83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 413: Minority Report

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

On this LIVE edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and host Conrad Thompson pull back the curtain on the business of professional wrestling past, present, and controversial. Eric breaks down the science behind booking major Saturday night specials like Clash of the Champions, explaining why timing, competition, and audience behavior matter more than fans realize. He also dives into the real challenges of tape delayed programming, using AEW Grand Slam as a case study in how momentum can shift when spoilers hit. Bischoff tackles the ongoing fan criticism surrounding creative, making the case that the process constantly evolves and why laying blame at the feet of Triple H oversimplifies a much bigger machine. He doesn't hold back when addressing Dave Meltzer and the recent Brody King reporting controversy, offering his unfiltered take on how narratives get shaped and sometimes distorted. Plus, Eric weighs in on the business realities behind Warner Bros. Discovery's minority stake in All Elite Wrestling, and the truth behind sluggish ticket sales for WrestleMania what's perception, what's strategy, and what's simply the modern marketplace at work. CHEERS - Same night out way better morning with Cheers. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order by using code 83WEEKS at http://CheersHealth.com .  #Cheers #ad CHUBBIES - Chubbies is here to keep you comfy and looking good year-round. Get 20% off with code eric at https://www.chubbiesshorts.com/eric ! #chubbiespod BLUECHEW - Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code 83WEEKS at http://BlueChew.com  BETTER WILD - Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at http://betterwild.com/BISCHOFF  MARS MEN - Get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at http://Mengotomars.com  NOWADAYS - Visit http://trynowadays.com/83WEEKS  to get 30% off your order or use 83WEEKS at checkout. Drink responsibly, must be 21 or older. POLICYGENIUS - Head to http://policygenius.com/83WEEKS  to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. JCW LUNACY - Juggalo Championship Wrestling drops BRAND NEW episodes of Lunacy every Thursday at 7pm ET exclusively on their YouTube channel http://youtube.com/@psychopathic_records check it out! 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.savewitheric.com  to learn more.

All right, folks, real quick, I want to talk just a little bit about saving money at save with Conrad.com. Take a look at this chart if you're watching with me over on YouTube. This is the U.S. consumer percent of balance plus 90 days delinquent on credit cards. Here's what we're talking about. America's in more credit card debt than ever before, but we're also more delinquent than ever before. And if that's you, I want you to know, there is still help out there. I'm especially talking to you if you have your bank account drafting your mortgage payment.

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Get yourself a quick quote. you don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket and if we can't save you some cash, we won't waste your time. But I want you to hear this loud and clear. If you're behind on your credit cards, if you're maxed out, if you're over the limit, if you feel like there's no hope, but you've made your house payments all in time for the last year. And when I say on time, I don't mean like you were a day or too late.

I mean like you were never more than 30 days late. It's not a matter of if I can save you money, but a matter of how much. And to my surprise, some of the folks we've helped do this. this, even with less than perfect credit scores, they didn't even need an appraisal. What we were able to provide to them was a fast and easy solution to the cash crunch their household was feeling. If you feel like there's more month at the end of the money, let me put that thing down, flip it and reverse it.

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I woke up to a great email this morning that was thanking us for helping them not only get a better interest rate on their debt and get a much cheaper monthly payment, but we were also able to help them find cheaper homeowners insurance. So to be clear, I'm not in the insurance business, but I can take a look at what you're paying and say, you know what? I've seen enough of these to think. You need to get another quote.

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Find out how much money you can save for free at save withconrad.com. NMLS number 2129, equal housing lender, save with Conrad.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad, the mortgage guy, and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish out, Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? You know what? I knew you're going to ask me that question because you have every time we've done a show for the last, whatever it's been, almost seven years.

and I always know you actually care. So I'm going to give you a response that is not your typical care response. As we're waiting for you to jump online here and record this episode, and we know you've got a lot of technical stuff you've got to do loading up ads and things like that. Dave Silva, Super Dave and I,

the producer of this work of art, we're having a conversation about, you know, living here and why I like living here and all that kind of stuff. It was a really good conversation. And as that conversation trailed off, I'm sitting here thinking, how freaking lucky am I? I'm sitting at a 150-year-old bar that used to exist in an establishment about 100 miles from here.

I'm looking out over beautiful mountains. I'm living in a home that I only dreamed about when I was a kid. And I'm sitting here doing a podcast that we've been successful with for the last seven years and having a blast doing it. So that's how I am, Conrad. Brad, how are you? Man, I woke up at the beach today. It's a good day, and it is Valentine's Day.

I hope you guys are going to have a special night tonight with your sweetie. And if you're alone, maybe they can find some solace in a pretty great AEW card tonight. AEW Grand Slam in Australia is going down tonight on Valentine's Day, Eric. I know that the wife and I, you know, we think tonight is kind of amateur hour. traffic's going to be crazy down here with party graw and valentine's day there's just a lot going on so we went and did our celebration last night do you and mrs b have like a a valentine's day tradition or something that y'all try to do in or around valentine's age no you know as you're just as you're leading me through this story and i thought you were setting me up to you know

you and me you're going to have a you know a eW you know pizza party watch along tonight oh gosh Come on. It just doesn't sound like the meeting. I know, but maybe it could have happened. Now, Mrs. B is down in Florida. She's been down in Tampa for about two or three weeks now, visiting Way J and the kids.

And I've been down there visiting all of them and her. So I'm back home now. She's still in Tampa, but she gets home tomorrow night. So, yeah, I've loaded up the blue chew. Gonna pick up some roses this afternoon. So they're here when she gets here.

And I'm prepped. It's been. a long three weeks. Yeah, it's time to unload the clip. And there is a clip. You know, we're going to talk a little bit about that later. Thanks. I know.

Thank God we got Bluetooth as a sponsor here. Because the expectations, I've got to tell you, I'm not the only one in this partnership that feels this way. The expectations are pretty high. So, you know, I've got to get my game on. So yeah, we'll talk more about. nobody wants to hear about this stuff. Especially not first thing in the morning,

but we are grateful that you guys are hanging out with us on a Saturday morning. You know, the scheduling just worked out this way. But Eric, you and I had such a blast doing this live last Saturday morning. You said, hey, why don't we just try Saturday morning?

And I really enjoyed us having a live studio audience. And we are going to be taking some of your questions. So if you've got some for Eric, I can see some of the interaction popping off right now. If you're listening to this and it's not Valentine's Day morning, what are you waiting? go hit the subscribe button turn on the notifications bell right now at 83 weeks.com. It's just our YouTube. It's totally free. But the next time we're live,

you can interact with easy E. It'll just send a push notification to your phone saying, hey, Eric's live. Want to ask him a question? Hit the button now. It's the subscribe button and the notifications bell over at 83 weeks.com. So there's no like annual Valentine's Day tradition, but I did want to ask you, you know, from a scheduling standpoint, does a Saturday night show on Valentine's Day. I mean, I think Friday night and Saturday night have always historically been hard to program unless you're, you know,

a major NFL playoff or something like that. Otherwise, I feel like a lot of younger people, that younger demographic, the coveted 18 to 49, they're going to be out doing stuff. But on Valentine's Day, it feels like it's even twice as hard. Sort of the same way you were laying out about

maybe this isn't exactly Megan's dream date tonight. like, hey, let's cozy up next to the fire and see if Brody can't take the GM. I can't see it. It's a tough sell for a lot of ladies and a lot of folks. So I did want to ask, like, do you think that that was maybe part of the strategy with AEW here is let's load this up so it feels almost like a clash of the champions? Because a Saturday night on Valentine's Day, it feels hard to program, Eric.

Nah. Look, if wrestling has proven anything, and I, this is so. Just beyond trite. But if you build it, they'll come. If you build it, they'll watch. They will find you. They will make, yes, are you going to lose a certain percentage of your audience? I mean, you think about that for a minute.

You're saying, we're going to let's focus on your 18 to 49 year olds because we all know that's where the money lies. So that's your target. I would say a good percentage, maybe half. A little more than half of those 18 to 49 year old men are in a relationship that would probably not exist if he were the type of guy to go, hey, honey, I made, I'm going to go watch wrestling tonight with my buddies. You and the girls go have some fun. Oh, what do you mean? It's Valentine's. You know what I mean?

Like, if you put wrestling in front of something like Valentine's Day, I would imagine there are a percentage of men out there that would just say, you know what? I'm not going to watch wrestling tonight. I'm going to go do something else with my wife for Valentine's Day. But what is that number? It's such a small number that you couldn't realistically program around it as an issue. Like you would, for example, on Christmas night or New Year's Eve or any other May 4th of July on a Saturday night. Those types of things are so freaking obvious that you do program around them. But when the percentage of the audience that's potentially affected by something like Valentine's Day, while it's there, I just can't imagine it's meaningful.

For this audience, for a different composition, different demographic, and I'm talking about financially sociographic. They're more than just ages and demos. When you really look at demo breakdowns, if you're actually a subscriber to Nielsen and not just, you know, someone pulling stuff off the internet from someone who actually is, when you subscribe to Nielsen, depending on your subscription, and it may have changed since I was familiar with it, but you get loaded up with a lot more data than you see published in public. And part of that is the social demographics.

You know, what do they like to do on a Saturday night? Sometimes, and this is one of the things I hope to do for Real American Freestyle soon, is really do a deep dive on research to find out what the audience really likes and doesn't like. You know what I mean? We haven't gone near that yet with Real American Freestyle, and we will at some point, because that's how you get to the absolute best product you can is knowing as intimately as you can your audience. And I just don't think, man, I'm going a long way into the weeds on this one,

but I just don't think Valentine's Day is going to matter one. one way or the other, booking wise. And, you know, I can't speak to whether or not Valentine's Day was a strategy in the booking conversations in AEW for obvious reasons. Maybe it was, but I hope they didn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about it. I want to, um, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the decision to have these Clash of the Champion type events. We're talking on Saturday morning later tonight.

will be Grand Slam Australia for AEW. And it feels like they have kind of loaded this card up, Eric. It feels like a pay-per-view quality level card. And the only thing I can really compare it to, and I guess in a more modern era, you could compare it to a Saturday Night's main event. But to me, because it's on T&T and it's a Turner product, it feels more like Clash of the Champions to me.

And I know eventually with the, you know, the success of Nitro and then the creation of thunder, the decision was made to sunset clash of the champions. What do you, what do you think of and what is the, the market or the upside for not really a premium live event, but almost like a clash of the champions or a grand slam in 2026? Do those have value the way they used to or talk me through that? I don't think that they do. Look, and I want to say this without sound.

I'm taking like I'm taking shots, but I'll just say it. Read into it, whatever the fuck you want. I don't care. I don't think anybody's looking at expanding AEW programming on the Turner networks. I don't think anybody's going, you know what, if this, this AEW, this feels kind of like it's a grand slam, feels like kind of the old clash, maybe we should look at this and maybe there's an opportunity.

That conversation is not happening outside of. anybody's head that's not in the business. It's not happening. And it's not happening for a lot of reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with AEW. So I don't think that opportunity is real. It's a fun thing to talk about, but it's not a real opportunity. Expansion. But what it is is a phenomenal opportunity to represent.

position your brand and hopefully came back some of the audience that perhaps you've lost over the last year or two years. Because they're still out there. They're still interested. You just now got to reconvince them. And this is where it gets harder. It's actually harder to get somebody to come back after they made the decision to walk away. That's a lot harder than getting them to show up and try you the very first time.

right. So there is a significant chunk of audience that has left AEW over the course of the last, we'll call it 18 months. This opportunity combined with what sounds like, haven't watched, not going to comment other than what I read, what I hear from people whose opinions I trust suggest to me that there's, that the creative has tightened up, that there is more focus. perhaps the right people are more closely related to the right opportunity at that moment in time, right? They're putting the right people in the right spot, trying to say it differently.

But that's what I mean. So if they've tightened up to creative and things are starting to feel like it actually makes a little more sense, and I know there's always going to be that one, yeah, but Tomaso Chiamper or whatever the hell his name is, yeah, that's a, okay, that's a debatable topic and probably an entertain. one too, an interesting one. But that aside, I think the consensus has been shows are getting tighter, getting a little more focused. That's a good thing. Now you've got this event in Australia, what's it called again? Grand Slam. Grand Slam. Great name, by the way. Now you've got Grand Slam in Australia that if people talking about it, they are, we are, on my freaking show, which is

ironic, but you've got people interested because you put together pretty significant card. You've been putting together a string of some pretty good shows. Now you get a little bit of support from your core audience, which is the internet wrestling community. Let's just be fucking honest about it. It is what it is. It's the chorus of core wrestling fans. You've got their attention.

Now put on a great show in front of a massive crowd. In Australia, it's going to feel. so much bigger and better that if you're going to repos, I don't want to say rebrand because it's not a rebranding, but if you're trying to reposition yourself to your former audience and say, hey, you might not have liked what we're doing before, but check us out now, right? This is that opportunity. And I hope, hopefully they'll treat it that way. I'm sure they will.

It's not by design that people don't, you know, maximize opportunities. It's by default or whatever. But that's what it really is. It's a great opportunity to put your absolute best foot forward to hopefully regain some of the audience that you've lost over the last year, a year and a half, and also just build a little bit of positive discourse over your product. I'm excited to see the show.

I think it's going to be a challenge, especially in 2026, not only because of the scheduling, because it's on Valentine's Day, which we've been talking about this morning, but also because it's on a tape delay. So it airs tonight, but as we're recording this morning on a Saturday morning, the show's already happened. It's already in the can.

It's not Eric Bischoff being, by the way. You can hear that. Whoa, I'm sorry. No, no, no. I think it was hilarious. I mean, listen, wake up and, uh, and, you handle your business with 83 weeks. I'm so sorry.

That's hilarious. Hey, when you think about tape delay for WCW, I know that, you know, you did tape. some things in Japan here, there, and yon, but it does feel like during the Nitro era, was there like a commitment to no more tape delay if and when we can help it? Or was that not part of the strategy? Well, we never liked, we never embraced tape delays. They were always forced upon us because of NBA scheduling or whatever.

Usually NBA was our biggest conflict. But there was nothing anybody's going to do about it. So you just adjust to it and do what you have. have to do. But yeah, you always, you know, especially once you got used to, you know, and your audience was used to live and you start taking advantage of all the cool things you can do when you're live. Just it brings a different energy. It always has and always will. Live television is where it's at for television. But whenever it was taped delayed, you know, I don't know back in the 90s, did the leaks really matter that much? I mean, how big was that,

you know, it wasn't even an internet. Okay. It was the beginning. of the internet wrestling community, but let's be honest, how big was it really? How big was the dirt sheet audience, right? Nobody knows, can all think guesses, but it was probably pretty insignificant compared to the broader number, you know, the national audience, right? So I don't think that things being leaked necessarily because we were tape delayed, had that much impact. Of course it does. I'm not saying it didn't, but I think it's minuscule or was minuscule. I just think there's a different energy. It just feels different. And maybe, I don't recall

us ever thinking this, but it could have happened. Maybe even booking wise, it's kind of like booking for a holiday, as we talked about earlier, if it's a significant holiday, Fourth of July, Christmas, New Year's Eve, things like that. you don't put your best foot forward on those nights because you know nobody's going to watch it. Right. You don't advance your stories on those nights because you know no one's going to watch it. Maybe we took a little that into consideration and kind of held back sometimes for tape delayed shows, depending on the situation.

But for the most part, you just roll with the punches. And when we were hot, like again, 96, 97, 98, even in the early 99. it didn't matter. You'd have a tape delayed show one week and your numbers would take a little bit of a dip and then pull me right back to where you were the week before, maybe even grow up. So it just wasn't that significant of an issue.

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So very excited about it. I can't wait to try it. I'll give you a complete analysis next week because I'm going to try it out tonight. Cheershealth.com. Be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. Eric, we are live and we're taking questions. We are going to be talking about WrestleMania. Yes, we're going to talk about those observer awards.

you know we're going to touch on the Brody. King controversy and a whole lot more. So keep your questions coming. We've got a lot to unpack here this morning. Matthew Hutchinson is with us here live and he says, hi, Eric, Matt from Australia here. Just wondering if you had the opportunity to catch any of the 2020 cricket World Cup so far.

What have you enjoyed the most about the sport of cricket and your time following it? I haven't watched much of it. Now, I was supposed to do Stumps and Bumps is a, a show that I do, it's basically a radio show that from Australia, covers the Australian markets on the, the, it's on the sports entertainment network down there, but it covers Australia, New Zealand, parts of South Asia, and my co-host is Barat, Sandrasia.

So we cover the world of cricket, and Barat being one of the leading cricket journalists in the world, really, highest profile in many respects. He brings me up to speed on the world, of cricket and helps me understand the game as best he can. And I'm learning, but I am by no means a cricket expert, but I'm learning kind of in the dugout, so to speak. I'm learning about cricket from one of the most knowledgeable people in that sport and a guy that I have fun doing that show with. So I haven't followed much of it. Obviously, different time zones. I'm traveling. Life's a little

busy for me now, but I do catch up with Brought every, oh, when do they air that show? I think it's on Monday nights, maybe Tuesday nights, you know, they're ahead of us. So probably Tuesday night is when that show airs. Another question here from Trigger Cheese. He wants to know, do you think you'll have Jason back on one day? That was a great show. I'm sure he's talking about your old pal Jason Harvey. Yeah, there's a real good chance.

I'll be doing more than that with Jason. Now, Jason and I haven't, you know me, Conrad. And anybody that knows me well knows that I suck on the phone. I just don't stay in touch with anybody. I don't like talking on the phone unless I have to. Now, if there's money involved, I'm all over it, right? Or an opportunity. But other than that, I don't chat much.

But it sounds to me like there's going to be a lot more production coming our way at Real American Freestyle in another form of entertainment. It's something that I need to be talking to Jason about. So I'm teasing it here a little bit, mostly because it's so early, but, you know, it's, it's pretty exciting. And Jason and I may be being able to work together again, which would be fun. I'm picking up what you're putting down. Hey, you know, we've got a question from Australia this morning.

And AEW is in Australia tonight for Grand Slam. Your WCW trips to Australia, were those on your watch or was that when you were on hiatus? No, that was after I'd been. and sent home and said, take your money and don't ever come back. So I had nothing to do with that. So your only experience with Rasselin in Australia was the Hulkomania down under tour and WWE tours maybe? Correct.

Correct. WWE tours first. And then subsequently I did, we did the Hulkomania tour. We got another question from AIC JDR. Whose idea was it to add the voice samples to the NWO theme or the voice is recorded by the wrestlers separately just for the sound bites. Well, it wasn't me. I would, I'm not sure if that would have fallen under Neil Pruitt's area or not.

Repeat the question. I want to better understand the question. Whose idea was to add the voice samples to the NWO theme where the wrestlers recorded by, or the voices recorded by the wrestler separately just for the soundbite? So Eric, as a reminder, you would have macho man going, oh, yeah. And you'd have Hulk Hogan just sort of laughing. Ha ha ha ha ha. And I'm just curious.

That sounds to be like Craig Leathers. Craig Leathers, the director would have overseen it. It could have been any number of people actually editing it together because that's what this is. This is just taking, istic content and editing it into new content. Because it is so creative,

not suggesting it was a stand on a scale. attend because it was a fairly complex creative approach that would have to be done by somebody pretty high up in in production just not sure who a tv production says when triple h took over creative people rejoiced um now they're saying he doesn't know what he's doing they want been back people just thrive on negativity i mean listen i think that although it is a you know silly, absurd conversation have. I mean, there is a reason, once upon a time, to use Memphis as an example, that Jerry Jarrett would book for a while and then Jerry Lawler would book for a while.

Like, burnout's real, right? Like, and, and I'm not even saying necessarily that triple H is burnout, but I'm saying if, if the individual doesn't burn out, maybe the fans do because there are similar patterns and it becomes more predictable. So switching it up, I think is not always a bad idea, but we know WC, CW famously had a committee and at times that was criticized too. Is there a perfect mix or balance in your opinion, Eric? No.

There never will be. It's a creative process. Creativity, just whether you're a consumer or whether you're, you know, sitting in the chair, it's all subjective. Right. And you are judged based on hard data as to whether or not you're successful or not. You're not judged by what the internet says.

your creative approach to the product is judged by the revenue that it generates in all the different ways it generates. In the long run, in the short run is how well does the creative department, because let's face it, people, please, let's get some perspective here. Does anybody think that Paul of Vec is sitting in a room 10 and 12 hours a day working on creative with the team? Of course not. Is he at home doing it? When he leaves the office, of course not. This is not Paul Levec's creative. This is Paul Levec overseeing the team.

Yes. Many of whom and the key members of have been on that team for a long freaking time, Ed Koski. Brian Ward. Brian Ward. I mean, yes. So to suggest that, well, you know, maybe it's time we change the booker, but somebody else in Paul Levexie is almost comical.

It reflects a total lack of understanding of what that process really is, who's on it, and therefore how to address soft numbers. Because let's be honest, whether it's just the Internet wrestling community's reaction, which can't weigh that too heavily at all. But if you're looking at, um, ticket sales are a little soft in Las Vegas, or there's other actual metrics beyond what the internet wrestling community points out.

But if you're looking at numbers and are getting a little soft, it could be time for some kind of a change. Not the person in charge necessarily, but maybe the person in charge has to give a little more rope to someone who maybe hasn't had a lot of rope in the last couple of years. give somebody a try creatively. Take a couple risks creatively that are just new ideas out because you touched on it. When you said it, I pointed it right at you when you were speaking.

Sameness, no matter how successful something is, if it's successful, week in and week out, and you're just seeing the same kind of formula. It's like finding a restaurant, you find your favorite meal. It's the best meal you've ever had. You tell all your friends about this meal. You can't wait to take your family to enjoy this meal and share food the way God created it to be shared because it's that damn good. And you go back night after night after night after night. And eventually you get tired of it.

It's still good. It's still worth the amount of money. You're paying for it. But it's just, eh, there's the sameness to it. And the same thing happens with entertainment. Once this, however, this is, you know, you become a victim in some respects of your own success in a way. Because you load up on expectations, you over deliver on those expectations. Now the expectations are even higher and you've got to jump even higher.

You know what I mean? It gets to be a little much after, you know, a while. And I think WWE perhaps is in one of those stages where not shuffling the deck in terms of personnel, but shuffling the deck in terms of tone and style and maybe looking for something a little more risky, creatively risky. I don't know what that is. I don't have any ideas. But, you know, edgy, dangerous, risky, tension, drama, it's all kind of the same ball of emotional wax. And if you can tweak the danger and the risk a little bit so that the states feel more important, maybe that's an approach that they could take because otherwise they're just making the same

great meal every week and people do get complacent and they lose interest because of it. It's so interesting that, you know, we break down how different companies can grow in your opinion and you obviously went through that, you know, taking over WCW when it was always in the red. It had never turned to profit. But now we're having conversations about other companies, you know, almost becoming a victim of their own success where, hey, this is working. Let's keep doing it. And boy, I think, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, who better to talk about that than the guy who created the NWO? And I think at times, you know, you're miscategorized

unfairly online where people say, when you're critical of something and he's saying, I don't know if I would do this, then it becomes, yeah, but you did this. And it's like, do you not understand that's the reason he's qualified to talk about it? I stepped in every pile of shit that was capable of being stepped in, dude. I know how to avoid piles of shit now. I just think it's so logical. It's almost like that movie Leap of Faith with Steve Martin at the end. You know, he's this,

but you should see the movie. But I don't want to spoil it in case you have it. But you learn that, hey, every now and again, the people who can teach you what to do and what not to do are people who've done them both, you know? Or in my case, in addition to that,

I appreciate you saying that, Conrad. But I've also had a ringside seat and watch some other people at very high levels to step in her own piles of shit. So I not only avoid the ones I stepped in, I know where the other ones are too. And sometimes of the same pile, but you know what I'm saying? Having a ringside seat and being able to not only do it myself and learn along the way, but also having that level of seat where I can watch and analyze and work with or against in some cases, people who are also operating at a very high level and see the mistakes that they've made. And it's not always about the copying someone's

success. It's being aware of their failures as well, or at least the shortcomings, because you want to build on success and avoid houses shit. So being a good observer plays a lot into it too. I totally agree. Speaking of the observer, we are going to talk about. Oh, God. You asshole,

I can't believe you did that to me. That is the cheapest of cheap shots, dude. Sorry. This had stopped. It was so good. You just laid it up for me. You laid it up for me.

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I'm sure some of our list. Yeah, if that's the first thing that comes to someone's mind when they hear my name, how about it? Hey, we are going to talk about the Observer Awards, but before we do, I think we should talk about the big observer snafu of the week. I feel like I'm piling on because, as you know, I consider Dave Meltzer friend,

and I like Dave, but Dave got some egg on his face this week, and I know that you were talking about it online, and if we don't talk about it here, it'll be disingenuous. So I'm going to do my part and bring it up. As we know, tonight, Brody King is going to get a title shot against MJF. Now, it's been pre-tape.

It's already happened in Australia, but a lot of folks who watch this and are watching right now, we're going to watch tonight, so we won't give any spoilers. But we will say, Brody King has been, you know, who's a part of a group once upon a time, and then he sort of broke out and had a lot of tag success with Bandito.

And now it seemed like he's getting the push of his lifetime. And he wrestled MJF a couple of weeks ago on Dynamite and just squashed him. So he just squashed the world champ in order to set up this title shot tonight at Grand Slam. So it feels like a really big opportunity. Now last Wednesday, they were doing AEW Dynamite from Las Vegas. And the crowd there was pretty loud and proud with a political chant, F. Ice. And the referee, Bryce Rimsberg, let it milk it a little bit. And the chant went viral online.

And certainly people were talking about it even in the mainstream media. Of course, last week was the Super Bowl. So we had MJF on Press Row doing a lot of fabulous work to promote AEW. And I mean, he really does a great job on those. As much as I don't like that, nothing happened in son of a bitch, MJF. He does a good job. on Meteorough. And through the course of that conversation,

they're getting a ton of press about it. And you and I talked about it last Saturday. And I said, I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I think a lot of people are watching wrestling as an escape from the real world stuff. I don't want to watch the freaking news or political commentary. I want to watch wrestling and just silliness. And hey, maybe one of the ladies is going to get their head shaved tonight in Australia. That's what I'm here for, not a political statement.

But that's what Brody King chose to do. Well, there was a report from Dave Meltzer on Wednesday night that Brody King did not appear on Dynamite to promote his big world title shot on Grand Slam. They're special tonight from Australia because there was pushback about they didn't want those chance. And I guess on the way into the arena, the AEW has been selling an abolished ice t-shirt for Brody King. And I guess the security wouldn't even allow him to

come in, a fan who was coming in, not wearing that shirt. They said, oh, no, you can't come in wearing that shirt. So Meltz are freestyled that this wasn't a Tony Con call, that this was a call from over Tony's head was the insinuation. The insinuation that this was Warner Brothers discovery. When that report comes out, of course, the media, their internet wrestling media, they really pressed Time Warner and Time Warner that flatly denied this and said, reports otherwise are categorically false and brodie king would appear on t and t this weekend so

it feels like we've got like everybody's saying not it you know i i think dave melzer was trying to maybe fade the heat for tony con or others and say hey it was a warner brother's call they don't want this they don't want to upset daddy trump or whatever and we're not trying to have a political conversation but that's kind of the insinuation that that melzer had warner brother says absolutely not what happened. And then Meltzer came out and said, hey, now they're saying that that wasn't the case. Brian Alvarez actually said,

Brody wasn't on the show because he was on a plane to Australia. He couldn't be two places at once. I don't know what to make of this, but it just feels weird. It's not that hard, Conrad, it's not that hard. I know he's your friend. And I know by nature, whether he was someone you were acquainted with or not,

your nature is not to beat up on someone. Just not the first thing that comes. Now, you're quite capable of it, but it's not your go-to. Right. And I respect that. But Dave is a pathological fraud. He makes shit up in his own mind and believes it to be true. That's where the pathological part comes in.

He doesn't even know he's full of shit anymore. He doesn't even know he's full of shit anymore. He doesn't even know he's flat out lying anymore because yet that concept doesn't connect in his mind. He believes it. He wants it to be true, therefore it is. And he's been able to make a living conning and lying and twisting and distorting and spinning what little crumbs he has been able to get throughout his career. and he's done it successfully.

And his developed, I don't even be careful what words I use, but he has an audience. He's been able to make a good living doing it. Here's what else Dave has been able to do over the years. And times have changed and Dave has not changed with him. He is now an irrelevant, socially disconnected, out of tune, whatever you want to call it, person out there commenting about anything. Dave in his early career was doing the one thing that nobody else in media gave two shits about. He was covering professional wrestling.

No one gave two shits about it in the mainstream media because it just didn't matter. It wasn't a part of a national discussion. Wrestling was this little local flea market, state fair kind of local promotion that happened in a television studio in front of 75 people. It just really wasn't something that the news or the entertainment industry was interested in covering all throughout the 50s. Now you'd have your exceptions to that, a big show in L.A. or a big show in Madison's Sport Garden. Of course, you would get that associated media. But on a day-to-day basis, nobody in media covered wrestling because they all look down their nose at it,

and some of them rightfully so, depending on what they're not. they were writing about. Okay. Dave comes along and now you've got WWE. It's no longer that little television studio. You know, nobody cares about it anymore. Now it's what's this wrestling made? What do you mean 60,000 people? What do you mean? You know what I mean? All of a sudden, because of WWF at the time, Vince McMahon, the Hall-Cogan connection and the way wrestling blew up in the 80s, now all of a sudden, you've got mainstream newspapers, magazines, television people wanting to cover it. Well, I don't know anything about it. They don't know.

None of their friends are in that world. So what do they do? You know, they find their way to the only person who purports to be a journalist covering wrestling, and they ask him for his opinion. That was Dave being first to market. Give him credit for that. That was Dave branding himself, at least successfully. enough as an expert and a journalist, even though he really wasn't either.

He was just a fan following it, but he was able to brand himself as something much more, which made it easy for lazy journalists who didn't want to do the work themselves to just have a conversation with a guy who purportedly does. That makes writing their story very easy. That makes a quote from Dave make the whole article seem like it. Well, actually could be true because here's this supported wrestling journalist. that says so. So that's how Dave was able to kind of place himself in on the fringe.

When I say fringe, I mean very freaking fringe of mainstream media as a quote-unquote expert. And he was able to enjoy that ride for a long time because nobody really challenged him until lately. Now the internet comes along. Podcasts comes along. The podcast is what really got, Dave, because the podcasts are feeding the internet. The internet's feeding the podcast. You know, Dave, Dave was always throwing rocks at podcasters like there was some lesser form of,

of content or, or conversation because of such podcasters. Well, yeah, like podcasting's kind of kicking everybody's ass, Dave, wake up, smell the coffee, but here's what's happened.

What's happened is because the internet is grown, obviously, the wrestling audience has found their own significant community, on the internet, and now everybody's tearing everything apart. Now of a sudden Dave says stupid shit. I used to be one of the first, and I took notes from Bruce, Pritchard, to jump all over and just point out what a fraud he is. I don't even bother with it anymore because there's enough people doing it for me

that I feel my job here is done. Not to hurt Dave, not necessarily to diminish his audience, but at least let people know that this fraud, in his opinion and his quote-unquote backstage access through people that still talk to him is a mirage. It's not real. He's a liar. He's a fraud that you willingly pay $14.99 a month to to feel like you know something more than people who don't subscribe to his nonsense. That's okay if that's what you want to do.

Just know what he is. And this isn't the only time. This is one kind of loud example when you've got one of the largest entertainment companies maybe in the world. I don't know. Coming out and calling you are bullshit. Do you know how egregious your bullshit has to be to get a network to respond the way they did? It's fun to watch, though, I will say. I'm thoroughly entertaining.

I don't have to comment anymore. Every once in a while something so good, I put a smile emoji on there just because I can't help that. It is what it is. But I love the fact that now the internet, the audience can see through his bullshit the way guys like Bruce Pritchard and Cornette and a whole host of others have been saying, including myself, for decades. And everybody thought, now they're just a better guy. They're just bitter. He's a bitter old man. He's not in the business anymore.

just bitter, just hates Dave. No, dude, he's a freaking liar to fraud. But he's good at it. Give him that. Don't you imagine that, you know, oh, this web we weave. Don't you imagine? And here's my thing.

I just have to imagine. Someone told Dave that. I refuse to believe that he just made it up out of thin air. But here's what I think happened. I don't think it was Tony Cohen that picked up the phone and called him and told him that, because I don't think Tony Cohen would lie. I think he knows, hey, that's going to hurt me with Tom Warner.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to fade the heat. I don't think Tony does that. But I don't think that everybody backstage knows where everybody is all of the time. And I would, I would bet that there was someone backstage at an AEW show who looked around and said, well, there's no Brody King here. They must have taken him off TV. It's the only reason that you would explain that he wasn't here. and if Brian Alvarez's report is true that he was on a plane,

they couldn't be two places at once, but it's not like everybody on the show knows everyone else's travel schedule, and I don't think they, you know, chartered or jet to get everybody over there at the same time. They're still probably doing this international travel, uh, through,

you know, regular commercial airlines. So I feel like someone backstage picks up the phone and calls Dave and says, hey, Brody's not here. Why do you think that is? The only thing I can think of is maybe they were pissed off about the negative attention and didn't want to piss off the administration.

And so then it becomes, it becomes telephone, telegram, telewessler. And, and Dave runs with it. Doesn't that seem more likely than he's just saying, well, he wasn't on TV because this and he just literally made it up like that doesn't sound right. He's your friend. Oh, you think he just made it up. You don't think that somebody called. I don't know whether he made it up or whether you can fade the heat to somebody who told

him the other way it's a fucking rumor and he's reporting a rumor as a fact. That's bullshit. That's a lot. That is what it fucking is, no matter what you decide to call it or how you describe, how you attempt to justify or make excuses for it. It's fraud.

It's the same thing that Bruce Pritchard and myself and everybody else have been accusing Dave of for decades is presenting rumor as fact. Now, Eric, if you did something like that on this show, wouldn't Dave call you? you a grifter? I mean, because you're, you'd be flacing, wait, but this show's free. But he's, people are paying for his info. And you're saying it's a lie. Maybe be careful how we throw that grifter word around. What do you think? Well,

it's here's, and this is the part, it's probably one of the reasons why I feel strongly as I do about it. Number one, because I know the kind of damage it does. And now so does Tony Kahn. Right. Guess what? I've stepped in. that shit. I know exactly where that pile is and how to absolutely avoid it. And this wasn't it. It's just, it's, it's, it's, he's bad for the business. He's been bad for W.W.E. WWF when it was WWF. He was bad for business for WCW because of the drama and bullshit that he created and how it made it to network executives at Turner Broadcasting. When I first showed up there, Jeff Carr was the only Turner executive that would even talk to anybody in WCW.

No one else would even have a conversation with WCW management, but Jeff Carr would. And Jeff Carr lived in Dave Meltzer's dirt sheet. So not me. This was before I started running the company. but the people above me when I came on as an announcement, Jim Hurd, he had to deal with that bullshit because of the distortion spin lies. And in that point of time, Dave was such a mark for himself that anybody backstage could pick up the phone and tell him something. He'd print it. That's still happening to this day.

But it was worse back then because talent knew that in Jim Hurd's case, talent knew that if they got to Jeff Carr through the internet, Jeff Carr would be able to advance an agenda. I saw it happen. When I was a third string announcer, I saw it happening. And I'm like, wow, this is what crazy. How do they, how turn to broadcasting and lets this executive try to manage an operation who doesn't understand based on information he's reading a day meltsers bullshit dirty?

This is my going to say. That's what I, that's what I saw. when I got there. Now, of course, once I took control of the company, it was evolved to different levels. You know, it is what it is. My history is my history. But Dave, my point is, Dave has been bad for business from day one. And Tony Kahn is his latest victim.

I've said to you before, I think, on this show, the smartest thing Tony Kahn could possibly do is to publicly disavow any connection relationship or future communication. with Dave Meltzer. I would cut him off publicly just to try to regain some credibility with my audience because this idiot going online and with all the things that he does,

covering and in this case spreading a rumor to fade the heat, whatever you want to call it, lying is hurting the business. It's hurting Tony's business now. Great question. here from David Bixen span who's in our live chat he says does Jeff Carr deserve the blame for making the newsletters a thing in the WCWC suite via his friendships with Meltzer and Steve Beverly

I don't look I think it's it's bound to happen for the reason that I talked about earlier why mainstream media kind of leaned into Dave Meltzer early on because he got there first he planted the flag positioned himself as an expert even though he wasn't people found him now he's getting, now he's getting copy, now he's getting credit. Now his name is mentioned in mainstream media and it just continues to build upon itself. That would have happened, I think, whether Jeff Carr would have been in that position or not. It was just easier to identify because a lot of times when, you know, my experience dealing with a big public corporation in particular, there's layers upon layers of influence and management. It's all not as easy as

the direct line or chart would suggest that it is. There's a lot of different influences. And oftentimes it's really hard to determine where certain influences are originating from. In this case, it wasn't because Jeff Carr was the only person that would even pick up a phone and have a conversation. So now you're talking to the entire corporation because only one guy's willing to talk to you.

And it was very easy to figure out just based on his questions, where are those. questions were coming from. It was really simple. It wasn't like you had to be a, you know, a code talker to figure it out. It was so obvious that Jeff was positioning questions that are coming directly from the newsletters. But I think somehow that influence would have happened either way.

It would have been just less easy to pinpoint. Well, to be clear. Eric Bischoff does not have a hard on for Dave Meltzer, but he does have one for Mrs. B, thanks to our friends at Blue Chew. Fellas, you know what time it is. It's time to level up. Blue shoe drop something new and crazy.

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That's promo code 83 weeks. Visit Bluethew.com for more details and important. and safety information. And we thank Blue Choo for sponsoring today's podcast. Let's do some live questions here. We are live on a Saturday morning. If you got questions for Eric, hit them.

We want to hear from you. We're also going to be talking about the Wrestling Observer Awards. We're going to be talking about WrestleMania and how ticket sales are going and what Vegas is doing in response. Here's a question, though, that, boy, I hate that we're going right back to it, but here's more Dave Meltzer stuff. uh l u i ism whatever that is says saw an old clip where melzer said you were a bigger racist than bill wants because you put harlem heat and chains when did you put harlem heat and chains all

first of all i haven't seen the clip i don't know that that's a real thing but the story i've heard is maybe they filmed one episode and as soon as you heard about it you thought it was a bad idea and it never made air did this even air what do you remember about harlem heat and chains you're muted Eric, you're muted. We can't hear you. Good. I get a second shot at this.

I'm hoping that whoever set that question in either made a mistake, somehow conflated things, whatever. I would hope that Dave Mouser didn't say that because that's taking even his level of garbage to a whole new low if he did. Because I wasn't in charge of creative at the time. I was in charge of the physical television broadcast. I remember that it happened. I remember putting a bullet in it, but I don't remember much else about it because it was something that happened quick.

There was no discussion. There was no yeah, but, or, hey, what about this? There was none of that typical wrestling conversation that normally takes place when someone like me at that time who wasn't involved in creating. of what came in and pointed out something that wasn't going to happen. So it was so fast, man. It was like it was more of a reaction than it was a discussion.

That was not under my watch creatively, by the way. Bixon's fan who's on top of these sort of things. He says, I don't think that's a real Dave quote. So glad to hear that. Here's one from K.S. Dixon 86. He says, I believe during Holt's divorce, E.E. and Jimmy Hart. came to control Hulkomania slash Hollywood trademarks.

Is this still the case? And are they open to Hulk's likeness still appearing in WW media, such as future WW games? You don't control that now, right? That's all Nick and the family? No, I have nothing to do with that. It was a brief period of time. Jimmy Hart was not involved.

There was a brief period of time that Terry transferred control, not ownership, but control. of those marks in addition to other assets, put those under my control while he was making transitions to new legal teams and accounting teams and things like that. So it was brief. It may have been a year, eight months, something like that. Jimmy was not involved.

And all it really was was a way to help Terry set up new business entities because the divorce forced a separation of a lot of it. They couldn't share the same accountants. They couldn't just share the same attorneys for obvious reasons. So there was just like a rebuilding of his quote unquote brand business and temporarily I was in charge of it. We got something pointed out by David Bixen Span that I'll admit I think I missed and maybe some others missed, but there was an article posted to CNN this morning and I've got our our producer, Silver pooling the headline for us. But I do want to talk about that. in a minute. But first, we'll do a fun and easy one.

Or maybe it's not that easy. I LU-I-Som says, where do you see cable 10 years from now, Eric? Do you think cable TV grows? Does it contract? Does it change? What does cable TV look like 10 years? I don't know that it'll contract in terms of quality.

Already is. And you can see it. Streaming is where the quality content is going. Streaming, as Wayne Gretzky would say, is without question where the puck, the entertainment puck, the sports puck, it's already headed towards that streaming and that that puck is only going to accelerate over time. I think as a result, just like, look, look at what's happened to television. Networks, the big three, right, ABC, NBC, CBS.

Look at what's happened to the quality of those shows over the past 10 years. They still have, they still have prime time lineups, but rarely are any of them any good. In fact, most of them aren't as good as most of the stuff you'll find on cable, first run, not repeats, but first run. Cable television is still delivering some decent product networks because of what's happening, of streaming. Now the ad dollars are shifting instead of it just being big networks and a little bit over here for cable. And then cable did the same

thing, right? Cable all of a sudden started becoming more popular, started sucking me those ad sale dollars out of what was formerly network only territory. Cable started getting bigger. Cable started getting bigger. Networks were getting hurt. Now streaming comes along and is kicking the shit out of both of them. So will cable television

exist? I think so. Because it's easy access. but he has it, but what's going to be programmed into it, I think is going to be much different. And look, you don't have to, you don't need a fortune teller to figure it out. You don't even need to be in the business to figure it out. You can just watch television and see for yourself what's happening to the quality of the content. It's becoming greatly diminished on network in particular cable as well. And also look at what you're seeing on streaming.

You're watching four-hour mini-movies. even the movie business is being severely impacted by streaming. So I think it'll all exist. It'll just exist in a much different form. Eric, I cannot wait for what I've got to show you. I can't believe that I missed this. It was a new article that was posted this morning before I talk about it, because I realized this is going to go long.

I want to really quickly and briefly tell you about Better Wild. This has been a game changer for my household. You know, we talk about our dogs a lot. And I don't know if you heard of the beginning of the show. Eric disclosed that Mrs. B has been in Florida for like three weeks, but Eric had to come home. Now, he's not going to tell you why he had to come home so I will.

He came home because he missed his dog, Nick. And by the way, that means he left his family and his daughter-in-law, his wife and his grandson, because he's like, I miss my damn dog. Get me home to my dog. And if you feel that way about your dog, you want the best for your dog. I certainly did for mine.

And I just thought my dog ginger liked to scratch your ears and liquor paws. I just thought that's what all dogs do. But they're not normal dog behaviors. They're actually signs of allergies. And allergies will flare up in our dogs whenever bad bacteria takes over the gut. Because 90% of the dog's immune system lives in the gut. Well, it turns out just like us humans, dogs need probiotics are good. bacteria to strengthen their gut health and call an overactive immune system.

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going to have a better time. You will too. Betterwild is committed to helping our dogs with science-backed veterinary and approved solutions that you can feel great about. And 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 fish off. So I'm pretty fired up about this because before we went live this morning, there was an article posted on CNN. And I'll admit, I missed it.

I wasn't monitoring the internet this morning before we jumped on. So David Bixen Span, who's in our live chat, a shout out to Dave. He's helped us with research through the years. And he wanted your opinion on the CNN article. And I thought to myself, self, what is it?

Well, here's the headline that I had Dave Silver a pull for us. And this is on CNN.com. And they're talking about the whole Brody King controversy. And to my surprise, I'll admit, I have not read the thing, but as I scroll it, it jumped off the page. There's a whole section called Controversy creates cash. And of course, they quote you. They say the key to understanding the business strategy and wrestling, Lane said, is in the title of a book by the former wrestling executive in WW Hall of Fame member

Eric Fischoff, Controversy Creates Cash. But here's the thing that I'll say, I thought I was sort of shocked. It's in here. If you look about halfway down the article, you'll see in big bold letters a president in the Hall of Fame. Then there's a paragraph underneath that a lot of people, myself included,

may have just scrolled right past. Vixen's fan pointed it out. The embrace of contemporary issues as part of a larger politically shaded rivalry playing out in the industry between the seven-year-old AEW and the industry's ruling juggernaut for generations, WWE. And then Eric, it says in parentheses,

here. Warner Brothers Discovery, comma, CNN's parent corporation, comma, owns a minority stake in AEW in parentheses. This is the first time this has ever been acknowledged. And we've been saying it here on the program that we felt like this was sort of common sense and everybody had to know. Like you even made the analogy once upon a time that a spike should have accepted or TNA should have accepted Spike's investment.

Like that's what you want long term. but I think this is the first time that we've seen it just revealed. I don't think anybody's ever really acknowledged it. But to have CNN as a matter of full disclosure, Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN's parent corporation owns a minority stake in AW. That feels like a big deal to just slip into the middle of an article, don't you think?

So much so that I'm sitting here analyzing why. Why would you, why would CNN owned by Turner, right? Still owned by Turner or not? Yeah, yeah. All right. I know they were up for sale for a while. Why would you, on the heels of something that all you have to do is wake up and have a cup of coffee and look around you at the companies, the major companies, the major brands that have gone

woke and gone broke, publicly destroyed stock market crash, just look. Look at what happened to Bud Light. Look at what happened to Crackerberg. Look what happened to all these mainstream America, iconic freaking brands when they decided to play politics. Now, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. We all know that. No argument from anybody on that one.

But you don't have to be that smart to know what a stupid thing that is to do unless there's a reason you're doing it. What would the reason be to do, do this article in the first place because now you're inviting the audience to join in. This is essentially Turner Broadcasting is telling you to show up and stand up against Trump. That's what you just did. That was the intent.

Either knowingly or unknowingly, that is what happened. I think it's intent. Why would you do that? because you believe so much in this AEW product that you're willing to risk the negative publicity and your stock price to invite a televised version of us versus them on a wrestling show because you have a minority stake in it? I don't, it's too stupid to be true. I even though I know it's possible it could be true, it's just too stupid to fow. them. But if it's not that, what is it? Why would you do that? Why would you use this story to expose your corporate ownership in that brand at this time? Keep in mind,

that whole world is on fire right now. The Warner Brothers Discovery thing, it's kind of volatile. Who woke up and said, man, you're saying, It's just giant bomb fire over here in our company, and we don't know who's going to own us. We don't know if we're going to spun off. We don't know what. We don't know what's going to happen. It's on fire. I know, there's a cup of gas.

Let's throw it out and see what happens. That's what they did. Can't figure out why. That'll be really interesting to follow. What's your take? I mean, I feel like you disclose it because you want to reveal, you want to make sure that there's no perceived bias. And so you just, I think, think a traditional journalist would say, hey, as a matter of full disclosure,

I work for the same organization that has a minority stake in it. I get that. We don't see enough of that with when there's been co-opted members of the pro wrestling media. But I mean, they go into so much here that I have to admit, I'm like, why are we? What is the upside here? TonyCon found a W in 2019. Simple Southern logic, right, Karen? What's the upside?

I don't get the upside of this. But, I mean, they're even talking about who the Collins have and have not made political donations to. And I'm like, why are we do? I'm with you. Why are we doing that? But I think this is the first time we've ever seen any sort of public acknowledgement that Tom Warner owns. There you go. Right there.

Warner Brothers Discovery comma, CNN's parent corporation, comma, owns a minority stake in AEW. So now we don't have to. we don't have to guess if Dave Meltzer is guessing correctly, we don't have to say, hey, is anybody being cute on a media call and, and being very strategic with their answers? No,

no. There it is. They're saying they own a minority stake. That feels like kind of a big revelation just casually slipped into an article this morning. Yeah, I mean, I think I may have been one of the first ones to throw that out years ago.

Four years ago, three or four years ago, I know, we can do the. research and figure it out. And back then it was like, he's so full of shit. He's so bear. He just is mad Tony never hired now, dude. I can see the dots. I see it down over here. I see a dot over here. I see a dot over here. I see a dot over here. You see four dots. I see a way to connect those dots that shows me a picture. And when you see enough dots,

you see enough of the pattern over the years, you can kind of figure some shit out that most people don't normally catch. And it was obvious to me, particularly in the lead up to the renewal of the EW contract, based on dots that I was seeing and hearing, some of them credible, some of them not, but just piecing it together.

There's no way. There's no way Turner does not own a piece of that company. And when I threw it out, everybody denied it and thought I was nuts. I think a lot of people warmed up to the idea that it was logical, but Bixon's fan who's with us here, he's got his finger on the pulse.

He says also remember to keep in mind that per SEC rules, Warner Brothers Discovery owns less than 5% of AEW. If they own 5% or more, it would have been included in the SEC filing. So nothing earth shattering, but it confirms what we already know. Yeah, and by the way, I don't see why that's a negative or that it maybe is perceived

as something that we don't disclose or is shameful. Like, that's just a good strategic thing for both sides. Like, we want to be, boy, I hate to use a biblical term on a silly wrestling podcast, but equally yoked. It shows that, hey, Mortar Brothers is invested in AEW success and vice versa. I don't, I don't perceive that to be a negative at all.

But now here it is. It's been confirmed. So I guess the cat's out of the bag, but the whole idea. And I, you know, listen, I, I should say, I'm a huge fan of Brody King and I have been for a long time. J.R. was one of the first guys who was advocating for him on the podcast to say, hey, this should be one of the top guys. An incredible physical performer. Like to see him in real life, there's authenticity.

He's believable. He checks all the boxes in a pro wrestler. That being said, when you're going to wear a political shirt on TV, you're going to half the audience no matter what. And I think that's when it bleeds over into, if he's positioned as a baby face or a heel, depending on where you sit politically, that may mess it all up.

And so I think it's important at times that at least me and my wrestling fandom I want to get lost in the character. And I mean this not disrespectfully at all. But I don't give a shit what Terry Belaya thought. I loved Hulk Hogan. So it was easy for me to separate the two. I got, I was a Hulk,

I was a Hulk maniac. I wasn't a Terry maniac and I didn't care, you know, anything about Terry Belaya as a kid. I was all about Hulk Hogan. And I want to get lost in that. But when we start to blend them together, I think that's when we sort of turn people off and we're like,

oh, I don't want to think about real stuff. I like this fantasy land. pretend wrestling fighting league. So I'm saying all that to say. When the decision was made, hey, you can wear a political statement t-shirt on TV.

I like the idea that they have freedom of speech, but they should have freedom of speech on their social media, not on my airwaves where it, I mean, that is the lifeblood and that that income from these television networks and advertisers pays everybody. So I think your first priority would be, hey,

let's protect the bag, let's take care of the business and the business will take care of us. If you have a political statement, by God, fire up your Instagram and let them know how you feel. But when we're coming through the curtain, I don't know if I want to do that on TV. But that's just me.

I think we should separate it because it should be an escape. Because I grew up loving the ultimate warrior. But if the ultimate warrior came out, let me tell you about immigration, dude. I don't want to hear what? What are we doing? I don't want to have any conversation about that. I want to get lost in the story.

Am I wrong on this? Am I crazy? No, you're absolutely 100% right. And it's so obvious to people like you and me and others. Obviously, we're not the only two to see it. But yet you still have people in very high positions making tens of millions of dollars and controlling hundreds of millions of dollars more in business that are making really stupid decisions because they're not connected to the audience any longer.

They do not know their audience. You cannot be successful in the entertainment business if you do not know your audience. And if you think because you're good out there performing in the ring or you're a successful professional wrestling character, that you're so good that you can go out there and piss off 50% of the audience that's watching you. And if you think you're so good, that doesn't matter. You've lost touch. And that's exactly what's happening on the corporate level. It's an in what I mean again here's the part that makes me just go what in the actual is are people thinking because it's not like a theory just go look talk to the executives if you can find them because you're probably all hiding now because they'll never get hired again then initiated some of those big brand disasters to go woke and engage in the political firestorm. It's not just a discussion.

We're not talking about a political debate here. We're talking about riots and streets and people dying. And somehow that's on, we're going to pick a team. Yeah, Conrad, it's so obvious and you're so right. I just, I wish you had more influence and I had more influence because we're seeing it happen over and over and over again. And not just with entertainment brands. It's just don't get in this fight. This fight is temporary.

you know this this this two shall pass eventually and when it does you want to be left with just a small handful of rubble where your audience used to be because that's what you're going to be building back from it just makes no sense well something that does make sense is our friends over at mars men you can take a look at eric and see that eric is in better shape than ever before and a lot of that is because he's tapped in to mars men you know a lot of us when we hit 36 it feels like like everything that used to be easy suddenly isn't. All of a sudden it feels like we're moving through mud. And here's the thing.

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They're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Eric, we are live. We've got a lot of great questions coming in. I want to hit a few of these, but then I also want to talk about WrestleMania. We've been teasing this for a bit. It is time we get there,

but there's so much cool stuff that keeps coming. Here's one from KS. Dixon 86. He says, without a TV deal, WCW was worth 20 bucks to Fusion. My question is, why? You had the tape library, copyrights, you remove most of the roster and after the 90-day cycle, T&A and others survived on a pay-per-view and DVD distribution just a year later.

But the benefit of hindsight, would you have tried to rework that fusion deal? I mean, obviously nobody knew what streaming was going to become, even if your partners had done some great business with ESPN classics, the tape library maybe would have been worth at least what Vince paid for it. But was that just not the model and what you were excited about? once that sort of shine was taken off, you were just less interested, or is there a way with benefit of hindsight to make a deal work?

You're muted. We can't hear you. Sorry about that. Sure, there would have been a way to restructure that deal if that's what Fusion wanted to do. Keep in mind, Fusion put in, I think they seeded WCW with,

it was either $5 or $10 million of their own personal cash, and then went out and raised additional $50 or $60 million, from institutional investors. And I was a part of that process. I was a part of those dog and pony shows with Fusion Media when speaking to the business and the business model to these potential investors, which were, by the way, at the time,

like Warburg-Pinkus-level institutional investors. So it was kind of a big deal. Ultimately, the investors that came on board so that Fusion had $67 million or whatever the number was bought into a business plan. Well, that business plan that the investment group bought into had television associated with it. So once you take the television aspect out of it, all of those institutional investors, and they're not looking for little deals.

That's the thing about some of the investors that we were speaking to. They're not looking for a little, I'll put in $100,000 here, or you put in $200,000 here. We're talking about $5 and $10, multiple millions of dollars, right? So once the business model changed because Kellner came in and unplugged the television and the revenue that came with it, it no longer made sense to the team of investors that had agreed to fund it. Now, the question really comes down to could have fusions gone out and found away or funded it themselves? Sure, they could have. That's not what they were interested in them. This is the team that took aggregated a bunch of collegiate footwork.

from major universities and colleges aggregated it because nobody thought it had any value, kind of like WCW didn't think the WCW film library really had that much value. That's the way NCAA and colleges universities viewed their old sports films. There's just maintenance. We've got to keep it. We've got to maintain them. There's no revenue there. Well, Brian Faddaugh and Steve Greenberg went out, went, hey,

I'm going to go up and buy the rights to all that footage. I don't need to buy the footage. I just need to buy the rights to that footage. It's found money for these colleges and universities because they don't think it has any value anyway. Brian and Steve had the vision to create the sports classic network, which ESPN subsequently bought and became ESPN Sports Classic. And then Brian and Steve went on to replicate that kind of acquisition,

content acquisition, build it, blow it up big and sell it for a big number. That was the business that Steve and Brian Badole were in. They were not in the, I want to be in the wrestling business. Here's the way we can get in. Let's just buy the tape library and build that up because sometime in the future, this streaming may pop up. It'll be worth a lot of money. It's just now what the business was for that.

We've got another question here. This one comes to us from Jeremy. He says, Eric, which one of WCW memorabilia pieces do you, which you wish you owned. Conrad, same question from the Nitro era. Hey, I've got the big gold belt. So I've got my favorite piece of WCW memorabilia. But if you, I know you didn't keep much. But if there was one thing you wish you would have hung on to, Eric, is there one thing that stands out? Yeah, I didn't keep anything, by the way. And it's not like I'm, you know, I think, oh, man, I wish I would have for any kind of an emotional connection because I don't place value on those things. any value.

Now, if there was one thing, if there was something that I could get from the original Nitro set, whatever that may be, I can picture of the set right now. But if there was any piece of staging that could literally fit in a garage or a house or a man cave or something, that was part of the original Nitro stage, that probably pretty cool. I can see myself sitting down and having a beer in front of that and explaining it to people. kind of like I do my bar in here, right? It's a, it's a conversation starter with someone walks in your house and they see like a, you know,

bar that looks like it should be in a hotel and Sundance. And he is, by the way, and Robert Redford's bars. Got one just like it. But yeah, it'd be a good conversation started. That'd be fun. Bixen span says,

Eric, about 10 years ago, I interviewed you and you gave a very sober analysis of what specifically you felt the torch guys did better than Meltzer. like citation formats. Could you elaborate here? That's a good question. What respect did you have for the way Wade Keller and the Torch did things as compared

to the observer or someone else? I'd have to see my exact quotes, but I want to be careful here because I don't remember making the quote, but it sounds like something I would have said. The only thing that may be lacking in context would be the timeline, because there was a time when, for example, Wade Keller was nothing but a cheap imitation of Maltzer, meaning rumors, innuendo, relying on hearsay,

a heavy amount of spin and personal take, yet published this fact. That was Wade Keller for a long time. Wake Keller changed his approach, and I'm not sure when, because it's not like I read, you know, stayed in touch with Wade Keller's work consistently over any length of time. But depending on what I was doing from time to time,

I would drop him. And I noticed several years ago now, at least several, maybe five or six or more, I started looking at the way Wade was presenting his content, at least online. I wasn't following anything else. And he was presenting more professionally. He was making it pretty clear in his editorial, you know, what was opinion. And he was just presenting. information in a way that I felt was far more truthful.

And over time, I found myself going, if I read it on the torch, I'm probably going to believe it. Because he wasn't making an ass out of himself every other day, like some people are today. Now, I will say with PW Insider, that goes back a little further in the sense that I started getting, even when I was running WCW, when there was a question, when somebody was writing a story about WCW,

Mike Johnson in particular, whatever the time period was, I don't have the chronological dates memorized, but at some point early, Mike Johnson would reach out to me and say, hey, I'm writing a story, and it's about WCW, and this is something I've heard. Would you like an opportunity to comment? He's the only guy that did that.

He's the only one that did that. And he did it. And sometimes I would say, well, sure, I appreciate you call me. Here's what I can talk about. Or sometimes I would say, can't talk about that for whatever reason. It could be proprietary, you know, corporate, you know, information that I'm, or legal information or accounting information that I'm not, at that time wasn't allowed to really speak about unless I was prepped.

And if I said, no, I can't talk about it. He was saying, okay. Then he called back again. month or two, three, four, five months later, whatever. Say, hey, you're not of the story. I'm writing this story. You want to comment. And that only has to happen a couple of times before I start having some confidence in

somebody because they're at least making the effort, to be honest. They're at least making the effort to get the other side of the story, even if I can't give it. And I appreciate it and respected that. And once, you know, you give my respect, you have to work pretty hard to fuck it up. So I respected Mike Johnson for a long time because of that. Um, and Dave, you know, despite having given him an opportunity to have access, continued to do the same things he had been doing before I gave them access, which is why I cut him off and just started calling him out because he's just,

he is what he is. It's what he's always been. Trigger cheese wants to know. 50 cent did a promo video with macho man to help push Randy's rap album back in 2003. Do you know how they connected? I really don't, but 50 cents is. He's one of my favorite people right now. I mean, if you look at his story, where he came from, what he accomplished in music,

but if you really look at what he's doing on film now and television, I mean, he's not just a good actor. He's a pretty good actor. He's producing and directing some pretty good stuff consistently. I just think he's a very interesting guy. And I think we're only beginning to see what, what 50 cents capable of creating. Because he's a very creative guy. I love his stuff.

Anyway, no, I have no idea. It was from out of nowhere. So it must have been a friend of a friend kind of thing. I don't know. Jake from Wendy City says, Hi, Eric, favorite memories of working with John Sina. You know, I don't have one. The only one that stands out, because a lot of the stuff that I did with John,

And it was, you know, I'm just basically a vessel for narrative. You know, I'm doing an interview. I'm doing something in the ring with a microphone, reacting to something he's doing. You know, I'm the, I'm the green stuff on the steak, right, on the plate, the garnish. But the only thing that I did that was more than that, really, that stands out was I think I had a match, quote unquote, with John. And it was either in the match I had with him or there was some spot. where John was hanging over the bottom rope and he was feeding me his face basically to smack him, right? So he was giving me his jaw. And, you know, John said before the match, I just don't worry,

lay it in there. Now, John's got a jaw like a, you know, small car. I mean, he's got a big, freaking jaw. It's not like I was worried about hurting John Ced his jaw. But I just, it felt weird for me to smack somebody that I wasn't pissed off at. And I don't know how to, nobody ever, I never learned how to throw a working punch or working slap. I just know that if I don't really slap them, it's going to look like crap. And John's probably going to be pissed off of me. And Vince for sure will.

So I know I got to lay it in here, but I like John. And I hadn't gotten to that point where I could flip that switch and just smack the fuck out of somebody that I liked. I wasn't there. Guys that do it for a living can do it in their stuff. sleep. I wasn't there. But I was torn. It was a dilemma. It was a rock and a hard place. Literally, John's jaw being the rock. The hard place was gorilla, knowing Vince is watching, and I'm in the middle of when I really don't want to do this. I don't want to look like shit. I don't want to

hurt my friend. So I hit him. I remember when I made contact with his jaw, I was like, well, that didn't hurt, but it didn't hurt because I couldn't feel my hand. His jaw is harder than it looks. And it was just a split instant. And I only thought about that because I thought, oh, man, I hope it looked good on camera. Because I know what it's like to be in the truck or in a gorilla position, watching on a monitor. When you're waiting for that one spot, you've kind of set it up. The cameraman, the directors knows it's coming. Camerman's in the right spot. Talent's doing what they're supposed to be doing. Now that I'm the only one left that can screw this up. That's what I was thinking. There's a fun moment. That's the only one that really stands out.

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I don't know if you are late to the party, but I highly recommend that you check it out. Hey, let's talk about WrestleMania. We are still live. Keep those questions coming. I've got like eight banks. So we are going to get to your questions. Keep them coming.

But WrestleMania. It's the topic right now for a lot of reasons, Eric. You know, this is WrestleMania season. I, um, I'm not going to say I told you so. But I think we called this. Ticket sales are sluggish for WrestleMania. I said last year when they made the announcement that they were going back to Vegas, that this would be tough.

You know, a lot of wrestling fans for WrestleMania at least are, of course, fly-ins. And so people plan their travel based on where WrestleMania is going to be. And that becomes one of their annual vacation trips every year. And Vegas is very expensive. And last year was the most expensive WrestleMania ever. and now they're going back to the exact same place where the Vegas economics are crazy. And the, you know, I know a lot of people say, oh, it'll sell out as we get closer. And I hope it does.

But right now there's a lot of reports that ticket sales are way down. I've heard as high as 18% down from where they were this time last year. I know some of that is TKO's aggressive pricing strategy. But I also felt like last year, respectfully, and I know you took issue with me using the word, I felt like the numbers were artificially inflated by John Cena. Now, I'm not suggesting they're reporting fake numbers, but I'm saying the interest in Sena's last run and Sena's last WrestleMania and Sena's last stop in your town was going to boost those numbers.

So from the outside looking in, you think, man, WWE is on a tear. And financially they were. But creatively, I don't know that they had something really strong to finish it. And I felt like, hey, by WrestleMania, the truth will have exposed itself. So here's what's happened. John Cena had the failed Hill turn last year, but they still sold a ton of merch, still sold a ton of tickets,

still set all kinds of records. He finishes up in December. January was the Royal Rumble, almost universally agreed upon as a less than show. It did not deliver. I mean, yes, they got paid. Yes, they made a lot of money, but I don't know that that show was necessarily booked for the fans.

I didn't talk to anyone who said, that's my favorite Royal Rumble ever. And it was in front of kind of, a crowd. And now ticket sales are sluggish for WrestleMania. And there's reports that things keep changing creatively for WrestleMania. And I guess some talent and people behind the scenes are frustrated by that.

But this has gone so far as that WWE has now let the local community know, you cannot stream WrestleMania this year. We're going to do the old school blackout. So whereas last year at the Circa Hotel, they had the world's biggest pool. and the world's biggest screen and the world's biggest sports book, and you can come in and party and watch WrestleMania. Not this year, unless you bring a tablet with you, because they want to force you to go to the stadium.

Well, I'm sure a lot of Las Vegas business owners feel like, hey, didn't the city give you a bunch of money to bring WrestleMania here? And this was supposed to affect tourism. But if they can't watch WrestleMania here, they're not going to come to our venue and drink and eat and all the other things. this is a problem. Now, it's not a terrible problem. There's still plenty of time.

They're still going to make a bunch of money. It's going to be another record event. I'm sure the revenues will be there. But the idea that fans aren't lining up to buy tickets, is this something to be concerned about? Or is it not anything that you would throw the flag on just yet, Eric? Well, you have to throw a flag. I mean, you have to pay attention to trends, especially financial ones, right?

They're less subjective. They're just numbers. So you want to keep your eye on your numbers at all times. But, you know, there's also, and you covered them. But just to point out what's been happening to tourism in Vegas for the last 18 months, just Google it. And it's a big issue. There are just less people going to Las Vegas.

and planning on being there for a weekend for an event. There's just less people in general. It has nothing to do with WWE or anything else that's going on. It's just less people are choosing to go to Las Vegas. Significantly so that it's really impacting businesses. WWE makes a commitment and they're coming into town. And yes, they're bringing people from all over the world. But ticket sales are down about 18%,

which, by the way, I'm not willing to stick my career on this or my reputation. but I would imagine if you looked at the trends for tourism in Las Vegas over the last 18 months, they're probably down somewhere between 10 and 15%. So 18% is really not, shouldn't be surprising as a data point. If there are just less people coming to Vegas, then I don't know. Somehow there's this math formula that could suggest that there'll be less people possibly coming to your show. Seems that way to me. I'm not a math guy, though.

So I think you have to look at that. Is it because of our creative? Should creative take all the juice for this? Or is the creative what the creative is? And let's also talk about what didn't happen. What couldn't have happened? What if Ron Breaker all of a sudden broke through? What if what was the original plan for him?

Because I remember hearing there was one. The rumor in innuendo was that he was supposed to, win the Royal Rumble. He did not. They pivoted to Roman Reins. And the following week, he, uh, hurt himself flipping the announcer's table. I guess it was a straw that broke the camel's back.

He's going to require hernia surgery and he'll miss WrestleMania as a. Okay. So then I can presume based on what you just laid out there, we can presume pretty safely that there was a plan for Bronbreaker. The way he got treated on the event before when it was just like kind of treat him like a dog, right? He was like, hey, it's like, wow. That was, what, what they used him like that?

Well, that was his motivation to get pissed off, right? I think there was a plan for Braun. Had there been a creative plan for Braun that could have been launched at Royal Rumble the way they wanted to, to launch it? And we were looking at Bronner in the main event? Would we feel differently? Would we be more excited? Would, would that story have captivated us enough because of the way? way it was set up. And if our hypothesis, guess if you will, is accurate and there actually was a

plan for him. And part of that plan was for him to get, you know, jobbed out so that he had, he could come back with fire in fury, which we saw. We just didn't see the part where he got a hernia. And now those plans are off the table. What if those plans would have remained intact? So before, again, it's so easy to go, oh, numbers are dead. I don't know, triple age is getting to eat and changes. Of course, there's freaking changes. People are injured. Right.

Yes what? You're going to have freaking changes, people. And once you make one change and it seems like when you're on the outside looking in, you go, oh, well, we can just put this guy over here and it unwinds a bunch of other stuff. That's right. So it's not as easy as moving a chest piece, you know, across the board. And that requires a lot of structural. change, even if you're only talking about one person, then all these other plans have to change.

So keep that in mind why we're jumping to creative conclusions, because that's the first thing the Internet Wrestling Committee is going to go to, right? That becomes the narrative. Ooh, there's trouble in paradise. You know, maybe, I mean, I don't know. I don't want to sound like I'm covering for many, but it just seems like we read so much into the drama of the wrestling business, even at the executive level, that it doesn't really exist or it shouldn't exist if it does.

Yeah, I don't think it's fair that a lot of people have decided that it's all creative. I mean, we've got some comments coming in in our live chat who are saying that, hey, it's all creative. I think some of it is economics and another part of it is there's a sense of sameness. I know we talked about this before, but, you know, it wasn't that long ago, guys, that WrestleMania was one night. so you had to buy one ticket. Well, if you're going and you're taking your kid, you've got to buy two.

Now you've got to buy four. But not only that, as Eric said, it's awfully expensive to go to Las Vegas. I looked it up and year over year from 24 to 25, Las Vegas tourism was down seven and a half percent. So you've got to assume that that trend has continued or perhaps worsened from 25 to 26. We're too early in 26 to get that sort of data. But clearly Vegas is trending down and that's about. based on economics.

I mean, a lot of the American economy right now are the haves and the have-nots. You've got people who are stressed out on their monthly payments and struggling to pay the rent. And then you've got other people who are making a fortune in their stock investments. But there's very little in the middle. And I think that if you're talking to the people who have to save up to go to WrestleMania,

then they would say, hey, we just went to Vegas last year. We'll wait until next year. I think it was a strategic mistake from a fan perspective. And I think this is the problem with TKO right now is they're not really operating for the fans. I do feel like on some level, Vince was trying to grow the audience. Now, maybe we didn't always agree with it, but it feels like now the decisions are made less about

what would the fans like and more about what's best for the bottom line. An easy example would be the NASCARification of the ring canvas. I mean, there's just ads everywhere, which I'm for, by the way. I mean, you listen to my pods and we're going to have one of those motherfacially. fuckers about every 15 minutes. So I'm for it. But I'm just saying there, there is a paradigm shift where we can't serve both masters.

And I think that if WrestleMania this year was in New Orleans, like a lot of people thought it was going to be, I don't think ticket sales will be down. Because I feel like the people who went, you're most loyal, who spend the most money, who went to Las Vegas last year, they're looking for a new experience.

They don't want to go back to Las Vegas again. It's like, well, we just did that last year. We were looking for something different than. And I feel like booking the same location has hurt them. And obviously the pricing. I mean, that's the number one thing that we're hearing about. You know, the guy who helps us on YouTube, Ann Evans, he bought a ticket for his kid to WrestleMania.

He is a local Las Vegas resident. But boy, he was belly aching in a major way about the investment to go to WrestleMania. But he also wanted to memorialize it for his kid and have a keepsake. TCO was charging a major premium just to get a 50. physical printed tickets. Like they don't just give you that. You have to spend hundreds of dollars more to get that.

So you can go slab it or, you know, say, Wow. I've never heard of such a thing. That's crazy. What else is crazy, Eric, is they're using dynamic pricing with TKO.

So depending on where you live and what time you're looking, the price of your ticket to WrestleMania will change. Like, this is a whole new ball game. This is not just, well, I wish Jay Uso was in the main event. It's like there's more to it than that.

There's a lot of other factors at play for this. And I think unfairly sometimes people are overly critical of creative. I'm not saying that, you know, everybody loves every second of WWE creative. And I'm certainly not defending my best buddy Bruce or anything like that. I'm just saying to say that none of these other factors matter, it's just this one thing is not fair. Well said.

Well, because it's a very complicated business. When I say to people that, you know, I don't really pay real close attention to the stuff in the ring until, you know, we'll get closer to WrestleMania. Of course, I'll check in. I'll start dropping in because the stories get better. It's the same thing that happens to me with the NFL. In the early fall, you know, throughout the winter, do I, you know, make a point of being home Sunday afternoon or Monday night so I can watch football? Absolutely not. I'm outside enjoying my life where I live with my dog, my wife, my kids, whatever.

I'm doing stuff. I'm not sitting in front of a television. That's just me. But towards the end of the season, as you're going into playoffs and certainly into the Super Bowl, now I'm going to make time on my Sunday afternoon because now it's getting good. Now it matters, truly matters, right?

I'm in the same way with WrestleMania. I'll drop in throughout the year from time to time. If I hear somebody that I'm interested in is doing something special, I'll start dropping in for a couple weeks in a row, just just check in. and see what's going on or check it out in social media, YouTube, whatever. Same with AEW. If I hear of something that sounds, oh, that could be kind of interesting.

I'm going to check that out. I'll drop in, but I don't watch on a weekly basis. I just don't. I think creative tends to get a little bit better as we get closer to WrestleMania. I'll go back to what I said earlier. I really, really wish if I'm right and I think I am, because I think I even predicted a couple weeks before that this is going to be brawn breakers opportunity. The Rumble would have, or not the Rumble, the last event would have been where he got jobbed out.

I really thought they were setting him up. He's ready, which is what I said. He's been ready for at least a year, maybe two. The audience was ready for him. I think this was his spot. I think that the fact that he missed that spot is what's causing the creative changes. And just the lack of, oh, same. sameness. That's what it is. You hit it on the head. You called it. There is a sameness here. It's not bad. It's just the same, or at least too much of it. So let's see what they figure out. I have faith that they will because they're smart and they've got experience and we've got some good people there. Let's hope that that, because if they can break out of that, oh, Roman again kind of vibe, let's see if they can make it.

that work. I hope so. I think the best thing that could have happened to Brian Breaker is him missing this year's WrestleMania. If they had crowned him, I think it would have been too much too soon and it would have stunned his growth and the audience would have regurgitated him. I got a lot of friends who are hardcore Bronbreaker fans, absolutely love them. But when I say, what's your favorite Bronbreaker match or promo? They can't answer me. So give them one. Well, that's what I'm saying. But I think, I don't think Cody was. made worse by waiting. And I don't think Brian will be made worse by waiting, but I'm glad we're talking about this because there's rumor in innuendo out there right now about who

Brock Lesnar's opponent might be at WrestleMania. Now, we heard a couple of years ago when Vince had a nasty lawsuit pop up on him that the plan that year was Brock versus Gunther. Now we're hearing maybe it's Brock and Obafemi certainly seems like that was teased. We're going to find out on Monday Night Raw on the 23rd from Atlanta. I guess there will be some sort of future foreshadowing between that and Elimination Chamber about what Brock may be doing. But there's speculation that it might actually be Brock versus L.A. Knight.

And I'll admit, that kind of caught me off guard. I did not expect to see L.A. night positioned with Brock Lesnar at this point. And I wonder when we're talking about timing, because timing is everything, do you think WWV has missed their opportunity? to make LA night a top guy. It feels like he's been right there waiting for years and WWE has not pulled the trigger.

Is it too little too late now? Did they wait too long? Did they miss their moment or can they still get there with LA night in your opinion? Just based on nothing more than audience reaction to him when I do drop in on him. And he's one of the characters, by the way, I do, uh, I do kind of follow along with just to see where he's at, what he's doing because he you know i i don't know him personally i don't think i've ever

said hello to him if i did it was in passing and it doesn't stand out um no offense if it happened i'm sorry um it's the old age thing it's a prevagen moment really um but i do i admire him his story's really interesting story and i admire his creativity and what he's trying to do and And the fact that he's connecting and he's got a very loyal audience. So all that being said, do I think they've missed the opportunity? Yeah. But it's still there. It's not like it's not there.

That opportunity has been sitting there waiting for a while now, at least a year that I've been paying attention or more. But just because of they haven't tapped into it at this moment doesn't mean that they can't because that that's a great thing about a wrestling fan base is they are really loyal to you as a talent like if you if you finally break through and and you struggle for years to finally get their respect and and they they bring you in so to speak they're loyal as hell and they'll stick through some downtimes and they'll be angry that you're not getting the opportunity that you should be getting in their minds um

But when that time comes, they're still there. They will be like me, even though they may not watch weekly, when they hear that someone that they've looked up to for a long time and followed for a long time is finally getting that break, they'll come back. So I don't think it's a situation where L.A. and I should feel like it's not going to happen. It still can't. Now, are they going to get there with Brock? Are they going to take L.A. night where he needs to be?

in order to stay viable to be in that spot? Are they going to put him in the ring with Brock and come out with that achievement? Yeah, I got to see that one. I don't want to be in the room when they lay that one out actually, but I would love to hear about it second hand. It just feels like a head scratcher to me. I'm an LA night fan, but it feels, I wonder if the timing is off.

It feels like he was hotter before. I'm not saying they can't heat him up again. It just feels like when they got J.U. So hot, they tried it. Maybe they decided, hey, it's ran its course and we're going to move on now, but they at least tried it. And I don't think they did for L.A. 9. I'll be curious to see what they do with Brian Breaker when he comes back.

There's lots of speculation, of course, that, you know, if Roman was going to, if Roman wasn't the original plan to win the world title or win the Royal Rumble to get that world title shot, if it was Brian Breaker, who would he have been wrestling? how are they going to tie in a Seth Rollins component to that? Maybe that was the backup plan if he didn't, you know, win the Royal Rumble. That's the direction it was headed with this masked man.

But now we're hearing Bad Bunny, who we just saw do the Super Bowl last weekend. I guess he's coming in to WWV next. And what a, what a feather in the cap that is, you know, one of the most stream performers and artists around fresh off of the Super Bowl. Now he's going to be at your Super Bowl type event.

And I guess the, the speculation is it'll be Bad Bunny and Logan Paul. Now that on the surface a few years ago would have felt really scary maybe because you've got two kind of new guys. But at this point, do you think, and nobody's confirmed that, but do you think it's possible that Logan Paul could, for lack of a better word, carry Bad Bunny and them have a WrestleMania worthy match? It goes against every instinct I have, but I think he could. Yeah. Because he's a special person.

He's a special athlete. He's still in double digits in terms of the number. He's probably in his mid-20s, maybe early, high 30s, mid-30s in terms of a number of matches. And look how freaking good he is. That is impossible. He is impossibly good at this stage of his career. 31 matches, Eric.

31 freaking matches and compare him to anybody you want. Technically, timing, selling, athleticism, psychology, pick a category. Anyone you want, he excels in each one of them. So when you pose the question to me, do you think you could actually carry Bad Bunny through a match? Normally, I would, this is not a way in the world. I'm going to buy that just to watch the train wreck.

But not in this case. In this case, I think he can do it. Not only can he do it, I would fully expect that I will bet on Polly Market if it's available, that it'll be one of the best matches on the card. Because we know Boney's capable. Now the only variable is who's going to control the match. These two guys will figure that out.

I would imagine it would be Logan. He just got more experience. like 30 matches, I guess. I don't know. It's almost comical to talk about. But he's obviously Logan is, he's a different cat, man. He's playing at a different level in Bed Bunny. Also, as an athlete, was playing at a different level.

So do I think it's possible? I bet on it. Well, thankfully, you don't have to bet on something really important like life insurance. Policy genius has helped me and I know that they'll help you too. I have to tell you, I had like a moment of quiet reflection. I've mentioned it a few times on the program. program, but it was Christmas Eve. We're in our formal living room at the lake. And I look around and I just see just a room filled with people that I care, the people I care the most

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for a million bucks in coverage. Head on over to PolicyGenius. dot com slash 83 weeks to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policy genius.com slash 83 weeks. Eric, we got a question here that caught a lot of people off guard here. I don't know that you even saw it. But over the weekend, I guess yesterday as we're talking on Friday, let me see if I can find it. I know that there was an announcement made.

I don't know if I can see it in here, but Johnny Ace, John Laurenitis is making, I believe it will be his first public appearance. He has been advertised for a convention, an autograph signing, an autograph session in Chilicothe, Ohio in mid-March. So we're about a month away from that. I know you and I both saw John Laurinitis at Hulk Hogan's funeral or Terry Belias funeral. And I hadn't seen him.

I couldn't tell you when, but he was there. But this is his first public appearance, and a lot of people have an opinion one way or another. I wanted to see what she thought about John Lauren Idis getting out there and making some appearances. Oh, I don't envy John. John made choices and put himself in a position that took a big toll on him. And I can certainly understand how he feels. feels embarrassed and wanting to move on with his life. And it sounds to me like John's ready to move on with his life.

And I also think it's a big step for John to get out there and do something publicly like this. But it's probably the best thing for him. He's not a part of the suit. So his legal jeopardy has been resolved, I guess. So what are you supposed to do? Just lock yourself in a room and not come out? well and to be clear i mean i appreciate what you said about his legal jeopardy but that wasn't a criminal

case it was a civil case so he's dropped he's never in a criminal suit and i guess he was being sued civilly but that seemingly has been resolved and he's no longer a defendant in that suit so if he has no pending litigation it feels like at this point all that's left is to just poke your head up and see if you see your shadow and decide if you want to be puxatony phil and if there's two more months of winter or if we're going to get going. Yeah, I mean, look, at the other, you've got to move on with your life. And if he's going to, he's going to find out how people feel about it. And let's be honest, there's always going to be a significant group of people that are going to hold that against John.

There's nothing John's going to be able to do or say that it's going to change people's minds at this point. Those minds have been made up. The only thing you can do is face it and move on. and hopefully, you know, find your way. But yeah, it's a tough spot to be in. Well, there's no doubt about that. We got some live questions rolling in. Let's hit some of these.

Lord Snow Gaming says, Eric, greetings from Paraguay. Hey, how about that? Appreciate you tuning in. At WCW prom, did Ted Turner ever say to you how great of a job you're doing? Was he a guy that would acknowledge good work? frequently every Tuesday, generally around 4.30 to 515. For a while, there was a regularly scheduled call. I made sure I was in my office.

Let's put it that way because I didn't want to get the message from my assistant. So, yeah, he and Brad Segal would both call together generally. And Ted was very effusive. He was very happy. He was excited because for years, and some people may know this, most don't. But even within turn, his own executives, the senior executive committee,

everybody in that company wanted Ted to unplug WCW from the day that it showed up. They didn't want him to do it. And when he finally, you know, created WCW, everybody in the company regularly told him all the rest of, reasons why they wished he would just stop. And he kept doing it, doing it, do it.

Finally, we proved him right. WCW and Nitro proved Ted Wright. And he took a lot of that same kind of pride in that. At least that's the way it came out over the phone. So, yeah, he did. He's a great guy. Louis, on eBay, it says, I don't see what a big deal it was.

CNN posted. WW top officials are on TV with the president and the Republican party what's the difference well first of all I don't think anybody was saying that that was necessarily the issue the issue the big thing to me was that there was finally a public disclosure

that Tom Warner had a minority ownership share in AEW like Tony Kahn was asked about that I guess back in 2024 year before last and he basically said he won't get into the ownership structure

but he will say he has 100% voting power. So he was careful to say, hey, I'm 100% in charge, uh, like John Taffer on bar rescue, but, you know, he, he didn't say, hey, we own 100%. So now we know that there is a minority share and it is officially acknowledged by CNN. I thought that was the big issue, but I do think just politics and wrestling are just bad, you know, like when, when Linda was in Trump's cabinet, and I guess she still is, I don't know. And I know that triple H is there as some sort of fitness component. You know, when you're seeing photos of triple H in the White House, if you oppose that

administration, now you're more inclined to jump online and say, oh, WWE is this or that. And I don't think that's necessarily what any corporation should want, in my opinion. Like, you want to be all things to all people, especially if you're an entertainment brand. Like I had a crazy uncle who used to say, I'm not watching that movie. Why? There's so and so's in it. And I hate his politics. And I remember as a kid thinking, I like that movie.

Like, I don't, I want to. watch the movie and just be, can I just watch it for what it is? Do I have to feel like, I only want to support people who do good things and, wait, what, what are we talking about?

Like, I want to be entertained for 90 minutes. I don't think that's too much to ask. I just would not involve myself in that. But for better or worse, it has become positioned, Eric, that,

hey, WWE is the, is the MAGA company. I don't know if I even said that, right? And it wasn't the fact, I mean, it isn't the fact that it was W, WWE who introduced bad bunny to the mainstream American audience in a bigger way than anybody

outside of the music industry. How can we say that? How can we arrive at the conclusion that WWE is one way? And no, we know where true. When in fact, they're giving both sides of the equation great entertainment. Yes.

If all they would do is. book, you know, hardcore conservative country acts. I, yeah, yeah. But that's not the case. They're not doing that. There's no, I don't know. I think people are trying to make more out of this because it's good commentary. It's good clickbait.

It's great podcast conversation. I think it's just a lot of freaking cheap noise. You know cheap eat and wrestling, which is why it's considered cheap eat. it's so freaking easy to get it has no value. This is kind of like cheap content. And I think the internet wrestling community is creating it because now they have something new to fight about and make fun of each other and accuse each other of horrific things.

Now we can do that and talk about wrestling at the same time. That's what all this is. I think it's a sad commentary is what it really is. Eric, you know what's interesting is. I, a friend of mine told me once that I have the most eclectic and unique group of friends ever. And I'm proud of that. But I don't know that you know this, but one of my friends actually did a TED talk once. And that's kind of a cool thing.

And that friend, when he did a TED talk, he had a really interesting subject matter that he discussed where he sort of compared these two things. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about here? Yeah, I heard that. It talks out of his ass. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, catch everybody up and maybe they can go find it online and see where you stand on this political wrestling discussion. Well, I just think that, look, news, the point of that TED talk, and I encourage people to go back and look at it. I don't remember what I did it.

19. It doesn't matter. I did it. I can't remember when. No, it was not 19. It was 20, it might have been 2017. Yeah, it was 17 or 18. Yeah.

And I was contacted by the organization that Ted, talk, we're going to TEDx, whatever's called. Guy came, you know, knew of me and wanted me to come in and do a 17-minute TED talk. And I was excited to do that. It was a challenge for me to do that because if you've seen TED talks or, in this case, TEDx, these are really people that are pretty good speakers generally and have something really interesting to share. But you do it like in a 15 or 14-minute time window.

You know, they don't give you all that. You have 14 minutes, right? The goal is to make your talk is an interesting. provocative, whatever, informational as possible in that window. And I thought, well, that's going to be an interesting challenge. How do I do that? And I had this whole thing laid out. I don't even remember really what it was.

I had it all scripted out. I had it on my iPad. I left Wyoming to fly to Chicago because it was in a suburb of Chicago where I was doing this. I got off the plane like at midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning. Sure enough, left my iPod on the plane, didn't realize it until the next morning. when I got up to start drinking coffee and, you know, rehearse and get ready because, you know, there's no, there's, you're just up there winging it, right? So I go to get my iPad as gone.

I got nothing and I panic. So what am I, I tried to call the airlines. That was wasting energy. So that, okay, I can either cancel or I'm going to win it. So I took elements of my podcast that I had with me and I found some pictures on the internet that I could give to the people. that were putting up the slides and everything, because I literally laid this thing out kind of in my head. And I thought,

I'm just going to do this kind of shoot wrestling promo as a part of my TED talk. That's how I'm going to get their attention, right? Act one. I needed to get everybody's attention and get them hanging on every word that I said. So I cut a wrestling promo on them. I made fun of the city that I was in.

I can remember what it is. This is a really nice city, but I shit all over it. I got everybody, and people were, literally city. At first, it was like chuckling. Ha, ha, ha. We know this is an act. And I picked out some lady.

She was not the most attractive lady in the world. And I said, don't even think it. Lady, there was not a chance in the world. You and I, after the show, it is never going to happen. Look at you. Look at me. Something like that, right? Now I can see people going, well, you piece of shit.

And I knew I had a, and then I went into it. the rest of my TED talk and it was all about how politics has become more professional wrestling than professional wrestling. Probably one of the reasons I'm so animated about this. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see politics become more like professional wrestling and I certainly don't want professional wrestling to feel more like politics from anybody's freaking point of view. Even with someone that agrees with everything that I think, I don't want that person interfering with my entertainment.

You're killing it. You're taking away the fun. Don't take away the fun. I love it. Let's do a few more here. We've got some questions and then I want to talk about the Wrestling Observer newsletter awards because there's some hilarious ones in here. Oh, you're killing me.

Walrod says this question is for both of you. How do you navigate losing a relationship that was really special to you in a way that's positive and forward moving instead of looking back in sad thoughts? Boy, that's a deep question there, Eric. Oh, well, that hasn't happened to me in a long time. I've been with my wife for about 43 years now. 44. I don't have to get out of calculator. That's a funny part.

But it's true. It's only true because it's funny. So, you know, I have, you know, obviously someone, close friends, family, obviously lost Hulk recently. And, you know, that hurt. It did. But I don't know if this is the answer. It was for me in that situation, which is the most recent, is I just, whenever I start feeling a little down or a little melancholy, whatever you want to call it.

I just think of something fun. I just think of a fun conversation. Or I think of a fun moment. Or I'll flip through my photos or sometimes even my messages because I still have messages that I keep. And I'll find something that I remember being particularly interesting and funny. And you just shift gears to think about something positive and don't dwell on the negative.

Because that's a very easy thing to do dwelling on anything, not just about losing a relationship or someone you love, death, injury, whatever. But just in general, it's so easy to hang on to negativity. And it just drags you down deeper and deeper and darker and darker. And if you can discipline your mind and that's what it comes down to is mind control, it'll be in control of your own mind and not losing absolute control of your own mind is discipline yourself to shift on the fly.

The minutes you start feeling something negative, creeping its way in, shift to gratitude. Think of the one thing that undeniably you know you could be grateful for, even if it's nothing more than getting up and being able to take a breath. You may not even be healthy. You may be dealing with other issues, but if you're awake and you're drawing breath, you have hope. So whatever your situation is, look for something positive. I looked out this morning. I sat here with you guys before this show, I opened up. I'm looking out the window. I'm looking at my life and I'm thinking, you know, yeah, do I have other issues that are you? You know, weighing me down, I absolutely do.

Some of them are big ones. But man, it's not getting me. I'm not making me sad. I'm thinking about the positive things. I'm thinking about the opportunities I have. And I'm thinking about the fun I'm having, just doing something as simple as this. So you can always find something positive. Just up to you to choose to do that.

Well, if you're looking to have fun with wrestling, can we recommend JCW? Let's take a look. episodes every Thursday night at 7 p.m. on YouTube. For over 25 years, J.C.W. has delivered the very best in pro wrestling entertainment, bringing fans deep storytelling drama, gut-busting comedy, and unbelievable in-ring action. From wild characters to unforgettable rivalries, don't miss a single moment. Tune in every Thursday night at 7 p.m. on YouTube. Let's briefly talk about the wrestling observer newsletter awards. We do have a few questions.

We'll get to those in just a minute. But I don't know if you saw this, Eric, but the voters of the wrestling observer newsletter get to vote. These are the readers who write in and cast their ballot for who they think is the wrestler of the year and the match of the year and that sort of thing. The wrestler of the year, according to the readers of the wrestling Observer newsletter was Mystico and of course considering the huge success of CMLL in 2025 I don't think anybody can argue that.

Takesha one most outstanding wrestler match of the year was Kenny Omega and Gabe Kidd in New Japan. The best box office drawl was John Sina. The promoter of the year was Salvador from CMLL. The promotion of the year was CMLL. The best booker of the year was Tony Kahn. as we continue listen there are some on here that I think are interesting but some just stand out like a sore thumb like the worst gimmick is eel John Sina the worst TV show was NXT the worst promotion of the year was

what how in the world is WWE who had their best financial year ever the worst promotion of the year and then maybe the most egregious John Sina versus Cody Rhodes is the worst match of the year. Like they're, of all the fucking indies of every bad TV match that just happened on TV in the last calendar month. John Sina and Cody Rhodes was the worst. Like this,

I don't know. This feels like this may be the most egregious wrestling observer newsletter award cycle ever. Can you imagine what that group of vote, like if you can get all of these wrestling observer, for voters in a room. Can you imagine what that would be like hanging out in for an hour or two? I mean, I need to have Dave, like the head gooner, you know,

that they all look up to and look at the world of wrestling through the Dave Meltzer lens. Of course you get these kind of responses. He's like, these are the most cultural. isolated a relevant group of people you could ever imagine. So I don't know why anybody would expect any of these categories would reflect anything sensible. Just so I'm clear, did you just hit us with Ed Gooner?

Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think I would ever hear you say the word Gooner here on the program. You don't think I have my fingers on the pulse of pop culture. Buddy, every now and again, you just does something off. Like, when I found out you listen to Yellow Wall,

I'm like, what? Hang on. Hang on. I just sent you a song that he did with, was it Waylon Jennings. Was it Colton Jennings? Struggle Jennings. Struggle Jennings.

I just sent you a song. Yellow Wolf and Struggle Jennings. Good song, by the words. On my, some of my workout playlist. I listen to it almost every day. Didn't know he was on your radar. Just,

you're an injury. You know, that Doseki's guy, he ain't got shit on you. You're the most interesting. No, no. Yeah. A hobo raider,

who was upset with me for not asking this an hour ago. wants to know. Do you sometimes wish that Polynesians from your era would have gotten the same opportunity to shine that today's Polly wrestlers? Oh, you know, I don't know how to answer that. I mean, we had the Yokosuna. We had... Yeah.

Were they ever really lacking? I mean, you know, because I didn't see what was going on on the West Coast. I didn't see what was going on on the East Coast back in the 60s and the 70s and even into the early 80s. So I had no visibility into anything other than what I saw in primarily Minnesota. And I don't recall who of Polynesian descent came through the territory, but I do remember working with, he wasn't called Yoko Zuna then.

What was he called? Oh, I'll remember. But in the AWA, before Yoko Zuno got to WW, I was interviewing him at Ringsside in Rochester, Minnesota at the Mayo Civic Auditorium for, AWA on ESPN. Kokeena. Is that right? Kina Maximus.

Kokeena Maximus. That was a great Ganya thing. I think Kokina, might have been Vern because that sounds something like, you know, Kokea, like big ass Polynesian. Kokina Maximus. I don't know.

It was fun, though. He was a, he was a very young, very early in his career, obviously. Can't say I got to know him very well. Just had the opportunity to work with him a few times. you know you did have king curtis you had haku you had the samoan swat team i mean colonies wrestlers are they're here to stay uh war hawk rambo says uh what's your favorite

regional style of barbecue do you have a favorite is it texas i'm as diverse as they come when it comes to my pilot i love all kinds of food and the more the more rare it is the better like i love I love when I travel. I love to eat the food of the culture, particularly the street food, not the fancy stuff. It's just what everyday people eat. I like that.

It depends on mood I'm in. Like, I typically don't like southern barbecue, some of it. Like the North and South Carolina stuff, I do like, it's vinegar based. I do like a little bit more.

I don't like, sweet. That's my thing. I like a good, like Texas barbecue can be really tangy and almost to the point of being too tangy. That's kind of my, that's my, my vibe. Kansas City, southern tends to be sweeter and I just don't like sweet. Well, I'm with you on that. You couldn't tell from looking at me, but I like dry rubs. I don't want any sauce. I always get my sauce on the side. Anytime you've had barbecue at my house, you'll notice it's always sauce on the side. If you want to add it after the fact. I'm just dry rubs. All I do.

Dylan Brooks, Orra says, love the show. Both Eric and Conrad can do a great job in making an hour to three hours of podcasting, feel like 30 minutes flying by with great conversation. Thank you for hanging out and sharing that with us. We appreciate that. Another question. Do you think it's best for WWE to change its day from Monday to another day with the growing popularity of the NFL?

Is it Monday Night Raw forever or now that it's on Netflix? Could it go to another day? Would it matter now? Oh, such a good question, right? Because does it, does a day really matter? I mean, if it's screaming, I don't think it does as much. And if, here's where the answer would lie and only Netflix would probably be, well, only Netflix would know this is what percentage of their overall number is live. Like, because that's what you're risking. What you're risking is your live audience.

Now, the degree to which you're risking it, you'd have. to analyze further, how many of those people would not watch it if it was on another night. Like they'll watch it live, but if you can't give it to me live, I don't want to watch it. I don't know. I don't think that number is, I don't know. But you would need to know that number before you start down that path, right? But if the number is minimal, knowing that the wrestling audience, this is one thing I do know from having been in the business as long as I was, is that the wrestling audience is extraordinarily more loyal

than almost any other fan base that I've ever read about or experienced. So if that is true and you know they're going to come and watch you anyway, what percentage of them do you potentially lose by not being on Monday night versus how many more would watch if they're not. competing with football. I mean, that's the kind of analytics that I think would be really, it's a rabbit hole. And I'm sure it's a tough one to, because now you're talking about, talking about feelings

and habits as much as math. And that's a, that's a tougher equation to get to the root of accurately. But it would definitely be a conversation I'd want to have. Another interesting question here. Eric, if this was the 90s and the Vince McMahon lawsuit happened with him and John Laurenitis, would you sign John Laurenitis just to get it Vince? So if this, if that, if that lawsuit had dropped and say January of 98, that of January of 2024,

would you have looked to bring Johnny Ace to WCW television? Okay. Now, I'm sorry. I was figuring out that question. So we're, we're going forward in time and back in time. Yeah. So let's,

let's pretend that the Johnny Ace, uh, Vince McMahon lawsuit that I think dropped in January of 2024. If that would have happened in January of 19, of 98 where you're just months away from challenging Vince to a fight. Do you think you would have had fun with this lawsuit? And maybe if Johnny Ace was released, in theory, it could show up on WCW and have some fun with you.

Okay. That's a little tougher question because it requires me to plug myself back into my mentality of 1998. 98 Eric Bischoff was not. not here to fuck around. And 98 Eric Bischoff wouldn't have been quite as concerned about the downside. Yes. There's just no, you know.

Now, 2026 Eric might have regretted what 1998 Eric did by taking advantage of this opportunity. And it may be one of those aforementioned piles of shit that I refused to ever step in twice. but to be honest with you, I probably would have. Yeah. That's kind of what I expected. Lord Snow Gaming says,

what's your honest opinion on Stings Run and WWE? What would you have done differently? Triple H winning didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense to anyone. I mean, that was silly. Why would you bring a guy in? You finally got the dream match and

WWE still has to win? I don't know why you wouldn't try to make Sting there, but clearly that was not what Vince and Hunter had in mind. That was a real head scratcher to me, Eric, what's say you? I think the whole, I think inducting Steve

into the Hall of Fame, look, there was a way to do it. What WWE did was not the way. What else would you, as a fan, what else would you have done with Sting? Would you have had Sting?

beat Triple H? Let's go back and look at some of the images. Sting was not ready for that opportunity. I'm just going to come out and say it. I love Sting as a human being. He was not ready for that opportunity. Go back and look at the pictures, the stills, the video. Steve Sting was not ready for that opportunity.

Had he had time to ready himself mentally and physically, there was a lot of fun things that they could have done. But if you go back and look at what WWE had to work with, what else would you do? I don't know. I mean, it's easy to be critical, but, you know, put yourself in the shoes of the people that have to make a decision about,

okay, what's best for the company, what's best for everybody involved, and just go back and look at where Sting was at and ask yourself, what would you have done differently? I think if I was Steve, I would be as disappointed in myself as I am as I would be with WWE. Because I think part of the responsibility was Steve's. If he wasn't ready for it physically, if he wasn't ready for it mentally, say, hey, maybe

next year. Let's let's let me, give me a chance to get ready to really live up to the opportunity. I don't think that happened. I think it probably came together pretty quickly. I think Steve thought it would be a great opportunity to get out there and get in front of the public again. And I don't know what was discussed. Never talked to anybody about it. But I'm sure that everybody was all excited about what could be until they got into talking about what really is going to be.

And then we started seeing limitations. And I'm just guessing knowing Steve the way that I know once. Because Steve will smell when something is not right very quickly. And my sense, just without ever having talked to Steve, just looking at body language and hearing a few interviews, I'm thinking Steve started probably having doubts about halfway through it. And it just affected everything overall. That's just a guess. And that's not, I do not mean any disrespect to anybody. But in order to talk about these situations with any degree of at least honesty, I have to give you the reason why I feel.

the way I feel. And it's not always flattering to myself if I'm talking about myself or even friends of mine, but it's the truth. And I think part of that responsibility was Steve's as much as it was, and it was WWEs. Did not expect that answer, but that's why we tune in. I, uh, I appreciate everybody hanging out with us today. We've still got some questions, but we're going to bank those for next time. Eric, I want to close with this. You know, a couple of weeks ago, you and I had an absolute blast in Atlanta. We had our very first Ring Classics live event. Now, if you've been listening to us for a long time,

you've heard us brag about ad-freeshows.com. Well, ad-freeshows.com is now ringclassics.com. And we've got some exciting news. We're bringing it back home to the home of TNA and Double J, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us for Jeff Jarrett's asylum weekend, May 29th through May 31st. Let's take a look. This May.

history comes home. As Ring Classics brings you the ultimate wrestling fan experience at the birthplace of TNA, Nashville, Tennessee. It's Jeff Jarrett's Asylum, May 29th to 31st. Ring Classics is giving you

something most wrestling fans only dream about, a true backstage pass to the business. Not from the crowd, not from behind a screen, you'll learn firsthand what it's like to be a pro wrestler. Cutting promos, making your entry, stepping inside the ring and training like the pros do.

You'll visit historic wrestling landmarks. Be part of exclusive panels. Get up-close meet and greets. And experience huge surprises along the way. This May in Nashville, you're not just watching wrestling history. You're stepping directly into it. But there's only one way to be a part of Jeff Jarrett's asylum, and that's by being a backstage passholder at ringclassics.com today.

Sign up by the end of that. February to be eligible to join double j in Nashville this may at ringclassics.com. Pretty excited about this, looking forward to it, make plans to join us at the end of May. And you want to talk about surprises. We've had surprise run-ins in the past at our get-togethers from big names like Rick Flair and Sting and Hulk Cogan. It's a who's who, and we're doing it again at the end of May. Go ahead and book your trip now. Ringclassics.com is where you.

can sign up to be a part of this. Eric, I had a blast in Atlanta. I'm looking forward to Nashville, man. Me too. All the fun that we can possibly have with our wrestling family and access to great food and entertainment in Nashville. I cannot wait. We should get one of those pedal bars. Oh, yeah. That's a bar and just, can you imagine how much fun that would be? Get Cassio up there in the front, lean in charge. We'll bring up the back of the little cart. I have Jimmy Sorensen up there singing karaoke. So we're going to up and down the street. Everybody peddling your asses off while we're drinking beer.

That'd be fun. Let's do it. That's a blast. Looking forward to it. Hit the button. Bringclassics.com and we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Fishaw.