83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 383: 25th Anniversary Of The Great American Bash 2000

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

On this REMIX episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad take us back to the year 2000 and the Great American Bash! The guys discuss the eroding relationship between Eric and Vince Russo, the growing number of gimmicks being added to every match, and the overall disgust Eric had for this PPV now watching it back over 25 years later. TRUE CLASSIC - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/83WEEKS  ! #trueclassicpod BLUECHEW - Visit https://bluechew.com  and try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code 83WEEKS -- just pay $5 shipping. 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. THEME MACHINE - John Carney, a celebrated St. Louis radio icon, has dedicated his career to capturing the essence of American storytelling. As an inductee into the Radio Hall of Fame, alongside his father Jack Carney, John brings a wealth of experience and a unique interviewing style to The Theme Machine. Available now wherever you find your podcasts. 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.

Don't we all love summer vacation, relaxing, laying out by the pool, barbecues, hitting the beach, doing, well, nothing? Well, how about a summer vacation from your house payments with savewithconrad.com? You can do just that. Reduce your monthly payments by making the equity you built up in your home work for you. You can roll together those high interest rate credit cards into one lower monthly payment and perhaps access some of that newfound equity to turn your house into your dream home with no money out of pocket. And how about this? you get to skip your next two house payments that's right you won't have to make your june or your

july house payment you're done until august first go right now to save with conrad dot com let my team run the numbers for you for free there's no obligation and if we can't help you save some cash we won't waste your time and did i mention we're offering a three-year guarantee right now that's right that means if at any point interest rates improve over the next three years you get a free refile that's right no new lender fees from us so you get to save money now without wasting money later when the rates improve on a whole second set of closing costs, why not go to savewithconrad.com and get a guarantee. Save money now and save money later with your friend in the mortgage business. That's me. Conrad Thompson at save withconrad.com. Shoot me an email

at Conrad at save withconrad. 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, it's Conrad Thompson, and you're listening to 83 weeks. There, Chris, y'all. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm doing great on Grandson duty here in Clearwater, Florida.

So, by the way, I'm going to give everybody a heads up. um we may have a special guest i don't know if i don't know if waylon is interested in being on the show or not but he's going to be running around he's going to be making noise and there's not much we can do about it so i apologize in advance for the distraction i love it another generation of bishops that's awesome just what the world needs and i said that a lot to myself as i watched great american bash 2000 which is our topic today we're on the heels of slamberry from last month which we covered here in the archives, 83 weeks on YouTube.com. Here we are, I guess now, Eric, about 45 days into this new Rousseau-Bischoff regime.

How were you guys getting along, say, 45 days in, best you can recall? The relationship was beginning to, had begun to deteriorate shortly after I got into, to WCW and started working with Vince Rousseau. And it was fine for a period of time. There seemed to be a legitimate or genuine desire on Vince's part to make it work. And there certainly was on mine. But no matter what, you know, it's chemistry. You know, when it comes to creative, you've got to have the right chemistry. You can have five creative people, five really talented people in a creative environment, in a room, so to speak.

And just because they're good doesn't mean they're going to create great product. Because if the chemistry isn't right, if it's not a true collaboration and with everyone focusing on the same goals and trying to achieve the same vision, no matter how talented the people in the room are or how many of them there are, whether it's one or two or ten, it's probably really not going to work. And it became pretty obvious shortly after Vince and I started working together, Vince Rousseau, that the chemistry just wasn't there. We should talk about what else isn't there. Attendance. Nitro on May the 8th is going to draw 3,388 paying fans. In total, there's 6545 in the building.

And you might think, well, that doesn't sound that bad. And it's not until you realize this is at the TWA dome. and Meltzer would say, considering the size and cost of running a show at the TWA dome, this is the biggest money-losing event for WCW so far this year. And he writes, as a reminder, but this TWA dome, it was 3,888 paying fans, and just 17 months prior in a blizzard,

which means there was no walk-up because it's a blizzard, had 29,000 paid. Eric, this has got to be hard to reconcile. I can't even imagine how this might have felt from the inside looking out. Wait, we were here last time and had 29,000 paid and now we've got 3,300 paid. We're not talking about years and years apart. 17 months difference. This is kind of unbelievable, no?

It is on the surface. You know, when you look at everything that was going on, clearly the wheels have begun falling off WCW creatively for about a year and a half prior to this event, maybe a little over a year. And that was the beginning. And things got continually worse for a lot of reasons. It wasn't just creative. It wasn't just Vince Rousseau.

It wasn't just Eric Bischoff. It was a combination of a number of things, not going to go into the internal. strife that was taking place with Interner at the time. We've talked about it at nauseam. But I think the other factor, and this is just as big of a factor, is that the WWE, when they made their decision in the late 97, starting in 98, but then really heating up with the very provocative creative that they were producing.

It was very sexualized. It was very much targeted towards that 18. to 34 fringe 18 to 49 year old audience so you have wwee turning up the nature of their adult themed creative and content while at the same time you've got wcw in a state of dysfunction both creatively and organizationally corporately that combination and and then you've got you know

Vince Russo's in there because Brad Siegel decided to hire Vince Russo because everybody thought that Vince Russo was going to be the big savior. Within a month of a Russo being in WCW or two months, Brad started having second thoughts shortly thereafter reached out to me about coming back. And that in and of itself was a dysfunctional way of going about trying to writing the ship correct the ship so there was just there were so many things going on any throw the morale in there and just a complete lack of vision that's it was a combination of a lot of things it's a runaway in the ratings war to raw from long island that day does a 6.23 rating nitro does a 2.28 else would say there were 10 million pro wrestling fans watching wrestling on

Monday night starting at 9 p.m. That means basically 66% of wrestling fans who are already home on a Monday night, didn't even bother to turn on their television sets to watch Nitro at 8p and waited until 9P to turn on raw. Momentum is a real thing, is it not, Eric? Not just in sports, but in business too. It is. And, you know, I've said this many, many times over the years, but maintaining momentum is a lot

harder than creating it in the first place. You can do any number of things, you know, even in business. You can do a massive advertising and marketing campaign and promotional activity. You can do so many things to create a surge of interest in your product or your brand, whatever the case may be. That's easier, in my opinion, than maintaining momentum. That's where it gets difficult. And this, know we experienced that firsthand you're going to uh have your your work cut out for you the night after slam barry as a reminder this is the paper view where kane took the or i'll get right cany took the big bump off the top of the triple cage onto the ramp so we opened nitro

the next night with him in the hospital and he's being visited by ddp and um you and the new blood are going to come in an attack page and then Kimberly pours the contents of Canyan's bedpan on Dallas. Yeah, we're pouring fists and bedpans on performers now. And then they cut to

the live show where we see Newblood and David Arquette coming out. And Meltzer would say, Mischoff, clearly feeling the heat of the criticism of Arquette and the ratings, attempted to portray it as if they had this angle planned long in advance by showing back footage. Unfortunately, they didn't,

none of this made sense if the idea was to get the belt back from page by using arquette why would page win the belt due to arquette in the first place if abbott laid down in a fake fight to arquette to full page why did he lay down for page's finisher unless page was also in cahoots at times it's hard to make logical sense of some of this writing is that challenging for you as a performer like if you don't buy it can you still go perform it or do you have to be bought in for it to be good oh i think you absolutely have to buy in. Otherwise, you're just going through the motions. You're just doing what you're

told to do and you're not feeling it. I think the art in professional wrestling, in any performance, whether it's music or wrestling or acting or whatever, the art is to feel it, to convince yourself what you're doing is real. And I guess that's called method acting in a way, but you have to believe it. You have to feel it in order for the audience to feel it. And so much of this was okay, if, you know, the bed p.m thing, I don't know what was going through Page's mind. You know, DDP was early on a supporter of Vince Rousseau. And I think that says more about Diamond Dallas' page's desire to look at the positive and look at the bright side and be optimistic. And I think that Page really wanted things to work with Vince Rousseau. I think

obviously Paige really wanted Rousseau and I as a combination to work. But at the same time, some of this stuff was so ridiculous that I think, and I'm certainly not speaking for page, and we didn't have this conversation. So I don't know that this is how he felt. But I know in general, when you're really wanting something to work, even if you're not feeling it or believing in it, sometimes you'll go through it and you'll do it because you may be wrong, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, you, you're not going to agree with every creative decision that's made for you. It's the degree to which you're not engaged, meaning how far from it, how far from reality, how far from your character's reality is what you're

being asked to do. And if it's a big disconnect, it's tough. You'll do it anyway, but it's tough and you're not feeling it. And generally, neither will the audience. I want to bring up another piece of creative here. We've got Rick Flair out. He's going to be calling out his son, David Flair. David's going to come out with Daphne and Vince Rousseau. So Rousseau is sort of taking on the stepdad role here. Rick's got his old 10 pounds of gold belt here. And he's arguing. with David and and Vince Rousseau and eventually he looks at David and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and says I'll get I'll pick up this phone right now and call Vince

man and you'll be on raw next one day and the crowd cheers and of course eventually Rick and David make up or so you think they hug but then David jumps him steals Rick's title belt and leaves he actually is seen later jumping in a limo and telling Lex Lugar he's quitting wrestling. What did you think of this? Is this a good storytelling, Rick and his son, David? I think at its core, it had the potential of being good storytelling. It was too much too soon for David.

He just wasn't ready to carry that kind of a role. But if you take that storyline, it just separated out from what we're seeing in 2000 in WCW, because everything was kind of a mess. But had that storyline played out two years earlier and it would have built over time and it would have been executed in a more realistic fashion, I think it could have worked. There was nothing wrong with a son turning against his father

for crying out loud, how many stories in the history of storytelling have been based upon a betrayal of a father and son. It's pretty common, right? It's a great premise. It's just how do you execute it? And this was rushed.

It was sloppy. There was no architecture to the storytelling. There was no real vision for it or planned for it. It was more or less a, hey, I got an idea. Why don't we do this? And it's just hot. It's another word for hot shop. is all it was. And again, David was so new, not really comfortable yet, nor should he

have been. No one would have been comfortable being thrust in that role with the little bit of experience that David had. It was no fault of David's, certainly no fault of Rick's. But it was essentially a good story on paper that was horribly executed. A true classic, the mission goes beyond fit and fabric. It's about helping guys show up with confidence and purpose. Their gear fits right. It feels amazing. And it's priced so guys everywhere can step into confidence without stepping out of their budget. But what really sets True Classic apart? Well, it's not just the fit or the fabric. It's the intention behind everything they do. True Classic was built to make an impact, whether it's helping men show up better in their daily

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That's trueclassic.com slash 83 weeks. Trueclassic.com slash 83 weeks. Well, speaking of horrible execution, Mike Awesome has a match with ADP here and man, they're just not on the same page. Sometimes matches click, sometimes they don't. This is one of those that's a myths. Mike Awesome, of course, is fresh off of a pretty incredible run with ECW. And he's going to be a big part of this new Rousseau Bischoff era, or at least has a big debut on that first night attacking Kevin Nash.

Why don't you think Mike Awesome enjoyed more success in WCW? Timing. Timing. Again, you come into an organization. I mean, it's like, you know, take Tom Brady and throw them, you know, into the Detroit Lion roster. You know, it doesn't matter how great of a, uh, a, uh, of an athlete or how big of a star, Tom Brady would be. When you're surrounded by a team that is not functional,

that isn't playing up to par, that doesn't have momentum, it doesn't matter. And I think not that Mike Awesome was the Tom Brady of professional wrestling at that time, but Mike Awesome was a very talented guy. He had the right look. His head was squarely on his shoulders from a wrestling perspective. He was smart. You know, he was good.

But he wasn't smart enough or good enough to rise above just the lack of momentum and the dysfunction that was WCW in the year 2000. Scott Steiner is going to come out and challenge Tank Abbott. And Tank Abbott is going to do an entrance here to sort of mock Goldberg. And Steiner and Abbott brawling, Meltzer would say, is tremendous and maybe the most exciting thing on either show. And of course, eventually Rick's going to run down. and it feels like he's going to be here to save his brother Scott. That is not the case. Rick Steiner is turning on Scott Steiner here.

We've told this story a few years prior in 1998. We're trying it again here in 2000. How many times can you go back to the whale on the brother story, do you think? You can go back as often as you want to, provided you've got a good premise in an emotional story and something that people will buy into. If the story is there, it doesn't matter if we've seen it before. There are basically seven stories that have ever been told in a history of storytelling,

going all the way back to when cavemen would draw on walls with sticks that they pull out of the fire and illustrate the hunt or the battle. There's seven basic stories, and you can go back to any of them as often as you want to, provided you do a great job putting a day. different spin on that story and making it feel like a new story. We've talked a little bit with Bruce Pritchard about Ken Shamrock and what his upward mobility was in the WWF. What did you see the ceiling as for Tank Abbott in WCW?

I never looked at Tank and tried to imagine what is, I didn't look at any talent and tried to determine, or especially early on, what anyone's ceiling is because you never know. You may think you know, but you may be very well surprised. So I never looked at anybody and said he's only going to be or she's only going to be valuable up to a point. You know, the truth is, Tank Abbott had a hell of a great character. You know, could he go in there and have an Eddie Guerrero style match? Absolutely not. That wasn't his character.

And he didn't have the skills to do that. He didn't need it. He had established himself as a pretty interesting character through the UFC. And when he got to WCW, he was actually quite entertaining on camera. He, so I didn't look at Tank and put any restrictors or governor plates on him, a restrictor plates or governors on him coming off the starting line. It was kind of a little, let's, let's try this and see how it develops and see how the audience reacts to him. The audience speaks up their mind.

You know, obviously creative has, and the character has everything to do with engaging the audience. and getting the audience's attention. But at the end of the day, whether I like a talent or character or Conrad Thompson does or doesn't, really doesn't matter. It is the audience, the general audience that will determine

whether somebody's successful or not. Eric, over your right shoulder, there's a bug crawling on the floor. There's a bug on my shoulder. On the wall behind you, over that shoulder, on the frame around the door. Let me kill that some bitch.

Oh, that's a big one. I think my, I think might beat my ass. Hold on. If we leave this in, you have to add suspense for music here, Dave. Oh, you bastard. You bastard, get out of you. Get the hell. I'll never come back.

just sort of remind everybody Eric is that Airbnb in Clearwater so I'll provide a link and let them know that this one has a problem yeah I don't know what that was that's a big ass bug though they got it's the thing about Florida they got and I saw the same thing when I moved to Atlanta

you probably have them in Huntsville but I'll never forget man when Lori and I we moved to Atlanta from Minnesota and we pulled into the driveway of our new house. It was in the evening. It was late at night. The porch light was on. And I saw bugs I'd never even seen a National Geographic.

And they were big bastards too. And that was another one. I don't know what kind of bug that was, but it looked, it looked like a tough bug. You never know what you're going to, what you're going to run into here, let's saying the 83 weeks every week.

No. Here's something I'm blocking. out maybe i don't remember this at all you had liz in matches this is going to wrestle daphne here yeah miss elizabeth medusa's going to interfere i can't believe this is real man liz wrestling was she okay with this what do you remember about this i don't remember much i don't think i talked to liz about it you know again my my role was a little different than maybe people perceive it to be um with regard to me overseeing russo and creative uh i didn't i didn't deal with liz on this one i didn't talk to her about it or i can't remember that she even expressed

an opinion about it we've got uh hulk hogan teaming up with kevin nash here to go to a no contest with ray mysterio conan kidman and mike awesome that's right it's four on two not a lot of selling going on here and eventually they get a baseball bat out after uh hulk ogan and put him in the trunk of a car um they're going to try to kidnap hogan here but the goldberg monster truck is going to block this from happening and then hogan with his uh magic houdini power somehow escapes the trunk what are we doing this doesn't feel like nitro anymore no it doesn't doesn't it feels it feels like a parody Of professional wrestling more than it felt like, especially when you look at nitro from, as you pointed out, 17 months earlier, 18 months earlier, we were, you know, firing on all eight cylinders, you know, with nitrous oxide and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it was just. And, and, and, and, and, and, it. And, it really does feel, as you talk about this. And I think back about it.

It feels more like a parody of Metro than Nitro. We should mention that there's a bright spot on this show. It's Sting and Jeff Jarrett for the world title, and it's a really good match. But maybe we've trained the WCW fans. Here's what I mean. Sting puts the Scorpion Deathlock on, and Meltzer writes, Then the worst thing happened. The crowd, sensing a world title change, gets really excited.

well actually in unison they turned their heads to backstage waiting for the run-in the first time i ever saw this happen was an 88 watching the jim crock in promotion show and i think it was when sting had the scorpion on rick flair and world title matches when it was first noticeable the reason i bring that up is because the cities where the fans did that drew smaller crowds every month until by the month of november they were completely out of business the only difference is these guys don't have to make money actually the fans were looking in the wrong direction since Vampiro came from under the ring and pulled Sting under. So he brings up a pretty good point. You got to weed through it to get it. The idea being fans don't believe that we're going to see anything. There's always going to be a non-finish, a screw job, a run-in, a DQ, a Schmaz, or what have you. And so when that moment finally happens like, well, it's not going to happen. So who's coming out? And they all look. And they didn't come that direction. But it did come.

It was Vampiro. And I feel like this is the reason a lot of people harp on quote-unquote clean finishes. Are clean finishes that important? Can you do this too often? Do you think you were here in this era? Clean finishes can be very important. At the same time, I think you can have non-finishes provided that they're compelling and were designed to motivate the audience to tune in to see what happens next week as a cliffhanger, if you will.

But I think the third point is that, yes, we did do it too often, and we did it in too similar of a fashion without any real thought to the episodic nature of it, Meaning these non-finishes and these swerve finishes at the end were more of a function of lack of storytelling and lack of discipline, creative. You hear me talk often, probably too often, about the architecture of the story. You know, if you've got a three-week story and you know what the finish is, you know what the end of the story is. You know what you want that to be and the emotion that you want to create. and you have an idea of where you want it to go afterwards, then you work backwards from that. But along the way, during that three-week period of time,

you need to hit certain emotional thresholds within that art. And done well, sure, you can have non-finishes. Go back and look at, you know, 95, 96, 97, even into early 98, mid-98. Night show very rarely had finishes in the main events, especially. But it didn't matter because it was such a compelling story that the audience was more interested in the story than they were, who's going to win the match? Who's going to win the match is a byproduct in many cases to the story. Yes, it's important, you know, who's going to win the match.

You want the right person to win a match, especially at the end of a three week, three month, three-year story, whatever it may be, but you've got to hit certain emotional points along the way to ensure that the audience is going to stick with it. And just to arbitrarily have, I got an idea. Instead of doing this, let's do this. Let's have Ampero come out from under the ring or anybody else has nothing to do with Amperil. Not effective. Not effective. And also, I think to reinforce what you're saying or what Dave said, I guess, is yeah, when you condition the audience to the point where they like a Pavlovian response as you're going into the finish everybody simultaneously looks for the run in clearly you've done a good job of I would say yeah

you've done a good job of ruining the audience's engagement because they know they know what they're seeing isn't the end of it they see something else coming and they want to see it right away it's it clearly was overdone way overdid same thing happened with i mean you've heard me on this show i've talked about it a lot wcw never had a handle on finishes ever ever ever not when i first got there as a c squad announcer not in 93 or 94 when i was the executive producer but not being involved with creative 95 when i started getting more involved in creative certainly by 96 with the introduction of the NWO was very involved and creative during all of that period of time. And up until this point, in July of 2000, the Achilles heel for WCW was finishes.

Dusty Rhodes had the same problem. That's where the term Dusty Finish came from. Dusty had a great mind for storytelling. Dusty had an amazing vision in many respects. but Dusty wasn't surrounded by people who were really good at finishes and I think Dusty himself because he was so focused on the episodic nature of what he was trying to achieve and seeing wrestling like a movie sometimes took shortcuts when it came to finishes and we hadn't kicked out of the WCW hadn't kicked out of that problem

by 2000 for sure there was just nobody there that really had a good feel for finishes. I've said this again a bunch of times. People say, oh, did you, all the people that you could have, you know, snatch from WWE, who would it have been, would have been Undertaker? Would it have been Sean Michaels? Who would it have been? It would have been Kane. The answer is it would have been Paterson, because I think Paterson will go down in history. And from the people that I've talked to that I worked with for many years in WWE, you know, that's Pat Strick was listening to somebody lay out a story, listening to somebody lay out a finish, and then sitting back and really putting layers into that finish.

You could probably find audio of me in an interview somewhere talking about this from 20 years ago, where WWE had multi-layered finishes. Just when you think you know which way a match is going to go and then boom, something else happens that you didn't expect, shocked you into thinking, okay, this is going to be it. And then, no, that's not it either. And this is the finish. That layered type of finish, when it's done effectively, keyword, effectively,

is an art form. It's the last two minutes of the movie. You sit and watch a movie for an hour and a half or an hour and 28 minutes, and it's setting you up for the final. two minutes or one minute and having a really multi-layered ending to a movie or to a match or to a television show or to a book is the difference between success and mediocrity or dismal failure guys it's time to enter the room dick first blue chew isn't just a tablet it's a cheat code for your gimmick stronger harder longer lasting like somebody gave your

a pep talk and a gym membership. Blue Chew is the original brand offering chewable tablets for better sex. I got to tell you, I'm carrying my encyclopedia, Brick Tanica, everywhere I go. Guys, this isn't just about performance. This is about legacy or third legacy. Give her group chat something to talk about. You know when you lay it down. They're talking about how it gets up. Nothing makes you more of a legend than a little blue chew. So go discover your options right now at bluechew.com. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. As always, get your first month of Blue Chew free.

Just use the promo code 83 weeks to check out and pay the five bucks shipping. That's it. Join Blue Chew's mission to upgrade humanity, one thrust at a time. Head right now to Bluatoo.com for details and important safety information. And a big thank you to Blu for sponsoring the day's podcast. And Eric's Weiner, his Hall of Fame weiner. use that promo code 83 weeks and bluechew.com

we're going to talk about some dismal failure but first I want to congratulate whalen way J has officially made his first podcast debut so how did you do that did you see him run around the back I didn't see him but we hear him so his voice is here loud and proud for 83 weeks not complaining just I think it's a cool moment that that makes

three generations of Bischoff that have now been broadcasted how about that wow well then I'm going to have to get them we're going to have to put them on camera for me yeah we'll do a cameo here at the end of the show long as he goes down for i got to warn my wife because she's going to have to bring him in so mrs b we're going to get uh we're going to get wailing on camera here sometime on the next hour or so so just giving you heads up she's giving me the finger so listen uh the the conclusion of that match where vampiro came and and brought sting from

under the ring uh sting's going to come back up all bloody jerry's going to pin him new blood's going to come out and beat down sting and then hogan and nash come out to make the save and the goldberg monster truck runs over rick steiner and tank abbott's car this is a little silly uh i think every fan watching at home could say wait a minute stone cold's been doing that on tv for years is russo really trying to do the same thing he did in the wbf with different characters well we had austin run over stuff now let's just have Goldberg do it bro well we had monster trucks i think in 96 didn't we i mean i put together a monster truck match for better or worse not arguing that i'm just saying as

it wasn't a regular occurrence on nitro that we saw people in monster trucks running over stuff and candidly i don't think as a wrestling fan i ever said man i bought a ticket to monday night raw but i really hope to see bigfoot run over a car like that's not a thing right this is I don't know, it feels like, let's just do what we did for Steve here. I think there was some, sure, there was probably a lot of that. You go to what you know, and everybody does this, myself and heard it. Everybody that's in a creative position is going to go back to things that have worked in the past. Halk Hogan was a perfect example of that to a fault.

It wasn't until he turned heel and joined the NWO that he had a different, way of thinking. A lot of that was brought upon him by his association with Nash and Hall and seeing the success of the way they thought about psychology. And Hulk adapted well. But prior to that, Hulk Hogan leaned into what worked in the 80s in the early 90s way too often. We've talked about that a lot of the show. It's not unusual. Vince McMahon probably does the same thing or did the same thing. Let's talk a little bit about what's next for Vampiro on Thunder, he's going to sit down with Mike Teney, and they're going to build to a spot where Vampiro is acting like he's going to bite the head off of Sting's crow.

But Sting makes the save and beats the hell out of Empiro. And after getting beat up, Vampiro starts laughing, and he's making references to Steve Borden, not wanting to work. He'd rather stay home. You see, his gimmick is just another acting gig. And then when Sting is pounding on him, he's referring to Vampiro as Ian. and I guess, you know, this kind of makes Sting look like the bad guy and Vampirio looked like the baby face.

Maybe that's the idea. But where were you on these characters calling each other, Steve and Ian? I was out. I did not. That was a trend, okay, that arrived in WCW. Look, we played to the smart audience, when I say smart audience, people who think they're smart because they read dirt sheets and they think their knowledge.

um because they do so i'm guilty of it i i played into that i would tickle that crowd every once in a while ideally you you play to the inside the inside baseball card in a way that those who know get it and those who don't know what you're doing because they're not part of that small percentage of audience don't even recognize it Then you can get away with it, but to overtly break character, which is what we're talking about here, and portray a character that you want the audience to believe is real up until the point in time when you basically tell them it's not, you're going to just, you're going to unplug the audience's interest in your, in your character and in this case, the brand happened too often. well speaking of things that happen too often Liz wrestled another match this time against Bertha Faye

I guess it's Rhonda Singh here still the match ends when Lugar is going to rack sing Chuck Palumbo is going to come down and hit both Lugar and Liz with a bat that's right Liz is not only wrestling again Chuck Palumbo's hitting her with a bat Chuck Palumbo hit Miss Elizabeth with a bat

What in the world are we doing Yeah you know Aside from the obvious here Palumbo a male hitting a female with a bat Aside let's just put that off to the side And recognize that it's just bizarre Yeah

The fact that Palumbo's using the bat, which was up until that point, a Sting gimmick, right? Yep. And then everybody started using the bat. Now you got Chuck Palumbo using the bat. So one of Sting's trademark characteristics, we had the whole, he had all of WCW scared to bet, scared to death, easy for me to say, the minute sing would come down out of the rafters or pull that bat from out from underneath this trench coat and point it to

someone it was extremely effective yes so let's all do it if it worked for him it'll work for everybody that was the mentality i think of vince russo particularly and we're seeing it manifest here in 2000 where stings now breaking character as as as did vampiro and now we got chuck Palumbo using the bat. I don't know, man. It was mess soup. Speaking of mess soup, we're going to see some of that in the next match here. Horace is going to wrestle Kidman and the stakes are Horace has to retire if he loses. And of course, you are not on team Horace. You're with Kidman. You're at ringside, constantly changing the rules of the match to make sure that your

guy doesn't lose, even turn it into a handicap match. so you can get other people involved and eventually Hogan who was banned from ringside during the match comes in and beats up some of these guys and then Nash comes out everybody's jumping on him Rousseau's out to confront Nash he's trying to take credit for creating his success in the WWF and then the blood falls from the ceiling and it misses Nash completely and instead and splatters and hits a lot of people in the front row what in the world what a visual too by the way the blood coming down from the ceiling's supposed to drench nash and we miss it completely this

I mean are you I suffered second-hand embarrassment just watching this I'm covering my face I don't mean if you're watching on YouTube this is just this is bad I'm wondering, I forgot all about this. And of course, there's an ash with a bat because no one can be in WCW unless you have a bat. Yeah, it's required. You get it when you sign your contract. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm wondering, no one, Kevin, did he go, eh, I don't think I want to do this.

And because, look, the apparatus, the setup for the blood was done earlier in the day. It's clearly up to the talent to know where that blood is going to or where that fake blood is going to come down and be in the position in order to take it, although I did look at that and it looked offset instead of the blood coming down in the center of the ring, which we would expect. Can we go back to that graphic, Mr. Silva? Take a look at that again. It appears as though Kevin is standing right in the middle of the rank, correct? Now he's standing right over the T. So he's standing close to the middle of the ring and it looks like that blood is coming down almost two feet from the edge of the ring so it could have likely been a production faux paul or it could

have been Kevin going no I don't want to do that so it's just going to miss me I don't know I'll have to ask Kevin next time I talk to him Kevin's a pro though I doubt that he would have done that intentionally but there's always that possibility The next week. Crabby, Kevin could occasionally be a little tough to work with. The following week on Nitro, it's all about the WCW title changing hands.

Unfortunately, Raw gets double the rating. Nitro does here, at least head to head. There's going to be a House of Pain cage match on this show between Sting and Vampiro. The object here is to handcuff the opponent to the cage. the lights go out and Vampiro just disappears.

By the way, the misfits in action, which we talked about on our prior episode about Slambury, Meltzer is sort of comparing them to be the WCW equivalent of the oddities. And just like they had Sable hanging out with the oddities over there, well now we've got Hylene Buck, who we're going to call Major Guns here, be a part of this group with Chavo as Lieutenant Loco, Van Hammer as major stash and as stupid as this sounds, according to Meltzer,

they wanted him to be private stashed as an inside joke but he cried about it because private is the lowest rank and he didn't want to be seen as the lower rank. Please tell me that. I don't know that none of us know if any of that is true. That's hilarious though. Is it not? But it is funny. If true, it is funny and it's not it's not entirely unbelievable either given the people

involved yeah uh well the misfits in action you know and the filthy animals this and terry funk i mean w c w in 2000 has a lot of stuff going on here i mean we've even got norman smiling running around doing hardcore match stuff and in full football gear ralphus is hanging around. I mean, it's not all bad. There's some interesting out there characters, but there are in a vacuum some really interesting characters. I mean, Norman Smiley comes to mind. Like, that was a home run in this era, was it not? I don't know if I could classify it as a home run. It might have been a double. I'm saying Norman Smiley in his prior WCW existence was quote unquote, just a wrestler. A phenomenal.

wrestler but just a wrestler but when he's here in this era doing the big wiggle and running away from hardcore stuff now he's showing that he's much more than just a wrestler he's an interesting character that makes for some interesting television segments like not every guy's going to be the world champ and be working for the big gold belt i loved what you guys were doing with norman in this era i think norman what we saw with norman what i saw with norman was like the audience he was a great wrestler, very little character, if any, but he was a great utility player in that you could put him in just about any kind of a match you needed to put him into, and he could have a great, believable, entertaining match with or without a story. But I don't think anybody

recognized or looked at Norman Smiley as someone with a potentially great character, especially a comedic one, until this point in time. I don't like the football thing. I don't like you know, coming to the ring and, I mean, it's just too goofy for my taste, but it was definitely entertaining. And I think more than anything, it, again, I, you know, I don't know this to be true. But I'm, I suspect that even Norman Smiley went, whoa, being a character is fun. And I think he had fun doing it as a result, even though I think the, the football gimmick was kind of lame and silly, it was far more entertaining than just Norman Smiley going out and having a great match.

Well, here's something else he does entertaining. He and Ralphus get a job at the popcorn stand, and then Ralphus gets them fired because he was picking his butt and putting his hand in the popcorn. And this same show, we would see major guns get down there and give Terry Funk mouth to mouth. This is the same episode of Nitro Boys and Girls. And on this same episode, ProBar and Daphne,

Russell Candido and Tammy, Probar and Daphne win. So they're now the cruiser wage. They are the Cruiserweight champion. Crowbar and Daphne, together, Eric. You had a mixed tag match for the cruiserweight title. This is just the epitome of nothing matters. It's all nonsense.

It's Crash TV, bro. Yeah. Bro, bro. It's Crash TV, bro. That's what this is. It's, it's, it's, it's a, It's a kaleidoscope of cluster fuck is what it really was. And when you think back, how, I don't even think about this until you bring it up, though.

You look at the Cruiserweight Division in 95 or 96, 97, early 98, mid-98. Unbelievable. You think of the Ramus Seri, Eddie Guerrero's, Dean Malinkos, I mean, just so good. Jericho, if I didn't already mention him, so many great talents that, the, you think, the luches that came in to create this phenomenon called a cruiserweight division. And then here we are in July of 2000. And it is completely bastardized. Yes.

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Miss Hancock comes out and starts dancing on the table In the middle of all this Tammy is going to give Daphne Maybe the worst stunner in history Ultimately though Crowbar and Daphne get the win And then Flair comes out to destroy Crowbar And in the middle of this

Sting goes to the parking lot And his car is on fire This is all in the same segment This is unbelievable You said it You said it right there it's unbelievable there is no there is no storytelling whatsoever in any of the things that we just described it is all crash TV hotshot seeds strung together that made no sense to

anybody but Vince Rousseau let's talk about your old pal Rick Flair we're going to see a tour in fact of Rick Flair's home because Vince Rousseau and David Flair are there to tear it up in Charlotte and they're jumping around in Flair's bedroom they're going in Flair's closet, getting his robes. This segment, oh, there you see. Look, that's Ashley,

that's Charlotte Flair on WCW Nitrow. Beth Flair and of course, Reed. But how about you had Charlotte and WCW years before Vince ever had her on Raw, just saying. That's a stretch, but okay, I'll take it.

by the way that that was that wasn't me that was russo put that together and for better or worse now this idea i don't i don't hate this idea right i this is the only thing i hate about it is that russo's front and center you know that's what i wanted to ask you about is he on camera too much here for you he's anytime that vince russo was on camera it was too much okay it he just wasn't a compelling character and he wasn't a great performer he could go out there and, you know, he could, because Vince has the gift of gab, you know, Vince could go out there and run his mouth and it'll make sense to people in the moment. And then he gets them talking, you think about it and go, no, Vince just wasn't a believable character. But he had inserted himself,

the story, you know, behind the scenes was, you know, Vince Rousseau replaced Eric Bischoff. Eric Bischoff was sent home, fired, lack of a better way of saying it, although they They were still paying me. And then, oh, they've got to bring Eric Bishop back. The Eric Bishop, Fitzruzzo's story, was kind of front and center to a percentage of the audience. What percentage of the audience? I don't know. I don't know if anybody does even today.

But we leaned into that. And it could have been, it had the potential of being a good story initially. That's why I agreed to do it and let it happen. but it quickly deteriorated and by this time russo and i were not on the same page shortly after this i'm gone Vince russo pulls his own little stunt and i threw my hands up and said brad you hired him he's your problem i'm done it's either me or him i that was my ultimatum to brad seagull sitting in brad's office in atlanta it was very simple he said brad either he goes or i go

but this working together thing isn't going to work and this is an example of it talk to me a little bit about player here because you know it wasn't that long ago less than two years and and he's at all he's on the sidelines you guys are suing each other not happy with each other now he's back and he's got an opportunity to work with his son but as you said maybe it is too much too soon for david what do you think rick thought about working with David here. I don't know. I never talked to Rick about it at the time.

I assumed, which was a mistake, I assumed that it was something that Rick would have wanted and been excited about, but I don't know that for sure. I'd like to hear from Rick about that. I don't,

you know, you want to give your family, your kids in opportunity, if you can, I think every parent would agree with that. Almost every parent would agree with that. I don't think Rick was any different at the time. I think Rick truly wanted to see if he could help his son break into the business and grow. But I don't know that for sure. Well, what we know for sure is Kevin Nash is going to wrestle Mike Awesome in a not-so-great match. Nash is going to accidentally drop awesome on his head um so a pretty rough looking spot with power bomb then awesome takes a

uh a bump off the apron onto a heavily gimmicked table setting this is all according to the observer and the match ended with awesome never put in the ambulance but i think it ended because it was a mercy killing that's all of course according to david melzer you're going to challenge ddp and ask him to bring backup. Sid's going to come in, make the save. But of course, Sid turns on DDP. Meltzer would say, they've got to bring Paige's mom on next week so she can turn on him. Were you doing too many DDP can't trust anyone's stories here? Do you think? Yeah, because it was very similar to the Sting story, right? Yeah. That's, that was the premise of the early crow character. Sting felt the,

People that were his friends, close friends, began to doubt him and doubt Sting's integrity, which is what kind of forced or was the catalyst for Sting kind of turning his back on everybody until he could sort out who he could trust and not trust. That was the premise of a story that worked really, really well two years earlier. And now we're going to the well with the same story, different characters, same story. eventually we get Horace Hogan turning on Hulk Hogan on this same show too so another hallmark of Russo booking I guess lots of turns even though I see you bro bro bro bro bro it worked for me in WWE I turned WWE around I'm the one that made that

happen bro it's just a mess it was oh god I don't know why it's still I still get pissed I don't know why I should I don't care it's not going to affect my life anymore one way the other but it still bothers me i guess for some reason i can't define or articulate we're going to switch the title here too player's going to beat jeff chariot with an inside cradle in six minutes and 16 seconds players 51 years old here wrestling with one arm because he needs shoulder surgery and they're hoping to do it in mid june and he wrestles in street clothes according to the observer wcw wanted him to wrestle in trunks but there was a miscommunication so he didn't even bring any trunks and he wins the world title in street clothes in street clothes what in the world

are we doing eric this feels like you you keep asking me that question and i keep searching for some kind of reasonable explanation or answer and i just can't you just sort of throw your hands up at most of the stuff i i don't know what else to do i can't i can't make any sense of it you know even look, and I'm not stirring any shit up, but how many, well, I guess I could see Rick not bringing trunks to TV, bringing his gear to TV, if indeed he had a bad wheel that he was preparing to have operated on, because you wouldn't expect to be asked to get in the ring when you're injured. So I guess that makes sense.

But if that's the case, he was injured, why do it at all? right why why even go there wait because we needed a swerve bro and maybe we needed a leader a new leader of the new blood because on thunder Shane douglas is revealed as the new leader and that leads to everyone fighting Kevin Nash makes a match with uh kidman for the great american bash and the stakes are if he wins he gets a title shot a bash at the beach 2000 we all know where that's headed and yeah this is um interesting this feud we even see hogan wind up kissing tory wilson to a big pop what did you think of the McKidman hogan story and involving troy and i don't know this is uh feels a little weird it is weird and i've never hidden the fact or shied away from the fact

that I'm friends with Hulk. I was friends with them then. I'm still friends with him. So I don't want this to sound like I'm just defending Hulk Hogan, but I'm going to. Because Hulk was, Hulk wanted this thing to work too.

Hulk had a good deal at WCW. Hulk wanted it to work, but it was smart enough to recognize that things were falling apart. And like me, to a degree, when I agreed to work with Rousseau, went into this with the best intentions, but also recognized that he had to change too. He had to be willing to do things that his character otherwise would never have done. And Hulk didn't want to work with Kidman. Hulk thought it was a ridiculous idea from the get-go, but also recognized that

there was this and part of it was you know managing the roster and trying to manage morale part of this was okay if 60% of our roster or 30% of our roster a large enough percent of our roster believes that they're never going to get an opportunity here then as a leader as the most significant talent on the roster or one of them at least Hulk felt responsible to try to make things work And the Kidman idea was his attempt. It wasn't his idea, by the way. But Hulk agreed to do it because he wanted to kind of break the perception and improve the morale to the degree that he could. He didn't want to work with Billy Kidman.

He didn't think that there was a story there. And nothing to do with Billy. Billy is a phenomenal talent. He certainly was back then. It just wasn't believable. There was no story there. made it believable. There was not enough story there to make people go, you know, I don't get it. Hulk Hogan, 275 pounds, 24 inch pythons, all the stuff that we've learned and identify with

in terms of Hulk Hogan's character. Now he's going to get in a ring with a guy that probably at the time weighed a buck 90 and was relatively new. It just wasn't believable, but it was Hulk's attempt to try to break through the perception within the audience and certainly within in a locker room that if you're in the middle of the car, there's no chance you're ever going to wrestle in a main event. And that's what this was. And I don't think that had anything to do with making out with Tori Wilson. I think he would have been happy to do that as a heel.

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cash out and use the referral code 83 weeks maybe so was this next segment Scott Steiner's going to come out with a bunch of makeup on and create a black eye and a cut-up mouth and it's going to be Scott Steiner versus Mike Awesome in an ambulance match but once he puts the recliner on Goldberg's music starts playing but instead it's Tank Abbot who comes out so Rick and Tank

are going to attack Scott is going to hold his own until Awesome makes it three on one they're about to put Scott on the stretcher the Goldberg truck makes the save yeah the same silly Goldberg truck from a week prior now Rick and Tank are going to go after the truck Scott's going to throw them both on the hood

and the truck backs it out of the arena so Scott wins the match my head's going to explode well wait till you hear about this next segment quote Vampiro burned a sting mask During the commercial, they soaked the ropes with gasoline. Sting came out, then Vampiro came out and called him Steve. They said they're going to have an inferno match on the pay-per-view.

Sting said, that's nuts, and he's not going to do it. And at this point, the ropes were supposed to catch on fire, but they didn't. The fans started laughing and booing, and they re-taped it later in the show, and it did work this time, but by that point, the arena was almost empty. man these stunts seem to almost never work in WCW these ideas that the WBF could have pulled off we just didn't have the staff for that sort of thing yes and no

we had some really talented people that were capable of a lot especially when it came to stunts but I think the over-reliance upon them and the lack of infrastructure. So, in other words, you've got Ellis Edwards, who, by the way, spent 20 years in WWE doing the same thing after he left WCW, right? Ellis Edwards was the guy who was really the architect

of a lot of these stunts, working closely with David Crockett and Craig Leathers and a team of people who wasn't David all by himself or Ellis all by himself. But in order to effectively execute any stunt. First of all, you can't do them, you can't do stunts five times in a show or six times or ten times in a show, as we're seeing here, right? If you're going to, if you've got an idea for a big stunt, something to shock and surprise people or do something that's completely

unexpected and perhaps not seen before, at least a version of something that hasn't been seen before you got to have the time to plan it, rehearse it, and execute it. And that's where WCW, especially during this time, were stunts that we pulled off that were pretty cool. Let's go back to, you know, Paul and Nash, the outsider's running the Steiner's off the road. That stunt was so real, we had to pull it off the air because people thought it was an actual crime. So there were stunts that WCW did, that we executed incredibly well and believable. Sting were propelling down from the ceiling had never been done before. It was done incredibly well and helped really define Sting's character and create a sense

of drama on the show that up until that point hadn't really been seen before. So it wasn't that WCW wasn't capable of it. It's just that at this point in time, WCW 2000, there was a an over-reliance upon it and a lack of detail and discipline to design, rehearse, and then execute. This was more of a ready, shoot, aim approach to stunts, and everybody was scrambling and rushing, and there wasn't enough planning to execute properly, and that's what we're seeing here, whether it be the bucket of blood or the ridiculous monster truck stunt and finish

or non-finished, whatever the hell that was, and now this, and the whole vampirial thing, you know, what, it's funny because one of the, one of the, I'll never forget when Brad Siegel called me about coming back in 2000, you keep in mind, I'd only been here for about four or five months, not even that, because I really didn't come in until, when was it March, can't remember, February, March, whatever it was in 2000. I'm here now for about 90 days, 120 days at this point. And I'll never forget one of the first conversations I had with Brad Siegel, who was the president of TNT, for those that don't remember, didn't know. When Brad explained to me why he was interested in bringing me back, he said, Eric Russo is just too dark. Everything is

dark. And there's nothing wrong with having a dark character or several darker heelish characters, or even a baby face, kind of like Stings Crow character, that was dark and ominous. But you've got to have a balance. And there was no balance at this point in time. And I think the world of Vampiro, by the way, I just saw him a couple months ago. And he's, I just, I have a lot of respect for Vampiro. But at this point in time, Vampiro was so focused on that dark, demonic kind of present. of his character that within WCW where there was so much other dark type characters,

so many other dark type characters in story, it just was too much. It was too much. And Sting wasn't the opposite. It wasn't good guy, bad guy. Sting was a very ominous, brooding, dark character in and of himself. There was no contrast in these characters. this is painful i want i want you to know it's 1026 a m on a sunday morning here in clear water i can hear my grandson play with my wife in the next room as you

you all probably can as well and i apologize again for that but man this is really hard to sit and look at this stuff and remember living through it because it is ugly uh so listen the original plan is for flare to lose the title on the 22nd. That was the plan all along. Meltzer would write that the original plan was that Rick would lose a retirement match and then have rotator cuff surgery. But it's not as serious as the one he had back in 96.

But the plan was lose the retirement match and come back probably for the September pay-per-view. But this angle with Rousseau is now maybe one of the hotter angles in the promotion. So as of the 15th, late afternoon, Jared was supposed to be Flair, and then Rousseau changed his mind before the show, feeling people wouldn't expect Flair to win. Jarrett was said to be unhappy about it, but promised he'd get the belt back a week later. And then Flair comes out on TV and puts him over pretty big,

saying that, you know, for a guy my age to win the championship again, it's such a great honor. And Gerrit was a great champion, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, the swerve, bro. You were right. Nobody saw it coming. That's the reason we did it. And sometimes people didn't see it coming because it's just absurd, but whatever.

I just say, I can't, I'm assuming the show is going to last about another hour, 45 minutes, whatever. I can't spend 45 minutes burying anybody any longer. It is what it is. Everybody did the best they could do under the circumstances, meaning Rick, obviously. They're going to pretend that Flair has a brain aneurism and do like a little, Um, uh, Nash is going to come out of a casket and beat up Jarrett and David Flair like their flies and he leaves with the belt, but this is kind of crazy, you know, that we're doing it the way we're doing it here, people coming out of caskets and we're still

bringing in new people, by the way. Pamela Paul Schock debuts here as an interviewer. What do you think of Pamela Paul shock? Um, can I get a look at her? Do we have a graphic? I just got to see her face. She's blonde hair. She looks like Shane. She looks just like Shane Douglas. Sorry.

Oh, goodness. You know, what I remember of her decent on the mic, but way too green to be in the role she was in. Again, it was the Vince Russo, Titson ass tour, or Titson an ass era, major guns, a lot of the women that Vince wanted on the show were very happy to be as trashy as needed, not that Pam of Polshok was trashy as a person, but there was just too many women that didn't really have any talent, but had other gifts that were on that show because of their other gifts. goodness gracious this is you know maybe because he can't push the the envelope

content wise as far as the maybe some of the risk gay storylines so just have folks who maybe could look the part of what he was hoping to do i don't know what do you think he was i think viz was getting as close as he could to the line but this is that was the one line that turner didn't want to cross i mean they were they were okay with the violence and the kind of some of the crazy stuff we did because it was, after all, professional wrestling and I think that many executives have become desensitized to a lot of the stuff that had been going on in WCW for a long time, not just in 2000, obviously. But when it came to the over-the-top sexual nature of what WWE was doing, that was a definitely no-fly zone with Turner executives. You guys are going to lower the asylum, which is a take off on a UFC cage, and we're getting ready for a match here.

The bulk cutters are going to come out, which I guess totally defeats the purpose of having a cage. Later, we would see Terry Taylor and Reed Flair come out. Reed's calling out David. So now we're getting the whole family involved. Allegedly, according to the observer, it says the original plan was for David to give Reed a terrible beating, but standards and practices nixed the idea, feeling it would display child abuse. I guess that makes sense. Do you remember there being an idea to see David beat up Reed on Nitro?

No, I don't. It doesn't mean it doesn't mean that it didn't happen or it wasn't a plan or a thought or a conversation, but it never progressed to the point where it involved me. So it could very well have been something that Russo wanted. to do that just never got done because i mean turner would throw if i could see turner throwing a flag on that at that time terry tingle terry tingle always said that is that not like the best stripper name in the world i love it like if you were a stripper and you were a hot stripper wouldn't you your stage name be terry tingle i think it's a great name well me too but not not

not with regard to the real one. She was far from being an attractive stripper. But I could see her throwing a flag on that one, and should have, by the way. By the way, somebody should have maybe thrown a flag on this. Vampiro beats Hulk Hogan in four minutes and 40 seconds. That's right. Vampiro beat Hulk Hogan in four minutes and 40 seconds.

And during the course of the match, Hogan ate him up. But Kittman does a run-in, hits Hogan with a blow torch. A blowtorch, Eric. Yeah. You know, I've been in probably thousands, maybe just hundreds, hundreds, thousands of arenas. I produced myself over 5,000 hours of professional wrestling over the years. I've never once seen a blow torch on the set. So, I don't know.

Where do you get a blow torch? Why a blowtorch? I don't know. Next up, we've got Nash versus Jarrett for the vacant title. Because Flare can't defend it. And eventually, this is real. Nash is going to set up a power bomb in the aisle on Russo. And the blood comes from the ceiling.

But he has to wait forever because the stuff is falling late. And when it does fall, it misses him again. But he at least tries to. to move into the path and get some of the real stuff on him. Jarrett hits him with the guitar and pins him in about five minutes. But we got guitars and blood from the ceiling and, man, this is just, this is all just a mess. You said it.

I don't know what to say. I like to be engaging and entertaining and be a little provocative myself. It gives people something to talk about, but I don't even know how to describe what was going on any better than you just did. It was a mess. Meltzer would say there's been a lot of high-level negotiations this past week involving WCW and ECW, most notably with SFX. SFX owns many arenas and as of late has purchased concert tour rights

for leading acts like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. The deal they've done in those situations is to book the tours themselves because they own several major arenas. They can cut out renal deals for other major arenas that everyone else can be on. They guarantee the performers, in this case, the latter to, $250,000 per show,

and they've jacked up the ticket prices to $100 or more per seat. They've sold tons of corporate sponsorships and commercials on the live screens to help defray the cost. And at one point earlier this year, they made a strong approach to buy WCW, this company, SFX,

which was immediately next by Turner. Exactly what's going on with these negotiations has been kept secretive, but there is talk that WCW is interested, but not in selling the company, but perhaps SFX might buy promotional rights to the house shows, and negotiations are in the beginning forms. Do you remember hearing about SFX, A, that they had an interest in buying WCW, and B, that maybe there's a chance they'll just handle our live shows? Yes, I think I was a part of one of those initially, initial meetings.

but it was a short-lived, I wouldn't even call it a negotiation. It was exploratory at best. There was a presentation. There may have been a meeting or possibly two, but I was involved with one of them very briefly. More as an introduction and getting to know everybody and having a preliminary discussion about the idea that SFX brought to the table. But it was really a Turner corporate.

discussion and my involvement was very limited at best, but the pretty much the reporting on what you just said was true. To the extent that SFX was interested in buying WCW, I had heard that at the time. Don't know how true or how serious that was, but isn't it ironic that here you had a company at the time sFX was a very uh credible well funded successful company had a great track record at the time turn or should have sold right it would have been a good move had they sold them i guarantee you they would have got more than four million dollars out of sFX it's believed that uh in the observer tbs and t and t want to maintain the tv rights to the company, but they don't want any of the headaches that come with running it or the

losses that come with running it. And Melzer would say at least two other groups have expressed interest in buying either WCW or ECW, and there's always the Fox network, which is always talked of doing wrestling, and according to Meltzer, had prior negotiations with you, Paul Kogan, and Randy Savage. Was that right? The three of you guys ever talk to Fox? I did. Hulk and Randy were never a part of those discussions. I met with Peter Legerre,

who was then the president of FX. And it wasn't Fox Network, it was FX cable. And who was the guy that was in Turner when the AEW deal was consummated?

Kevin. Kelly? Yeah. Doesn't sound right, but I'm I'm going to use Kevin Kelly. Kevin Kelly worked right under Peter Liguri, and I met with both Kevin and Peter, and there were some serious discussions, not negotiations, but there were some very serious discussions about bringing one of the shows.

They wanted Nitro. Turner was interested in possibly moving Thunder, possibly. Brad was interested. Brad Siegel was interested. but they didn't want to move they didn't turner didn't at the time want to move nitro Kevin Riley Kevin Riley that's it Kevin Riley is the WWF announcer right Kevin Riley was uh I don't if he was I don't know what his title was but I had a meeting in LA with both Peter Legory and Kevin Riley on the nitro or sorry the thunder show that

airs on May 31st you do an interview with Tony Chivani and you're going to claim that you've got a big deal that's going to change the landscape of the wrestling industry and it was finalized earlier in the day and you say that the deal will be announced at the Great American Bash and that there's nothing Vince McMahon can do about it. When you cut this promo,

was the plan all along for Goldberg to turn heel as we'll see or was it something else that fell through? God almighty, I don't know. Like it just feels like coming out making an announcement this will change the wrestling landscape forever and it's just goldberg turning heel feels a little silly no well there was nothing else though i mean it had to be it by process of elimination because it wouldn't have been a tv deal i certainly would have been

wouldn't have been involved in those negotiations or discussions had there been one because at this point in time i wasn't even an employee of turner broadcasting i was a consultant And I would not have, it wouldn't have been appropriate to have me in, in a business meeting with regard to WCW or Turner. So it wouldn't have been that. The only thing it could have been was really Goldberg and overhyping, teasing that turn. I just love this story that makes the observer, quote, WCW sent feelers to ECW about working together, something Bischoff discussed with Paul Heyman during the Mike Awesome legal battle. of turning it into an angle, something a stagnant ECW may be more likely to consider,

although Heyman said he has no interest in being part of a WCW angle. Is this real? Do you remember trying to do something with ECW here, stir it up in 2000? I mean, Paul and I had several conversations. I have known Paul since 1987. We both worked in AWA together for a while. Paul Heyman worked with a guy by the name of Rob Russell. and Paul and Paul Heyman and Rob Russon were essentially Vern Gagne's live event promoters

outside of the state of Minnesota. So I've had known Paul for a long time. And even during that period of time when there was a lot of ECW talent coming over to WCW because Paul was having cash flow issues, despite the lawsuit threats and all that going back and forth, Paul and I met, at least on one occasion, I remember specifically in Orlando. So there was, yeah, there was, we'd explore it. You know, we were familiar enough with each other that we'd explore it.

But here's what I didn't know then, and very few people know now, is that WWE was funding ECW. Yeah. Vince McMahon had a piece of ECW, which is why Paul wouldn't have ever really been able to work with us. on any kind of cooperative basis. Let's talk about some sad news that happens on this show. There's a report that prior to this Nitro, Tammy Stitch was taken off the show because of a backstage incident. Lots of people at the time were saying she had been fired.

Meltzer says that doesn't seem to be the case as of yet. But apparently other women working in the company found syringes in a restroom adjacent to the women's locker room, along with a vial of Newbain, which is a painkilling drug that has become a major. major problem in the ECW locker room and apparently this was all linked to Tammy quote she was described as being in very bad shape backstage before the show and it was said before the show that she was in the said bathroom for what seemed like an eternity she was supposed to do a catfied spot with miss Hancock on the show and set up a mixed tag feud with Chris and Tammy versus David and Miss Hancock that was a bitchoff and Janie Engle were alerted he was pulled from the show and it's believed she was ordered to take a drug test the next day. And for years, Eric, people have said that Kimberly took the blame for this, the discovery. And I guess that even maybe led to an issue with Scott Steiner and DDP. And

this just spirals here. What do you remember of this sad Tammy Sitch circumstance? I remember Janie coming to me and saying, hey, we've got an issue here. I remember going into the bathroom and seeing the syringes. And Chris Candido was in there with her. Um, presumably using as well it was really really ugly well it's a sad circumstance uh thoughts and prayers for the candido family of course they just did a fantastic dark side of the ring on those guys not too long ago um booker t's back he's going to come back as g i bro i don't know that booker t needed to be repackaged but we tried it and you can see eric's visual response yeah 83 weeks on YouTube.com.

Russo, David Flair, and Daphne, and a woman playing the role of Reed Flair's sixth grade teacher Ms. Snodgrass are going to be on the show. And she said that Reed was teaching the other kids to make fart noises with their armpits and sticking mirrors on classmates' shoes so he could look up the

girl's skirts. And this has to be Rick Flair's son. David challenges Reed to a match at the bash. Yep. David is challenging a sixth grader. talking about arm fart pits this is a different wcw crash tv bro oh goodness i mean i mean you talk about playing to the lowest common denominator yeah that is playing to the lowest common

denominator enough if that isn't a reflection of Vince russo's understanding of or appreciation for professional wrestling as a business i don't know what is and look we've all done i'm not I'm not righteous here. It's not that I haven't done stupid shit, but the degree to which, and the volume of stupid shit creatively that Vince Rousseau is doing during this period of time, if that isn't a true reflection of someone

that A, doesn't really understand the wrestling audience at all, not even a little bit, Vince Rousseau was living out his own pre and post-tubescent view of what professional wrestling is. And we all had to suffer through that. This is just horrible. I mean, this is really weird.

Look, like I said, I don't want to come off like, oh, I never made any mistakes, or I never did anything that was tasteless, or I have, and I recognize them when I did them, and went, okay, I don't want to do that again. But this is just consistently horrible, juvenile, I want to call it frat humor, but even, you know, frat humor is usually perpetuated by 19, 20, 21 year olds. This is like 13 and 14 year olds who are just living a weird, sexually frustrated fantasy. It's bizarre.

well it was bizarre the way we played hot potato with the title we're going to switch it again this time nash wins the world title in a three way with charrett and scott stiner of course there's going to be women getting kidnapped and referee bumps and tank aback because why wouldn't there be in nitro in salt lake city we got vince russo and david flair holding reed and beth flare hostage kevin nash is going to hand the world title back to rick flair and say you never lost it so that makes the fourth title change in WCW in three weeks Derek comes out and challenges Flair to a title match and Flair says I want the night off

but of course he wants the night off and then of course once he finds out that his wife and son are being held hostage he accepts and the matches back on meanwhile Goldberg's going to challenge Tank Abbott to a match on June 5th in Atlanta Vampiro is going to try to burn

Funk with Pyro. Eventually, Sting's going to make the save once Funk has been completely doused in gasoline. Vampiro's got a blowtorch. He's threatening to set the entire parking lot on fire, but they stop. What's with the blow torches? Another blow torch. What's up with blow torches?

A lot of fire here. Apparently, there's a little smoke to the fire, though, because Lex and Liz, they say that's enough. They refuse to do the planned angles that were set up for them at these thunder tapings. And they're sent home. Allegedly, Lugar was supposed to do a run-in and attack Palumbo,

which would cause the DQ in Chronic's tag title loss to Palumbo and Stasiak. In the case of Elizabeth, there's a good deal of sympathy in her direction because they wanted her to be a wrestler and do a wrestling match with Kimberly at the pay-per-view. And she's never even trained to be a wrestler. Of course, there's a lot less sympathy for Lugar, who didn't like the way he was being booked in the program with Palumbo, who clearly isn't ready. But then again, Lugar was once in Palumbo shoes

and he was pushed long before he was ready. My goodness. What do you remember of Lex Lugar and Liz saying, nope, I'm going to do that. And you guys having to show them the door. I didn't blame him a bit. Completely understood it. Didn't interfere.

Didn't try to talk anybody. I didn't talk to Lex or or Liz about, I didn't try to calm him down. I sympathize her. I empathized with them. I didn't want to be there either. So couldn't blame them. They weren't wrong.

Well, the much hyped return of Goldberg and it's Goldberg versus Tank Abbott, his first match on TV in a long, long time does a 2.90 rating. The show that night does a 2.86, raw does a 5.95. And then you actually bring up

on this show that Lugar and Elizabeth aren't there. Bruce was going to challenge John Rocker, who's, you know, making a lot of news. He's the baseball pitcher from the Atlanta Braves, who was pretty controversial at the time. I don't know, man. This is weird.

We even see Rousseau beating Rick Flair in a cage match. I can't believe this is real, but it happens in nine and a half minutes. Flair is, uh, I don't even know what to say, man. You want to talk about a loyal soldier here. Wrestling in a cage match against Vince Rousseau? I mean, why don't you throw the flag on this?

I don't know I should have I just this is so freaking ridiculous I don't know how I let this happen I mean this I should have walked out with Lex

and Liz I should have driven him back to the hotel with this one Meltzer would say for some reason I can't figure out the blood immobilizes everyone except the heels which it doesn't affect it appeared the blood was supposed to drop much sooner thereby not making the figure 4 spot so ludicrous and that David was supposed to pull Russo out of the path

of the blood only Rick would have to sell it but neither happened David put the figure 4 on Rick and Russo covered him for the pen this is all just bad it is what it is um the go home thunder the mama lutes are now the hardcore champion i know that sounds silly but it's only silly because you gave it to them you'd beat terry funk for the hardcore title which we've talked about in the archives you're the hardcore champion having beaten terry funk on the same show where Vince rousseau was beating rick claire this all actually happened then you just give the title to the mama luke what's the deal eric you took

good to put a guy over you can't help make the mama luke why don't you count the stars pal i don't want to get my ass kick well there's that and yeah yeah you kidding me damage this face potentially i've no way i'll just hand it over i had no desire to defend that hardcore title i didn't want to be on the road defending that title i don't want that pressure of that burden the pressure of the burden Hey, man, take a look of this. What you're seeing right now is that the gap is widening between asking prices and sales prices.

What this means is, if you've been on the fence about is now the right time to buy, this graph tells you the story. It is. You can get the best deal possible right now. You know, it wasn't that long ago during the pandemic. We were all saying it's a seller's market. We were seeing houses get listed in multiple cash offers over the list price coming in. That is not the case.

today. You can actually get a really good deal right now. Now, if you wait until the rates improve, well, we're going to have a bull rush like we did a few years ago. Everybody and their brother is going to be trying to move. You're going to have to compete. You're going to pay more for your house. I've been saying this for a long time, but I really do believe it. You date the rate, you marry the house. Let's find the house you really like, and let's get a great deal on it right now. And if and when interest rates improve, and you can get an even better payment. Don't take my word for it. Just ask Jacob.

He's a broadband technician from Tennessee. We were able to show him how to do this every step of the way. He's now a homeowner. He bought his very first home and he did it right now in 2025. And we'd love to help you the same way we help Jacob. But right now to Save Witheric.com and let Eric Bischoff and his team personally run the numbers for you and get you pre-approved. There's no cost. There's no obligation.

And if we can't help you out, we won't waste your time. but what we will do is we'll get you a plan of how to get on track and accomplish your goals. If your goal has been to own a home this year, let's make it a reality. Let's let Eric Bischoff help you do that because Eric won't say no, he'll say not yet, but here's how. That's what you need. You need somebody who cares. Eric can be that guy for you.

And when you work with our team at Save Witheric.com, you do get that year three guarantee. You know, the experts all agree that interest rates are expected to tumble in the next couple the years, we don't want you to miss out on that. But right now, you can go get a great deal on a house today. Then when these rates improve, get an even cheaper payment. It sounds too good to be true, but Eric Bischoff can do it for you. And I keep saying Eric, because Eric Bischoff is licensed. He's going to be able to help you do your mortgage. He was so impressed with what my office was able to help him do. He took the classes. He got lined up. He's been doing this for years and years. He's ready to go. Start saving money right now. It's

it's save with Eric.com. NMLS number 2129, Equal Housing Lender, save with Eric.com. Tank Abbott is looking for somebody to pound and they show a 12-year-old kid in the audience and they alerted us that it was John Michael Chivani, Tony's son. Tony hops the rail and the kid threw a drink

at Tony Abbott's, I'll get it right, Tank Abbott's face. Nash comes out to save Chivani's life and they went all of 13 seconds. before Rick interfered for the DQ and Scott made the save. How about that involving Chivani's kid in the program? Made him a star. Come on.

What's he doing? What's he doing now? I think he's doing, I thought he was doing the brewery, but I think that's a different one. Yeah, I talked to Tony about his kids about a year or so ago. We were driving together somewhere.

You know his son, one of his sons worked with him in AEW. oh really yeah because he was at fox wasn't he in new york he was a production in new york so you know what i found out the other day just to change the subject because this is just actually turning me inside out having to talk about this disaster of a show is randy anderson's remember the scene where i fired and then his kids came out yes and i said tell your daddy he's still fired yes yes his son is an actor really randy anderson's son is currently an actor what and i'm going to interview him i'm going to find him and interview him on a special edition of 83 weeks i want to do

a special edition and i may do it on strictly business because the business of the wrestling business is often a family business yes and i want to interview teal piper who i ran across a couple months ago here in florida i want to talk to teal and i want to talk to randy anderson's son about what it was like growing up with a parent as a professional wrestler and how it influenced their decision to become one and look we've seen it before we know the story i mean you look at dusty roads and dusty roads and Cody Rhodes, obviously. You know, there have been a lot of, you know,

Garrett Bischoff, obviously, my son, there's been a lot of father-son combinations and that's been in existence. But I want to talk about what it was like growing up as a kid in that world and what that world looked like from a child's perspective. I think it'll be very interesting. So somewhere soon, probably in June, we'll do an unstricted business. We're going to do the business of the business of the family wrestling business.

There you go. Just a tease. We're finally here at the show, Great American Bash 2000. We did 75,000 is actually an improvement. It's up 23,000 from Slambury a month prior. But a year ago, the Great American Bash had Kevin Nash to, defending his title against Randy Savage and Rick Blair taking on Roddy Piper. Maybe most famously though,

the No Limit Soldiers wrestling the West Texas Rednecks. That did 160,000 buys. So year over year, we go from 160 to 75. And of course, the big surprise is going to be Goldberg. We'll talk about that when we get there. First up,

it's Lieutenant Loco, that's Chavo, retaining the cruiserway title over Disco Inferno, who is frequently called the Hip Hop Inferno. during the match they go four minutes and 57 seconds um yeah mouth to mouth is going to be there because pops is laying there for dead major guns is going to deliver the mouth to mouth he awakens from the dead one of the few wrestling moves uh on the show reverses her gets on top and then he's pulled off man this uh this is a little wild that we've got this old out here playing captain or general hugh g rection's dad and we're doing mouth to mouth i mean this

is that was the highlight of this guy's life i bet well it's a good day i'd say that uh next up we got chronic meeting the mama luke's in nine minutes and 20 seconds veto is going to wrestle early in the match wearing the hardcore title which is kind of fun it only gets one star um they're they're going ahead and setting themselves up to be the nine number one contenders for Stasiak and Palumbo's tag team titles but chronic i mean it's written in the observer that even after just a few months on tv you were a big fan is that right you were a big fan of chronic saw upside i had a lot of respect for him i i didn't think he was like ready to come out of the cannon and be the face of the company or anything like that but i was

very happy to work with them and and i was on my chronic Mark and Adams, Brian Clark and Ron Adams. Oh, no, I was believable, credible. Yeah. Professional, easy to work with. Decent, like, oh, wait a minute, I see Whalen here. Okay, I think it's time for his debut. Time for the run-in?

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. Come here, Waylon. Making his worldwide television debut. Here. Hold on. Come here, Boy, Jay. Is he going to do it? Is he going to do it?

False finish. Hold on. All right. Here comes. Drum roll, please. There he is. Look at that. Look at that, Wailin.

Look at that. Wave. Welcome to 83 weeks, Whalen. Say hi. Okay, we're done. Well, there you go. Riving audio here. But we got it.

three generations of bishop now how about that nicely done mike awesome is going to beat diamond dallas page nine minutes and 41 seconds it's an ambulance match uh canyon is going to be the next guy to turn that makes it three pay-per-view shows in a row for ddp's best friend or wife has turned on him two and a quarter stars i mean my goodness dude arquette Kimberly now canyon a man has no friends you say said it though he is the new sting next up g i bro is going to pin sean stasiak in 14 minutes of a boot camp match um yeah we're gimmicked up here booker tea probably should have just been booker t jane douglas is going to wrestle the wall they go eight minutes and 12 seconds in a tables match

and conrad i know you got a you i know you got a busy day today and obviously our hands are but is there any doubt can anybody not understand why I hate gimmick matches as much as I do yes this is just disgusting it's too much of it too much of it I mean how about this too about this too Douglas asked for it to be a best of five tables match and the announcers explain it was really a best of none and then turns out no Douglas was right it's the best of five so the announcers don't even really know what it is but now instead of putting a guy through a table one time you got to put him through five tables eventually douglas hits wall with a foreign object wall falls backwards through three tables and he loses

it's not enough to have one table it needs to be five tables as if that's not enough scott stoner is going to win an asylum match over rick steiner and tank abit yet another gimmick match. I don't know how we do this, but maybe this is what we've all been leading to. Hulk Hogan and Billy Kidman. They go 11 minutes and 39 seconds. Hulk Hogan gets the win, which means he earns a title shot at Bash at the Beach 2000. We all know what's going to happen there. And Meltzer would say, even though the match was lousy, Hogan was the first guy on

the card to get a really big crowd reaction. Star and a quarter, listen lots of people have been critical of this angle and the execution but clearly hogan gave kidman a lot but ultimately the title shot was on the line and you hear the crowd got to go with hogan that's the story we're telling right it would have been a disservice to billy kidman i mean i would have hogan would have survived it because he's hulk hogan

but to push billy down the audiences throw at that point would have been ludicrous. Nothing against Billy Kidman at that point in time. Phenomenal talent. Just not ready for that. And it just wouldn't have been believable. It would not have been believable. The Gilligan's Island theme, how did you come to write that?

If you have to explain why these seven people are on that little book, it would be boring every week. John Coney is opening the vault, a staggering archive of 5,000. interviews. I suspected early on that I would probably have to use the river as a runway. The theme machine. They had a crush on Florence Anderson. She happened to play my mom on TV. A new episode every other week, The Carney Show.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Next up, something interesting. Rick Flair is going to beat David Flair. Rick's title, or his career rather, is on the line. If Rick loses, he has to retire. Rick, thankfully wins.

but you probably knew that was going to happen because he comes out with his entire family his wife Beth is here Reed is here even both of his daughters Megan and Ashley and Meltzer would say it was looking sad when Rick went to do his flip in the corner and couldn't even get the full flip

but aside from that Rick showed his unbelievable ability since this was far and away the best match of David's career Rick's going to hit or Rick's going to get hit with a baseball bat by Vince Russo they handcuff him they're using the figure four for leverage. Reed Flair

hops the rail. Russo pie faces the little boy. Reed gives Randy, or Russo a low blow rather. It's the handcuffed key. Charles Robinson unlocked Rick. Ashley jumps Russo. That's right. Charlotte Flair jumps Russo.

Locks him up with the handcuffs. This is crazy, silliness. And afterwards, Russo is going to challenge Rick to a match with Rick's Carrera on the line again on Nitro. Two and a half stars involving the whole family though what do you think too much too much i i i oh silly i oh my god yeah i as if that's not enough we've got an inferno match still to go

vampiro and sting somebody's going to get lit on fucking fire yeah that's what we're to do. The match starts in the ring with Vampiro pouring liquid all over Sting, which they're pretending as gasoline. He climbs up the ladder to the top. Sting takes a stuntman bump about 10 feet onto padding. He gets right up and climbs back up the ladder. And eventually they get to the top of the screen, do some thunder and lightning effects. The lights go out. They switch to a stunt double. You can see the stunt double, put on the sting mask. Some of the fans are even able to see the switch. The stuntman is then set on fire and jumps off the top. It's going to fall 30 feet onto a heavily padded stage.

They doused him with the fire extinguisher. It wasn't so much because he was on fire, but because when he landed, his wig came off, and people could see it wasn't really sting. The announcers are trying to sell it like someone died. And, uh, yeah, negative two stars. What are we even doing? This is just stupid.

It is. And this was, this, and again, this is probably a discussion for another show, but after going through the couple months that I worked with Rousseau, trying to write the ship, so to speak, trying to find a path that would work for WCW and a way out of this craziness, was the reason that Hulk and I had been talking about Bash at the beach, having their, be a controversial finish, hadn't fleshed out yet, but a controversial finish where Hogan would get the belt, take the belt, leave the building and disgust and not come back until October so that we could construct a tournament that would add some sensibility or credibility to our story arc going into Halloween havoc. And that's where the real conflict came in, was in July at Bash at the beach as a result of this pay-per-view and all of the nonsense that we had seen leading up to it. The goal was to create something clean, understandable, basic wrestling

storytelling is what we were going for. I had to get Hogan out of the mix. He had to be gone long enough to matter so that when he came back with the audience thinking, oh my gosh, Hall Cogan's gone, he's never coming back. He stole the WCW title. WCW is going to have to create a new title because Hogan took the original one and created tournament to name a new world heavyweight champion. Two heels. I think we kind of thought this through after this pay-per-view, but in the week or two to follow, we thought it best to have two heels end up in that tournament in the finals so that when Hulk Hogan showed up and said, uh-uh, uh-uh, that's not the title. This is the title.

If you're going to beat anybody, you're going to have to beat me for it. That was the idea for the Halloween habit coming out of the July pay-per-view. So the reset, even though we had tried the new blood reset and all that, it was a mess. It wasn't working. The real reset was supposed to begin at Bash at the Beach in July 2000. Oh, man, what a mess. What could have been. Let's talk about our main event.

Jeff Jarrett's going to retain the WCW title. He's going to beat Kevin Nash in 17 minutes and 24. 22 seconds. Lots of interference, lots of silliness. You got disco out here. Uh, you got Conan and Guerrero out here. You got the cat out here. You got Charles Robinson and Rick Steiner and Ray Mysterio and eventually Goldberg runs in for the save. He's waiting forever in the Nash points at Jarrett and which guaranteed, of course, that the spear was not going to Jarrett. It was going to Kevin Nash. That's right. Goldberg has turned heel. Jeff Jarrett scores the pen, Goldberg, Rousseau, and Vischoff are all hugging as the show goes off the air, star in a quarter.

Listen, I understand that, you know, once upon a time, what's that business on fire was Hogan turning a heel. But did anybody want to see a heel Goldberg? We were desperate. And I, you know, I was very much involved in convincing Bill Goldberg to do this. I wasn't, wasn't by myself. but I did support it and I remember talking to Bill about it because Bill at the time he wasn't against doing it. He just was not comfortable doing it because he didn't feel it. You know, Bill Goldberg only knew at this point a two and a half year career, right?

Right. But he had been in a business for a whole 30, less than 36 months. So he didn't have a sense of when something was. right in terms of timing or wrong and because he was insecure about it it took a little nurturing to get him on board and i remember talking to bill that night uh there was a i had a motorhome there that i was using as an office and brought bill into the motorhome and sat down and talk to him and obviously not not putting up a fight wasn't resisting doing it but he clearly was not comfortable doing it and i think one of the reasons again was that we needed

Heels. We needed credible, believable badass heels. And I don't think it was a bad decision. I think the timing sucked. The execution might not have been the best. But I think the idea at that point of turning Goldberg, had we not seen a plethora, I love the word, I just love being able to use the word plethora. It's one of those words that just gives me goosebumps when I say had we not had a plethora of turns that made absolutely no sense, I think Bill Goldberg Turning Hill would have made more sense. Because it certainly did on paper. It's what we needed to go forward.

It's written in The Observer. There are people in the company that have actually been convinced that Scott Steiner has more drawing potential as a baby face than Goldberg, even though the difference in their respective television ratings are like night and day over the last two years. Although at this point, probably every aspect of booking is over analyzed because of the problems from long-term perception of the company, particularly by teenagers that see it as old man's wrestling and are just as damaging as the lack of continuity in the booking. That's Meltzer's summation.

And he even says that the heel turn was probably too early in Goldberg's career and certainly in his return to television here. But where did you land on Scott Steiner? Did you think Scott Steiner had more potential as a babyface run at this point than Goldberg? No, I don't know who Meltzer was referring to, but it wasn't me. And that's nothing against Scott Steiner, but I just didn't see that at that time. I just didn't see it. Well, I got to admit, this is a challenge to take a look at this era of WCW. And people were forecasting in the observer how much money could be lost and they were talking in WCW as if,

internally the number was 36 million most thought it might wind up at 50 to 60 million but the worst case scenario was that they were headed to lose 80 million i know you're focused on trying to turn the ship around ratings wise eric but were you at all or was wcw at all at this point trying to get into cost cutting mode or just growing they had been in conrad they had been in cost cutting mode since third quarter of 1998 Turner Broadcasting literally cut our budget was even before that. It was halfway through 1998 is when Turner started cutting a budget that had already been approved a year previous. Right.

And we had been over delivering on. We were generating more revenue than we even projected at 1997 when we submitted the budget. We were getting even better ratings than we projected in 1997 when we submitted the budget, which was subsequently approved in late 1997 and as what we were living off of in 1998. But about in the middle of 1988, end of second quarter, I believe, for sure by the beginning of third quarter, that budget was dramatically slashed, dramatically slashed, and we were put on a hiring freeze, not so much for talent, but for employees. administration. So now that that process started in 98 and was only getting worse. And by the

way, nobody, you know, there's enough haters out there, enough people that listen to the show just so they can disagree with what I have to say or call me out on it. Feel free to take a shot. I dare you. Go back and read Guy Evans book before you do that so you don't look like a complete asshole. But a lot of the losses that the narrative that's still out there, somebody just wrote not too long ago I saw on my social media feed, somebody we all know that I'm not going to mention his name. It said, under Eric Bischoff, you know, last year, WCW lost $65 million. No, we didn't. WCW was the victim of intercompany allocations because Turner Broadcasting knew by 2000.

They didn't want WCW on the books. There were enough Turner execs. And anybody that has worked at WCW during the early 90s and before Nitro knew the WCW had been on the chopping chopping block at Turner Broadcasting for a talk to Tony Schiavani about me. He just commented on it not too long ago. WCW

was on its deathbed when I got there. And primarily it was because of lack of revenue, lack of business. Ted Turner liked it because it did drive ratings and he looked at it as a promotional platform for other programming on Turner Broadcasting. You can read that in Ted's autobiography

or biography I should say, Porter Bibb, Look it up, Google it, 2B, Porter, Bib, B, I, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, read the book. And then read Guy Evans' book. But when Turner, AOL Time Warner, knew that they wanted WCW off its books in one way, shape, or form, they started dumping losses from other companies within Turner into WCW because they knew they were going to, it was going to go away anyway. That's where that $65 million came from.

Not that we weren't losing money, we were losing money. There's no question about that. at the extent to which it was reported we were losing money had a lot more to do with intercompany allocations and dumping, cleaning up a lot of other divisions books because the company knew that WCW was going to go away. Well, this show is not going to go away. We'll be back next week. You get all these shows early and ad free if you join us over at adfreeshows.com.

Of course, you could have also been a part of our live studio audience like we had today, Maddie and Bobby and Josh and Bryant and Adam, whole gang was here greatly appreciate the coach and kyle and denobius and jimmy and everybody showing up uh you get to be a part of everything we do here on ad free shows over to ad free shows dot com including the brand new series the false finish i recently just sat down with one half of tna's greatest tag team america's most wanted and chris harris told us his story and i was as proud of this as anything i've done in the wrestling space go check it out and try it for free one week on me.

It's ad-freeshows.com. By the way, if your business targets me in 25 to 54 years old, no better place to advertise them right here on 83 weeks. Advertise with Eric.com can hook you up. Love to have your social interaction on Twitter. We're at 83 weeks. On Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, we're at 83 weeks. Over on Twitter, Eric is at E. Bischoff.

On Instagram, he is at the real Eric Bischoff. And the easiest, cheapest. Best way to support the show is to, like us and subscribe on youtube it's 83 weeks on youtube.com that's 83 week on 83 weeks on youtube.com tons of new merch and swag over at box of gimmicks.com as well and eric i never know what to expect when we sit down and we talk about all the silliness from way back when but wcw in 2000 man it was uh it was a roller coaster to say the least no no roller coaster implies that there's ups and downs this was just all downhill this is more like it was a cliff

that everybody was falling off of. Well, we will see you guys next week, right here on 83 weeks, and we'll try to keep Eric away from the cliff. And hey, man, thanks for bringing away Jay today. Made his television debut, if you will, his YouTube debut. He's got a bright future. We'll see you guys next week, right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bishaw. Hey, hey, it's Conrad Thompson.

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