83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 392: Confusionpalooza

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad are joined by Raj Giri to break down the confusion surrounding WWE’s upcoming PLE, Wrestlepalooza. Did WWE do enough to explain how fans can watch the event on ESPN? The guys also dig into WrestleMania 43’s move to Saudi Arabia and what it could mean for WWE’s “Super Bowl” moving forward. Plus, Eric shares his unfiltered thoughts on Vince Russo’s booking, counts down his Top 5 biggest WCW fails, and so much more on this week’s edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff! SIGNOS - Go to signos.com, and get $10 off select plans with code 83WEEKS. PRIZE PICKS - Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/83WEEKS  and use code 83WEEKS to get $50 in lineups after you pay your first $5 lineup! BLUECHEW - Visit https://bluechew.com  and try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code 83WEEKS -- just pay $5 shipping. RIDGE - Upgrade your wallet today! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code 83WEEKS at https://www.Ridge.com/83WEEKS ! #Ridgepod LEGAL BUDDY - Download the Legal Buddy App at http://LegalBuddyApp.com . Register today, use referral code LEGAL for your chance to win a $250 Amazon Gift Card. 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. ADVERTISE WITH ERIC - If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on 83 Weeks.  You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to http://AdvertiseWithEric.com  now and find out more about advertising with 83 Weeks. 83 WEEKS MERCH - You can now rep some of your favorite Bischoff-isms in style, like “Controversy Creates Cash,” “Heat is Life,” and my personal favorite, “Better Than, Less Than, Different Than” and our LIMITED EDITON “Nitro 30” all available now at 83WeeksMerch.com  SOCIAL HANDLES Like - subscribe - leave a 5 star rating on all platforms Twitter handles - @ebischoff, @heyheyitsconrad Instagram handles - @therealericbischoff @heyheyitsconrad  Facebook handles - ebischoff and heyheyitsconrad Show handles - @83weeks on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook YouTube - Like, subscribe and turn on notifications at 83Weeks.com

Hey, hey, it's Conrad, The Mortgage Guy, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish off, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? Doing great. It's fall in Cody, Wyoming. It's a beautiful time of year here. The weather's absolutely. Absolutely stunningly beautiful. And we have some friends from lacrosse coming out. Bob and Tammy Neander are going to be here next week. So we're going to be hanging out with them. Life is good, man. Life is good.

Wait, is this the glizzy king? Yeah, it's the glissie king. He and his wife usually come out over the 4th of July, but they had some issues this year and they couldn't come out over the fourth. So they said, when's the next best time to come? And truthfully, September and October, the two absolutely best months of the year to be in Wyoming. So they're coming out to hang out for a couple days. Eric, we're going to have fun show today planned. We're going to be talking a little about

WWE and perhaps their expansion into Japan. We know what they've been doing with AAA. So we'll talk about Japan. We're going to touch on a little Mexico. We've even got some new merch we want to brag about. But there was a thing that popped up last week that I can't wait to get your take on that involves your creative notes from Nitro 25 years ago. And we'll invite Raj Geary into the show here a little later to cover the big news this weekend and of course preview what's going down with the very first ever ESPN PLE for WWB. But perhaps the thing I'm most excited to talk about are the top five WCW fails, all that and more coming up on today's episode of 83 weeks.

But Eric, I want to sort of get an update for Real American Freestyle. I've seen so much on my timeline. It feels like you guys have hit another gear in the shadows of. the first event. As you're getting ready for the second event, I'm seeing more names, I'm seeing more people excited. It feels like people are really rallying around RAF. What's the latest?

Well, the latest is a fact, it's going to be, if it wasn't already announced, no, it was announced yesterday if you happen to be watching Ariel's show, Ariel Hwani, who by the way is no longer banned at UFC. So shout out to our buddy Ariel for that accomplishment.

But Giuliana Pena, who recently fought on UFC is going to join our broadcast team. So she was on our show yesterday. So we're pretty excited about that. Julian is a great, great competitor, great fighter. She's got a strong amateur wrestling background. I understand freestyle.

And she is really great on camera. So she'll be joining us. But we're going to be going to Penn State, Bryce Hall, at Penn State. Now, for people that are not that knowledgeable about amateur wrestling, Penn State's kind of like the New England Patriots, Tom Brady Circuit, right? Just between them and Oklahoma and Iowa, you know, strong rivalries there when it comes to wrestling. But Penn State right now is considered by many, not necessarily me, but many, as the mecca of freestyle wrestling. So we're going to be having our event there, really looking forward to it.

predict a sellout, so I don't usually do that, but I'm going to go out on a limb this time and talk about a sellout. We're going to tweak the show. You know, we had a pretty successful show the first time out. Obviously, our television partner was excited. There'll be news about that coming out in the next couple of days, but there's still a lot of things we can improve in the format of the show. So I'm going to be tweaking that over the next couple of weeks, but that's the fun part, man. That's what I get excited about. Well, stay tuned. We're going to continue to get these real American freestyle updates, but I do want to briefly touch on the rumor and innuendo. I don't know if you've been paying attention to this, but it wasn't that long ago that we

saw speculation that WWE may be expanding their footprint into Japan. We know earlier this year, they announced a partnership, and I guess it was a partial acquisition in conjunction with the third party for AAA. That was announced WrestleMania weekend. And listen, whenever there was speculation about. about Japan. I think everybody started to immediately think New Japan. It was around that same time that the Rock posted a photo of himself wearing a New Japan Pro Wrestling shirt on Instagram and like he was in his kitchen. So speculation went wild. Oh my God. Does this mean WWE is going to do

something or perhaps acquire New Japan? And I want to be clear. I have no insight. I haven't talked to anyone. I know everyone assumes because I do a podcast with someone else every now and again that maybe I have the inside track. I do not. But the latest rumor in innuendo is that it might actually be WWE doing business with someone else in Japan, not new Japan, but NOAA. Noah, of course, is where Masawa left and of course others followed,

including Kobashi. When Giant Baba passed away, there was a split. And a lot of those talent left all Japan and went to Noah. And people are now curious, hey, what this might mean. you were sort of the forerunner for this concept years ago. You were trying this When Worlds Collide that we've seen WWE pick up the mantle for with AAA. And of course, now it's WWE. But once upon a time, WCW was involved.

And everyone knows that you had a great relationship with New Japan. What do you make of the potential NOAA opportunity? I know the more we talk about WWE, we wrap our head around the fact that it is a global property. But it's not been without its critics in Mexico. Do you think they will close the deal with NOAA if you had to guess? And what might that look like in your opinion? It's hard to say. I'm not as familiar with obviously the state of the wrestling business in Japan as I once was.

Anecdotally, my take is that, you know, New Japan of the late 90s is not the New Japan today. It is a shell of its former self. So the idea that WWE is doing business, a strategic relationship with a wrestling company in Japan, other than New Japan, doesn't surprise me because the business is pretty soft in Japan across the board. So everybody, again, my understanding, I could be wrong, but the impression I get is NOAA, New Japan, whatever other wrestling organizations are out there, they're treading water right now. because the business overall in Japan has not been good for a long time. So to me, this looks like an opportunity. It's almost working with the developmental territory. It's a way for WWE's brand to get a foothold and get residency, so to speak, in Japan,

or at least the perception of a relationship, a permanent relationship in Japan, which would be good for the domestic Japanese audience and WWE. It sounds to me like it's more of a strategic kind of developmental opportunity than any kind of significant revenue opportunity, at least in the short, midterm. Long term, could be great. Short term, won't mean a thing. Midterm, maybe. We'll see. It will be interesting.

To be clear, I'm not saying I have any inside information. but where there's smoke, there's fire sometimes, and we've seen A.J. Stiles in NOAA. We've seen Sinske Nakamura in NOAA. We've seen Omos in NOAA. And we've even seen NOAA talent in NXT. So if this is the next direction, it does feel like NOAA would make more sense than perhaps almost anyone else in Japan. But one thing I'm curious about is how will this change sort of the politics of wrestling in Japan? because we know that New Japan and NOAA have seemingly had a great working relationship, but it does feel like that would change since we know New Japan has some sort of an allegiance in alignment with AEW.

So it feels like there may be a separation of church and state. Now, we've certainly seen this happen in Mexico, where I know CMLL has started to really market and brand themselves as we're the only 100% Mexican-owned Lucha. So they're trying to rally the troops and the locals to go ahead and, and embrace CMLL in lieu of AAA. Do you think there could be political ramifications that are felt at all here in America

if WWE does something with NOAA or for American wrestling fans, respectfully, will this be a nothing burger? It's just expansion into a new market. It means absolutely nothing to the domestic U.S. audience. Absolutely nothing. No one will care outside of the internet wrestling community that likes to fixate and get excited about

deals like this and in the conversation that comes with it, but as far as the domestic U.S. product, will you perhaps see somebody that wrestles predominantly over NOAA make appearances in WWE programming, whether it's NXT or whatever? Yeah, probably will it matter to anybody outside of Dave Meltzer and his ilk? No, it won't matter. Again, this, I see this benefit, here's how it benefits NOAA. It benefits NOAA because now NOAA will have access to stars, legitimate, global stars through WWE, that they would otherwise not have access to. And they'll have access to that talent for their shows in Japan.

And that's a big benefit for them that gives them a promotional marketing, market share, edge opportunity. It's good business. As far as WWE goes, what does it do for them? It gives a lot of their talents who might not otherwise be real busy, a place to work and a place to build their equity among the Japanese fan base. So it's a great opportunity for WWE in the extent that they can utilize talent that's already under contract that may be otherwise underutilized. So they're going to get a maximum return

on investment for certain talents that are going to be able to go over to Japan. So it's a benefit to WWE strategically, arguably financially. It's a great benefit to NOAA because they're going to have access to WWE branded talent, which will definitely help their domestic business. But in terms of what does it mean to the consumer? Little to nothing. I can't wait to see how this shakes out

because I know that, you know, it could lead to more interesting and exciting matchups, but also more shows in Japan. I mean, that's one of the things I think that we'll see happen is, I know that there have been, different times where that market was hot and cold they're probably in a down right now objectively i think everyone would agree on that but it does feel like wwe may have with their new promotional experience that they have and all the talent they have access to and more importantly

the war chest of cash if they're going to reinvest in wrestling in japan they may experience a boom over there that might not be possible here in america i think there's a real big opportunity for TKO, don't you? I absolutely agree. And that's, that's an interesting, it's interesting. If you go back to the early 90s, the steroid trial era, even slightly afterwards for maybe a year or two, W.W.E was getting their asses handed to them in a house show business. I mean, all of their business was down, but most significantly in house show. So that was probably for two reasons. One is WWE oversaturated the live event marketplace because it was such a cash cow at that time. Based on the way WWE was structured for talent compensation and things like that,

it was a real moneymaker. But they burned the market out. And then on top of that, there was probably some, you know, creative issues because a lot of business focus and the team's focus was on the steroid trial. It's a lot of pressure to work under, right? Creatively, you're probably not going to get your best stuff under those conditions. It's just tough. So between the oversaturation of the live event market in the early 90s and then because of the distraction that the federal steroid trial created,

WWE's business was flat as piss domestically. So they spent a lot of time in Europe because they were making money hand over fist in Europe. Why were they making so much money over in Europe? Because Europe historically, as is to a lesser extent, but in a similar way, pop culture American product is hot around the world. It was certainly hot in Europe in the mid-90s because it was WWE, WWF, it was an American brand, it was wrestling, it's fun to watch, but it hardly ever came to Europe.

There's only once or twice a year they'd get the opportunity to experience it, live. It's interesting conversation I just had with Jonathan Coachman about live events and how the lack thereof can affect the relationship with the audience long term. Same thing here. WWE's opportunity with NOAA, as you pointed out, is to establish the brand, in Japan, also establish some of its currently underutilized stars that would be attracted to that Japanese audience and build that audience in Japan because unlike when I started

to do a business with New Japan, New Japan was way hotter than WWE or WCW when it came to ticket sales. I'd say they had more shows. They didn't, but on a per cap basis, New Japan was hot. They would put 60,000, whatever the maximum capacity was for wrestling in the Tokyo dome once or twice a year for their big shows. and they were selling out, we're close to selling out, a lot of their non-televised shows.

That's completely opposite today. Today, if you're drawn 2,500 people, you're, that's a big day. And again, I don't keep track of the business in Japan, so I could be wrong about some of these things that I'm throwing out there like fact. This is anecdotal, these are impressions I have,

not facts that I'm trying to share, right? The business is so down, it just needs, something hot. Just like the wrestling business was down in the early 90s, and then the competition between WCW and WWE made the business hot. Nitro versus Raw made the business hot. The NWO made the business hotter, including in Japan, by the way. Substantially so in Japan, by the way. The most successful wrestling angle ever from a monetary perspective, according to a reporter from the Tokyo Times that I interviewed with last time I was there for Mastasaito

services told me that New Japan had never generated more revenue, particularly in licensing or merchandising than they did with the NWO storyline. Well, the business has been soft now for a long time. Sure, you have your hardcore, you know, the Japanese version of the internet wrestling community, those people who are so attached to the product, they're never going to go away, no matter how good it gets or how bad it gets. They're just going to be there. You can depend on them. It's a very small percentage of the overall audience.

Well, that small percentage of audience is still there in Japan. But if they come up with something hot, something that makes that audience that used to be so excited about professional wrestling 10, 15, 20 years ago, just like we did in the U.S. with Nitro. It's not like all of a sudden we created a bunch of new wrestling fans. We created something that was hot, word of mouth took off, and a lot of laps fans, who used to be fans, went, yeah, I'm going to give this a try. They sampled the product that fell in love. That same opportunity currently exists in Japan.

Just nobody's given them anything hot yet, or at least not hot enough to kind of reignite that passion for the sport for the entertainment property. that existed not that long ago. It's not like those people all died or quit watching television. It's just that there hasn't been anything interesting enough for them to get excited about. Well, now perhaps there's a chance. Can't wait to see what's next

and what I know what's next for you and I is bragging about our friends at Signos. You really dropped some knowledge on us about this product last week, Eric, and you were pretty loud and proud in saying And it had helped change your life. And a lot of people want to track their glucose because they want to try to lose weight more efficiently or sustainably. And they want to avoid the new crazy trends.

And if you're interested in intuitive eating and your hunger signals and just learning more about how this works, I can't think of anybody better qualified to brag about it than Eric Bischoff. But before I turn the floor over to him, I want to give you some stats. 73.6% of U.S. adults are classified as overweight or obese. I'm among them. 88% of Americans are classified as metabolically unhealthy. And if you're looking to really understand more, we can sort of break it down and Eric will tell us, hey, when you eat carbs, your blood sugar rises and your body releases insulin to shuttle that sugar into your cells for energy. But if you're insulin resistant, well, that sugar doesn't get used

properly and it lingers in your bloodstream and that's when weight gain, fatigue, and long-term health risks start to build. So managing a healthy weight and your blood sugar range can reverse this cycle. And that's really where Cignos comes in, right, Eric? It's amazing. And sometimes I'm reluctant to talk about things like this because I'm not an expert. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist. I didn't study shit. Well, that's not really true. I've been down to fitness and nutrition rabbit hole with my wife for a long time. But I am the world's leading expert like no one can even come close to the level of expertise that I have when it comes to me, how I feel, how things affect me. I am the world's leading expert on

that shit. And what I've learned over the past three weeks, because I've been using the Cygnos Glucosponitor for three weeks now, even though I was pretty educated because it's like a hobby for Lori and I, right? It's a passion. So we're always reading, we're always listening to the podcast, we're always researching. And I thought I knew quite a bit about blood sugar, blood glucose levels and how to manage it properly and what happens if you don't manage them properly. And I had a pretty good top line understanding. But once I hook up, myself up to my signals and was able to look on my watch on my phone in real time how certain foods affected my blood sugar I was shocked number one by the foods that I

thought wouldn't that do and more importantly I was able this is the part that I'm passionate about like this isn't selling anything this is sharing something that I think can change people's lives because it has mine what I pay attention to how I feel. Like right now, what does my mental clarity feel like? I'm a scale of 1 to 10, my 6, my 8. Well, tweet us right now, I'm kicking about a 9, 9.5. Well, what did I eat? And when did I eat it prior to this moment so that I can replicate that? Because I want to keep my brain function creatively for business, personally, for doing a podcast. I want to be responsive. I want to understand questions. I want to try to be as entertaining as I can be in the process.

right? If I'm at 100% of my mind-brain kind of pipeline, I'm going to get there. So what Signals has done for me is allowed me to understand metabolically because we're all different. Your metabolic footprint is different than my metabolic footprint. And I'm not necessarily talking about, you know, how much do you weigh versus how much I weigh. I mean, your body, your chemistry based on your DNA, you may process things metabolically differently than I do. Well, I can now watch and see how things affect me. I target my blood glucose right now at about 95 millimeters per deciliter.

That's my target. I figure that out after being at about 115 millimeters per deciliter. I feel better at 95. So now I target 95. And my energy, my focus, my mental clarity, my creativity, my ability to, to deal with stress all of it the whole damn thing is all tied up in blood glucose for me so i love it it's a game changer i'm probably never going to not use one because i think that they add so much value to to my life for sure and i'm an expert i want to remind you here's a fun fact we make

like 227 different food decisions a day and imagine how much easier those decisions could be if you had the personalized data that Eric has. He got it from Signos and you should too. Signos took the guesswork out of managing our body way and gives us the personalized insight into how our bodies work. They have an AI powered app and a biosensor. And man, that's a tag team that allows Signos to help me build healthier habits and stick with them.

Go right now and check out Signos because they've got an exclusive offer for our listeners and it's at Signos.com. That's S-I-G-N-O-S.com. That'll get you $10 off selected plans when you use our code 83 weeks. One more time, go to Cygnos.com, S-I-G-N-O-S, and use the code 83 weeks, and you'll get $10 off select plans today. Eric, I'm pretty excited to talk about our next topic. But before I do, I want to give a shout out and love on Daniel Santiago.

He's one of our top guys over at ad-freeshows.com, and he's been with us now for over four years. greatly appreciate all of your support. Round in the bases almost at five years now. Greatly appreciate you hanging out with us and supporting us, really almost from the beginning, Daniel. But let's talk about some support that I threw to AAA last weekend. It was a big weekend for TKO. They set all kinds of records.

I don't know if you saw this, but they had a $47 million gate over the weekend for their boxing efforts. It was really Dana White's first foray into boxing. And, well, I think it did okay. $47 million that sent an attendance record at a Legion Stadium, the brand new stadium where the Raiders play, and of course, WrestleMania's host last year and this coming year. But all eyes in Las Vegas were on AAA and WWE. And there were some keen eyes that noticed, hey, wait a minute.

That's not the same guy who's been portraying many Abysmo Negro. That guy's got tattoos. This is a different guy. Wait a minute. Didn't we just see him at the old ECW arena working a show that was, are promoted by Tony Kahn and an independent promoter. So did this guy just pull a ravishing Rick Ruto? What's happening here?

And that made me think when we take a look back at ravishing Rick Rood, back in 1997, we saw something pretty special and I love the shot. If you're watching with us right now, you got to go check it out at 83 Weeks.com. There was a tape for all that aired that night, and Rick Rood was in a full beard. so someone in the WCW camp thought why don't we prove that we're live and have him go out here with different facial hair somehow some way

this was able to be a thing that you were able to take advantage of I say somehow some way because he really started this and we talked about this a few weeks ago on the very first nitro where Lugar shows up unexpectedly nobody imagined he would be there and we know that when the end of angle comes out, man, there's going to be lawsuits going back and forth in 1996 about what you could and couldn't do with trademark infringement for the diesel and razor characters.

So you've been in the muck and the mire legally with WWE, but now they kind of just gave you a gift because I think Rick Rood wasn't under a contract. How did that come to happen? Because I think when people saw it last week, obviously to a much smaller scale, they're like, hey, wait a minute. Wasn't he just, it's not exactly the same? thing but people drew the parallel so i wanted to talk a little bit today about rick rude how did it come to be here you know i'm not really sure what the wwe

contract status was with rick the only thing i knew is he wasn't under contract because that was the first question out of my mouth uh when rick called me but it goes back to the uh screw job montreal screw job um i was at home on a sunday night wasn't watching the pay-per-view was just with my wife and my kids typical Sunday night about 10 o'clock nine o'clock whatever time it was and that was back when I had a hard line you know in my in my house had a regular phone which I haven't had in years but the phone rang and it was Rick Rood and Rick had witnessed the Vince McMahon Brett Hart confrontation I don't know if he saw the punch if he was in the room or he was outside the room but clearly

Rick knew everything that went down and had a very strong opinion about it. He was livid at Vince. He was livid at the situation. I'm sure he didn't have a lot of details. He didn't know the nuance. But nonetheless, Rick was pissed. And he called me up.

And he was the first person to explain to me what happened. Because again, I wasn't paying attention to the internet. I didn't have this damn thing back then, right? I just watch a TV. And Rick called me and gave me pretty much a blow by blow in terms of overall what happened, his perspective, at least. And he said, man, any shot I can come back to WCW because I don't want to be here. And I said, Rick, you know, what's your contractual status?

Don't have one. Come on down. Bring a razor. I didn't say that. But I said, absolutely. You don't have a, because I've been known Rick for a long time. Rick and I were friends for quite a while. I knew of Rick back before I ever got into the professional wrestling business.

We had a lot of mutual friends and hung out in some of the same bars, so to speak. So I knew of Rick. And then when I got to WCW in 91, Rick and I kind of immediately connected because he's a Minnesota guy. We had just mutual friends, right? We had a lot in common. So we started hanging out. I'd drive to towns, you know, occasionally with Rick, we share rides. and stuff. So when Rick called me and said, hey, you know, told me what happened, didn't want

to be there, asked if there was a spot, kind of like I did with Medusa. She went through the same thing, different circumstance, but same thing. She called and said, hey, any room? Sure, we'll make room. Come on down. We'll figure it out. And it's the same thing happened with Rick. Although with Rick, I immediately was just like Dr. Evil. How do I want to use this? you know, I wanted to stick it up Vince's ass as hard and fast as I could. So the whole thing was really more, it was just as much about pissing off Vince and getting under his skin because I really believed at the time that if I could get him off his game, I knew he was competitive, I knew he had a big ego, you know, when I say I knew, I had been led to believe that

by people that did know Vince very well, who have kind of consistently all said the same thing at different times and different conversations. So you've got to get a sense of what you're dealing with, even though I didn't know Vince personally. So I thought, all right, he's got a big ego. If he gets pissed off easy, I'm going to keep him off his game by keeping him pissed off. So that whole thing with Rick and me kind of,

back there with the shit eating grin on my face, that was all intentional. And it was really designed more to piss off Vince McMahon than it was the entertaining audience, to be honest. I got to ask, when you said he called you, did he just call the office? Does he have my house? Okay.

And do you think he got that number from Page or did he just have it from years before? No, I think he had it because we, like I said, we'd ride together occasionally if we were going to TV of, like, Macon, Georgia, for example, if TV was in Macon or if it was in, you know, somewhere that was like a two or three hour drive, which happened a lot. Occasionally Rick and I would, would connect and we'd drive together. So he would have had it from that. I don't know that you knew this, but I think as the story goes, he was on a per appearance deal. So that's the reason he was able to just show up somewhere else.

You guys didn't discuss his financial opportunity in WCW over the phone though. You just knew we'll get together and figure it out face to face. Yep. Yeah. It's fascinating, man, to just think about what a major moment that was in wrestling history. And I know that wrestling fans were really caught up in that. certainly the quote unquote smart fans but did anyone in the turner organization realized what you had pulled off here were there any add boys on that or was that not

really something they kept up with you know it's one of the things that was disappointing during my time with turner and it it certainly changed toward 97 and 98 but for the longest time other executives within the company that you you kind of knew that they wished you weren't there. Like, you felt like the guy that got invited to the party because someone felt like they had to invite you, but nobody at the party was really happy to see you there. That's pretty much how all of us at WCW felt anytime we were in the CNN Center. Because generally across the board, we were that, oh, it's those wrestling people.

That was the vibe. You know, people wouldn't say it that way, but that was the vibe. So, no, I didn't hear from anybody, but nobody watched the show. Nobody within Turner really gave a shit. They didn't watch the product. I made a point of that when I sat down in 1998 with a whole room full of people that were there to tell me how I should run my business, but none of them ever watched it. Didn't know anything about it.

Had no idea how WCW went from where it was to where it was, from where it was when I took it over to where it was the day of whatever it was in July of 1998. had no clue how it got there no understanding of the wrestling business whatsoever no interest in even trying to understand it fundamentally so no we didn't hear from anybody i do want to ask we know of a few guys lex luger rick rude who were were really able to show up as a surprise on the other channel but did that ever happen the other direction i don't remember there being a story where someone shows up on monday night raw and you were caught on your heels Nope. Why do you think that is?

Because I wasn't sloppy. Sorry, that was a shot. No, look, was it sloppy to have a guy on your television show that was on a nightly deal? Not really. At the time, keep let's be real, Rick couldn't wrestle because of his Lloyd's of London issue. So he was relegated to a manager type of business. position, a role, right? He wasn't going to get in the ring and take any bumps.

So was there any need on WWE's part to put him under a traditional talent contract? Probably not, especially if things were tight financially, which at that period in time, we all know, WWE was real close to, to call it a day financially. That's the reason the screw job happened. I mean, let's be real. Yeah. So it wasn't, it wasn't like, finances weren't an issue with regard to keeping guys under contract.

So the fact that Rick really wasn't a wrestler and they were really tight financially, it makes sense that he'd be on a nightly deal. I didn't like people on nightly deals on my television unless they were enhancement talent, for example, for a lot of other reasons, many legal ones. So that was their choice and we took advantage of it. You won't find it now. I doubt that they've got anybody that showed. I mean, I was just in WWE last week doing something for A&E.

And I'm signing, you know, releases and documentation. And, you know, they've certainly, the business has changed, but the conditions have changed. It's interesting because I do think in 2020, Ray Mysterio was on TV without a contract for WWV. And in 2022, we know that allegedly Moxley's contract expired and. he was the interim world champion and technically working without a contract for w w no for AEW oh okay I love you for that just I don't know if you're watching on video but every now and again you should be watching on video and if you were you would notice what I can't

help but notice Eric you're rocking a new controversy creates cash t-shirt that you're sporting on the program today that's pretty fun if you want I love that I love this shirt because controversy does managed properly in the hands of an artist controversy can be a powerful very profitable weapon but in the wrong hands can mess your shit up so you got to be careful if you want to pick one of these up on your own you can click the link in the description today we've got a link for you or you can just type it in right now 83 weeks merge.com that's 83 weeks merch.com and hey while we're at it with the 30 year anniversary of nitro upon us this month we're celebrating with a brand new exclusive nitro 30 set of gear that's right you can get t-shirts

you can get sweatshirts you can even get dye cut stickers all available right now and this is for a limited time only we're not doing a huge run of these and once they're gone they're gone for good so if you haven't already go pull the trigger i don't even know that we'll have these next week. But we only printed a certain amount. And when they're gone, they're gone. Go right now. Collectors items.

There'll be collectors items. They will be. I mean, listen, this was, I think for a lot of people watching this, Eric, and listening to your program, Nitro was the peak of their fandom. What better way to celebrate that, but not only are you a wrestling fan today, man, you were there when Nitro was the hottest show in all the land. Still probably my peak fandom, probably yours too. Let's celebrate this anniversary at 80s.

three weeks merch.com. And Eric, speaking of Nitro's 30th anniversary, who better to chime in and sort of show us what they thought about that anniversary than the one and only Lex Lugar, we recently caught up with him over at ad-freeshows.com.

And he sits with us once a month and we talk about the good old days. But we recently talked about that debut 30 years ago. Let's take a look. The way Eric and Stinger and everybody kept the clash, the only people that knew, I believe, were

Hogan, Eric, and Stank. Right. So, nobody locked them, none of the guys, nobody knew, even the guy when I walked out, I don't think, I don't think Flair or the referee knew. Yeah. So the expressions were

legitimate. You can't buy that, right? No. And things that people say, well, everybody's planned out and everything. That was a total surprise, curveball and had me come from the other side of the mall and just literally walking off the street and street close.

I mean, that was, that turned out, I never imagined, and none of us knew what this was going to lead to the Monday Ward. No one night war. I mean, Raw had been already firmly entrenched. I thought,

I thought they're kind of crazy. I wanted to try to go up on the same night. I guess raw. I was like, are you guys kidding me? I went, my thing told me, I'll be there, but you guys didn't try to have your own program head to head. I, I, I, I wasn't pessimistic, but I wasn't optimistic either. Go check it out.

Y'all love catching up with Lex every single month. He does it every month for us. We call it Lex Express. We've got that and over 100,000 hours of other exclusive bonus content. You can't get anywhere else. We're talking about ad-free shows.com and it doesn't just stop at the content. Eric, this past week, ad-free show members got a chance to catch up and chat live face-to-face with JBL, Tony Chivani, Delo Brown, Jeff Jarrett, even Eric Bischoff, and it all starts at just $9 a month. Check it out right now at ad-freeshows.com.

Eric, something I want to point out to you, and I actually saw this over on Twitter, one of my favorite follows is E. Andrew Dice Clay. And he posted something very interesting he'd found online. every now and again you see guys post things to Facebook Marketplace and there's a lot of former WWB and WCW personnel who will list things for sale there or just show off their personal collections one of those was the former timekeeper and stage manager for WWE Mark Eaton did you ever meet Mark do you remember Mark yeah he was the guy for fans who don't know whatever Stone Cold's calling for a beer he was the guy pitching Steve the beer all those years Do I have that right?

Yep. It bars is a funny guy. He's a great guy. Always smiling. Always laughing. Well, he posted something that I wanted to share with you. It's a WCW television format from the year 2000. And it's got notes that are sort of handwritten here.

And we believe that this is your handwriting. That's the way it's framed or positioned. So I wanted to share this with you because it is an online conversation in certain circles, but one I know that probably didn't land. land on your radar. But if you see here, we've got in the notes where we're going through this whole silly situation where David Flair was supposedly going to kidnap his stepmother Beth. And in the notes, he wrote, gone too far, going to house, now kidnapping his family. Should he call the cops and tell him my son kidnapped his stepmother? I don't know if you remember

this, but I think this would have been during the three months where you were quote-unquote, overseeing Vince Rousseau in WCW. How often did you have notes like this? I don't even know if those are my notes. It's definitely not my handwriting. If you've ever seen my handwriting, I wouldn't have to say anything more. So that's definitely not my handwriting.

Now, during that brief period of time when Fusion Media Ventures, myself and Fusion Media Ventures were in the process of acquiring, Once we kind of got through the deal points and the deal was really in the process of due diligence and finalizing, there was a period of time when I stepped in discreetly. Like I didn't go to the office. I didn't set up any creative meetings. But I connected with Ed Ferrara.

Maybe Terry Taylor was a part of that. But there was one or two people that I communicated. I said, okay, tell me what you guys have got going on. And really, my only goal was that they didn't make anything worse than it already was. There was a strong concern that because of the direction Rousseau was taking, I just didn't want to have to fix any, I didn't want to have to repair any more damage than it was necessary. So I kind of wanted to see where creative was going in the end.

interim as we were getting ready to take over the company. Brad Siegel agreed to that. It was part of my deal. So Brad Siegel agreed to that. No, I take that back. I take that back. This would have been prior to the acquisition. What was the date?

Do you remember? When you sold? No, when supposedly this document came out or was produced. I mean, I think it would have been, but what, what month was it? I don't know off the top of my head, but I believe April, May June is, there you go, May 29, 2000. No, those weren't my notes. And that was before I was working discreetly. So I would have been involved at that time, but I would have been communicating directly with Rousseau or whomever.

So is it possible that I made that comment? in a creative meeting or a phone call and somebody else wrote it down and therefore it shows up on a format as my notes. I guess that's possible, but those are definitely not my notes. And I don't remember those notes in particular. Let me see what else you got here. Yeah, you know, I can't tell from looking at this, but during this period of time, I was working face-to-face with Rousseau.

So if I would have made notes on a format, they would have been in my hand. writing and those were not my notes that was not my handwriting so your guess is as good as mine hey i do want to ask you you know do you disagree with the sentiment i mean i know that sometimes we have to suspend our disbelief in wrestling but the whole idea of kidnapping and stuff like that and you do some silly stuff every now and again in wcw not necessarily you but you know we buried holkogen in the desert and once up at a time we push the giant off the roof and there are some big like Okay, we've got to suspend our disbelief. I mean, they blew up a boat with a little person on it in the Vader-Sid era.

Oh, an Undertaker rises from the dead after he's been very. There you go. There you go. It's not unique. I appreciate you pointing that out. It's not unique to WCW. There's just some silliness in wrestling every now and again. Does that take you out of it?

Because as a fan, I have to admit, I had a ton of respect for the work that Mark Calloway did. But the Undertaker character to me was, hey, I'm kind of an undead zombie who can summon lightning all of my friends loved it but i was like it's a little hokey for me and i never really loved it but i could appreciate bell to bell and the character work and the commitment like he did something no one else could do so nothing but respect for him but the character itself was just kind of i don't know this is a little far out there for me did that ever happen for you in wcd where you're like if you guys think so but i don't like this oh yeah a lot and

Some of it you just learn by experience. Like kidnapping as a theme, as a premise for a wrestling show, nobody's buying that shit. It's too far. There's an art to suspending disbelief. It's not as easy as it is to listen to it and think you understand it. Really performing, especially in professional wrestling, because it's so much harder. Like, Lori and I are watching a new series on Netflix called The Diplomat. I don't know if you've seen it.

Highly recommend it. The writing is phenomenal. So is the acting, but the writing is unbelievable. But on a drama series like that, you've got the ability in the budget to hire the best writers. You're hiring the best actors and actresses. You're hiring the best directors to artificially create emotion that allows the viewer to suspend the disbelief. It gives them permission because it's being executed so perfectly and flawlessly and so

believably that you give yourself permission just to get sucked in and enjoy the story. Just go for the ride. That's when it's really, really good. Well, wrestling is a lot harder to achieve that love, that mental state of permission in terms of believability because you don't have the tools to work with. And the environment you're working in is already an over-the-top kind of hokey. When I say hokey, that's not the right word. It's an over-the-top gregarious presentation from the get-goat, which makes it a little more difficult to suspend disbelief.

You have fewer devices to use to get that audience in that state of mind, which is kind of like hypnotizing them in a way. But you're hypnotizing them with narrative or action or drama on the screen, right? so wrestling i've seen other people try you know kidnapping type angles in the past people will talk about it after the fact because it's different unique not used to seeing it so that you'll get chatter afterwards but it's not good chatter it just doesn't work there's certain things that just don't work in wrestling and whether i've done them or i've seen other people do them i don't want to do them again so a lot of of times people would come up with ideas and it's not that I necessarily had tried it before

and it didn't work, but I've watched a lot of other producers and promoters throughout my 35 years in the business. And I, you know, you build up a little bit of a database in terms of what works and what doesn't work. And it makes it easy to kind of make notes like that when somebody's suggesting something that you've seen fail time and time and time again. I do want to ask you when it comes to trying to edit Rousseau, because we've acknowledged that's not your handwriting, that's not your note, but I'm sure you did have notes. What were the biggest problems you had week to week with trying to rein him in? I asked because I know he's got an incredible reputation for giving something for everybody,

and that was the positive that we heard on the WWE side of things, is everyone had a story. it wasn't just the top guys or the top two or few at two or three angles like everything has some sort of a purpose so i'm sure wcw was excited about that but russo shared his experience with cornet was often that russo didn't put much thought into how can we execute this in actuality like hey it sounds good on paper and creatively that makes sense but from a physicality standpoint can we really actually deliver on that idea and cornet acted like that was a real for Russo. He cited specifically where they wanted to have a T and a brawl through the impact zone, but the way Russo had laid it out, it would have made it nearly impossible to shoot

and produce. Were those the type frustrations that you had with Russo or was it something different? Similar, similar, similar but different. Here is my issue with Russo. Rousseau could pitch you an idea. Even if it was a luke one. idea. It was a six on a scale of one to ten, five and a half. But he would pitch it with so much passion and conviction that even though in your mind you're going, this is eh at best, he was charming enough and passionate enough that he could get you to go further with an idea than you might normally go. I would listen to some of his ideas more than I typically would. just because of his passion for it.

But once you got through the passion, like all of his bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, New York bullshit, once you got through that, if you asked him one question, where does it go from here? What happens next week? What's the arc look like?

It was like you were asking him to solve cure cancer. It would stump him. But like, you know, it was kind of amazing. And once I realized it, you know, Hulk was the first one to point it out to me. So I didn't notice it right away. But if you ever wanted to shut Vince Rousseau down,

all you had to do is say, Vince, this sounds really great. What do we do next week? Because he never thought about next week. He never really understood episodic television. He booked one week at a time. And whatever got him excited, whatever it was, you know, and he got, once he wrapped his head around it, he felt like he was going to go out and pitch it.

That's all, it's all he needed. Next week, yeah, we'll figure it out next week. We can have whatever. I got it. He didn't understand storytelling. He talks a lot about it. Everybody has a story, but the story sucked. It's the same thing that I hear from, you know, internet wrestling community fans about

the day and Dave Meltz, oh, there's so many stories. stories in AEW, it's hard to keep track. I'm you fucking kidding me? Those are stories. They don't qualify as stories. There's no structure to them. There's no journey to them.

Just because you come up and you book shit every single week for the same two people over a course of six weeks doesn't mean you're telling a story. You're just booking matches. And Rousseau was more guilty of that than anybody that I've ever worked with and created. He just didn't understand the concept of, as probably in Jim Cornett's example,

yeah, it's great to come up with a good idea and a piece of paper. It sounds really good when you're pitching it in a room, but you have to execute it. Right. How? And part of that execution is what happens next week or next month? Where does it go? And if you don't have the answer, where does this story go after we shoot this really cool angle if you don't have a clear picture for that that you can explain with confidence

all you're doing is pitching angles that's what everybody does everybody's pitching angles nobody's pitching stories man what a line everybody's pitching angles nobody's pitching stories i think we're going to have to remember that one there's your your quote for the week boys and girls if you're if you get paid to recap the show hey i do want to ask you You know, you worked with Rousseau, not once, but twice. He worked with them a little bit in WCW. And then years later in TNA, had anything changed in Rousseau's game, had his perspective or his approach at all changed,

or was he pretty much the same guy both times? He was more cautious in TNA. I think he understood. First of all, he knew me better. And he knew where he stood with me. and don't get me wrong by that I got along with them okay I told Dixie when we first started talking about it because she was worried about me and Rousseau

I said I don't like him and I don't trust him I don't have to like him I mean it's true I don't have to I work with a lot of people I don't necessarily why I should say I work with a lot I have worked with a lot of people that I didn't necessarily like. There weren't people that I'd go hang out with in my free time. They weren't people that I'd invite over to my house to grill steaks on the weekend.

But I could work with him because I respected their abilities and the way they handled themselves. So I don't have to like people to work with them. But I do have to trust them. And I made it clear that I didn't trust Vince Rousseau and never would. So that's how I went into the relationship. And Rousseau knew that. He knew I didn't trust.

trust him. I didn't hold it against him. I took him out to lunch. A lot. He never paid. I always did, by the way. You don't believe me? Asked Matt Conway because he was always there, which was fine. But I didn't trust him. And he knew I didn't trust him. So he didn't even try to fuck with me. He didn't try. And previously he did. And every once in a while, if it was in a like a production, meeting, a creative meeting, he'd start to try to bow up a little bit because he thought maybe I wouldn't shut him down in a creative meeting in a room full of people, including Dixie Carter. And he found out that wasn't the case.

It didn't really matter if we were alone or if there were 20 people in the room. My reaction is pretty much going to be the same. So he figured that out. And we got along fine. I mean, it was a working relationship. But I kept a much closer eye on him. I gave him no benefit of the doubt because I didn't trust him. Previously in WCW, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt.

David Arquette's a perfect example. I wasn't excited about it. I understood the reason for it, Synergy, Time Warner, Warner Brothers movies, WCWCW kind of made sense on paper. And I understood the pressure that was also coming from Warner Brothers at the time to make sure that there was good synergy. But the David Arquette thing in the show, the way it was laid out, personally, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Once I got the T&A, there was no more benefit of the doubt, zero. So that was the only difference. Well, somebody who gives you benefit of the doubt is our friends at prize picks. I know you guys are listening on Friday, but Eric and I record the show on Thursday. I'm fired up for Thursday night football. We got the bills and the dolphins tonight and prize picks makes every game a little more fun. This episode is brought to you by prize picks. You and I make decisions every day.

But on prize picks, well, being right can get you paid. So don't miss any of the excitement this season with prize picks where it's good to be right. I'm fired up about tonight's game. The bills and the dolphins. The bills are coming in undefeated. The dolphins, Lord bless them. O and two.

It's going to be fun tonight, though. And by the time you're listening to this, you'll get to judge what I'm doing tonight. I'm going to say that Ray Davis for the bills is going to have less than 25 and a half rushing yards. And I'm going to say that Khalil Shakir is going to. have more than half a touchdown. It's that simple. Boom. You see, prize picks makes it simple.

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83 weeks to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Price picks. It's good to be right. It's time for the wrestling news update with Raj Geary. We're going to jump right into it, Raj. We sort of thought this announcement was going to come eventually, but now it's here. WrestleMania 43 is official Saudi Arabia. Here we come. 2027.

What do you make of this? You know, like we mentioned last week, it's not my favorite. You know, I do kind of equate it to the Super Bowl being held overseas and taking place in morning. It just doesn't feel right. I'm not a fan with it of it. I know there's a ton and ton and ton of money involved. You got the Royal Rumble going there early next year. So I get it from a fiscal point of view, but as a fan, I'm not a fan of it. Well, it is official and we're excited to hear, you know, when we can learn more. What does this mean? Is this going to be the only WrestleMania or will there be a second

WrestleMania? I bring that up because we know a few years ago there was the regular Royal Rumble and then there was the greatest Royal Rumble or whatever they called it. But they haven't at least framed this the greatest WrestleMania or the super WrestleMania or any sort of

silly nomenclature like that, Raj. Do you think they do wind up making this the only WrestleMania or do you think they wind up doing two that year with a domestic one? Yeah, this is it. So, you know, Turkey Alashid, who who's responsible for basically all these big sports coming to Saudi Arabia now. They want the WrestleMania.

They don't want two wrestlers mania. Two WrestleMania is in one year. They want the WrestleMania, the one show, and they're getting it. So there's not going to be two. This isn't the greatest WrestleMania, WrestleMania backlash. This is it. So for that year, in the U.S., at least, theoretically, SummerSlam, unless it's held in Toronto or something, will be the next biggest show in the U.S. Eric, when we saw this announcement video played for the fans who were in attendance for

WW shows last weekend, they were overwhelmingly booed. And they even solicited, you sold out chance. And as we're seeing footage here or steals with us over at 83 weeks.com, I think the press conference had no press there. And this has been like a 45 to 1 thumbs down versus thumbs up ratio on social media. So there's been a lot of backlash, is what the point I'm trying to make here, Eric. And I'm wondering, why don't you think we saw anything like this with the announcement of Royal Rumble? Is it because WrestleMania is that big of an institution relative to Royal Rumble?

What do you think, Eric? I think part of it is just exactly what Rosh pointed out, you know, looking at it like I do. I think Raj and I feel the same way. WrestleMania is like the Super Bowl. and I'm not a hardcore NFL fan I don't really start paying attention until about halfway through the season I'll pick up a game here and there

if the Steelers are playing and I've got it on TV I'll check it out the weather's shitty but if the weather's nice I'm not really watching football until November, December but the Super Bowl I mean I'm a very peripheral NFL fan but I will have a plan for the Super Bowl

Bowl. Most people do. Because it's such a part of our culture, I think a lot of the negative reaction we're getting has a lot to do with our culture. We don't just like Rosette, you don't want Super Bowl played in London or in Munich or Buenos Aires. You want the NFL somewhere in the United States because it's part of our culture. It's our history. It's our diet. It's who we are as Americans from a culture perspective, a part of it. So there's a resentment that a big part of our American product is now going to be shared overseas. Let's be honest and add to the fact that it's Saudi Arabia because there's still a certain segment of the audience and they're loud about it because now we're crossing over into politics and we all know how politics are, which is why we try to avoid them on this show. because it's now gotten incendiary.

You can't really have a conversation that involves politics without the shit around you catching on fire. But a part of it is the politics of this. So between the fact that I think we just feel like, wow, this is us and we don't get to have it because these other guys are getting it, that's natural human nature. Add to that, the political,

challenges that come with this and you've got controversy. You've got people booing. You've got thumbs down. You're going to get that reaction. The same way they got reaction when they first announced it we're going to be going to Saudi Arabia.

Same thing happened. So it's not unexpected. It's anticipated. It'll be uncomfortable and then people will get used to it and they'll watch it. They'll probably have more fun than they think because there's a lot of value

and watching WrestleMania during the day as opposed to the evening. For me personally, it's really beneficial to watch it during the course. I can have more fun. I can enjoy it more during the day as opposed to being up at 1 o'clock in the morning, barely able to stay awake watching. So people get used to it. They'll adjust and eventually it really won't be that big a deal. Raj, I'm going to draw a silly parallel.

But once upon a time, Jim Crockett promotions pulled Starcate away from Greensboro. And that happened in 87. They went to Chicago. It was a disaster. And a lot of people point back and say, man, that's where they lost the fans who were so supportive of Starcade. Obviously, this is a much bigger scale. Do you think there is potential backlash? Are they headed for a PR problem?

Will they lose faith with fans? the idea that WrestleMania is not just leaving America, but North America and going somewhere rather controversial like Saudi Arabia? I think the fact that they made the announcement so far ahead of time, you know, it's a year and a half, as Eric noted, as we get closer and closer to the event, people will just get more used to it. And I think by the time it comes, people won't be happy with it, but I think a lot of the initial backlash will have subsided.

So, you know, I do think that TKO in general, I think they need to be a little more careful with some of the things they say. You know, when you had TKO, C.O. C.O. Mark Shapiro, basically criticizing for making tickets affordable to families, you know, that was a choice. That was interesting. And it was at the Goldman Sachs communikopia and technology conference. But stuff like that gets out there to the wrestling sphere. And maybe they don't realize. that with a lot of the other sports and things that they've promoted in the past. But that stuff gets out there to wrestling fan. And even though they're speaking to, you know, industry leaders about industry trends and strategy, they need to be careful about that kind of verbiage because it does turn fans off.

And granted, most of the fans that go to the arenas that watch on TV are probably not as in tune to the wrestling news and are paying attention. But it does create, you know, a little backlash. I think they need to be more careful of it. I don't think this particular WrestleMania being in Saudi will hurt them at all. I think, you know, the first Saudi event had no effect, and that one was way more controversial. Yep. So I just don't think it'll have an effect at all.

I'm curious to hear the amounts that we think. There's been speculation that, or I guess we should back up on this. We know through court filings and more importantly, shareholder information that's been made public that WWE is receiving or has received roughly $50 million per Saudi event. Raj, last week on the show before this news was ever confirmed, you suggested that it would probably be a multiple. And the number we've heard floated around is $250 million.

I don't know if that's real or not. Raj, do you have a feel on that? Is it really $250? Yeah. I mean, that sounds high. I mean, when you look at what, we don't know what. this past year's WrestleMania did as far as the gate. We just know it was higher than the previous year's WrestleMania, which was about $39 million. This year's WrestleMania did get a $5 million

gate fee. I mean, site fee. So you add those together and then, you know, just round up a little bit and just say $50 million is what they make in the U.S. for WrestleMania from the gate and site fees. And then that's what a normal Saudi event gets. And so now it's going to be not only a regular Saudi a regular, you know, a WrestleMania in Saudi, but also two nights. 250, it's higher than I would think. I would think probably more around 150 to 200, but 250 wouldn't surprise me. And when you think about that, that's five times more than they would make for a WrestleMania in the U.S. at least.

We should mention that as crazy as these numbers sound, Eric, I don't know if you saw, but this past Monday night, it was revealed that Saudi Arabia is going to host a flag football game with former NFL legends, chief among them perhaps Tom Brady. There's been lots of speculation about what the total offer is. I can't believe this is real, but I've heard a rumor that it was a billion.

I don't know if that's the actual number. But Dave Portnoy revealed earlier this week, Eric, that for a single flag football game, Tom Brady will make $75 million. and never get hit, just run around. And if someone would normally hit him, just take a little yellow string off his waistline. And then they drop the wire, Eric, $75 million.

I guess what I'm saying is, whatever potential heat that WWE is going to face here, this feels like the new norm with sports. I mean, we've seen mega boxing events there. We've seen mega MMA events there. We've seen golf there. Now if Tom Brady,

the poster boy, the face of the NFL for the last. last two decades plus, I think the heat, this will just become new normal by 2027, Eric. Do you agree with that? And what do you make of this report that Brady's going to make $75 million for one flag football game? I just think it's cool as hell.

It's awesome. I mean, what a world. What a freaking world. It's great. And I do, you know, it's like Raj and I, thematically, we're on the same page. yes people are going to bitch yes you're going to get you know social media blowback blah blah blah blah blah but people will forget about it they'll get used to it they'll become numb to it they'll find something else to rage about and it'll become accepted

but i think as you pointed out kind of around between golf car racing is kind of a big deal over there's f1 that kind of shit really big over there flag football wwee you're probably going to see more and more and more sports in Saudi as time goes on, and the negative reaction will become more and more muted. It won't matter. Raj, if you had to forecast, I mean, listen, let's just be honest. There's no way they're going to be able to sell tickets in Saudi Arabia and cover this flag football game. There's also no way they'll be able to sell tickets and cover the gate of a potentially

$250 million, which I agree with you. When I first heard, I thought, well, that's ridiculous. It's not that amount. But then when you hear one quarterback for one game, 75 million, you start to think, well, maybe we'll see. Who knows what's real and what's not? But I'm saying all that to say, do you think this will be price in any way affordable for American wrestling fans?

I mean, the cost of travel there is crazy, but we're already seeing pressure on ticket prices. Is this going to be something that has any American fans, do you think? Or will this be primarily targeting? Saudi citizens. Well, I think, you know, this is part of the Riyadh season, the 300 anniversary of the first Saudi state. I could see that wanting tourists to come. I mean, this event and these events that they're doing, the Tom Brady flag football, you know, they made a huge offer to Tiger

Woods to be a part of live golf, which he turned down. But again, these offers aren't to become profitable. They're to spread awareness, you know, of the country and, you know, whatever you want to call it, but that's really what it's there for. So I think I could see them not really pricing tickets all that high because, again, it's not about making money for this event. It's to get people out there, is to get people traveling and, you know, coming into the country. So I actually don't think the tickets will be that expensive. I think they'll be cheaper in Vegas. I mean, we'll see, but that's, that would be my guess. I'd love to go over as a fan. You know, I wouldn't necessarily want to be behind the scenes and all that because that's hectic. It's

stressful and don't need to be near that. But I'd like to go as a fan just experience it from a fan's perspective. I think it would be a it would be eye opening culturally it would be such a fascinating thing to experience. Have you been to Saudi Arabia before, Aaron?

I have not, which is one of the reasons why I'd love to go. I've been to Qatar or cutter, you can take your pick. I've been there and really enjoyed it. Had a great time, but I would love to go to Saudi. Roger, have you been to Saudi before?

No, and I'm kind of with Eric. I'd be kind of interested to go because I've never been to that. You know, we've traveled all over, but I've never been to that part of the world. So, Roger, if you go, if you go, I'll go. I was going to say the same thing. Let's go and let's do a live 83 weeks from Saudi Arabia. Why not? Now, see, now we're taking an idea and giving some, we're giving it some, some gravity.

I like it. I did too. I just don't consider that. Well, it will be fun to see what shakes out. there, but I want to pose this question to you, Eric, because even like in our live studio audience, because we allow our supporters at ad-freeshows.com to become a part of the backstage live recording experience. And Michael's with us here. And he says, as a fan, this, he's talking about WWE to Saudi Arabia, doesn't feel right. But as a person who owns a minimal amount of stock,

I like it. And I think that's an interesting perspective because, and I want your take on this, Eric. Booker T on his podcast earlier this week who addressed this controversy where fans weren't happy about the idea of WrestleMania in Saudi Arabia. But he started to talk about the business end of it and how much revenue would be there. And he knows that a lot of the guys that he's friends with, the former legends, they're going to be upset because they're missing a wrestle con payday. And that's normally one of the

biggest weekends for those talent. But he said, and I thought this was an interesting question, Eric, if you were a businessman, man, what would you do? And I like that Booker put the on us back on the people who were being critical. Like, hey, if this was your business and you had an opportunity to make a multiple, what would you do? When you frame it that way, I think the answer is get a little easier. What say you, Eric?

Well, they not only get easier, but what if you, not only are you a business owner, but you're a business owner that is legally responsible to make the best decisions you can for the people that own stock in your company, because if you don't, they can sue you. So, yeah, it changes things. When you're a publicly held company, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders to maximize financial opportunities for the benefit of your shareholders. That is a, you have to do that. That is your job when you take a job for a public company, especially if you're an executive, senior management.

So I get, it all goes back. to the very beginning. Do I understand why people are going, man, I don't like it? Sure. But from a business perspective, as Booker T pointed out, Raj certainly would know better than I, it's a good business decision. It has some risk, goodwill risk associated with it, but you can calculate that risk. You know it's coming. You've had it before. How badly did that negative public opinion actually hurt your business. Did like a bunch of whiners

on the internet wrestling community chat rooms and Dave Meltzer and people have their rage and their meltdowns about it. Sure. How did it affect the bottom line? Oh, it didn't. Well, then who gives a fuck?

You make the best decision you can make for your company and its shareholders. Not because of what upsets the internet wrestling community, because they live to be upset. That's their jam. Well, let's talk about what's not everybody's jam, and that's ticket prices. That brings us to this week's YouTube comment of the week. The conversation of rising ticket prices really sparked a conversation on our YouTube

channel last week at 83 weeks.com, and this one caught my attention. from C. Mundario said Eric Conrad, I believe WWE has definitely locked out probably 90% of its audience. I mean, just looked at prices for Madison Square Garden in the nosebleed seats. I'm not going to pay over a thousand dollars to take my family of four. Not saying the tickets should be free, but damn, there's a lot of stuff a family can do for much less out-of-pocket expense and have fun. What do you make of this, Raj? I mean, this has become a speaking point. I mean, we heard Shapiro talk about this last

week with Goldman Sachs, and Eric touched on it last week. He wants Real American Freestyle to be affordable for families. But TKO is trying to deliver that shareholder value. That's Paramount. This is kind of the new way, isn't it, Roche? Yeah,

and again, you know, not to sound like Scrooge, but if it doesn't sell out, then it's overpriced. If it sells out, then it's price. right. Or if it comes close to selling out, I hate saying it that way because I get what everyone's saying. I mean, I'm the same way. I don't want to take my family if it's $4,000 for a wrestling show that, you know, three members of my family don't really watch that much.

But, you know, if it's a big enough show, I'd go. So instead of back in the day where I'm paying for four tickets for $20 a pop or $50 a pop, now I'm paying for $1,000 for $1,000, obviously TKO likes that thousand a lot more. I do think at some point, they're in that experimentation phase. You know, WW is still hot. They might be cooling off a little bit this year, but they're still hot.

And so they're experimenting with where they can take it. And once you start seeing the sell-up slowing down and the price is getting too high, you know, that's where you'll see the prices start coming down. But until that point happens, And they're just doing insane arena business. This is just the new norm for now. It's kind of like if you look at the logic behind trading cards,

collectible cards, it's like plan scarcity. Yes. You know, you raise the price enough so much that only a small select group of people that get it. But it's like that velvet rope thing, these people got in. There's prestige. Because, my God, you flew all the way over to Saudi Arabia to go to a WrestleMania and it cost you 20 grand.

There's the perceived value of that experience that has now been established at 20 grand to go over to Saudi, pay for your plane tickets, stay in a nice hotel, eat some great food, go to WrestleMania, probably 20 grand for two people, right? Yes, see. Well, you've established a value, a perception of value. You can always bring those prices down, as Ross pointed out, and I agree, they're probably, they're going to push the envelope. They're going to see how far they can go until those tickets start to fall off. Well, when they start to fall off, then you can adjust accordingly. And now you know what the market will bear. That's kind of how this stuff works.

Capitalism. Let the market tell you. And I don't blame them for doing it. They'll find out, and there'll be a time when they decide, you know what, either because ticket sales have gotten soft or for whatever reason, perhaps even creatively, the product starts to cool off a little bit because we all know. Wrestling goes through that. Every form of entertainment goes through that.

Certain types of programs fall into and out of vogue over the course of two or three years. So they'll feel it, and when they do, they'll adjust, but I just don't think people should make as much of it. Look, if you're disappointing because you can't afford to go, I get that. But a lot of the chatter you're hearing is just chatter for the sake of having something to say. It doesn't really matter that much to people. And when it does, they'll adjust. I hate to draw a real estate parallel, but I think everybody knows listening to this.

That is my business. I'm in the mortgage business. And I can tell you, you know, realtors make a commission based on how much your house sells for. And I always kind of chuckle sometimes when I see a real estate. estate agent saying, oh, I sold it the first day it went on sale. We listed and it sold an hour later. The full thought on that, the full sentence is, dot, dot, dot, I underpriced the house. I screwed my seller and left money on the table. Now, they're not going to tell you that, but I feel like from a TKO perspective, maybe the worst thing that anyone in TKO can hear right now is,

hey, the WWE event sold out in an hour. It's got to be like, oh, we left money on the table. they didn't price high enough. That's the way it worked, right, Raj? All right. Selling it the day of, that's perfect because you know, like, you didn't, you didn't miss anything. Exactly like you're saying. You sell it out well in advance, then that means that tickets weren't priced high enough to get that maximum profit. Again, not trying to sound like Scrooge, that's just reality. And that's what they're, that's what they're trying to do. So, you know, when, when WrestleMania this earlier this year hadn't sold out, you know, a couple weeks in advance and people were like, oh, it's not as hot.

no they have the tickets priced a specific way so they don't sell out one in advance so you know they make the maximum amount for tickets so it's smart i get people not liking it i get it pricing people out but uh you know like like i mentioned eric said uh eventually they're going to hit that ceiling where they're going to bring prices down but they're not there yet well something that's never going to go down at your house well it's because of a hot tag from our friends at Blue Chew. This is awfully affordable. I don't know if it's fun for the whole family, but you could make some new family members. Guys, enter the room waney first. That's right. Blue Chew's not just a tablet. It's a cheat code for your crotch. Stronger, harder, longer

lasting. Like somebody gave your downstairs a pep talk and a gym membership, Blue Chew is the original brand offering chewable tablets for better sex. I've been kicked out of four museums for carrying a loaded sculpture. Guys, this isn't just about performance. It's about your legacy or your third legacy, give her group chat something to talk about. Nothing makes you more of a legend than a little Blue Chew. Go discover your options right now at Blue Chew.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 at checkout and pay five bucks for shipping. That's it. Join Blue Chew's mission to upgrade humanity one thrust at a time. Head on over to bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. and a big thanks to Bluchu for sponsoring today's podcast and Eric's Wiener. All right, Raj. Raj Geary is with us here live, breaking down the latest and greatest on the rasslin news. And I need you to explain what exactly happened this week, Raj,

because it looks like Warner Brothers Discovery did some sort of streaming measurement, an analytics deal with Nielsen. There's been a lot of discussion about wrestling ratings. Gosh, going back to the very beginning of Nitro. it's not really as important as it once was clearly it's a television rights game now but what does this mean a lot of our listeners are familiar with nielsen i mean they know they do the ratings but can you give us any more context of this deal rosh it seems like it's more internal measurements that don't get released to the public anyway that wbd will be getting from nielsen i think a lot of people don't realize that nielsen tracks hbomax ratings as it is if you go to nielsen dot com right now Now, their ratings are a month behind, but you could look at the top 10 streaming shows. And you'll see, I think the Big Bang Theory is number 10 on there for the week of August 11th of the 17th, the Big Bang Theory on HBO Max.

And now this would be for all the episodes, not a single episode. So they track, they track HBO Max, they track Netflix with their own Nielsen numbers. And granted, those numbers will be a little off than the direct numbers that Max has or Netflix has. but Nielsen already does track all this. So my guess is from that announcement is it's going to be more internal stuff, more in-depth streaming measurements and stuff that probably won't be leaked to the public unless they want it to. You know what's, you know, I'm really curious about this.

I don't know how does, how does Nielsen track HBO's stream? How do they do that? So now, so the way they do the Nielsen ratings now is, I believe now it's like a wristband that you wear that can hear what you're watching. And there is a specific code in that audio that when it's playing, it can decipher which show you're watching. So if you're watching, you know, the same show on Peacock versus NBC, it can detect which one you're watching. And so that's one of the ways. I know some people, some of the older people have boxes. And I don't know if they've taken a lot of those away and are transitioning.

But the newer people that are on Meelson are using these like risk bands that detect what you're watching. Yeah. That's interesting. We also want to understand, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about who has access to this data and who hasn't have access to this data. We've seen a lot of commentary online, Raj. I'm sure you've seen it about, you know,

there's speculation from Dave Meltzer about how many people are watching HBO Max and how many people are watching Netflix. We don't really know that. I'm not saying that these companies don't know that, but that's not information that's readily available sort of outside the tent, right? Well, Nielsen has that data, like I was saying, if you go on their site. But that, yeah, they don't release it. And the individual streamers don't release it.

Now, as far as their own data, like Max has their own data, Netflix has their own, that, you know, they release every week just for the top 10. And then every quarter, you know, they do a big data dump. Yeah, that's all internal. And, you know, not that many people have access to that within the company. But, you know, as far as Nielsen's own data, it's all what they want to release. When we're thinking about this data, and Eric, I know that you're not involved in the streaming game outside of Fox Nation right now. and you're really just launching that experience. But with a look back,

because you do have the benefit of the way it worked in cable, I know some of our listeners are probably confused about, well, why do we care how many people are watching streaming? And I know this wasn't the original idea, much like it wasn't with satellite radio. We were all promised once upon a time. There would be no ads.

And now, of course, there are ads. And they even joked about that in the Emmy opening monologue this past week with Nate Braggazzi. But that's really what we're talking about. What matters how many people are watching the show doesn't really matter outside of the Internet wrestling community. And even then, I don't think they understand why it matters. It matters for a monetization and how effective we can be at selling ads and sponsorships.

I'm throwing this out there because whenever I watch AEW on HBO Max, I get a lot of car commercials. I don't know if that's unique to me or what have you, but the streaming opportunity and being able to sort of geotarget like delivering ads in theory can be more catered to the user as opposed to a more shotgun approach that you had to use for cable TV. Is that the way you understand it, Eric? I have not had any in-depth conversations about tracking data metrics.

I've had we had an initial conversation with Fox Nation a couple days after our first event they called the Chad and I to New York because they were excited to talk about what's next and in that conversation because I'm thinking you know I'm in my mind I'm preparing for the next real conversation about our two year deal and our three year deal I'm thinking about Chad's thinking about for example how he's going to sell advertising your sponsorship within this show. So for two different reasons, both Chad and I asked if we could get access to that data. We were met with a chuckle and a, no, they're very protective of that data. So whether or not they're able to, as you suggested, maybe from a demographic or socioeconomic angle, be able to target specific ads because somehow they know Conrad, you're a car guy. If there's any car guys I know in Alabama, you be the car guy, right? If somehow somebody on my team knows that you're a car guy, car guy, I'm going to make sure

all you see is car ads if I have that ability. Does that ability exist? I don't know. Sounds like it probably does. And if it does, it's going to be an interesting world to live in. that's really fascinating from an advertising point of view. But to be really frank, I have no idea how it works. Well, I can tell you how it works in the podcast biz.

You know, there's a lot of our, I mean, you hear some of our sponsors, weekend, week out, like Blue Chew is a great sponsor for us. And you're going to hear that ad no matter where you're listening to us, whether it's on YouTube or RSS or you're in Japan or you're here in Alabama, you're going to hear that Blue Chew ad because it's a part of the programming. But, Raj, you're at least familiar with. There's another side of the business, the programmatic ads. And so now we could say an advertiser could come along and say,

hey, we want men 35 to 54 in these five states who are listening to this type of content. And now that would mean that not everyone who listens to 83 weeks gets that ad, but those particular people do. So I sort of differentiate that in my country speak of a shotgun approach versus a rifle approach. do you think that perhaps because Raj from what I understand almost no streaming service in history has ever been profitable with the exception of Netflix but I'm saying all that to say do you believe when they really dial that in

now they can really jack their CPMs way higher I mean if you're just talking about tonnage and Eric you've said this before like him and in Mars they would say hey if it can get affordable enough we're just looking for humans you know it doesn't we're just all peoples but when you can get very specific garage now you can really crank that ad costs through the roof right yeah absolutely and and you know one of the things you mentioned about programmatic ads is that you know a lot of these ads like you're saying a lot of these car commercials and things like that they rotate among just all the shows on the

network or a bunch of them like you know we have the ad supported version of peacock and my daughter as they watch love island you know i'll watch movies on there regardless of what we watch there's this X in a commercial we all always get, you know, just stuff that doesn't relate at all, that just rotates, that, you know, that they pay in bulk to the streamer and those just rotate throughout all the programming. Then you also target some, you know, towards men, you know, in the different demographics. So I don't know if these max ads are being bought specifically for AEW. My guess is not. I'm guessing they're mostly programmatic ads that are appearing because usually when it's specific to AEW or WWE, you will see a lot of those.

You'll see like tie-ins and things like that. You can often tell which ones are specific for that show. So, yeah, I don't think those ads are tailored, you know, are geared towards AEW programming. It could be wrong. Yeah, I mean, listen, who knows? It could just be like, I guess, like a run of sight type thing. But Raj Mal have got you. I do want to ask about a potential issue I see this weekend.

We know that WWE has finished their PLE run with Peacock. They're about to embark on a new PLE run with ESPN. And I think most people listening to this are probably, or at least at one point this week, we're a little confused by how this goes down. I mean, when the announcement first came out, I feel like we all thought, oh, man, we've got to sign up for a new $30 service. And I felt like there was a correction that they were. sort of keeping quiet, like, well, no, that's not exactly it.

As a matter of fact, if you have these certain cable systems, you'll get it for free, but don't overreact. And so then people settled into, oh, it's on ESPN, but I heard multiple conversations, even in my local market on the radio, where they were telling people where to watch it, and Raj, they were telling them the wrong information. And Jeff Jarrett says it pretty often on his podcast as a paramount issue for him as a promoter is, if you confuse them, you lose them. and I feel like there's going to be some frustrated people.

I'm not suggesting that WW did anything incorrectly. They got a huge bag from ESPN. The onus is on ESPN to explain this properly to everyone. But when I tried to log into my ESPN, I had to scan a QR code. And that QR code then took me to a squeeze page for Disney. And it offered me the opportunity to sign up for a bundle for Disney and Hulu. I already have Hulu, but I didn't have Disney. and the ESPN app.

So they wanted to bundle me up for 3899. And I think a lot of people are going to be plopping down on the couch Saturday night, looking forward to seeing Brock Lesnar and John Cena on ESPN and say, wait, what the hell? Where is it? I could see the iceberg here that this is going to be a trending thing come Saturday night. What do you expect, Raj, am I all face? Or is this unique to my state?

No, I agree 100%. It's really confusing. And I feel like WWE didn't do a good job on ROV. like Joe Testatory made it sound like anyone that has cable can subscribe, it can, you know, has access to the Unlimited app. And that's not the case. Right now it's just Spectrum, DirecTV, Fubo TV, Hulu Live TV, and Verizon. And outside of that, you will need to subscribe to ESPN Unlimited.

And this is where it gets confusing. When you download it, there's ESPN Select, there's ESPN Unlimited. ESPN Select was ESPN Plus up until, you know, a month ago. And so basically, you won't get the WWE with ESPN Select. You need the Unlimited. Now, with the Unlimited, they have a bundle right now that you can do two. Both are $2,99.99 with the bundle. You also get Disney Plus and Hulu.

But, and this is, again, where it gets super confusing. You need to have ESPN Select to order UFC pay-per-views. Even though ESPN plus ESPN Select programming is on ESPN Unlimited, you cannot order UFC pay-per-views through EFC Unlimited. I mean, ESPN Unlimited. So super confusing. My guess is that until the UFC pay-per-view deal is done at the end of the year, they want to keep it this way.

You know, why change it now when the UFC deal is, you know, almost over? But it's very confusing. I wish they could have done. It's a fucking mess is what it is. It is. It is. Ideally, they would have had at least an hour air on ESPN linear where they can explain exactly what you need to do to watch the rest of the event. But you got college football and that's not possible. So it is just a, it is a mess. I want to get your take on this, Eric. I don't know that, I mean, I know that you had a snafu once with Halloween havoc where the show went off the year early and you had failed to let satellite providers.

know that we'd be going long on that show or not you, but Mike Weber or someone in that department. But this feels like we're getting off to a bad foot. Like I know that people are always going to be excited about this first event. And man, they've loaded this card up about as much as you could possibly ask for. I mean, really just the poster for the thing, John Sina and Brock Lesner.

This is Brock's first match back. People are know that Sina's rounding the bases. This will be the last time we see this. This is about as high profile as you can get. but it is going to confuse a lot of folks and folks are going to be frustrated with this and we're starting that way like I wonder will there be upset people on the other side of this Eric on the ESPN side specifically I want to point out too and I don't know that you saw this but are you familiar Eric with the Stephanie McMahon podcast snafu from a few weeks ago

yeah I read about that so just to catch everybody up she had a same sponsor that we've had before. It was a VPN ad. And she was basically reading copy where she was explaining that are you watching WWE the old-fashioned way? She was almost allowing you the opportunity to circumvent

all of these new guardrails that we have in America because the rest of the world they're going to be able to watch this on Netflix but not here in America. And I know that she took a little heed for that. I can't imagine that sponsorship will continue, but this feels like if we're not

careful there could be some really upset folks on the ESPN side of this deal fairly soon don't you think Eric sure but who are they going to be upset with they should just you know it's they only have themselves to blame I mean just listening to Raj explain the various options and the Cirque de Soleil approach you have to take to figure out how to watch something it's already a mess it's already a mess. I'm not even sure I'm going to attempt figuring it out. It's so messy.

I just don't want to have to, it's like the reason I don't get a new phone, like this phone is old, right? It doesn't have a lot of the cool stuff. Because if I go get another phone, I have to spend two hours setting it up. I don't need a new phone that bad. I'm not going to spend two hours of my life

setting up a new phone if I don't have to. And that's the way I feel about ordering this event on ESPN at this point. Just listening to what you have to go through. It's a joke. I wouldn't do it. I'll wait until they figure their shit out. I order one next time.

It's not a good thing. But who's the blame? It's not WWE's fault. It's ESPN's fault. So if they're mad, just yell at each other. Y'all at the guy you work with at ESPN. Ask them what the hell. Why don't you figure that shit out before we did this big deal?

Stupid. Now you're going to get a bunch of people pissed off. all the things you're going to read about on on social media and in the headlines because it'll it'll break through to mainstream it's ESPN it's sports so somebody's going to want to talk about it and they will it's a mess should have figured it out beforehand Raj I want to ask you this you know it wasn't that long ago we heard people on the TCO side poking fun at pay-per-view saying things like who orders pay-per-view anymore it's just for movies

like in boxing nobody nobody does pay-per-view anymore dot dot dot hey don't forget to order the pay-per-view this weekend on ESPN unlimited and this comes after i mean gosh what 11 and a half years since we debuted the the wbd network so now instead of conditioning us to pay 30 40 or $50 a month we started paying $10 a month and we had that month's paper views and pretty much every paper view in history now we're doing it about face a lot on that. Nope, turns out pay-per-view is back. This will be the first time fans have had to fork over

$10, $20, $30, $40 for a pay-per-view in over a decade. How do you expect to do this weekend, Roche? Well, so technically it's not pay-per-view, right? Because pay-per-view is for one show. This package includes, you know, all the ESPN

channels, live streams of all the ESPN networks and all their associated content. This is basically what it was meant to be when it, and what it's turning, eventually we'll turn into is an alternative for cord cutters who don't have cable who can access ESPN and WWE is an extra added bonus. And all the people that have ESPN through cable theoretically should be getting, or most people should be getting it. Earlier this week, ESPN programming executive John Lasker said by the end of this

calendar year, they're expecting the majority of their ESPN subscriber base to have access to ESPN Unlimited. So while most people will have to pay for this event for one month, at least, they're saying that by the end of the year, most people should have free access to this ESPN Unlimited app. So we'll see. We'll see if that happens. Well, we appreciate all the time today, Raj. How can folks keep up with what you're doing every week? Well, check us out on Massive Heat every Monday night, myself, Matt Morgan and Jack Farmer. We aired live on YouTube right after Raw on the podcast Heat Wrestling Network.

So check that out. We're going to be going a little in depth on the AEW ratings, Wows lately. They did a really low rating for collision. The dynamite number isn't out yet as we're speaking, but once we get that, we'll cover that as well. What's your prediction for? Since we don't have the number, we always like having numbers,

but we can also have some fun with our predictions. So, what, Raj, what are you predicting for this week? like a point 13 18 to 49 I think yeah I think it'll be still on the lower end but up from last week I mean last week was the second lowest they've ever done

so I think they've got to be up What was the viewership number last week? I was like oh my gosh I'm forgetting Was it above 600,000? I think it was here let me double check but it wasn't below $500,000. It was at,

one second. It was on the lower. It was under 600. It was $5.84. Yeah. And next came in, I think, around $6.57 last week. They did $737. 737?

Yeah. I think AEW's numbers are going to get softer as we get into the fall. and I know it shouldn't make any sense that football for whatever reason has any impact at all on a Wednesday night but I think people's priorities change during the NFL season

and I think there's even some impact on Wednesday nights just because people's television viewing habits have changed so much. Now Monday night's busy Thursday night's busy so that means on Wednesday night you've got to do the stuff that you would normally be doing on Thursday night or Monday night. I think it's going to, I think, and WCW's numbers were always impacted into fall,

even before we were on Monday night. So I would look for a softer number this week, unless there's something going on there that, you know, would have been in particular interest. I'd look for about a 10, 50% drop from last week, 10%. Yeah, I'd be my guess. Yeah, they did advertise it as September to remember. So they did have a little theme for it. But it was a three-hour show, but the third hour is technically collision,

so that won't count into the rating. But yeah, we'll see. They've been on a low lately, especially, yeah, dynamite collision the last month. It's been really low. Hey, since we're making predictions, let's have some fun with this weekend. I know we won't actually probably ever hear a number, a real number, about how many people signed up for the new streaming app and all that with WW. but I am interested to see how it perhaps affects the AEW show as a reminder to everyone this is no longer head to head AEW move their opportunity that's this Saturday night to be a matinee just like they did in July in Dallas for all in so all in and all out are now matinee shows much like forbidden door was I I like a matinee show you heard Eric say earlier he likes a matinee show you have a prediction for the number of buys this weekend rush

well i think in general this is probably the weakest card they've done this year anyway um i'm gonna go like a hundred five maybe like around there so it would be their lowest this year but um but i still think it it breaks a hundred it's still a lot of cash looking forward to it check out raj geary anywhere you enjoy podcast you can catch him at massive heat over at podcast heat wrestling and follow him on social at the Raj Geary, Raj. Thanks for all the time, man. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Take care. Good to see you again, Raj. Thank you very much.

Well, somebody that takes care of us, and we hope you'll take care of them as our friends at Ridge. I've had this wallet for a long time. I know Eric has to. This can truly be the last wallet you ever need. I'm talking about Ridge, who does a lot more than wallets. They do luggage and premium everyday gear. And I absolutely love the fun they've had. You're talking over 50 different colors and styles. There's something for everybody. I like my carbon fiber one, but literally whatever you're looking for. Any color, any finish, they've got it. And they even have an option where you can pick your favorite NFL team. Just one that matches your vibe. No matter what it is, Ridge has something for you. As I mentioned,

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been running a promotion for a Lamborghini Hurricon, a Hennessy Velociraptor, or $100,000 in cash. By the way, no purchase necessary to enter. But every dollar that you spend, to get you more entries. That's ridge.com and use the promo code 83 weeks. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. All right, Eric, now it's time for one of my favorite parts of the show. We've started to have a look back with a lot of context, because if anything, we know on

this show, context is king. And today we're doing a fun top five. I know our listeners are going to have fun with it. Maybe you not so much. The top five fails. in WCW, according to Eric Bischoff. So here we go. Coming in at number five, Eric, on your list of the top five WCW fails is WCW Thunder.

I'm curious, Eric, why does WCW Thunder coming at number five on your top five fails? Absolutely devastated, creative. When we had to split, and same creative team, but now we've got to come up with great stories for two primetime shows live every week. If we would have grown into that opportunity and had time to develop the infrastructure necessary in order to deliver that show consistently, it would have been a great idea. The timing and the fact that we were forced to do it as quickly as we did had an absolutely devastating effect on Nitro. it diluted the product it diluted the brand it diluted our ability to tell great stories

and it overexposed our top talent by every way measurable it was a disaster you know obviously there's a lot of moving parts on this you know that if we had it to do over again we would have and i know that it created a lot of stress because it's not like you got more budget in order to do this. You were told to just figure it out and make it work. And there's a lot of things that maybe we could armchair quarterback about this. But if we made a list and we checked it twice like Santa Claus, is there an alternate universe where with the right amount of support or whatever it may have been? Is there any universe where Thunder could have been successful?

Sure. Okay. Sure. Again, as I said, if somebody would have come to me and said, look, by this time next year, We want to have a prime time show and replicate the success that we've had for Nitro. We could have figured it out. And we would have been ready to do it. And we could have done it.

We would have done it. But that wasn't the case. I got a phone call while I was on my way out here to Wyoming with my family that I thought was a joke from Harvey Schiller when he said, Eric, Ted wants another show in prime time. And he told me the window that he wanted it. It was like within months, not within a year, not within 18 months, not with enough time to plan, build a team, figure out a process that would have

allowed us to produce another show in prime time without such a negative impact on Nitro. I would have been excited about it. That would have been a great opportunity. But to have to turn that around with my existing staff, by the way, Not only did I not get an increase in budget shortly after we took this on, I got my production budget cut, even though it had been previously approved the year before, even though I was outperforming all my targets. I was generating more revenue than we projected. our ratings were higher than we're projected everything that we were doing we were outperforming any measure that had been previously set for us by Turner Finance not by me by Turner Finance

we're outperforming those so rather than get wow these guys know what they're doing let's give them some more support let's help create more opportunity for them no it was Eric Ted wants this we're not going to pay for it so you are and oh by the way in another couple months we're going to cut your budget oh and that marketing budgets you have that's going to be gone oh and by the way I know you want to hire some people but you can't and if there is if you do have to bring someone in to replace somebody that was already under already staff member you can only hire from within Turner Broadcasting. You can't bring anybody in from outside the company.

Now go launch a new show. Yeah, it was not a good thing. Well, there you have it. Number five on Eric's list of top five WCW fails is WCW Thunder. Coming in at number four, I may have mentioned this earlier, Halloween Havoc, 1998. Now, I'm not really talking about the ultimate warrior and Hulk Hogan, having perhaps Hulk Hogan's worst match of his entire career.

I'm really talking about the idea that we were going to have the runtime change. So we're going to overwhelm the fans with value. We're not necessarily going to charge them anymore, but we are going to give them a little more. And we're going to have our runtime. Instead of being like two hours and 50 some odd minutes, we're going to go closer to three hours and 30 minutes. So three and a half hours,

allegedly, is what was supposed to be blocked off, but a lot of the cable companies do not get the message. And as a result, a lot of people are upset because the main event was DDP versus Goldberg. Now remember, this is October of 98. Goldberg just became the man back in July.

So he's still riding high. WCW is on top of the world here. And now we have a problem. tell us what happened, how it happened, and how you guys tried to fix it. Well, I mean, what happened was pretty clear. Most of the cable systems are many of the cable systems. I can't remember how many.

Many of them, though, far too many. The satellite time went off, like, at the three-hour mark, which was standard. The show was scheduled to go longer. The reason for it, I guess Mike Weber would be a better person to, to break it down. From my perspective, based on what I remember, the challenge was, you know, did Mike Weber communicate to our satellite partners?

Yes, he did. Did he do everything he could with our satellite partners to make sure things were communicated? Probably. I'd assume so. But what happens because the pay-per-view business was so ad hoc at the time, a lot of the local cable systems were owned by mom and pop. They were small little operations that were part of DirecTV or were part of whatever the pay-per-view platform was in a local community.

but they operated as small little mom and pop operations in many markets, not in all markets, but in many markets. So the communication between, I'll use DirecTV as an example, to their, we'll call them franchisees, just as a way to kind of create the image of the relationship, was sloppy. And a lot of people didn't get the information. So, unfortunately, a lot of consumers didn't get the product

because the local cable system had booked it to go off at three hours instead of three hours and 30 minutes. That's what happened and roughly how it happened. And we had to come up with the make good. It was embarrassing. It was cumbersome. There was no good answer. There was no right way to do it.

It was like, okay, what's the least wrong way to do it? that was that was the discussion the next day if you go back to uh goldberg's first show with the title there were 11 matches on that show at bash at the beach the following two paper views which would have been road wild and of course fall brawl there were nine matches here at halloween havoc 98 there are 12 matches and some of those if you knew you were using satellite time he probably would have trimmed. Rath and Ming, Disco Inferno and Hovintu, Guerrera,

Alex Wright and Fit Finley, Saturn and Lodi, Kidman and Disco, that's right, not one, but two disco matches on pay-per-view here. And then we had two tag matches. There were sort of Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner involved. But then Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, Red Heart and Sting, Warrior and Hogan, and then famously, Goldberg and DDP.

They had 10 minutes or 10 and a half minutes in that match, but not everybody saw it. So you make the decision the next day to just show the match on Nitro. At that point, had you just resigned yourself that, hey, I'm going to have to give a bunch of refunds anyway. Might as well pop a rating or is there something else?

There was no refund option that would have been. I don't know how we would have even tried to attempt to manage that. so that really was there was no how we could get everybody that didn't see it we could give them a refund there was no way to manage that but people were asking for refunds sure they're pissed off of course they were and deserved one there was just no way to functionally figure out a methodology that would allow us to do it even if we wanted to right so then it became all right well if we can't you know give people their money back who deserved it you only thing we can do is make sure they get to see the match but unfortunately the people that

actually paid to see the match felt like they got ripped off wait a minute these guys are getting it for free and a bunch of people that didn't even buy the pay-per-view they didn't get short change they just didn't buy the pay per view now they're getting the main event for free and i had to pay for it that's what i mean there was no good decision there was no right answer it's like let's pick the least painful wrong answer, which is what we did. Well, that'll do it for Eric's number four on the top five fails at WCW. But coming in, we got three more, we got to sit through three more. Sorry about that.

That's all. Tomorrow or not tomorrow, right now we're going to talk about number three, Bash at the Beach 2000. So we've got two paper views in a row here. of course this is the infamous night that unfortunately was Hulk Hogan's last night in WCW and I can't help but think that the way everything went down with Vince Rousseau I mean you're going to be leaving WCW Hogan's going to be leaving WCW and I think a lot of people would argue WCW never really recovered they're desperately trying to find any sort of

momentum by July of 2000 and we know they're on a death march that will come to an end in March of the following year, why is Bash at the Beach 2000 number three on your list of top five WCW fails, Eric? Well, for the reasons you just described, honestly, you know, that one stupid, selfish, self-serving decision by Vince Rousseau to go into business for himself to cut a promo about Hulk Hogan

that had never been approved, even though it needed to be, for Vince Rousseau to, despite the fact that Brad Siegel, who is the head of the network, myself and Hulk and Vince Russo, were on a telephone having a conversation that was involving creative that had nothing at all to do with what Vince Russo decided to do once Hulk and I left the building because he would have never had the balls to do it while we were there. that I can tell you he is a gutless he's a gutless human being and he's a pathological liar

and he convinced himself that what he was doing was correct and he went into business for himself and it cost WCW everything Ogan left I left there was no hope for it after the two of us walked out the door zero it was nowhere for Vince Russo to go with that show and people like to talk about oh there's a finger bug of doom which is like the dumbest just the stupidest internet wrestling community comment you could hear but it's so typical right because those people don't want to recognize that our ratings actually increased after the finger polka doom our revenues increased after that period of time, it did so for quite a while.

But nevertheless, because they didn't like the creative, it was like, oh, that was the beginning of the end. Look, if you losers need a beginning of the end moment to point to, this would be it.

From a creative point of view, this would be it. Eric, did you ever have a chance to talk with the real life Terry Belaya about how he would have liked to have ended his WCW run? I mean, we know ultimately he never comes back to WCW.

who doesn't get to finish the story. I mean, Silva just had the photo there. He's dressed like Hollywood Hogan, standing over Jeff Jarrett. And we know that there was another idea in mind, but I'm sure with all the money he made and all the fun he had and as important as his turn was to the history of WCW and hell, for that matter, professional wrestling, I can't help but think it was a missed opportunity that we missed a proper ending

to the Hulk Hogan story in WCWCW. Did you guys ever, after a six pack of beer, even freestyle, something like that? No. Hulk never really, he never really talked about how he wanted to end his career anywhere, WCW or WWE. I don't think Hulk ever contemplated the end of his career. Not that he wasn't aware that someday there would be one, but I think guys like Hulk, Rick, Claire,

I would imagine even Undertaker from time to time at this point, just kind of got that, oh, maybe just, you know, I don't want to have a match of WrestleMania, but maybe I could just, you know, because you miss it. It's a part of your life. It's a part of who you are. It's a part of your identity, I think, when you get to the point of an Undertaker or Rick Flair,

Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, John Cena, rock. You can go on in case of Rock. He's out making movies. He's being recognized for some incredible acting in his newest movie. Sina's about to turn the page in the next chapter of his professional career as an actor. I mean, he's been doing it for a while now, but I think you're going to see him getting more and more interesting parts, more things that challenge him and are more rewarding for him. So he's going to continue to grow, but there's always going to be that piece.

which is probably why we're seeing him in a farewell tour. He's not doing it because he needs the money. He's doing it because he has a love for it, a connection to it. And I think when people get to the John Cina level, that Hulk Hogan level, that Undertaker level, yeah, you know the time's coming, but you don't, number one, you don't want to think about it. And when you get there, you start to deny it anyway. So now we never talked about it.

Well, that'll do it for number three. but what's number two on Eric's list of biggest WCW fails? Mike Tyson and I can't help but wonder when I see that on the list, Eric, is this just the one that got away? I mean, you've told us the story before that,

you know, when you saw and Kevin Sullivan, when he saw Mike Tyson on W on WWE programming, a lot of people felt like, oh, this is real competition. Of course, we really see him in January of 98.

Austin wins the title in late March of 98. The first time Rob wins and ends this 83-week streak is in April of 98. And you had done so well with these celebrity athlete integrations, whether it was Kevin Green or it was Reggie White, or it was Dennis Rodman, or Carl Malone. Is Mike Tyson the one that got away? Is that why it makes your list of top five? WCWFALs?

No, there was never an attempt to get Mike Tyson. I mean, that's a internet wrestling community dirt sheet rumor that's been around forever. I'd never had one conversation, not a syllable of conversation, with Mike Tyson or anyone that represented Mike Tyson. So it certainly was not a one that got away scenario. But, and that's why when you brought it up, it's like fail. I mean, it's not a fail, but it was. was a serious, serious pivot point.

And I've talked about it before, Zane Bresla. I was down in Orlando. I was taking, I was finishing up some, some flight training so that I could get my pilot's license. And I was down, I got a call from Zane. I got to a pay phone, returned the call. And he said, man, you're not going to believe what, what WWF's doing now. And at that point, I was like, yeah, whatever, I don't care less at that point, because

we were just hammering them. There was no competition. And he said, they're bringing in Mike Tyson. Whoa. That's, that matters. But here's what's interesting. We were talking about, I was talking to Jonathan Coachman right before we did this podcast. And he asked me, you know, what's the one thing you're most proud of?

One thing that stands out. The two decisions. I made prior to launching Nitro was once I do launch Nitro, I'm going to be live every week. WWF is live, one show,

tape, one show, live tape, live tape. That was nothing new. I'm going to be live every week. And these are the two decisions that actually changed the wrestling business, not some bullshit internet wrestling community

hyperbole, where guys are giving each other participation trophies and how significant they are to the history of the business and all that bullshit. There's two things that changed the history of the business and are largely responsible for the success that WWE is enjoying today, and it started right here with me. Live every week, focused on 18 to 49 year old men, not teens and preteens. those are the two conscious decisions that I articulated to my whole team that were the reason that Nitro succeeded.

And there were the same reason that why in November of 1997, just about six weeks before you saw Mike Tyson, Vince McMahon went on the air and promised his audience he was going to change. Guess what he changed? He changed to the two things that I was kicking his ass with. live every week and targeting 18 to 49-year-old men. Which is why WWE is the success story in the media juggernaut it is today. Because have been stuck with teens and pre-teens, do you think WWE would have gone public?

No. Do you think they would have had the success on television that ultimately had, had they not gone after 18 to 49-year-old men? Because I forced them to. Not because they were smart enough to figure it out for themselves. because I forced them to the trough and taught them how to drink the water. Otherwise, they would not be where they're at today. And Mike Tyson, in January of 98, as you pointed out, was the tip of the spear. It was the first time they really made a commitment to go after males 18 to 49 and to do it on a live format every week.

You're all welcome very much. Thank you. Vince, go ahead. I dare you send a check because you should. Well, it's too late for Mike Tyson, but it might not be too late for you with the legal buddy. You see, life happens fast. One minute you're driving home after work and the next.

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looking at people who get pulled over and their reactions when they start getting questioned there is like a boatload of stupid people out there that should have this app, because you do not do yourself any favors when you're sitting in the driver's seat of your car and you're being questioned by a cop and you're a TikTok lawyer, you just make it worse. If you had this app, you get pulled over before the officer even approaches your car, as soon as you get pulled over, I'd be pulling that thing up. And I'd have my legal buddy on the phone.

So when the officer says, sir, can I? have a copy of your driver's license and your registration i would say yes sir and here's my attorney talk to him save yourself a lot of hassle and you won't look stupid on tic doc when you're done check it out the legal buddy app all right it's time eric we're finally here number one on your list of wcw fails we've listed a lot of business but this one's knee deep and creative the shockmaster eric i got it here how does this become become the biggest WCW fail? You know, I don't know if it could be considered the biggest

because that encompasses a lot. But it was the most embarrassing and avoidable, which is why it's so embarrassing. How did it come about? It was Dusty Rhodes' idea, was not an Eric Bischoff idea. I will fall on a sword for my bad ideas, and God knows there's so many of them. But this one wasn't mine.

And it's what happens when, you know, Dusty was a very creative guy, very, very creative. And the idea, okay, I mean, there's nothing you can say about that bucket of glitter that he had on his head. That was just, yeah, yeah. There was no scenario. where that was a good idea.

That was just just astonishingly bad. However, if he hadn't fallen through the wall, we wouldn't be talking about his helmet,

at least not as much. But when you're on TV, that had to be live, right? Ben. And he falls through the wall, making his entrance and appearance for the very first time, after this big buildup and this whole set thing that we were doing at the time it was a

destiny really believed in it he wanted to upgrade the production value of the show and wanted something a little more interesting his thinking was correct the execution however was horrible that set should have been designed better there should have been more of a rehearsal somebody should have had the balls to say dusty what's with that helmet that star war's glitter thing that's got to go put something else on his head if you got to cover and friend's a I mean he's a big guy but he's a good looking guy there was no reason to push not like he was an ugly human being some people need a hood and a mask some people should not go out of the house without them but that wasn't Fred there was some other reason behind it I don't know what

it was whatever it was it wasn't a good thought wasn't a good idea but yeah that one was not the biggest fail but the most embarrassing fail perhaps is why it's number one how much what was the ratio of laughter to anger when this happens because there had to be some pissed off and embarrassed people and sometimes when people get embarrassed they get mad but other people it was what I remember it was very quiet because look here's the truth it was funny as fuck yeah I mean it was funny like you had to force yourself not to laugh and because you were forcing yourself not to laugh

everything got real quiet initially and then it was like oh no Dusty now Dusty wasn't a he wasn't a yeller and a screamer he didn't throw shit he didn't intimidate people that wasn't at Dusty's thing but nobody wanted to be around Dusty when Dusty was pissed off he got quiet

dangerous people get quiet people that make a lot of noise when they piss off are generally harmless they're trying to make you think they're pissed off they want you to be sure that you know that they're unhappy the really scary ones don't say much and that was dusty

he didn't say much and nobody wanted to laugh so everybody did the next best thing and just shut the hell up and so it was very very it was eerily quiet for quite a while if silver can show that picture of him falling through the wall all i could think was it may have been quiet in the studio but eric this is what was in your mind i was all sure you know i just felt horrible for dusty Because I knew, I knew how this was going to land. I knew what was going to, I knew what was going to follow.

And I felt so bad for Dusty. And Fred. I didn't know Fred really well, but I felt bad for him, too. Savewithconrad.com. My name is Darrell. I came from Massachusetts, and I moved to Wisconsin. There's a lot of people that might be asking, why go with Conrad? Why go with Supreme Lending?

And let me tell you something, brother. I think about the credentials, the tag team partner that I'd be working with. First of all, we got the pod father himself, Conrad. How can you go wrong with that? And then also go on to Save Witheric.com, which, you know, who else could have kicked Vince's ass for 83 consecutive weeks? You can't beat that duel right there. But they did bring a secret weapon. And I didn't realize this because this was not advertised.

I worked closely with Larry the axe, Thompson. And let me tell you, with all the stress with moving across the country, with a large family that I have, it was reassuring to know that I had the enforcer at my back, handling questions from the other side of sellers. The other side was trying to find the right prices. He took care of all that. All I had to do was keep my eye on the prize and make it there to Wisconsin. They were absolutely fantastic.

They checked in on me, especially friends. Francis, very patient with me. I don't go through this process all the time, so I trusted the experts. I was able to call them. They called me if they had questions and it felt like it was a personal arrangement. There was even a point in which from the seller side, they wanted something else that wasn't part of the norm. Francis straight up told me, hey, we're loyal to you, we'll do whatever you want to do, and we'll make sure that you guys are taken care of. They came through.

I made it to the dream. I'm the champion of my own destiny here. They were able to help paved the way for me and my family. I couldn't be more happy with the results. I went from having less than an acre to now 20 acres worth of land. They made that dream a reality. I'm Daryl, and I'm living in Friendship, Wisconsin, in my dream. Thanks to save with Conrad.com.

At all that number 212, 9, Equal Housing, Lender. Save with Conrad. All right, Eric, that'll do it for us this week on 83 weeks. Man, we talked about the good, the bad, the ugly of professional wrestling. I love breaking down and deciding to tell the internet, hey, actually, that was not Eric's handwriting. Those aren't his notes. No shade to Mr. Yeaton.

It's still a fantastic collectible. I'm glad that we found it and we had an opportunity to discuss it. We broke down what may or may not happen in Japan. How in the hell the Rick Rood thing happened with a little bit of relevancy for what happened last week with the AAA card and a Ring of Honor card. But maybe the most fun I had was the biggest fails of the week. Next week, Eric, we're going to be talking about the top five reasons the NWO failed in the WWE.

Now, you and I've never spoken about that before. You knew exactly what it take to make the NWO take over wrestling and be hugely successful for WCW, but that history did not repeat itself on Vince McMahon's watch. The NWO kind of limped out of wrestling in the WVE land. So we'll talk about that next week here on the show. I can't wait for that one. I'm going to, I'm coming, I'm coming armed with that one. I will be, I will be armed to the teeth.

I can't wait for that. We want to hear from you guys. Why do you think the NWO failed in the WWB and what would be on your list of the top five fails in the history of WCW. We're going to highlight the YouTube comment of the week next week here on the show. And when we do that, we're going to drop you an autograph date by 10 or some sort of collectible from EZE, something you can't get anywhere else. So be sure to hit that subscribe button, turn on your notifications bell.

And let us know in the comments below right now, what are your top five reasons the NWO failed in WWB? Why do you think it failed? And what are your biggest WCW fails in history? Let us know right now at 83 weeks.com and be sure to follow us on all forms of social media. You can find Eric at E. Bischoff over on Twitter. On Instagram, he's at the real Eric Bischoff. And of course, you can follow the show at 83 weeks on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

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