83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 398: To Bleed, Or Not To Bleed

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad head back 30 years to unpack the creative chaos in WCW following Halloween Havoc 1995! The Giant is the new World Champion, Jimmy Hart's turned heel, Lex Luger's gone bad — so what the heck is going on? Eric breaks down the thought process behind the wild character shifts and storylines that defined this era of WCW. Plus, Eric tackles the question: why was murder okay, but blood wasn't? 😅 And what did he really think of Dustin Rhodes' bizarre new WWE persona at the time? All that and Eric's Top 5 Most Successful WCW Tag Teams of All Time on this can't-miss edition of 83 Weeks! 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! STEVEN SINGER JEWELERS - NO ONE DOES REAL DIAMOND JEWELRY BETTER. EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE AT STEVEN SINGER JEWELERS. ONLINE AT IHATESTEVENSINGER.COM. ALWAYS WITH FAST AND FREE SHIPPING. THAT'S HTTP://IHATESTEVENSINGER.COM  INDACLOUD - If you're 21 or older, get 30% OFF your first order + free shipping @IndaCloud with code 83WEEKS at https://inda.shop/83WEEKS  ! #indacloudpod RAYCON - Raycon's going big for Black Friday and Cyber Monday — everything's up to 30% off! Just click the link in the description or go to http://buyraycon.com/83weeks  to save on Raycon audio products sitewide TUSHY - Over 2 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with code 83WEEKS at http://hellotushy.com/83WEEKS  #tushypod MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code 83WEEKS at http://shopmando.com ! #mandopod 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 CONRAD - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com  to learn more.

Hey, just in time for the holidays, what if you didn't have to worry about any of that credit card debt? If you're feeling stuck making the minimum payments and you don't want to have to put Christmas on a credit card, we can help at save withconrad.com. We routinely help our listeners save hundreds of dollars a month. Find out how much money you can save right now for free at save with Conrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad the mortgage guy and you're listening to 83 weeks. Well, there, fish off, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? I'm good. I'm good. It's good to be home. Uh, about a week on the road and bouncing around. Um, so it's good. It's good to be home. I'm feeling wonderful.

Anxious to do the show. I know I did one last week, but for whatever reason, it feels like it's been about a month since we've done one of these. So I'm really excited to be here. I'm really excited about today's topic. Of course, we're going to be talking some Halloween topics. We hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween. Eric, did you have a favorite Halloween costume as a kid? No, I really didn't. You know,

Halloween, I never really got into it as a kid for whatever reason. When I got into it, I was like 12, 13 years old and it was just all about filling a bag. So, didn't really dress up much. Whenever we did,

it was like dressing up like a mommy or something that didn't cost money growing up where I grew up. So it was a fun time of the year, but I didn't really have a favorite costume. I can't help but ask. I feel like Montana and especially Garrett had to have the coolest Halloween costumes ever. With the proximity to WCW, we know we saw Garrett dress up as Sting once on a Halloween Havoc or a WCW commercial.

Was there ever any WCW fun with regard to Halloween for the Bischoff kids that you remember? Well, yeah, Garrett loves Halloween. In fact, I talked to him just a little while ago, and he's got a big event plan for Whalen. tonight in the neighborhood kids. He went and rented a flat bed that he could have hauled on his, he's got a little four-wheeler. So they got bales of hay on it,

and the neighborhood kids are all going to go around on this thing and have a good time and their parents. Garrett is really festive when it comes to Halloween. He had a blast, and his buddies were the same. And I remember specifically the first time when things were really heating up with Nitro, and it really was getting popular,

especially with the younger kids. and Lori and I were, you know, handed out candy when people come up to the door. And it was the first time that I remember seeing kids dressed up like WCW wrestling characters. It was really cool. I loved it. It's super cool.

We would love to see on social if you could hit us with some of your favorite wrestling themed Halloween costumes. I'm going to post myself later as one of the nasty boys. I think it was like 1990. I went as one of the nasty boys. My best friend growing up was a guy named Fish. well, that was his nickname, but he had blonde hair. So he was Jerry Sat, or he was Brian Knobbs and I was Jerry Sags, I guess.

But I think a lot of kids my age, they all did like Halloween costumes, uh, wrestling themed. I don't know if you've seen, but a ton of kids are doing Cody Rhodes this year. Have you seen the costume? WWE is selling for Cody this year? I have not. I have not. It's got the full jacket and the whole thing.

Like they really did a great job. We hope you guys have a fun, uh, happy Halloween. Let's talk a little bit about Real American Freestyle before we get on to our topic, though. You just had a huge event this past weekend. I think everybody knows it was in Penn State. But we saw some superstars we've not seen before, and we heard Kurt Engel on the stick. How did Real American Freestyle number two go, Eric? You know, I was just talking to my partners, Chad, and Izzy.

It's like everyone is a learning experience and the product will continue to evolve. Chicago is going to be crazy good. I'm not really comfortable announcing the card quite yet. Some of it's been out on social media. We'll announce the full card here shortly, but we've got some major matchups with a lot of crossover MMA athletes competing in Real American freestyle as well. So we'll probably announce that card either today,

more likely Monday. And I think people are going to be pretty impressed with it. But Penn State went really well. It was a big card. a lot of international talent. It went great, man. It went great. Am I allowed to mention some of the things I've seen posted on social?

If it's posted on social, is it okay for us to talk about? If we're going to talk about it. If it's on social, we can talk about it. You have Frank Mears' daughter competing in the next event? Yep. The guy who beat Brock Lesnar in his UFC debut, his daughter is going to be on the next event. How fun is that?

There's a lot of, there's a lot more crossover coming. It's really been fun. And in Chad and Izzy are the ones that are dealing with the athletes. I don't really interface with them until after they've been signed for a card. But we now have a lot of really big names from the world of MMA that are reaching out to us wanting to participate. So it just enables us to really level up the competition. And again, you know, crossover, which only makes sense because wrestling is such a critical component in the MMA skill sets. If you look at most of the big champions all come from a wrestling background.

So I love the idea that, you know, MMA fighters, big name MMA fighters are knocking on the door, wanting to compete real American freestyle. That's what we were hoping for and it's happening. When you talk about UFC legends, Chad Mendez and Michael Chandler are on the next card. They're going to be facing each other. That feels like Michael Chandler is kind of a big name right now. Yeah. I mean, this is huge A-list kind of stuff coming your way.

I even saw that Clay Guida is on the most recent card that was announced. That's going to be coming up, November 29th, that WinTrust Arena in Chicago. You can get your tickets now at Real American Freestyle.com. Of course, you'll be able to watch that event on Fox Nation, the app. But I'm looking forward to that. Clay Gwita, man, I'm an old school UFC guy. He had some absolute wars on TV. one in particular that I'll never forget.

And the idea that he's going to try his hand at this now is really interesting to me. Yeah, well, he's, you know, he's got a wrestling background. So he's kind of going back to his route. But it, rumor has it, he may be fighting Connor McGregor at some point in the future. So it's a list activity here at Real American Freestyle. Well, check it out, real American freestyle.com. And of course, you can watch online at Fox Nation on the app. but it's happening November 29th.

I can't believe that you're back in the fight game, so to speak. Are you enjoying this experience so far, Eric? It's totally different. I know that way back once upon a time, and I think people forget this about you, you were a kickboxer, and you did a lot of karate stuff. And I mean, we know the association with Sonnyono,

but I don't think a lot of people know that way back when. You actually fought on ESPN, right? Yeah, you could call it that. But it's fun. And number one, you know, I wrestled in high school. I wrestled for a couple of years after high school. Back then it was called the AAU or amateur athletic union. And I wrestled freestyle and Greco.

And then kind of segued into martial arts in my mid-20s. But it's so much fun taking a sport like wrestling and evolving it into a television property. And it has its challenges. I mean, you know, amateur wrestling, freestyle wrestling. If you're a competitor or your family member or a friend, you get it. You're passionate about it. But the challenge we have is going outside of that neighborhood, so to speak, and getting those crossover MMA fans and just sports fans to sample us.

Because usually when they do, we get really positive feedback. And it's fun to build things. You know, that's one of the things that I missed about the wrestling, or I miss it, I guess about the wrestling business and being in it. it is the ability to build something and to take an idea and then expand on that idea and actually have it become a reality kind of right before your eyes. It's a fun process. It's challenging as hell.

I'm not going to lie. But it's also really, really rewarding. We got to take a minute and talk about something that I saw just yesterday. It kind of went viral, I guess, is the phrase people would use. talking about Rhonda Rousey's appearance on the comedian Brett Kreischer's podcast. Somehow, I think everybody listening to this knows that I said Bert or Brett, it's Bert Kreischer. Bert mentioned that he had texted Joe Rogan asking before their interview, hey, how could

I beat Rhonda Rousey? And Rhonda responded saying something like, he wouldn't know. He's not an expert. He's a fan with an audience. He never fought. and of course Bert says well he did Taekwondo and she corrected saying Taekwondo is not fighting

and then of course Bert asked Hey how do you feel about Joe and Rhonda just doubled down and said he never fought and of course that led you to make a tweet which I just tickled me to no end and do you want to remind everybody what your tweet said here?

I think I said, neither is judo. Ask Holly Holm. I just felt like stirring it up just a little bit. Of course, we know Holly Home made an appearance at the first real American freestyle, but most MMA fans would remember that once upon a time, Rhonda Rousey felt like an unstoppable monster. I mean, famously Dana White even said there will never be women compete in the UFC, but she became such an attraction and there was so much interest that they brought her over and man she helped take the UFC to new heights there's no doubt everybody knew what was coming round one arm bar submission rinse lather repeat and then she ran into a buzzsaw named holly home and

night night that was all she wrote and she talked a lot about that in in vert's podcast but i love that when she's trying to take joe rog into task you're quick to remind her technically judo is not all that different in that it's not really fighting i thought that was an excellent point eric are you trying to create a little controversy create a little cash in your old school ways or what do you think no i mean i just have fun with that look and i i respect ronorowsy i mean she's she's an amazing athlete she's accomplished great things and her time in ufc is a perfect example so it's not that i don't respect ronda but it was a i guess maybe i was a little over sensitive to the statement because when you look at MMA, just like every, you know, I talked about how wrestling is

such a fundamental part of mixed martial arts. And I'm certainly not a mixed martial arts, and I'm not trying to pretend I am one. But if you look at the skill sets that take people to the top in MMA, generally speaking across the board, wrestling is a big component of that. But, you know, you've got judo. You can take out wrestling insert judo. Um, jiu-jitsu is a, is a variation, obviously, of wrestling. But, you know, you look at sports like or martial arts, for example, like Taekwondo, as the Olympic sport, Taekwondo, that's more like kind of full contact tag is what that really is. It's really not a fighting skill, the way it's presented in the Olympics, for example. But if you take someone like Joe Rogan, who, yeah, he has a traditional

Taekwondo background. And for people that don't know, Taekwondo is the Korean style of karate that basically involves probably 75% kicking techniques, 25% hand techniques. And those 25% hand techniques are not generally that effective anyway, because it's not a central part of the style inherently. Japanese style of karate is the opposite of that. You know, it's a lot of strong punching technique and skill, very limited kicking skills. So if you take any martial art like taekwondo and suggest, well, it's not really a fighter skill. Depends in the context. But again, you take somebody like Joe Rogan who, yeah, he does have a taekwondo background.

I don't know, Joe, I've never talked to Joe, I've never watched him work out. I've seen some of his videos. So I guess I could say I have watched him work out to a degree. But the style of taekwondo that I'm sure Joe Rogan practices is not at all like the Olympic taekwondo that people are familiar with. So I just think the statement was a little bit of a shot, and you could say the same thing about judo. You know, judo is a very effective self-defense skill

because you're trained to take people down and use their weight against them and all that good stuff. And I have a lot of respect for people that are great at judo. But you could also say judo is not really a fighting skill. So it was more of a way just to stir up some shit and have some fun, and I wanted to help get some attention on Holly Holm home because she's part of real American freestyle. Well, I love seeing you stir it up online. That was a lot of fun.

And I got to tell you, I don't think a lot of people made a lot of money on that Holly home, Rhonda Rousey fight back in the day. I mean, Holly Holm, don't get me wrong, was an accomplished athlete. But the hype around Rhonda was out of this world. I know nobody wants to give her credit for that now. But with the benefit of hindsight, man, she was one of the biggest stars. in sports at the time. And if you're looking to cash in big on sports right now, let me tell you, Price Picks is the place to be. This episode is brought to you by

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Hey, you know what else is about Real American Freestyle coming your way? Speaking of price picks, we're in the process of getting approved for gambling. So pretty soon you'll be able to bet on Real American Freestyle. That news is coming your way as soon as we. wrap up the regulatory issues, but it's pretty exciting. Do that. Am I wrong in thinking that will make us next level? Like every guy I know, I mean, I'm talking about to a man.

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typically on Saturdays, hearing about what's coming up the next day on Sunday in the NFL. I just love the way sports is covered, like on the Infinity Sports Network, for example. And because I look for stories and everything, right? It's just how my mind works. But if you listen to a lot of the sports talk on Saturday, so much of the stories, that you hear. So many of the stories that you hear about teams and players is all kind of based on gambling. You know, it starts out with odds, right? And the conversation evolves from there. So I think by including gaming, gambling, and real American freestyle, it's just another way to further engage

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Halloween havoc happened on October 29th. And the next day, of course, was Monday nitro October 30th. That's a day after Halloween havoc and the night before the actual Halloween holiday. We've done a whole deep dive on Halloween havoc 95 in the archives, but let's hit the key point so everyone has the full context of Nitro here. At least from a storyline pay-per-view, this is probably one of the more memorable WCW paper views from the Nitro era. Midway through the show, Hulk Hogan and the giant are going to do battle in the monster trucks on the roof of Kobo Hall under what was essentially sumo rules.

Let's just stop right there. Eric, was this a monster truck sponsorship opportunity or what was going on here? How does this idea come to be? Let's put two guys who are going to be in the main event in Monter. monster trucks on the roof. What's the strategy here? You know, it's funny when you set that up. I was trying to remember how the thought, like what was the first thought in my head that led me to actually trying this and executing on it? And I'm not really sure what it was. It may have been as the result of a

conversation that I had with Barry Bloom. At the time, Barry and I were pretty close. and I think Barry represented the group that owned Bigfoot and Monster Truck. And that's probably where the thought started. And I'm thinking, wow. I mean, you know, because I took my son and his buddies, we'd go to Monster Truck events and it's like, it's a big business, right? And I'm looking at those trucks and I'm thinking, man, you could actually create a monster truck that's based on the character of professional wrestling.

And if we could make this work, we could have a, no pun intended, monster licensing business as a result and integrate with the monster truck group. So that was the reason for it. There was some actual logic associated with it or hope, I should say, that we could take that creative idea and use it as a platform to launch licensing and merchandising, frankly. So that's, that's the reason why we did it. And it was different. I thought, you know, why, why the hell not?

It's, it's Halloween. If you're going to do something crazy like this, do it on Halloween. At least there's an expectation for it. You know, I know for some of our younger listeners, maybe they don't remember this. I think the first big foot was quote unquote born in like 79, but by the mid 80s, Bigfoot was everywhere. Like people knew what Bigfoot was. It was a part of the pop culture.

Like if you went to Walmart or Camard or whatever, they were Bigfoot toys. Now, Monster. Yes, yes. I mean, it feels like every kid I knew,

they at least knew what Bigfoot was. And like, even my mom and dad, they would have known what Bigfoot was. I say my mom and dad, because respectfully, we never went to a monster truck show or bull or anything like that. But everybody sort of knew what it was.

And so at the same time that in the mid 80s, Hulk Hogan is, becoming a household name. So is Bigfoot. So if you could pair that together, I can see how from a sponsorship standpoint and a licensing standpoint, you're looking for a way to maybe, can we get a Hulk Hogan monster truck on the toy shelves, right? That was exactly it. And we worked with the, I can't remember the gentleman's name. I think he lived in St. Louis was where the monster truck team was based. We were working closely with him to develop and design, you know, the bodies for these trucks and to, you know, introduce us to the people on the licensing side of Monster

trucks so that we could also include WCW characters. I mean, I still, I'm proud of the idea. Not every idea, no matter how interesting the idea is ultimately is successful for a variety of reasons. But the concept and the reason for doing it, I'm so pretty proud of it. Just didn't pan out the way I wanted it to. Of course, thrown a giant off the top of Kobo Hall, you know, having them land in a river and then showing up at the arena didn't help as much.

It's like, hey, how can we screw this idea up? Oh, I know. Let's throw the giant off the building. And then he could show up and make a comeback. So if you didn't see the show, let me give you the context. They're doing almost like a sumo rules with these monster trucks. And there's a post-match brawl. Of course, Hogan wins because, you know, losing didn't work for him, brother.

Wait, hang on. Let's go back to that other slide. Is that in the bottom left? Is that Ellis Edwards? It is indeed. Tell everybody who Ellis is. Ellis Edwards came to WCW from Thunder and Paradise. The producers of Thunder and Paradise were Doug Schwartz

and the other guy's name was Bonin, something Bonin. And they were hugely successful with Baywatch and then decided to repeat that success with Thunder and Paradise. So Ellis, I believe, had worked on Baywatch as a stunt coordinator and then worked on Thunder and Paradise, and that's how Ellis met Paul Cohen. And Polk introduced Ellis to me. So in working with Ellis on a couple stunts that we used for WCW,

it became obvious to me that having somebody on staff like Ellis Edwards would be really beneficial because we were moving into doing a lot of crazier stunts, you know, sting dropping out of the ceiling, for an example. That was something that Ellis Edwards, words, you know, he designed that stunt. He designed the rigging. He made, you know, I mean, from top to bottom, Ellis was very, very safe. He was almost obnoxious about it.

Sometimes it got to be a little over the top. But he also made sure nobody got hurt. So we worked with Ellis a lot. When you see cars getting, you know, flipped over backstage and Ellis eventually went on to work for WWE. I think he may still. I'm not sure. But Ellis was very involved in a lot of very complicated.

stumps for WCW and then after WCW shut down, obviously WWE. Do you remember the other fellow in that photo? Like we saw Hogan, we saw the giant, we saw Ellis Edwards. Is that, that's not Doug Dillinger, is it? That is Doug Dillinger. I had to put my glasses out, but yes, sir, that's Doug Dillinger. Yeah, he looks a little different there.

But either way, we're going to get a post, a post monster truck brawl. And somehow, some way, Paul Kogan actually accidentally knocks the giant off the roof. And of course, we know, you know, anytime you see a murder right in the middle of a pay-per-view, not exactly what you were expecting. You know, I mean, if you're going to order somebody, do it on Halloween. Well, do it on pay-per-view.

Maybe standards and practices will leave you alone. Serious business. We know that different times, you know, there was an era where you couldn't bleed in WCW. In fact, it was this same year where there was a no blading rule. Where do we draw the line between blading bad, murder good? How does that happen? Isn't that the weird thing about professional wrestling, though, things that you would see in an action movie or television series,

and nobody bats an eye, nobody brings it up, it's not an issue. But if you do some of those, if you have some of those same elements in professional wrestling, especially back at the time in that time, man, it's like people's hair is caught up fire. And I'm not really sure why. For example, you know, murder can be the premise. A murder mystery has been the premise of television storytelling since the beginning of television time. But if you do something like that professional wrestling for whatever reason,

oh man, you set the world out of fire. I don't know why it is. I guess wrestling has always been in that funky gray zone. where it's not really drama or action, but it is. It's not really a kid's show. It's more of an 18 to 39, 18 to 49 year old product. But still kids watch so people are, I guess, more sensitive to certain things in wrestling than they are in other forms of entertainment.

But we got a lot of attention from that. And the blood thing was really, I mean, there was a lot going on when it came to blood. Certainly the AIDS issue, what was a driver of that and should have been. You know, it was a health and safety issue. But it became more than that. It became kind of a cultural rallying cry for some people in and around wrestling. Some of it driven by Vince McMahon. And the reason I had to react to some of that is, for example, when WCW would allow

blood, for example, Vince McMahon would write a letter to Ted Turner, CC senators, congressional people, people involved in the entertainment industry and the government because he had a campaign to try to prevent WCW from using blood within the context of the show. So we'd react to that.

As in this case, you're talking about right around this time, I made a rule. Not that I made it willingly, but From 10 down down, you know, it was like, that's it, no more blood, mostly because they didn't want the press, right? They didn't want the bad PR. So we had to draw the line and make blading or inducing blood intentionally for show, for entertainment purposes. That was off the list of things that we could do creatively. And about a month or two would go by and then Vince would use blood.

It's like, wait a minute. So eventually, I think people figured out in management that this was just a little bit of manipulation and PR work and Vince McMahon trying to throw us off our path, I guess, for whatever reason. But it was a lot of hypocrisy involved in it as well. Well, as you may recall, and boy, this was some silly stuff after the giant falls off the roof, which you would assume on top of Cobol Hall if you fall off the roof that maybe you're dead. Uh, that's not a far stretch to imagine, but, hey, what do you know? The giant still manages to make his WCW debut and show up and win the match by DQ when Jimmy Hart is going to attack the referee Randy Anderson.

And this is, uh, you know, trying to get trying to get Hulk Ogan involved with the dungeon of doom. I can't believe that, uh, Jimmy Hart is going. to join the dungeon of doom. But he does, damn it. Randy Savage and Lex Luger run in. Lugar's even going to turn heel here.

And it's all kind of in the background of, of Jimmy Hart's big turn. Let's just take a time out for right there for just a minute. Jimmy Hart turning against Hulk Hogan, like they had been synonymous. Certainly coming in from the WWB. I mean, they were together at WrestleMania 9.

And now they've been together for all of their WCW tenure. Did you prefer, I prefer Jimmy as a heel as to a, as to a baby face. Did you have a preference? Did you like Jimmy as a heel or a baby better? I hope Jimmy doesn't hear of this because I really, really like Jimmy. He is a good person and he's worked so hard for so long.

There's not enough time to say enough good things about Jimmy Hart. However. I heard of black coming a mile away. However. He's a heel at heart, people. Yeah. And not very many people see it. Jimmy's been really good about keeping that part of his personality private.

But you get Jimmy alone in the right frame of mind and listen to Jimmy Hart go off. He makes me sound like a Sunday school teacher. I mean, Jimmy was a great heel when he wanted to be because it was his nature. He was a, I think he was a much, much better heel. He was a more, for me, a more believable. heel than a believable baby face. Well, we know that Jimmy's going to turn on our pal the hulkster here. And when that happens, all hell breaks loose.

The Yeti shows up. Yes, the Yeti. We just talked about him making his Nitro debut. Here. This is so fun. Is it not? Did I do that? Did you do what?

Did you book the Yeti to come in? So here's the thing. I mean, that's my head of mascot right now. I did damn, I should have prepared better. That photo of Hulk Hogan in the middle. There's a Hulk Hogan sandwich happening here. The giant on the left, the Yeti on the right. And I guess this is supposed to be a beat down, but it almost looks, uh,

like a decidedly sexual practice. I'm going to see it. It looks like something out of a Bonnie blue video. It's just horrible. Look at you doing a deep cut with a Bonnie Blue reference. I can't believe you even know who Bonnie Blue is. It's all over Instagram, man. It's hard not to know her.

Well, it's hard not to know this story of the Yeti either. I can't believe this is real. But here we are talking on Halloween. And as luck would have it, just this morning, we've dropped a brand new exclusive interview over to ad-free shows with the Yette himself, Ron Reese. Let's take a listen. And here comes the Yette. I was in that main event sort of group there.

I was looking for like a little bit of coaching, but it wasn't really there. We're going to do a bear hug spot. How does that happen? There was no call on that. I just got in the rain, started walking around. I felt stupid walking around. So I figured I'd do a bear hug because I'd seen Hogan a million times do the bear hug and the three count with the arm.

And I locked in and maybe moved my hips incorrectly. 100% my fault. And I'll till the day. I die, I will take all the heat for it. I'm going to tell you this. If it wasn't for me doing that, we would be having this conversation. That's 100% accurate. Yes. I just want to put Ron Reese over. He is generally one of the nicest people I've ever had to work with or had the opportunity to work with. Really super guy.

I'm glad you had a chance to sit down with it. Eric, we talked about everything. We went a deep dive to not only that one night of Halloween havoc, but how Ron was first trained by Big John Studd, how he became the super giant ninja, how he joined Ravens flock. There's a lot to unpack with Ron, and we do it all at adfreeshows.com. Check it out right now at adfreeshows.com. I promise you do not want to miss what Arne Anderson said to Ron when he came back through the curtain that night.

By the way, over at adfreeshows.com, not only do you get all of our shows early and ad free, but you also get a ton of bonus content. How much is a ton? What about more than 100,000 hours worth? You get every live panel from Starcast, you get interactive Q&As, you get watchalongs. Plus, we've got exclusive series you can't find anywhere else with Lex Lugar, The Godfather, David Crockett, Mike Keota, Tully Blanchard, the Blue Meney and Downtown Bruno and more.

Go check it out right now at adfree shows.com. I got to ask though, look Lex Lugar turning heel right after Jimmy Hart. Is that 10 pounds of shit in a five pound bag? Like Lex Lueger's a big time star. It doesn't feel like he should. turn right after someone else or am I all face there? No, you're not overthinking it. I think that's a fair,

a fair perspective. It was overkill. It wasn't necessary. Too much of anything is too much. And turning two names like that on one show is too much. So in hindsight, I would not have repeated that. Man,

when you're watching what we're watching right now, and I hope you're watching over at 83 weeks.com, just the visual of what we see. I mean, Kevin Sullivan dressed up with the paint over his eyes and his, I don't know, adult onesie with the red and the yellow thunderbolts. Macho man looking like he's just, uh, macho man dressed up like that all the time anyway. He always looked like that. I'm not arguing that, but I'm just saying, imagine if you're just flipping through the channels.

And I know you're not because this was a pay-per-view. But how would you explain this visual to someone? Like when you see stuff like this, respectfully, I'm a. a big wrestling fan clearly look at what we're doing right now but when you see something like this i think if you were a hoity-toity person in the north tower of turner you might say wait we're doing this like how would you describe what we're seeing right here to a lay person not a wrestling fan someone outside of the bubble eric you know i i also posted something last night that i took from a story and in fact i sent it to you late last night but

I was having a hard time going to sleep, so I was just surfing and watching, I was watching National Geographic. And there was a show on called Ancient Warriors, I believe, the history of the gladiators. But at the end of this research I did on that particular show, there was a line in, maybe I'll dig it up here in just a minute, but there was a line that I actually quoted on my social media that essentially said, I'll paraphrase it, and I put it in quotes, if people want to go back and look at it, at E. Bischoff on Twix or X. essentially saying that, you know, society loves its heroes in their blood sport, whether it's scripted or not, something to that effect. And I think that's what we're looking at here,

and it's one of the reasons why professional wrestling continues to be as successful as a form of entertainment as it is, is since the beginning of time, really, and civilization, at least going back to Rome, according to this series that I watched last night on that geo, there's just always been an appetite for blood sport. And in the case of Rome, it was real blood sport, but as it's evolved over time and cultures, now we have Halloween havoc,

which is a fictional representation of blood sport. So maybe that's why, maybe it's just part of our nature, and this is just a very crazy example of it, because it was Halloween. It was a little more exaggerated, but I think it's also one of the reasons why professional wrestling works as well as it does,

as well as MMA, as well as real American freestyle. I just think the human nature will always gravitate towards the story of life and death. It's just part of how we're made, I guess. And I would suggest to somebody who had never seen professional wrestling before or who worked in the North Tower

at the CNN Center at the time is this is just a very, very entertaining way of satisfying the need of the audience in a way that dates back to, according to National Geographic, the Roman Empire. I think the quote you were looking for is, if Rome teaches us anything, it's that humanity craves warriors who bleed for our cheers, scripted or not. There you go. Thank you. I butchered that, but thank you for finding it. shout out to Dave Silva for that. Hey, I do want to talk about Halloween Havoc a little bit. The other big angle on the show is the expected Rick Flair He'll turn on Sting to form the new four horsemen along with Arne Anderson, Brian Pilman, and eventually Chris Benoit. It was easy to see, but that doesn't mean that as a bad thing because in storyline, it was great.

Sting saw it coming, but he's going to let the flare charm, charm him into teaming up against Arne and Pilman. and you know listen i'm sure this happened so many times at some point maybe there was a conversation of hey are we making sting look bullish here but i kind of like the idea of him always trying to see the silver lining trying to see the good in people and that sometimes made sting vulnerable i mean him being the the good guy that's that's paramount for wcd did you think there was ever a time where, you know, maybe you were trying to make him look a little dumb because he kept falling for this? Or is that just classic storytelling for a superhero? Well, it's classic storytelling with the same actors over and over and over and over and over and over

and over again in different stories, right? And the argument of, doesn't that make him look, if we move forward with this particular creative, doesn't that make insert name here look stupid? Like, why would he fall for that? It's a danger. rabbit hole to go down. It's a good way to look at something to make sure you've done your job setting the story up, or in this case, a turn in as believable way as possible. But in professional wrestling, if you camp out on that logic of, yeah, but why would he do this? He'll look stupid if he does it. You'll basically paint yourself in a corner and not have any way to work. It's create, especially when you're working with the same, in this case, wrestlers, but, you know,

can you imagine, you know, Tom Cruise in an action movie and we keep seeing an action movie once a month and he keeps following for the same bad guy stuff? You would say the same thing, right? So it's a bit of a challenge. It's probably not the best analogy, but it's a great, it was a constant challenge and I still think it is today. If you sit back and you're, watch a wrestling show and ask yourself logical question, why would he or she do that? That doesn't make sense.

That makes the opponent look stupid. That logic applies to just about everything you do in professional wrestling. None of it makes sense. It's not designed to make sense. It's designed to entertain. Well, I think the idea is we don't want our heroes to look gullible. And if you don't want to look gullible, let me give you a pro tip. I got some exciting news for you about my friend.

And Stephen Singer, maybe you remember Stephen Singer. Yeah, you know, the I hate Steven Singer guy. As you know, Stephen Singer is the most hated jeweler in America by other jewelers. And why is that? Because he has the best guarantees, the best warranties. And all of this at the perfect price. We're talking 365 days a year. There's no phony baloney sales.

There's no fake discounts. There's no pricing games. No nonsense ever. Just easy and fun. That's why Steven Singer is a real jeweler. who you can trust. Steven Singer Jewelers was just named one of America's leading jewelers.

There's almost like 18,000 jewelers in America and less than 50 have received this honor. Just another reason why most other jewelers hate him, no one does real diamond jewelry better. Experience the difference at Steven Singer Jewelers online at I hate StevenSinger.com, always with fast and free shipping. That's I hate StevenSinger.com. And Eric, listen, this can be kind of a stressful

deal for a lot of guys who are shopping for, well, I don't want to spill the beans, but someone in my life is getting engaged and it's happening around the holidays. And that happens a lot around the holidays. And sometimes respectfully, people fall for the Rick Flairisms of the world, just like Sting did. Don't be gullible and go to another jeweler and fall for there. We've got a special sale this weekend only. Steven Singer plays none of those games. And you need someone who's going to shoot straight with you,

brother. And you need to look those other jewelers in the eye and stroke that old flu man chew and say, that doesn't work for me, brother. And go right to I hate stevensinger.com. You're going to get the best price right away every day, right, Eric? Absolutely.

And how do you not love a guy who's built his brand around being hated? I mean, this guy speaks to me on a level that not very many retailers do. I love the fact that he embraced, that heel aspect of his character. Now, he's a heel to other jewelers because he's actually there to defend the pocketbooks and the bank accounts of the people

that are looking for a great deal on jewelry. And of course, the rest of the jewelers are going to hate him, but the fact that he's willing to embrace the hate and use it to market, to save people money, in my mind, just mine, make Stephen Singer a genius. I love it. What I love most about this is he makes it easy for guys like you and I, Eric, like,

let's be honest. If you're going to give someone your last name, that's a pretty stressful decision to make. And once you've made that decision in your life, now you've got to kind of decide, all right, how am I going to do this? What is the right time? What is the right angle? Do I have an audience? Am I doing it in public?

Do I have to pick a special location? Once you figure all of that out, now you got to go find the ring. Hey, if you're like me, what the hell do I know about diamond jewelry? I don't know anything. So I found myself studying about the four Cs and color and cut and clarity. I don't know what all this stuff means. The last thing I'm thinking about is now I got to go negotiate. You're so worried about getting it right.

You're so worried about making the right decision that you just sort of get caught up in it and throw caution to the wind. And if you're not careful, someone will take advantage of you. Don't fall for these silly, phony baloney sales. Talk to a guy who's going to give you the best price every single day. He's been around forever. He's advertised on our program for years. We feel like we know him personally, and you will to go right now to IHatestepensinger.com.

You'll be glad you did. That's I hate StevenSinger.com. Hell, we're even going to throw a link in the description for today's show. Just click it right there. I hate StevenSinger.com. He's your boy. Give him the hot tag at I hate StevenSinger.com. Actually, I'm looking up in our kitchen cabinetry here, and there's the gold-plated roses

that I got from Stephen Singer and gave to my wife for Valentine's Day. Just an example. And the other thing about Stephen Singer jewelry is, you know, jewelry, diamonds, gold, and necklaces, rings, whatever. If you're not in that business, you have no idea what a good deal is. That's right. The way that stuff is marketed and, you know, 50% off, but it's really not because they just overinflate the price and make you feel like you're getting a good deal.

That is so prevalent in the jewelry business. And Conrad, I know you're into high-end watches, so you know better than I do in many cases. But at the retail level, you know, you're making a big commitment not only to someone in your life, but you're making a big financial commitment to. And it just makes it a lot easier when you can trust the person that you're buying from to know that you're getting value for that investment. That what you just laid out is exactly why all the other jewelers hate him because he's taking their profit away. He is, he's going to be fair and square with you.

give you a level deal. There's a reason he's got all these positive reviews. There's a reason you've heard him on Howard Stern show for decades. The guy's been around a long time because he does fair business and you're going to keep going back. You're going to be with Steven Singer for life. Go right now to I hate Steven Singer.com. Eric, let's talk a little bit more about Halloween havoc and then I want to move on. This show featured a pretty fantastic match, especially by 1995 standards. It felt like it was ahead of its time. I'm talking about Saboo and Mr. J.L. You've probably picked up for my conversations in the last few weeks. I was a huge fan of Sabu and a huge fan of Jerry Lynn.

But in this particular match, I kind of forgot until we started looking at this show again that not only are these two wrestling on pay-per-view, which is really cool for WCW and 95, because respectfully, the WWF is doing nothing like this. This is the era where Sabu is really getting more of a name for himself, not just in the tape trader community, but because of the rise and success of ECW. but if you're watching with us at 83 weeks.com, take a look to the right side of your screen. That's not Sabu.

That's his uncle the Sheik. Now, I think a lot of people have reconciled. Oh, yeah, I remember he was at this pay-per-view. But the significance of why the Sheik is here, we're in Detroit at Kobo Hall. This is the Sheik's home stomping ground where he was an absolute legend who made millions of dollars. This is like a homecoming of sorts for the Sheik.

Is it not? It was. It was a little bit of a homeowner. coming for me because, you know, I grew up in Detroit. My first exposure to professional wrestling was because of my grandmother. Her name was Agnes. She really didn't care for me much. I had heat with my grandma. But the only thing that we did together or where we could be in the same room together without me getting slapped in the head with a shoe or something was when we watched professional wrestling. My grandmother loved professional wrestling. And my earliest memories of

but were wrestling from, it was on CKLW Channel 9 in Windsor, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. And Sheik, Bobo Brazil, so many of those big names were from the Detroit area. So it was a little bit of a, it was a little bit of a homecoming for me as well. And certainly seeing the Sheik there just added to that. Did you, was there a little fandom in you that went over and interesting? introduced yourself to the Sheik or were you passed that or was that not professional? Was that not protocol?

But if he grew up watching the guy, it does feel like you would have gone over and said, Hey, man, nice to meet you or something like that. Does that happen or do you not have time? It's not a question of time. You know me well enough to know that in real life I'm a little bit of an introvert. A little. Yeah, I was going to say that's kind of an interesting. And it's not because I don't like people or like meeting people.

it's because I just sometimes feel awkward, socially awkward, engaging with someone unless they engage with me first. It's a weird kind of respect for me, I guess, is another way of looking at it. So I typically don't go over and introduce myself. Now, in this case, I may have just because, you know, I was running the company at the time and it would have been the right thing to do. But I generally don't do that kind of stuff unless, you know, you make eye contact with somebody you could tell whether they really want to engage with you or not. And I don't really recall if I engage with Sheik or not. But typically it's just not my thing to go up and approach people, even if I'm working with them.

I need to work on that. I have people tell me that a lot. Well, I think respectfully that's the reason a lot of people, and we're friends, I can say this. I think that's the reason a lot of people think you're an asshole. But when you don't approach people, it comes off like,

oh, he thinks he's better than or whatever. And I know you well enough to know, That's not it at all. But I think, you know, and I'm not saying this is the same thing. But I think Lex Lugar suffered from some of that too where if he wasn't as engaging, people just thought, well, he's a big time celebrity, super wealthy, super successful. He's in great shape. He's handsome, blah, blah, blah.

He must think he's better than me. He's an asshole. But that's not the case. I know it's not the case with you. I don't suspect it is with Lex either. You know what I mean? No, it wasn't. And I mean, I've, you know, I've had people recently, you know, pull me aside.

I said, dude, what are you so upset about? upset. Why do you think I'm upset? I'm just looking at your face and you just, you look so serious all the time. This is my resting bitch face, man. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just thinking about something and my face happens to fall into this position and I look like I'm pissed off or, or don't want to be bothered. And it's not the case. I enjoy being approached. And I enjoy engaging people once they kind of give me permission to. I'm just not inclined to. be the first person to reach out and shake hands or talk to someone. I think Lex did, that's a good observation.

I think Lex, because you assume we as human beings, right, we see somebody, we make an impression whether we admit it or not. You know, we jump to an initial impression of someone. And when you've got, you know, when you're Lex Lugar back in that at that time, I mean, he's built like a Greek God. Yeah. He pointed out, you know, he had a lot of money, but the perception of people is they have twice as much as they really do, right?

When you're a celebrity, everybody thinks you're a multimillionaire just because you're on TV. I'm living proof that that is not the case, by the way. But with someone like Lex, who's larger than life, good-looking guy, drives a nice car, lives in a beautiful home, and he's not very socially...

Outgoing. Outgoing, yes, thank you for that. Then if you don't know that individual, you just jump to that first suppression of, oh, man, what a cocky, of a bitch. I think I think Lex suffered from some of that. There's maybe a little bit of truth to it too, as, as was the case with me. You mentioned, you know, that's not really your way to go engage like that. We were asking about the shee. Is the lone exception to that,

Muhammad Ali? Wow. Yeah. I could not wait to meet Muhammad Ali. Yeah. To this day, like if you said Erica, you know, I'll give you $100 for, you know, five of the most, you know, interesting people you've ever met. Muhammad Ali would be at the top. Ted Turner probably second and there's really not a third, fourth, and fifth. And that's not to say I haven't had a great opportunity to meet a lot of very impressive people. But Muhammad Ali, to me, to this day, was such an amazing human. being. Oh, yeah, by the way, he was an amazing boxer, too. But such an amazing human being. For example, and I remember this because I was old enough to pay attention to shit. Now,

when Muhammad Ali didn't want to be drafted into the army, now, here's a guy at the peak of his career, making so much money, at the absolute physical peak of his career, was willing to walk away from it all for what he believed. And I'm not judging one way or the other why he believed what he did. It's not my role in life to judge other people's morals or religious backgrounds or reasoning. But the fact that Muhammad Ali was willing to walk away from everything for what he believed made him such a hero to me. Again, whether you agreed with him, you know, not wanting to be drafted or not. There's an argument for that.

I get it. I was just so impressed with this man's willingness to stand up for what he believed that he became such a hero to me during that time that when I had the opportunity to meet Muhammad Ali, Tommy Hurons there too, Detroit guy, I love it. When I had the opportunity to meet Muhammad Ali here at this paper view and then subsequently to be very involved in getting him over to North Korea and having the opportunity to travel with Muhammad Ali

and really get to know him. You know, like the shot of Muhammad and myself and Tommy Hurst, you know, that was a great opportunity to meet your hero, right? But I was able, a couple years later, to go well past that.

And I remember, it was one of my favorite memories of my career in professional wrestling is sitting next to Muhammad Ali out a plane. There's a North Korean military transport is what it really was. Old piece of shit. But to sit next to Muhammad Ali for,

we flew from Tokyo to Pyongyang, I think we were in the air for maybe two and a half hours, two hours, something like that. But to have that much time, to have a conversation, much like Conrad you and I would have, if we're just sitting down over a burger or something,

to get to know somebody on that level, especially somebody like Muhammad Ali to this day, just so amazing and grateful for that. But yeah, I was anxious to approach Muhammad Ali. And really, when I approached him, it was just out of pure respect. Not, hey, can I have my picture taken with you or would you sign this? It was just to be able to have the opportunity to look that man in the eyes and say, it is really an honor to meet you and to work with you. Thank you very much.

And then I'd take my exit. But, yeah, it was a big deal to me. It still is. Let's talk a little bit about Monday Nitro, the night after Halloween Havoc. It's October 30th, and of course it had become par for course in the ratings war that the following night after a big pay-per-view, whether it was in your house for the WWF or it was Halloween Havoc for WCW Monday Nitro. It's going to score a solid victory for you guys. Nitro that night had Lex Lugar and Ming taking on the American males. Shark versus Scott Norton, Eddie Guerrero versus Sergeant Craig Pittman,

and Sabu versus Disco Inferno. It has a 2.5 rating and a 3.8 share. We almost never talk about the replay rating, but it did a really strong 1.1 rating as well. Meanwhile, over on the other channel, Gold Dusts wrestled Savio Vega, Razor Ramon, wrestled Owen Hart, and that did a 2.2 rating. Did you know, like going in that on the heels of a big pay-per-view weekend, that show would always do better? Or did you think it would be the go-home show?

Or do you fall into patterns where you see how the ratings are affected based on pay-per-view at all in the infancy of Nitro, we'll call it October of 95? You could go to Vegas and put money on it that your rating on Monday following a pay-per-view was going to be at least 25, 35% higher. I mean, it's just people that didn't buy the pay-per-view, but they were aware of it, but for whatever reason didn't buy it, tuned in to find the results.

So you would definitely pick up a lot of viewers on a Monday following a pay-per-view that may or may not have watched the show otherwise. So, yeah, you could bet on it, for sure. On this particular episode of Nitro, you're very careful about saying that you don't want to talk about what happened last night on Halloween havoc until the tape arrives.

There we see. We've got Mongo being very festive for Halloween and Bobby the Brain Heena joining you to round out the trio. Is the whole idea about saying, hey, we're not going to talk about it until the tape arrives? Is that just to build anticipation and keep people sticky to the program so they don't know what happened? They got to hang on and find out. Now, I realize to listeners in a 2025 context, that sounds crazy, but 30 years ago, not everybody had the internet and they certainly didn't have a smartphone. Hell, we were using

bag phones back then. So there was no way to look up and see on a social media, which didn't exist, what the hell happened. Was that the strategy of, hey, we, we can't talk about it until the tape gets here. I want you guys to see what it is. You're just keeping them tuned in and keeping them from switching the channel. Just a carrot. Just keep that carrot dangling in front of them. Absolutely. It was just a way to kind of maximize what was happening anyway, when people tuning in to find out. Well, back then, the goal of producing television was to build every quarter hour. And I remember when ratings would come out on Tuesdays, sit down and looking at, and we didn't actually get the quarter hours until the following day on Wednesdays. But sitting down and

looking at those quarter hours, you know, we judged our success or failure, not necessarily by the overall number. Obviously, that was important. But what we really judged, judged our success or failure at when it came to building the format and booking the show was how did the second quarter compare to the first quarter? How did the third quarter compare to the second quarter? And as long as these quarter hours were continuing to build, you knew that your formula was working. Sometimes it would work better than others. But if we ever ran into a situation where a quarter hour dumped on us, dropped on us, that was a, that, That's a red flag. That's telling you you didn't do something right. You either didn't

promote it well enough in the beginning of the show or throughout the show or the audience just isn't interested in it or there's not enough story behind it, whatever the reason may have been. But when you saw a quarter hour drop, it was a red flag. And this device that we're referring to about waiting to see the tape was our way of holding that audience and continuing to build it as opposed to giving them that information right at the head of the show. Then they're going to tune in, get what they're looking for, and they're gone. This was designed to hold them as long as possible. And I look at television ratings today.

Of course, you can go on the internet. You can look at WWEs ratings or AEWs, whatever. And I don't think people really understand the significance of quarter hour ratings. Or maybe it just doesn't matter anymore. I don't know. But back at that day, those four hours and that bill throughout the entire episode was critical to our success or not. Hey, let's talk just a little bit about this particular Nitro is where you make the announcement about World War III.

And you're going to explain it's going to be a three ring, 60 man battle royal. And I know this sounds a little silly, but I can't help but think, okay, three rings, 60 guys, it's at least twice as big as the Royal Rumble, which is going to happen in January. Were you just trying to get the jump on the big battle royal and you felt like, hey, we need something that can compete with the Royal rumble or am I all face with that? It wasn't so much to compete with the Royal Rumble, but it was, we wanted to at least be adjacent and I wanted something that was different than, obviously the Royal Rumble is a very successful format.

Well, it was back then still is. It's a great idea, but you don't want to copy somebody's idea exactly, but if we can take a good idea, tilt it five or ten degrees, one direction or another, make it feel a little bigger, a little different, it's worth a shot. And that's what this was. It was looking at the success of Royal Rumble. Keep in mind back, you know, we've talked about this on previous shows over the years. One of the goals, particularly at this time, in order to grow our pay-per-view business, let's go back to the beginning of this. When I took over WCW, we were doing four paper views a year, right? So you had a lot of television to utilize, to build up your story so that you

you'd pay it off on a pay-per-view. Well, WCW was really in trouble financially from the time I showed up there to until after I left, obviously. But the one opportunity we had, especially back at this time, was revenue opportunity we had, was pay-per-views. So I added a fifth one. W.W.E. added a fifth one. I added a sixth one.

W.W.E. added a six-one. I mean, we really led the charge on the 12 pay-per-view schedule. And we were doing it out of necessity because I was focused. on making that first dollar of profit, if you remember. And the only real way I could do that was by increasing the number of pay-per-views. Well, when you do that, in my opinion, at the time, and still to this day, is that you have to give those events unique personalities. Otherwise, it's a three-hour television show that you're charging people money for.

So I would always look for different ways, just like you would create a character with, wants kind of physical attributes or the way they dress or the way they speak or whatever, right? All those little details that make up a character. I wanted to apply that same thinking to each pay-per-view so that it was branded and had its own personality and was different than the one before it or different than the one that's going to come up next. So the whole World War three idea was to, yeah, take a format that's working, tilt it five or ten degrees, try to make it feel unique in every way that you possibly can and have our own. And that's what World War III was. By the way, the execution of that idea pretty much sucked because we rushed into it.

We didn't think through it. We should have tested the idea, at least on a limited basis, before we did it, because there were just a lot of production challenges that we didn't anticipate. I still think the idea was a... was a good idea that was poorly executed. Let's talk a little bit about what wasn't poorly executed that night. We're going to see Eddie Guerrero, Russell, Sergeant Craig Pittman. We talked about that.

And Eddie actually uses a leg scissor to Pittman's midsection and rolls him into a pinning position and Eddie gets the win. And you are on commentary and you refer to this like it's a big upset victory. Between this and the Paul Orndorf, Mr. J.L. Darkmatch earlier in the night, This to me, Eric, almost feels like it's marking when the merging of the two WCWs are happening since Nitro launched. You're trying to showcase the work rate guys or the future cruiserweight guys or whatever you want to call them with perhaps the old style of wrestling that WCW had presented.

Did you feel like you had to have a paradigm shift here on Nitro? And is it fair to say that it's happening here in October of 95? Oh, it was definitely happening by October of 95. It was a slow transition. If you go back and you look at WCW program, well, just look at this program. Look at the pay-per-view from Sunday, the Halloween Havoc. The Dungeon of Doom.

You know, that was a leftover from that era where everything was an over-the-top character that was really created and targeted towards teens and pre-teens, right? That was WWE's Bread and Butter and WCW back when it lost all the way up until Nitro. was just a very cheap imitation of that of WWE and their characters. It wasn't very successful. Nitro came along and it was the beginning of a more reality-based presentation,

not completely across the board. Obviously, we still had the Dungeon of Doom and all that silliness. But Craig Pittman, for example, was an amateur wrestler and a damn good one. And I believe he was a legitimate Marine. Could be wrong on that one. I'll have to go back and check. but Craig Pittman came to me through Brad Briggins. Brad Briggins was a member of the,

I think the 1980 Olympic team that didn't get to compete because of politics at that time. But Brad was a badass as a wrestler. He was the original, you know, he was Kurt Angle before Kurt Engel showed up. Not as good as Kurt. You know, Kurt was a gold medalist, obviously. And by the way, you can check out Kurt Engel.

At Real American Freestyle is one of her color commentators. Juliana Pena. Shameless plug for Giuliana Pena. Two-UFC Bannamoyt Champion, also on color commentary with Kurt Angle. But Craig Pittman came to me through Brad, and I was really excited about using his freestyle wrestling skills and collegiate wrestling skills and trying to integrate it into our presentation. Craig was a legitimate badass. And I was obviously excited about the Cruiserweight Division and helping to develop guys like Eddie Glemy. By the way, did you see a social media that Eddie's one of Eddie's daughters is now breaking into the business?

I did. How cool is that? She's going to be working with Booker T down in reality of wrestling in Houston. That's super cool, man. I have a smile to my face this morning when I saw that. I like that kind of stuff. It makes me happy. I want to ask about Eddie because, you know, we're seeing Eddie get a win here on TV, which is a big deal.

And you're clearly trying to introduce a new crop of talent to WCW fans and just the larger wrestling audience at large. Were you trying to just gauge crowd reactions or were there other metrics that you use to figure out who to push or who not to push? I bring this up because there's an urban legend and I don't know if this is true.

Maybe there was a focus group once upon a time that said Eddie Guerrero was perhaps the most likable wrestler in WCW. Did that really exist? I don't think so. Perhaps and I just didn't see it or I wasn't involved in it or it just doesn't come to my mind.

But focus groups, particularly at this time, and when Eddie was a part of WCW, was more about the brand than individual wrestlers. I didn't really utilize research to help me qualify or quantify, you know, the value of a particular wrestler. That was the instinct and feel. And to be honest, you know, you've got to show every Monday night, you've got anywhere between 5,000 and 15,000 people in your live focus group. So for me, I'd like to feel it as opposed to reading about it or looking at numbers and

information. To me, when you've got, you know, 5,000 to 15,000 people who have all come there and parted with harder and cash to watch your show, learning how to interpret their reactions to the extent that at some point you develop the ability to anticipate their reactions. And that's the sweet spot for me, was learning how to anticipate how an audience is going to react. That's as a producer or even as a talent. That's where experience really comes in. Now, other producers probably are different. They just want to dive into the numbers and follow those patterns. And it can be very effective, I guess, for some people. But for me, it was like, if I had,

have an idea, I want to put it out in front of the crowd, and I want that, we'll call it 5,000, those 5,000 people who are paying me to do a focus group on my product, that's what I invested my time. And a lot of my decisions came from crowd reaction as opposed to numbers. I wonder if way back when, if you were looking for inspiration or ideas, maybe you maybe you needed a little into cloud. Maybe that would have helped get some creative ideas going. Maybe you've ever woken up after a fun night and you think, you know what?

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And you announce on this episode that next Monday, Nitro will be interactive. And I'm curious, how well did those interactive shows do in terms of business? As a reminder, you were using the hotline. fans are going to pick the main event by calling the hotline. Now, this is 1995, and I know WWE would try this with the advance of the internet, maybe what, nine years later with the whole Taboo Tuesday concept where fans can go online and vote. But this is a really interactive idea. And I know, you know, once upon a time, you could have different books and things like that and video games.

And you could sort of pick which way do you want the story to go? Do you want it to go this way or that way? So that interactive component, now you're trying to introduce to wrestling. Is that an Eric idea, a Kevin Sullivan idea, somebody else? And obviously it's a business driver because if fans want to vote, they've got to call into the hotline and spend money. So I guess the big question is, is this a mean gene idea? Take me through this. Actually, the first time I did this was on WCW Saturday night from center stage.

That was my idea. I believe it was my idea. And look, it's so hard to say where the germ, the nucleus of an idea came from. It could have been in a conversation with somebody walking by, and I overheard it. Hey, wait a minute. What if we, let's build on that, right? So it's too hard to pinpoint. But the first time I did it was actually on a WCW Saturday night from Center Stage.

And the reason it was so memorable was because, well, first of all, it was really whack idea at the time. And secondly, this is funny. I remember I was standing up kind of off to the side of the set. And we're doing, I was doing play by play from a podium, basically, right? Because it wasn't a lot of room at center stage. It wasn't a lot. Didn't have desks and just didn't have a lot of room to work. So I was on the set, kind of off to the side, standing up in front of a podium doing my work.

And you've obviously heard about my false teeth. or yeah, tooth at that time. I had a plate. It's called a flipper plate, if you know what that is. But basically what I went in to have this false tooth made for me. I had a plate, much like I guess braces probably used that just fit to the top of your mouth and then the fake tooth is right here in front. And I remember it's live. The camera's on me and I'm, you know, I'm yelling and doing what I'm doing and play by play.

I am all excited talking with my hands like I am right now. And I must have enunciated just awkwardly enough that the tip of my tongue hit that tooth. And in the middle of a live broadcast, it's somebody I'm going to go back and see if I can find this. I literally spit my tooth and the flipper plate it was attached to right out of my mouth on camera. and I caught it in midair with my left hand and sloped it walking on my mouth like that. I don't think anybody noticed it because I've never heard a word about it. I remember it because I was on camera. I was freaking horrified.

It's not like I wanted the world to know I had false teeth. But I remember that it's like slow motion. It's like something you'd see in the movie, this flipper plate with a little tooth on it, is flying through the air while they can. cameras on me and it's like, shoot, thinking back in my mouth and keep going. That's the only reason I remember it. But we did have, we had all the heels in one room and we had all the baby faces in another room and we created this interactive idea, but we did it first on WCW Saturday night. And it was just an early way to, again, better than, different than less than. Let's try

something different. I was never afraid to try shit. Sometimes I wish I would have been more afraid because you end up having to live with, you had to live with the results. And every once in a while you get lucky, it was great. But more often than not, it was like a really good idea, but it needed a little more work. And I think what we're doing on Nitro was, okay, what did we learn the first time?

How couldn't we improve it? How couldn't we maximize it? Let's try it again. So it was actually the second time we did it. Well, I love the idea of trying to be, you know, interactive and trying to do something different. Do you think if WCW would have had, like if WCW existed in the more modern internet era, would you have leaned into this further, do you think?

100%. Oh, I would be determined to figure out the solution and the best way to maximize the opportunity. In today's world, when everybody can react and vote or whatever, instantly at scale, Well, Taboo Tuesday, WWE did it. It certainly would have been a lot more effective to do it in today's environment than it did, even back whenever your Taboo Tuesday was. Because people are more familiar now. They're more comfortably using technology. There's more of it out there.

Somebody will do it. Somebody's going to find a better way to try it again, and they will. It'll probably be successful. I don't think it would be successful on a regular basis. I think it's a special event. you build up to it and have some unique stakes tied to it. I think it's a much better idea today than it ever has been. I want to ask you about Mongo McMichael here.

There is a moment where, you know, there's a match between Lex Lugar and Ming and they're going to be wrestling the American males. And at one point, Mongo says, they're kicking the jag out of Lex Lugar. And you said, my heart just skipped a beat. And then you commented to Bobby Hennon that it says, scary working with McMichael. I know that prior to Mongo coming to work for WCW and being one of the talking heads here on Nitro, he had been in radio, but were you still nervous about him not having

guardrails on him here at a live broadcast and maybe saying a four-letter word accidentally? Sure. Sure. You know, it's one of the things that made Steve so much fun to work with is because he was off the wall. He was very, very unpredictable, which by the way is a really great attribute to have a you're a television character. He was very, very unpredictable, borderline, in a way, dangerous. But that was part of his charm. So, yeah, I probably did skip a beat or two or three. So after we saw Lex Lugar's turn at Halloween Havoc,

Chivani is going to interview Jimmy Hart, Lex Lugar, Kevin Sullivan, and the Giant. And the giant has the big gold belt wrapped around his waist. And Jimmy Hart says the whole world wants to know why he turns on Hulk Hogan, but he's not going to explain that until next week's Nitro. And he says that there's evil living in Hulk Hogan. And Jimmy was right all along. And the giant says he's going to defend the belt next week on Nitro. I wanted to ask you about the decision here.

I realize that, you know, we're trying to do a storytelling piece here. But sometimes in wrestling people say, oh, this guy was shoved down our throats or it was too much too soon or that sort of thing. But this is really the first time we saw the giant have a match in WCW, and he not only died, but he recovered a couple hours later and won the world title in the main event of his very first match in WCW. And we know it worked out just fine for the real life Paul White. And we know him these days is a big show.

But was it too much too soon? And who would have been championing him? It feels like this would have been a whole Kogan thing. Am I wrong on that? You 100% right. I mean, Paul came to WCW through Hulk. I think Hulk met him in Chicago at a charity event of some kind and was so impressed with him that I probably got a phone call the next day.

And once Paul came into WCW, he was really, he was a project for Hulk. Hulk saw so much in him, again, because of the experience that Hulk had with Andre the Giant, And this, I think, in Hulk's mind at the time was, ah, we have another one. And he had so much success with Andre. Obviously, his match with Andre the Giant, really in Hulk's mind, I think, was largely responsible for Hulk's success. This was just another way to kind of recapture some of that magic. He saw the opportunity in Paul. So Hulk was hands-on in just about.

about every aspect of Paul White's career once he got to WCW. Would you have done it differently? Like if Hulk Hogan wasn't in WCW and you have, I mean, really a once in a lifetime size athlete like Paul White come in the WCW, would you have had a different approach with that character without Hulk Cogan? Do you think?

I mean, obviously when the guy who's drawn the most money in the history of the business says, hey, here's what I want to do, it makes sense that you listen to that guy. But if he wasn't there, Would you have handled Paul White differently, or do you like the way we rolled them out? I would have done it differently. Just to build and I just was such a big believer even back then of building anticipation. And because Paul was such a unique character, still is, I would have, my instinct would have been to look for a different way to build on the anticipation of such.

a unique performer as opposed to here he is on Sunday and wait to you see what he does tomorrow. It was too much too soon. You got to give the audience a chance. You hear that wrestlers talk about this a lot when you're talking about the action in the ring is you got to let it breathe. You know, let the audience have time to catch up to the emotion you're trying to create in the ring. I think a lot of wrestlers and producers, writers, things. that the audience is going to react immediately to whatever you do or say in the ring. And that can be true, but what is more often true, particularly when it comes to the physical

batch itself, is things happen so fast in the ring that as a performer, you believe, incorrectly, I might add, but you believe or hope to believe that the audience is paying close attention to everything you're doing, and their reaction is going to be consistent with the timing of the things that you're doing in the ring. It's not true. It takes a while. You've got to do something.

Let it breathe for a half a beat or a beat, maybe longer, depending on what you're doing, and let the audience react almost in a delayed fashion. And I think when you hear people often talk, when I've heard people talk about laying out a match in the ring, the really good ones, ones that really know what they're doing and have that experience and have learned how to manipulate the crowd. Remember what I said earlier about developing the experience to rely upon, in my case,

I relied upon the reaction of the audience and learning how to read so I could therefore anticipate a reaction. Once you get to the point where you feel, think of a different way to say this, once you feel like you have a really good understanding of how to manipulate the audience, is emotion because you've learned timing and sometimes especially with younger talent and in particular the the nature of matches today which are generally much more fast-paced um you miss that beat you miss the opportunity for the audience to really react to what it is you're trying to do and i would have relied on my instinct to take more time and and developing paul but like you said pulled it all right we uh we got to say that it worked out you know i mean listen he's a hall of famer no matter where you how you slice it all the stuff he did in wcw all

the stuff he did in the w w and i think he's still with a w um let's talk a little bit about halloween though because on the other channel monday night raw is going to have a halloween themed program todd pettingale is going to do like a count dracula voe previewing the program and then he's going to introduce Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler. Were you a fan of doing these Halloween tie-ins on wrestling shows? I only ask because people used to go all out with getting into costumes and things like that, at Halloween Havoc. And eventually, when you're in charge of WCW, some of that changes a little bit.

Did you not think it was good for sponsorships or branding? I mean, that's not to say that you didn't have the giant, you know, you have a show named Halloween Havoc and you got the pumpkin. but everyone being in costume and things like that. It feels like with the success on Nitro, you started to dial that back a little bit. Was that because you were leaning into realism, or you just didn't see money in Halloween or a combination of both?

I just didn't, I never really, I just didn't like it. I mean, Halloween Havoc was different. Obviously, it was a pay-per-view. You've got to do something a little different for that pay-per-view to give it a

personality and embracing the holiday kind of made sense to me, especially Halloween, because it's kind of a fun holiday. anyway. But like Thanksgiving, you know, how many times have we seen silly ass Thanksgiving shows for wrestling? Same thing with Christmas. And I think to a degree, one of the reasons why I just didn't like it is because they were throwaway shows for the most part, particularly if they were on or really adjacent to either Thanksgiving or Christmas in particular. Because you assumed your viewership is going to be way down.

So it doesn't really make a lot of sense to stack really strong creative into a show that you know half of your audience isn't going to be there for for whatever reason, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So the tendency was, okay, well, people aren't really going to be watching that closely anyway. So let's just have some fun. I get the idea, but I never liked it. It just never felt right to me. So that's probably more than anything why I got away from it.

I do want to ask you about Monday Night Raw the next night because we see something kind of interesting. This is going to be the Monday night raw debut of Gold Dust. He's going to beat Savio Vega. And Vince McMahon is going to explain that there's never been a WWF superstar, create as much interest as gold dust has. He's going to talk about Goldbergs, or I'm sorry, gold dust contract requiring certain lighting, certain music and special effects. And as soon as he takes the wig off, he's going to aggressively attack Savi Ovega. who I guess was distracted or maybe mesmerized by Gold Dust's entrance. And as Vegas starting to make a comeback, McMahon is going to say maybe Gold Dust is going

to be a box office flop. Of course, we know in the end, Gold Dust gets the win. I'm bringing this up now because this is the first time we saw Gold Dust on Monday Night Raw. And it wasn't all that long before this, maybe six months or so, when he was still employed by WCW. And of course, when we saw Dustin in WCW,

he was the natural. It's a totally different presentation. What did you think of the Gold Dust character the first time you saw it? To be clear, he debuted a week prior at the In Your House show. But this is the first time the masses are seeing him on Monday Night Raw.

And it isn't about face from everything the WWF has done before. What did you think of it? I got to be honest, I didn't like it. I hope Dustin doesn't. doesn't take offense. Because I think Dustin really love that character, at least what I've heard him talk about.

But for me, it was so, just so not Dustin, the guy I knew, that I just, it just, it didn't work for me, brother. It just didn't work. But I think that was more because of the relationship I had with Dustin. I felt like, you know, I knew him. We'd gone hunting together, you know, did things away from the wrestling business together. And it just was like so weird. I couldn't see it working for him.

And I was dead rock. And obviously did work. And he embraced that character. He made it work. And I eventually kind of understood it. But initially it was like, what the hell? What are they doing to Dustin? Well, let me ask you this.

Don't you think it was necessary on some level that Dustin do something to differentiate himself from the way he was presented in WCW? because I think this is a challenge that is unique to a lot of second generation performers. But man, you want to talk about casting a big shadow and trying to fill really big shoes. All those cliches. Dustin had all that and then some. And then you've got people, again, these are the smart fans who are being critical. Because if Dustin gets a push, then inevitably is not about his talent or his performance.

It's about, oh, well, it's because of who his daddy is. like Charlotte Flair suffered this same thing online from fans for a long, long time. And recently they've started to warm up to her. But even that is only when she sort of pulled the curtain back and let the world see the real life her. And I know that Bruce sometimes talks about you hear guys or see guys playing wrestler. And I think this gave, perhaps this gave Dustin a way to sort of come out of his shell and try something new and take a risk.

Even Bruce has said before that he's not sure that he could have been in front of the camera as Bruce Pritchard. But when he puts the costume on of Brother Love, well, now it's easier because he's left self-conscious and he's not in his head as much and he can embrace the character. Does any of that make sense? I mean, could you have seen that work in that regard or is it just more of a function of, hey, I went hunting with this guy and that's not his real personality.

That's not what I wanted for him. Yeah. And again, I talk a lot about my instinct. And it's just the way my brain works is to take a person's real character who they really are as a human being, find the aspects of that character that you find most interesting and then figure out a way to turn the volume up on that so that the wrestler doesn't necessarily have to be a great method actor in order to be successful. Because a lot of wrestlers, they're playing a character, but they're not really great at it. They're just, they're

dressing correctly. They, you know, they got the look in a way, but they don't become the character like a method actor would, right? And that's what impressed me the most eventually, and even to this day, because I knew Dustin or the Dustin Rhodes that I knew was so completely different from the Gold Dust character that my initial take was how could he possibly pull this off? And that's where I think Dustin deserves a lot of credit because he, whether he liked the idea initially or not, you probably know better than I do. I don't know how I've ever heard how he felt about it when it was first presented to him.

But it almost doesn't matter because he embraced that character. You have to embrace that character. If you don't, much like a method actor would, if you don't become that character, almost to the point 24 hours a day, if you don't go that far, you can't pull off a character, like gold dust. There's just no way, not successfully. And the fact that Dustin, despite what I thought

I knew of Dustin, and did know, it was genuine, but he was willing to leave that guy home and become gold dust. And when I say become gold dust in a very complete way, and for that, he deserves a ton of credit, because that's really hard to do, particularly with someone like Dustin. Justin, who was, at least in my opinion back then, he was, you know, the natural Dustin Rhodes, he was a Texas cowboy ride horses, go hunting, you know, chase cows, you know, kind of guy. And to just embrace the goldless character the way he did was so counterintuitive to who Dustin Rhodes really was that eventually it really impressed me. And now, you know, in retrospect, really impressed with what Dustin.

was able to achieve with that character. I got to ask, as a reminder, I think everybody knows this, but I just want to make sure they remember six months prior. He's with with WCW and he gets relieved of his post. And there was a misunderstanding there to say the least. And I think we're going to talk about that next week here on the program. It was all born out of a match that happened at uncensored 1995. And that is going to be a major chapter and talking point.

and Barry Darsoe's new book, which is available now, sickles, studs, and stolen cars. And next week here on the program, we're actually going to have Barry Darso join us here live where we'll be discussing why he was fired, how it happened, everything surrounding that. As a reminder, he and Dustin Rhodes quote unquote got color during the blacktop bully natural match on the back of a flatbed truck in the suburbs of Atlanta. Mike Graham was their agent and WCW went to a crazy expense and when it was all said and done, it was a fun match that got everyone involved fired. Everybody is the guy that should have been fired, which was Mike Graham, but yeah.

We'll be talking about that next week here on the program. But I guess my question is now we're seeing six months or so later, the Gold Dust character debut for WCW, you've admitted now that you didn't love it. You weren't necessarily a fan of it. So it begs the question, would you have had an idea to bring Dustin back?

Was there a time, you know, you felt like he needed to sit in a stinky for six months a year, whatever it may be, when you could and you could bring him back, what would you have done with him? Would he have just come back as the natural? Or was there another idea, do you think? There wasn't another idea.

And I had every intention because I was friends with Dustin. I was friends with Dusty. it really letting him go was a really difficult decision for me. I don't ever like firing anybody. Never have. Still don't to this day because it can be devastating to someone. It can be devastating to them financially, initially. It can be devastating to their confidence.

And certainly with regard to someone like Dustin who was a friend of mine, it was very difficult on the relationship and the friendship. So I hated that I had to do it. it, but I did, in my mind, have to do it. But when I did it, and I probably told him this, is just let's get through this, let me do what I need to do, and then we're going to bring it back. It's not really that big a deal. It'll feel like it. And I'm sure to a degree, Dustin may or may not have believed how sincere I was about bringing him back. But I had every intention of bringing them back. To answer your question, that I have an idea.

in mind for another version of Dustin Rhodes, the natural at that time? No. Doesn't mean we wouldn't try to come up with one, or we wouldn't have found a way to kind of exploit the fact that I had to fire him as kind of a jumping off point for his return, meaning he could have come back with, you know, wanting to get some revenge on me or somebody else in WCW, whatever. I don't know what the creative would have been, but I know I wouldn't have certainly not changed his visual aspect of his character.

Because to me the value was in fact that he was Dustin Rhodes and the natural. That's, I would have, would not have been my instinct to, to bring him back as something other than Dusty's son. We know that we've got on the other channel something kind of interesting, especially from a sponsorship standpoint, Hakushi and Barry Horowitz are going to face off in a game of karate fighters. Now, this, of course, is a sponsored toy product. product on Monday Night Raw, but these sponsor integrations, while fans at home may not have loved

them, boy, corporate had to. Were you hoping to sort of integrate some sponsors like this on the WCW side of things? And when you see the WWF do that, does that get the sales team in WCW or for Turner motivated and thinking in that direction? Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, that was one of the, you know, people talk about WCW and how we had at the time an unfair advantage because Ted owned the network we were on. And that was certainly an advantage in a lot of respect.

One of the disadvantages, though, is we have very little control over sponsorship and certainly zero control over ad sales. Everything had to go through Turner ad sales at the time. Turner ad sales was embarrassed for the most part, that they, especially back in 94, 95, they were embarrassed to even talk to their clients, which were advertising agencies. And in some cases, the client itself, they did not want to even pull WCW or Nitro in the beginning

out of their little bags of tricks to sell. It was almost like it didn't exist, which is why we kind of took over some of that, because Slim Jim, for example, the only reason I was able to control that spot, sponsorship, sell it, number one, and execute it with 100% control, is because Turner Ad Sales had nothing to do with it. To answer your question, nothing got Turner Ad Sales motivated about anything when it came

to WCW. They would have preferred not to have to present it and usually didn't, which is why we suffered the way we did. But we had no control over that. Now, if you take something like this game or this toy, whatever it is, I don't remember it, or we'll use Slim Jim as an example, the reason I was able to control that is because I integrated it into the storyline or into the show itself. It wasn't part of a commercial break. It was part of programming, and it was part of programming, I had 100% control.

Meanwhile, on the other channel, there's also a promo that's going to air for Brett Hart and Hukushi, teaming up against Jerry Lawler and Isaac Yankham. The next, week. This feels like another example, this entire Monday Night Raw episode of maybe Vince not knowing exactly how to deal with Nitro. I mean, they just had a Brett Isaac Yankem cage match and now they're somehow going to continue the feud. But more than that, they're even going to replace some clips from the In Your House pay-per-view, at least the finish to the tag title. And that's where we see perhaps, you know, a little bit of a heel behavior from Sean Waltman, which is going to be timely because a year from now,

you're really going to need him to be that heel. But I really wanted to ask about Ahmed Johnson because we see Razor Ramon beat Owen Hart here by D.Hugh when Yoko had interfered. And somehow along the way, Ahmed Johnson's going to run in the ring and body slam Yoko Zuna. Obviously, Ahmed is going to be one of the new prime time players for Vince McMahon's WWF.

He's showing major league, charisma, and ring presence. But it's the thing he does. that gets my attention. Lex Lugar has only been gone from the WWF for like two months. And the biggest thing he did in the WWF was Body Slam Yoko Zuna. And now we've got a new hot baby face debuting. It's body slamming Yokozuna right away. How much of that was to just counter program Lugar being in WCWD think? It's hard.

I mean, obviously I couldn't tell you. Bruce might have a recollection of that. But to me, as you were laying that out, I would imagine Vince was just absolutely determined to get Ahmed Johnson over. And the most obvious, quickest way to doing that was the body slammy Okazuna. And I think without regard to whether Lex Lugar had done it previously or not, I mean, this is this is a classic way to get a new guy really over by doing something as big as this. No pun intended.

I just think it's interesting. As a reminder, Ahmed Johnson debuted on Raw a week prior. So his second appearance on Raw, he's body slim in Yoko Zuna. It's clear they had big plans for Ahmed Johnson. It was kind of like their version of the giant, right? Yes, absolutely. On a Monday and becomes a big thing on a Tuesday. day. It's kind of the same. It's a parallel. Was Ahmed Johnson on your radar here at all?

Like I know that eventually he does make his way to WCW. And with all due respect to Ahmed, he wasn't nearly the same. But there was a lot of optimism and a lot of hope on the WWF side of things with Ahmed Johnson. Did you see that in him? I didn't. Not because I didn't see it in Ahmed, but probably because people still have a hard time believing this. I really wasn't paying attention to Monday Night Raw. I was paying attention to their commercial breaks and their timing and a little bit of information about the show so I could bury it as an announcer or give away finishes whenever that was appropriate or had the ability to do that. But I really wasn't tracking their creative at all, not even a little bit. Well, listen up. This message is

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Start building wealth for your family with my family at savewithconrad.com. Five, four, three, two, one. It's time to count down the top five. Brought to you by savewithconrad. Pretty excited about this. Today we're going to be talking about the most successful WCW tag teams. This is Eric Bischoff's list of the top five most successful tag teams. And we want to hear from you who are in your top five WCW tag teams.

Let us know below. But coming in at number five on Eric's list of the top five WCW tag teams is the nasty boys, Brian Nobs and Jerry Sags. They won the world titles three times between 93 and 93. They were the champs for over 300 days. We know them as hardcore brawers who brought the, uh, the grit to WCW here.

Of course, they did have two stints, one that sort of predated Eric's run with the company, but man, when you're here with them and they're enjoying all this success, they had some really classic matches. Missy Hyatt was their manager once upon a time, but the matches with Harlem Heat were fun,

but I don't think anybody will forget seeing those matches with Cactus Jack and Max Payne. A lot of violence, a lot of chaos, and seemingly always in the title hunt. Why were they number five on your list, Eric? On a personal level, they were really the two guys that I first became friends with in a wrestling business. They were working in AWA in Minneapolis at the time. And I think like my second or third day on the job, we ended up going out and having a beer after we were done working. and got to know them and just enjoyed being around them on a personal level. On a professional level, they were dependable as hell, meaning, are you going to get five-star matches out of them?

No. Can you absolutely depend that they're going to light the audience up and get a great reaction for television? Yes. And that was really my responsibility is getting those crowd reactions. and they were so dependable, predictable, almost, that you could always count on them. I think another reason why I thought so highly of them is because they were versatile enough to work

as many dates in Japan as I could get them. Because they were kind of an attraction. It's a little hard to build really good story with guys who are specialists, if you will, at that hardcore style. it's not story premise friendly, right? But we could utilize them when we needed them, but rather than sitting around for months at a time

when we didn't need them creatively, we could put them on a plane and they would be excited about it and they'd go over and work Japan, which was good for the New Japan WCW relationship. So they were so versatile as performers, they were dependable as a television act, And from a financial perspective, they were really inexpensive because I was making money off of them when New Japan was using them. Nasty boys.

Come in at number five on the WCW list of the top five most successful WCW tag teams. That's according to Eric Bischoff. Who's your number five? Let us know below. But coming in number four, it seems like there's a lot of respect here at play for Eric's number four on the list of the top five WCW tag teams. It's Doom with Butch, Reefiote. and Ron Simmons. They only won the tag straps once back in 91.

They held them for quite a while, I guess, 280 days or so. But, you know, I guess they technically won them in 90, lost them in early 91. But they had classic matches, man, whether you're talking about the Steiner's or the freebirds or the horsemen.

Like Halloween havoc 1990, I think a lot of people kind of forget. That's when we had Sting versus Sid for the big gold belt on top. And Rick Flair, fresh off of losing the title just a few months prior to Sting. Where is he? He's in a tag match with Arne against Doom. That tells you the respect that Flair had to want to work with guys like

Butch Reed and specifically Ron Simmons. Why is Doom coming in at number four on your list here, Eric? For me personally, because of Ron Simmons. I didn't get a chance to know Butch Reed. I did get a chance to know Ron Simmons. First of all, just look at them. Yeah. Physically impressive and believable they were together and individually.

But, man, I'm just always have been a huge fan of Ron Simmons. To this day, I still get to see Ron three or four, five times a year at different conventions and autographed signings. And he's just, man, even at this stage in his life, we're all a little bit older, right? We're all a little heavier and all that. But man, when Ron Simmons walks into a room, the room stops, whatever they're doing, and looks over to check this guy out because he has this aura is an overused word as of late. But Ron Simmons in particular has such an aura about him. He commands respect.

And that's probably your answer. He just commanded so much of my respect as a character and as a human being, but as a character is so believable. he's a unique individual i don't think there's a lot of guys who carry as much almost universal respect as ron simmons does it's like um i don't know he may be like wrestling's clinn eastwood or something yeah it's a good way of saying it because he's he's just got that i mean literally he walks in a room he doesn't even have to say anything yes there's just all kinds of energy around him and then he opens his mouth and he's got that james earl jones baritone

that just if you weren't impressed with the physical aspect of Ron Simmons, the minute he said hello, it's like, whoa, he's got a voice to match. He's just such an impressive person. And he obviously, look at his athletic background and all the things that he accomplished in Florida playing football. He's just, he's a personification of what a wrestler should have been, particularly back in that day. Let's talk about number three on Eric Bischoff's list of the top five most successful tag teams in WCW.

No surprise. We all know they're going to be on the list. Eric, you've got the outsider, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in the number three spot. They won the tag straps six different times between 96 and 98. That means they held the belts for nearly a year between 97 and 98. Over 500 days in total. These are sort of the founding. members of the NWO, clearly that turned not just WCW around, but the entire wrestling

business around. I mean, these guys are, I mean, the longest tag reign of the era and well deserved. I mean, you want to talk about revolutionary. What they did for WCW and what they meant for WCW just can't be overstated. I'm honestly kind of surprised they came in at number three. Why are the outsiders number three, Eric? One word. Chemistry.

and the outsider, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, were the definition of a perfect working chemistry. First of all, they complimented each other, and they had worked together long enough, and they thought alike. They could read each other's minds in the ring. They can anticipate what was going to happen long before it actually happened, not just because they laid the match out,

but reading the room, listening to the audience, taking advantage of an opportunity in a match that you didn't anticipate. They're just their instinct and their chemistry and the fact that they were really focused on getting each other over as well as their opponent when they worked with them. It's just chemistry. It's unbelievable. They had unbelievable chemistry together.

Let's talk about number two on Eric's list to the top five most successful WCW tag teams. Probably no surprise. I think they're going to be on everybody's list. The Steiner Brothers, let us know in the comments where you rank the Steiner's. Eric's got them here at number two, hard to argue with their success, seven times the tag team champions. I mean, they were maybe the gold standard for athleticism and intensity. And they wrestled all over the place. You could see them in WCW.

You can see them in Japan. You can see them in the WWF. But I think most of our listeners, myself included, when they think about the Steiner brothers, they don't think about those other federations. They think about WCW. And, you know, it's not just suplexes. But when Scott Steiner broke out the Frankensteiner, it felt like it was a revolutionary move to the wrestling business. It felt like it made every match from then on must see because you wondered, is he going to do it again?

Like this is years before the Canadian destroyer captured our imagination. The Frankensteiner man, I don't think he gets enough credit for that, maybe with the benefit of Hans It's like, why are the Steiner's number two for you, Eric? Much like the same reason the nasty boys are on a list. First of all, they were so freaking good together. They complimented each other. And not like Scott and Kevin did necessarily, but, you know, Rick was, you know, down to business, not that flashy, still very effective, very intimidating.

didn't have to say much to get a lot of attention. Scott was flashier and a little more dangerous on the mic, as we've certainly learned, you know, later on in his crib. When I say dangerous, I mean, in a good way, an entertaining way. But, yeah, Scott Steiner, I just saw a clip a couple weeks ago of a really, really young, like maybe first or second year in the business young, Scott Steiner doing the Frankensteiner. I first got, and it was so impressive.

I mean, it was nuts. Because, you know, in today's world, we'll see moves like that. And you go, oh, yeah, I saw something like that last week. Or somebody else does that too. And maybe they do it a little bit better, whatever. But you didn't see anybody Scott Steiner's size doing anything that looked like a Frankensteiner. When Scott did it, it was like, whoa.

I mean, so physically impressive. And then to pull off a move like that, it's typically a small person's type of move, smaller person. It was just so freaking impressive. But I think from a business perspective, consistency, much like I said with the nasty boys, you knew you were going to get a reaction where you needed it when you needed it. You knew the Steiner's were going to deliver together. You knew their matches were going to be incredibly entertaining. And you also knew, more often than that, that Scott's.

signer was going to give you something to look freaking awesome on camera. And by the way, much like the nasty boys, Japan loved them. From a financial point of view, they were very good for WCW because of the relationship with New Japan. I could utilize them so many different ways. By now we probably know who number one on Eric's list of the most successful tag teams in WCW history is probably no surprise. coming into number one, it's Bookerty and Stevie Ray, Harlem Heat, 10 times your WCW

World Tag Team champions, the champs for over 600 days. I don't think a lot of people maybe would have predicted their success when they first made their debut in 1997. And I know eventually Booker T is going to go his own way as a singles player and have a lot of success there before becoming the world champion. He'd become TV champion, U.S. champ, and then the world champ. But as a tag team, Harlem Heat had incredible matches and feuds with the Steiner brothers, with nasty boys, with the outsiders.

I mean, they probably represent the tag team division at WCW's peak more than anybody else, don't you think? Yeah, maybe toss up between them and the Steiner's, but absolutely, you know, Harlem Heat, again, I'm saying the same things with a lot of these people, but it's why they're in the top five. is consistency. You know, as a producer, writer, or head of creative, whatever you want to call it,

or part of creative, you know, when you sit down and scratch your hand and go, okay, what are we going to do next week? Or what are we going to do next month? And you look at your roster

and you figure out all the different ways to mix and match people up, try to come up with stories in the process. The Steiner Brothers in Harlem Heat were like two of the teams. It really didn't matter. You could create a story around them or with them. And they would deliver the,

The audience responded to them every time. You know, poker was so good on the mic. I just loved his work on the mic. And look, they hauled wood, man. They hauled a lot of wood in WCW, meaning cash. They delivered a lot consistently. Let's talk about some of your honorable mentions on the list. I think everybody agrees that Harlem Heat belongs at number one.

But on the honorable mentions list, the Hollywood Blonde's, Steve Austin and Brian Pilman. They were only the tag champs once. It was a pretty short, but Tam was in an iconic run. They had really fun flair for the gold parodies. They had great matches. But it's the personality that we get to see here from these two guys that I think really leveled them up.

Prior to this, I would argue that Brian Pilman was considered, quote, unquote, just a cruiser weight or a light heavy weight, I guess was the term at the time. But he showed here, he had a lot more personality than just the bingletites and a great match for Juschen Liger. And Steve Austin here sort of broke the mold from his maybe more quiet, reserved, stunning Steve Austin character. And we got to see some of the personality that we know he would just break wide open as Stone Cold Steve Austin.

What did you like so much about the Hollywood blondes and why are they on your honorable mention list, Eric? You know, the only reason they're on the honorable mention and that at the top is because they just weren't together long enough to generate enough revenue to, to be at that top position. But man, did they bring out the best of each other? It's like one plus one equals five with those two.

I don't know why. I don't know what it was about them working together, but they absolutely brought out the best of each other. Another on your honorable mention list are the enforcers. This is Arne Anderson and Larry Zabisco. They were the tag team champs. Only one time, only about 90 days. But, man, you want to talk about two veterans.

I know you have a lot of respect for both of these guys and you go way back with Larry Zabisco. I'm kind of surprised they're on your list, though, of honorable mentions. Why did you think so much of the enforcers, Eric? They are, they were my personal favorite because of what they represented. And maybe it has a lot to do with the era that I came up in and what I appreciated, you know, subjectively as a fan first and foremost, but there was a lot. reality, execution, believability,

all of the things that I believe are requisites to be a great professional wrestler, whether you're a tag team or single. And in their case, this case, so much credibility. They could deliver in the ring. Again, consistency. We're going to keep hearing that word because when you get to the top

three, four, five of anything, you've got be consistent and these two were but this the character they represented like arns interviews to me always when i first got to wcw i would look for i would hope i'd get to i'd get to tv and i'd go to find myself a format and i would literally hope look forward to an opportunity to do an interview with ar i remember the first couple i did with him because i didn't i didn't know who he was i didn't get a lot of, you know, Crockett promotions or WCW even in Minneapolis when I lived there before moving to Atlanta. So Arne was like a new character to me. And the first couple times I did interviews with him was like, oh, man, this cat makes me believe. And I'm standing

right next to him. And we just rehearsed this. And I still believe it. Just who was magic. Same with Larry. You know, I was more used to Larry because I worked with Larry a lot in AWA. I think Larry was really responsible for me ending up in WCW, believe it or not. But, um, we had a lot to do with it at least. But those two together, their style, their approach to a match, their interview qualities, their interview ability, they were like complete packages. Rounding out your list of, uh, honorable mentions will rapid fire some of these were the public enemy.

they were only the tag champs for a few weeks, but man, they were a staple in the early WCW days of Nitro. And clearly we were capitalizing on some of the success they had in ECW and some of the table celebrations that later the Dudley boys would sort of take ownership of. Stars and Stripes with Marcus Bagwell and the Patriot. They also make the list at a very challenging time for WCW.

These aren't super profitable days, but man, you want to talk about a very serviceable baby face tag team that fit the era. And before we shift gears, I want to say one more thing about Marcus Bagwell, well, we showed him in a graphic there with Patriot, Del Willis.

I had a chance to talk to Marcus a couple weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. And I'm going to back story this is a little bit. When Mark had his leg amputated, I found out about that. Again, social media. I'm looking at a picture of Mark laying in a hospital. bed with his leg cut off below his knee, which was shocking in and of itself to me,

because I hadn't, I wasn't aware that this was even a possibility. But the most shocking thing to me when I saw that picture was the fact that he was smiling. Wait, what? It was weird enough that, you know, I'm looking at this guy who had known for so long and friends with laying in a hospital bed with part of his leg gone. but the strangest part was how happy he seemed to be. So I talked to DDP. I said, Paige fill me in.

What the hell, right? So Paige gave me the backstory. And I had this, because it's my weird sense of humor, I thought, you know what, knowing Mark, the way I know Mark, I thought, I'm going to text him and see what it's, this was, this was, whenever this was, it was sometime in a spring, I guess, or I lost track of time. but maybe late spring, early summer, whenever it was. I sent him a text saying, hey, Mark, I'm working with an independent promoter who's looking for a one-legged wrestler and wondering what your schedule looks like in October. So I sent him that text, and I never heard back from them. And like a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about that.

In fact, I was in Connecticut. I was down the street from WWE headquarters. I was there to do some stuff for A&E. And that's when they thought crossed my mind. I thought, man, I should call Mark because I may have, just because I saw him smiling in a picture, it doesn't mean he was happy. Maybe I, maybe I heard his feelings or offended him. And I started feeling really bad because I started thinking about that, how devastating that could be

to have someone that, you know, you know, call you up and make funny here for losing your leg or making a joke out of it. And I called Mark. We had the greatest conversation. I was so inspired by listening to Mark and how he's adjusted. And he was more optimistic than any time I've ever had a conversation with him at any time in his life that I've known him. He was so positive, so optimistic. We're talking about, he was telling me about, you know, when he goes to the gem now, he doesn't have that, you know, mangled leg getting in his way and throwing him off.

He was actually thrilled at the fact that he finally got that portion of his leg amputated because it opened up so many other opportunities for him. And I said to Mark, you should be, you should be talking to people. It's such an inspirational story. So if you have a chance to see Mark at a convention or an autograph signing, I encourage you to spend five minutes talking to Marcus Alexander Bagwell because your life will be better because you did. Shout out to Bagwell, man. We absolutely love his story.

No, he's going to be a great success story and continue pulling for him. I'm so proud of him turning over a new league. in life. And then last but certainly not lists, easy for me to say, last but certainly not least, the insiders make your list. And this is also a kind of forgettable time of WCW.

It's when they're on the downhill slope of 2000 and 2001, but a real mega pairing of Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash. That's a pretty big time dynamic duo there of personality. Don't you think, Eric? No doubt. And again, similar to, in a way, to Scott and Kevin, Kevin and DDP, they were so committed to each. I mean, they just truly wanted to get each other over.

They were both very generous with regard to what happened in the ring and making sure that they both would come off better when they left the ring than they were when they got in it. Yeah, if they would have been, had that tag team been around? around a couple years earlier. Who knows where they would have ended up on this list. But yeah, you're a great team. Speaking of great, you're going to love this top five list. We want to hear from your great top team list right here below on YouTube.

Drop us a comment below. Who are your top five tag teams? Eric Bischoff, Scott Harlem Heed at number one. Who's your number one? Steiner Brothers at number two, the outsiders at number three, Doom at number four, and the nasty boys. at five. Pretty tough list. I love the nasty boys man. I mean, a guilty pleasure of mine. How could you not have respect for Ron Simmons? I think the outsiders, the Steiner's, Harlem

Heat, they all kind of speak for themselves. But where would you rank them? Let us know below right here on YouTube at 83 weeks.com who your top five teams are. And I'll tell you what's going to be on your top five list this holiday season. And that's Tushie. You've heard us bragging about Tushie for a while here long before they were a sponsor on the program. Eric and I had Tushies in our house. Hell, I've even got Tushy in the new office. We recently moved to a new location here in Huntsville. And the first thing I did when I toured the space is, uh,

we got to get some new washlets in here. I'm talking about Tushy. The Tushy Biday is a game changer. The everyday luxury bidet instantly transforms your bathroom habits and your bottom health for life, whether you're shopping for a bro, a CEO, a daddy, an activist, or someone who lights their farts on fire. this is a perfect gift for someone who refuses to pick a lane. We're talking luxurious, practical, techie, easy to use.

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Remember, A-Hole is only a naughty word if you wipe. For a limited time, our listeners can get 10% off their first bidet order when you use our promo code 83 weeks at checkout. That's 10% off your first bidet order at hellotushy.com when you use the promo code 83 weeks. Eric, we've got a lot of news that we want to hit this week. There's been so much happening in and around WWUXY. and just wrestling at large. I want to remind you next week here on the program, we are going to be talking to Barry Darso,

so make the plans to join us here. Hit the subscribe button, turn on your notifications bell. And we're also going to be talking about what happened this past week at Saturday night's main event. Now, as you're listening to this, this is tomorrow night. So Eric, real quick,

I wanted to get your take on Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre. We know that Cody Rhodes is going to war with Drew. Drew has a former champion himself. Cody's on a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of, a tear. We've seen a more harder edge with Cody. Do you think we're going to see a new champion or will Cody retain if you were a betting man? This one is a tough one, right? Because you could argue that Drew McIntyre is just sitting there waiting for his rocket ride.

He's very dependable in that respect. You could plug him into a top spot anytime you need him. But Cody's on a roll. So this one's kind of unpredictable, which is, that's ideally that's what you want, right? You don't want the audience to be able to call it. I can't call this one. Either one's a great choice. I would, if I had to bet, I would bet Cody retains, but man, anything can happen.

Drew, I want to say something about Drew McIntyre, though. Drew has become, to me, impressive, even more impressive because of the way he's using social media. much the same way Becky Lynch impressed me back in 2019, prior to me even going to work for WWE for that cup of coffee. I remember, you know, I didn't really know who Becky was. I wasn't paying close attention to her or her character until I stumbled across her in social media. And just the way she was using social media to get her then character over was really impressive to me. Drew's doing much the same thing.

He's really found a way to use social media to advance his character rather than to expose it. I think a lot of talent still struggles with finding a way to consistently use social media to not only talk about their storyline or push their storyline, but to actually get their character over in a different way. So hats off to Drew. Let's talk about CM Punk and Jay Usso. seeing Punk is going to go one on one with Jay Uso for the now vacant world heavyweight championship. It's happening tomorrow night at Saturday night's main event.

Punk has also defeated Uso in an L.A. night in an explosive triple threat match to become this number one contender. But somehow, some way, Bronbreaker and Bronson Reed betrayed an ailing Seth Rollins with a brutal attack. And while now that he's out of action, Uso emerged victorious in that number one contenders battle royal to earn the right to take on the second city. Saint and somebody is leaving the building tomorrow night with some new hardware. What do you think? You're a betting man. Seam Punk or Jay Uso? I'm going to take the long shot here and the odds and I'm going to go Jay Uso.

I say that because again what I'm seeing on social media and I could be reading too much into this, but Jay Uso's inspired in a whole different way. And I heard him talking about the other day how. his rep right now is that yeah he's great on the entrance but maybe not able to carry much at the top and the way jay talked about that and how we felt about that number one very believable he sucked me in he's got me into that point where i don't know if that was half shoot half not how much not sure but it felt inspired is my point and i think the move putting it on Jay Uso right now from a long-term perspective makes more sense than punk punk is so

freaking over it's ridiculous he doesn't need it j could use it so from a purely practical point of view i'd put my money on jay last but certainly not least we've got the intercontinental title in a three-way dominic mysterio rusef and penta there's been lots of rumor in innuendo that perhaps Dominic Mysterio is going to be wrestling John Sina. And there's also speculation that perhaps it would be for the Intercontinental title, which leads people to wonder, is it going to be John Sina and Gunther and Sina's last match for the Intercontinental title? I don't know.

I can totally see them going with Pinta here, but man, a Sina Dominic Mysterio thing, that sounds fun. What would you pick here tomorrow night, Eric? Tom, Roussev, or Penta? Penta. I just feel like the emphasis and the strategy and the business is pointing more towards Penta right now than Rousseff, certainly,

and much like Punk, don't know that Dominic needs it. It doesn't anybody needs it, but some people will get an advantage at a time in the trajectory of their career where they really need it, and it makes sense. and I just don't see that Dominic needs it. I think Penta,

given the direction that WWE has been going as of late, that's where I put my money. But it's really, it's hard to say because there's so many options. Just, you know, three or four of the ideas that you just laid out, or two or three of them absolutely makes sense. So it makes it really hard to predict. I can't wait to see what happens on Saturday night's main event. We're going to be talking about that next week.

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take about a sweat stains, and say hello to long-lasting freshness. Man, do we have a banger of a show lined up for you next week, Eric? There's been some news that's developing, and we'll have more details next week. But Vince Rousseau is back in wrestling, and this time, he's partnering with the clowns. Whoop, whoop, the insane clown posse. That's right. Vince Rousseau in Juggalo Championship Wrestling. We'll talk about that next week here on the program.

And we may even invite a special guest. Speaking of special guests, we've chatted with David O'Tunga before, and he is going to dismantle the WWE's independent contractor classification. There's a new video he's posted where he's actually apologizing to WWE for doing so. And Eric is uniquely qualified to discuss this. We're going to talk about the arbitration clauses that exist in these contracts. We're going to talk about the independent contractor status that everyone's talked about for a long, long time.

And the predicament, this leaves WWE in. I can't wait to talk about this with Eric. We'll do it next week here on the program. There's also, and I don't know if this is real or not, there's a report that Charles Manson, yeah, that Charles Manson was actually a Bray Wyatt fan. We'll touch on that next week. But the news that you saw Silva T's there. is that Tyrus is suggesting that John Cena's retirement match will feature a big-time celebrity guest,

the president of the United States. We're going to talk about that next week here on the program, and of course we'll be visiting with the one and only Barry Darsoe, all in an effort to talk about his new book, Sickles, Studs, and Stolen Cars. As a reminder, he got fired by Eric Bischoff, and the story is one that we've never really told. What was the last time you and Barry conversed about all of this, Eric? It feels like it had to have been a long time ago, right?

About be firing him. We probably haven't talked about that since three months after it happened. But I still see Barry, you know, a couple times a year on the circuit and always enjoy seeing Barry. We kind of go back a ways and have a lot of connective tissue from our past, so to speak. So I'm looking forward to this one. He's a great guy. Can't wait to visit with Barry next week and you won't believe who he went to school with. We're going to be talking about that next week here on the program.

Hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell and let everybody know to join us next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Vischoff. You know, life happens fast. One minute you're driving home after work. The next, you see flashing lights in your rearview mirror. Your heart skips. Your hands tighten on the wheel and you start asking yourself, what do I do now? That's when you need someone on your side. And with the legal buddy app, you can connect with a local attorney in seconds,

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