83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 402: Bret Said What?

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric and Conrad unload a jam-packed slate of headlines, controversy, and classic WCW insight. Eric dives into the return of the super cards concept and shares his unfiltered thoughts on Bret Hart's latest barrage of bombastic statements, including what Bret got right—and what he absolutely didn't. The guys also address Dave Meltzer labeling Eric a "grifter," with Bischoff responding the only way he knows how: directly, honestly, and with zero hesitation. Then, the conversation shifts to a deep dive into the creation and evolution of Raven's Flock. Did Eric see the faction as a unique, gritty piece of WCW storytelling? Or was it an idea he'd have rather left on the cutting room floor? Eric sets the record straight with behind-the-scenes insight you won't hear anywhere else. All that plus so much more on this can't-miss, no-holds-barred edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff. BUTCHER BOX - Get free turkey or ham in their first box, or choose ground beef for life - PLUS $20 off your first order. Go to http://ButcherBox.com/83WEEKS  to choose your offer and get this limited-time deal, with free shipping always. RIDGE - Upgrade your wallet today! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code 83WEEKS at https://www.Ridge.com/83WEEKS ! #Ridgepod SIGNOS - Visit http://SIGNOS.com  and get 25% off select plans with code 83WEEKS.  STEVEN SINGER JEWELER - NO ONE DOES REAL DIAMOND JEWELRY BETTER. EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE AT STEVEN SINGER JEWELERS. ONLINE AT HTTP://IHATESTEVENSINGER.COM . ALWAYS WITH FAST AND FREE SHIPPING. THAT'S IHATESTEVENSINGER.COM  JCW LUNACY -  BLUECHEW - Visit https://bluechew.com  and try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code 83WEEKS -- just pay $5 shipping. TUSHY - Over 2 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with code 83WEEKS at http://hellotushy.com/83WEEKS  #tushypod THE PERFECT JEAN - F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code 83WEEKS15 at theperfectjean.nyc/83WEEKS15#theperfectjeanpod TRUE CLASSIC - Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/83WEEKS  ! #trueclassicpod 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.

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So don't make saving money a resolution next year. Make it happen today at save with Conrad.com. At all that number 212, non-equal housing lender. Hey, hey, it's Conrad the mortgage guy, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fischoff. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you? I am well, Conrad. I am in, well, I guess it's beautiful downtown Chicago overlooking Lake Michigan,

Marriott, getting ready for real American freestyle. Oh, three. Man, I can't believe it. We're on our third one already. Got a great crowd ticket. It's a really moving grade at the Winters Arena here in Chicago, right across the street. So we're expecting a really, really fun Saturday night. It's going to be, it's amazing.

We've got some great, you know, crossover, UFC, MMA, you know, Real American Freestyle matchups in our co-made events. Absolutely an amateur wrestling phenom. Don't be surprised if you don't hear way more about this. this young man in the next couple of years. Bo Bassett, just turned 19 years old. Signed with Real American Freestyle, but had to have his parents also sign up because he was underage at the time.

Amazing, amazing, freestyle wrestler is going to have a great career. Like I said, you'll be hearing a lot of him, but you'll see him, likely, unless you're already a fan first at Real American Freestyle. He's going to be taking on Daryon Codwell. Daryon Caldwell is veteran, former Bellator, tour champion, great freestyle experience and pedigree. And Bo kind of grew up looking up to Dariot. You know, it was like, that was his hero.

And now he's going to be competing against him at Real American Freestyle. So it's just going to be a special weekend. Tickets are on sale now at Real American Freestyle.com. WinTrust Arena is the newest, nicest arena in Chicago. I highly encourage you check it out. And I've got a prediction for you, Eric. I think the next time Real American Freestyle is there, you guys are going to run a convention at that big-ass convention center right next door.

I can feel it in my bones. You know what? It's really interesting. Last night I was talking to a woman that we work with here at Real American Freestyle. My name is Tanya Stokoya. She's from Bulgaria. She's a really, really an amazing person. And her career basically is putting on these big conventions and trade shows and things like that for large companies.

And a lot of those shows that they put on, you know, look for and try to design into a lot of interactive kind of things for people to do instead of just walking around with a plastic bag thrown samples in it, right? And she came in and has a whole idea about, you know, the day before and the type of activities that we can provide. Because Real American Freestyle, we're kind of gearing more towards a, I don't want to say family friendly and the Disney sense of things, although that's probably not a good analogy. anymore. But you know what I mean? But we want it to be a comfortable place for parents who have kids that are into wrestling come and enjoy the experience of the competition. And part of that is having things to do like you just mentioned. So maybe I got to get you and Tanya together and you know, make some magic happen because it's such a great opportunity. And we do so well with kids that we're kind of excited about that. I'm excited for the card this weekend. Chad Mendez and Michael

Chandler are going to be in action. for the men's middleweight championship. That's 175 pounds. Kennedy Blades, who you've heard us bragging about for weeks, is going to be in there for the middleweight championship at 150 pounds against Alejandro Rivera. And the men's featherweight, Real Woods versus Jordan Oliver, 145. The title is on the line. Plus lots of other fun stuff.

Frank Mears' daughter is on this card. Play Gwita is on this card. So if you're a UFC fan or an amateur wrestling fan or just sports and you want to try something new, I highly recommend it in person. You can still grab great seats at real American Freestyle.com. But of course, you can watch like I'm going to watch on Fox Nation. I think it's only like seven or eight bucks. And you're getting what really is a premium live event for less than what you can buy a chicken.

I just saw it on TV. It's like $2.99 right now. And there's so much great stuff on Fox Nation. You really should check it out. Fox is really doing a great job of this platform. And we're proud to be part of it for sure. Check it out, real American freestyle.com. Eric, I thought we would have a little fun to start the program.

We are going to be talking about Ravens flock. We're going to be doing that because Raven's new documentary, Nevermore, it was just released on Amazon. I've checked it out. I hope he will do. He's doing a heck of a job promoting it. We thought we'd help him a little bit here today and talk about Raven on 83 weeks. But before we do that, I wanted to see, I know you've been busy,

I know you've been traveling. Did you happen to see the new gimmick that brought, Lexner debuted this past week on Monday. The ass bump. Oh, no, no, no, no. I mean, the new gimmick that he's doing. Oh, no, I didn't, I didn't see it. I saw, I saw clips of him, you know, taking a bump on, uh, on his entrance,

but I, I didn't get to watch anything else. I don't know if you remember, but this weekend, I know you've been busy with Real American Freestyle, but this weekend is Survivor Series. Right. And in Survivor Series, they're actually doing war games as a part of Survivors. and well, Lesner is going to be a part of it and he debuted his new gimmick on Monday.

Take a look. What do you think? Sorry, Brock, it's funny. I mean, I think even Brock is probably laughing about this one. I don't know.

I don't know Brock's sense of humor. I never spent that kind of time around him, but I'm guessing all you can do at this point is get a laugh. Well, he hopped up, smiling, patted, you know,

Paul Heyman on the shoulder, and then put his hat. on one of his tag team partners. So clearly they're having fun with it. But as a reminder, the shockmaster thing, and even you may have forgotten the context of this, they were introducing the fifth and final member of their team. Oh, wow.

War games. And now here we are on our way to the war games. And Brock Lesnar Busty's up in the sky going, I'm just going to have a little fun with these people. I'm just going to be a little surprise here. Remind them who the dream really was. She brings a little ditsy dust on that thing. And let's say, you know what?

The world's most dangerous man is having his, he's having his moment. It's funny. I also wanted to show you some other good news. You know, it feels like a lot of times we're only talking about the crazy and the overtop and the sensational. But it came out yesterday that Sid Vicious his son,

Gunner Udy, is raising money to buy his first wrestling ring. I guess he's doing it for all. the right reasons. He's launching the first annual Psychosid Memorial Benefit Show with 100% of the profits going to local animal shelters in Crittenden County. And that's because that's what his dad loved most, these young animals. So here we've got a young man honoring his father through wrestling and charity and purpose. I don't know. I think it's a kind of a cool story. And I know you've got a heart for dogs. We've heard all about Nikki. What do you make of this news? So I don't know.

Since what was his name? Gunner. Gunner. I'll never forget that one. That's a cool name. I don't know him, but I'm sure someone that's listening may. And if you do, let Gunner know that I would be more than happy to participate, show up and perform in any way other than in the ring at my own expense to help support

what he's doing because I think it's cool. Good on you, man. That's awesome to hear. I love when we get to share these positive stories. And another story that hit everybody's timeline this week that I thought might make him the most transparent wrestler alive, John Sina actually posted when he went to visit his hair clinic checkup. I guess it's been about a year since he had hair restoration done. That seems like something that happens in Hollywood all the time,

but people usually keep it hush, hush. Not John Sina. He posted a picture with the doc and said another great visit to him. Anderson Center for Hair, but about one year since Ken Anderson operated and what a transformation it's been. Got to take care of his work so I can stay up with my maintenance. Eric, you know a thing or two about a great head of hair and wrestling. But how rare is it that you see someone come out and say, oh, yeah, I'm doing maintenance

on this. That feels like something nobody talks about. Good on John. I think John is rare in a number of ways. and I think his, the level of comfort that John has with who John Cena is, I admire him. It takes, it's not like, I mean, it seems silly like, well, why is it such a big deal to admit that you're having your hair done or you're having hair transplants?

People are vain. People don't, it's not, I mean, across the culture, right? It's just not something you go brag about when you have work done to try to improve your looks. And I think only people that are really confident in themselves, I mean, truly, honestly, confident to themselves have, you know, those people are perfectly comfortable talking about things like that. And to me, that says a lot about John and who John is and where John is at the stage of his life. And if you follow John on social media, you know, I go back and forth with John occasionally. So I pay attention to what he's got going on in his life, not just inside the ring, but outside of the ring.

I'm happy for the success that he's had in the future film world. I see a lot of commercial work. I'm just proud to say that he's a friend and I know him and watch him grow. But over the years, he really opens up on social media as well. I mean, he's not your typical celebrity. Let's put it that way. He's very, very transparent. I totally agree.

Hey, I want to get your take on something else because I'll admit, I had not considered it this way. Ethan Page, who has some gold down there in NXT, has recently talked about the term main roster. He really wants to abolish that term. Here's what he says, Eric. I want to abolish the phrase main roster. I think it's demeaning. It spits in the face of what I personally have

and continue to accomplish an Nxte. I believe that when one of these other promotions, Rawler Smackdown, goes out of their way because they need me to come steal me from Sean Michaels, that that will be a lateral move for me career-wise because I'm already a main attraction. I don't think there is a level up. Right now, Sean Michaels has the best wrestler in the WWE on his roster. I just play for a specific team.

I'm not in the B league. I play for a different team in the NFL, MLB, NHL. I went a lot for my team. I will end up being traded, I'm sure, but for me, it will be a lateral move. I think that's kind of cool. You know, I mean, listen, let's be honest. NXT is competing more than competing with every other promotion in the world, whether it's T&A or it's AEW or GCW or GCP, or New Japan, or you name it.

So if we really are trying to do a brand split where Raw is one thing and Smackdown is another, this is what he's supposed to say. And maybe you could make the assessment that Raw and SmackDown, or like the Yankees or the Red Sox, but I kind of dig what he's saying. Maybe we should stop referring to it as developmental. It's on TV, so how developmental is it really, right?

Very interesting. Yeah. I have to agree. I have to agree with him and you. I think, first of all, I think from a roster member's perspective, someone who is relatively new to the industry

and has obviously a, a potentially great career ahead of them, you know, you want to have a healthy attitude that allows you to keep pressure on yourself and not be satisfied. But at the same time, you know, maintain a sense of reality. But I think for this thing man to look at what he's accomplished and where he's accomplished it and just acknowledging the evolution, the growth, frankly, of NXT, which when it started out, it really was predominantly the idea. was a training facility with enhanced opportunities to get in front of cameras and things like that.

Well, it grew and grew and grew and grew and now has its own show on a major network. So I do see that point. It is really a lateral move. But at the same time, you're always going to have that raw Smackdown. And really raw, just because of legacy, even to this day, Smackdown is, you know, may get a bigger number, raw may get a bigger. I don't even care about the numbers anymore.

just my relationship, the way I feel about the brands, which the way I feel has nothing to do with logic, by the way, which is the problem most people have in this country, feelings have nothing to do with what actually makes sense sometimes. But I feel like Raw is still the king. Like, you know, not that there's anything wrong with SmackDown. Money's the same. That's the important part. But there's just a feeling about Raw. But I do. I tend to agree. I think. it's a great way to look at it and I think it reflects reality. So make sure where we're at. When dinner time hits and your fridge is full of question marks,

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I'm not trying to pick on Brett Hart, and I know that he has some super fans who maybe hate this until you discuss your time with him occasionally, but Brett's in the news in a major way this week. He recently made an appearance on the Johnny I. Pro show, and I guess he spoke his mind about a lot of different topics and different subjects, and I wanted to get your reaction to some of these. He said that he had a hard time watching today's pro wrestling because it's just too fake for him. I'll be honest, I have a hard time watching today's wrestling. I just can't really watch it. It's too fake for me, but I love watching the old 90s wrestling. Like when I watch my matches back or

almost in any match, even obscure stampede wrestling matches, there's something about the realism, the punches, the kicks, and even just the way the presentation is, it just seems to me to be more honest put on the workmanship of learning the craft of being wrestlers. So Brett's not a fan of modern wrestling.

I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. He's kind of old school. Is that part of the business, though, that it always has to evolve? I mean, it feels like Brett himself, would have had a lot of respect for a guy like dynamite kid. And I got to think that older folks in that generation, the legends of that generation would say,

always going too fast and needs to slow down. And doesn't always have to evolve. That, that perspective that we just heard from Brett is, I've heard it for the 35 years that I've been professionally associated with the business. when I first broke in 87, I would listen to Ray the Crippler-Stevens, Wahu McDaniel. Greg was in on those conversations, but he really wasn't their peer in terms of, you know, when those guys broke into the business. But Ray Stevens, Woham-McDaniel, occasionally Vern would sit on those meetings.

Nick Bockwinkle would sit in on those, and these were after work, right, is there sitting around having a beer after the day's done. And that's all I heard when I first broke into business. These young guys, and of course, they report, in fact, and specifically talking about Sean Michaels or Marty Genetti, the Midnight Rockers who were on AWA attraction at that time. I booked them in Mason City, Iowa, the first event I ever promoted. I promoted the Midnight Rockers, a little tidbit, if you will. I'm in a dusty frame of mind. I guess it's Thanksgiving. But I heard those conversations talking about John Michaels and Marty Janetti. And then when I got to WCW, I'd live. listen to the older guys there. Oh, geez, Oli Anderson was the worst because he was almost

violent about it. He'd get himself so worked up talking about it. He'd end up punching walls and kicking desks. He took it a little too far sometimes. But it was the same time. Oh, today's wrestlers, if they would just go back and look at some of the old tapes from some of the old guys. And I'm not saying what Brett's perspective is wrong necessarily. It's subjective. the industry has changed, the music industry has changed, the film industry has changed, the television industry has changed. Every form of media that we consume as entertainment or even information has changed. And some people just hold on a little more than others.

And I get it. You know, a large part of me agrees with Brett. I just don't have any problem going, yeah, well, that was a minor, but now things are different, and finding ways to enjoy what's current. Because otherwise, you're just hanging on to the past. You're hanging on to a memory, quite frankly, it isn't probably as accurate as you'd like to think it is. If you go back and you look at wrestling across the boards, not just Brett Hart's mask, which Brent Hart only wants to talk about Brett Hart, unless he's criticizing somebody else.

but even during Brett's era, although Brett was, and I'll never be shy to say that I think technically speaking, performance-wise, inside of the ring, technically, physically, I think Brett Hart's one of the best in, I don't know, two generations. You can compare them to other people and argue with me if you want, but in my book, technically Brett Hart is one of the best that stepped into the ring during my professional lifetime. That being said, he never really had the charisma or the ability to end up in that Rick Flair, John Cena, Undertaker, Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin kind of category. He was like one notch below, right? And I think that bothers Brett, which is why Brett comes out, talks about this stuff all the time. He's trying to put himself on this pedestal that he never really achieved in terms of being considered one of the greats. although everybody has respect for him.

He just can't seem to go, yeah, in my day, things were different. But, man, look at some of the stuff these guys are doing. Because there's really stuff going on inside of the rain. The ladies, the stuff that they're doing. And, I mean, if you can't find something entertaining in today's product because you're hanging on to what you think in your mind, the old style of wrestling used to be that, you know, sit around, slump in your chair, look like you just change something.

be Zoya Leifflub and complain about everybody else because evidently that brings joy to Brett. You know, we're talking about the best of all time and we're talking about realism and things like that, which I thought was interesting because in the same interview, Brett points out that he believes Ray Mysterio might actually be the greatest wrestler of all time. He says, when I met Ray Mysterio, I will say this, Ray Mysterio is one of the greatest wrestlers, maybe the greatest wrestler of all time. Nobody can lace Ray Mysterio shoes up. He was such a great wrestler, a great athlete. He was just so good and such a smart wrestler and so amazing. Maybe when I was in my late 20s, I would have loved to have wrestled Ray Mysterio.

By the time I was in WCW, it might have been hard for me to do the kind of match. I would have loved to have had with Ray Mysterio. I think that's interesting because on the one hand, it feels like he's complaining about the modern style of wrestling, but it feels like a lot of the modern style of wrestling was influenced by Ray Mysterio. But I mean, listen, I can make the argument that Ray is one of the greatest of all time. What say you? I've said it before on this show and on others. I think Ray Mysterio is as close to being a cultural icon as you can be. I give this example. I mean, I think Ray Mysterio, not just Ray, I want to be clear about this, but Ray is the face of the luchador's and

what the luchador influences had on American professional wrestling. And, and, and, and what the luchador influences had on American professional wrestling and American culture. It's not just wrestling. You know, when I refer to to raise, you know, in a sort of cultural icon, I'm sure people that are outside of wrestling right now would roll their eyes. What are you talking about? Well, if you look at the influence on film and television of Lucha Libre, it's seeped into our culture and not just because of rape, but without question, that whole, the Lucha

influence in the United States owes a debt of gratitude to Ray Mysterio because he was such a phenomenal performer that it was easy to shine a spotlight on that style of wrestling. Ray Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, DeMilinko, Chris Binwa, you know, a lot of the lusadors that we brought in from Mexico, a lot of the Japanese that we brought over on a regular basis, a consistent basis to compete in that Crucial Weight Division, I think shaped this industry, led by Ray Mysterio in many ways, shaped this industry and will have shaped it for decades to come. The Lucha influence, if you really look at how not just in the Lucha style matches or in the smaller, you know, I'll always call them cruiser ways, but I'm talking about the smaller, faster guys and gals.

That style will always be there and it will continue to evolve, but it would not ever have gotten started but if it weren't for guys like Ray Mysterio and Eddie and Dean, Chris, and bringing it to the forefront and making it cool. I promise we're going to get to Ravens Flog, but we have one more piece of business that I've got to address with this Brett Hart interview. I don't know if you've seen this. I know you've been traveling,

but boy, he got everybody stirred up. Who's he talking about now? What a miserable man. Brett has said that Vince McMahon and Sean Michael, were lovers. Sean was so envious and jealous of my position that he finally had to sleep with Vince to get it. I would say it to Sean if he was here right now.

I'd like to have Sean come clean and say we were lovers. This is getting to be clinical. I mean, don't you hope that's a joke? Don't you hope he's just trying to be funny? First of all, I don't think Brett Hart is. has the ability to be funny.

Maybe he is at times, but I've never seen it. Humor's not something that pops into my head when I think of Brett Hart. No, I don't think he's being funny. I think he's being bitter. And the reason I feel that way is because of everything that we've heard out of Brett Hart for the last couple of years. When I talk about a guy who's just hanging on, I just talked about it. He's hanging on to this perception of him as the greatest there ever was.

And not only a Canadian hero, which is whatever, but like a cultural hero of some sort. Dude, you were never that popular as a professional wrestler. You were over. You sold a lot of stuff. You made a lot of money. But if you go back and you look at the revenue that WWE was reporting during the years, you were champion, Brett, wasn't a pretty big. Make sure.

Now, you can blame it on other people and you can blame it on things that were outside of anybody's control, the economy or the steroid trial or whatever. You can blame it on all that stuff. Facts or facts, numbers and numbers. You just never got there. But you've got so close. Why can't you just enjoy that as opposed to constantly week after week after week? Just burying people and making sure that you compare yourself and your virtues in your career to someone that you're shitting on. I don't know, man.

It's just so bitter. I'm not joking. I think it's like clinical. If I was somewhere close to Brett, I'd, someone close to Brett, I'd, I'd suggest maybe go see a therapist or talk to somebody and just leave that baggage behind.

Although your life will be way better if you do. Booker T, obviously, has a podcast on a radio show. And I think he felt the need to address some of, uh, Brett Hart's statements that had the IWC buzzing. And he said,

something like, I just refused to give these podcasters shoot interviews about what went on with me and my peers and stories that happened inside that locker room. You're not going to hear too many of those stories from me. People have tried and tried and tried to get me talk about Batista and tried to get me to say anything negative about Batista. And I'm like, man, I'm not going to say anything negative about Batista. This is a guy that him and I had a deal, a disagreement, and disagreements with people happen all the time. You settle your differences like a man and you move on. I thought that was a hell of a statement.

I don't know how you can't love Booker Tee, right? And respect. Yeah. And that's, I mean, it's hard to love somebody if you don't respect them first. And I have a ton of respect for Booker T. And what a contrast.

You've got bitter bread over here who tours the world, kissing on everybody he can. So he's got something to talk about, other than how great he was, which he eventually will get to anyway. And then you've got Booker T's, I mean, 180 degrees, you know, because he's had a great career. He's, he probably wishes at certain points, things he would have had different opportunities. But, you know, Booker T is a perfect example of making the most out of the opportunities that you have.

I mean, look at where he is right now. I don't know what he's making. I'm guaranteeing you it's close to a fortune. And he's been doing it for a long time. When I say a fortune, it's relatives, of course, but I'm sure he's in the upper 1% of income earners in the United States easily and happy. You see Booker anywhere. You see him at a convention from across the room. There can be 300 yards away with people in between you and him, and you can not only see him laughing,

you can hear him laughing across the arena because he enjoys life as opposed to sitting slumped over in a chair. looking like a freaking whino, pissing on people that help make you and help create the opportunity for you to make the living that you're so miserable about. I don't know. It kind of shit just drives me crazy, actually. I just don't know why.

What is the why behind that? Why would you choose to wake up being that way? Talking about breath. Whereas Booker, I aspire to wake up with an attitude like bookers. It's nothing but respect to Booker. I don't know that all of our listeners will agree with your assessment on Brett Hart, but I know that everyone listening will agree that Ridge is the best wallet a man can get.

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you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Eric, what a crazy week this is in wrestling history. You know, for a long, long time, especially during the territory days, it felt like Thanksgiving and pro wrestling just went hand in hand. And perhaps there's no bigger and better example of that than the birth of the Supercard. Yes, it predates WrestleMania. We know that was March of 85. but on November 24th, 1983, it was Starcate 83, a flair for the gold, the granddaddy of them all, as Rick Flair is victorious over Harley Race in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Jim Crockett Promotions has essentially invented, of course, with Dusty Roads at the helm of the creative, the blueprint for the big, modern show model. This is before WrestleMania existed. This is before pay-per-view was commonplace. they had closed circuit all over the country. I mean, traffic was shut down. This was a sellout. And, man, fans were excited.

Even the photo that Silva just had up there, two of the WWE originals that most people associate, Greg the Hammer Valentine and Roddy Piper. Oh, by the way, Hebner was here too. They're all a part of the very first Starcade. And I think so many fans, they still consider Starcade like the granddaddy of them all. and it's this particular show, Starcade 83.

I know you weren't necessarily watching wrestling during that time period, but fans in the South, certainly NWA fans, Jim Crockett promotions fans, StarKate 83 was like the gold standard, wasn't it? It was, sure, looking back, you know, for sure from this point backwards. And, you know, in 83, I was in Minnesota, and I didn't even know NWA existed. Now, I'm sure they were hardcore, you know, guys like Wade Keller, you know, who who was paying a lot closer attention to wrestling than I was. I was just your average consumer that lived in Minnesota and like watching wrestling on the weekends. I wasn't a hardcore fan by any stretch.

So at least from in my world, none of that stuff even existed, which is really fascinating. It was interesting, too, when I first got to WCW because I didn't have any exposure to, all of the things that so many people were involved in the NWA and Krocco promotion at the time were a part of. So I didn't have an appreciation because I didn't know what existed, right? And I learned over time and certainly now looking back at it objectively because I wasn't involved. I have no dog in the hunt, right? But looking back at it, the reason I think people still look back at Starcade 83 because it was much like Nitro in a similar fashion, it changed the format. It was such a successful idea slash format, the outline of the show, if you will, the blueprint of the show.

That's what I refer to as a format. And the unique elements within that format. It was different, and it worked and it clicked. And this is why people are still doing it today and variations of it. That was a big creative moment that probably doesn't give the credit it should get because it was a departure from the norm. And it worked effectively. I also want to ask you about StarK885. What an interesting story this one was.

Magnum T.A. and T.L.L. Blanchard had what many people considered the greatest I quit match of all time. It was an Iquit cage match. And then it's probably arguably the most perfect NWA match in history. It was violent. It was emotional. It was simple. It was unforgettable.

And just the way the chair broke in the perfect fashion. And then knowing as, you know, time goes on and things change. We know less than a year later, unfortunately, Magman was going to be paralyzed in that tragic car crash. Thankfully, he survived and, and was able to live a very wonderful life on the other side of that accident, but his in-ring career came to an end.

And a few years after that, Tully Blanchard's in ring career, by and large, would come to an end. But knowing that they became a shared, blended family, it's one of the most unique stories in the history of wrestling. But I think when people think about Magnum and Tully to this day, they always think about that I quit cage match.

What was it about that story? Was it the personal issue? Was it the blood? Was it the cage? Was it the I quit concept? Was it the performers? When you have magic like that that really resonates and connects with fans, what qualities make it that way for fans, Eric?

Perfect example. of what I refer to as the Sarsa formula. A great story, because the story was great, and the performers were unbelievable in their roles because they believed them, there was anticipation, there was the reality, in this case, the danger of the cage, which at that point in time,

that was before you'd see cage matches on a frequent basis, with no real meaning behind it, other than, hey, guess what? We're going to do a cage this month because we haven't done one in a while. The creative logic that goes into a lot of the cage matches I've seen over the last 10 or 15 years. But back then, it was still essential. It was dangerous. So you've got a great story with great performers.

You've got anticipation. You've got reality, the reality of the danger that the cage canon did, you know, create. Surprise. I don't know if it had any surprises in it. have to go back and look at the story and see if there's anything that could qualify as something that happened along the way that was basically a plot pivot, if you will, or a plot turn. And then it was the action, which was incredible. So it had at least four of the five elements, which is usually a big hit, by the way.

Five out of five, you're printing money for a long time. Four or five, you've got a hit on your hands. Three out of five, it ain't good for a week or two. Anything less than three out of those five boxes you get checked. and you're destined to be sorry you did it. So this one I think this is a perfect example of a great, maybe close to perfect storyline with performers that were so believable. That's the thing that, you know,

this is where I'll agree to a certain extent with Brett, going back to some of his comments about the current product. There was a believability, an attempt at believability in earlier wrestling. I'm talking about, obviously, 70s, 80s, even into the 90s still, there was a real effort to make people believe. And I think that's not been abandoned across the board, but it's a much less significant part of the art form, to Brett's point. That I do agree with. And because you have examples of when it was done so amazingly well with Tully and with Magnum, we can go back and see that. We can go back and feel that.

People like me that weren't exposed to it can go back and see it for the very first time if you're really interested. And you can see and feel and sensitive emotion in a connection to the audience that you really don't get. You get it. But it's very, very infrequent in today's product. Today's product is more about the visual dynamics, the excitement, the risk, the speed. Because again, culture has changed. The way we consume stuff has changed. And what used to hit that dopamine button and get us a bit of a dopamine buzz because of what we're watching,

that may not exist, but there are other things that are designed to do that when you're watching entertainment. So it's just, I think, represents a change in the modern product of today versus the product that Brett was referring to back in the 80s and into the 90s. You know, when we think about Thanksgiving traditions and pro wrestling, I know it was a territory thing, but that all really changed in 1987 when Jim Crockett promotions decided they wanted to throw their hat in the ring for pay-per-view. Vince McMahon felt like, nope, I own that with a success of WrestleMania 3. and I'm going to truly compete and go head to head, make the cable systems choose. And, well, that was the end of Starcade on Thanksgiving. The very next year, 1988, Starcade became a December show. And it stayed that way through your duration of WCW.

Do you think that a Thanksgiving night wrestling show could work in 2025? Like, I know Survivor Series is close. It's this weekend. It's a few days after Thanksgiving. but in 2025 with society being what it is today could pro wrestling survive a Thanksgiving night show and is it worth a try I would I would I would and there's a couple reasons why I would one of the reasons why is because based on everything that I'm learning on the job about viewing habits across the

the board. How do people consume? Where do they get their entertainment? Not just their news and their social media bullshit, but where are they consuming actual sponsored and supported entertainment? And how are they watching it? What are the psychological changes in the viewing audience today versus the way, the psychological perspective from which people were entertained 10 years ago, 20 years ago because guess what? It's different now. And you either learn what those differences are and adapt and prosper or you hang on to a formula that used to work but doesn't any longer. So I've had to because of my role now at Real American Freestyle because there's a lot of new media. Now, it didn't exist when I was doing whatever I was doing even as recently as 2015 in my own

production company. There are platforms and opportunities that exist today that no had even conceived of 10 years ago, right? So I've kind of immersed myself into that. One of the takeaways, the reason for all that bullshit, was that people, because of all of the new ways that people get entertainment, I'll keep it short, we have become so isolated as consumers. We each get to watch what we want to watch individually without making it everybody else in the room, watch it too. There's so much available now that you have to, you have to learn how to access it.

One of the takeaway, the takeaway is because we become so isolated, the people are investing large sums of money in very unique live experiences. Because people generally agree that live in this world, that because of social media and because of the isolation that we voluntarily put ourselves in and adapted to, the live experience is going to be more valuable to people than it's ever been, which is why I think a Thanksgiving show in particular would work. I wouldn't do it at Christmas, but I would do it on Thanksgiving. Number one, I'd lean into the tradition.

Let's go back to the future, what's old is new again, whatever metaphor you want to come up with, but lean into it and talk about how it used to be the time. When after stuffing yourself with turkey all day, you've been around your relatives for two freaking days. Usually two hours is enough, right? So you're cooped up in the house, your stuff, you're tired of eating turkey, and guess what?

We can go drink beer and scream at guys that are beating hell out of each other and have fun. Let's go do that. I think if you made that Thanksgiving night, wrestling night, a part of the family experience, I'm not saying family friendly. I'm not saying that.

but just something everybody can get in the truck and go, yeah, let's go do that. That sounds like fun. Instead of sitting around watching the same stuff we've been watching for three days. This is me, I'd take a chance. I think it's sellable. I think it would catch on. And if everything that I'm reading is right, that real experience is going to be much more attractive to people in the coming years.

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today. And Eric, I'm so thankful that we are one day removed from Thanksgiving and we get to plug our buddy Raven's new documentary. It's available now on Amazon. You can rent it or you can purchase it. It's called Nevermore the Raven effect. I've had a

chance to check it out. I know you guys will dig it. We've already covered Ravens WCW run more broadly in the archives. But this week we thought we'd take a look at, I guess we'd call it the Flunkies, Ravens flock. And this, of course, is the successor to Raven's Nest, which was an idea in ECW. I know we've talked about this briefly, but let's just level set. Did you see any of Raven in ECW, or was that something that just Kevin Sullivan

monitored on your behalf? I hadn't watched 30 seconds of it. So I was totally unfamiliar with Raven in ECW. or his flock or his nest or whatever it was. Yeah, Ravens flock is what we're going to call it here in WCW. And Raven shows up and then Stevie Richard shows up and he's just sort of zigzagging back and forth. His Ravens Flunky and then his enemy and then back again. But he settles in as I guess what we would call the first member of Ravens flock.

And then he quickly leaves the promotion. Do you remember what exactly happened with the end of Stevie Richards career in WCW? I know that, you know, he's obviously enjoyed a lot of success post wrestling. I was a big Stevie Richards fan in ECW, so I was excited to see him here in WCW, but it doesn't seem like it lasted as long as I, as long as I would have liked. I don't, I don't recall what it was, what the issue was. And I'm trying to recall, you know, generally what my perspective was of Stevie at that time. I guess I didn't buy into the character that he brought with him, obviously, or

the version that he brought. And I've said this before. It was worth saying again, I didn't like the whole Raven flock, whatever we ended up calling it, that whole grunge kind of vibe that Raven was such a strong proponent of. Personally, my individual taste

didn't connect with that. But I also didn't care about that because I wasn't booking for me. I wasn't producing a television show that I would be entertained by. I was producing a television show that I was hoping the largest segment of the audience or largest audience would enjoy. But I was also smart enough to realize there were a lot of things in terms of characters and stories that while they don't appeal or didn't appeal to me, did appeal to a large part of the audience, I was hoping to capture. So whether I liked something or not was mostly irrelevant. it was whether others could convince me that there was an audience for this particular character or characters in this case

and that it may work and nothing's for sure. So I certainly supported it. But I want to be clear when I say I didn't really click with Stevie Richards gimmick. That's on a personal level. On a professional level, I brought him in. I paid him. So I fully supported it. hoping it would work, I just didn't think it did or would.

It was too small. The audience that, and here's my take, and this is what Raven and I, I'm sure we talked about it in the archives, but my take on it was that while that whole, and again, the grunge thing, you know, that's 90s, early 90s, right? And it was a strong kind of cultural phenomenon for a while. It was, you know, fashion, music, bands, television, all that grunge had a really significant get impact on the culture. And it still resonated with the culture into the 90s, late 90s.

So I was completely aware, but I just didn't dig it. But we gave it a shot. As for Stevie, I just don't recall if there was any specific reason why we ended up parted company. There must have been. And I sense when I see Stevie even to this day, there's a little bit of, you know, there's respect and very friendly and all that. But there's still a, you get this vibe every once in a while.

when you meet certain people. It's like they're very friendly. They shake your hand. They smile. And they're generally, honestly, happy to see you and communicate, catch up and all that. But there's still this underlying, man, I wish you would have given me the shot. I think I deserve. You know, there's always that.

Not always, but occasionally there's that undertone, even with people who you meet and enjoy talking to. And I think Stevie is one of those people. At least that's how I feel when I'm around him. I can't help but think that Stevie was. was frustrated with the positioning he had in WCW based on his association with Raven. You know, of course, that was how he was brought into ECW, and now we're just going to sort of carbon copy that for WCW. And he had separated himself a little bit from Raven and ECW, but the idea in WCW is

put them back together. And I get the vibe from watching the documentary that Stevie was not too happy with the way he was being treated by Raven in real life. and I'm sure he had different aspirations for his career than being positioned as quote unquote just Ravens flunky. But it does feel like, man, with the right creative, I could have seen him being a really popular baby face in WCW. But I guess he had some sort of a legit falling out with Raven because I don't know if you've had a chance to check out the documentary, but he's the one guy that Raven really wanted to participate in the documentary. and Stevie never responded. I hate to hear that.

I guess there is some legitimate hurt feelings that go back a long way. And Raven talks about being at different times in active addiction and not the nicest guy to deal with. So I could feel that there may have been a time where Stevie Richard says, I've had all I can stance and I can't stance no more. And that was the end of their real life relationship. and maybe WCW thought, hey, if we see you as Ravens Flunky and you're not willing to be Ravens Flunky, maybe we mutually part ways. That's the only thing I can come up with here. Yeah, unfortunately, only the late Kevin Sullivan could probably give us real insight from a WCW perspective.

I'm sure Raven has his could very well be true. And unfortunately, I mean, Stevie got, even though, you know, we're not tight, we're friendly, like I said. man, I encourage you, C.V. If for no other reason than your own contentment, just go, go shake hands with a guy and have a Coke or a Pepsi or a steak or whatever. Just go play the air. You'll feel better when you're done. You may never see him again. You may choose nowhere to hang out with him again.

But, man, let that shit go. It is just not worth carrying around. I mean, I can tell you from personal experience. you feel so much better when you just look somebody in the eye, tell them how you feel, forgive him. And if you see each other again, great. If not, that's okay too, but you'll feel better. So I would do that,

Zeevi. Not that you necessarily should or would want to take advice from me, but hopefully it seeps in or somebody else will tell you. Eric, I consider you one of my very best friends. So forgive me in advance for asking this, but would you be willing to do the same with Vince Rousseau? Or is there a point in any relationship where you get where you're like, okay, that's a bridge too far. I got to have a boundary there.

Um, so here's the, here's the math. Am I holding on to anything? Not really. So by me meeting with Rousseau, am I going to make myself feel better in any way? Am I going to be more content or at peace than I already am? No, because I'm not hanging on to anything to begin with. So on a purely selfish perspective, probably not. If I saw him, you know, if we happen to bump into each other, would I be friendly?

Would I say, hey, Vince, how are you? I hope things are well? Sure. But would I sit down and actually spend my time to make him feel better? No. No. So it's just a math thing. but I don't know, should I now?

If you take a step further, should I as a Christian, should I as somebody who tries to be a better person all around? Maybe I should look at it from that perspective and I possibly will. But because that's an aspect too, right? That's a part of feeling good about yourself as well is, for me, at least spiritually. And maybe spiritually it's something I should do. I'll give that some thought. I wish you wouldn't have brought it up.

I've got to think about it. Well, thank you for not killing the messenger, but I'll tell you what, I love that you said, let's run the math on that, because that makes a lot of sense to me. It'll also make a lot of sense to run the math. When you go to I hate StevenSinger.com, you're going to realize why every other jeweler in America hates Steven Singer.

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He recently did an interview with Fightful. I guess it was a couple of years back. The Raven said something like, I like having a stable. I had the Ravens Nest in ECW before then. I like having a staple for a couple of reasons. One, it gives more room for creativity with finishes and stuff because I have more people to operate with. I like it because I can work smarter, not harder, and take less bumps. and maybe people can come to finally to get me,

makes it mean something more when they finally get a hold of me. They have to go through a gauntlet of freaks and geeks. So I like it for those reasons. Also, I like directing traffic. Like when we do a run-in and DDPs diamond-cutting all of them, I love setting up the run-ins, playing the mastermind behind. He goes in and he feeds this way. Obviously, Paige put his own spin on it too,

but the flock had their opinions too. But I like being in the role as like the flight director. Who's flying this way? Who's flying that way? I got to tell you, I enjoyed the presentation, and I kind of agree with what he's saying. I think if you're thinking about an action movie,

a lot of times your hero like a Rambo or a Jean-Claude Van Damme or whatever, there's going to be a bunch of bad guys coming from different directions, and you set your hero up to look like a superstar if one guy can take down a bunch. And I think even though it doesn't get talked about this way, yes, Randy Savage helped make and establish Diamond Dallas page. But DDP running through the flock in his battles with Raven, that added something to it proved that, wow, this car really is a badass. He's just laying waste to everybody. I think stuff like that really helped get over the diamond cutter more than almost anything else, don't you think? That's a fair perspective.

I can disagree with that. because it is kind of a cumulative thing. When you talk about what actually got somebody over, it's a series of big moments and a lot of work and a lot of other people that's involved in eventually getting someone, quote, over, over meaning, you know,

headlining paper views and things like that. And, you know, based on what you told me earlier about the issues between Stevie and Raven and now listening to your quotes from Raven's interview, It's all about Raven. Yeah. Clear and good on Raven for being honest about it.

He's not trying to hide it. It was a very selfish, not in a negative way, but it was a very self-centered or focused perspective. And who doesn't want to be in total control? Who doesn't want to have to take a lot of bumps if you're in the ring? Who doesn't want to have a bunch of other people taking bumps for you so that you can kind of sit back and eventually take yours. And the logic behind that creative on paper makes a great deal of sense

and can work very effectively when done right and executed well. But it can also be eight guys all sacrificing their positions, doing what they're doing to get you over with no regard to where they go. I'm not saying that that was the case, but that can be the perception amongst that group of people that you're working with. If their only job is to get you over, yeah, work for a while. But guys get tired of that, creatively get tired of it. And then, you know, you start having other issues as a result of that,

which maybe that's the thing with Stevie and Raven based on what we heard earlier. So I don't know, but look, I get Raven, yeah, I understood his creative, his philosophy, his psychology behind his creativity, and would agree with that. I think execution has a lot to do with it. But to your point, yes. Savage absolutely planted the flag for

for DDP, but DDP took that flag and ran with it and got over in part because of scenes like you just described. Eric, I always kind of viewed Raven to be like a cult leader type character,

a Jim Jones, a David Koresh. And I know that, you know, Bray Wyatt certainly tried his hand at that after this. And I think before this, Waylon Mercy tried that sort of thing in the WWE or F at the time. Do you think the cult leader

place should exist in wrestling? Like, I kind of dig that. Especially for a faction. I think that really works. And I think that's what Raven was going for. Do you think that has a place in wrestling? Is it something that should be used more often? I don't know.

Well, I mean, what's the difference? And I mean, it's sincerely, I'm trying to, figure this out of my own head as you're asking the question what's the difference between a cult and a faction well i think the idea with a cult is you know a faction may be guys who are on equal footing like i think of the four horsemen as a fact where hey we're all enjoying individual success you know these guys are the tag champs he's the u.s champ he's the world champ but i think in a cult leader no we're all focused on making this one guy successful he gets all of the success if something goes well it's because of him if something goes poorly it's It's because these other guys who are associated were the failures and they failed him. So I think it comes from a very selfish place from a from a leader. That I understand and I that helps. No, I don't think there's a lot of room for the whole cult thing. It's not a vibe that people can connect to.

And you do it once in a while, once every year or two for a short period of time. Maybe every, yeah, every two years, maybe every three. if you come up with something really unique with a really special character that actually feels like a cult leader. Now, Raven did. I almost made the smart-ass comment because I don't believe it to be true personally.

But some people get so close to the character that they play that sometimes there's a little, there's a little, it lays over each other. You know what I mean? Sometimes it emerges. And I think in Raven's case, just from what I saw, being around him. Do I think he was an aspiring cult leader? No, I don't. I don't think that at all.

Do I think he had a lot of characteristics of that? And sometimes because of the character that he played on TV, it kind of spilled over into real life. I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And I think it's such a narrow, the audience that will really connect and identify with that kind of a story is such a sliver of the broader audience that I think you risk wasting really valuable television time and other opportunities. Number one, and number two, you're boring or disconnecting from the largest percentage of your audience

in order to stimulate the smallest section of your audience. Boy, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? You can apply that across a lot of different things. But that's why I don't think it would work today. I just think the audience that would be attracted to that kind of storyline and stimulated by that is just a minuscule part of the overall potential audience. I think the whole, you know, this one guy takes all the credit when things go well and takes none of the blame when things go poorly.

That just feels like a bad boss almost. And I think that is related. It's true. It's just there's, there's, nothing interesting about that. It's been done to death. Mr. McMahon, Eric Bischoff in the NWO. It's been done to death. Well, something else that Raven said in this interview, I wanted all new guys. I wanted all the guys that nobody'd seen before because I didn't want a bunch of reruns. I didn't want retreads. I didn't get what I wanted. I did get one sick boy. And he really stood out because he was talented. Lodi too. Yeah, Reese, I

wasn't so jazzed about because he'd just done the Yeti thing. I liked him because he was a giant. Wasn't asking for Hammer, but DDP asked me to take him. And Hammer's got a great look to him, but I didn't want guys who were being retreaded. I mean, he turned out fine. He worked out great, but I wanted guys like sick boy, Lodi. Saturn I wanted because Saturn was my boy. He did work out for the most part.

Riggs I loved hanging out with. He was my boy. Riggs can work. but I didn't want guys like him because I said, hey, I don't want reruns or retreads, but at least we got to do a way where we initiated him into the flock. And he wasn't just all of a sudden one day he's here as a new guy. You know what I mean? I always thought if they wanted to retread a guy like that, take him off TV for a year,

pay him to sit home and bring him back completely different. We had Horace Hogan in the flock. Funny story, Jimmy comes up to me and says, hey, Hogan wanted to know if you put his nephew in the flock. I was like, sure, anything for Hogan? Like, what are you going to say? No one's going to say no. And then the rib is, me, Jericho, and Conan used to hang out and we would call ourselves

the triumph rant of useless information because we were all trivia marks. The funny thing is, the running gag became, hey, did you know Horace Hogan was Hulk Hogan's nephew? I'm like, I had no idea. So I love the origin story of how all these different members come together. That's kind of interesting. I appreciate Raven being so transparent about that with Fightful a couple years ago. But what do you think about his idea that,

hey, I needed them to be new characters. We do see a lot of repackaged performers who tried a presentation and for whatever reason it didn't work out. So they try something else. Kane comes to mind. You know, he was the evil dentist and then he was fake diesel and then he was Kane and man, he wrote that for decades. Is that, but it does feel like that.

That's more the exception to the rule. Yeah. That's very rare. Yeah. You know, again, I agree with Raven. What he said was insightful. Not insightful. Yeah, insightful.

In the sense that, let's take Van Hammer as an example. Now, bringing Van Hammer into the flock, let's do the math. Is there any value there in Van Hammer? Hammer. Well, people recognize him. He's got a great look. He can go out there and get through a match. Most of the time, he's a big guy so he can be the muscle. He can be your heavy. He doesn't have to get in there and spend 20 minutes bouncing around the ring and exposing himself. So you can use him in that heavy role if you need muscle, especially if you're a character like Ravens was, right? And a lot of the flat, they needed somebody that was physically imposing. Okay, those are

Those are the assets. What's the liability? Well, the liability is in some respects similar to the asset in the sense that people have seen a lot of him. He's been pushed pretty hard. People have an impression of him already. It's embedded into their mind because he had been on TV for quite a while at that point. And Dusty really liked him push the hell out of him when he first made the scene. So everybody knew who he was.

So that asset also can be a liability. In fact, in this case, it was more of a liability than it was an asset. So the math would say Raven is right. Because that bringing someone in, I hate the term retread, but bringing somebody in and going from point A to point C without a point B, without any evolution of that character, without any backstory, just go from A to C. You're bringing a lot of that baggage that you've accumulated in two or three years

we've been trying to get you over and haven't been able to. Now you're bringing that more or less negative impression to Raven's new idea. I absolutely understand why he wanted fresh faces that nobody ever seen before because they didn't bring any baggage. It's a clean slate. You're starting from point zero as opposed to, in the case of Van Hammer and some of the others, starting actually in the hole and you have to work your way up to zero. And then hopefully it will grow beyond that.

Whereas you bring in fresh names like Lodi for you. example, nobody really knew who he was. In terms of the WCW audience, nobody knew who he was. If they did, there was a small, small handful of them, literally in a room. But that provides a great opportunity because it's a clean slate. Well, it seems like it could be really hard to figure out how to make all of these pieces fit together, especially if you do have an established television character.

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And a big thanks to Blu Chu for sponsoring today's podcast. So, Eric, we should also talk about the Horace Hogan bit. You know, I don't know that we've spent much time talking about Horace Hogan. What was his relationship like with the Holkstra? Did you get to spend much time with him? I know that, you know, he had been with FMW. That was sort of his home promotion. And now all of a sudden he's in WCD.

I'll be honest, I didn't, I didn't even know of Horace Hogan. I didn't even know Hulk had a nephew until, you know, Hulk introduced him to me in WCW. So it was all news to me. He never came up in conversations and I was never around, you know, socially whenever I was hanging out with Hulk down Florida, never had met him. So, yeah, it was kind of news to me. To a degree, you know, Ravu was right.

It's like Hulk has a nephew. He wants to give him a shot in WCW, and he's got some experience. He wrestled in FMW, whatever the story was. More than anything, it was, okay, well, we're going to give him a shot because I got to keep my star happy. That's how the entertainment business works, folks. Sometimes you make decisions based on that.

And sometimes they really work out well, and sometimes they don't. But the case here was that this really was a, say, Hulk, hey, give my nephew a shot decision. I wasn't even really aware that he had a nephew. But once I met him and he got filled in on his backstory and, you know, why not give him a shot? We, uh, we got to have the follow up question though. Does it sound plausible to you that Jimmy Hart was asked by the Hulkster to go ask

Raven, hey, can you put him in the flock? Because that does sound plausible, doesn't it? I would bet on it. Yeah. Yeah. There was a story. It didn't come for me. And it, it, it, it, I would have been surprised that you may first wouldn't have gone to Kevin,

because that was really Kevin and Ravens deal. I wasn't involved creatively in that one at all for obvious reasons, because I knew I just wasn't in it. But Kevin was. And that really would have been a Kevin decision. So there, there may have been some other communication along those lines. I don't think Jimmy would have gone right. to Raven, I think Jimmy would have had enough respect and smart enough to Luke have it in on that as well.

I do want to ask you about a story that was floated around during the early days of Raven's run in WCW. Allegedly, as the story goes, Raven called Tommy Dreamer and told Tommy he could get him 200 grand a year, but Raven allegedly has denied this and said it was a false rumor spread by Paul Heyman and Kevin Sullivan. Do you remember at any point there being a discussion, perhaps, about Tommy Dreamer being a part of WCW? I can say 100% unequivocably never happened.

Could somebody have had a conversation with Kevin Sullivan? Maybe. I don't know. Kevin didn't tell me every conversation he ever had during the course of a day. But me personally, first of all, the two. 200 number doesn't ring true to me for somebody that I didn't know. And I didn't know who Tommy Dreamer was in ECW, nor did it have any value to me at the time. $200,000 had value to me at the time.

And I wouldn't have offered that kind of, first of all, Raven wouldn't have been in a position to offer anything. Raven would have had to talk to me. I would have had to say, hmm, if you can get him for 200 grand, get them. Otherwise, Raven's throwing numbers out there that he can't back up. And he's denied doing that. So it does sound like it was a rumor that was spread because it certainly didn't happen with me. I didn't approve 200 grand for anybody.

I didn't approve it to Raven. I didn't approve it to Tommy Dreamer. I didn't approve it to Kevin Sullivan for Tommy Dreamer. So how that rumor got out there, I don't know, but it definitely rumor because it didn't happen. If you're curious, $200,000 in 1997 is like $400,000. in 2020. And look, I wrote big checks. I paid people well.

But it's got to be somebody I know or somebody that's got some equity and some value as we, you know, it's got to be something, they got to bring some math with them. Right. If you're not bringing me any math that works for me, then yeah, we'll search out at a, you know, 75 at a power plant, maybe if you've got a lot of potential or buck 25 if I'm talking about 97, 98 money. or maybe a buck 25 if I can use you on TV occasionally because we think you're going to get better. Oh, you're actually on television and we can book you in a reasonably interesting

storyline. Now you're in the buck 75 to 25 range. First of all, I never offered anybody 200 grand. There's always 175 or 225. There's a reason for that. But there's a lot easier to keep them in a 175. But I never offered anybody 200 grand. That's the other screwy part of that. Wait, what's the reasoning on 175, 225 run me through that? It's a long kind of ration. This is my own kind of way of thinking. It's not like I didn't read it in a book or anything. It's just what's worked for me in the past is now I'm talking about when you're bringing people up, right?

When you're bringing somebody in at 75, a trainee, for example. I've done this really well and I've done it really badly. In fact, I've learned and feel so confident in what I'm about to say, even though it may not work for other people, or for me. The reason I feel so strongly is because I learned a very, very, very hard and extremely expensive lesson with one Bill Goldberg because he's the, he's exactly the way you don't do what I'm about to tell you to do, what I do. When you're bringing somebody up, you're bringing them in at 75, they think, oh my gosh, I just wanted a lottery ticket. I'm getting paid for to learn, to acquire the skill, to get them.

to be on television and to make a living as a professional wrestler. When you get somebody in and they're in their 20s or even into their 30s and you present them with that opportunity or they see that opportunity for themselves and they're getting paid, they're in a honeymoon phase for about a year, year and a half. Now, if they've got some potential and you're actually able to use that person on TV, you want to put them under a regular contract, you take them up to 125, again, their life has changed. I mean, that's a significant jump.

So was the jump from 125 to 150. And now we're talking about two years, three years. Once you get somebody up to that 175, now for me, I was putting them into way more meaningful storylines, storylines that would hopefully last months, as opposed to shooting a hot angle for a week or two, right? That takes talent. That takes the ability to grab a mic and to tell your,

story. You have to have the physical narrative. You have to have the, you know, you have to have have a voice. You have to become that character and outside of the ring as well. That takes talent and time, repetition. Now you get somebody up to 175. You can hold them there for a long time because that jump from 175 to 225. That is a big jump. And you know you're going to get there anyway. I know once I pay somebody a buck 75, there's a very good chance. I'm going to be talking to them about 225 in the future. I just want that future to be as long as it can be. I want to cap this person at 175 and be fair about it, but you've got to manage the process. At some point, I drew a line and said, okay, this is where I'm going to hold this particular

category of talent. Two years was my goal. And then eventually, once you get to that point, it's like, you either have something you're really excited to write that next big challenge. for or you realize that this is you've gotten about as much out of this asset as you're going to get hate to talk about wrestlers or characters as assets but that's the math part would it surprise you to hear that there's been reports this year of folks in w w e developmental who don't make seventy five thousand dollars and twenty twenty five dollars would it surprise me no would i be envious as hell yes And let me just say that's not because of greed, but where else can you go and get paid to learn how to develop a craft that could make you independently wealthy before you're 35 or 40 years old?

Where do you go? I guess I want to go. I'm too old. But I will send my grandson, you just tell me where that place is. That's what that opportunity at NXT is. And it's not like a wish or fantasy or a dream. There are people who have gone through the process who are doing it and now are in the movie industry.

Thanks to my friends over a paradigm, Nicropoclo. Where else can you go to learn that skill to get that opportunity? So that's why I'm envious, because if finally WWE has established themselves and now they have a track record of if you come to the Performance Center and if you excel, then you have this opportunity to move here. Oh, you don't believe me? Well, look at these 15 people over here. Look but how much cumulatively they earned last year.

That number would be staggering. And if you're a young talent, you're going to sign up for that. Maybe instead of spending $100,000 a year going to a laymanx university, where you're going to come out with a piece of paper that it gets you absolutely nothing but a job as a stock filler somewhere. So I think it's a great opportunity and I envy that WWE has been able to structure their business in such a way that makes that opportunity still for the best opportunities for anybody that wants to get into the entertainment business anywhere in a world that I know of. I love hearing your perspective on things. I also want to ask you about something that Raven starts doing in early October. I think it's out of TV taping in Dalton, which means it was probably WCW Saturday night.

And Raven beats an enhancement talent in a squash match, but this is where he establishes. He's demanding that all of his matches be no DQs so he can use gimmicks. And he's using a chair in this particular match. And this becomes the new way from that point forward. And it became called, it started to be called Ravens Rules. and I know that ECW was certainly gaining some momentum. They had their first pay-per-view in 97, and there was a market for that hardcore-style weapons

and associated nonsense and silliness. My fans like myself, I kind of like that. I thought it broke up the monotony. It was something different than some of the other matches. What did you think of Ravens' rules, where it wasn't necessarily that, hey, the match or the story has dictated that we're going to have that type of match. But this particular character, he's going to have that type of match every time.

That too sort of leans into the cult character. I kind of dig that. What did you think? It didn't work for me. It didn't then and it doesn't now even hearing it back. It's like I'd slam the, you know, I'm much more open-minded now to listening to ideas that don't necessarily fit into my box perfectly. Way more comfortable.

When I say comfortable, meaning it's easier for me to see things working that are different than what I would formulate if I was thinking of ideas. But there's such a disconnect there. And this is treacherous because whenever you try to apply any logic to this thing we call professional wrestling, which is purely scripted entertainment, and it's to the extreme in so many regards, right? It's almost a parody of life in a way. But the minute you start applying logic too many of it, you go into a rabbit hole that's hard to get out of or justify. But I believe for a story or a character to work, there has to be a minimum amount of believability to the scenario, to the story, to the character. It has to be believable enough that you give

yourself permission to spend more time with the rest of the story or to allow yourself to enjoy it. In other words, to be interested in it. You've got to have a sense of believability. And again, I can just, I can read my social media feed before I even looking at it without even looking at it based on what I'm about to say. But you can't apply logic to professional wrestling except for in certain areas where you want to connect to the audience. And it takes me back to Sars, story, anticipation, reality, surprise, and action. Those are examples of elements that you actually have to have, especially story. It's why it's the first one.

I didn't start with action, then story. I started with story because story is the character. Story is that moment when the viewer goes, oh, this is interesting. Ooh. Huh. I like this. just that first introduction, the first appetizer of what's going to be a buffet of story in the weeks and months to come. But you've got to get them to lean in.

And the fact that Raven's character had the ability, much like the NWO, to call their own shots, was not believable in that story. And if you can't connect initially on a story, if you don't get that, huh, this is interesting. if you don't get that immediately, the chances of a story working for anything more than a month or two is pretty minimal. And this was just not believable in this particular scenario. The next week we would see Nitro in Tampa. And this is where we would see the drop toehold from Raven onto Scotty Riggs into the chair. And that sort of leads to Scotty Riggs being,

on TV with an eye patch. I kind of dig that. You know, we talked about how you need some of these weapons to make sense, but the drop toe hold into the chair, that's a Raven innovation, and he uses it to change the Scotty Riggs character to have a plausible reason to wear the eye patch. I kind of think that's pretty creative.

You got any love for that or also not such a big fan of that? No, I think, I mean, I like the drop to hold onto a chair. If you're going to use a chair, if you're going to introduce a gimmick, If that's the device that that particular character or story needs, then I applaud the use of it because it's innovative. It was creative. Nobody, you know, at least initially,

had seen anything like that before. And then to do it consistently as kind of a finishing move in a way, a branding move, if you will, I think it's really smart. Creatively, I think it's really smart. The I patch. Eh. It looks like a freaking pirate. Well, I'll tell you what.

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toilet paper does not work. Think about how silly that logic is and how, I don't even know, humiliating. I mean, it's a waste of time. It's less than ideal. It's inefficient. It doesn't do a good job. It clogs your toilet. You're wasting money on something that doesn't even make logical sense.

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only a naughty word if you wipe. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off their first per day order when they use the code 83 weeks at checkout. That's 10% off your first-paday order at hellotushy.com. Just use the promo code 83 weeks. So let's talk a little bit about Raven here at World War III. This is where he's going to be wrestling Scotty Riggs, and this is where the whole reveal happens, you know, that we're going to be doing the, the dastardly, um, eye injury. I bring up World War III primarily because this is the November solution for WCW pay-per views. We know that WWE is going to be hitting you with Survivor Series. We know that WWE, when they do Survivor Series, they're two months away from the Royal Rumble. World War

3 was supposed to be the WCW equivalent to that. But I have a feeling that you never really were in love with World War 3 as a concept. And is it the most regrettable formula of a pay-per-view that WCW had during your tenure? Yes. Yes. I know people would say, oh, no, it had to be uncensored. Actually not uncensored. Generated a lot of money. was a great idea that was not quite executed that well or as well as it needed to be,

but the idea was a solid idea. It really was. And we're doing it again, which I did. But war games, I think, was DOA. And for everybody knows how I feel about cage matches and gimmick matches. This one was a little easier for me to wrap my head around because it was a character. The three rings became a character.

character in the show. And it was something that we visited every year. So it was an established character that you could build backwards from in terms of telling the story and how you're going to get to it and why, or what's going to happen when you do. So I could check the box on the logic of it and the positioning of it. But for me personally, just shooting it, producing it, bringing it into the home on television in a dramatic way where you can really tell the stories and get your great action and keep everybody engaged was really, really difficult. It was a mess to produce. And consequently, it was not what we envisioned or hoped it would be once got to the home.

It was just too hard to shoot. That's my reason for just regretting it. much as I do. I want to ask you about some other members here of the flock. We know that Sick Boy is going to come through the power plant, but there's another fellow who's going to become, I don't know, kind of a staple in wrestling for a long time.

I'm talking about Lodi. Originally, Dave Meltzer thought maybe the name would be Skank, but it winds up being Lodie. He's not a power plant guy like Dave Meltzer suggested. He was more of a North Carolina indie guy, still calls North Carolina home to these days. And I think the name Lodi is idle backwards, like Billy Idol.

And so they just took Billy Idol and did it backwards and said, hey, he looks like Billy Idol. Well, let's just do idle backwards. Lodi. Does that make sense to you? I'll buy that. I wasn't involved in a discussion, but I'll buy it. Van Hammer had been out of the company for years before the flock run.

He had a drug arrest. His family's adult bookstore was getting rated by. the police and I guess Regal head butted him at DDP's Christmas party. So he was making friends everywhere he was going. How does he wind back up in WCW? I never got to spend any time with him. Was he a good guy? Did you just like him personally?

Why did he get another chance? It would have been a Kevin, Terry, you know, I wasn't the guy that brought him in or would have known why. the reason behind it bringing him in at that point in time would have approved it, I don't really remember what the rationale was for bringing him in, to be honest. As far as how I felt about him, I was ambivalent. I didn't, I mean, cordial, professional, and my contact with him backstage and everything. He was very polite, always very friendly, personable, respectful, and helpful to me in any way he could be.

backstage. But I had very limited contact with him, really. When I saw him, he seemed to get along with everybody. He seemed to be pretty much at ease backstage. I didn't see anything that would make me think, oh, drug addict. Never saw any of that out of him. So I was just, I didn't like him. I didn't dislike him. I just, he was part of the team. Didn't have a relationship with him. Let's talk about Ron Reese. We know that we've seen him as the Yeti and the super giant ninja. I guess once upon a time he was maybe going to do something as Ron Stud. But you've got another giant running around here besides the guy here calling the giant.

It feels like a waste to not use him at all. I think if Ravens flock needed a heavy, Ron Reese probably checks all the boxes, doesn't he? Except for the believability part. Ron Reese could not make me think that he would be angry or dangerous. Dangerous is a better word. He's just, he's got the most teddy bear-esque aura about him of anybody I've ever met. He's, you just, you want to hug him.

He's such a nice guy. and it radiates. Like he walks into a room. You never even have met him before. You can watch him walk into the room. You go, you know, I bet you that's a nice guy. I'm going to go over and say hello to him because he just looks like a nice guy. Oh, he's a really big guy too.

Maybe he's an athlete, but I'm just going to go over and say hi. He's that guy. How does that guy become dangerous in the context of a professional wrestler? He can mean mug all he wants and growl, spit fire. if he can figure out how to do that, I ain't buying it. Now, as a baby face, that's a different story because he is so lovable. But as a kind of a cultish, dangerous, unpredictable giant, very badly miscast. Billy Kidman had been around WCW for about a year before he joined the flock.

He clearly had some talent. I think he was from Offa's training school up in Pennsylvania, but he'd previously just been, maybe call him a preliminary guy at best, but we know that he has a ton of talent. And I think this is where a lot of fans really become familiar with him. What do you think of Billy Kidman as a member of the flock? Talk about underutilized. I'm looking at this picture of Billy right now and I'm asking myself,

what the fuck, Eric? Why didn't you do more with this kid? He is so good. good. And he has such a great look. His work in the ring was way ahead of its time. He was on par with some of his, he was on par of my opinion with Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero. He maybe not quite Eddie Guerrero yet, but he was well on his way to that level of excellence. And I think he got lost in that flock. And I'm not suggesting that if he wouldn't have got involved with the flock that he might have, you know, his trajectory would

have been any better or worse necessarily. All I'm saying is someone with that much talent should have been the focus of the story. Sorry, Raven. Let's talk a little bit about sick boy. I know that the real life Scott Vic, he is going to be a person from the power plant. And he just makes one TV appearance prior to this. He was Lance Ringo in a losing effort to DDP. He winds up in the flock.

And he clearly has a lot of athleticism on his side, but post flock, he's not retained. for very long instead he goes to the WWF and I don't think he ever made it past developmental in an alternate universe could Scott Vicks or Scott Vick's career have gone a little differently I don't know how it I mean maybe just proximity he was in the business an opportunity could have you know come up where you know his character or a version of it or maybe a completely different character could have fit and worked and perhaps could have had a different trajectory. But beyond that, I don't know that it would have made any difference. Let's talk about Canyon here for a minute.

He wrote a book called Wrestling Reality, The Life and Mind of Chris Canyon. And from his memoir, we've got an excerpt here. Raven was the first person who said he wanted to do something with me if I took off the mortise mask. We came up with a sketch and it worked out pretty well. for me. In February of 98, fans watched as the sketch opened with Raven, sitting by a boiler in the inner workings of the arena. I'm still dressed as Mortis, and I told Raven I wanted to join his flock, a group of wrestlers who had fought with Raven. If you want to join the flock, Raven said,

then you have to defeat Diamond Dallas Page for the U.S. heavyweight title. I turned and walked to the ring as Jim Mitchell in character followed me. No, Mortis, he kept screaming. Don't do it. But I went ahead and wrestled DDP for the title, and I turned and went ahead and wrestled DDP for the title, and the crowd backed me like never before. It felt amazing as I went through the match because the crowd was cheering for me as the underdog to win. And they fully believed Mortis could defeat Page, one of the most visible and popular characters in the company.

It felt like they believed the character, and we could have taken him further. But it was not to be. Page defeated me with the diamond cutter, and I was dejected. The rest of the flock came to the mat and carried me back to Raven. What now, I said to him, and then Raven kicked me in the gut and gave me another diamond cutter on the ramp.

I was finished, and Mortis was ready to disappear. Jim Mitchell dragged me away, and it would be the last anyone saw of Mortis. For two months, no one saw or heard of me, but in the storyline, I'd been let go for my contract. But that spring, various people from the crowd began running up and attacking Raven during his shows. A police officer attacked him, and as a vendor, each time it was secretly me attacking him, and it was all part of the way I was going to reveal myself as Canyon. It was somewhat of a scary time since out of sight, out of mine is one of the essential maxims of the wrestling business. But my storyline was so good I was never forgotten.

In fact, I was supposed to continue attacking raving while disguised as a lot of different characters, but instead we only did it a few times, partly because Dusty Rhodes took over the writing team. And Dusty, a legend who'd come up from Texas, who was known as the working class hero, the American Dream decided we should get on with the story. Never really thought Dusty saw much potential in me. It was written where I would make my first appearance without mask and a match against Saturn, who like Kidman, was a member of the flock. It was a pay-per-view match.

And by this time, people knew I'd be coming up with a new move, so the crowd was ready to react. Unfortunately, they reacted with confusion. We were in Oakland, and it was a great match with Saturn, but the storyline just got jumbled as Saturn turned against Raven. So it became Saturn and me against Raven, and we were good guys fighting Raven, but Saturn and I were also fighting each other.

The crowd just didn't know who to root for. As each member of the flock came out, I had each of them with a different move, and then Kidman came out. You ready, I asked, and he just smiled. We showed the crowd a move we'd practice packet off us, the second rope, pile dropper. Kidman stood on the second rope,

and I stood on the second rope, and we put his head between his legs and fell to the mat. when he hit the mat, I heard the best reaction I'd ever gotten. And then Saturn came in to celebrate with me and it all turned. He pinned me and the crowd just died, realizing that Saturn was also against me. Again, they had no idea who to root for. They liked us, but they wanted to root for both of us. And a week later, Bischoff, who was not there for the show, called us into his office.

He said, your fight was the best part of the show. But when you guys started fighting each other, you lost me. We knew it too. Saturn had a lot of ideas. We had worked well together. Raven in particular. So why was it difficult to put together a three-way match? At one point during the match, all three of us were on the mat.

I had to roll over to Saturn and say, what's next? Hold on. He said, Raven, what's next? I don't know. Raven doesn't know, Saturn told me. We just made up a few moves and we're trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. This to me is, I apologize for reading so much, but you have mentioned this a lot, that WCW, if there was something that was missing,

it was a finished guy. It was a Pat Patterson type. And I can't help but feel like this might actually be an illustration of the greatest example of that. And I appreciate Canyon laying it all out for us because you've got three very capable performers who we know how to put on a good fight and put on a good show. And you were impressed with parts of it. But some of the psychology was missing. You needed a puppet master for moments like these. Is that maybe the best example you've seen or heard of why WCW needed their own Paterson?

It's a perfect example. And what I was trying to, you know, because as you're going, as you're reading that I'm also in my mind, as I'm listening, I'm trying to find timeframes in here so that I can have my own context when I respond to some of the stuff. The thing that I found interesting while you were reading is when Canyon said, by that point, Dusty Rhodes had taken over the storyline. That surprised me. And it confused me because Dusty, you know, was headbooker for a while. And then I brought in Rick and Kevin.

But Dusty was still in WCW. It sounds to me perhaps I'm speculating 100%. that perhaps for whatever reason, Kevin tagged Dusty in to oversee this story based on what you just read me, at least that's the way I heard it. Right. If that's the case,

this story is being handed off from Kevin to Dusty. With nothing but respect, obviously, for both of them, you can't hand your baby off to someone else and expect them to treat it like their baby, no matter how much they want to and promise you they will, they don't have the same feel for it. It's a problem with handing off a story,

especially one that's still evolving and you're trying to get it off the ground. Two highly credible credential, phenomenal writers, bookers, call on what you want. individually may not see eye to eye on certain elements of a story. The psychology, when I say elements oftentimes I'm talking about the psychology, what triggers a specific emotion at a specific time in a story arc is what I really mean. But they may look at that story from a psychology perspective completely different than their counterpart. And that to me seems like what's going on here, just based on what you're reading.

I can just picture that being, Dusty, you do this. Okay, Kevin, I'll go do that. And Dusty did it to the best of his ability, but his ability, his vision, his psychology was different than theirs, obviously, and different than Kevin's. Well, I do want to talk about Canyon,

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gut-busting comedy and unbelievable in-ring action. From wild characters to unforgettable rivalries. Don't miss a single moment. Tune in every Thursday night at 7 p.m. on YouTube, J.C.W. Lunacy. You know, we haven't talked about Mortis in a while here. Do you have, do you think in a perfect world you could have done more with Canyon as Mortis? Like, could the Mortis character have advanced?

And I know that people are overall negative. about the blood runs cold thing and the glacier thing, but I think the darkness and the sinisterness of the Canyon character, I wonder if it could have broken out of this blood runs cold situation and enjoyed success separately. Because what a great look that is. Like if somebody told me that was a picture from this past weekend in CMLL, I might believe it.

What say you? Could you have done more with Mortis? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, especially in hindsight, right? Chris's unique abilities, I mean, he was so innovative in the ring. I mean, when he would get into a match and I, you know, I produced all the television shows he was on, I would have to stop what I was doing and watch his match because I knew there was always a chance

I was going to see something I hadn't seen before and it would look awesome. Maybe something really little. maybe a big finish like move, but there was always something that he would do that was so innovative and so believable looking that he was always interesting for me to watch. So when you take somebody with that kind of ability, you know, he had an unnatural ability in that regard.

He was unique, very unique in that aspect of his physical abilities. Look, his ability, the mic was a challenge for him. It just, it was what it was. But in the hands of somebody that was really creative and committed and allowed the time, that character could have been, could have become WCW's version of an undertaker or of somebody that would be able to be dependable for a long period of time as a pay-per-view player.

I want to ask you, you know, this all leads to Saturn breaking away and winning the flock members, their freedom. Why do you think you cut the flock off after only about a year? Could it have lasted longer? Was Raven just never going to be a good fit with you and your vision for WCW? Because I think a lot of fans look back fondly with this presentation. I know it may not have been for you, but what of my very best wrestling friends? He loved Raven.

He loved the flock. I'm curious. Do you think there was more meat on the bone or were you personally just it was only going to go so far because you didn't dig it? Not because I didn't dig it. The audience wasn't digging it. At some point in time, we just have to look at the audience and the numbers that you have. And you know, numbers can lie and liars can use numbers. But you combine, you know, the data that you have, your instinct, you know, part of it is instinct. This is an art. It's not a science. You can't rely only on data. and that's what makes this form of entertainment on the creative side so challenging. Because you have to take the live event experience in consideration, but you also have to be able to know how to read that reaction.

Is it a Pavlovian reaction because the audience knows they're part of the show and they're going to react because they want to be on TV? That's a good reaction, but it's not a genuine character reaction, right? And there's a lot of Pavlov dog reactions that are built into wrestling formats and matches, right? You're there intentionally. But you're looking for those real reactions, a real connection with the audience. And there was nothing suggested to me that there was a sufficient enough audience that mattered to keep investing in this story and giving them the amount of real estate we were giving them. I do want to ask, you know, a lot of people,

think that Raven was maybe at his creative peak character-wise in ECW. And I think a lot of that was because Paul Heyman saw a lot of himself in the character. And we've heard guys like, you know, the million-dollar man Ted DiBiase, we've heard that a million-dollar man character may have been how Vince would have wanted to portray himself as a character. So whatever you have the creative driving force behind you, working closely with a character, because he feels like it best aligns with his character. It feels like that's always going to be a hit.

Is it fair to say that maybe Raven didn't enjoy as much success in WCW as he did in ECW because he didn't have his Paul Heyman in WCW? There wasn't. That's a cop out. I think, you know, I'm having a hard time buying that Paul Heyman saw a little bit of himself and Raven. I know,

maybe there's a connection there. It's just not obvious to me. me, right? Just knowing the two personalities. But that aside, I think Raven probably, the ECW audience probably related more to Raven than Paul Haven did, right? The ECW audience probably saw or wanted to see, which is equally as powerful, maybe more so, parts of themselves in the Ravens' character in ECW. You look at the composition of that ECW audience back when at that period of time when Raven was at his ECWP, just go back and look at that audience.

And I think you'll agree with me that a large portion of that audience probably thought that that character was really cool or they identified with it. They aspired to be it. They wish that was them, they could be that character. Or maybe they felt like they already were. I think a large part of the ECW audience, that was their composition. The WCW audience was a completely different audience. Just go look at the composition of the audience in any wide shot from the same errors.

And it should be easy to see if you're objective about it. And Paul did a great job of creating the format of his show, the tone, and manner of ECW was specifically targeted towards the type of audience that would identify with the Raven character. Look at the rest of the show and the characters on the show. They all had a version of that vibe, that energy, that characteristic about their individual characters. There was a similarity to it because that's what Paul used to appeal to the people that

made ECW such a strong brand eventually and a very unique audience, which is why people have tried to recreate that audience ever since. You can't do it realistically and keep it and keep the integrity of it. I think Bully Ray could probably speak to this much better than I could for obvious reasons. But even in W.E, I don't want to speak for Paul, but I'm guessing that Paul wasn't really thrilled about it because Paul knew with the WWE composition of audience, the nature of that audience and what the nature of that audience is generally attracted to and what they're not attracted to, Paul knew that he was sipping from a little teeny straw. There just wasn't that big of an audience and he knew the reaction would likely not be what it

could be, right, if it was an ECW composition audience. So I think Raven probably felt part of Raven's frustration may be that while he had such a strong connection with such a large portion of his audience in DCW, when he got to WCW, it was a different audience. And it wasn't working as well as Raven probably thought it was. Not to me it wasn't. Not to Nielsen, it didn't. not to merchandise sales it didn't so what do you have to go by other than you know how do you feel when they come out you're in the crowd kind of reaction are they really getting have love's dog or people really connected to this all goes into it well we enjoyed talking

about the flock today and i know there is a contingent of fans who are a big flock fans so i want you to know that today, the day after Thanksgiving and tomorrow, and maybe perhaps on Sunday, too, the flock is back together at WrestleMania, and you can go get your photo made with all of these folks. What a cool opportunity this is. Scotty Riggs, Lodi, Harry Saturn, Reese, Raven, sick boy, they're all here, and you get your photo taken with the flock. I don't know how often this happens, but this feels like a really fun idea. I hope you'll make plans to be there. It's happening this weekend at Russellcade, Winston-Salem, North

Carolina, the Benton Convention Center. I'm going to be there. JBL's going to be there. Tony Chivani's going to be there. J.R. is going to be there. It's a who's who. So if you're in the North Carolina area, go check out Russellcade and then hurry home and make sure you've got Fox Nation. For $2.99,

you can check out Real American Freestyle number three. Before we go, can I just say something about Raven? Because, you know, we're going back in time, we're talking about what works and what didn't work and why I made the decisions that I made because of the way I felt about the character and all that. And that's fine. I enjoy talking about this stuff. But sometimes what gets lost in that discussion is the respect I have for Raven because he did, to tell the things

that frustrated me at the time, but I obviously respected that and even more so now, is he believed in himself enough to stick to what he believed in. A lot of guys don't. Raven was committed to his idea and his character. Maybe obsessively so. And there's nothing wrong with that when you're a performer. Raven is also an incredibly, incredibly creative person. I think so much so, he's so creative. I think sometimes it gets in his own way.

And I know a number of people like that who are incredibly successful people in entertainment. They're so creative. that they're borderline dysfunctional. But man, when they hit it, they hit it. Raven was all of that. He's a very complex individual and a very intelligent guy. And just because his experience with WTW or my experience with him,

necessarily on a personal level, may not have been congruent and just fit really nicely with a happy ending. I don't want to diminish the respect I have for the performer. mostly the individual. Well, I'll see if you feel that way about your boy, Dave Meltzer. Before we get out of here, since we've been recording, they posted something pretty wild that I want you to respond to. But first, I want to brag about our friends at True Classic.

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But for the best deal, you can go to True Classic.com slash 83 weeks for the perfect gift for anyone on your list. One more time, that's trueclassic.com slash 83 weeks. Eric, we, um, we last week responded to clips of Tony Kahn's fabulous appearance on Errol Hawani's podcast. I thought it was Tony's best appearance he's done. Uh, you agreed with that. But boy, that's not what everybody was talking about. They took little clips and in little moments that are things that were said in response

to what Tony said. And they sort of teed off on that, including Dave Meltzer. So I wanted to play this. Surprise, surprise. And let you take a look. It's really funny, you know, kind of like the grifters. They're so anti-A-W. I had to have a budget, and he doesn't have a budget.

It's like, dude, they used to cut my budget. It's like, they cut your budget because the freaking company was on virtual losing $80 million in a year. They had to cut the budget, like with Cornette talking about, oh, you know, you guys like Rikersh are stealing money from a rich kid. And it's like, the rich kids making money. Hey, you know, it's like, I mean, imagine like a wrestler from the past of all things getting mad. The talent is getting paid because the company's revenues are high. You know, I mean, super high, really, other than not compared to WWE, but compared to everybody else in history.

And it's like, you know, how are you stealing money from a rich kid from a rich kid when the company is. a profitable company. It's like, kind of like, you know, it's, it's like, you can criticize it all you want, but update your material because the stuff about losing money that not just certain people, but all these people, they come at me and all this, how much profit are they making? It's like a lot, okay? Do you know what $185 million? Well, this year, it's $180 million. You know what $180 million does to a budget in a wrestling company? That's a lot of money, you know, so if you're, you, you know, If you want to say that the ratings are down, they are. You want to say they're struggling with live attendance.

They are. You want to say the pay-per-views are too long. Sometimes they are, you know. But the pay-per-views generally very well-received. But if you're going to talk about the idea of budget and money and losses and all of that, it's like you need to get some new material because the stuff doesn't work anymore. he's your friend what

I mean this is the most disconnected I want to say he's irrelevant because he's out there and people listen to this shit and we just put a clip of it on our show

so he can't say he's irrelevant he should be irrelevant but he's not but out of touch I mean this is a person who is so out of touch with the product that he supposedly studies and the business of it and instead embeds himself in the bullshit that he keeps hanging on to of their $180 million a year in revenue from their

TV contract, which I challenge anybody to prove to be true. The $185 million a year or $80 million a year is the total value, value, value of the agreement based on promotional contributions by the network. You know what that really is? That's like we got ad space left over. We can't sell this crap. So we're going to use it to promote AEW. That's called remnant inventory.

Inventory that can't be sold. Well, here's what we do. We take that rate card, $20 million worth of advertising. We know we're not going to sell. And we'll put it into this contract. And the value of that contract is X. That's what that deal is. Dave has gotten really good over the decades of conning people.

And I love how he uses the term grifter. Or it used to be conned. Now he's going into grifter because it's, you know, it's in the zeitgeist. Look that one up, babe. He'll start using that. It's 40 years, fucking old. but he'll start using it. Dave likes to talk about grifters

and implying that people like Cornett who makes a great income, I'm assuming, you know better than I do, Conrad, but I'm assuming it does really well with his podcast and his YouTube show based on the numbers that I see at least, on his YouTube show, that somehow Jim Cornett's perspective

or information is just throw it away because he's a grifter. When in fact, the only grifter in the conversation is that Freakazoid sitting there on his $300 fake leather couch

looking into the microphone like a three-year-old does and babbling about shit he doesn't know about, doesn't understand all in an effort to somehow protect for whatever reason his

mentor, mentee, I don't know, soulmate, whatever Tony is to I don't get it. Don't care. None of my business. But Dave exposes himself so much for being what he truly is, which is a completely, completely out-of-touch person talking about a business

that he shouldn't be talking about any longer. Just write obituaries, do history stuff. You know, write books about the history of wrestling. Try not to insert yourself in a conversation about what's really going on in the industry today because it's not just me that shreds you like lettuce. It's not just Cornette that points it out and flames you every time you open your mouth or type something stupid, which is pretty consistently. But you've got other people in the industry that are louder and more aggressive about it than I am. Because everybody sees through your shit, Dave. Everybody knows who you are and what you are

and why you're doing what you're doing, while you're taking 1499 a month from people who think you know what you're talking about, you tell me what a grifter is, Dave. One last thing about told Dave Meltzer. He tweeted last night as we're recording, and he was quote tweeting, Fightful Wrestling and the headline they chose to use from our show last week was Tony Con being disrespectful to Ted Turner made me lose respect for him.

I know the quote you're referencing. I remember that interview. But Meltzer quoted Fightful, a competitor, which I think is interesting, and says, Eric has a show this weekend. He's too busy making up that Con was disrespectful to Turner, which never happened. I was there for the line, which was not disrespectful, or making up things I've said when he never reads, listens, or has a clue of what I think about almost anything to promote his own event.

Please, I actually know the people on your show. I want some storylines, backstories, booking progression, etc. Joe Silva did it for years running monthly. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a account out there that keeps up with how many tickets wrestling shows are selling. Real American Freestyle is doing better than several of those right now. Over 4,000 tickets out this weekend.

I think the entire lower bowl is sold. And the rumor in innuendo is that Fox Nation is freaking thrilled with their performance of Real American Freestyle. I just don't understand why Dave Meltzer, for whatever reason, who he's insinuating that he's keeping up with your product. He's telling you that what you're doing isn't working when he has no idea how many tickets have actually been sold, what the adoption is for Fox Nation. Like, where does this come from?

Is he an expert on the same place the rest of his nonsense comes from? The same thing that diatribe that we listen to, you know, Dave talking about. Cornett or me, it comes from the exact same place. It is what it is. Dave, Dave doesn't know, doesn't understand. Does he likely know somebody that we work with that perhaps is on our roster associated with it? Sure, half our roster, not half our roster, but a good portion of our card are going

to be former UFC. We have some current UFC. our world champion is a current UFC competitor, Bonickle. So we've got an, and I'm just, you know, Chad Mendez this weekend. You know, I mean, Michael Chandler. So is there a chance that Dave knows or knows someone who knows them

and is hearing some information about Real American Freestyle? Sure. Sure. I mean, it's a small world, right? but does Dave have any inside information? Does he, is nobody in this organization will talk to him. Ask Dave Meltzer if he gets anything from our PR firm.

Everybody else does. Dave does. I don't want Dave's help. We don't need Dave's help. Dave is actually toxic to anything he attaches himself to, Tony. So, no.

Dave, you just go keep being Dave. We're good. Well, we're thankful that you guys joined us on a lovely Black Friday. We appreciate all the time today. I hope that everybody makes plans to check out Real American Freestyle Number 3 tomorrow on Fox Nation.

Eric just broke the news. It's like $2.99 this weekend. And Eric, I hope you and the family had a safe and happy Thanksgiving separately and apart for the first time ever. But for a good reason, we're all looking forward to RAFO3 tomorrow night. Thanks, Scott.

Have you then. We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. Hey, did you know you can own for less than your current rent? We can help at save withconrad.com. Stop throwing your money away on rent. You don't know any wealthy renters. Start building wealth for your family with my family at savewithconrad.com.