83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 412: 83Weeks LIVE

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

On this LIVE edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson turn the show over to you. Listener questions take center stage, no topic is off-limits, and Easy E finds himself right back in the hot seat. The guys also break down everything happening in the wild world of professional wrestling, including Cody Rhodes' idea to bring house shows back to WWE. Plus, get your weekly wrestling news update with 83 Weeks contributor Raj Giri on this special LIVE edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff. MARS MEN - Get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at http://Mengotomars.com  STEVEN SINGER JEWELER - No one does real diamond jewelry better. Experience the difference at Steven Singer Jewelers. Go online to http://IHateStevenSinger.com  today! Always fast and FREE shipping is waiting for you. POLICYGENIUS - Head to http://policygenius.com/83WEEKS  to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. BETTER WILD - Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at http://betterwild.com/BISCHOFF PRIZE PICKS - Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/83WEEKS  and use code 83WEEKS to get $50 in lineups after you pay your first $5 lineup! MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code 83WEEKS at http://shopmando.com ! #mandopod QUENCE - Layer up this new year with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to http://Quince.com/83WEEKS for free shipping on your order and 365-day return 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.

Save with Conrad.com. My name is Sergio. I'm from Lancaster in California. The motivation behind just following through with this refinance was I have a baby on the way. So I just wanted to get everything in order in the past couple of years just afraid to pull the trigger. But then it just seemed like the right time to do it. I went to multiple banks, not only the mortgage I had, but then I went to you. And then I also went to several others. And it just seemed like your team, they were just completely honest.

and outright. Also, all the information was just laid out for me right there and then answering all my questions in a timely, efficient manner. Diane was just so helpful and above and beyond accessible with texting and emails and just any information that they needed. She would explain to me what exactly they wanted me to send and then if there were any issues, she was able to just resolve them pretty quickly versus other companies that sometimes it would take a couple of days to get some information. We're looking to pay down some debt, also looking into making some improvements to the home,

also build up our backyard, do everything, especially for our daughter coming. By doing this cash out, it's a good amount that we're saving between $1,500 a month, I would say. It helped out tremendously as well. My name's Sergio. I'm from Lancaster, California,

and I saved over $1,500 a month with SavewithConrad.com. And I'm a lesson number 212-9-Aqual housing lender. SavewithConrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad, the mortgage guy, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish Off, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? I am outstanding. I'm here in Clearwater, Florida. Mrs. B and I are watching our grandson this weekend while Garrett and MJ are off having a romantic weekend on a beach somewhere. So we're having a blast. Well, that's awesome, man. I'm glad you got to get down there. It feels like you've been a world traveler. Can you just take us through your travel schedule for like the last 10 days or two weeks or so?

Because it feels like it's like nitro days for you right now. It's actually more intense, believe it or not. Now, some of it is by choice. Like I'm down here in Florida by choice. But, you know, I can't even tell you where I've been for the last 10 days. I think I started sometime in Wyoming. And, you know, there was a New York trip in there. There was a trip to North Carolina in there.

There was obviously the Atlanta weekend with all of you. and I'll be here until Tuesday. Then I'm heading home. So it will be a two weeks stretch by the time I get home. Who's having more separation anxiety right now? You or your dog, Nikki? Nicky's, I got an issue with Nikki. Now, unfortunately, Nikki was diagnosed with Cushing's disease.

So she's struggling a little bit. And I guarantee, now I just talked to the vet this morning or the people that I board her with. And of course, she's happy. And they're sending me pictures and all that kind of stuff. But she does get a little anxiety, separation anxiety. I, on the other hand, get a lot. It's really hard for me to be away from a dog. Well, I'm glad you get to be reunited,

and I know it'll feel so good here in just a couple of days. We're going to be talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of professional wrestling the last week. There's been so much change that's happened and major news, and people are curious about what's next. We're going to be talking about all of that, and we are live on a lot of different platforms this morning. I should apologize. Normally, Eric and I record on Thursday, and the show populates on Friday morning everywhere you enjoy podcasts,

but I had something on my end of the world that happened that allowed me to, or force me to not be able to record on Thursday night. So we're coming to you on a Saturday morning, but I don't know, man. For me, Saturday morning and wrestling just kind of go hand in hand. It was a big part of my fandom to watch superstars, the Power Hour, or the syndicated shows from WCW always wound up watching them on a Saturday morning. So the idea that we're accidentally live on a Saturday morning, I don't know, feels good to me, Eric.

It absolutely feels right. You know, on Saturdays are, you know, it's the weekend. We're all looking forward to having some fun and what better way to have some fun than to kick it off talking about wrestling on a Saturday morning. You're right. And when I was a little kid, we're up in Detroit, my mom would take my dad to work on Saturday mornings. So she had the car because we only had one car.

because we only had one car. So she would drop my dad off at work on Saturday mornings, and then she would take the car to go grocery shopping, which means that my little brother and I, he's four years younger than I, had the house to ourselves, which was like amazing. And we would start out by watching cartoons.

And once we got through our cartoons, I think Roadrunner was like the last cartoon we'd watch, and then professional wrestling would come on. Big time wrestling from KLW in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It's where I cut my teeth on pro wrestling, but it was always on Saturday morning. So there's something just, I don't know, right about it. Speaking of Canadian wrestling, I got to catch up over the weekend with Scott DeMore.

He actually joined us in QT. Marshall for the 1FW taping there in McDonough, Georgia on Sunday. And he's got some big things planned for Maple Leaf Pro. And I guess he's taken over the old Jack Tunney territory. You can catch the DeMore drop on Yahoo every week. And he actually talked a lot about spending the weekend with Eric Bischoff at his power plant weekend. We'll talk about that a little later. Before we do, though, I kind of wanted to talk about what you just did.

I guess it was Thursday afternoon. You spent the afternoon at High Spots. And I want to encourage everybody, if you're an Eric Bischoff fan, go check out Highspots.com or, of course, highspot, auctions.com. but we may even have a video of something that I've never seen before and I thought, hey, this is kind of cool. Let's take a look. Spray painting action figures with the NWO. I don't know why, but it's still cool all these years later.

Is that the first time you've spray painted stuff in a long time? Yeah, and I had to practice like on a piece of just regular cardboard to be sure that I had my technique down. Right? So I'm not used to tagging stuff. But I got it down and had a blast. And yeah, we sold a ton of those things. It was kind of fun. They do such a great job.

If you're not familiar, high spots with the same folks who bring you wrestle con, Michael Bikikio and crew, are one of the gold standards in pro wrestling. You know, a lot of people sort of come and go in the pro wrestling space. They've been around for, gosh, nearly 30 years. I mean, I remember in high school,

high spots was a thing. And I just have such admiration for the business that Bikikio's built, not only with high spots, but his auctions and gimmick tables and wrestle kind. It's a fun business. Is it not? Eric, you got to see it up close. I was actually really impressed because it's an operating business. It's not just a hobby on the weekends, you know, which is the impression, you know, you get sometimes is that people are just doing this as a side hustle. This is a legit business. You know, they've got a manufacturing facility where they make ring mats and gear pads. So they've got, you know, the business to business side of their

business model. And then they've got the consumer side, which is, you know, the collectible stuff and the things that we were doing the other night. So Michael in his team, he's got a great team of people, by the way. And that's usually the case. It's very rarely one individual. It's more than likely if you have a successful business, one individual that's surrounded by a lot of very talented people and committed people. And that's what Michael's got over at high spots. Very, very impressed. Classy group, very efficient.

Everything went as planned. So it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was a great Thursday night, to be honest with you. Yeah, if you've ever found yourself at an independent wrestling event and thought, man, that's a pretty good looking ring or hey, look how professional those turnbuckles looked or, man, that canvas looks nice. Or, hey, where'd they get those skirts? There's a good chance that it's from high sports.

and I don't know, maybe one of the best kept secrets amongst the hardcore fans. So I want to give them some love and want to encourage you if you're looking for some really cool and rare autograph Eric Bischop Collectibles. Highspots Auctions.com and Highspots.com can probably hook you up. We think they do a great job and we know you'll be happy with what you see. Real quick, I also want to plug right at the top of the show. I don't know that you had a chance to see this yet, Eric, but JBL and I have started a brand new podcast.

It's called Have More Money Now. And you might be thinking to yourself, self, wasn't that the name of JBL's book back in the day? It sure was. And now we're answering all of your financial questions. And we're talking about credit on my side of the street and how to improve your credit score and how to buy a house and how to best manage credit card debt and get out of debt. But once you've actually cleared the debt, now it's time to start saving and investing. And a lot of people don't really know where to start.

So JBL is going to help guide the way. And we may actually have a cliff. Let's take a look. I played a little pro football and when I got done, I just didn't make any money. So when I got done, I didn't have any money. I thought, you know, I wasted a couple years of making money and I thought if I ever had money again, I'm going to figure out how to invest it. People aren't a great investor.

I always said, know what you own. You can't explain what you own in a couple sentences. You shouldn't own it. You don't buy things just because they think they're going to go up. You buy things because you know it's a good company. You need to be able to understand the company, but also have the time frame that you know will be he's 10 to 15 years. And if you have that,

you know pretty much for sure you're going to get in the company and you're going to make money. Best advice I ever got was from the legendary wrestler Stan Hansen was don't buy a boat. What he was saying was don't buy something you don't need. He's not saying don't buy a boat. If you want a boat, you've got the money to buy your damn boat. Life's about enjoying things.

What he's saying is don't buy things you don't need. Check it out if you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck, if you're tired of guessing with your money and you're ready to start winning instead of just hoping you got to check out the brand new podcast from John Layfield. Have more money now. It's not fluff. It's not theory. He's breaking down his actual portfolio. We actually run through the stocks that he's invested in. What's worked better than others. Why he picked them. You're going to learn what an ETF is and a whole lot more. And we're actually giving away a copy of his book right now. So if you'll go hit the subscribe button at have more money now.com, that's just going to take you

right to our YouTube channel. It's totally free. Hit the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell. But if you'll actually post a screenshot and tag at Have More Show, we're going to pick one lucky winner and send you an autographed copy of JBL's book. Eric, you've known John for a long time.

That fella knows a thing or two about investing. Does he know it? Yeah, it's funny when people, you know, in the wrestling community, you know, when you talk about JBL,

the first thing that comes to mind is his clothesline. Right. And some of the great matches he had in WWE. But he's really, John is a very, very smart man. And he's incredibly savvy and successful when it comes to the world of finance. So I think between you, Conrad, and your knowledge of the mortgage industry and credit and how to best manage both, combined with John's insight into investing, that's going to be a powerful show that I, for one, will definitely be. be not only listening to, but taking notes on. And let me just say, too, if you're listening and you're thinking, I don't have any money to invest.

Well, here's how you get the money. You clear your debt first. One of the first things we talked about on episode one was, hey, how do I best get rid of my credit card debt? How do I best boost my credit score? I actually gave a tip and trick in there that I've shown people who have applied for mortgages for the last 24 years. I've been in that industry.

How to get an extra 100 points added to your credit score in like 30 days. go check it out have more money now.com. We are live and we've got a lot of great questions here. We do have a show format. We'll get to it, but I wanted to make sure that we acknowledge some of these great questions that we've got coming in. Alan Martin is with us here live and he says,

Eric, I saw you in an episode of the Jeff Foxworthy show. What was that experience like? It was a blast. It was such a great crew. I mean, we did the show. I did it with Randy Savage. And we did the show and hung out with the cast afterwards, we all went out to dinner, as well as a producer and a director.

And just, I've never felt so welcome by a large group of people who I'd never met before, as we did. It was really, really fun. Obviously, taping the show was fun because it's different than what we normally did at the time. But it was nothing but a positive experience. Jeff is a fantastic person. He's just such a genuine down-to-earth. If you didn't know better, you would just, you know, think he's a guy that works at a warehouse somewhere and it's fun to hang around with. He's really a talented and genuinely nice guy. K.S. Dixon 86 is with us here live and he's got an interesting question. Hey, Eric, clear up some confusion. How involved were you with Matt Rats?

Conventional fantasy booking says you would have graduated Matt Rats from whom left at age 21. into Fugent's cruiserweight division. Would that have been a possibility? Maybe you take some talent from Matt Rats and bring them into a larger operation, or what was your experience with Matt Rats? I guess maybe we should also explain to people who don't know what we're talking about. What the heck was Matt Rats, Eric? Yeah, Matt Rats was an idea that came with the person that reached out to me.

His name was Graham, and I can't remember his last name. Graham reached out to me and said, said, hey, we've got this thing we're doing up here. And I can't remember what part of Canada was in. It doesn't really matter. It might have been Edmonton. But he said, we'd like to fly you up and bring you in and just have you see what we're doing and give us your thoughts. So it was a very informal opportunity.

I went up there with Jason Hervey. And we sat in. We got to look at what they were doing. I think they were producing this show with the idea in mind that it would air. are somewhere like on MTV or if there's a Canadian equivalent of MTV. So it was definitely a show that was targeted for a much, much younger audience. It was faster pace.

A lot of high flying, which you would consider to be kind of cruiserweight action because most of the talent they had, I don't think I saw anybody there that weighed more than 180 pounds. So they were smaller, lighter, much younger guys. We're talking about teens, you know, mid-teens, late teens, primarily, a couple of guys in their 20s. But it was really the idea. deal was a good idea. There was just nothing for me to really contribute. I wasn't interested in

trying to sell their show for them, which is what I think they were really hoping for, is to have me jump on board and kind of represent their product and help them get it on television. But I just, I had so much going on at the time, and I really wasn't interested in getting involved with wrestling on any kind of a full-time or major scale. So I thanked them for the opportunity. Had a blast while I was up there. I met a couple guys. I ended up spending some time in the business. Teddy Hart was there at the time. He was really young before he turned into a train wreck.

So, yeah, met a lot of interesting talent, but there was no formal plan strategy or anything like that. It was really social more than anything. You know, we've never talked about this. What was your experience like with Teddy Hart? I'll admit, I was a fan watching from afar of what I thought was possible with Teddy Hart. and I thought, hey, this is going to be one of the can't miss stars of the future.

I only met Teddy once, and it was briefly. He showed up randomly, believe it or not, backstage at Starcast in Las Vegas. And I wasn't sure that was him, but with the shiny suit and the crazy hair and the cat and toe, I thought this is unmistakably, Teddy Hart. What was your experience like with Teddy? Very limited. I met Teddy for the first time at Matt Rats. I think I may have crossed past with them once or twice subsequent to that.

where I kind of, I don't want to say, washed my hands, where I lost interest in getting to know Teddy any better. I'll never forget. I was on my way to WWE for something. It might have been a Monday night roll or whatever, but I was in an airport, and Teddy happened to be in the same airport, probably going the same place I was. He came in on a different flight than I did, but we both ended up at the bar at the airport. And Teddy didn't know I was sitting there, right? I'm just sitting there minding my own business, haven't I? Amber or whatever I was doing.

And I could hear Teddy talking on the phone. He was a couple chairs down for me, I think, or right behind me. I couldn't help, but overhear him. He was very loud. And I was listening to him talking about how he's going to approach WWE. It's almost like how he was going to negotiate his appearance fee there. And I was just listening to him and I thought, you know, this cat has no clue. He is absolutely clueless, has way too high of an opinion of himself, which not unusual.

But yeah, I just knew right then that he was probably not going to be long for the business just because of his attitude. I just kept my distance from that point forward. I had no interest in getting to know him any better or doing anything with him. Well, what could have been? I think he's got to be one of the, he's on my list of, hey, this guy. his career should have worked out differently. Not the same vein as like a Monty Brown or a low-key, but I think Teddy Hart is somewhere on that list.

Do you think that his lack of success or, or I don't know, durability in the business, maybe is the right word? Do you think that's all just, can we talk it up to self-sabotage, Eric? Oh, it's 100% self-sabotage. His attitude, again, going back to that, I listened to him, his idea of how to conduct business,

I could hear his conversation. And I knew right then, you know, he was 22 years old at the time or whatever he was, 23, 24, had absolutely zero real experience in the business. But the way he was approaching, at least on the other, at least the conversation that I could hear, it's like he'd been around. Like, he thought he was Brett Hart, you know, and I think that's part of the problem. He used that heart name and that heart influence to the point where it, it's all that he had. and he thought he was a lot smarter than he was.

And yeah, self-sabotage is absolutely the best way to frame it. Well, we're going to have some fun answering some more questions here. I want to do one more. And then we're going to talk about some rassling. I guess first we probably need to service some sponsors. But we have kind of a silly question from Awesome Sauce that I think you may have fun with. And you're going to have to put your silly hat on for this one, Eric. And I know that's challenging times, but here it comes.

who of these people would you have joined the NWO at its peak George the Animal Steel Kamala Vern Ganya are your favorite the AWA legend Jake the milkman Millman I think he probably did the last name wrong but you get the idea if you had one of those cats to join probably the black and white version after there was a split if I had to guess

George the Animal Steel Kamala Vern Ganya or the milkman I could see Vern Gagne in the NWO, as crazy as that is. No, man, I'm going to go on with Jake. Jake, the Milkman Milliman, he was like the jobber of all jobbers in the AWA, him and George Scrap Iron Gadasky, where the two guys in the AWA that would never win a match until the day Jake Milkman Milliman won a match.

And if you've never seen a local crowd, because everybody loved Jake, he'd been a jobber in AWA for years. He was there before I started watching it. And when Jake won his first television match, you thought that he won the World Heavyweight Championship. Crowd went crazy. Jake to Milkman-Millman-Millman was a fun, comedic type of character that I think we would have had a lot of fun with in the NWO.

We'd have gotten him some big wins because he was not that physically impressive. That's putting it mildly. Just Google him. You'll see what I mean. But in the NWO, we could have, you know, Randy and Hulk, Kevin, Scott could have taken care of the heavy duty work and let Jake, the milkman Milliman come in for the big finish and get all the glory. So I think that would have been a fun, comedic kind of spot. Do you remember there ever being any conversation about you working with Vern Gagne in WCW? I know Greg Gagne was there, and we've spent a lot of time over the years talking about Greg here,

there and yawn, but I know what respect and admiration you have for Vern. Was there ever a serious conversation about him being contractually obligated to WCW in some serious way? No, you know, I had, I stayed in touch with Vern. He called me, or I called him, you know, once or twice a year. And occasionally, I mean, Vern called me about Brock Lesnar before practicing with, with WWE, because Vern was very much involved with the University of Minnesota wrestling program.

And Vern really believed in amateur wrestling, huge support. I wish he was around now to kind of see what we're doing with Real American Freestyle because I know he would have been really excited about that and proud of what we're doing. But, you know, Vern was so, Vern was very stubborn and Vern was locked in the 70s. It's one of the reasons why he ended up the way he ended up, because he just refused to adapt to television and wanted to come. promote wrestling. Bill Watts cut out of the same cloth. For guys like Bill and Vern at that time in their lives, the only approach to professional wrestling was to go back and produce professional wrestling

like it was produced back in the 70s and very early 80s because that's what Vern knew. That's what he was comfortable with. Television had advanced so much by the 90s, And Vern didn't advance with it. So there was no serious thought. I would have liked to just out of loyalty and a sense of comfort. And I would have liked to pick Vern's brain from time to time. But I also knew knowing Vern as well as I did, that he would have been extremely frustrated working in a corporate environment

and trying to develop television as it was in the 90s as opposed to what it was in the 70s. I ran into the same thing with Jerry Jirot. No offense to Jerry, nothing but respect. But I brought Jerry Jury in because I wanted to pick his brain. And I have, you know, I had respect still do for people who were really successful

during other eras because there's always common denominators. Yeah. They were always parallels. There were always formulas that worked in the 70s. that you couldn't do the exact same thing, but you could modify it. You could use it as if nothing else as inspiration for another idea.

But again, I think the frustration that guys like Jerry Jerrett probably felt, first of all, working for me, which, I mean, I get it, right? I was the new, I was the, I was a C squad announcer. What am I doing running the company? And I get that.

You know, I didn't take it personally because it's understandable. But it was also kind of a, it was a roadblock in terms of really working together. There was an underlying resentment that guys like Jerry Jarrett and others felt like they shouldn't be working for this guy who was a C-Squot announcer,

and now all of a sudden is running the company. Who did he ever beat? Where did he ever promote? So there was that. And probably more than anything, one of the reasons why I didn't reach out to Vernon, more than I did. That's so fascinating to me to think about, you know, how wrestling, as you said,

even though it had been a long time in the technology and maybe the delivery and the marketing and some of that have changed, like really, what really works in wrestling is getting that emotional connection. And people are people. And that doesn't really change, whether it's the 60s, the 70s, the 90s or now. If you can get people emotionally invested, and that's kind of what wrestling is at its core, is manipulating the desired response emotionally from the crowd, right? That's all it is.

It's all any form of entertainment is getting the audience's attention, getting them to identify with a character, to feel empathy for a character, or some cases sympathy for a character, and then take them on that emotional journey. I mean, wrestling, dramatic television, comedic television, action, whether it's movies, television, or a book. it's all the same thing.

You're providing an escape and you're giving people an opportunity to experience emotions that they may not be able to experience, you know, work in 95. It's a relief, really. And there are you right, man, the psychology. And I think that's the part that I feel Vern and guys like Jerry could have, if they would have been willing to just get comfortable with the situation they were in, because it's the psychology that always remains the same. Human nature remains the same.

Now, the way you produce your shows and the attention span and all that, sure, that changes. The audience changes. The audience evolves along with everything else that they're watching. Their taste evolve with it. And you have to be able to adapt and evolve. But at its core, wrestling psychology is wrestling psychology, whether it's from the 50s, the 60s or the 90s or in the 2000s. And I think that's one of the things that we talk about missing with some of the product today. It's athletically far superior to anything that any of us ever watched back in the 70s and the 80s and even the 90s in most cases.

Not at all, but in most. but the psychology always stays the same. The psychology with us humans always stays the same, but unfortunately for the men, physically we start to change, and that's why Eric and I recommend Mars men. You know, if you're listening to this, you're probably around my age of 44,

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Go right now to men go to mars.com for 50% off plus three free gifts at checkout. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you how you heard about them. please support our show and tell them 83 weeks so eric we uh we're live on a saturday morning so we've got some uh some some questions rolling in here let's hit a few at a tv productions wants to know hey eric uh most fans find the what chance annoying what do you think do you think the what chance are annoying were they then are they now will they be fun forever where are you on the what chance i think it's tiresome it's disruptive um look when when Steve Austin was in the ring, it worked, right?

And it allowed the crowd to engage. But, you know, so often now, of course, we haven't seen it a lot lately, but there was a period of time for a long time when the fans would just start chanting and what to be disruptive. And I get it. It was fun for them, but I've seen talent in the ring. I've been in the ring with talent that what chant really. really threw them off their game. It made it difficult for them to stay focused and get their

timing down when they're doing something with the microphone in the ring. So it was disruptive, kind of a pain in the ass, but it was fun. You know, when when Steve was in the ring, I enjoyed it. Is there a chance that you don't like now in 2026 that you find more popular where it's just an eye roll to you where you wish, oh, it's taken me out. I wish they weren't doing that. Does that exist for you? The this is awesome chant, I think is just the most obnoxious, juvenile waste of energy. It's very disruptive. And I think it takes away from the show, particularly if there's nothing really that particularly awesome going on. But the crowd is chanting, this is awesome.

It's kind of like, what are you watching? You know, but whatever. That's the one. It's always, that one's always bothered me. AOTV production says Eric just made me laugh. Vince Rousseau took a shot at C and Punk saying he'd make a better champion than him and wouldn't have to wrestle in a t-shirt. Is he playing a character or is that how Vince Rousseau really feels?

I don't know. I don't comment too much on Vince Rousseau. I think he's delusional as fuck. Whatever. You know, I mean, I think it should be pretty obvious that Vince Rousseau is in love with Vince Rousseau. He's in love with the sound of his. his own voice. All you have to do is spend five minutes trying to listen to his show and you'll

figure that out or a promo or an interview. He loves the sound of his own voice. And he thinks he's a phenomenal character on television, which should tell you everything you need to know about Vince Rousseau in his understanding or ability to produce good television. The fact that he thinks he should be on air should tell you everything you need to know. Eric, I do want to ask you. I don't know that we've talked about this, but I think our pal Kevin Nash started the discussion, and now it has become a thing.

I don't know it was necessarily fair, but I want to give you a chance to sound off on it. I know once upon a time you didn't count CM Punk as one of your absolute favorites. I know you've come around on the way he's handled the transition to WWE and Saudi Arabia and a lot of the other things that we've seen CM Punk sort of evolved through based on what our preconceived notions were.

But the whole he wrestles in a t-shirt thing. That has become a topic in large part, thanks to Kevin Nash. I don't think that's a big deal in the same vein that, and I'm not trying to dump on another one of our friends. Like Tommy Dreamer made a career out of wrestling in a t-shirt, and so did Mick Foley. And I don't think any of that is comparing what they do to see a punk. But TKO is now very much a merch business.

I mean, they are bottom line driven. And a lot of guys, what they're wearing on, He's not just wearing a random nondescript shirt from Walmart. He's wearing a piece of his own merch. I think he's trying to sell stuff. But there's this whole topic about, hey, he shouldn't wrestle in a t-shirt. He doesn't look like a wrestler.

I don't know Kevin Nash is saying things like, wouldn't it be easier to just go to the gym? Do you have a strong opinion about CM Punk and a T-shirt? I'll admit, I don't get it, but I can't wait to hear from you. I don't. First of all, let me state for the record. I'm highly impressed with CM Punk. Phil Brooks as the professional that he is currently,

I had a real issue with some of the shit that he did in AEW. And I mean, it's, you know, I was sticking up for Tony Kahn at the time. You know, the way that punk handled some of those live interviews, I certainly understand it, probably understand more now than I did then with regard to his level of frustration. But still, man, don't conduct your business on live television. That's just a rule, no matter how strongly you feel, conduct your business privately.

And that was one of the reasons why I had the attitude I did about Phil. In addition to some of the stuff that he said about HALC and the NWO and Scott and Kevin, I just thought it was cheap heat and felt like for all of the support that CMIP got, when he got to to AEW, that there was no need to reach in your bag for the cheap heat. I was unimpressed and was vocal about it. Now let's fast forward. He's 100% pro. I'd been around just a little bit backstage, and he's got a positive attitude on the people

that I saw him come into contact with. He immediately approached me, and we, you know, set our respective piece, And got along great. Gave me a big hug and we're off and running. And if you look at, in fact, I was just thinking about this the other night when we were watching Rumble. There's an authenticity to see him punk that really cuts through. Even listening to him when he was doing the broadcast before the event, there is an authenticity to him. that it just makes him different than everybody else.

So I think the world of them professionally, I think he's doing a phenomenal job. Obviously, his character is still clicking after all these years. And he's been able to maintain that kind of rebel with the cause character that's always been a part of him. But it's obviously working now. As far as the T-shirt thing, I don't know, man, if I was making money,

If I was making a percentage of the T-shirts that had my trademark on it or my likeness on it, I'd be wearing it too. Not everybody is that larger than life, bodybuilder, pro-athlete-looking physique. A lot of guys aren't. I think he looks like he's in great shape to me. How old is he, 45, 46? Yeah, maybe even older than that, yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, no comments at all.

negative comments about his conditioning. He just chooses as well, wear the shirt. I think you're probably right. He's making money doing it. And if anybody understands that, it's kind of national. No doubt. He's still making six figures a year easy from the NWO T-shirt. And it's been a long time since the NWO was the thing.

Punk will be 48 this year. He's 47 right now. And he's actually in the news this week. He was doing a lot of media as a part of the, I guess, press row. for the Super Bowl, which of course, as you're listening, is tomorrow. But he was asked about whether or not he had any regrets from stepping away from WWE for 10 years, which I thought was a great question.

We know that, you know, he decided to throw himself into MMA and wound up on a losing effort of a couple of UFC fights, but all the respect in the world for getting his ass out of his comfort zone and doing so very publicly. But when I asked about stepping away for 10 years, he said, I'll just go ahead and say it. like Vince was still here. I don't think anything was ever going to change for me at least, so no. Can I think about, man, that's 10 years.

I could have worked with AJ a whole bunch. I could have done more with Sina. I think I did pretty good. Tribal chief says he graciously scaled back for two years. Well, I graciously stepped back for 10, and it took him that long to become the superstar he is. So no, I got no regrets. By the way, what a great answer from C.

punk in that he gives the interviewer exactly what he's looking for here's the information but he still has his mind on business and curls it back to whatever his current promo is about Roman Raines I thought this was a great answer but I really wanted to drill in on you do you think that

punk and Vince could have existed in the last 10 years or was Vince too stuck in his ways do you think for punk to be happy I think two things are absolutely true Vince was stuck in his ways and wasn't about to change for CM Punk. And CM Punk was also entrenched in his perspective

in his ways and was not going to adjust for Vince McMahon. So I think Punk's response was right on the money. And when you think about it, perhaps that 10 years away is the reason why he's successful as he is today because the audience wanted him back. They wanted him back for a long time. I don't know how you could look at CM Punk's career as it stands today and not think that it was very, very well managed. Even the difficult part, you know, taking 10 years off. And you're right. You know, he put a stone in the water in MMA, you know, props for having the guts to do that.

But, you know, after that, he stayed relevant. He'd make appearances here and there. But he maintained his relationship with the audience. That's the fascinating thing. That's what people should be talking about with regard to CM Punk and his character and how strong of a character it is and was. When you look at someone who literally took a decade away from the business and came back with as much or more.

fanfare than he had when he left. I think it's pretty amazing. And it says a lot about his authenticity and who he is. His audience isn't as connected to a character as they are to the individual. And that's, that's impressive. Speaking of impressive, if you want to impress your loved one,

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Eric, we've got some big news that's not necessarily positive news. It felt like it was a foregone conclusion for the last few years since he was injured, but Big E made it official on social media for anyone who was curious. I entered the pro wrestling industry at age 23 with an injury history that included a torn left ACL, a torn right ACL, a torn left peck, and a broken right patella. At 39, I'm well aware that I will one day have to pay the piper. I put my body through a lot. And somehow, I feel great. I don't battle daily pain. I'm able to function normally and healthily. I'm eternally grateful for the wonderful career I stumbled into.

I pray for all of my fellow athletes and performers who have not had the same good fortune. A sincere thank you to everyone who's taken the time to follow my in-ring career. It was an immeasurable gift to get to perform. for you all. So it's that last sentence. It was. It feels like it is official. Big E is announcing his retirement from in ring action. We know he's going on to become a talking head or an analyst for WWE.

I think he's done a great job in that. He was one of the more entertaining characters in WWE for a long, long time. A lot of people thought, hey, this could be the guy. And his career was cut short so early. I mean, even now, just 39 years old, he's still not hit wrestler prime. but, well, the Lord had other plans. What do you think about Biggie's announcement in his career in retrospect? What an amazingly classy person.

And I can't wait to see him again and shake his hand. And congratulate him on an amazing career. And it makes me smile when I hear people like Biggie who appreciate the opportunity for what it really was to be able to go out and perform. in front of thousands of people who are there because they want to have fun. And you're able to be out there in the ring with your opponent or somebody else and be able to go out there and perform and deliver that. It is a gift. And to be able to walk away from it,

or perhaps he's not walking away from the business, but he's walking away from the in-ring portion of the business, to be able to do that with gratitude as opposed to, anger and bitterness or feeling sorry for yourself because of an injury. I'm always disappointed when I hear people react that way because I know that five years from now, 10 years from now, take it for me. I know what I'm talking about, you look back and you look at things completely differently than you did in the moment.

And I know a lot of these guys, sometimes they sound bitter or disappointed or angry, whatever. you hate to hear that because you know at some point they're going to regret saying it and they're going to realize that it was a blessing. They've had this unique opportunity to do what so few people ever get a chance to do. Forget about wrestling as an entertainer to be able to go out at a high level on a worldwide stage and perform your craft and to connect with the audience. yeah, it's a tough business. There's no question about it. It takes its toll in many ways.

But at the end of it all, it's a gift. And I'm glad the big he realizes it now, while he's still a part of it, because it'll allow him to enjoy the next chapter of his career, even more. So I'm, I'm really happy for it. You know, a well-built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and more importantly, maybe to me, hold up over time. That's what Quince does best. Premium materials, but thoughtful design and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather is shifting. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that truly last. We're talking organic cotton sweaters, polos for every occasion, lighter jackets that keep you warm in these changing seasons. The list just goes on and on. Quince works directly with top

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day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash 83 weeks. Free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash 83 weeks. I think so many of the accomplishments of the modern era are sort of glossed over. I know that a lot of fans my age, we celebrate, you know, the stuff happened when we were younger fans, but I just want to run through some of the accolades and accomplishments that Biggies had. He was an NXT champion. He was the Intercontinental Champion on two occasions.

He held the raw tag team titles with New Day twice. He held the SmackDown tag team titles six times. I think they're the longest reigning tag team champions in history, passing demolition. I know he won the men's money in the bank in 2021, and I know he cashed in to become WWB champion. And I think that kind of gets glossed over, but when you really take a look at his career.

It's a hell of a living career. He did it all. Like world title, NXT title, I see all the tags, longest raining tags. And by the way, he made it look fun.

I mean, if I was going to describe New Day in a word, I think that would be the word fun. And so often in wrestling, you know, we focus on the serious. But the silly is needed. Like I knew,

I knew people, I had a great aunt who loved New Day. And when my daughter was really young, she loved New Day. And when you can get a character that fans love, whether they're young or old, it has to be rooted in fun, at least in my opinion. And I think Big E was probably the epitome of that on some level. Well, you look at New Day.

I mean, they could deliver in the ring. There's no question about it. Once the bell run, what they did in the ring was as serious as anybody else's matches. But their characters were fun. You know what? I was there in 2019. I saw firsthand the way the crowd reacted to New Day. When they came through the curtain, so to speak, when they came down the stage,

the crowd was waiting for them. They were anticipating New Day. They wanted to have that new day experience that they associated with their walkout. And that is an important part of wrestling. It's not all intense, conflict, violence. You need that, I don't want to say comedic relief, but you need that lighthearted entertainment to kind of balance some of the more intensive or intense, I should say, action that you bring or stories that you bring.

So you need a balance. A new day provided that balance until the bell rung, and then they went in and delivered in an impressive way. So, you know, it's funny. You talk about all the accolades that the Biggie should be proud of at this point. And he accomplished all of those things before he reached. typical wrestling crime, right? He's just now knocking on the door, really, of that sweet spot. Because you've been in the business for such a long period of time.

You've got your own fan base that have grown up in some respects watching you or evolving with you as their fandom evolves. To think that he was able to accomplish all of that in the period of time that he had, which is a relatively short period of time is even more impressive. You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, it's hard to believe, but we're coming up on the four-year anniversary next month of when his career came to an end. Of course, we know it was an errant over-the-head, belly-to-belly suplex on the floor from Ridge Holland, and I guess he fractures his C-1 and C-6 vertebrae, but there was no spinal cord injury.

But that was it. No more in-ring for Big E after that. I wanted to ask, do you think that's an evolution of wrestling? Like once upon a time, it feels like if a guy had an injury like this in the 80s or 90s or even the early 2000s, the individual and the company would have been hand in hand in, oh, we'll figure it out later. Let's rub some dirt on it. And they would have probably been playing with fire. But it feels like now we're being more cautious.

I'm grateful for that. But I wanted to know, do you think if a big E type injury happened on Nitro back in the day? and all I can think about when as we're talking about this is the buff bagwell thunder incident. I'm not saying it's the same. I'm not saying it's identical, but I'm saying it does feel like one positive change because I know there's a lot of people who say, oh, I miss the way wrestling used to be.

I think it's like this as a positive change where, hey, for once, it feels like we're putting their performers well-being first and foremost. What would you say? Well, look, so much has changed for professional wrestlers, particularly those in WWE or even AEW. Because it's my understanding that Tony does a pretty good job

of taking care of talent who've been injured, right? That's different, right? It wasn't that way back in the 60s and the 70s and even the 80s, right? Or even some of the 90s. It wasn't that way. It wasn't until both companies, WWE and WCW started getting bigger when litigation and lawsuits and we just had to start operating differently.

It wasn't the small local, you know, territory promoter that could get away with whatever. Or wrestlers who could keep an injury secret because they didn't want to lose an opportunity. That happened as much as, you know, probably promoters asking people to go out and work hurt. There were probably just as many, if not more, wrestlers who were hurt that didn't want to tell the promoter because they didn't want to lose an opportunity. Both of those situations combined resulted in a lot of people that both you and I know very closely and personally who have a hard time walking through an airport today or are just uncomfortable sitting down watching television because of neck or back or hip injuries. So I think it's a positive advancement. I think it's one of the things that has come along with the explosion.

growth of professional wrestling as an entertainment property comes the responsibility along with it. And I think that's a benefit to talent today. Well, let's talk about our friends over at PolicyGenius. I'm really glad to hear that Big E has all of his priorities together and he's going to be able to move forward happy in life. And I want to make sure that the rest of your family can do the exact same thing. I was overwhelmed on Christmas Eve, just surrounded by my family opening their presents and what we call our tall den,

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quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com slash 83 weeks. It's time for the wrestling news update with Raj Geary. All right, all right. One of my favorite parts of the show every week. Raj Geary joining us live here. We greatly appreciate you jumping in with us, man. There's so much to talk about.

Where should we start today, Raj? I think one of the big things that happened in the past couple weeks is the ratings. Nielsen, they updated their methodology again that really benefits cable shows. And we've seen it. we've seen an uptake in all the cable TV show TV ratings. We've seen uptaking dynamite, smackdown, collision. They're all doing the best numbers this past week since Nielsen changed their methodology last September. So some good news on the ratings front for pro wrestling.

Let's talk a little bit about that. You know, I saw, of course, you have your critics online, and I get tagged in that every now and again because we have some fun here on 83 weeks. And I saw someone when they posted a great rating. rating from Dynamite, they're like, oh, I wonder how Raj and his fellow grifters, I guess that's me and you, Eric, are going to talk about this. But this wasn't like a unique change for AEW. It was for all the cable ratings, right, Raj? Absolutely.

Yeah. And it was specific to cable ratings because if you look at all the hit broadcast TV shows over that week, the change went into place, and you look at the ratings the week before, they're pretty much the same. So, yeah, the methodology changed. dynamite actually the viewership was up again this week so this would be the second week

after the change was up slightly it was 653 last week 654 this week so you know a slight change but the 18 to 49 numbers saw a big increase so I don't know if they tweaked it even more but it went from a 0.09

last week to a 0.15 this week I don't know if it was the show you know I've always when we did get the quarter hours MJF and Kenny Omega really two of the biggest movers numbers and they were both wrestling on that show so I don't know if they tweaked it further or was just the show

when the wrestlers involved Andrade has been hot since since returning to AEW and him and Omega was kind of a big match so that probably has something to do with it too but yeah I mean overall it was across the board. It wasn't just AEW. It was also Smackdown, Smackdown doing their biggest numbers

since the change. Still, so I did get the Fast Nationals for Smackdown last week. And the Fast Nationals were, let me take a look here. It was 1.4 million viewers with 432,000 in 18 to 49. So usually there's a 10% uptake. with that. So you add 10% to that near closer to 1.5 million is probably what Smackdown would have done under the old panel only rating system. But still, it was still way up from recent weeks. This past week did a, it did 1.26 million viewers with a 0.29, the 1.26. Again, the highest since September when the ratings change went into effect. I want to ask you a little bit about these ratings, and specifically what I'm looking for is, do you have a feel for how this has at all affected advertising?

Was the old way not around long enough for it to have a meaningful effect? Is this something that you're seeing being championed and discussed outside of the wrestling bubble? What context can you give us about the way the ratings changed, maybe affected the financials? Well, it was a concern. I've talked to people who definitely that we're definitely concerned about the change in the ratings and how much lower in particular the 18 to 49 numbers were. Because it just happened in September,

I don't know if we've really seen that effect. And, you know, Nielsen, and I think it just goes to show just how little tweaks that Nielsen does and how much the numbers change. just how unreliable those numbers really kind of are. Really the most reliable numbers that you see are the Netflix hours viewed because that's actual homes that are actually watching. It's not a sample size.

It's not tweaking the methodology. They do for views, but for actual hours viewed, that is the most accurate number that is actually available out there. Nielsen has shown, kind of shown their ass a little bit with how much they can really tweak stuff. and just change the ratings. And it's not like all of a sudden there's 500,000 more viewers or 300,000 more viewers watching Smackdown this week.

It's just a change that Nielsen made. So, I mean, it's always been the case with Nielsen. You know, anytime you're doing a small sample size to represent a larger universe, it's, it's going to have its flaws. Guys, isn't it? I mean, it's really interesting when you think about this in the advertising context, Conrad, But because streaming, we all know, you know, streaming and the expansion of it has dramatically affected the television business. I mean, all you have to do is watch any of your big networks.

Look at some of their prime time programming. It is not nearly what it was in many respects, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And that's because of streaming. A lot of the best content, whether it's action, drama, whatever it may be. is available on streaming platforms. So the quality of the product that's available on cable television and network television has greatly diminished because the budgets for those projects have been devastated because of streaming. So streaming has caused the money in the entertainment business to be spread about so much so now

that it's greatly affecting programming in cable and network. But if you look at the impact that streaming has had on the advertising business as it relates specifically to Nielsen, because Nielsen was the only, it was the only game in town. You know, Madison Avenue in New York, the advertising center of the universe was totally built upon and dependent upon Nielsen ratings. It was the only way to score. Well, now with streaming, there are other ways to score. and more accurate ways to score. So even though everybody, I took my first meeting with Nielsen in September of 1987, 30 days after I went to work for Vergaanya, Mike Shields, who handled all Vern's business.

And Vern, by the way, subscribe to Nielsen. He wasn't just ripping shit off out of a, out of a weekly magazine and using that, the way, you know, aggregators do his social media, Vern, subscribe to Nielsen. So we got a much more in-depth reporting that you would typically get in a Nielsen report that was available more or less to the public. But it was the only game in town. There was no choice. It was their rules, their scoring system, or don't play. Well, now with streaming, there's another way.

And I think that's the pressure that's on Nielsen right now is now Nielsen has to adapt. Networks have had to adapt. Table outlets have had to adapt. directors, writers, producers, actors, actresses, agents have had to adapt, and now Nielsen has to adapt. And this is what we're seeing now, and I find it to be really fascinating. I do want to ask, you know, as we're taking a look at, um, Raj, I know you've been a bigger critic creatively of AEW than I have. But I told Eric last week when we were spending some time together in Atlanta that I felt like last week's dynamite was one of the best in a long time. And I'll admit, we had some family stuff going on.

I haven't seen this week's. But my AEW friends tell me that this week's show was even better than last week. It feels like there's a lot of fans who maybe have changed their opinion about AEW creative with the way the bookings handling, with the way everyone is after the world title. There's been a lot of great quality matches. I heard you just give some love to Andrade. Do you feel like the show is hitting its stride differently, creatively, Rush? I do think it's been a lot better this year.

You know, a couple years ago when they were showing that CM Punk footage and the young books were taken over the show, like it had gotten really bad creatively, and you really saw a nose-time pretty much across the board attendance, ratings, you know, everything, but everything imaginable. And now, and I think a lot of it is putting faith in the people that have really been draws since the beginning, you know, MJF, Kenny Omega, I've always felt like you kind of put the focus on them and it kind of raises to show up. And they've been doing that. And And And And Andrade has really, they've really done a great job since he's come back. So I feel like all those things are hitting.

You know, this thing about multiple people going after the World Title, they've done that so many times before. I mean, you know, how many times have there been multiple people in a World Title main event on a pay-per-view? So that's, I don't think it's that. I think it's more the people involved. And I think Omega, MJF, Andrade, and that is hitting. It does seem like.

But also the new, the change in the Nielsen system. And, you know, we'll just. have to see i mean we're seeing it across the board uh but still even with the change in milson's nelson system the the ratings for dynamite this past week were really good well ratings aside no i haven't watched to uh w so i can't comment but karenra i'll take what you're saying and absolutely face value because i trust your your judgment um if the if creative is starting to tighten up which is a good thing whether it's because as raja's pointing out we're putting the focus on the right people.

And some of those people are back now. Kenny Omega's been out for a while. Now he's back. So maybe putting the emphasis on the right people like MJF and Kenny Omega and others that you know are good, solid ratings getters, now that they're back healthy. Perhaps this is the pressure that TNA is putting on AEW. You know, everybody talks about competition being good. WWE is so much better when, you know, WCW is competing or the hope was that,

you know, AEW was going to put some creative pressure on on WWE. That never really happened. But you've got AEW in their loyal fan base. Say whatever you want about them. You cannot deny that they are credibly loyal, which is a valuable thing to have a loyal audience. Now there's a little pressure on Tony and company to up their game because they don't want to get beat by TNA,

just like WWE didn't want to get beat by WCW or didn't want to get beat by AEW. So now Tony has some pressure on him creatively because he's not just the underdog, the quote-unquote, challenger brand. He also now needs to hold on to a number two position. And there is some legitimate, although it may be mostly perception at this point, there is some legitimate pressure on AEW and their fan base because DNA is breathing down their back. Yeah, and that is an excellent point. And I do think, you know, the first two weeks with TNA being on AMC and beating collision and, granted, you know, obviously collisions, the B show, but it's still TNA, which has a fraction of the budget and a fraction of the star power and beating their number two show in 18 to 49. I'm sure that probably, you know, was a little bit of a wake-up call.

like, you know, we can't just be on cruise control. And we need to start taking this seriously because particularly in a company that is so social media intense. Yeah, absolutely. Raj, I want to ask you, do you know, and again, I'm asking von der Le here, I don't know the answer to the question I'm about to ask. Do you know how the ratings were last week for collision relative to TNA? because I know that last Saturday was a unique situation for AEW. I think a lot of wrestling fans get a little bit of a hangover after they watch so much wrestling. So with Royal Rumble being essentially a matinee show here in America,

and then that night you had collision, I wondered how will you get wrestling fans who felt like, oh, I've had my fill of wrestling today. How would you get them re-engaged? And I thought Tony did a great job of, let's introduce Tomaso Champa on Wednesday and tell you that he's going to make his in-ring debut on the B show on Saturday for the title against one of our more beloved characters. And they also had Okada, who almost never works collision,

fresh off of his Tokyo Dome performance against almost like an indie darling and Adam Priest. That felt very, I know early on, we heard Tony Kahn unbusted open, and he gave a great compliment to Eric about Nitro. He said something like, I love the randomness of Nitro matches. Where else would you see Perry Saturn versus Rick Martel or Bobby Eaton versus Randy Savage. So we saw Adam Priest versus Okada, fresh off of a Tokyo Dome main event. That felt like, hey, he is making a concerted effort to load up the Saturday night show. And I felt like maybe he was doing that, A, to overcome the, uh, I just watched the rumble.

I don't know that I can convince my wife to watch two more hours of wrestling. And B, maybe I don't want to lose market share and accidentally have TNA beat me this week. Do you know what happened last week? What were the numbers? Yeah. So collision, they did their, realistically, it was probably their best numbers. And again, this is the first collision since Nielsen updated their methodology, but they did 490,000 viewers and a 0.07. Now, the week before, with the old system, they did 253,000 viewers and a 0.02.

So that was a 90, basically a 95% uptick in viewership and a 250% uptick in the 18 and 49 rating. So again, a lot of that is Nielsen changing their methodology to eat, but a lot of it is exactly what you said. Tony Kahn loading up that show. It wasn't head-to-head with the Royal Rumble. When they're head-to-head, you usually see a drastic decrease in viewers for collision pretty much almost any time it happened. I mean, even last week, that was against Saturday Night's main event when it did the 0.02, which was their lowest of all time. So I think loading up that show,

having a guy come in from WWE right off the bat and getting a title shot, I think that all worked. And it was a smart idea that paid off. So that 492,000 viewers, it was their best viewership

for that show since, I mean, if you look at it realistically as a two-hour show on a Saturday night in the normal time slot, it was, and without a big lead, because there have been episodes where they had an NBA lead. So without the lead, and it was the best number of viewership that they had in over a year.

So it shows that they can do numbers on Saturday night. It's not a, you know, at times it feels like they're just letting the show die. Before that episode, they hadn't done over 200,000 viewers in this regular time slot since, I believe since August. So, yeah, you book it right and the viewers will probably come. Well, congrats to Tony and AEW. and big congrats to Adam Priest. I'm going to give all the credit to him for the rating last week. Of course, I'm kidding, but I'm a homer.

Hey, I do want to ask you about the Royal Rumble. You know, Raj, we've seen a lot of reports about how financially successful the weekend was. I don't pretend to have any insight as to what that looks like, but I did see some rumblings that it looks like they're not going back to Saudi for the Rumble. Next year, it will be domestic. We know next year Saudi is going to get the Royal Rumble. What can you tell us about the economics of this past weekend in Saudi? Well, we don't know, because it was a sold show, so they're not getting any of the ticket sales or anything like that.

But it was a sold out show. It was a weird one because the lighting, the way they did the lighting, and they admittedly know that it was a mistake, the way it was done. It made it look like it was empty. And it was one of those weird visual tricks that if you look at photos and you zoom in and you see it looks empty and then you zoom in and you see people there. And then also scalpers had bought up all the tickets or, you know, most of the tickets and charged them at really high prices. So a $25 in U.S. general admission ticket was going for like $250. So at the end of the show, it was about 90% full. So the scalpers didn't unload all of the tickets, but it was 90% full.

The one thing is it's rumored that the amount that WW made off of the show, usually with a normal. normal Saudi show, it's 40 to 50 million. This was rumored to be about 100 million or above. And to kind of put that in perspective, last year's Royal Rumble was, did, you know, about 70,000 fans. It was the most successful non-Ressalmania WWE event that they've ever done. And that did 17 million in ticket sales. So, you know, you're talking over five times that amount that they made for the Saudi show. So, you know, when people, They're like, ah, see, this is why they shouldn't go to Saudi and things like that. But you look at the economics.

You're talking over five times that amount for this one show. Over five times their largest non-Resslemia gate. And last year's Rumble beat a lot of WrestleMania's as well. Actually, most wrestlingias, they're outside of a few. So just a huge moneymaker. And so when you see them doing these pay-per-views out, these PLEs out in Saudi Arabia, you know what? Yeah, it's probably one of the reasons why Mark Shapiro came out and said both WWE and UFC are $20 billion companies. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, they're money-making machines right now. But you also don't, no matter how much money you're making, you know, popularity can be a fleeting thing, as we've seen over the year. So you still want to keep the creative strong. I think they hit a home run with the CM Punk, Roman Rain stuff. But you definitely want to keep the creativity. creative strong. And you don't want that, you don't want that to fall because it wasn't that long ago when they weren't selling out these arenas and charging and being able to charge these high ticket prices. So you definitely don't want to, you know, rest on your laurels.

That promo was great, by the way. Absolutely. Get excited about a promo because I've seen and been a part of some really good ones. That was a great promo. I would have liked to have just been the referee and the race. at that point. That was a good. That struck all the cords. You know, I think to be critical, there were a couple periods during that promo when I went, oh, I wish they would have just left that out. You know what I mean? Because there was a point in the middle where it felt like it was just not moving anywhere. It was starting to slow down a little bit. And, you know, once you get them and you've got

their attention, you want to hold on to them. You don't want to feel like you're losing them. and I think it just got a little verbose, much like I do on this show, it got a little verbose in the middle, but then it finished so strong. It was just, it was a classic promo. I loved it.

Yeah, it did feel like it was tapering off a little bit, and then Roman started cooking and, and took it home. It's funny watching Roman, and I'm going to go back and watch this one. I'd like to watch it with somebody who was really interested in learning how to do a great promo,

and just keep the audio off, and just focus on facial expressions. Because that's when Roman, when he finally hit his gear, and I was waiting for him, go, man, I mean, I don't know Roman well enough to have a sense of his timing or his cadence or anything like that, but I'm thinking, come on, dude, what are you waiting for? They're waiting for you.

Why are you holding back? And then once he let it go, and he did it, you know, with facial expressions, You could see the gears in his brain start changing and you can see it all on his face. It was really, really well done. Yeah, and it was one of those where you don't know where the fiction ends and the reality begins. And I think that sometimes makes wrestling the best. And when you can find that when you've got a real issue that the audience is aware of, you're not building the whole story on it, but you can throw those, a little bit of that

backstory in here, there to help tie it all together. And what that does is it makes it believable. You're giving the audience permission to believe that this is real because they're telling you things, they're using things that you know are true. Therefore, it allows you to believe what you're seeing and hearing, therefore, is true. Or at least it could be. That's the magic of taking a real-life situation and finding the right way to weave it into a current store. I loved it. Yeah. And just off of that one promo, it kind of feels like the biggest WrestleMania match,

singles match that they've had in a long time. And you know, I'm sorry, guys, I can just get excited about this stuff. And the mistake that a lot of less experienced performers, and by that I mean people that haven't been doing it at a high level for 10 years, the mistake they make when they bring in the backstory is they rely too much on it. It becomes the focus of the story. And that's old news. People won't care.

But the way they just kind of salt and peppered it in here and there, again, I thought it was really, really well done. Raj, I want to ask you a little bit about the Royal Rumble. I know that a lot of us, myself included, we kind of expected Chris Jericho to be there. He was not. we did see the debut of Roy's Keys, but I thought that even that was interesting and worth pointing out. Eric, do you remember a time in history where WWE acknowledged someone's previous name,

like the big Jumbotron said Powerhouse Hobbs? And then it transitioned into Roy's Keys. And even the lower third said formerly known as Powerhouse Hobbs. I almost never remember seeing that. I can't think of another time when I remember seeing that. What did you make of that, Eric? And then, Raj, I want to hear from you. when do we think we'll see Chris Jericho?

I thought it was really awkward. In effect, I think we talked about this the week before. We talked about, is this the right time to introduce voice keys? And I thought not for the very reason that the audience didn't know how to react to them. It's like they wanted to react, but they didn't know what they or who. they were reacting to. And then to stutter step, it literally brought the audience in by tripping them.

It's like, come on into my house. Come on in. Have a glass of wine. Have some dinner. Oh, sorry, didn't mean to trip you. They tripped up the audience with that powerhouse hobbs and then transitioned to Royce Keys. It was confusing and awkward.

And really surprised me. That's not typically a WWE kind of move. I thought it was a fumble. conceptually, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. And in fairness, we won't really know if I'm white or not because that was not the right audience to do it too. Had they tried that same device to introduce Royce Keys in the U.S. in front of a U.S. domestic audience, perhaps. But man, it was like a double whammy. You know, you're introducing somebody that the local audience really doesn't know, and you're doing it with a stutter step, which is bizarre.

Yeah, you're exactly right. We did talk about that last week, how debuting him in Saudi Arabia would be the wrong move. Because AEW doesn't air on television out there. They're on a streaming service, I believe it's called Starsplay, that has 2.5 million subscribers total over the entire Middle East. So it's a really small amount of people that are watching AEW. And I know, like when I say, you know, no one Saudi is watching AEW.

That's why Powerhouse Hobbs, you know, got no reaction. And then I have people be like, hey, there was an AEW sign in the crowd. Literally, you know, literally zero people are watching AEW. But vast majority of the year are not, they're not familiar with who he is. And, you know, we discussed the last week that it would be a mistake debuting him there. They did. He got a very mild reaction. And I just think if they would have waited until Monday in Philly, that first reaction would have been a lot bigger.

But, you know, that being said, in the long run, it doesn't matter if he's going to get over, he's going to get over. But it is always nice seeing that first reaction, you know, because sometimes, you know, those are the memories that last, like AJ Stiles. When he first debuted at the Royal Rumble, you always remember that moment or Chris Jericho coming in. So it felt like an opportunity that kind of went to waste. But again, if he's going to be a star, he's going to be a star regardless. As for Chris Jericho, still on the AEW roster page. He's playing it close to the best. He's not tipping his hand.

So who knows? I mean, did he sign an extension with AEW? Has Tony Khan added time to his contract for, you know, missing time for concerts and things like that? I mean, all those things are possibilities. Tony Kahn has added time in the past to the guys when they were injured and things like that, which is a common practice that WWE does. So, I mean, those could all be possibilities. But, you know, that makes it more fun not knowing.

And, you know, knowing Chris Jericho in the past, when people kind of got tipped off to when he was going to show up, he did try to get him off the scent. So we'll see where he pops up. I still think it's going to be WWE. I think it'd be most effective. in WWE. And, you know, we saw this with WWF and WCW. But going back and forward just really freshenes up talent and gives them a fresh coat of paint.

So, you know, I think it really would benefit Jericho to move. Just like there are some guys in WWF, I think could, WW, sorry, they could benefit by moving to AEW. But you look at Chris Jericho. First of all, I think financially he's probably very, very, very well set. I don't think Chris is going to necessarily do something just for the money, but let's be honest about it. If Chris has the opportunity and Tony is still interested in Chris, just a purely financial perspective, AEW would be a better choice. Chris is not going to make the amount of money in WWE on a one-year farewell tour

that he could conceivably make in AEW over the next two, three, three years. Yeah. If you were a betting man, Raj, what do you think we'll see Jericho at Elimination Chamber, WrestleMania, the Monday after WrestleMania? What do you think makes the most sense at this point, Rod?

I think we'll see him. If I was putting money on it, I would bet that we see Jericho in WWE by the summer. Yeah, I think that's a safe bet. I would go so far as to say, I think it's going to be WrestleMania weekend,

and I'll include Monday on that. But between, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, it feels like you're going to be looking for some big surprise or some new way to kick off a new exciting thing. And if you'll recall, Goldberg made the jump from WCW. Our guest WCW folded, but he made his WWW the Monday after WrestleMania. It feels like dropping him in the Monday after you finish a lot of your major stories, Eric, could be the best possible timing for Jerry.

It's kind of brilliant. It falls into the brilliant category. That would be the smartest move you could. make. Isn't that wild too? You mentioned Goldberg. Like, Austin's last match was the night before and Goldberg's WWE debut was the next day. We're that close. It felt like to getting an Austin Goldberg dream match. It just never, never happened.

Anything else on the radar this week, Raj? We need to hit for you. I think that's about it. Um, yeah, yeah, those were, those were the major items. Obviously the Royal Rumble and now, uh, all eyes on WrestleMania. And then, you know, we're going to have WrestleMania and Saudi. Hopefully they fix a lot of the problems that they had with the Royal Rumble, especially as as insignificant as it sounds, the lighting was definitely a big issue. No, I was watching with Conrad. We were both sitting there with our ad-free shows family.

We're watching on the big screen. Conrad's sitting right next to me. We were looking at each other going, are there people in those? What? The place is half empty. And then where you can tell on television, where we can tell on television is when the house lights went up. Like if there was something happening arena-wide.

They would bring the house lights up. And then you could see there were bodies in those seats. But as soon as the house lights would come back down because the action was now in the ring, then all you saw was those little blowing headlights that just really was distracting visually. Yeah, it seemed like they were trying to copy the Intuit Dome, which is where they had the raw Netflix debut, which had all those red lights. But it didn't work. And they know it, so I'm sure they'll fix it.

It is interesting to build a stadium for one show. And it's because you don't have the benefit of hindsight and being able to test things out. And it's, you know, it's go. And then I'll suffer the consequences. It would have been really interesting to be sitting in guerrilla next to Vince McMahon. When that white came up and it looked like there was nobody. And you would imagine the audio track that you'd have been able to lift from that scene? Yeah.

He would have lost it. Yeah. Well, Raj, tell everybody how they can keep up with you every week on social media. Yeah, follow me on Twitter at the Rodgerie. And thanks again, guys. Appreciate it. You're going to talk a little bit more about AJ Styles and the Royal Rumble. But first, let's talk about Better Wild.

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Right now, BetterWild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at betterwild.com slash bischoff. That's betterwild.com slash bischoff for up to 40% off your order, betterwild.com slash bischoff. So, Eric, I'm excited for us to talk about some more news and notes that we've got this week. I definitely want to talk about AJ Stiles, but we've still got a great live studio audience. I want to hit some of these questions and see what we got going here.

King of Arts 316 says, Mr. Bischoff, in your expert opinion, how can WWE have better shows instead of the bullshit it is now? I have seen some pushback, and I don't know if you've seen this, but it feels like there is an undercurrent

of anti-Triple-H sentiment building on the IWC. Maybe they think he's overexposed, I don't know if you've seen the cover of the new video games, but I guess there's a lot of different alternate covers. He's on most of them. He did the intro video at the Royal Rumble. He's definitely positioned himself to be out front.

And I wonder how much of the criticism of the booking is really just, oh, I'm tired of seeing this guy. He's overexposed. I think you're uniquely qualified to answer this, because when you were on top of the mountain in WCW, you were not only running things behind the scenes, but you were a fabulous on-screen character. So even guys like Dave Meltzer who would be complimentary of your on-camera work, they would say,

maybe there was too much bisch off on this show. Do you think that Triple H is tipping the scales in that direction? Or is this anti-WWE booking stuff coming from somewhere else? I think it's a combination of a number of things. I think it's, you know, first of all, it's the internet wrestling community who by their nature are miserable fucks for the most part and just need something to complain about because they feel they feel like they're part of something if they're part of a group that is being critical. It's just the nation.

It's not just wrestling. It's social media. So it's just that kind of ambient noise, if you will, that that's a part of the internet wrestling community. That's number one. Number two, I can kind of see, I see what's happening maybe from a slightly different perspective, I don't think Paul Levec, the individual, feels any need to push himself. In fact, I'm pretty certain that if you sat down and talked to Paul, he probably would prefer

not to. He would probably prefer to push the stars. But here's the reality. Stars come and go for whatever reason, hopefully because they're. They've had a long career and they ended up riding you off into the sunset and come back like the undertaker in our part of the team, but in a much different way where you're no longer out in front. Corporately, you need that face of the company, not face of the ring necessarily, but you need that executive who is the face of your brand. it was Vince McMahon. Now it's Paul Levec.

So from a corporate perspective, if I'm Mark Shapiro or Ari Emanuel in particular, or Nick Kahn, I want my number one corporate exec to be just as familiar to the business community as he or she would be to the wrestling community. So Paul Levec is in a unique situation in the sense that he was front and center, in many respects, the face of the company, if not the face, the co-face of the co-face. I don't think anybody's ever used that one before, but it's a good one. He was the co-face of the company for what, the last 20 years. So he's going to be, he would have been and always will be such a big part of the history of WWE.

but now he's the corporate executive that also needs to be commercialized as the face of the brand. So as a wrestling fan, you're now seeing Pallivac everywhere. And of course, the natural tendency, particularly among the wrestling community, is he's just trying to get himself over. He's hogging the camera time. He's making it all about him. I am 100% sure that is not the case. and I'm almost as sure that if Paul had his choice, he wouldn't be doing it, not to the extent that he is.

But unless you've been there, it's hard to see both sides of that coin. Here's one awesome sauce. What are your thoughts on wrestling becoming more political? I don't like it. Wrestling is an escape. Crowds chanting Constitution like Congress is watching or cares. This comes up, of course, because we've seen on the WWE side of things,

Triple H is a part of, I guess Trump's cabinet. He's a regular visitor to the White House as a part of their commitment to physical fitness. And I think earlier this week on Dynamite, I haven't seen the episode, but I've seen some clips online where there was an F-I chant before the main event with Brody King and MJF. And as a rule, we don't talk about politics here on the show. We want this to be your fun escape. But I think this is a great question. Should wrestling shy away from politics, Eric? or is that even possible now in 2026?

Yes, it's possible. And yes, wrestling should avoid becoming a political platform at all cost possible. Practical. You know, you want to go out there with, you want to start, look, go woke, go broke. You don't have to believe me. You may not disagree. You may not agree with anything that I have to say from a business perspective, and that's fine.

but take a look at what's happening to companies that are stepping out in front of these social political issues. They're burning to the ground. They no longer even call the fire department. They just let it burn to the ground. It's stupid. It's not going to help. Look at the controversy around the NFL right now.

It's just when you embrace that, you also embrace the, the 50% or more, depending on what you're embracing of the audience that feels just as strongly against the things that you believe in as you believe in them. Why would you do that? Why would you intentionally promote that? Are you stupid? Do you just not understand? Because guess what?

It's not just your company's brand that you're choosing to embrace these political, particularly the hot button issues. You're choosing that. That's your choice. It's your company. It's your brand. But how does your network feel about that? How do the advertisers who are way more sensitive to that stuff because they understand

far more than you do as a wrestler or as a fan or even as a producer? they understand far more acutely than you do the risks involved in that. So before anybody gets too overly enthusiastic about, you know, sharing their political positions on their favorite live wrestling show, just understand that there are advertisers out there that may not agree with you. And guess who, guess who that hurts, the very company that you're buying a ticket from. So just be aware, be careful, be mature, leave your politics at home. Well said, I appreciate you saying that. Hey, I wanted to ask you about LeBron James.

I don't know if you saw, but this week, he was interviewed and asked about the way maybe fans have viewed him differently through his career. He basically said he was embracing the villain role when he changed teams to Miami and even compared it to Hulk Hogan joining the NWO. He said, I grew up watching Hulk Hogan, and at one point, Hulk Hogan was like America's like everyone loved him, what it means to be an American. And then one day, he went to the NWO, and people couldn't understand how he tagged up with the enemy. They was like, what is going on?

Everybody just booed him. He went from wearing red and yellow to black and white. One, we're entertainers as well. Listen, we want to go out and have fun, smile, and be happy, because that's what brings us joy. But we can tap into the Joker role. if y'all make us now. We can get there too now and still be able to perform at a high level.

I love that LeBron James, who a lot of people consider to be the goat of basketball, coming out and saying, hey, I just embraced my Hulk Hogan NWO. How cool is that? I think the coolest part is that he's a wrestling fan, just like the rest of us. Yes. He may be the ultimate athlete in so many respects. I mean, he's an amazing, amazing athlete. but the fact that this amazing athlete is just like the rest of us and he was a wrestling fan too,

I think is really cool. Yeah, I'm a big fan of LeBron coming out and making that comparison. Speaking of Hulk Hogan, you know, I don't know that you have any insights, but I saw some people sort of panicking this week, and we got a couple of questions here live, including one from PJ Taints, who's been a member for a long time. What are your thoughts about real American beer dropping Hogan from the can? Also, do you have any business relationship with them? Well, of course, real American freestyle.

and Real American Beer together. But I mean, them changing a can design. I don't feel like that's a need to hit an alarm. Like, seasonally, people change designs all the time. This is a marketing effort. I don't think that means the Hulkster's gone for good off the can. That can't be, right, Eric? Look, I'm not involved at all on the Real American Beer business side of things,

so I don't have any unique insight into that. Other than to say that it's a business, and there are a lot of people involved in that business from distributors, to the consumer, obviously, in distributors. And it was a rather complicated situation with regard to Holt's passing. So I think the company is adapting and moving, but Hulk is still, you know, alive in spirit with all of us. I know he certainly is at Real American Freestyle.

We talk about him often. You see Nick Hogan come out and put the bouts on our champions. And Nick has a piece of equity in Real American Freestyle as a result, I believe. I'm not involved in that portion of our business, but Nick is going to be there. Real American Beer is hugely successful, going to continue its success, continue to grow, and probably introduce more product along the way. But that's just what I hear kind of in the hallways, so to speak. I'm not really involved in the business.

I want to encourage everybody, if you've been on the fence, go grab some right now, real American beer.com. They are doing a limited run of these whole Coke and cans. if you don't have any yet, or even giving away some autographed ones. I guess the Hulksder autographs some. And having an autograph case of that is going to be a worthwhile investment long term. If you grew up in the state of Alabama, you know when they did those Mayor Bryant glass Coke bottles, there's still probably two dozen families that could go to their garage and there's unopened bottles there.

They're just collector's items that people love to display for years and years or decades and decades, and Real American Beer.com can hook you up. If you haven't already, I want you to know that there's multiple cans, with the hulks are on it. Not just that WrestleMania with the flag, but they've got the red and yellow can. Some really cool designs. If you're a Hulk Hogan collector,

if they are going to be making a switch, I'm sure it's short term, but if they are going to be, these are like limited edition, almost become collector's items. I think that's something that I wouldn't have ever imagined would exist for this product, but I know I've got a lot of friends,

including Steve Patty, who works with us on the mortgage side. He proudly displays his autographed case right there at his home studio, his home desk. It's a cool collectible to have. So I want to encourage everybody, go check it out at real American beer.com. Raven has a great question or was a great question from Conan, believe it or not. It happened over on Twitter where there was a question posed to Conan. I haven't listened to every Raven podcast or shoot out there, so I don't know if he's touched

on this. But during Raven's feud with DDP, he said Jake favored you the most, but he gave me the DDT. Where there ever plans to bring Jake Roberts in at this time, do you have any info Conan? And Conan said, I think I've heard it was just those guys messing around. I don't think there was any plans for Jake. Conrad,

have you ever gone over this with Eric? So this feud would have been happening in 1998. Jake Roberts was finished with WWE at that point. Of course, we know he came back in 96, but I think he left in 97. So he was available in 98. He showed up in ECW,

I think in 99. You know, when the NWO and WCW and Nitro was at its peak, call it 97, 98, 99, were there ever any conversations about bringing Jake in? Not even suggesting necessarily that it would be in front of the camera, but I know at times you've said, hey, what we really needed in WCW was our Paterson.

And famously back in 1992, when Pat Patterson was at home, I think Jake felt like he was next in line for that opportunity when he didn't get it. He decided, okay, I'm going to go work for Ted Turner in WCW. That didn't really work out, but he loved the idea of working behind the scenes

creatively, but I don't know that it ever really happened. Was it ever seriously discussed in WCW? No, but I wish it would have been. Now, you know, perhaps Paige and Kevin Nash or, you know, Kevin Sullivan, you know, there may have been discussions that I wasn't a part of. Don't get me wrong. It's likely at some point. But there was never any discussions had with me about,

about that, but I wish there would have been. Now, in fairness to myself, I never really got to know Jake. I never, I worked a little bit with Jake in WCW when I first arrived. I think I did a few interviews with him. Certainly not, didn't work with him in any way that would have allowed me to get to know his process or what he brought to the table creatively. I didn't learn any of that really until afterwards, until after I'd left WCW. And then I started talking to people who did work closely with Jay. Now, in fairness, Jake had been on a little bit of a personal roller coaster during that period of time as well.

So I wasn't necessarily leaning into people that I knew, you know, could have issues, so to speak. But had the situation been right timing, I think what I've learned since then is that Jake could have quite easily fit into that Pat Patterson role that I coveted so much that I needed so much we needed somebody who could think outside of the box creatively but who also understood psychology as well as Jake did so I in retrospect I wish I would have had that opportunity and it would have been really cool to think about Jake working with Kevin Sullivan. It feels like to get.

What I've learned since, I think it, and talking to Jake, you know, Jake comes out to Cody, Wyoming. His wife is from Cody, believe it or not. Oh. Yeah, Jake comes out in the summer. I just saw him last summer. We went to the rodeo together. So he got to know Jake a little differently,

and certainly because of the mutual context that we have learned of Jake and what his capabilities are so much more sense. I want to highly recommend that you get out there and check out Cody Wyoming. I think this is going to be the year that I make the trek out. I also want to talk about Cody's house show idea. But before we do, I want to remind you that tomorrow is the Super Bowl and prize picks is the place to be. I got to tell you, when it comes to watching the big game,

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after you play your first $5 lineup. That's 83 weeks to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks, it's good to be right. So Eric Cody is famous for doing these crazy ideas that he shares on his podcast every now and again. And he shared a crazy idea about maybe he should get a tribal tattoo like the Samoan guys do. And thankfully, that was a drunken idea. He did not do that. But he did have a really great idea.

And it was about house shows. It's come out that he pitched the WWE on doing monthly house shows. He says, I suggested to some of the top brass in the company for a myriad of reasons, camaraderie, the reps, the general sense of working here. It's hard to think you work somewhere if you're only there a couple of days a week, right? Versus the schedule for when we first started where it was full tours, live events,

and then you come to TV and you're home less time. Two days, right? And some days a day and a half, right? Half the day is a travel day, but I suggested to them, I said, run one weekend a month. Call them house shows. Make them almost poke the fourth wall a little bit in terms of what they are. They're canon, but they're not.

you're going to see some of the stuff you see on TV, but it's going to be a bit more of a mixed bag, and you're going to see some people you've never seen before who are getting their first rep in front of you and run them that way where there's an intimacy to them that they advertise. This is a house show. That's what you guys are getting, and it's going to be awesome. They're so fun, so fun.

And I know that some of our listeners, they think, well, house shows are inconsequential, and I only want to see storyline advancement. I would challenge you and say the people who are saying that, I have never actually been to a live event in the house show. I hate watching a live show that's on TV because I know that, hey, that show is not for me. That show is for the television audience at home. There's going to be dead periods where there's things happening in the backstage area that I can't see or hear or I'm not hearing the commentary.

I don't have the context of all the promos. It's just not the same thing. But if you go to a live event, if you go to a house show and AEW is doing one next weekend in Brisbane, and I'm really excited for those wrestlers, because this is where the, they get to try stuff, fun stuff, just be themselves, more improv. It's not so tight on, hey, you got to hit your time or we're all screwed. If you go over a couple of minutes and everybody had fun, it's no big deal. I like that. It feels like the show is for us. I think Cody's on to something. I would love to see a once a month loop, a weekend loop of house shows. You could be

selective and hit the major markets if that's what you wanted to do, but I still think it could work even without all of the big names where you maybe burn through a P&L and you get right into the red ink if you have big name talent like a Roman reins is going to cost well into the six figures for a single appearance. Maybe that doesn't work, but it doesn't mean that you couldn't have fun without Roman, right? There's such a great idea, and it's really timely. It's such a great idea. One of the challenges, I mean, look at how much, even when I was in,

WWE in 2019 for my almost cup of coffee, house shows were a major issue, like a bad one. They were bleeding, just not profitable under the old system of a house show routing and the number of events and so forth. So they completely went the other way and put all of their resources into television, And much like I did in 1992 or 93, when I basically forced Bob Deuce Hand and we shut down all the house shows and only produced TV, we did it for different reasons. But now you've got all of this talent. And Cody, you know, put it so clearly, you know, how do you feel like you're part of anything when the only time you're together is at TV?

And TV is pretty hectic. You don't really get a chance to riff. You don't get a chance to exchange ideas. You don't really have a chance to sit down and talk about. things creatively. You don't get that bar and car time where so much of the great stuff in professional wrestling was conceived, either in a back of a car, right into the next town with a beverage or two or sitting at the bar after the show and talking about what you just experience and what maybe you want to try next time. And that's where so many great ideas were

born. And that opportunity no longer exists. But if you had a monthly house tour, or a monthly house show, as Cody's suggesting here, Friday night, Saturday night, maybe a Sunday matinee, perhaps. I don't know, try it. What's the worst it could happen? And yeah, you can have your upper middle, not main event necessarily, but you can have your LA nights making a special appearance.

You can have that extremely high level of talent that can be the superstar in that particular show. But you could also call up some people from Ann Now, granted, the people in NXT, they get to work in front of a studio, but it's a studio audience. It's not the same thing. It's better than no audience in terms of your ability to work the crowd and learn how to get the crowd to react. It's better than nothing, but it's not nearly as good as 1,500 people, 2,000 people, 3,000 people that spent their money just because they wanted to come see you perform. and it's a different crowd, it's a different environment.

And to Cody's point, talent needs those reps too, not just reps in front of a studio audience, not just reps on Netflix or not just reps on USA and television. They need those house show reps. And not only does it make you feel like you're part of something you're going to learn, you're going to get experience in front of a different crowd, different type of crowd. and it's also an opportunity for you to try some things. So if you're in NXT or you're in WWE and you're working together on a house show, you haven't really started your program on television yet, but you know it's coming.

Work your stuff out at a house show. Try some new things there that you can't try on TV. Nobody's willing to try anything new on TV. You're going to do the things that you know work and get the reaction you want. But a house show is when you get to experiment in a fun way and the audience gets a chance to participate. And oh, yeah, those reps keep you from getting hurt. Now, I'm never a wrestler.

Don't ever try to pretend I was. But I've known a lot of them. And the one thing that I remember hearing them all say from the beginning of my wrestling career was how difficult it is to take time off. Because when you're not taking those bumps, you get deconditioned from bumping very quickly from what I've been told. Right. So getting out.

out there and taking those bombs and performing in front of a live crowd helps you from being injured when it matters. I hope that house shows make a return. I, for one, would be really into that. I don't know if you saw this, but Tony Kahn recently did an interview about Sting's son, Steve Borden, saying that his development is a huge priority for AEW. He said, Stephen has never been on AEW TV, but he's somebody we're developing. I have so much respect for Stephen.

he's a rising young wrestler. He played college football at Kentucky. I followed his football career. And now I'm proud to say we're working on developing him as a pro wrestler for AEW. But he also said, Eric, I don't know if you saw this, but Tony is a big fan of licensing theme songs. And he licensed the old NWA slash WCW theme song that Sting used, specifically going back to like old school Sting,

like when he beat Flair for the world title for the first time. I think the name of the song is Turbocharged. I don't know if you can hear this, but I'm going to try to play the first few seconds. Oh, yeah. So to me, that, that to me is still like the iconic Sting theme. That is the one I think of the most when I think of Sting. And the idea that we've got his son training to be a wrestler, and he's going to use that theme song.

I'm not trying to be a homer. But boy, I'm pretty excited about it. I hope it works out as well as it has for Charlotte Flair when she was doing the figure eight, doing the woo and wearing the robes. I know sometimes that doesn't work, but it worked for Charlotte Flair. Am I wrong in hoping that it works for Stephen Borden?

Because that would be so cool to me as a fan. No, you're not wrong at all. And I agree with you. I hope it works. Here's my other take. This is the producer in me. And the guy who's seen similar situations in the past. Steve Borden is going to have to be his own character and comparing him, even in a fun way, to sting his father.

It can be fun. It can also get to the point where it can slow you down and become a challenge. He's got to be his own character. But I think to embrace it, acknowledge it, you know, certainly it's the reason that he's in a position that he's into. today, both in terms of his desire to get in the ring, having watched his father all those years and seeing what that sting character became, who wouldn't want to walk in those footsteps, right? But he's going to have to learn how to do it on his own, because if he realized too much on the footprints that his father left before him, he'll have a hard time filling him. But

if he makes his own footprints, he'll be well on his way. Something else happened this past week. It was a big anniversary that I wanted to ask you about. know that you and I spent a ton of time talking about it, but a lot of fans, myself included, considered this past week to have been the anniversary of the greatest angle the WWF ever did. Of course, I'm talking about Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. They didn't do Saturday night's main event. It was called the main event. And it happened in 1988, February 5th. So a couple of days ago, actually, when you and I were set to record on Thursday, it was the exact anniversary. And this has been talked about for a long time because I guess some

newspaper somewhere once reported that 33 million people had watched and and that number had been echoed forever and ever. Well, it's come out since. It was actually closer to 27 million, but who's counting? Still, what 26.6 million people. And I absolutely love this. This is the evil twin referee, if you'll recall, where they had both Hebner's there. I think WWF fans didn't realize that Dave Hebner had a brother Earl.

and, you know, clearly they had done the plastic surgery, man, and they stole the title. And of course, Andre upon pinning, even though Hulk had kicked out, he just awards Ted DiBiase the world title. And for a few days, Deviasi made appearances, some on cable TV as the WWF champion before

ultimately Jack Tunney stepped in. That was stripped. We set a new tournament, and we crowned a new champion at WrestleMania 4. But it's a consequential week because not only is it the biggest rating in the history of wrestling as far as I know, but it was Hogan and Andre on primetime television. It was creatively a master class with the twin evil referee. And if you're an old belt mark like me, it was the debut of arguably the most beloved belt of all time,

the winged eagle that is synonymous with Brett Hart and Randy Savage and Sean Michaels, but of course nobody bigger than Hulk Hogan. And I know that you weren't there. You weren't even involved in WCW in 1988. You're still trying to figure some things out, whatever's left. I was working for Vern. I had been in the business for one year by then.

What did you think, were you watching the WWF at the time? Did you see the angle? And I'm sure this came up through the years with your old pal Hulk Hogan. How do you think he felt about that angle? Was that his very favorite story besides the NWO or was there something else?

No, I think it was. You know, Hulk just had such high regard for Andre that whenever Hulk talked about anything that had to do with Andre, he was in a different, he was in a different frame of mind. He really, really respected Andre and I think understood what Andre did for Hulk Hogan, the character. Just such a high degree of reverence. But I do think that that was probably one of his favorites. I mean, it was, as you pointed out, It was a master class. I mean, talk about swerve. The wrestling swerves were really defined, if not invented on that particular show. I think it's arguably the very best piece of creative WWE ever did. And it's uniquely 80s. Like sometimes you go watch a movie like lethal weapon or die hard or one of those classic action movies that we all love.

And yes, there's some cheesiness and there's some campiness. But at the time in the 80s, man, it was badass. and if you watch that program through that same lens of the same way we were watching lethal weapon and die hard and stuff like that, it was just fantastic. I love that we got to talk about it and I hope that fans will go check it out. It was February 5th, 1988. What a moment it was. And we're going to be talking a little bit about AJ Styles.

I feel like we've saved the best for last. I am going to ask Eric about T&A, Sue and Gil Kim, and we're still got a few questions that we can get in from you. So we've got Eric a few more minutes. Keep those questions coming. But right now I want to talk about Mando. You know, a lot of us, we have to get nervous about our first date, at least once upon a time. Hey, what do I wear?

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It feels like this is the end of his in-ring WWE career. I don't know for sure that it's the end of his in-ring career, though. You and I were fortunate enough to get to watch this side by side. And at the end of the match, I think we both sort of expected him to take his gloves off and leave him in the center of the ring. He sees that and then decided not to. It held up his hands.

And a few days prior to that, it was revealed that he had trademarked the P1 logo. And I think a lot of people, myself included, just thought, well, this is all going to be a part of the WWE Unreal series that they're putting together. It's just going to be a swerve. Whilst they have one of their contracted talent like Nakamura say, yeah, AJ told me months ago he's retiring at the Royal Rumble. It just felt like, oh, this is very obviously a story, and they're going to swerve us, and maybe it still is.

But a little birdie says, no, that's not true. He really is finished with WWE, but probably not finished wrestling. and he even did an interview with Stephanie McMahon where he said that everyone is afforded one fake retirement, something like that. When she asked specifically about the gloves, he says, I don't know why I kept the gloves on. I don't know. Never say never, right?

That's the saying. I think everyone's allowed at least one time to come out of retirement. I'm not saying that I'll do it anytime soon. What if my son wrestles? The opportunity to tag with him once? You never know. So there'll be a time when the gloves never go back on. it may be now, but we'll see.

I wanted to ask you, what did you think of the send-off that WWE gave him or didn't give him? I say that because when we saw the farewell tour for John Sina, we knew more than a year in advance, and we had just a huge celebration of John Sina. I didn't feel like we got that as much with AJ. They didn't empty the locker room. They didn't send all the superstars out to celebrate him. That didn't happen. I'm not saying it won't happen because on the 23rd, WWE Monday Night Raw is going to be in Atlanta, Georgia.

Perhaps it's there. But there were no friends, no family, none of that. And maybe it was just because it was in Saudi Arabia and logistically, that was tough and challenging. What did you think of the farewell, the sendoff that WWB gave AJ Styles? And what do you think is next for him? Either by design or default, default being what you just explained, it just being logistically, you know, too hard to coordinate because it was in Saudi. or by design because AJ himself hasn't made up his mind.

I mean, what if, what if, and I'm not suggesting it was, but what if that moment that you and I were sitting together watching when we thought, okay, he's going to put his gloves in ring, ceremonial goodbye, right? Just before he dropped him on the mat, put him back on or held on to him. What if that was real? What if AJ had been considering retiring right there, right then? Maybe that was his plan going into the match. Maybe that was his plan as soon as the match finished.

But what if in those final moments he went, I don't know, what if my Sunday decides to wrestle? Or what if I changed my mind? Maybe I'm just not quite sure yet. maybe it's real. That could be real. And if so, good for AJ. From a fan's perspective, I wanted more for AJ.

I wanted to experience something more. Whatever kind of send up. Not necessarily a John Cena tour, because let's be honest, as much as I respect and like AJ Styles, he's not John Cena. He's not the undertaker. Right? So it's not exactly the same thing.

And you can't have that incredible farewell tour kind of platform for everybody that retires, even really successful performers. It's not realistic. But I did want more for AJ. If that indeed was going to be his last match, I wanted to share a moment with AJ that I didn't get to share as a fan. Catherine Summers has been with us a long time and she says, I saw the AJ

Stiles match at the Rumble and it felt like AJ's retirement match should have been at WrestleMania. Do you think WWE should have given AJ a better send off? I'm on a reserve judgment. I still think they may do something on the 23rd. I don't have any inside knowledge, but it just feels like it's almost in his backyard relative to where he lives.

It feels like that would be a no-brainer to celebrate AJ if that's what they're going to do. But I also felt like, if I'm honest with you, it was a little weird where when he put the gloves back on, it felt like maybe not everybody was happy with that. I don't know. I don't have any inside information. But when Rosenberg jumps on the post game and says, I talked to AJ earlier and he's done, he told me he's done. And then when Triple H is on that same desk and he's asked, he says, hey, AJ told us he doesn't want to wrestle anymore. It almost felt like they're posturing too much. And that's the reason I say,

I think we're going to see him do some more stuff. And as an AJ fan, I hope he does a farewell tour globally. I'd love to see him at Russell Kingdom next year. I would love to see him do a big Wembley show for AEW. I think it would be cool if we saw a main event, something in Arena, Mexico, or headline of Triple Mania, like, why wouldn't you pop up in TNA and have one farewell match there?

Like, if you really are going to, you know, do a farewell tour, there's more to wrestling and more to AJ's career than just WWV. At all those places, why not?

What do you say? It depends on your goals. You know, if it were me and I still had the desire to perform and I knew that my opportunities in WWE were limited in terms of what I wanted to do. But if I had the opportunity to pick up the phone and get myself booked for something really exciting in Japan or Australia or the UK, and I have the opportunity to work with a few people outside of WWE

that I really wanted to work with because I still want to work. I still want to get out there and perform. And I still feel like I have enough to give where I can go out and do a good job, not let people down. Because people have a certain expectation of AJ Stiles, right? Look what he's done. Look at his body of work. When you see AJ's now, AJ Styles' name on a card,

you have a certain expectation. Well, as an athlete, you know that. And you also know how realistic it is for you to live up to that expectation. Most guys don't. Most guys lose sight of that part. Most guys think they're able to go out and do things that the audience is expecting, but they really can't, or at least not as well as they used to. And then there's a level of disappointment, either in the performer themselves

because they know or amongst the fans, which would be worse, right? But if AJ still knows that he can go out there and deliver on the expectation, and AJ has a very high expectation of himself, number one, that I do know from having worked with him. But if he believes he can do it, and there are people out there, he wants to do it with so that when he does finally put those gloves down, he's checked all the boxes. There's no more boxes left for him to check. Then God bless him.

and I'll be right there cheering him on and hoping to enjoy it however I can. That's his choice. I still think he's going to finish up in WWE for some reason. I don't know why. I just believe that he will. But hey, I'm here. I'm along for the ride because I'm looking at it from a business perspective. Like what makes the most sense career-wise, business-wise?

That would be WWE. But then if he doesn't need the money, if he's not worried about that part of his future, and it's all about spending time. I saw what he wrote about his daughter, which brought a tear to my eye, by the way, when I read it, when he talked about his daughter saying something to the effect, I'll butcher this. But, you know, all the kids in school think it's really great that, you know, AJ Stiles is my dad. And I think it's really great that their fathers are home with them, you know. I mean, that kind of stuff for someone like AJ, that will tear his heart out. So this all may be driven by just wanting to spend time with his family. He may not have any boxes left with the check.

Or he may. I don't know. We'll find out. You know, one of the advantages of being a star to the level of AJ styles, you get to pick your own stuff. You know, when you don't work for WWV and you're not contracted, because when you work for WW, respectfully, you're dictated. But if he's not under contract, and if his contract has truly expired or is about to, he could take one-off independent bookings and he can say, hey, I'll come in for you for this

amount, first-class airfare, I want to wrestle this guy, I want to go over and I'm with that many minutes. He has that amount of leverage in the pro wrestling space. New Japan would not turn him down. I can't imagine AEW would turn him down. I can't imagine, you know, Arena Mexico and CMLL will turn him down. he would be able to do that and do it well. So I think he could probably schedule that stuff that is inclusive of his family schedule.

And maybe his family could travel with him because he wouldn't have to go from town to town like he did for so many years in WWE. I don't know. I'm just freestyling, but I know a guy like Will Osprey. I mean, he holds T&A and AJ styles in the highest of regards. That's sort of the wrestling that he grew up on. AJ is for a lot of people sort of the pioneer of that style. You even heard Seth Rollins give a lot of credit to that saying, hey, I could never be the Hulk Hogan,

but I knew I could be the AJ Styles or I hope to be. And I think that I want to see AJ, the performer, get a chance to live that opportunity and set his own pay rate and dictate, you know, his matches and why not? I think the freedom of being able to do that, if anybody's earned it, it's AJ. So I think we're all in the mutual AJ Styles Appreciation Society. and we hope that whatever he does next,

he's happy with and he gets to do it his way. I think that's very important. I didn't ask you, though, I don't want to put anybody on the spot. But what do you think of the finish of AJ Styles with a sleeper hole? That's the way it goes out in Saudi. To me, man, I don't know.

It just felt kind of anticlimatic. And I'm not, I love Gunther. I think he's a great character. I think he's a great performer. But I don't know. I wanted to see. the anticipation of a three count or something. I don't know.

It just, it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for with a finish. It just felt like, well, there it went. What'd you think? I responded almost immediately on Twitter. And I think I said something to the effect of a sleeper by definition is tiresome.

That's how I felt about it. It's such a non-finish finish. And I'm sure somebody in a room, somewhere would try to convince me that that's where the heat is because you're not giving the audience what they wanted. And I get the psychology of that. And I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced of it. But not right now I'm not.

Nobody's convinced me yet that that is a good enough idea, that that's solid enough heat to build upon. I just, it's anticlimactic. It, by definition, put me to sleep. Not just AJ, but me. It's just, eh, I wanted more. I just wanted more. Even if it was Gunther going over,

I wanted to feel something other than what I felt, which was like, really? That's it? All that? For a sleeper? Whatever. And I don't think I was alone, you know. Again, sometimes I think we can outsmart ourselves creatively.

Sometimes you are so deep in the forest that you're walking into trees. And to me, that finish is walking into a tree. Well, I hope that AJ gets multiple more sendoffs. I hope he does get one in Atlanta on the 23rd. Nobody's saying that. I'm just looking at a calendar and saying it's in Atlanta. and boy, if I was booking, maybe that would make sense. I know they did a great job getting a lot of quotes from big time stars.

You know, folks like Roman Raines and Shane McMahon and Seth Rollins and even Tony Cohn all chimed in, giving AJ their flowers. But sign me up for a little more of that. Sort of last call for your questions here for Eric. We got more of a comment here from Chab who says J.CW is the only true sports entertainment left, not stale storytelling. It's a carbon copy of the way the attitude era was. done. Check it out sometime way better than current

WWV. A wrestling historian wants to know what was the most controversial storyline you had to shoot down in WCW thanks in advance. Do you remember a controversial story you shot down? Nothing comes to mind. I kind of leaned into controversy.

I didn't shy away from it, but I can't recall anything coming to me that was really controversial based that I rejected. I can't think of it. Maybe it's happened. I just can't think of it. Joe Bangle says, How does it feel to have your creation as one of the covers on

WW's latest video game? Your idea has changed wrestling and the business forever. Just want to give you your props for other, for life. Thank you. Look, left the mark. You know,

at the end of the day, if you spend, in my case, the majority of my career in a business, and for whatever reason, hopefully good ones, something you did

resonates with current fans it how does it make you feel it can't make me feel anything but good I don't I don't walk around with a big head over it I don't I can't take it to the bank and cash it now can't pay a mortgage payment with it so beyond just making me feel good

for a moment or two it's it's a nice thing to have but I don't I don't put a lot of stock in it to be honest we've got a question about the the super bowl one about bash at the beach 2000 and we're going to touch on gail kim but first we've got a word from quince you know a well-built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and more importantly maybe to me hold up over time that's what quince does best premium materials but thoughtful design and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather is shifting Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that truly lasts. We're talking organic cotton sweaters, polos for every occasion, lighter jackets that keep you warm in these changing seasons.

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Free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash 83 weeks. Wrap it up a live episode here of Eric Bischoff's 83 weeks. If you got a question, let's hear on last call for alcohol right now. But I wanted to talk to you about T&A, suing Gail Kim. You may recall that I guess she was let go in March of 2025, and when she was let go, I guess there was a statement that,

quote, she believed she holds legal claims against AWE, that's Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions, a subsidiary of Anthem Sports and Entertainment, for violations of the Florida Private Whistleblower Act. Now, I know that everybody got excited about this lawsuit being filed,

but I believe that this was basically filed before the National Chancery Court to say, hey, if this is going to happen, it's going to happen in Tennessee, not in Florida. But this does feel like they may be challenging some sort of independent contractor status. And I know that conversation has existed in wrestling for a long, long time. But the idea that one of the quote unquote boys of getting sued for this by a company,

I don't know, it caught me off guard. What'd you make of this? I don't know enough about it to give it really any thought other than it's unfortunate. And it's going to be expensive. and if she's litigating independent contractor status, she's going to spend a lot of money and walk away wishing she wouldn't have, it's my opinion. It's too,

it's such a complex issue. There's precedents involved. Hey, maybe she's got enough money. She's willing to fight it out. But that's, the litigation involved in this is going to be so expensive. And unless she's able to,

to prove something that no one else has been able to prove yet, it'll be a waste of time and money. I think the biggest piece of it that maybe she is going to be structuring her complaint, if she does one, because I don't even know that she's done it outside of just threatening to say, hey, I may, is discrimination and employment. Like, that is going to be interesting to see that, you know, you've got a woman leading the charge here. I don't know, we'll be monitoring it in the coming weeks, but it did catch a lot of people

off guard. Wait a minute. P&A is suing Gail Kim. Jack the phone guy says the Super Bowl halftime show rivals the game itself. Wrestling thrives on spectacle. What could wrestling borrow from the NFL's halftime and entertainment production, Eric? I guess for WrestleMania a halftime show? I don't know. It's already so long.

I don't know that there's any fit. I think the NFL has become more like WWE, that WWE needs to become like the NFL. So I don't know. I think the learning curve is the other way around, to be honest with you. K.S. Dixon says never fully understand Bash at the Beach 2000. Eric was head of creative and Siegel greenlighted his plans. Russo went into business for himself. Why did Russo get fired and Bischoff take full control of creative? Good question. You'd have to ask Brad Siegel that.

That was a decision that Brad Siegel made. He had to choose. And he obviously chose wrong. Not only did he end up getting, did Turner end up getting sued for a significant amount of money. It ultimately was a bad choice for Brad and everybody knew it. We've got a great question that we should do a long form on a podcast someday. K.S. Dixon says,

what were some of your plans for WCW's relaunch under few? Fugent, you still had relationships with New Japan and Turiumen, for example, et cetera. That's a great question, but I don't think it's one that we can squeeze in here. So maybe in the coming weeks, we'll do a long form on that. But hypothetically, what could that have looked like? Eric, at the helm of WCW on the other side of the acquisition with Fusient Media. This was a really fun episode, and it caps off a really fun week. Eric, we've got some exciting news to share with our listeners today.

You know, for years, we've celebrated the biggest moments and matches, and legends and wrestling all over at ad-free shows.com. But today, I'm excited to announce the next evolution of that journey. Ad-free shows is now Ring Classics, and we officially kicked off Ring Classics this past weekend in Atlanta. With a wrestling fan experience, unlike any other, it was a look inside Eric Bischoff's Power Plant Weekend. Let's take a look.

What a weekend it was in Atlanta, Georgia, as Ring Classics brought fans together for Eric Bischoff's Power Plant Weekend. The experience kicked off with three legends of the business, breaking down some of their favorite iconic wrestling promos. From there, the spotlight shifted to the fans. As David Crockett and Tony Chavani took the stage to see what the audience had learned, giving them the chance to step up and cut promos of their own. The queen of the mallet sits on top.

I always have been and always will be. Now, choke on that, slapass. Hey, hey, hey, hey, you hold on one second here. I'm here for not only the fans of that three, but the fans of you. You might be the king of the mountain in the spring, but pal, you got a long way to go when it comes to podcasting. Following that, the attendees were treated to an exclusive first look at the Jeff Jarrett story, part of a promoter documentary that left fans wanting more. Laughter filled the room throughout the weekend as JBL debuted his brand new show,

Curtain Jerkers, recording multiple episodes live in front. of an energized audience. J.B.L. It's definitely still row to me, damn it. Oh, and there were surprises. An unannounced appearance by primetime Elyx Skipper had the crowd buzzing as he joined Sergeant Buddy Lee Parker to run power plant drills, giving fans a firsthand taste of what it takes to become a professional wrestler. And you can't be a wrestler without a good entrance, as participants were judged on their

entertaining abilities during entrance roulette. But the main event of the entire weekend was something. truly special. Fans boarded a bus with Eric Bishop himself for an unforgettable tour of Atlanta, beginning with the legendary home of the WCW power plant. From there, the journey continued to AFX Studios, where historic memorabilia from the mind of Andre Freitas brought wrestling history to life. The tour concluded with none other than Ernest the Catmiller, who capped it off with live

demonstrations at his karate school. The weekend came to a thrilling close with live professional. professional wrestling action, hosted by One Fall Wrestling, who graciously served as home base for this incredible event. It was an unforgettable gathering of legends, stories, and fans, and this is only the beginning. Next, Ring Classic's backstage passholders head to the home of Double J and the Heart of TNA. Become a backstage passholder today and secure your spot for Jeff Jarrett's asylum weekend this May. How fun was that, Eric? What a blast we had in Atlanta, man.

Such a great concept. And you and your team, because you've been a great team of people behind us all at at Free Shows.com, did such a great job of putting that together. I mean, it really, I love it. I just have a blast doing it. Fans got to live out their wrestling dreams. You got to cut a promo on the old TBS set with the real big gold and the real WCW United States title.

the ring used championships. And of course, we had Tony Chivani and David Crockett and their JCP Blazers and we professionally filmed it. And everyone who volunteered and came up and cut a promo is going to get a copy of their promo of them.

And it feels like they're transported back to 1985 or 1986. But we also had ring entrances, which I thought was a blast. You actually got to judge those along with Elix Skipper. It was so much fun. I just left my ass off. I had a blast. It was super fun.

And you got to feel like, it was like to be in the ring with Sergeant Buddy Lee Parker in Atlanta. But then to go visit the actual power plant, you know, to be in a karate studio like the one where you first met Ernest the Cat Miller. And it was all about Garrett. And what do you know? He became a big part of the show. But I think the real highlight for so many people was spending time with Andre Freitas and

AFX studios, the guy who helped create the sting character, who helped create the blood runs cold whole storyline. He had Wildcat Willie there. The whole Hogan heads you saw in the VIII. video. It was an absolute blast. It all happened thanks to our support over at ringclassics.com. It's a brand new app. For years and years, you've heard us say ad-free shows.com, that's always just pointed at a Patreon. But for a few more weeks, it'll remain there. And then ad-free shows.com will forward to ringclassics.com, where we now have our own app.

So if you've been with us before and you were frustrated by the user interface and just felt like it was clunky to navigate Patreon, we heard you loud and clear. You wanted an app. We finally delivered it's ringclassics.com. I'm going to encourage you if you're on the fence and you're thinking about joining us in Nashville, sign up on the website, not the app. Apple takes their cut. It's more expensive if you sign up on the app because of Apple.

If you just go right now to ringplastics.com, you get all of our bonus content. Once upon a time, the bonus content on ad-freeshows.com started at $29, and we had a $49. Now it's all $13.99. All of our content is $13.99. and we're going to have not one, not two, but three or four of these weekend experiences every year. And they're going to be in the heart of some of these iconic wrestling towns.

We kicked it off with WCW and Eric Bischoff's power plant in Atlanta. Coming up next in May, it's Jeff Jarrett and TNA, and we've still got one or two more left to go this year. You don't want to miss it. It's a unique fan experience unlike anything else. You're not paying for meat and greet. You're not standing in line. It really becomes almost like a family reunion, but you get to do things that you never felt like you could. Like the whole velvet rope is removed. It really does feel like a backstage pass.

But to do it with your friends, it does feel like a family reunion, doesn't it, Eric? It does very much so. I mean, so many of these people at Andrew now, we've been doing this for a number of years. I mean, so many, we call them family members because that's what they become, but have become, you know, friends of my wife and, I mean, just the relationships that we've seen, you know, develop between and don't think anything negative now, people. The positive relationships that have developed in a friendships that have developed amongst so many of the people that are part of our ad-free shows family

has been pretty cool to watch. You'll not only get early and ad-free versions of all of our podcasts for everything on my network, but you'll also get all the bonus content, including some great new names we're going to be introducing to the fold with some original concept art and sketches, some old nitro formats. We are hitting the reset button on the way we've been producing content.

We launched ad-freeshows.com right at the very beginning of the pandemic. We were all stuck in our house looking for things to do. So it was easy for people to justify paying for content. We're not really doing that anymore. Now you get all of this stuff early and ad free for just 1399 a month. Go right now to ringclassics.com. And if you really want to have the ultimate fan experience, if you're the type who enjoys going to these wrestle cons or wrestleades or sarcasts, I'm telling you, you don't want to miss what we've got planned at ring classics. The backstage pass is the place to be. It's ringclassics.com. One more time, I hate to belabor the point.

This is available in all of the app stores. But if you download and you sign up in one of the app stores, the app providers are going to go ahead and take a cut. I'm talking about Apple. I'm talking about Google. If you sign up online at the website, Reneclassics.com, you're going to get a discount. It starts at just $13.99 a month.

And don't worry, if you're already subscribed to ad-freeshows.com, we're going to make this a seamless transition. Our number one priority is to make sure that no one is double-billed. And maybe if you subscribed once before to add-freeshows. and you've let your membership lapse, you're going to get an opportunity to try it before you buy it. Keep an eye out for your emails and don't get to DM us at ad free shows on Twitter. Eric, I had a blast this past weekend in Atlanta.

I can't lie, I'm looking forward to Nashville, but this show, this Saturday morning randomness that we had, this wound up being way more fun than I anticipated. Yeah, way more fun than Thursday night would have been. So I'm glad that things worked out the way they've worked out. And I look forward to Nashville. I'm going to be at that one. So I can't wait. Nashville is a fun town anyway, and to go and be a part of this event, it's going to make it even more fun.

We got some big stuff up our sleeves. I can't wait for you guys to find out. Join us at ringclassics.com, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button right here because we'll be back next Friday on time at 83 weeks.com.