the part of certain people, who I won't name, that this was ever part of the portfolio. And there's still, once you get into it, you can still.

that sense of embarrassment is, like, quite tangible. You know, when you say, well, it was your highest rate of programming there for a while, right? And it's like, oh, yeah, I have to admit that in this conversation. So that sentiment definitely exists in some quarters, even to this day. And that's where, that's where, you know, when I get angry or I get frustrated, and a lot of times I'll take it out dipsets like Dave Meltzer because he's the one of the most guilty of perpetuating the bullshit. And, you know, for a guy that says he loves to.

to study and he researches and all that nonsense. He's just a sewage pipe. And that's one of the reasons why I was so happy about this book. The first book, it's certainly about this one, because now guys really presenting the facts that people that like to write about wrestling and consider themselves journalists probably won't take the time to read because it's 180 degrees from their narrative over the last 20 or 25 years. It makes them, look like fools, as well as certain executives in the company. And I think, Guy to your point, one of the reasons certain people that are executives, especially if they're in television programming, they don't want to admit that Nitro beat

everything that they did. They don't want to admit that we got much higher ratings than movies that they were spending tens of millions of dollars on, and we were outperforming them by margins they couldn't accept. They hated that. But that was, again, going back to so much of the stuff that we've talked about, Conrad, it's one of the reasons so many executives with intern or broadcasting wanted WCW gone. As I pointed out, they didn't want WCW to be part of the portfolio because it was kicking their ass.

It was more cost efficient. It was more popular. But even more than that, it was eating up real estate that they didn't have access. to. They couldn't make original movies because we controlled four hours and sometimes five hours of weekly primetime

programming. So there was a resistance, a resentment by a lot of executives. One of the thing that I want to say in terms of Brad Siegel's name came up early on and in a deposition, Brad Siegel testified that in a

given year we had lost $20 million, which based on what we're learning because of guys' research was total bullshit, Brad wouldn't have known that. Brad only had the information that Turner Finance gave him. And that was one of the unique things, and I guess now it makes a lot more sense. One of the unique things about the way Turner was structured as a company is, while I had

a controller in WCW Greg Prince he had support by a guy by the name of Don Edwards and Bill Bush Judas little prick they didn't report Bill eventually reported to me

but originally he didn't anybody that was in finance or accounting didn't report to anybody in the division that they worked in they reported to Turner Finance. There was a dotted line there, obviously, but they didn't report to us. They didn't have to explain much to us. It was the other way around. And I think that's one of the things that enabled Turner

broadcasting to get away with some of the things that they did. And by the way, Brad Siegel was in the same position. Brad Siegel would not have had visibility into the level of detail that Guy has had in writing this book. Fred only knew what he was told, just like I only knew what I was told. I couldn't challenge the books. I couldn't sit down with Vicki Miller and say, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What is this $9.3 million in interest payments that we're getting charged for? Let me throw a flag on that.

I couldn't do that. I didn't have visibility to it. I didn't even know what was happening. So it's just the unique structure of, of, of, Turner corporate at that time and the way they operated. Dick Chatham could speak in much more detail to it, but I think he's talked about that a lot. And if I could just add very quickly, Conrad, I just want to add to some of the points that I recommend here, just with a direct quote from the book from Greg Prince, who is the WCW controller. So I'm looking at the book

here. So he says, and I'll actually just, if I could, just back up quickly and just start at the top of the paragraph. So although WCW was allocated a monthly allocation for programming, the finalized figure based on subsequent transfers between Turner Divisions would often be revised and then offset or settled. And for example, if you look at January of 2001, you'll see this play out. And that's just, I mentioned that month to show you that this was happening still at the very end, WCW was allocated originally $2 million for what they called programming license fees, but by the end of the month, that had been adjusted to reflect a final

settled figure of 652,000. So basically we're going to take back $1.35 million and we need that for another purpose over here. And none of the people that were mentioning would have been privy to that because that's like the final stage of the equation, right?

So, and this is the quote from Greg Prince that proves my point on that. So Greg says, in terms of how it all got swirled around, not just with WCW, but with every other type of ancillary, entity, we were all pretty much in the same boat. It was one of those things where it was like we're going to distribute revenues and expenses to you, and that's the end of it. Just make sure

you get it booked up before we do the monthly close. So that's what I really just want to emphasize and get clear in everyone's heads. You know, it is possible for you to be a controller for a particular entity within a corporation and still not see how the sausage truly gets made because you're not necessarily there at the very final stage of the process where they're doing things like interest allocation and intercompany allocations and and this offsetting process that I just mentioned. And so again, unless you have the actual source documents, there's just no way to have any visibility into any of that. By the way, I want to remind everybody, anywhere worth going is worth going in good boots.

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but with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills try it at progressive dot com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates pricing coverage match limited by state law not available in all states we appreciate all the time that you've given us here today guy but we do have one more question before you get out of here this is from Travis medway and he wants to know and maybe this is really more of a question for you Eric but I think together we can tackle it was selling WCW ever an option before 2000 or did the executive wanted to go away as opposed to selling it.

Did you gents make an educated guess on how much the company would have been worth in 1998 had it been for sale? So, Eric, I'll let you tackle the first question. Do you think at any point it was an option to sell WCW before the year 2000? It would have never been an option to sell while Ted Turner was in control of his own company. Absolutely not. My opinion, what it would have been worth if you'd take 1998, I think multiples were probably around five or six for entertainment properties.

So whatever our true revenues were, I think in 98, my estimation is, and I've said this publicly before, and have been chastised for it, run through the meat grinder for saying it, but now I'm even more sure that I was right. I think in 1998, we were between 60 and 80 million before we got rated. I don't know, whatever, five or six times, you know, the multiple would be of that is probably what it would have been worth. Guy, if you had to take a guess, I know you've had access to all these financial records. If you were going to guess what a WCW sale price could have been, if you sold at its peak, 1998, what do you think WCW would have been worth in 98 if you had to guess? It's going to sound like a cop-out answer, but honestly, there's no way of determining that just because of how intertwined all of the revenues and expenses were. And certainly, you know, Eric, you know, being the person who is actually running the company, you know, what he says has a lot of credibility in that regard. From my standpoint, you know, I just, knowing, you know, what I've learned and the nature of that,

you know, Byzantine accounting system and how it was not set up to make true decisions about how much each individual entity was worth. And again, I know we're really running out of time, what I'll do just to, what I'll add, just to help people appreciate that is this wasn't just limited to WCW. I think it was much more pernicious in the case of WCW because it was wrestling and because it was a red-headed stock child and because, as we've established, you know, many, many times other than had practically no one wanted it there. But there were many other entities that were being affected in terms of what the true bottom line should have been within Turner for reasons that had nothing to do with personal distaste or grudges or politics or anything like that.

A very obvious example would be the Atlanta Braves, who were perennial money loser, at least on paper. And you might say, well, why was that? Well, if you look into it and you discover that there was a surcharge, Major League Baseball had a surcharge on earnings, you could see why there would be an obvious incentive, okay, if the Braves made money this year, let's see what we can do. Let's see if we can shift some things over other subsidiary companies that are within the same categories. So under, you know, gap, we're legally able to do that. Let's see what we can do in terms of shifting things around so that the Braves as a standalone entity on paper appear like they're losing money, right?

So, again, this is anyone who's worked in a large organization, anyone who's worked for a corporation before will appreciate that these kind of things happen when you have, you know, in the Nitro era, 150 subsidiary companies that made up Turner Broadcasting. So again, I hope I'm not dodging the question there. It's just because those revenues and expenses are so intertwined and so mangled around, it would be a lifetime's work to try to strip all that out and come up with a real number. In my opinion.

I want to just clear something up. I said, let's call it a multiple of six or eight. That's not a net profit. That would be on gross revenues. Our gross revenues were probably in the area in 1998 of around, I don't know, I'm going to call it $275 to $300 million. So it would be a multiple of five or six of that is what the company would have been worth if it was a standalone company.

And if it didn't, you know, wasn't the victim of voodoo economics or accounting. yeah it's a creative accounting for sure um guy you're uniquely qualified to answer this and we won't hurt his feelings because lord knows i've tried so we can just speak obviously here there's a lot of folks out there the haters of this program we might say who anytime eric pops up with any new venture or any quote or any sort of headline and there's always going to be somebody in the comment saying l-o-l this guy killed wcd And I think the people who've really done a deep dive and really understand that WCW never turned to profit without Eric Bischoff. That is a fact, but that gets lost in translation.

You've seen a lot of the financial records. You've done a deeper dive on WCW than perhaps anyone in history. Did Eric Bischoff kill WCW in your opinion? Well, look, I think because of the way that things ended up and because of, we tend to remember the last thing that we saw. And obviously the last couple of years of WCW is not particularly enjoyable time for people working there and the viewers in general compared to its peak. You know, there's obviously so much of the discussion relates around who's to get the blame.

But as I've often said, if you're going to do that, if you're going to spend time trying to figure out where should we ascribe the blame, you also have to do that in terms of the credit as well and understand that without the phenomenon that happened, there would be no, you know, Shakespearean rise and fall story, right? And we've seen plenty of wrestling companies that, I suppose technically, on a relative basis, you could say, yeah, there's kind of a

peak and there's kind of a trough, but in many cases it's, you know, kind of treading water for a lot of competitors to the WWW over the last couple of decades. And in WCW, you did have this huge, unexpected boom.

And so, you know, you can't leave that on the table and say, well, Anyone could have done that. Anyone could have convinced Ted Turner to open up the checkbook and sign a few people. I mean, we've seen that strategy, you know, attempted in the years since in terms of spending a lot of money on talent. And I'm not sure it's necessarily had the same effect. And even if you look at, you know, there's some documents that I was privy to on the Turner side, which will tell you. And Eric may not even be aware of this because this was prior to his tenure.

But there were discussions going on about how do we scale back the expense of talent in our wrestling division. And they actually had put together a roadmap for establishing basically a salary cap is what you would call it in professional sports, where they said in 1993, late 92, 93, by 97, we want to get this down to $5 million. So we do not want to be spending any more than $5 million on our on our wrestlers. that doesn't sound like an organization that had any inkling that or any anticipation that what happened in terms of the boom was going to happen between, you know, let's say 95 and 98. That sounds like, you know, as we've talked about, this is a red-headed stepchild. We don't want this around.

And if we can sort of, you know, wind things down here and manage losses as best as we can, let's try to do that. So I just, I say all that to say that. I suppose if you have a hypothesis, you know, it's helpful to try to test it against reality. So if you believe, for example, that, yes, the numbers that we have read as it relates to WCW are absolutely 100% correct. There was no shifting of revenues, no shifting of expenses, that type of stuff would never happen in a corporate environment. And we can take this as gospel. Well, the next step is how do I test that?

And one way to test it would be, let's try to get access to the actual financial records and the books. And then let's talk to people who are involved in the preparation of SAIM to develop a contextual understanding about how these figures were generated. Or, you know, you can just go on Google and find, you know, a citation by a newspaper or something from 2000 and say, look, there, it's true, it happened. So I would just, I guess my general comment is I would just encourage people, you know, when it comes to any subject, and this is a subject that we all know and love because we grew up with wrestling and this was a great time in the business back in the 90s. But with any subject, if you, you know, you're in a position where people, you know, find credibility or a usefulness in your opinion and you have some sort of a platform, it's really helpful to test those opinions out. against something objective and I'm proud to say I think that's what both of these books do and then people can make up their own minds about that and the reason more people don't do it is because it is a tremendous amount of work yes an enormous amount of work

and you're the only one it's done it guy and I appreciate it very very much guy if you had to guess how many hours do you think you have in this book you know what I don't even want to guess but You're absolutely right. It is a, it's like putting together a mammoth puzzle, you know, because you're, you're getting, you're getting information and data that is all disconnected. And in the case of Turner, you know, they have their own own terminology and abbreviations and notations. And as you know, Conrad, in the businesses that you're involved in, you have your own institutional way of doing things. And so having to, you know, make sense of all of that.

and cross-reference it with other things and put everything in context. It is a lot of work, but it's really gratifying when so many people, you know, have enjoyed the books, and that's what makes it worth it. And so it is worth it.

But at the same time, I don't know if I want to sit here and try to work out how long it took. If you take a calculator out and start figuring this out, you're going to take up another line of work. Yeah. I do want to be,

be respectful of your time guy but I do want to ask you a couple more questions we heard Eric say earlier you know he's had a few references on today's program he's not necessarily the biggest fan of Dave Meltzer's reporting and we know how Dave feels about Eric but he is the

I mean he is the brand name when it comes to internet wrestling reporting like as far as a beat reporter or an industry trade or things like that he's been doing it since the 80s so his name is an institution amongst those who are looking for news and information in the wrestling world.

And there's always been sort of the separation of church and state where people in the business are going to disagree with a lot of his opinions and sometimes things he presents as facts. You actually dug out the data. And I know that, you know, through this journey, you've had to become aware of Dave Meltzer's reporting and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Do you think that Dave Meltzer has read the first Nitro book?

will he read this book? Is it in one ear out the other? Is it a grain of salt? How do you think some of this newfound data will land with Dave Meltzer? Well, I don't think it will land necessarily, and that's why if you go back to 2018, when we launched the first book, when I launched a first book, I sort of, my strategy was to give it directly to the readers. And fortunately, and this is why I always have to credit the people who support the book in the early days. And, you know, I'll never forget you guys getting on here a month or two after it came out and I'm speaking so highly of it and making people aware of it. And of course, you know, I thought that was just so commendable, particularly of you

Conrad and also Eric at that time because Eric even said there were a lot of stuff in this book that, you know, was not happy reading for me. But nonetheless, you know, you have to go and read this book. And he didn't have to do that. And my only relationship with Eric prior to that was interviewing him for the book. And so I had no idea how he was going to receive it. And I thought that was quite rare in life that you would come across someone with that perspective. But I think in terms of reaching some of the people

that you're talking about, I'm not sure that the book ever did, but it didn't need to because I think the strength of the work and the strength of the book sort of spoke for itself. And I trusted that through word of mouth, the readers would make other people aware of it. And, you know, I mean, the book at this point, the first book, and now this book, you know, have become extremely successful and life changing in many, many ways. So I suppose, you know, it doesn't really matter in that sense.

And it's not something that I follow. You know, I haven't read sort of that sort of insider, you know, fan newsletters and such since I was, you know, a teenager in school. And so I'm sure, you know, I found some benefit in it back. then, but it's not something that I look at necessarily when doing something like this. I would go directly, you know, to the source, speak to the people who are actually there, get my hands on as many documents as I can. So hopefully that answers your question. I just, I just, it's not something that I suppose is, fortunately, is needed for me to get

the word out about my books. I know that, you know, if you have spent, you know, a long time sort of getting across a certain point of view. And then there's some counterfactuals out there. Well, professionally, you know, it may not make a lot of sense to draw attention to that. But fortunately, we're in a world now where thanks to the internet and social media and such, the role of gatekeepers or the role of, you know, people who would make, you know, the public or an audience aware of something, I think, is less significantly. So by the time, you know, I mean, I think after seven years, they still haven't been able to come up with a counter argument for anything in the book

because you can't. So maybe they'll get there, you know, before the next book comes out. But thankfully, the people and the readers and podcasters and host like yourself have already got the word out. So I'm really thankful for that. Well, Eric, what do you think? You think Dave Meltzer acknowledges the newfound data? Because he does study the business.

Oh, he studies. He's like a professor. He's just really smart guy. It's a mathematician, too, I heard lately. He's really all about the math. No, he won't because this guy pointed out, he's a much more elegant than I am. But, you know, Dave spent 25 years burying me,

burying WCW, spewing his own narrative, which is all fabricated in his warp mind. And this book absolutely disintegrates his narrative. So for him to read the book and acknowledge the book would force him to look in the mirror to acknowledge that he's been a fraud. He's been a cosplay journalist who tries to convince people, as he still does to this very day, that he's a student of the business, and he's knowledgeable and he does his research. He doesn't do fuck off.

He's a dirt sheet writer. He's a fan boy, is all Dave is. And a book like this just spotlights that fact. So, no, if he does read it, he'll never admit it. he'll never try to counter any of the information in here because a guy points out he can't because a guy did the work that Dave is too lazy and sloppy and probably in terms of talent incapable of doing and I can I just add real quick as well Conrad you know over the years I've received so many messages on social media where people have been I suppose propping me up

or inviting me to say something and I've never said anything because I don't feel that I need to, thankfully. I think if the books didn't have the content that they did, I would be sitting here saying, how do I, you know, drum up some controversy or get people talking about this. But I've never felt the need of, not one time have I ever responded to anything. But again, it's because we're in this new universe now where the people can carry the message out for themselves. So finally, just to reiterate to make it absolutely abundantly clear, because if you don't have this kind of access and you don't have this kind of visibility,

then obviously you're looking at it more from the perspective of a viewer, which is subjective, which is based around your tastes, which may be influenced by personal relationships you have with people. And so if you are looking at through that point of view, you can look back on WCW, and as we said multiple times now, you can definitely say there was a marked deterioration and the quality of the programming. You know, the paperview business fell off a cliff.

The exact numbers are all documented in this book, and you can read about that for yourself. You know, 81.5% decline year to year, spring of 99 to spring of 2000. You know, the ticket sales were down, revenues across the board, you know, collapsed. All of these things happened. No one's discounting the fact that they happened. But there is just a much richer story here and a much more interesting story that you're only going to get if you, quite frankly, you know, put in the time to do so.

So once again, just to be clear, more than one thing can be true. And I don't think in my books I've ever, you know, discounted that or try to dissuade people from that. I got to know, Guy. Are you going to do a pre-Nitro WCW book next? Are you going to do a T&A book? Are you done with wrestling books? What's next for you? Yeah, it's funny because,

again, I thought this was kind of going to be a one and done back in 2018, but it, it, it doesn't work like that. And I think, I think certainly there'll be future wrestling books for sure, because, you know, the demand has been just so overwhelming, thankfully. And it's, it's really been a treat, you know, to have the opportunity to hear from so many people and doing things like the Starcast convention back in the day where you meet people who come up to you and say how much they enjoyed the book. And it's like, why wouldn't you want to do, you know, more for those people and give them something else to enjoy? And I do think it's a fascinating world. I think that you come across people in the wrestling business who are truly, you know, among the most unique

creative people that you'll meet in any walk of life. And you learn something in doing every single book. So, yeah, they'll definitely be more to come, for sure. Well, in the meantime, go grab this book it's fabulous i highly recommend it two thumbs up five stars whatever rating system you're looking for scan the QR code on the screen right now it'll take you directly to the link to buy it on amazon if you're listening on your favorite podcast app you can find it directly at wcw nitro book dot com that's where you can find book bundles signed books and lots of other fun stuff guy man thanks for all the time today i greatly appreciate all the time i think you did a great job on this book i mean lots of times books about wrestling eric

or written by wrestlers or people in the wrestling business this time we had and i'm not ashamed to say it a real journalist write the book about the business of wcw that's what separates it from all the rest right eric it does and one of the only real journalists that have written about wrestling and i like i said earlier man i i really truly appreciate it it it's nice to hear facts for a change when people talk about wcd we're going to let guy go but we we're going to keep the conversation going. Go pick up your book right now. WCW Nitrobook.com. You can also win a book. I want to give you another example of how you can do this. Go right now on Twitter to at WCW Nitro book. Go ahead and throw them a follow and then retweet the pinned post. Then we want you to answer

this trivia question to the X account and use the hashtag beyond Nitro. According to the official Turner books, what was WCW's total profit or? loss for the years 1997, 1998, and 1999 combined. We want to see you tweet that at WCW Nitro book and use that hashtag Beyond Nitro. And we'll give away three books next week, right here on 83 weeks.

Guy, thank you so much for the time today, man. I greatly appreciate it. Oh, you're very welcome, guys. Look forward to doing this again. Thank you so much. Thank you, Guy. Eric, we've got a lot of fun stuff to talk about. But first, I want to tell everybody about Ridge Wallet.

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Then I mentioned that all the Ridge products actually have a lifetime warranty. This is literally the last wallet you'll ever have to buy, and you can do it with peace of mind, knowing that all the Ridge wallets have RFID blocking technology. It's going to keep you safe from digital pickpocketers, but it's unique, it's modern, and it holds up to 12 cards plus your cash, and I got to tell you, this is the future. If you're still one of those dudes with an old crusty leather piece of crap, that's it's messing up your spine and you feel like George Costanza, you're sitting all uneven,

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Eric, uh, my reason. and there it is. Look at there. Everybody loves the red. I love this wallet. What's cool about it is you get to keep it in your front pocket too. Yes. I feel like most guys, when they have a traditional wallet, they carry it in their back pocket. And Ed, who's with us live here says, who puts their wallet in their back pocket? People who are using those old school wallets. But if you're with the program and you got a ridge, man, front pocket Jones, as Taz might say, right? Absolutely. It's comfortable. It's easy to carry. And I'm one of those

guys, I had a big, thick wallet, carried it on my right side, back pocket, and inevitably, I'd get on a plane, forget to take it out, and I'm sitting on that damn thing, and one little airplane seat for however many hours, and you get up with your back is stiff, and you're just a man, what the hell happened? You feel like you get hit by a car? No, you've just been sitting damn cock-eyed for four and a half hours in a plane, and that's why I love this wallet. I keep it in my front pocket, don't have that issue. It's awesome. Go to ridge.com. Use our code 83 weeks. Eric, it's a big wrestling week, man.

We've got so much news. I don't know how we'll get to it all. We're going to do our best. Lots and lots of big news. I guess we should mention this is a huge weekend for WWB. We know they're going to have a Win Worlds Collide pay-per-view this weekend. It's going to be incredible. There's rumor and innuendo.

Mike Teney might do commentary for this, Eric. How cool is that? Oh, that'd be awesome. I hope that happens. There's also another piece of rumor and innuendo from PW Insider that says that John Layfield may actually be there. Of course, we know he was employed by WWE for years and years. As of my most recent conversation, he was not under contract with WWE.

And he has been making some appearances in AAA, including like last weekend. So the idea that Layfield is going to be at a AAA WWE event and maybe Mike Teney's there, man, sign me up. This is going to be fun at El Hio de Vikingo versus Chad Gable. Buddy, don't blink. It's going to be something else. I can't wait to see it. But later that night, they've also got.

money in the bank tomorrow night is money in the bank live on peacock we'll see Cody Rhodes and Jay Uso team up to take on John Sina and Logan Paul I assume that's a tag match that will lead to future singles matches we'll also see Lyra take on Becky Lynch for the intercontinental title as far as the women's money in the bank match we've got Ria Alexa Roxana Naomi we've got a who's who here over on the men's side of things we've got Pinta Seth Rollins L.A. Knight solo on drade and El Grande Americano. So, yeah, allegedly, if it really is the same man,

Chad Gable might be working double duty. I don't know how to feel about that. But we'll see what happens. But as if that's not enough for TKO, tomorrow night is also UFC 316, Eric, and check out how they're promoting UFC 316 with their merch. I thought you might get a kick out of this. UFC 316 like Austin 316.

How great is that, dude? That is so cool. I love that. I love that. That's awesome. I want to get your opinion on some other news. There's a bit of a headline that got everybody's attention. Earlier this week,

he came out that Nick Kine sold a bunch of stock, millions of dollars worth of stock. And it feels like Vince McMahon said, hey, hold my beer. Because he sold to Endeavor, 1,579,080 shares. So Vince is selling shares back to Endeavor, and he pulled in a cool $250 million this week.

And Brandon Thurston says, by my count, if McMahon hasn't made any other transactions since September of 2004, he still holds 6.4 million TKO shares, which leaves him at about 3% of all of TKO rather than 4%. So listen, there's a lot of crazy news.

out there about Vince McMahon these days, especially with the news last week that John Laurenitis is now going to be on the opposite side of Vince McMahon. But hey man, just another week at the office for Vince McMahon. I'll just bring home a quarter billion dollars. What do you make of this report, Eric? Well, you know, after taxes, it was only about 130 million.

So make it sound so big. It's really not that much. That's, you know, seed money, new business, probably needs some financing for whatever he's got going on. And why not cash in some chips to fund your new venture? Why not? It's going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. Of course, we talked a little bit about that new company last week here on the program. Speaking of the company, Carl Anderson has a podcast with Doc Gallows. We're a big fan of those fellows here on the program. Great guys.

They've got a big show coming up. I think it's next weekend in Dublin, Georgia. There's a who's who on there. Even Matt Hardy's on that card. I don't know. I may ride down and check it out, Eric, but Carl had a quote that I wanted to get your opinion on Eric. He says, it's not the WWE anymore.

Guys, it's a company called TKO. I don't look at WWE as WWE anymore. they're TKO now and that's great that's good for them but it's not the same thing that's kind of hard to argue right now it does feel and look different than the way

WWB used to feel and look do you feel like it's different or is that not really registered for you well it hasn't registered as much as it would Carl because I haven't been there since the takeover but even when I was

there a couple of A couple years ago, I think the last appearance I did there on Raw or SmackDown, whatever show it was I did, it just the vibe is different. It was different then. I'm absolutely sure it's a lot different now. And I've talked to guys in my category, legends that go back and make appearances. And we all kind of say the same thing. It's always fun to go back.

Don't get me wrong. But you go there kind of anticipating an experience. that's going to remind you of the way it used to be, just the vibe backstage, you know, the camaraderie and the interaction with talent and staff. It's not like that anymore. It's like working in an office and it takes a fun out of it. You know, you go there hoping to hang out with some old friends and you get there and it's not what you remember. And I can only imagine that that's only been exacerbated with new ownership.

So, yeah, I get that. It's a machine. It's always been a machine, different kind of machine now. Let's do another question here, or a comment, rather. And this is about WrestleMania. And I guess the mayor of London has come out and said on CNBC, I'd love for WrestleMania to come to London. Triple H if you're watching, we want WrestleMania to come to London.

how cool is that when you've got the mayor of London going on national television saying please bring your show here this comes on the heels of them announcing that WrestleMania next year is going to be in WrestleMania wait no never mind New Orleans is not going to host WrestleMania next year maybe it's going to be Vegas Brian Alvarez is reporting that it's almost finalized maybe we'll see an announcement this weekend at money in the bank they're not too far from there you and I speculated last week hey man it could wind up in Saudi Arabia do you think that London ever gets a WrestleMania and where do you think final answer

WrestleMania winds up next year if you had to guess if I had to place money on it I bet Vegas yeah my second bet would be Saudi um because there's even more money there and I'm still kind of intrigued as to why WWW moved the crown what's it called crown jewel event from

Saudi to Australia that to me is the biggest indication that there might be some smoke with that fire as far as as Russell Media and Saudi I don't think

either one will happen I would hate to have to make a bet on either London or Saudi just because I think it would be very similar to you know Major League Baseball moving the world series to you know Germany. It's just, it doesn't,

this is, I don't know, man, it's, WWE is an American brand. And it's one of the reasons WWE has been so successful internationally is because, believe it or not, even though a lot of things that are born and bred in the United States, aren't that popular internationally,

entertainment still is. You know, the American entertainment brand still has a lot of value in internationally. And if you bring that international brand or that American brand to the international marketplace, it kind of loses its distinctly, uniquely American feel. So I don't see it.

I think you really run the risk of agitating your audience, just losing them, losing the connection to your audience by making a move like that. And I just don't think it would be worth of risk long term. But it's a publicly held company run by. guys that are squeezing every nickel out of it they can and at the end of the day that's what matters it's the money is what matters and if the money's there's enough money there there'll be people that'll be willing to take the risk well there's no risk in uh having the best sex of your life thanks to our friends at blue chew blue chew max is here and eric and i are fired up

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Hey, I got an idea, Conrad. Okay. Since WrestleMania is two nights anyway. Yep. But why not do one night in Vegas and one night in London? How would you do that with the travel? Oh, I got to see what you're saying.

You wouldn't have the same group to two crews. Yeah. That could be kind of fun. It could be done. It could be done. That'd be wild. Let's remind everybody, that's not that crazy of a thought. I mean, Starcade was doing that in 86.

A WrestleMania did it in 86. Yeah. WrestleMania had three. WrestleMania, too, was in three locations. They were in California. New York and Chicago. So yeah, maybe that's what they're going to do. WrestleMania will be two nights in two different towns.

You heard it here first. How about that? Something we didn't hear here first and something none of us would have guessed when we recorded last week, Eric. Ron Killings has been released. He wrote this to his WWE or to his Twitter account. I'm sorry to inform you all. I just got released from WWE.

I want to thank WWE for the ride, but mostly I want to thank each and every one of you who was along for the ride. thank you for all the love, support, and appreciation you've ever given me over the years. And, man, I just, I don't know, this caught me off guard. I didn't see it coming. This is another example, maybe, of what Carl was talking about. It's TKO. It's not WWE.

It feels almost unfathomable to think that he would have ever been released. Defense McMahon was still at the helm. We know they were tight and they were buds and they've been, he's been there forever. And how long is forever? truth signed his deal with the same week WWE went high definition January of 2008

what an incredible run he had are you surprised that killings I guess the idea here is it's not like he was fired they let his contract lapse they let it expire and that's sort of been the AEW way we have seen a lot of folks

just get released from WWE contracts but at least with with killings they just let it expire and there's rumor and innuendo they plan to let a few others expire and there's lots of whispers about certain talent maybe being asked to take a pay cut who knows what's true and what's not but all of that was born out of the the killings release you you've spent some time with ron before what can you tell us about uh ron killings and the news that he's released how did you receive this i was disappointed if you remember um before the last we were talking about the Ron Sina John Sina match and you asked me what I thought the finish might be and I think I told you I was hoping that they would put Ron over. It wouldn't have hurt John. You could have, it could have been a great story. John could have got his heat back immediately. I was hoping that that was going to happen because I knew that Ron had such a strong fan base. People just love that guy. So I was surprised as

And I'll be honest with you. And this is, you know, having spent too much time in a wrestling business, you become cynical and never take anything at face value. I'm still not quite, I'm not 100% sold. I would not be surprised to see Ron back in WWE. I would not be surprised at all to see this situation as the basis for a storyline. I don't know what it would be. I don't even want to speculate on it.

But I'm still not taking it. it at face value. I can understand, and this is business, this is real life. I don't know what Ron's contract was. From what I've heard, I don't know this to be a fact from what I've heard. Vince was a big, big fan of Ron. So Ron may have been making a boatload of money, but he was only used occasionally. It wasn't like he was in a weekly storyline and all that. So it may have been a situation where he was just making way more than WWE could justify in terms of a return on the investment. Everything is a return on the investment.

If you hire somebody to, you know, to work on your house and you're paying them, that's not a good example. That's a service. But if you're paying somebody $20 an hour to produce a product, you want to be able to sell that product for at least 50% more than you've invested in it. you've got to get a return on an investment. You're a publicly held company. That's the nature of business, especially publicly held one.

So I could see where Ron was making significantly more than was just a Bible based on the current use of him. He is 53 years old. So there's that. But he's still one of the most entertaining characters on television. And that's why I just don't believe the story's over yet. I don't think it's over either. And I think whatever he was making in WWW. he can make more outside of

WWE. I mean, he is a natural born influencer. I mean, that dude is just naturally entertaining. I just feel like he is going to be very attractive to sponsors and viewers and the mainstream. He has crossover appeal. I'm really excited

to see what's next and I agree with you. It feels like it's inevitable. He's going to have more appearances down the road with WWA. Yep. We had a lot of fun talking to Guy Evans today and talking about the book. We hope you guys will go check that out.

One more time, I want to plug it for him. It's WCW Nitrobook.com. This is the deepest dive, perhaps in the history of WCW. But you guys have some fun questions. We'll try to hit some of these. I know Smackdown has started. So we'll make it quick. Ask a bum wants to know.

Eric, how would you have booked Ted DiBiase if he would have been allowed to use his million dollar man gimmick in WCW? I would know. By the time, by the time Ted came to WCW, I had pretty much made up my mind to get away from the gimmicks. So the

million dollar man thing would have appealed to me at all. It was cool when it was happening it was, you know, but there was no place for it by the mid-90s. Instagram or wrestling historian says when did you know it wasn't going to work out with Vince Rousseau in WCW?

Probably about May or June I think we started working together in March somewhere in there it took about 60 to 90 days to realize there's just nothing under the hood he just really wasn't that creative

I wanted to believe he was I wanted to believe it could work out it would have been great for me if it worked out great because I didn't have to be there every day I was consulting I could do it remotely I could just kind of oversee add some, have some input, come up with some of my own ideas, and let everybody else do the

work. So I would have had a sweet-ass deal, but it just wasn't going to work. He just didn't have the horsepower. Another question here from Alex. Hypothetically, if Booker T and Buff Bagwell would have had a five-star classic match on Raw, would it have changed the course of WWE history? Eric, of course, he's talking about the famous Tacoma Raw, and this was supposed to be the week before Atlanta and it went so poorly that immediately after like that same night and then the next morning they met about it to pivot and that's when the invasion angle changed and ECW was added to the mix and the whole deal in an alternate universe if that match would have been well received do you think Vince ever would have really pulled the

trigger on making the Monday night show a nitro show at WCW property and making smack down show and wwee show it's still i know that was the narrative that was out there but it's still hard for me to buy that was ever really possible let me let me try to put it as elegantly as possible no fucking way it's never going to happen Vince giving a Monday night show and calling it Nitro or WCW it's a fun thing to think about you're out with your friends and just talking about what if scenarios wouldn't have been cool if they would have done that sure that's a fun conversation there's just it would never happen ever a tv productions is here with us live and he's got an interesting question for you eric

i don't know that you've seen the news but here it is with the live and roxan stalker story some are worried that this will lead to wrestlers being unable to interact with fans what do you think i don't know if you saw this eric but arrests were made this week this has been kind of a sketchy deal and you've got some crazed super fans and i guess that is possible in every instance but one of the great things about wrestling is you know these meet and greets and conventions and you know starkass wrestle con and wrestlecade and you know fanatics fest that sort of interaction is what fans really look for and i think a lot of fandom is is kept sticky based on the ability to follow on social media and keep up with these folks and you become

fans of them in their real life but maybe that's a slippery slope uh this is something that for guys i don't think we think about very often or worry about very often just that's not the way we're wired eric but when you see names like live morgan and roxan having this issue do you think that might bring about change in the near future i'm sure On a personal level, there are some talents that will maybe think twice about doing some of the things that they normally would do in terms of making personal appearances and things like that. I think as unfortunate as it is, it's still rather rare.

It happens in all forms of entertainment or celebrity, even in politics. We see it, hear about it unfortunately all the time. There's a bunch of crazy bastards out there, and you've got to have your head on a swivel, whether you're a wrestler or a professional athlete or anybody that gets any notoriety at all. There's just a lot of really twisted sick people out there. But I don't think overall it's going to have any kind of immediate impact on the business other than people individually will take precautions. That'll do it for us this week here on 83 weeks.

We've had a blast talking about the Nitro book and all that's going on in wrestling. Of course, tomorrow night, Eric, is money. in the bank and when worlds collide. I know you're on the road filming. Will you have a chance to catch either one of those shows tomorrow? No, I won't. I'm actually kind of beat, to be honest with you. It's been a, I've been on the road for 11 days now, straight.

And great days, but I'm kind of wiped out. So I'm going to get home. Mrs. B is up in Seattle. She's with our daughter, Montana. She's running another marathon. I think this is number six. I was supposed to be there, but obviously I couldn't because I had other things to do with the Real American Freestyle.

But I'm going to go home. I'm going to pick up my dog because we had to board her. And I'm just going to hang out on the deck and just relax for a couple days. So I don't think I'll be watching any wrestling. Well deserves. And next week we'll be back your way talking a little wrestling. Of course, we'll be recapping what happened this weekend. And we're going to do a profile piece.

I love when we have an opportunity to talk about. about an individual performer and next week i can't believe we've never done it we're going to talk about one of the all-time greats one of the most iconic names from the 1980s one and only jim dougan will be our topic next one oh that'll be fun i love jim is a great guy and i love talking about jim he i can't wait to do that one you want to hit us with a hoe to close us out oh see you next week right here on 83 weeks tough guy Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson, here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about.

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