83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 379: WCW's Biggest Mistake

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

On this epic edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson take us on a journey through WCW and the start of Thunder and the serious consideration to create an nWo Nitro program. Eric explains why he believes this was one of WCW's BIGGEST mistakes, the battles he had trying to keep a positive outlook, and why ultimately the decision watered down the brand. All that plus, some of the major news and notes from this week in professional wrestling. STOPBOX - Get firearm security redesigned and save 10% off @StopBoxUSA with code 83WEEKS at https://stopboxusa.com/83WEEKS #stopboxpod CARGURUS - #1 most visited car shopping site. Shop from millions of cars to find your best deal. https://www.cargurus.com  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. ROCKET MONEY - Download the Rocket Money app and enter my show name 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff in the survey so they know I sent you! MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code 83WEEKS at shopmando.com #mandopod 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.savewitheric.com  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? Having a great day. And it's a beautiful time of year here and Cody.

sunny about 75 degrees about 30% humidity just a light nice breeze is awesome just awesome we are fired up to be with you we are here live at 83 weeks dot com so if you've got questions for eric we want you to keep them coming we are going to hit some news and notes we're going to do that at the end of the show we're going to get things started today with our topic which is the hypothetical we're going to be taking a closer look at the business of creating wcw thunder and of course we're going to be talking about the development of the new show both in general and how it relates to this supposed it almost brand split uh now that i know that's not maybe technically the right term but i do find that fascinating because we've all at least

heard the story eric that once vince macman got control of wcd there was an idea floated out there that certainly made its way through the dirt sheets, and I think people would even say, hey, it was hypothesized, but I don't know that you ever bought that Vince would ever change Monday Night Raw to Monday Nitro and then make Raw like a Thursday show. I don't see that he ever would have done that, but is there any way possible you think a brand split would have worked like that, or there was a W. WCW show on one day and a WWF show on another day.

If Vince had done the post-invasion angle that way, could it have worked? No. No. And boy, there was a lot there. Holy smokes. I'll start at the end because that's all I can remember right now. It wouldn't have worked because in order for the WCW brand split,

as it relates to this context in WWE, So there'd be a WCW, a Nitro on Monday in Iran, or whatever. Yeah, yeah. You have to start at the very, just the foundation of that concept, which is Vince McMahon. And anybody that's ever worked for Vince McMahon near Vince McMahon

in the same zip code as Vince McMahon probably knows how he feels about protecting his brands. And that runs deep. And it's not so much, well, I won't say. Perhaps it's not as much about his ego as it is about his firm belief that building and protecting your brand is foundational to success in the intellectual property industry, which television is. I just, with that in mind, and he's a control freak about. Right. Anybody that's worked near him knows that.

He's almost obsessive, compulsive about it. So if you know that at the very beginning, that here's a guy who is just antithetical to any idea that sounds even remotely close to what we just discussed, you're going to do that. You might get thrown out of the office for suggesting it. So no, from the get-go, no. Now, let's just say that that wasn't the case

and Vince was open to the idea. Here's the other reason why it wouldn't work. So there's two big ones. Without the talent that represents the brand, the brand doesn't represent anything. It represents a memory of something that you're not watching on WWE programming. That's called WCW Anything. It's just not the same.

would you get tuned in for, you know, a couple of months because there's some really cool, creative, you know, tongue-and-cheek bullshit you could come up with, you know, to come up with some pretty entertaining TV for a few months while you're establishing the brand. Yeah, that would be fun, but it would get tired after about six months. And then it would end up being, you know, a disaster of failure. Well, we know that didn't happen. let's talk about how this idea may have originally even been born. We're going back to 1997.

As a reminder, by the summer of 97, boy, the WWF is a sucking high and teat, man. The NWO is reigning supreme. Monday Nitro is the number one show and it's not even close. Let's take a look at what Dave was writing in July of 97. He says the ratings for the July 22nd Nitro on Tuesday were a 3.84 rating

and a 6.69 share. The ratings were shockingly high and very significant that it showed it wasn't just viewer patterns of being used to watching wrestling on Mondays, and that draws for Nitro, but the fans will actually seek it out and find it. This is interesting because the show was preempted,

so Monday Nitro was on a Tuesday night, and it still did a 3.84 rating. I mean, there's certainly an argument here, that WCW is on fire. Do you think with the benefit of hindsight that may have been one of the catalysts to thinking, hey, maybe this could work on another night? Maybe it doesn't just have to be on Monday night, Eric?

I mean, it could possibly have been. I mean, look, Thunder came to me through Harvey Schiller shortly after Harvey Schiller hung up the phone with Ted Turner who said, Harvey, I want to show for TBS on Thursday night. so I was probably the third person to know and I don't know what was going through Ted's mind possibly this could have been that could have been that this evening this Tuesday preemption and the success of it that could have been a catalyst or it could have been part of Ted's plan all along and I say that because again going back to the beginning knowing

the man a little bit and reading a lot about him over the years Ted has always believed that wrestling is foundational to the TBS network because of its consistent ability to draw a very loyal audience. That's one of the things that made Ted a fan, yes, not only of the in-ring product and the fun that you can have watching it, but he also really admired or respected, I should say,

professional wrestling as a business because it was a very predictable business that was undervalued at the time. And that's why Ted made the move he made to acquire his own wrestling property. And that's why he was consistent about doing everything at least he could do for WCW, despite the fact that everybody around him was trying to pull the rug out from underneath him. It's interesting too, because what aired on, I can't believe this is real. I mean, that days of thunder aired that day on T&T.

So it almost feels like this was intentional to try it on another night and just see what was possible. And maybe they had this in mind all along and this was sort of proof of concept. But the ratings prove out. And it's written here. It also shows that TBS, the idea of doing a prime time live show on a night besides Monday without WWF competition could do even better ratings than Nitro. Even better ratings. Do you think that was the original idea? they thought, hey, well, it makes sense.

I mean, if we're hypothetically splitting the wrestling audience, if we go to another night and there's no competition, the ratings could be even bigger. And we know that's not actually going to wind up being the case. But do you remember there being a lot of chatter about that in advance of the actual execution often? No, no, here's the fun thing. So Dave's knowledge of the television industry and how it all works

and his vast knowledge of ratings and, and all that that means. Dave's taking this leap that if Nitro does what Nitro is doing had to have against Monday Night Raw, then that means another wrestling show is going to do even better. If you don't know anything about television, you don't know anything about viewing patterns, you don't know anything about how ratings really work,

that's an easy leap to take, but it makes no sense. And anybody that's actually in the television business, which Dave clearly never has been and never will be, of obvious reasons for credit. Dave didn't know then as he doesn't know now how it really works. A lot of those numbers, look, I've said this so many times and people don't really remember it because it doesn't seem like that significant of a point, but you can go back to any.

discussion I've ever been in going all the way back to while I was in that competition and I've always talked about duplication that it's not like well there's three million people watching Monday Nitro and there's three million people watching Monday Night Raw and six million people watching wrestling no it's about 3.2 million and they're just going back and forth that may be a little bit of an exaggeration. So, and this is a thing, is nobody, nobody can tell you exactly no way to track this information, perhaps.

Maybe there is now and there wasn't when I was doing it, but you can't possibly track the back and forth. I'm going from MSNBC to CNN to Fox News and I'm just every couple of minutes going back and forth and back and forth. And if I happen to be out of Nielsen box, it's going to get. attract. The majority of the people watching wrestling, here's why this matters at all,

me at least. It's kind of what's happening today. You know, people say, oh, it's survival. That's not really. I mean, it isn't the Internet wrestling community because that's how people, you know, they get their attention and it makes them feel good and they're engaged and they're in a debate or an argument or whatever, right?

that's that's her entertainment that's why this shit is so freaking addictive right because that's what people love to do whether they admit it freely or not i do i have you all know it you've seen some of my shit at two o'clock in the morning i have fun doing it too sometimes but i would say you know of the one point i'll say two million people that watch monday night raw i would say just about all of them watch AEW. Not quite the same going in the other direction for obvious reasons or in an obvious way. We know that that is not the case, but I doubt there are very many AEW fans who don't watch WWE.

If for nothing else, just a bitch about it. It's not like AEW has their own separate little stockpile of unique wrestling fans that don't watch the other product. It is not the case. And it's similarly here, you got somebody watching raw, you got somebody watching Nitro and I'm going to change seats, digitally speaking, according to Nielsen, now I'm going to be over here watching what you were watching and you're going to be watching what I was watching.

Six million people, no, three million people bouncing back and forth. Let's, uh, I, I just did a little research. The real reason it was preempted, I guess days of thunder aired after the first run, but rough riders, do you remember this? There was a Civil War mini-series that aired four nights, or I'm sorry, two consecutive nights in July of 1997. And there's some real stars in here.

Tom Barringer, Gary Busey, Sam Elliott. So I guess that was a priority for T&T. But either way, this little experiment results in really strong ratings on a Tuesday for Nitro. And a few weeks later, we read in the torch.

This is, uh, call it late August. Beginning in November, a new live show will be added to the TBS wrestling schedule for Thursday nights. Not a lot is known about the new show at this point, probably because the format is still being determined. All the talk right now is that the show will be two hours and basically

formatted like Nitro. Eric Bischoff dropped a hint on the August 18th Nitro indicating that a new show could be an NWO show with Bischoff as the main commentator. Originally, WCW was pretty much dead set against adding another show to the schedule because it would put such a strain on the staff and wrestlers. here's the fun part apparently tbs offered such a large sum to wcw that it was an offer that couldn't refuse tbs badly wants to get in on the ratings bonanza that t and t and u s a are experiencing on mondays while the initial reaction is

that thursday is a bad time because of must see tv on nbc is competition it's worth mentioning that the tv audience because of nbc's lineup is higher than at any other point during the week so channel flippers may discover it during reruns or right after friends and Seinfeld listen we know that the Thursday night lineup on NBC boy it was a murderer's row I mean they stacked the deck with all their best shows including Seinfeld including ER including friends like I mean all their big hits were on Thursday night were you hesitant about Thursday night I mean was Wednesday night ever seriously considered how did you guys ultimately land on thursday

erring oh we got to wait back way way who wrote that what did that quote come from torch Wade killer yes sir big killer so I don't know where Wade was getting his information but like none of it was accurate there's no sum of money we know that for sure there was no money and you don't want to believe me, Wade? You know, Wade's cool. I'm just kidding. But those of you who don't want to believe me because I'm saying it, go

read Guy Evans' book. Specifically chapters 12 and 13, I think. Off the top of my head, I can't remember. But I think of close. It's all there based on Turner accounting and Turner's notes. It's there.

Receits everywhere. It's like 700 fucking pages of receipts. go read it it's awesome and it also supports the fact that nobody wanted this show i didn't want this show it was a hot freaking potato nobody wanted it everybody do let's see i don't want to make decision here brad you make that you know brad i do whatever you want to do i don't want to have voice of this your network that month nobody wanted that thing Harvey schiller didn't want it I didn't get to vote.

I was like the last guy that you could roll the shit down to. And said, do it. Find a way. That was my directive from Harvey Schiller. Ed wants it. Find a way. I don't want to be the guy to say, no. At that point, if I say no, who's going to come up behind me and do it, right?

I mean, it was a silly position to be in. And Harvey didn't want to be in that position. He didn't have a vote either. I had wanted this. So, yes, there was no money. Yes, we were reluctant right up until the point where I realized there was no, there was no way to say no. It's not possible.

So then the only thing you can do is say, yes, the best you can do the best job you can, which is what we try to do. It was not something we planned for. It's not something we thought about. Nothing was discussed weeks or months in advance of this. I mean, I don't know when the official decision was made before the news came out, but I bet it was no more than a week. And prior to that week, the only discussion I had about adding another show

was when Harvey Schiller called me on my cell phone on my way to Wyoming with my family for the 4th of July to tell me that Ted wanted a show on Thursday. So when I talk about there wasn't time to plan creatively, that's what we didn't even know we were going to do it. And I had about a week to try to fight it off. And then it was like, just find a way. So we did. And I didn't get to vote on Thursday night either.

I didn't get the vote on anything, just how to do it. What would you, I mean, listen, once you know you're dictated to and you're going to have to do a second show. If it was left up to you, what night, would you have picked Thursday? You know, I would have. And I know that sounds crazy. But wrestling was one, you know, when you, in the television industry, you know, television is categorized by genre. You know, you have sitcoms. Obviously, you have dramas. You've got, you've got action. And you, you, it used to be called generally speaking, alternative television. And in the alternative television, and then of course, sports. But in the alternative television bucket could be a number of different things,

documentaries perhaps in some cases. It's kind of a wide open category that's not scripted necessarily by writers in a structured way. Alternative programming has now become even more broken down. You know, maladyer's reality. There's, you know, within reality, there's called doc follows, doc dramas, you know, situationals, transactionals, it's just it's crazy.

It used to just be called alternative television, and the reason it was an important category in a programming industry is four situations just like this, where if you've got, let's use sports. Sunday afternoon sports is one of the most, I mean,

what else are you going to put on television on Sunday that's going to draw anywhere near Sunday football? Nothing. Right. But there is a vast audience, of people out there who don't like to watch football and will watch alternative television, something other than what's on the main networks at that time, some different type of programming.

So I think if you think from a programming point of view, it's a big, big challenge, but it doesn't take much to win. because if you can carve out the majority of that other, the rest of the audience that isn't watching those sitcoms on Thursday night back then, for whatever reason, if you could kind of dominate the audience that those shows don't have, that's a win. I don't know if that went into the discussion or not because now you're talking about ad sales, information, and things like that. It becomes a math equation at some point.

but there is a way to make an alternative night like that work for. Especially if you're hot, which we were. Let's talk just a minute about one of our great sponsors here on the program. I'm talking about Stopbox, and this is a real heads up. I mean, owning a handgun for self-defense comes with serious responsibility. You need it secure, but you also need it accessible when it matters most. And too often that means choosing between locking it away or leaving. it out, which means it's vulnerable to kids or guests or intruders, and that's the problem

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in the usa and the stopbox pro is tsa compliant stopbox offers a whole lot of other cool stuff too like the vehicle safe and chamberlock go check it out right now and for a limited time once again our listeners are getting a crazy deal 10% off your entire order and use our code 83 weeks and right now stopbox is also running a deal on their most popular bundle the two pack it'll save you over 30% and it comes with free accessories and shipping that's 10% off and a big bundle discount when you use the code 83 weeks at stopbox usa.com discover a better way to balance security and readiness with stopbox so we know we're going to be coming on thursdays and i'm curious you know we've always heard like the the stress and pressure that this added but let's just go through the

workflow of this traveling band of characters i think everybody listening to this knows that when nitro would go do a live show guys there's a whole lot more involved than just let's get the 40 wrestlers here or whatever you've got just 18 wheelers out of with guys who are going to have to hang the lights and set up the ring and set up the staging and i mean it is a a major operation how many people would you say total including production and talent are going to be in a market for a television show like nitro eric including freelancers everybody all told everybody getting paid that night in the building that worked for us you're probably looking at

probably a hundred and ten that we travel and another 30 that are freelance in the market you know production stage hands and things like that that yeah they're just they're already there we didn't have to travel in there but they work for so yeah you probably took 120 130 people all in now as a reminder this is the era where monday night has a lot of nitro we're historically doing house shows because those are a thing again and they're profitable now thanks to the NW and L EZE. And those are happening on Friday, on Saturday and on Sunday. So if we were to say we're going to start our work week on a Friday, that's a different crew because you don't need the same level of production, but still the wrestlers are there, the agents are there, the people

who are building the rings are there, and they're making towns on Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday, on Monday. And now we're adding Thursday. Now I know, what you're thinking at home you might be thinking to yourself self well i work five days a week i hear you and that's correct but they wake up on tuesday and have to go home and then on wednesday they have to turn around and get back out of town in order to make the thursday show the quality of life for a lot of people here is about to change in a major material way fair to say that was one of the biggest issues i mean just the human just a horsepower, right?

It's the energy, the human energy that it takes to give from point A to point B on the type of schedule that everybody had, whether you're a wrestler, you had your own unique bizarro schedule that you had to manage that most people are tired with, but honestly, including me, by the way. It's not a healthy way to live. I only did it short doses. But then you've got your production team. You know, some of those people are, you know, they're loading in at midnight in 1 a.m.

Oh, by the way, they're tearing down at 11 o'clock the next night. I mean, it's brutal. And then you've got, you know, all of it. It's all in its own way, regardless of what part of, what segment of the production you're in, whether you're in front of the camera or behind the camera, it doesn't make any difference. It's a brutal way to live when you're doing it five, six days a week. because we all know, I mean, people that have traveled much, no. Traveling in it of itself, even for fun, it's a hell out of you.

So you stack that all together, it was brutal. And to get, to get the mandate to do another two hours. Oh, and by the way, this is like everybody's getting ready for murder. This is why this is such a fascinating time. Why Thunder really, you know, a lot of people, what's one reason? There's a lot of reasons we've talked about them all. but thunder was a big part of that. Thunder accelerated and created opportunity

for what eventually happened to happen because of that one decision. Ultimately, if Ted wouldn't have brought thunder upon us, this sounds almost biblical, inevitably the outcome would have been the same, but it would have happened in a much lower pace. I do want to ask you a little bit about TBS because I think a lot of wrestling fans almost see them interchangeable TBS and T&T but that's not the way everybody in the world sees those two channels as a kid growing up in

Alabama I remember watching a lot of Braves games on TBS and of course in more modern times I think most of us have watched the NBA on T&T but once upon a time it felt like TNT was more high-end? I don't know. Because I mean, I remember TBS showing like a lot of Andy Griffith reruns and that sort of thing. What was your perception, Eric, or the difference between the two stations?

Well, the two different audiences. They were programmed specifically for those two different audiences, which is in a way ironic because it's exactly why Scott Sasson and, and Brad Siegel probably thought Ted was absolutely insane. for putting professional wrestling on tn tn tn tn t was programmed and budgeted to become the patina network the hood ornament if you will of of turner broadcasting the place where almost all the original movies went to tn t so the the aforementioned civil war four part series that you

talked about i guarantee you that was a ted turner project yeah there's no one has else got to vote on that. Like Brad Siegel couldn't just go, hey, Ted, you know, our research is, you know, determined that, you know, 98% of our audience never wants to see another Civil War movie again. Even if Brad knows that, he's not raising his hand. So, and Ted would spend a lot of money bringing what he felt were epics like this. And he said, loved history, loved the Civil War history.

He was fascinated by it. Anything that has to do with the outdoors. one of the reasons the National Geographic Channel was a part of term broadcasting broadcasting. I don't know if they were corporately aligned, but there was a unique licensing arrangement between the two at the very least. All the big budget stuff was on T&T. TBS was very true to its roots. That was the first network, right? The first station, if you will, that had very little money. Didn't really have a lot of experience in programming either, but he knew he wanted to be in cable television.

So he took what he could get with his limited budget. And one of those things was wrestling because he didn't have a lot of value to anybody else. So you could get it on your air cheap, but Ted knew it brought an audience. And then, yeah, Andy, Andy Griffith reruns are really cheap in syndication. There was a point in time when there were episodes of friends in syndication that were going for like three million an episode out here. Something is something ridiculous like that. Don't quote me on the number. But like the second run, in the third run of some of these sitcoms to this day are making more than some original productions are.

It's nuts. They couldn't afford that. But he couldn't afford Andy Mayberry, Gomer Pyle, so he was available. And that's what he built the TBS network. Then he got a hold of the Braves. It's the best network. It was the only network he had for it. Boom.

It's on TBS. Now he's, now he's sports and in, in, in, and, and, you're the best network. kind of nostalgia. That creates an older demo. The people that gravitate towards that network because of the way it's being programmed tend to be older or rural. The way it is. T&T was created to get the other side of that point, so to speak, the high-end advertisers, a network that could attract Mercedes-Benz or Rolex as opposed to energy drinks necessarily. And that's the way all most now things have changed over the last several years because of the streaming but most major cable platforms brand themselves vis-a-vis the content that they put on that that channel or

that station that i just go way too deep no that's what we like we like this sort of thing hopefully it made sense you know i want to make you laugh i know you're going to love this and listen i'm not picking on him he's a friend of mine i i like me some dave melzer I know we agree to disagree, you and I do, but given what we've read in Guy Evans book, which is directly from Turner, like, records, we know more than we knew back then. And Dave wrote with the money figure offered by TBS for the show, believed to be about 12 million a year substantial enough to ensure the company as being easily and majorly profitable despite its huge talent costs.

Well, okay, we know that never happened. but one of the things that I do want to talk about is not just the financial strain and then the staffing strain because we've really talked about how internally the company is going to feel that let's stop that conversation for just a minute and let's talk about the people on the other end of the old boob tube does you concern yourself or were you concerned that hey this might be the tipping point of overexposure that was absolutely my number one concern it's the one that i raised when i thought maybe there was a chance i could speak up and turn the tide on this thing the thing i brought because it was

i mean it was visceral i didn't have to think about it with harvey so harvey we can't do that because i knew what would happen i knew we were going to dilute our talent i knew we were going to go from must see tv in head-to-head competition to oh fuck i don't need to watch that i can watch i'll catch up on thursday It's like, no, do not do this. Harvey, we can't do this. And here's why we can't do this. Not only are we going to dilute the talent and make Monday Night Show less of a must-see,

we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot from a strategy point of view or from a tactical point of view, because we're going to embrace the strategy that we're going to be able to do the same thing on TBS with the same people. No. Oh, and I didn't, I didn't even bring this up to Harvard because I was hoping my first two, my first point would have sunk in. I didn't even get to thinking about how the hell are we going to produce this. Meaning, I don't really have enough staff as it is, despite a lot of the bullshit narrative by the bullshit artist himself, Dave Meltzer, as you've just alluded to, thank you very much for that. I do appreciate it, despite your friendly relationship with him. All the while this was going on, you know what else was going on? I was getting my, not right, not right this week, and this is being reported, but within a month or two, I'm getting my budgets cut. Budgets that were approved the year before, and budgets that I'm crushing, I'm overproducing in my, my forecasts from a revenue and profit point of view,

Yet, you want to cut my marketing budget by what? Wait a minute, you want me to, I can't hire any more people? What? I just got two hours of prime time television I've got to do. What do you mean? I can't hire anybody. Oh, I can hire anybody from inside Turner. I just can't hire anybody from outside Turner.

Well, there's fucking nobody inside Turner that knows how to do what we do. And I can't train them. But we'll, we'll get it done. I didn't have that conversation like that with Harvey. I had too much respect for him and he wouldn't have tolerated it. But that's what I was feeling. And as if that's not enough, I mean, we've, we've already talked about the stress that's going to put on the actual staff,

the production staff, the writing staff, you know, all of it. But you've also got, this is very much the, the era of guaranteed contracts. and Eric, my understanding is it would usually come down the pike where, I mean, that's the reason we've heard Kevin Nash and Scott Hall wanted to come is, hey, it's guaranteed money, but it's also a guaranteed number of dates. Hey, there's a, there's no cap on the income you can make. There is a bottom floor. You know, that's what we've always heard is, you know, the minimum guarantee.

But there was a max on the dates. Once by the time, Vince could just call and say, hey, you're booked next so and so and he could do that as often as he wanted and in wcw the structure was a little different it was a set amount of money for a set amount of dates now i'm hammering that point because i hope everyone at home is realizing we just added 52 dates out of thin air now there's 52 new dates on the schedule that we didn't have that means you're going to need more talent as well right Yes, and no.

Yes, we needed at least one of call, him or her, and it ended up being Brett, an anchor talent, a major star, preferably that is new to the scene, that can be the star of that show, and we can build post stars underneath. and then eventually stars along with our much like the NWO because it was a faction was the star of Nitro a while and Sting became the star he was up in a rafters yeah the NWO went from being the star to being the co-star didn't matter because it all elevated the hope was that with a couple key additions one in particular being Brett that we would be able to figure out because we didn't have time to plan for it.

No strategy sessions. There was no riffing ideas. There was no fun to happen, but do it. The hope was that we could figure out a way, because it's just math, right? It's always just comes down to math. It's like, okay, well, we've got 52 less states. Well, we're not going to let television suffer because what kind of company are we, everybody? We're a television company.

So television comes first. So if I have to take 52 dates that we're available for live events and make them unavailable for live events, then that's what we're going to have to do because there's no choice. That's how it works. We'll lose over here on the live event side of our business. And hopefully somebody's made up their mind that we're going to make it up over here in the television park.

That wasn't my decision. I didn't get to vote. hopefully that's what they were thinking about. That's what I was thinking about. How do we do this? And it really was, if I could get, and it was Brett right off the bat because it was just timing.

It was just timing more than anything. Okay, Brett comes. I'll figure out a way. We'll create our way into the solution, but we've got to figure it out. It's upon us now. Listen, if you're trying to figure out one of the biggest purchases of your life, actually your second biggest purchase, I mean, behind your house is your car, right?

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That's car gurus.com, C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.com, car gurus.com. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, what this means. And I guess before we get to the show, there's a report in the observer to sort of backs up what you've been saying here all along from day one of this program. A memo was sent internally to WCW officials on 8.13, about a second show, although Bischoff was telling people, perhaps in an attempt to come off as the good guy in a situation that wouldn't be taken well, that he was going to resist doing the show unless it was specifically ordered by Ted Turner.

However, high-level internal meetings were scheduled as to how to put this show together on August 19th in Atlanta. tbs may change its weekend four hours of taped wrestling program schedule although no change will be made in the saturday night show the belief stemming from statements bischoff made on nitro and other bits we've picked up is that one of the two weekly shows would become more n w o oriented with fish off as the host and the other more wcw oriented they're going to try to portray the two groups even more as two entirely different promotions that are feuding and have the pay-per-view and arena shows become more of an inter-promotional focus. So there's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with the last part first. Was that one of the original ideas? Let's run an NWO league and a WCW league,

and then we can sort of create our own interpromotional war? Absolutely. Absolutely. Senate, right? As soon as I started talking about it publicly, particularly when the decision have been made, that was the focus. It was the goal originally.

And we know we're going to kick the tires on that when we do like an NWO takeover as we get closer to Starcade 97. But when you're in these original meetings with these other Turner executives, obviously, listen, based on the way it's written, it reads like, hey, the cable wars are here, Nickelodeon's competing, USA's competing, T&T and TBS are competing. And we know that the T&T has enjoyed a lot of success with Nitro. So it makes sense that TVS wants a wrestling show.

I get that. I understand it. But I am curious, if you felt like overexposure may be an issue, where there are discussions about how to make that show look different than? Only internally. Unlike, I always try to give Brad Siegel a lot of credit for this when Brad,

I found out shortly after, maybe slightly before I did, that Nitro was going to be on TNT, um, I know he didn't want it, a hundred percent confident in that statement. But once Ted said, do it, he embraced it like he was his own in a good way, not in a territorial way. Now, how can I help you Eric, right? What can TNT do? Because T&T had a lot more than WCW did. Everything we did in WCW from a production point of view or design point of view, all that was internal. We didn't have access to outsource any of our stuff even to other Turner companies.

And quite honestly, they weren't that good anyway, even if we were allowed to. So we just did everything ourselves to the best of our ability with the budget equipment we had. And we did pretty well with it. We did very well with it. Nitro with with Brad's help. For example, that whole Nitro open that everybody brags about, didn't design that. Nobody in WCW designed that.

Pretty sure I'm right about that. That started at TNT, at least the concept and the branding and the design of Nitro. Now, I was involved in that. I was a part of those discussions with Brad and some of the people in his team. But they were doing the work in bringing us ideas to approve, essentially. And we're great ideas. Brad is the one that funded out of his budget, all of the research that went into creating the most exciting new format professional wrestling at that time almost 30 years.

So that was Brad. If Brad hadn't had done that, we wouldn't have done that research. I wouldn't have had the insight that I'd gleaned from that research to make the decision I made to bring Lex Lugar in as a surprise. It's just one little example. The cliffhangers that I relied so heavily on came out of research. You know, so much of that Metro format came out of the research that Brad Siegel paid for. So he deserves a lot of credit.

Now, let's talk about TBS. Bill Burke is a genuinely nice guy in a very strong. smart man, didn't lift a finger. Not an idea, not even a question, other than when can we do it. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I don't think so. So it was night and day. Nitro was a team effort with a lot of important people behind it. And TBS, Thunder was, all right, we got to go do this, let's go do it.

that's the difference we got a great question here we're doing this live on YouTube we hope you'll go hit the subscribe button and turn on your notifications bell at 83 weeks com so you don't miss us the next time we're live but instagram a wrestling historian wants to know as we're talking about a hypothetical brand split

between nitro and thunder with regards to wcw and the NWO Instagram a wrestling historian who's always bringing the good questions wants to know was Roddy Piper originally considered to take down the New World Order at StarK-96 and the reason he asked you this, Eric, is because you were quoted in a newspaper in Chicago, the Chicago Sun Times on June 15th of 1997.

And you said something like, we originally figured the NWO would be a six-month program. So if we're thinking that it might be a six-month program and it was originally going to get kicked off, we'd call it the summer in 96th, and I could see how Piper comes back in October and that's the end in December of 96. The trouble is nobody expected it to be this hot, right? You don't kill it when it's that hot.

Was that the original plan as best you remember? No, it wasn't the plan. Okay. It wasn't the plan. I mean, look, it didn't take us but a week or two before we realized what we had. I got you. In July of 96. And it would not have included a potential end of something we just started.

in December. Copy. So I don't know where that information started. And, you know, who knows, who cares. It doesn't really matter. But no, it wasn't, was never the case, never the conversation. I do want to ask you about the weekend show, because it's easy for us to just sort of gloss over this.

But for years and years and years, the A show for WCW was WCW Saturday night. Now, of course, we know that all changed in September of 95 of the creation. and Nitro. But, man, Saturday night felt like a B show when Nitro came on the scene. But now with Thunder, were you concerned about

Saturday night at all? I mean, clearly Ted or somebody at Turner had a soft spot for Saturday night. Was there a consideration to saying, hey, let's scrap thunder. Or was that never even viable or possible? Did you mean scrap? I mean Saturday night?

Yes, yes, yes. no no because it costs so little to produce that show okay and it was local and we didn't have to use top talent for it we could almost use it as a little bit of a developmental territory or developmental opportunity we had the power plant going at the time it's one of the reasons i gave the book to jimmy hart and asked him to focus on a lot of the younger talent jane helms um and and many many others uh that actually made in the business some who still are. So we looked at it. WCW to Saturday night was valuable to TBS based on its performance even with Nitro. So it worked for them financially. It didn't put a lot of pressure on me or production, quite frankly. It was an easy show to do. And it was cheap. So, no, it was more maintenance and maybe, like I said, a kind of way to make it work for us. There was no discussion of killing it.

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the overexposure and the stress. Once upon a time, I imagine you were pretty hands-on. I guess I shouldn't assume that. Let me ask. When were you hands-on, if at all, with WCW Saturday night? And when did you sort of take your hands off of WCW Saturday night? I'm talking about you personally.

93. I mean, when I say hands off, there was always Dusty, a Rick Flair, a Kevin Sullivan, or someone, a group of people actually that were driving the creative of that. I would be aware of it. I would sit in sometimes. Sometimes you listen and learn. Because again, I didn't feel strong in my capabilities in that area at that time. but I let I delegated pretty well when I came to creative but that probably stopped probably early 95 even before Nitro things just started getting busier and we were looking at ways of doing more things you know Disney was the thing and I was at one point considering moving WCW to to Orlando. I don't know if we've ever talked about. Huh. Yeah, there was about three months. And I'll have to go back and try to figure out what year it was. It was probably the first, second year we were down there or at least the second time we were down there. Um, I was, you know, again, I'm looking at the budget. I'm looking at all the people

were flying into Orlando. And I realized that that list, you know, again, I'm looking at the budget. And I'm looking at all the people were flying into Orlando, and I realized that that list is about 50% shorter than it normally is because half of the people that I'd use for my TV show, I was flying from Orlando. Half my crew is already there. So I thought, well, why don't I just move everybody that's in Atlanta down to Florida and we'll set up, you know, our own shop in Florida? up. I floated that internally to key people. Nobody wanted to go. You know, and I get it. People had kids in school, homes, they didn't necessarily, their spouse didn't necessarily want

to leave or could leave. So I understood why. I was just disappointed because I thought it would have been a cool move. It's interesting to think, you know, we've mentioned the overexposure piece a bit and I've mentioned syndicated shows. I just want to remind everybody, Monday night, Nitro, Thursday night, Thunder, WCW Saturday night. And oh, by the way, there's also pro and worldwide.

And WCW main event on Sunday night. You've got six shows, three syndicated shows, two live shows, plus WCW Saturday, night yeah a lot of television being created here a lot of content being created here one of the other things that we're going to be talking about is talent of course and the torch is doing a cover story here in late august of 1997 and he says wcw salaries comma roster to expand for a new show Kevin nash up for a substantial raise one of the biggest drawbacks wcw saw on adding a weekly live show to their schedule was the lack of available talent at first such a claim

sounds preposterous since wcw has the deepest talent roster perhaps of any wrestling promotion in history but the devil is in the details the small print in wcw's top stars contracts it was no surprise that hogan would demand a limited schedule but the fact that such a clause became a trend was new to the industry kevin nash scott hall sting and randy savage are among the top names who've signed or extended their contracts with WCW over the past two and a half years who've negotiated a cap on the number of dates they will work. In fact,

one of the bigger reasons Hall and Nash agreed to jump was the limited work schedule. When Six asked to be released from his WWF contract, it was because he feared with his string of injuries that his career would be cut short if he didn't switch to WCW's more limited schedule. We sort of laid this out that you're going to be in an uphill battle with some of these limited type date opportunities, who would have helped you navigate who's got time, who doesn't have time, like when you're trying to figure out how to reverse engineer this

new show that's just falling into your lab, it does feel like you're going to have to work backwards in some respects. I mean, you're from a storytelling standpoint, the perhaps the only way to make this happen would have been a quote unquote brand split. If we only keep them on one show things stay the same, right? Yep. Yep. But unfortunately, again, this shortly after Thunder is when they started cutting my budgets and freezing budgets.

So, yes, the original idea is brand split. Give me somebody new and fresh. We got that red heart. Now to achieve exactly what you said, I'm going to be really transparent here. It's not like I sat and thought through the methodology. of how to accomplish what we know now needed to be accomplished. Right. I was kind of going, I knew, I knew we had a limited number of dates.

That part didn't really bother me that much because, again, I just, my reasoning is I didn't like house shows anyway. House shows were good business, but they weren't high profit margin business. There's a lot of costs associated with them and burning up talent dates. If you really do hard math on live events, we know this now because they hardly exist anymore, for the very reason I'm about to describe, but it's not like it's new. If you go back and you look at the revenues, yeah, your gross revenues are really big. Oh, it did a $500,000 house.

And you start backing the math out of it. Sure, it was proper. For some promoters, it was extraordinarily profitable based on who they were and how they pay talent. Jerry Durit, or in Ghana, perfect example of what I mean. But nonetheless, as time has gone on and television has, become more important the costs associated with live events from insurance to gas in the trucks to move stuff, whatever it is, all of the costs associated with live events has been for years making live events less and less financially attractive. They have served

the purpose more for local market promotion to support television. In some cases, then they were then they were serving the bottom line that's very true with wrestling you're literally touring your television brand in major television markets 365 days a year one-way share so they become less important now and everybody's talking about it now but it was also true back then so I took a little bit of comfort the dates weren't as big of a challenge as the headlines are making it out to be or the or the editorializing yes it was a factor but not a big one the big one was creative and look i worked in wwe during the original brand split it sucked

they couldn't figure it out worked for a little while come up with some pretty cool stuff fun Steph and I competing against each other in the beginning and you know it's tongue and cheek kind of fun

McMahon versus Bishop silly but it was it kind of was fun glue and I held this shit together a little bit in between the actions it kind of faded away

and they've tried different ways of doing it and different ways of drafts and all that and it's a ten-pole moment it's something you can promote but

they've never really had a lot of impact on the direction of the programming. Yeah, but how about when this guy went over here and anybody came, I'm sorry, okay, you went. But for the most part, the formats have not been affected what they've been. But what they have done, a good job is not over-exposing top talent. But it's taken them how many years to get there?

Right. It's taken them 20 years to figure it out. It's just now starting to work. we didn't have a we didn't have a model we didn't have a math formula that we could go to we just had to figure it out and for me it was always easy enough to go okay well just kill 52 dates out of live events we'll figure it out it is interesting because you're also in this process going to maybe lose a little bit of an advantage you had when you're negotiating with talent Because of that schedule, I mean, you know, if it was just a Monday and weekend opportunity,

that's one thing. But now if we're Monday, Thursday and oh, by the way, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it gets a little more stressful. And as a reminder, these trucks have to go new places, these rings and stages and sets and lights have to be put up, taken down, packed up, gotten to the next town. I mean, this is a major undertaking. Do you remember feeling like you needed to staff up more? from an office standpoint, or since you didn't really have it in the budget, were you just

going to try to, hey, make it work and let's just, if there's a stress fracture, we'll deal with it. But let's just use what we got to start. By default, that's all we could do. Yeah. Again, not to keep hammering this. There was no hiring anybody. No budgets. Nobody. Nobody. Perfect example. And this might not have been the exact time frame. But right around the time, it became. public. And I think if I remember, this is all memory now, so you know what that's worth, right? I think

Shane McMahon was the person who originally kind of launched the WWE internet platform. Yeah, AOL. Yeah. Shane was the driver behind that initially. What I think

I've heard, I don't want to test to it. But the reason I remember that, I was thinking, oh man, he's right. Because you know, Bob Ryder was in my ear. We don't talk much about Bob Ryder, but Bob was a great dude. I love Bob. He was fun. And he's always had a little something for me.

You know, it was always credible information. He was always good. He said, hey, with WWE's doing, watch a website. Huh. With Bob, I was doing his prodigy show, like one of the first cat shows or whatever it is. A prodigy, nobody else was really doing that. Nobody in WWE had done that, I don't think. But Bob was the guy, and I liked Bob, and he did a little thing,

and some things for WCW from time of time. So I thought, you know, I'll do his show. This is fun. I like him. He's funny. He asks good questions. And that's, whatever year that was, because I went, you know what? I asked Janie Engel, I need to find the most cutting edge, the best website,

designer, internet guy. You need to hire one. Put in the request, they figured out, you know, went to human resources so they could word it properly. They knew what I was looking for. And they got shut down. Well, what do you mean to shut down? I got room here. See, I still have the administration room in my budget.

It says so right there. See how much money left over? I can do this. This is not a big deal. No. But here's what you can do, Eric. You can take anybody from IT and Turner and you can move them over to WCW. Because on the surface, that sounds like it wouldn't make sense.

You know, that technology, especially back then. This was all brand new. I didn't know anything. Oh, I'll hire somebody that knows what this stuff is about and then come to work for me and do what I'm going to ask them to do. So we're not way behind the WWE in this new way of reaching audience. Oh, okay. Well, let's see if we can find somebody that knows how to do that.

Oh, we don't have anybody. So what do I do? just have to wait that's why I remember it so distinctly it was very frustrating but that's and I tell you that story just to give you context of what was going on internally while this new show is being dumped on our lap

those of me when I said out stressed out he was oh he looked like the walking dad he was so stressed out yeah I was this is exactly why one example well maybe it's time you try to figure out how to make your budgets work can i recommend rocket money i'm a big believer in this program because when it comes to spending you know sometimes it's out of sight out of mind a daily coffee habit those streaming subscriptions

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Hey, let's talk I'm tweeting I'm sending a message to Dave Silva right now so he can pull it up live while we're doing this Is it your rocket money account Are you going to show us

how you were overpaying? No, no, I'll just say Because now you guys can hear me I thought I was going to get this text in before you were done reading the commercial But you caught me dead to write So Dave, I just sent you a tweet texted it to you

From last night So when it's convenient you can pull it up While we're waiting for Dave to get that together, I want to bring this up. You know, we've got all these new expenses. We've got a new show, a sixth show. And what's interesting about this is this becomes official where we know about it through the newsletters. And I would say, you know, August of 1997. So I'm curious, did you, were you already booking buildings in August for January?

I bring this up because early reporting would show, hey, the show is going to launch in November. Was Thunder ever talked about as November and pushed to January? Or was it January all along? Got that I don't remember, Conrad. That I don't remember. It's a point of time.

I could see how if you're doing, you know, World War III and you know you're building towards your December collision course pay-per-view of a year and a half long story, line with Hogan and Sting. We're not going to talk about it now. It's available in the archives, Starcade 97, biggest show in WCW history.

I can see how one might say, that might not be the best time to launch a new show. Let's get through this and then let's start the new show. And maybe we can have some controversy and that leads into the new show. You know what? That's a very logical assumption. Yes. It's conceivable, right? It's logical.

which is why that's probably not it. There's probably something else. Well, here's where I was getting at. You know, if you did, whether you did or didn't have building holds in November, we know that you're going to have to in January.

Now, I just want to mention this because we've talked about how crowded this is going to get. You're going to be doing Monday Nitro and house shows. So you do a house show on January 3rd in Columbia, South Carolina. This is 1998. we're talking about you're going to do a house show the next day in Columbus Georgia on January 4th and then on January 5th we're going to make our

WCW debut at the Georgia Dome now I know that we all have seen that the high watermark for WCW is probably the July 6th 1998 nitro where Goldberg beats Hogan for the big gold belt got it we understand but the debut was actually in January of that year on January 5th. I bring this up because the next day, you guys go to Rome, Georgia, and you do a WCW Saturday night taping, and then you have one off day, and now it's time to do Thunder on January 8th. So you're running the Georgia Dome, your very first time in the Georgia Dome.

So anytime you're running a Dome show for TV, it's a big damn deal. But when you're running one in your own backyard with all the stress and pressure of all the Turner executives being there. And by the way, there's 26,773 people there on a freaking Monday night to see a TV show. They could have farted in their couch and watched it home. But instead, they're going to come on down, pay for parking, buy a ticket, but pay $25 for a DDP shirt.

They're doing all that. The next day roam Georgia, one day off and then the nitra, or I'm sorry, the Thunder debut. This feels like you're, the stress has to be. on you in a major way. It's like, kids, I love you and I hope you had a good Christmas. Dad's going to work and it ain't going to be fun. It quit being fun. And that's, I think, the really sad part about all this, this whole story and the WCW story

from say, you know, 94 on is thunder not only created the stresses that we've already discussed, Financial, human resources, creative, creative in a big way, all of it. That's not even the worst part of it. The worst part of it is what it did to morale. You could start with talent, and you can't blame them for not wanting to be on the road, especially the ones with families. I was always pride to be as considered as possible, which is why I offered the 180-dates cap in the first place. sure is you have to have a life you can't show up to work and deliver you're a performer

and do it well if your life is a wreck because you're never home and you're physically exhausted it doesn't work I saw it firsthand for years before you got into the management I saw the effects I want people that would show up a TV want to show up TV and more importantly, have freaking fun showing up for TV, just talent, people that are really talented that are actually having fun, not pretending they are, not having fun despite the fact that they're doing what they're doing, but actually have a blast doing what they're doing, that's when the magic happens, that's when the ideas come, that's when some of the best improv comes, that's when some of the most magic moments come, not when you're grinding,

wrestling out through a meat grinder. And that was the part that I was most fearful of. I knew when I brought Scott Hall in, I wish he was allowed to tell the story. I don't think he'd care. When I brought Scott Hall in, I never did this with hardly any other talent that I remember. Because he had a reputation.

I knew Scott before he left WCW. It wasn't like I didn't know who Scott Hall was. Or not that I didn't hear about things that were happening in WWE. I was really well aware. So much so that when I brought Scott in, picked him up at his hotel, and I drove him, I wanted him to ride with me so I could get inside his head a little bit and let him get inside mine. One of the things I said to him about halfway down is I said, Scott,

for the first time since I've been in this company, the morale is pretty good. That's not to say people didn't improvise. But overall, the attitude, the energy, the collaboration, the willingness to collaborate, just the whole vibe, the energy backstage was so refreshingly positive, particularly compared to what it had been, that I was really afraid that somebody would come in and jeopardize that. Because I've seen it.

I was a part of it. I was collateral damage because of it. I saw the kind of gamesmanship and bullshit that goes on in the locker room. When you've got basically people who are just showing up because it's what they do. Versus people showing up because they're having a blast. We were having a blast even before Scott and Kevin got there. I had that conversation with Scott. He was very honest about it.

I was very open about it. It was a good conversation, and we obviously went on and did great business together. But, and I say all that, again, that was the, that's why when I said, it's one of the saddest parts of the story, because having Thunder absolutely vaporized that vibe, from production, talent, to creative, all that positive energy that we had created and the momentum we created, when Thunder was forced upon us, by Ted Turner, I'd absolutely vaporized that

and continued that feeling. I was pissed off. Oh, gosh, I'm never going to see my wife, my kids, never going to be able to sleep in my own bed. This is what I was trying to get away from. It wasn't true. It wasn't 300 dates a year, but it was more than they bargained for.

Or at that point, potentially more than they bargained. was bad. It was a bad decision in a lot. Eric, would Zane Bresloff have been the guy who was quote unquote booking buildings for you at this point? Zane worked with Gary Jester.

Gary Jester was kind of, you know, he got inherited I guess. Crocrow emotions. And he was always there. But when Zane came in, Zane was just Zane had deeper contents. Zane, Zane's footprint,

promotionally was much bigger than Gary's footprint. Gary Jester had personal relationships with small, perhaps some, mostly mid-sized, occasionally a larger venue. But Gary was a small town, small market kind of guy. That was his role of debt. Zane was a large market, key player, key decision makers, and big organizations kind of guy. So Zane did a lot of the bigger stuff.

Gary did a lot of the smaller stuff that he had traditionally been doing for you. I do want to ask you about the booking of this building because I've always been curious. Do you recall how or why you guys chose Daytona? You're going to have the first thunder at the ocean center. I bring this up because I'd like to state in a loud and clear voice for the record

that the ocean center in Daytona Beach is arguably on the Mount Rushmore of WCW venues. And I know the traditionalists are going to say, oh, no, it's the Omni, it's center stage. It's, you know, Greensboro Coliseum. I hear you. But let's think about this. Paul Kogan turns heel at Daytona Beach at the Ocean Center. That's in 1996.

You come back in 1997 and you have what's going to wind up being at the time, this was the biggest WCW pay-per-view in history. It's a tag match with Dennis Rodman on one. side and Carl Malone on the other. And then in 1998, just, uh, I don't know, a week or so removed from Starcade 97, you're going to debut Thunder here. And the dark match that's advertised is Sting and Hulk Cogan. So Hulk Hogan first turns heel in this building. We come back a year later with Dennis Rodman and Carl Malone like a month after the finals, two weeks after the finals. And then a year later, we're back to debut a new show live on TBS. And although it didn't air, those in the stands that day, saw Sting and Hulk Hogan for the Big Gold Belt,

this is an important damn building in WCW history, but it's realistically not a major market. Daytona Beach is not L.A. or New York or Chicago, it's not even Atlanta. What made the ocean center the right call here? And why was that building so special for WCW? I wasn't a part of the discussion and the possibility. of choosing that building. I just merely approved it. My guess would be money. And budgets were a big problem right about now. It was close. It's a right to work state so you don't have union issues. It's a building we had history in, as you just described. So the market

kind of high expectation and made it easier to sell tickets. Yeah, it's not a major market, but it's also the kind of market that draws from a pretty wide area surrounding it. And there's a lot of wrestling fans in it. So there was a lot of reasons for it. But if there was one reason, it would have been the money. It's the overall expense and the bottom line. It's just so crazy to think that, you know, you're going to do your first Georgia Dome show and a few days later,

two days later, you're going to do your debut Thunder and it's in the same building where Hulk Hogan turned heel and you had Dennis right. It's just so much going on here. Before we move on, because there's another major change that's going to involve Clash of the Champions I want to talk about.

But she teased something a minute ago when we were finishing up our commercial and you said, hey, I texted something to Dave. Dave has it ready. I'm flying blind here, Eric. The show is yours. All right. I just want to shout this out to Haxon Jim Duggan

and his wife Deborah. Sonny Ono was here. Jake Roberts is why Cheryl were here. We had a blast last night. So I was hoping David put that thing up there, but evidently we don't have that. Yeah. And we're at the rodeo having an absolute blast. What a cast of characters that is, man.

We just talked about Jim Duggan. We just talked about Sonny Ono. And there's Jake the Snake Roberts. My goodness and his lovely wife, Cheryl. Yeah, what a, when did, when did Cody Wyoming become such a hotbed for professional wrestling legends? Since I moved here. Oh, there you go. You know, there's a celebrity golf events here this week.

And a good friend of mine, Ryan puts it on. And they bring in, there's a lot of celebrities here, NFL celebrities, major league baseball pitchers. We've done softball games a couple times. I played in one or two of them. But Sonny, usually Ernest Miller joins us, but he had been traveling the week before and he just couldn't do it. But it's so much fun. I laugh my ass off.

Hacks on Jim Duggan and Deborah. He's actually just as funny as he is. I walked up. They were already there, you know, started chatting. I was, you know, busted over laughing within the first three minutes. And I don't think I stopped until it was time to go home. This is such a fun night. shout out to sunny oh no and hacksaw jim dug in and jake roberts and the whole clan i love that photo

thanks for sharing that uh i want to ask you about clash of the champions here but before we do let's do some live questions we are indeed live here on youtube Travis medway is with us and he says hey gents i lost someone who was a father to me yesterday a father slash mentor this isn't sympathy seeking i just wanted to say thank you for being on here today it cheered me up. Thank you, gents. It's powerful what you do. Well, I hate to hear your loss, Travis, but thank you for joining us. And we're glad to do our part to offer a fun distraction, hopefully. Travis has another question for you here. He says, wanted to defend Eric again. On Starcade 1997, the end was a bit naft, but casuals got a happy ending. Heartcores,

stay tuned in and 1998 showed. WV got red hot with all sorts of nonsensical crap. Shout out to Cacodmon, 3246, a new member here at 83 Weeks.com. AOTV productions has a question about your old pal, Jonathan Coachman, who's been making some headlines lately. I saw that. Hey, Eric, earlier this year, Jonathan Coachman made a controversial comment about Bailey, calling her washed up and boring. What do you think of Bailey, Eric?

I like her. She's a, I don't know. really well, but I've, I've interacted with her enough to get a sense of who she is. I think she's an incredibly talented young lady. I like her a lot, and she's achieved a lot, but I don't really know her well enough to go into what she should be doing or how she should be doing it. I don't watch enough. All I know is when I was there, she was great, great talent, and just a great person to work

with that stage her energy was always really positive or so never saw her walk around boo-woo face or upset about some bullshit she always had a positive vibe to her and she was great in the rank so that's what i think shout out to bailey uh ask a bum wants to know would the bloodline have gotten over in the 90s that's interesting eric if the bloodline showed up in the 90s on raw or nitro could that group of work could they have gotten over Yeah. Yeah.

No doubt. Of course. It's a great storyline. That storyline, you could, you'll be able to rinse and repeat that storyline in about five years, change the characters, change the names, make a couple little moves just to break up the creative flow and pattern of the bloodline. It'll feel like a brand new storyline. That's how good that storyline is.

That's how well developed stories. So well developed, you'll be able to go in and. modify just a few things so it doesn't look and feel the same but it'll get the same results it's a really good story on let's talk about uh clash of the champions here you know we've we've known clash of the champions since 1990 1980 where rick flair uh made sting i guess it was a 45 minute time limit drawls heads up with wrestlemania four and it was free on tbs it was It's a counter program WrestleMania, much like Vince McMahon tried to sabotage Arcade with the creation of Survivor Series.

Dusty and Jim Crockett said, okay, hold my beer. We'll create Clash of the Champions. But that was a unique opportunity for TBS. And if TBS is going to get their own show, well, that means the end of the Clash of the Champions is here. The last one happens August 27th in 1997 at Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a tag match in the main event. Scott Hall and Randy Savage against DDP and Lex Lugar in a tag match. Listen, I love Clash of the Champions. It felt special,

but I guess you don't need a one-off special if you're going to have weekly recurring stuff. Especially with the production values. I mean, we were doing a Clash of the Champions every Thursday night. That's exactly right. I mean, so why? Do we need a other one once a quarter? It made no sense. What's weird about that and what sucks about that at the same time, and I know you get where I'm going with this, is because it was so infrequent, you know, you saw a handful of them a year. It felt special.

But when it's every week, it doesn't feel like this thing to look forward to. It doesn't, I don't know. I feel like the weekly format makes it easy to sort of take it for granted. Flash of the Champions felt like must see TV for me. Thunder about a month in was like, eh, I'm good.

Yep. It's crazy how that works, isn't it? Not really. It's almost predictable. Yeah. The ever exposure you were talking about? We predicted it. That was Brad Siegel's concern.

You know, Bill Burke, uh, he understood, but he didn't care because he was a president of TBS and he wanted the show. He wanted the numbers. He wanted headlines. I don't really care. It's all he wanted.

That's what he got. You know, the more I think about it, the bigger of a mistake it becomes. Like, I'm thinking about it differently now than I did when it happened because I've just been able to kind of look at things differently now and in more detail,

thanks to people like Guy Evans. That taught me more about my own company than I ever knew. Isn't that something? He's going to be more people about my company inside of Turner organization that I ever met. Crazy. Anyway, I do want to bring this up too because I think this often gets lost in the shuffle. Eric, you pointed it out earlier. It's not just raw. I'm sorry, it's not just Nitro and Thunder,

but it's also WCW Saturday night. It's also pro. It's also worldwide. It's also made events. So it's six shows. Now that's going to be what the schedule looks like, you know, the first Thursday of January. But by the end of the month, the last nitro of January 98, that's when it becomes permanent, that nitro is going to three hours. I mean, it's just, this is death by 1,000 cuts at this point. Doesn't it? I mean, if you felt like there was a risk of overexposure by adding another day, we're going to double down and add yet another hour on.

It's almost like somebody wanted it to happen, isn't it? well so that's where I was getting at what was what what is the adding of the third hour is that a result of well hey if t b because I know that there had to be some executives who were in charge of t and t and other executives who were in charge of tbs I don't know that to be for sure but I imagine that there's silos for these different networks I know there's economies of scale and they work together but as far as programming I feel like internally were there like team tbs people and team t and people was that a thing sure So, so if that's the case, what was someone saying, hey, if they can do another show on another day, give us a third hour. How do you land on the third hour? I don't think it was that. I think it was a decision driven 100% by finance. Okay.

I think finance, because you keep in mind, you know, finance was a separate division that oversaw all things financial at T&T and all things financial at TBS, all things financial at WCW, blah, blah, blah, blah. Vicki Miller, I believe, was instrumental in these decisions. I don't know that as a fact, and I could be wrong. My gut tells me, especially with so much that I've read, basically I have it again, I'm pretty sure I'm right. This was a, this was a decision that was driven not by Brad Siegel, not by Bill

Burke, probably not any involvement or even a right to really object to it making Miller in finance they were squeezing as much value out of WCW as they possibly could get without regard as to how bad it was going to damage the brand because they didn't care because they knew what we didn't know if I think this was part of it maybe not intentionally I'm not suggesting some you know Sun Su looking you know finance person It's sitting back in the corner, you know, strategize, oh, I know what we'll do. But I think it's like, oh, this thing's making money.

Oh, this people are watching this. Oh, well, let's put more of it on. Yeah, but it's going to hurt. No, I don't care. Put more of it on. It's making money. Cash flow. This is our stock looked great.

You get to brag about it. Variety. Let's do it. That was the thought process, in my opinion. the branding of things or something I want to discuss because we would see in 1998 like a video game that a lot of us who were playing games in 98 absolutely loved was when you pushed out the video game and it promoted itself as WCW slash NWO in years prior WCW marketing and video games and things like that

it had just been WCW whatever WCW Nitro or whatever WCW. have you. But we start to do WCW slash NWO so we can see that you're certainly heading that way with the benefit of hindsight and hindsight's always 2020. If you had it to do over again, would you have tried to sort of brand and market the NWO was its own thing? I think if we would have had time, Conrad, if somebody would have come to us in January or even June. No, that's not true. Probably January, February.

Somebody would have come to us in the first quarter and said, on January 1st or next year, we want to launch a brand new show. That would have given us time to at least start to try to figure out, because again, the context is so important here, you can't imagine what it's like to have a project dropped on that you're not ready for, but you have to do it. You're not really sure how. You don't really have the resources.

But you still have to do it. And the fact that we got a show on the air is, you know, surprising enough. We would have had the time. We could have figured it out so that it would at least, it would have at least had a chance, likelihood of being successful. There was no opportunity to plan. But had we had the time, I think we could have figured it out.

We had the beginning of a great idea. We had the beginning of what became the brand split in WWE. They executed far better than we ever got the opportunity to because it was of September 99. I was gone. But going in and we had the time, we would have branded Nitro, NWO, we would have branded TBS, WCW, and even from if you... From a programming point of view, we talked about the difference between TNT and TBS.

We talked about the difference in their audiences. We could have branded a show specifically, more specifically for the TBS audience in a number of ways. We could have figured out the creative, how to not overexposed talent. So we see Randy Savage and Diamond Dales page on Nitro, and oh my gosh, we see him again on Thursday. There's the pay-per-views on Sunday and that makes sense. That's what happens. That's what happened. So we would have had time to figure that out, but we were figuring it out while

we're on the treadmill, juggling. We're juggling balls on a treadmill. And when somebody goes, hey, grab another ball. It's a shame. I'm a shame. I do want to ask you when you felt like the NWO show idea may have been a bad idea. But first, let me give you a good idea. I'm talking about cash app.

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Just download cash app and sign up. Use our exclusive referral code, 83 weeks in your profile, send $5 to a friend, and within 14 days, you'll get $10 dropped right into your account. Terms apply, that's money, that's cash in. out and Ryan we are live if you've got a question we want to hear from you keep them coming hey so I wanted to ask you when you first thought this NWO idea for a show may not work out I ask because we're reading about this in the observer as we're going through here

and in the torch in like August the 97 like hey it's going to be an NWO nitro and I know that we try a little takeover in December before Starcade 97 a few months from now in December of 97. But if we go all the way back to the beginning of 97, Eric, you ran your first NWO pay-per-view, sold out from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We covered it in the archives. It feels like a fever dream. I mean, people were trying new things here in a major way.

It looks and feels completely different than all other WCW pay-per-views that ever existed. And you only did it once by January of 98, you're going to do a different kind of sold-out. That's where Brett Hart would make his in-ring debut for WCW against Rick Clare. But it doesn't look or feel nearly like the 1997 version of sold-out. It feels to me like the sold-out pay-per-view would have been proof of concept that an all-heel show might be difficult to do on Monday nights. Why did you not have any sort of hesitation or pause like that? Because I never considered it to be an all-heel show. Okay.

You would have had wrestlers who were baby faces that were not part of the NWO. You had that on sold out too. I mean, you had that on sold out, but I'm saying it was coming from a heel perspective. Yeah, it would have been, it would have had a heel vibe to it. But you would have had baby faces getting over. You would have had, you had all the drama you would have at a show. It would have been branded and themed very NWO versus a more traditional lighting, more traditional pyro or traditional color combinations more traditional arena

configurations or traditional camera work there would have been a lot of things that would have been more traditional on the tbs show versus so a gadget and a half as crazy on nitro got you let's um i mean that feels like a risk does it not i mean respectfully sold out 97 was not well received it wasn't a huge financial success i mean it felt weird and and clearly someone in wcew felt the same way because we didn't repeat it and if we know that monday is kind of like our battle zone with the number one show monday night raw doesn't that feel like a miscalculate i mean ultimately you didn't do it so it's not like you you stubbed your toe here but i'm wondering

when did you come to the realization that maybe this isn't going to work was it the takeover episode or was it before that I don't really know. And honestly, as I'm listening to you, you know, frame this and bring up detail that I boyfriend forgot about, I'm really camped out on why didn't I continue the NWO concept? Because I believe firmly, I've talked about it prior to this, that event. Yeah. Talked about it here for seven years subsequently.

the idea of branding an event to feel, as you pointed out, the lead-up completely different than anything else WCW had ever done. Yes. It needed its own personality. And somewhere along the line, I abandoned that. I made a decision either by design or by default, do not press forward with the NWO sold-out kind of format. Mm-hmm.

And I honestly can't remember if it was one thing or a combination of things or something that just happened because there wasn't a plan. Sometimes when you don't have a firm plan, week one, week two, week three, week four, here's where we're going, folks, here's what we need to do to get there. Here's the lunch you need to bring because this is how long we're going to be in a car. You know, if you don't plan your trip, you probably aren't going to make it to the end. It's not the way you want to. And I'm not sure to be really honest about it. If I just lost focus or if I said, no, that's a bad idea because. Don't see, it's funny, even to this day, when people criticize sold out, I just laugh at, I mean, inside.

I just, I go, okay, yeah, yeah, I wish I could have got that one back. But really deep down inside, I don't. I looked at that as a very successful paper. At least conceptually, successful in the sense that it was a step in the direction I wanted to go. It was a chance to feel whether or not this general idea could work. Right. You could debate the matches and the finishes and it deserves debate. I'm not trying to pretend it doesn't.

But from my perspective, did it feel different than everything else? Yep. Does it seem to have a strong personality and identity as a brand? Yep. It's a little unpredictable, for sure. Okay, there's three out of four. Now, if you can check those boxes, you can check three out of four boxes. It's kind of successful from a contest.

conceptual point. So I don't think I just went, I don't want to do that anymore or, oh, the internet hated it. So Dave Bouncer gave it two stars. You know, it wasn't any of that.

There was something else. And I just asked, honestly, I can't believe it. Not Paul and Owen. I mean, we've established whatever, but sold out 97,

the NWO paper view, did 170,000 buys. The month prior was Starcade 96. That was Hogan. and Piper that did 345,000 it's a Hogan Piper rematch at February that's 275,000 so in order for us to get down to 170 we've got to go all the way to fall brawl 99 which would be uh September of 1999 I think off the top of my head that may have been sting and Hogan in the yellow and red

and that was 130,000 buys so it wasn't a huge financial success. but I will say as a fan, I really enjoyed it. I'm like you, it was different. And I mean, one of the reasons I enjoyed watching the first ECW paper review was it felt different. It felt gritty.

It wasn't as polished. It didn't feel like Disney on ice as you've described WWE at different times. So I dug the show. I don't know that it would work weekend, week out 52 times a year. We know it ultimately didn't happen. So let's talk about one of the hypotheticals on the way there. uh in early october of 1997 it's written in the torch if the current monday show does become the

nw o nitro show the host will likely be a current announcer who turns heel after it's revealed he was a mole for the nw o all along mike today is a strong possibility because he could actually host the show and announce the matches while shivani would shift to the new thursday show which would remain wcdb in terms of format the contract of chris cruz another possibility possibility expires next month, and Bischoff told Cruz that he didn't like his announcing style and therefore would not be renewing his contract. Cruz adapted his hyperactive announcing style at the urging of Kevin Sullivan a few years ago. Hey, so time out right there.

We haven't spent any time talking about this before, but when it was going to be an NWO show, what would the announced team have looked like? Is this accurate? You would have considered someone turning heel and positioning themselves as I was a mole for the NWO the whole time, and it would have been tonight? No, no. That would have been such a bad choice for Mike today.

Mike is so good and so respected and well known as the straight up guy, straight up announcer, that for him to try to, if what you're asking for today to be the, the NWO mole, that would have never occurred to me. That's bad casting. It's horrible casting. Mike was best, in my opinion, when he was color or anything from Japan or from Mexico. There's a man knew everything. He could tell you stories. He could give you a backstory. He not only knew how to call the action, which is a prerequisite, he could tell you stories about

talent while they were in the ring. It's invaluable. So to compromise that, to have him play a character now. But would it have been? Yes, who? Oh. I don't know if I ever got that, if I ever got that far, just start thinking about it. Well, let me ask you this, this report on Chris Cruz. Is this accurate for whatever reason you weren't a fan of his announcing style. I mean, did you actually tell him that on an exit interview or something like that? That feels weird. It doesn't sound like me, does it? No. I mean, I can say it does in a way. I mean, if there's somebody, if I don't feel like somebody, because a style is subjective. That's right. It's just an opinion. It's not a, you know, it's not a conviction for the rest of

your life. It's just my opinion. Somebody else's. But I would, if I knew I wasn't going to renew somebody, somebody i would not like wait till they were punching out the last day to tell them i would have just been straight up so it's a possibility i just don't remember it well something else you may not remember and the observer points this out and i think this is amazing of course by early november the entire world knows that brett hart is headed to wcw and this is even before the montreal screw job but dave would right here that not only is Brett Canada's most popular wrestler, but Nitro has begun airing weekly on TSN and Canada, which is great. But more importantly than that, TBS just became a regular cable station

as opposed to a premium cable station throughout the country of Canada. So all of a sudden, TBS is going to have much more penetration than they've ever had before. And that's coming to fruition in late 97, which supports your idea of, let's bring bread in and let's make him one of our top guys on Thunder. I mean, the timing of this couldn't have been better, really, could it? It was coincidental, though. Yeah, of course. One didn't have anything to do with the other.

I'm going to piss off some Canadian fans, okay? Do it? I don't do it often. I used to do it a lot. And I thought about it. See, well, that's not very cool. Canada is actually a pretty cool place. Sometimes people get a little too excited about Canada.

There's only like 25 million people in the whole country, whatever it is. Maybe we should look that up, so I don't look like too big of an ass. It's a small country. It's got a population more like a state. Oh, God. I mean, it's geographically. It's huge. It's 40 million people, Eric.

All right. 40 million people. There's 39 million in Canada, but whatever. 900,000 more people in Canada than all of California. But go. All right. So the idea that PBS is expanding and we've got this Canadian guy. Oh my gosh.

We're going to own the Canadian wrestling market. All right. Cool. You own California. Yeah. Big deal. You know, you got Toronto and Montreal, which are big markets and great markets and amazing fans, but that's about it, realistically, unless you're going to go to Vancouver to the other side of the planet. So, it just wasn't a big deal for me.

I mean, it was nice to have it. It was ancillary opportunity because touring there, like going and producing television there, people don't understand. Tell them, the Canadian government has, you don't get it, maybe it's changed, right? But it was a Canadian content rule that you wanted to produce a program in Canada, you know, X amount of people had to be above line, meaning, you know, executive producers, directors, writers, high-end production pay grades, so to speak. And then a certain percentage of all your production crew had to be Canadian citizens. which is I kind of dig that

and I understand it and respect it but it made going there and producing television really freaking expensive and difficult oh and then you got this thing about getting across and going across the border like everybody's upset about our border or current border policies try getting into Canada

with oh I don't know a DUI from four years ago try that sometime Yeah, that goes. And when you figure, as we talked about the beginning of the show, right, you got 120 people, 60 or 70 of them, talent. What are the odds? They've got a DUI. Or they're going to do something stupid. Probably pretty good.

It's a pain in the ass to go to Canada, and it's expensive to go to Canada. Your return on investment or, you know, business in Canada makes it. really um great ancillary revenue but it's not wasn't our focus not because the fans didn't deserve it not because i didn't care about canada just because it was economically so difficult i was just waiting on you to finish your candor i i love that uh i mean i was trying to give you a compliment about man so great your timing with your bread heart acquisition right with dvs as you're like if that's not true if i was going to be like everybody else that does a podcast yes yeah right you sure sir yeah

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Every time she'd come on, she's talking about, this is what I do, and it works for your underboob, your butt crack. You put her feet up in front of the camera. You can put it on your feet. She's just funny as hell. She's just cool, right? But that accent I said, honey, I bet you she's from Minnesota. At my time I saw, I said, I've known 100 people that talk just like,

her. And girls I knew in high school, they just carried themselves like her. And then I looked her up. Yep. Just what I thought. 55343. That's the zip code. Anyway, good stuff, Shannon. Good stuff. You're making Minutaka Proud. Go check it out. Shop Mando. You're going to be so glad you did. One buttress at a time. I love it. The idea that's coming out here in November of 97 is that the name of the show is going to be called Thunder, but not Thursday Thunder. And I kind of assumed it was going to be called Thursday Thunder because there was Monday Nightro and Monday Night Raw. Eventually we know, I think it's like January of 2000, so two years into the thing,

thunder is going to move to Wednesday nights, perhaps in response to Smackdown being on Thursday. But why didn't you go with Thursday Thunder? Was there fear that it might be preempted for sports at some point? Yeah. That's always the problem. You know, TBS had a lot of sports. So did T&T during certain times of the year, basketball, obviously. But yeah, TBS was, um, be expected, they expected that it would get moved around a lot.

There's a rumor in the observer that perhaps Rick Rood could be the guy who's going to be one of the voices on that Monday show. And as a reminder, he had actually done some commentary work. I guess we would call it color alongside Joey Stiles on the ECW syndicated. television program, do you think perhaps, and I know you didn't watch ECW, maybe Kevin Sullivan or others said, hey, he's doing it right now on their show. Why not? I wouldn't have needed any encouragement from Kevin or anybody else. I was a big fan of Rick's. You had known Rick for a long time, worked with Rick and WCW, brought him back to WCW from WWE. Um, we were pretty good friends. So that would have been, had there been a discussion,

somebody threw that on the table that would have been about the end of that discussion because that would have been a great choice I don't know but not for play by play caller still would have a play by play issue but for a caller commentator Rick would have been perfect there starts to be some discussion

as we cruise towards the December of 97 hey is it time to sunset main event and pro those are the syndicated shows that have historically aired on Sundays, were you in favor with the addition of the new show, sunseting, some of the syndicated programming? It didn't matter to me.

Those shows, you know, for example, you know, that night we went to Rome, Georgia to produce WCW Saturday night, we would have produced an additional two matches, I think, maybe three, probably just two, and the rest of it would have been edited together, edited together from other, it would have been more of a compilation show. So it didn't put a heavy burden on production. It didn't put a heavy burden on creative because Jimmy Hart was pretty much handling creative for the most part on Saturday night with, I'm sure, support from

Terry Taylor and Kevin Sullivan and others. So there wasn't a lot of pressure that way. It would not have mattered to me other than the revenue because good chunk. Now, it became less and less as time went out because syndication has become less and less profitable as the years have gone on. That started a long time ago. It started with cable initially and progressively because of cable. Our kind of syndication for wrestling. It still provided good revenue and it really had a very low burden in terms of pressure financial or otherwise i want to mention that um there's some discussion as you it's made clear that it's going to be bischoff versus zabisco at starcade and we're trying to battle for nitro here those are the stakes of that

match and one of the things that is discussed is hey maybe rick rude winds up in color and you're going to be play by play that as a hypothetical broadcast team for an n w o show you driving the show running traffic i guess is what we would call it and having you know rick rude as an analyst almost like tas is you know where where he's telling you from a wrestler perspective i can see that work i mean when you think a classic bad guys does it get more easy casting than rick rude there no like i said i've been that's just It's such a perfect choice. It would have, I could have easily done it, and probably would have, if faced with the choice of doing it or not,

it could have done it. And there was a lot of reasons why at that time it would have worked. I think it would have worked better with somebody who wasn't quite so dyed in the wool NWO. It worked. I mean, that's how I started at Retro, right? It's not like it would be a new job. We, uh, we should mention that we've got an opportunity to use another name. I know Thunder was the name that we were all heading for, but it's reported in the observer, and I've never heard this before. So I want to get your take on this.

The original idea of the show being called Thunder appears to have been dropped. As when checking on the availability of the name, ESPN own the name Thunder for television for a motorsport show so we know ultimately you do get clearance to do it but i do actually remember there being a thunder racing show once upon a time you know when you have these hypotheticals like this and you see that someone else in the television space space had a mark was there some sort of professional courtesy that's extended between an outfit like ESPN and turner like do they want to be in the good graces of one another i know they're competing on some level but on another level it does

feel like they're going to have to do business in roundabout ways or with common people often tell me what you remember if anything about this thunder ESPN situation absolutely don't remember okay first I've heard of it first I've heard of it and you know your question about generally speaking was their cooperation probably not there's two competing businesses it's not like you know that they met at the country club on weekend and put their differences aside. They were competing, you know,

protecting your copyrights and your trademarks. It's not a personal choice. It's a you have to do it. Your legal department has to defend your trademarks. And it's not a question of, well, yeah, but I know that guy, he's a pretty cool guy, and he lets me get away with some shit.

So let's just let that slide. It's not how it works. So if you've got somebody, if, I don't know where Dave got this from, he could be making his shit up. Um, But I would imagine if there was some kind of potential conflict, it would have come up in a trademark search, which is like usually the first thing you do before you throw an idea out to be considered

is to make sure that it's actually available. Otherwise, you look like a dipshit. That's like in the operating procedure. So if there was an issue, then legal would have looked at that and said, okay let's make sure the categories preclude us from going forward if they do let's come up with another name that never happened so i would imagine dave's making shit up well here's what we know is real ESPN did have a program which was for short track events like dirt tracks and paved oval tracks and it was called Thursday night thunder and it aired from

1989 through November of 2002. So Thursday Night Thunder was indeed a racing show, but somehow you guys made it work. There's a discussion here that I wanted to bring up, and this is something that was talked about in the observer, with regards to Kevin Nash. David Wright, it's known that behind the scenes Kevin Nash was trying to get the NWO show

to be the Thursday show. From a risk standpoint, it's better for his and the NWO's position. Even if the new show were to bomb on Thursday, let's say to a 2.0 to a 2.5 consistent rating, it can always be explained as being a new night for wrestling fans and the competition of going against Blockbuster Network programming in Seinfeld and Friends. With no wrestling track record to judge it against, anything can be said to be a success. It does feel like a risk to tinker with the winning formula of Monday Nitro. Do you remember anyone raising their hand and saying,

maybe we shouldn't do that? I know ultimately you didn't do it. But who was the first to have apprehension about, hey, I know the NWO is what's carrying us right now, but let's not tinker with the format of what's already working. Well, to a degree, that would have been all of us.

Yeah. I mean, we all felt that way. But again, there was no voting involved. And if I understood what you read, correctly Kevin didn't have a voice in any of this

I don't recall Kevin saying maybe Thursday's better because it'll take some of the heat off the end of you know we don't want to be blamed for the I mean I get who wrote that was that Wade Dave Meltzer okay now I get it sorry Wade

now it makes a lot more sense this is how Dave thinks Dave thinks everybody thinks like Dave thinks Dave makes excuses all time for the shit that he fucks up. He won't accept or even acknowledge when he fucks up because he doesn't understand that some of the things he says and accuses other people of doing is exactly who he is. This is another example of that. A gift that keeps on giving.

Well, like a week later, he did come. come back and say, hey, never mind, the show is indeed going to be called thunder. When you saw eventually WWE follow suit and we know they're going to launch a smackdown and make it a more permanent piece of the offering, did you feel like they were repeating the same mistakes that, that you guys had on the WCW side of things, or was that a different set of circumstances. You know, I don't recall, you know, I was so underwater. Yeah, my own shit that I wasn't really thinking too much about it just because I didn't have the luxury, um, of thinking about the competition. Um, I, I honestly don't recall even registering what they were doing.

It, we were literally on that treadmill, you know, we went from, you know, a six, mile an hour pace to a 12 mile an hour pace overnight so yeah it was kind of a blur let's talk about the disastrous takeover we've watched this before it's available in the archives but just as we're getting ready for star k 97 we're going to have the n w o do a hostile takeover angle of monday night nitro just six days before their biggest pay-per-view ever we're talking December 22nd and And Wade Keller wrote, Consider all plans off. WCW experimented on the December 22nd

Nitro and they got the answer that they most feared. Viewers apparently don't want to watch an NWO program. The implications of the ratings could be major, not just on what happened Sunday at Starcade, but also how the two-hour primetime live WCW shows were formatted in 98. The last hour of Raw defeated the last hour of Nitro by two-tenths of a rating point.

Raw has outdrawn Nitro a few times in a quarter hour in the past 18 months, but to have an entire hour of Raw outdraw Nitro is even more remarkable. Nitro began its usual strong rating of a 4.0 for the first hour, but dropped to a 3.6 when Raw and Monday night football started. Raw posted a relatively 3.0 rating for its first hour, but the third hour of Nitro dropped dramatically to a 3.0. Meanwhile, Raw grew to a 3.2.

Now, the last 90 minutes of the show, according to Wade is going to consist of you and Rick Rood and Kevin Nash Bobby Hennon and Mike Teney announcing matches but mainly ignoring the action in the ring and talking about the NW takeover of Nitro without interviews, rotating

hosts with an overabundance of Eric Bischoff and inscessant nauseating borish brown nosing of Hulk Hogan it was no surprise the ratings dropped now obviously we know that this is probably the catalyst to throw the table in and say

All right, maybe not a full NWO show, but still Nitro. No, no, no, let's have to go down there road. That's not fair. Okay. It's a three-hour show against a two-hour show. Three-hour shows, it's impossible to hold the audience. Had we done the NWO takeover or had we been doing something else, my guess is the outcome would have been pretty close to the same.

three hour show the third hour to three hour show professional wrestling is a definite why didn't they meet it the week before or the week after I don't know you still think look all I can tell you is that wasn't the reason I went ooh don't want to do that we but we and maybe the segment sucked maybe the segment could have been structured differently that's a different argument then oh then nobody wants see an NWO theme show. I don't buy that. I could buy that the segments suck. There's too much Boris Sherry, Bishop, I'm noticing Hulk Hogan. Okay.

I'll take that. Well, here's what it really was. It was 45 minutes of building a set. I remember this show like it was yesterday because you were, you were taking down logos and putting up new logos and it was like, we don't care to see the construction. I want to see what Stone Cold's doing. I'm flipping to the other channel. Okay. Well, there you go. So, but that doesn't mean that the idea of an NWO takeover show is a bad idea because that quarter hour, the last hour, didn't turn out like the hours before it. And I just, I can't buy the premise. So what was the catalyst to scrap the idea of an NWO Nitro?

Probably not being able to figure out how to do it. Yeah. How to split the tail on up. How to create distinct brand identities. How to actually do it effectively. There were a lot of theories, but we were trying to figure it out schedule-wise with other commitments and working it in with paper views because those things are all planned out in advance. We just did, we never figured out the logistics of it, part one, and because we never figured out, never figured out the framework of it, how it would work, we certainly never got to creative. And at a certain point, I think it was like, fuck it, just stay on the treadmill.

Just, just keep, just keep doing what we're doing. A, we couldn't figure it out. B, we were getting our budgets crushed. B, we're getting more content dumped on our laps. There was just no way to get off the treadmill long enough to catch your breath and figure the shit out. I don't think, that's why I think I struggle. It's look, I'm not embarrassed by it. It's not like, I don't want to admit that it was a bad idea.

that's, you know, that's internet wrestling bullshit. It's not, that's not it at all. Right. It's that I, I don't remember there being one reason. I really think, and again, this is where everything kind of blighted with what was going on behind the seeds with Ted Turner and the Turner board, what was beginning to develop with regard to mergers and acquisitions. and everybody gifting money around and debt around and positioning themselves in their divisions

to be optimal for a financial perspective. So when that merger happens, everybody got rich off their stock options. There was a lot of that shit going on. And we were just running too hard to figure it out. I really think it was just like, fuck it. Let's just book the next show. I'm not like that I kind of think that's probably the answer hey let me ask you you know one of the things that we haven't talked about

because we all get caught up in the way things are now I mean right now all of us could go to our TV and whether we're watching you know cable or satellite or YouTube TV or sling or whatever it is we've got a channel got we can search we can bounce around we know we can download what we missed we can set season passes to record stuff in the future. We have all this technology now, but we didn't back then. Back then, you had to actually know what the hell you were going to do and you had to share that information because it had to be printed in the newspaper and in

television like TV guide had the biggest distribution of any publication in America. And now the idea of us going out and find a magazine at the grocery store to tell us what's on TV feels foreign. But that's what it was back then. I'm bringing this up because there were some satellite magazines that came out in advance of Starcade that listed the new Thursday show as NWO Thunder. But meanwhile, TV Guide, when we're actually to the week of the debut of Thunder, it says to be announced on TBS. And it made me wonder, were you guys concerned about giving a spoiler and not wanting to leak? you know, hey, because as a reminder, it's you and Larry's Abisco at Starcate and you're

battling for the rights to Nitro. Was it not wanting to give a spoiler or have we not made a decision in time for publication, do you think? Not certain, but it's very likely that that was a TBS communication TV guide, not a WCW. I don't know that for sure. But I'm sitting here thinking, why would, why would, it's not how it works.

WCW doesn't control the channel. TBS controls the channel. So the communication about what's on the network usually would be between the network and the publication, not the producer of a show of the network. So the whole thing kind of sounds funny to me. I'm not sure how to connect those dots to be. honest with you because it just starts off a little weird let's talk about the first thunder it's a Daytona beach and we know we're in the first week of January

1998 just a few days removed from Starcade and we do a 4.0 2 rating that's a 3.75 first hour a 4.25 second hour and a 4.03 3rd hour so a 599 share. This is head to head with a really strong NBC Thursday lineup that has Friends, Seinfeld, and ER. And there's a big in-ring confrontation, great promo between Rick Flair and Brett Hart. And the show actually peaked rating-wise for a replay of your match with Larry Zubisco from Starcade. And then we have a DDP versus Kevin Nash main event. And what's weird is the rating for some reason during the main event goes from a 4.3 to a 3.4. I don't know if that's when there's a situation with

ER or what's happening there, but when the ratings come out and it's a 4.02, are you excited? Are you celebrating? Are you almost like, oh, I'm a victim of my own success. This means I've got to keep doing it. I probably should have had that thought. I probably was just relieved. Yeah. More than anything like dodged a bullet like okay good well at least it worked you know we don't want to do it we know it's going to kill us but at least it's working now it was it wasn't a pause for celebration certainly i do want to ask you know when you're trying to to line this show up you know we're going to see thunder debut with one sort of look and feel the open and the set and all that and just a few weeks later we're going to pivot and it's all going to be overhauled

were you not as hands on in the initial design and then weren't happy with it in ordered a new one who was responsible for the first set who gets the credit for the second set who sort of because we've we've said before hey man our budgets have been cut and we've got to make it work now we're ordering a second set like this can't be something that you did lightly how does that happen as best you can recall yeah I can't recall it. Let's see if you can do this one. Chapter 2, Unit 4, Here With Us Live on YouTube says, Eric, what was the last good

concert you saw? Ooh, Tom Jones in Chicago. It was awesome. August of 2023. I remember that. Yep. It was awesome. It was in an amphitheater outside of Chicago.

It was the coolest amphitheater I've ever been to. You know, people all came and they had blankets and they brought wine and cheese. He had these, I mean, it was kind of a big damn deal, right? And these people all go to this amphitheater for the concerts, and they all get together, and they spread out their blankets, and they got these really, you know, fancy cheese sets and, you know, rocks of wine and it's fucking crazy. But the concert was really good.

Laurie and I sat probably 60 feet from Tom Jones, and, you know, he's been around for a minute, but man, a guy still has an amazing voice, and it's a tremendous showman. speaking of showman we saw one this past monday night we've talked about it here on the program for several weeks now goldberg is back he's in w e and he's getting a title shot against goonther and it's happening in Atlanta live on saturday night's main event in about three weeks it's saturday july 12th in Atlanta and clearly the world heavyweight championship he's battling for is

loosely based on the big gold belt he wants famous one from Hollywood Hulk Hogan right there in Atlanta 27 years ago as a reminder that title switch happened on July 6th so 27 years and six days later Goldberg's back for a damn rematch 27 years I guess it is what do you what do you make of Goldberg coming back at 58 years old and getting a title shot man I mean as an old as an old guy. How do you not love that? How do you not admire Bill for doing it for being able to do it? Like he isn't he one of the last, I mean, Jericho, Goldberg, who else, man, that's out

there still doing it? Jeff, yeah, certainly just very few guys that were there, you know, during that Monday night war era in a prominent way that are still out doing it capable of doing just just that alone you know to be able to keep yourself in in shape and in physical condition um and a mental condition to go out there and do that it's not easy all it's really hard and and fun if you can pull it off so i'm you know how do you not feel good about it well we all feel good with the news uh you you and I probably should have touched on this at the top of the show, but Eric,

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you before we got out of here. Rumors of Hulk Hogan's demise have been greatly exaggerated. There was some speculation earlier this week that the Hulkster was in a bad way. Thankfully, we've seen some really positive reports that, uh, that seems to have been a false flag and, and,

and he's, uh, on the man and, and feeling good. So what can you share, if anything with us about the Hulkster? Um, look he's had some issues you know he went in for surgery um i don't think he would mind if i shared this he's talked about it a lot but you know he's he's had issues with nerve

problems in his back and spine up in the cervical part of his neck he went in because he had a difficult time feeling his hands he went in for surgery and came out of the anesthesia and boom And we have feeling in his hands again. He's really excited. I had a couple issues with, I think, just, you know, the anesthesia. The body could only handle so much anesthesia over a certain period of time. And he's had a lot of anesthesia. And I think between that and some of the prescription medication that he was on coming out of that surgery,

just kind of combined and set him back a little bit. But, you know, the diagnosis is good. you know the rumors of you know the family gathering in the hospital that's the park that was just all bullshit but yeah he's he had a bit of a setback because of the next surgery but he's going to kick out like he always does and he'll be fine we are glad to hear that and we're excited to hear that real american freestyle's first event has been announced of course it's august 30th in cleveland ohio the press release has come out i guess the proceeds are going to be pledged to Cleveland State University fans can already purchase their tickets

for the event on the Real American Freestyle website and, of course, Ticketmaster. I know you've been working pretty hard on this. This has been something that you've spent a lot of time creating and traveling the road. And it's almost going to be like what we've seen with amateur wrestling, you know, that level of competition. But now we're really going to understand who these people are a little better almost like if you combined maybe, you know, the look and feel of the UFC may be with the back story of the voice

where we know more about these guys than, you know, just two college athletes and singlets and hey, I hope the guy in the red trumps beats the guy in the blue trumps. We're going to learn more about these individuals as human beings, right? You're going to learn more about them. You're going to learn their backstories. I, you know,

I cannot wait to share this stuff because I know I've been hyping it up. And a problem with hyping things up oftentimes is you raise expectations to an unrealistic level. I'm not doing that. You can't have expectations high enough. Some of the interviews you're going to hear from these people. It just amazing athletes, amazing athletes with even more amazing backstories. And yeah, you're going to see a different presentation than you've ever seen before when it comes to freestyle wrestling. It's not going to be what you expect.

We're going to have some really cool ideas. As you can imagine, we're going to be a little different than. And we have a major announcement coming your way next week. I want to scoop it here, but I'm blessed and very grateful. It's going to be a fun project. Yeah, the rumor in innuendo is it's a pretty big announcement. So fingers crossed for that. Hey, I want to announce now, since we're talking all things, WCW today,

Mark Madden is back calling wrestling tonight. I'm so happy to hear that. I retweeted that. I love it, but man, Mark, going back home where you're supposed to be. I know you'd bring it home, though, the bag every single week at Pittsburgh is the number one sportscaster. If you're not, you should be. You probably are anyway. You don't need me to sell you.

But Mark or father, you're back into wrestling game. I love it. Good for TNA. Good for Mark. We're going to have a lot of it. How cool is it, too, that as we're talking yesterday was TNA's 23rd birthday, 23 years old, TNA as that's longer than WCW and ECW and

maybe even Smoky Mountain combined. I don't think a lot of people predicted this. I mean, even in the very early episodes and issues of the observer and and the torch, they were saying hey, if they make it to next month, Eric, they're 23 years old.

I didn't see this last thing. Did you look at them good for TNA? And they're doing great business too. Well, that's the most important part. You know, the lineage and how long it's been around given how all that happened you know cool hey good for you kind of a you know everybody gets a trophy for something thing but damn the show's really getting good and they're doing well that's the only thing that really bad the recipe is just like you know buying your own trophy and putting it on

a wall for yourself that show is getting much better it's gaining momentum bigger crowds it's the sleeper i think i said it here a couple months ago tna is the sleeper in the wrestling industry if I was Tony Count, I'd forget all about WWE and be looking closely of what's coming up my back because they're coming. I'm really impressed. What was it about eight months ago I read, I think, that there was a senior management acquisition. Remember when I read it shortly after that,

there was some other newsworthy business related element to TNA, and Anthem Sports that I read and went, huh. That looks to me like somebody's making some smart moves. And here we are. I'm not saying that I was right necessarily, although, you know, but almost always. But, man, if they keep, they keep moving in the right direction, opportunities are going to come their way that's going to catapult them to a much better position because they're doing the basics right.

They're doing the basics right. And the people are responding. So that's off. I'm pulling for TNA and I can't wait to see what's next for them I'm also excited about Gail Kim there's been rumor and innuendo that she's been hanging around some NXT shows she's certainly been one of the major characters behind the scenes you know sort of the unsung heroes of TNA for years and it's weird how this relationship continues to evolve I'm talking about between NXT and T and A

because on the one hand, you know, it feels like, well, that's weird. But then on the other hand, is it looking like it all winds up being WWE at some point anyway, Eric? Could be. Yeah. Makes sense, doesn't it? It does. If I'm in TAA, I'm hoping that's the case.

No doubt about it. Hey, speaking of WWE, we should talk about Nick Conn. He's made some headlines this week. I don't know if you saw, but he was recently doing a series of interviews. one with Stephanie McMahon, but another where he was talking about business mistakes. He said, quote, Triple H and I, we make mistakes in business every day. The good thing is we have one another. We can say, hey, I think I did this.

What do you think? I don't think that was the move. Maybe we can think of it the other way. Let's try that. You didn't really have that back then in WCW. Did you? Did you have somebody you could bounce ideas off of like that? Who would have been your partner in crime, if you will?

Oh, it depended upon the idea. If it was creative, I certainly wouldn't have talked to my attorney. But I don't want to give the impression. I didn't have resources around me. I did. I have people that I trusted. But it all depended on the idea and what the subject was, really. I don't think I, you know, I certainly didn't have anybody that was my equal necessarily.

I don't mean on my level, but I mean. terms of relationship corporately. Orchart stuff, yeah. Yeah, not an org chart basis, but you know, I still had people that I could depend on the subject, depending on the topic. Let's talk about something that Nick said about

the writing team. He says, WW encourages their creative team and writers to not program for social media critics, but to program for the universe. Quote, we encourage our creative team and writers like don't program for that program for the universe not for a small portion of the universe who wants to criticize you that doesn't matter move on put on a good product the money will be there the fans will be there the results will be there this is nick con speaking on stephan

mcman's podcast called what's your story put out by fanatics and he's basically saying stephanie i've never searched my name on x i don't care if there's criticisms i don't care if there's compliments it doesn't affect my life at all doesn't affect what i'm doing at all i think some people online have taken issue with this saying yes he does book for the internet i mean they fired our truth and they brought him right back yes he does book for the internet he he took cody roads out of the main event of wrestlemania for the rock and then he put him right back i get if people are trying to play gotcha but i think in general we agree you don't necessarily want to book for a small portion of the audience.

She booked for the masses. And I know that as I was sort of speculating, I mean, we called it on this program a couple of months ago. Goldberg's last match is going to be Saturday night's main event July 11th in Atlanta. Check the archives. We were talking about that before anybody else. But still, when Goldberg came out, he got a huge reaction.

Now, the internet would have you believe. This is terrible. Nobody wants to see this. We don't care. But boy, people sure were making a lot of noise when they saw. saw Goldberg and my dad, who is a casual fan at best, folks has head in my office earlier this week and says, hey, is Goldberg back and he's fighting for the title? That's what you want. Like, that's how you're getting people to watch your program, not necessarily what does X think

today, right? Eric. It's funny. You know, I've been saying the same thing for years. Yes. Take out Twitter, insert dirt sheets. You know, it's like, it's the same thing. It's the same mentality.

It's a very, very low vibration thinking in the internet wrestling community. The reason they're so upset about Nick Kahn saying, don't look for these morons. They're just a small group of people that make a lot of freaking noise. The reason that upsets them so much is because they desperately believe their identity as human beings is tied directly to the amount of influence they have in social media. and the very idea that they're just a bunch of nerds screaming in the darkness and their voices don't really matter scares them to death because if they don't have that they don't have anything so of course they want to believe they have power of course they want to believe that they can get inside a nick con's head and make his change his mind or triple h or anybody else

because that's what they do it's hilarious i use to go so far, again, take out social media, insert dirt sheets. I used to go so far as to tell people internally, hey, if guys like Dave Meltzer are burying you, you know you're on the right track. Anytime you read something in Dave Meltzer's dirt sheet, think about doing the exact opposite, you'll be close. I mean, I've been saying this for decades. So it's really fun to see somewhat of Nick Kahn's level coming out and essentially taking the same position because it's the accurate one. Let's talk a little bit more about Nick Kahn.

He was on Stephanie's podcast and he had a compliment for Vince McMahon. He said something like, I only have admiration for Vince and Stephanie quipped probably his biggest nemesis is himself. That's Stephanie talking about her dad. What do you think about? I mean, obviously who's qualified to talk about. about Vince more than Stephanie. She thinks Vince might actually be his own worst enemy.

What say you, Eric? I think that should be obvious. And everything that's happening right now is self-inflicted. Yeah. Nobody did it to him. I mean, if this isn't a pretty good illustration of being your own nemesis, I don't know what it is, but he's also, you know, we have talked about this before, even shortly after the,

you know, all the controversy broke. You can have whatever opinion you want and, you know, people like to be judgmental and, you know, be the final judge and jury about other people's lives and other people's situations. It's just, I guess, unfortunately, human nature. But if you take that morality portion of this out of it, take judgment out of it and just look at facts

in terms of what Vince Wickman has done in his career, I don't know how you not admire it. Take the person out, take the shitty part out, just look at the facts of what he built, how he built it, what he overcame. I do not know how you could honestly say you can't admire that. Now, you get to the other side of that, and you know, you've got the personality part of it,

but that's exactly what I think Stephanie was saying. He's his own worst enemy. and it's unfortunate, but it doesn't take away from what he accomplished. Last but certainly not least, there's some news out this week, Eric, that I want to get your take on. It's revealed by our buddy, Justin Barrasso, who's formerly with Sports Illustrated, but now he's at he has a great substack. I encourage everyone listening to this. Google Justin Barrasso undisputed substack.

You'll find all of his great work there. but Vince McMahon recently made a move to purchase controlling interest in bare-knuckle fighting championships. This is a former report that Justin put out this week. David Feldman is BKFC's founder and president, and he confirmed that a meeting occurred and that McMahon is resolute about a return to promoting. Quote, he's a great guy. His whole team is great, but the timing wasn't right for us. He's Vince McMahon. If I were him, I'd want creative control too he was awesome very complimentary and he was very serious to do business we know it didn't happen though Eric uh what do you make of this news and uh yeah i'm just anxious to hear what

you think about this didn't we break this news first year months ago no you told me candidly we never talked about it on the year oh really yeah well we should have broke it well i felt like you didn't want to betray confidences at the time okay There's another pretty famous person involved in their telling of that story, the version I heard. Yeah. So, first of all,

I met David Feldman, um, a couple times over the last year, maybe a year and a half, went to a couple BKFC fights. The last one I went to was here. The first one was down in Florida somewhere, Fort Lauderdale and then I went to one in,

uh, Billings, Montana actually, six months ago, eight months ago. And had some interesting conversations with David Feldman and his team. And then it all went dark. Just like all of a sudden, well, that's okay.

It's not like I was planning my life around this opportunity. It was just very exploratory, nothing really serious. And I just forgot all about it. And I got to call back a few months later. said, hey, we'd like to kind of pick this conversation back up again. And it was mentioned to me that there was a conversation had been taking place during that period of time when I went dark, when they went dark. And I just went, okay, whatever. And it was during that period of time

that I think they were talking to Vince. And obviously the deal didn't work out. We picked up our conversation. And I just decided that for no reason other than I wasn't confident that I could do for them what they needed done. and I didn't want, I didn't want to take on a responsibility or a commitment that I wasn't 100% sure I could deliver on. And some of what they needed was beyond my abilities. So I, I said, hey, I'll have you guys on my show, I'll go promote, I'll do whatever I want because I really think a lot of David Feldman and his team, the son is doing a great job

with television. They put on a great event. I mean, I went to two events and they were first class of, events. I met with the fighters after the show, hung out with a couple of them at the hotel bar after the fights. Super, super, super people. So I wish in the absolute best. But yeah, I knew about, I don't know when I told you about that. Cutter that had to be like six months ago. Yeah, it was a while ago. I mean, I think it may have been either at the end of the last year or very early this year. But it is fascinating to hear that some of that stuff is bubbling out.

And I don't know that you've seen this. But since we mentioned him earlier, I want to close with this. Because we talked a little bit about Vince McMahon today. Jonathan Coachman, who's been doing a lot of more wrestling content, catch him on coaching bro or a variety of other things. You can just check him out on the stadium app or YouTube or anywhere you enjoy podcasts. And there's lots of different opinions about what he's saying.

But one of the ideas he has is Vince is going to try to buy the WWE back with help from the Saudis and he thinks that this may have actually been his plan all along now that seems a little far-fetched but I could get behind his events trying to make the best of a bad situation it's hard for me to imagine this was the original plan but I think coach basically is saying hey maybe this is an opportunity for Vince to cash out with the TKO thing and then get some outside money from Saudi Arabia to help buy it back and then he gets control that seems really far-fetched for me to imagine but now we're also hearing from Justin this week that hey Vince tried to be by BKFC now you and I already kind of knew that

we just didn't talk about it but still this is bringing around a lot of talk of Vince is going to do something what do you think Vince is going to do if you had to guess is he going to make a run at WWE I mean that okay that's a stretch right right a really big stretch but it's plausible there's no shortage of money in Saudi there's no shortage of a relationship between Vince and Saudi I could see it that part of it but the acquisition itself I you know You got board, you know, you've got shareholders that you've got a, I mean, I don't know how easy that would be, but if it's possible, I wouldn't, never say never, said this before about

Vince McMahon on his show many times, just you cannot, you cannot underestimate him. he's pretty amazing in that regard and i do i could see that the relationship that that Vince is the one that created the relationship developed that relationship with saudi turned it into what it is today in many respects that was all vince McMahon and because of that relationship that kind of opens the door to yeah but it's possible that's the plausibility door it could happen now the downstream from that would be how do you do it how do you overcome any regulatory issues are there any regulatory issues because it's a foreign entity buying a public corporation i don't know i'm not that guy somebody is out there

somebody's listening to the show right now that knows the answer to that just you know that's an example of the kind of potentially kind of hurdles that that kind of a acquisition would face even if Vince had Saudi money. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Vince McMahon in the coming weeks. Eric, you've been bouncing all over the place for Real American Freestyle. What's your agenda like over the next week? Are you finally home on the range for a little bit? Are you back on the road again?

No, I'm home all next week. I think I'm home until just after the 4th of July, although things can have happen fast and you still got more interviews we're going to do this one of the biggest challenges with Real American Freestyle right now is getting these interviews done with all of our that are on our card because these athletes are competing all over the world it just competed at an event called Final X last weekend to determine who's going to be on the world team which will determine who's going to be on the Olympic team so our athletes are competing at a world-class level all the time so we're

We're trying to capture these interviews as we need them early on for pre-production while they're training and on the road and competing all over the world. So we'll get them all in. And depending on when people are available, I could be leaving here tomorrow morning and not get home for a week. But I don't see that happening quite yet. What I do see happening is you and I getting together next week to talk about the one and only, the late Great Canyon.

Who better than Canyon? He's our topic next week. I can't wait for us to talk about him. Let's get DDP to join us for that one. Okay. Yeah, we'll see if we can't get a DDP run in. That'll be fun. Is he, yeah,

him and DDP were tight, man. That'll be a great one. Oh, man. I love that. Make plans to join us. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button right now and turn on the notifications bell.

You don't want to miss us the next time we're live. You never know who's going to do a little surprise run in. And earlier today, Eric, we had some brainstorming sessions about what's to come later this summer and fall. with 83 weeks. Is it fair to say that we've got some pretty cool stuff up our sleeves that people don't want to miss? Yeah, I'm excited about that. I love trying new stuff. We're going to try a lot of new stuff here over the next couple weeks and months throughout the end of the

year and keep the stuff you all love and try new stuff with the things you don't. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. There's a lot of really cool stuff we talked about today that's going to be fun to do. Some stuff on location. I don't want to say too much, but it's going to be fun. Stay tuned, boys and girls, hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell. And we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Derek Bischaw. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson here to tell you a little more about what ad-free shows.com is all about. Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling

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