83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 416: AEW, Make Your Move!

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Chew studio. Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code 83Weeks at BlueChew.com On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and host Conrad Thompson welcome legendary wrestling producer David Sahadi to the show to discuss his new book, Tales from Beyond the Squared Circle. Sahadi pulls back the curtain on decades of television production in professional wrestling, sharing how Vince McMahon taught him the importance of producing with emotion, while Eric Bischoff showed him how taking risks could transform wrestling television. David also reveals the surprising story behind how Monday Night Raw got its name and recounts a shocking personal moment involving Kevin Dunn and his father's legends check. The conversation also dives into Sahadi's time working with Eric in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, where he explains why Bischoff was the true creative force while Hulk Hogan focused strictly on being talent. Plus, Eric and Raj Giri weigh in on today's wrestling headlines, including why Road Dogg could be exactly what All Elite Wrestling needs, the intensity surrounding the RAF aftermath brawl, and Eric's take on why Danhausen's WWE debut didn't land the way it should have. It's fascinating behind-the-scenes storytelling, bold opinions, and decades of wrestling television history only on 83 Weeks. 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 MANDO - Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code 83WEEKS at http://shopmando.com  ! #mandopod MARS MEN - Get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at http://Mengotomars.com BLUECHEW - Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code 83WEEKS at http://BlueChew.com CHIME - Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to http://Chime.com/83WEEKS  . POLICYGENIUS - Head to http://policygenius.com/83WEEKS  to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. QUINCE - Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to http://Quince.com/83weeks  for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com  to learn more. SUBSCRIBE TO 83 WEEKS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqQc7Pa1u4plPXq-d1pHqQ/?sub_confirmation=1 

Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Choo Studio. Get 10% off your first month of Blue Choo Gold with the code 83 weeks at bluechew.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad the mortgage guy and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fish out of Eric. What's going on, man? How are you? Doing all right. We got about three, four inches of snow last night. So it looks like a winter wonderland here.

It's been like the easiest winter since I've been. like the easiest winter since I've been here as long as I can remember. It's been like October and November all winter long, but we finally got a taste of winter for us and out, so it's kind of nice to see. Well, it's nice to see you. We greatly appreciate you guys joining us at the subscribe button, turn on the notifications bell on YouTube.

If you haven't already, that's 83 weeks.com. What an incredible show we've got lined up for you. This is one of the more monumental wrestling news weeks in quite a while, and we've got some real American freestyle stuff, but first, we're going to throw out the format. Normally, we're a no-guess-needed type show. But there's a new book coming out next week that I think you need to go ahead and

pre-order it right now. You can get it on Amazon or anywhere else. The name of the book is called Backstage Pass, Tales from Beyond the Squared Circle. And of course, it's brought to us by David Sahati. Let's welcome him to the program. Mr. Sahati, how are you, man? today, especially this early in the morning. Great to talk to with you guys.

Man, we're excited to be here with you. You know, you are one of the more prolific behind the scenes names in the history of pro wrestling. And now you've, you've got a book. You're going to be telling some of those stories. I had a chance to catch up on several chapters. And man, I'm blown away. You know, this is a perspective that we've rarely heard about the real behind the scenes of pro wrestling, especially someone on the production side.

I'm excited for fans to get their hands on this. What made you decide to write a book? I started writing the book about for myself, just talking about my, you know, experiences and my memoir, just like documenting things and said, wow, this is fascinating,

you know, there's some stories here that nobody's heard. In this book, there's very little talk about wrestling and about the matches. It's really about my journey through the world of wrestling, how it changed me, how I changed the genre itself.

how much I gave it, what it took from me, but also the humanity about the wrestlers themselves, because they're all humans. And even the legends that we worship and we love and the icons, they're human beings and they have fears, and one of the biggest fear is being irrelevant. And it's just amazing seeing that when the cameras are off and you're backstage and you're in those quiet moments and always watching, you catch these guys and you see the humanity that are no longer these invincible figures. These are people that have real doubts, real fears, and sometimes really big egos too. I found it amazing how some wrestlers handled success well,

and others didn't get right to their head. How there are those athletes who could have been in the spotlight, but never really got that big, big, bright spotlight moment in their lives. Some handled that well and some did. So it's really about the humanity. I tell very little stories about matches. It's mostly what happens when the cameras are off, things that, stories that nobody's ever heard before,

because they've never seen them, they haven't been on television. A lot of times when people are creating, creative, they have like one area of genius. You know, this guy is, is really successful at this medium or that medium. What I was so impressed with with your book, though, is it shows me that, well, your creativity and your talent knows no bounds.

I think most wrestling fans who are listening to this or watching this, they're very familiar with your video production work. You've got some of the more famous packages in the history of professional wrestling. But to be able to apply that same level of creativity and skill to written form. that's not something that is very common. I mean, Eric, have you ever heard of something like this before? I mean, Mr. Sahadi is, he's like a Renaissance man of sorts, I think. Well, what's interesting about Dave is his perspective.

And Conrad, you and I joke about this all the time. You know, our memories are shaped over time, right? And we all have our own unique experiences or perspectives on things that happen based on how they affected us. So we could both see the same incident, for example, and you're going to see it one way. We both see it. So the same thing. You're going to interpret it one way. I'm going to interpret it and file it a different way. And we may each tell those stories over time, but over time they're affected by the ability to really remember the details. But what we do remember is how those incidents affected us based on our role in it, even as a spectator, how we felt about it.

That part always remains. The details sometimes get lost over the course of time. So you could hear two different people who saw the same thing interpreted two different ways. What I like about Dave's book and Dave's perspective for the reader is that, for example, as an executive, I saw everything from my executive's perspective, right? David is a producer, and as a producer, David had the interface with management, i.e. Vince McMahon and company, but he also had to deal with talent. And that is a unique experience. Most producers, depending on their level, typically, you know, they're working with talent, they're working with other producers, they're working with the team.

Very rarely do producers interface with management to the extent that Dave did. So Dave brings, you know, kind of a dual perspective to his stories, and I think that's what's going to make this book really, really interesting. You know, you read a book from a wrestling talent, right? Anybody that was a talent. That whole book is coming from their unique perspective as a talent and how these experiences affected them. Doesn't mean that they're accurate at all, by the way.

Most of them aren't. Very few of them are, including my own, because I'm guilty of it too. I remember things in a certain way that over time becomes comfortable for me. Had an incident with Bruce Pritchard a couple weeks ago. Bruce did an interview. He was just telling an innocuous story.

It was a story didn't really matter. We got one really important part of it kind of different than the way I remember. I just reached out to Bruce and let him know that. And it's all fine. It was a very, very little thing in retrospect, but it was just one example how Bruce, who is a dear friend of mine, as you know, remembered a story involving me much differently than I did. And I have to remind myself that time, conditions, the way we choose to file things, all affect the story.

story. And I think Dave's a unique perspective and his ability to really tell great stories, because that's what this is all about, whether it's a package he's producing or produced for WWE or produced for TNA or now producing for Real American Free Style. He's done some great ones. That is another form of storytelling. Dave just has a unique ability to not only tell stories on video, he can write great stories. So it's going to be a great book. Yeah, no doubt. I have indeed. enjoyed the book so far. And I think you hit the nail on the head. One of the things I think so many fans sort of forget is that Mr. Sootti, you've had multiple lives in the wrestling

space. You know, not only the WWF attitude era, I mean, pre-attitude era. So there's a lot of backstage talk about working with Vince McMahon and other WWE executives. But then years later, you get the same treatment for T&A with Dixie Carter and Jeff Jarrett and others. And I think that's pretty interesting for not only WWE fans or TNA fans because you have the ability to sort of compare and contrast both the little engine that could that was TNA

and then obviously the juggernaut that was the WV not a lot of books are able to cover both of those from a behind the scenes perspective I think you've got a home run here dude thank you and going back to what you said earlier I am a storyteller and thank you for acknowledging that

I had two great teachers during the 90s one was Vince McMahon And he taught me that everything we do is about emotion. He meant the matches in the ring and the story of that telling. Another great teacher I didn't work for it was Eric Bischoff because during the Monday Night Wars, he was kicking our ass. And it pushed me to be more creative to think more outside the box during that time because we were losing.

Vince wanted everybody to hate Eric Bischoff. Vince can stand Eric Bischoff. And nobody did it. You'd be honest. I hate to say that, Eric, sorry. Oh, I'm well aware. But I'm watching what Eric is doing, and I'm like, you know what? I kind of like this guy.

He's taking chances of which we were doing that stuff. Yeah, he looks like a little bit of a sleazy kind of character, you know, on TV. But something about this guy I like. And between Vince, wanting me to use emotion, which I do naturally. And Eric, you have all the stuff outside the box. They both molded me, both somebody I'm working for and a competitor I'm working against at the same time, which is kind of unique as well. And I think that brought out the greatest creativity in me then. right now and it only evolved from them because of what was going on in the dynamics at that time

uh it was more than just you know wars between like two companies it was actually you know the people that revolve the things that were going on behind the scenes Vince was so fixated on getting back at WCW and Eric that he didn't want to give Eric any recognition on those billionaire 10 vignettes which i hated by the way and had a little issue with Bruce about what he said about those about it it'd be my idea it was not but we won't find that right now but um You know, it's like Eric was laughing at those things. Vince would not put Eric on TV and parody because he didn't want to give Eric the benefit of the doubt. And I think Eric didn't give a shit if he was being parodied or not.

But Vince thought that would get to Eric and I think it didn't get to Eric whatsoever. And that was a time where Vince was wasting so much energy. It was two to three days a week just consumed by what we can do with billionaire Ted right now. And of course, we tanked. And it wasn't until we got those things put to rest. We started to focus on how can we get better. It's always how we can get better. I'll give Terry Taylor some credit here.

Terry Taylor said there are two ways to have the tallest building in town. One is to tear the taller buildings around you down. The one is to build it. And I'm a builder. I hate tearing other taller buildings around you down. I hate tearing people down. It's just like if you don't have confidence in yourself and what you can do, if you don't feel as though you're a creator,

then don't be in this business because it's about creating something new and something different, something compelling, something that's going to touch somebody on a visceral level that's going to make them feel something. It's all about feeling something, and that is storytelling, its essence, making somebody feel some kind of emotion. Man, I can listen to you talk about that forever. I do want to ask, though, if you wouldn't mind entertaining us a little bit here, because I know you and I have told the story before on a different interview, and I'm sure other people may have heard it in various interviews through the years, but there's a really amazing story about the first time I feel like you made a connection emotionally with Vince McMahon with a video that I don't think, people, I know everyone will immediately remember the video package, but to hear Vince's

reaction to that, I think is pretty interesting. Can you share that story with us? Sure. I was pretty fortunate in the sense that after the first Monday night rope and got approved because Kevin Dunn wanted to get me fired because I was just there. And he kind of expunged everybody who worked for NBC that was there. And I came there from NBC. I was only three weeks in and my job depended on the minute rope. And then Vince finally liked that. And then it gave me the creative freedom to start doing things that are more adventurous. So I got Vincent's trust very early on. And this legend spot was the follow-up to the attitude spot. The attitude spot that I first did was about, you know, the athletes making them, hey, I'm not just

a wrestler. You know, I'm an athlete as well that had stone cold in there. It had Ken Shamrock. It had the rock. It had the undertaker in there. So I decided this is 2019, 95. Gosh, time flies. And I decided to do a follow-up sequence of that. And by this point, I could just do spots by you know without even run them by Vince. And Vince finds out that I'm up there in Albany, doing a shot, a spot with the old timers, with Grilla Monsoon, with Kilikowalski, with Freddie Blassie,

who I love, by the way, Freddie Blassie. And he finds out, and he calls Kevin Dunning, he goes, what's not you do up there with the old timers? And Kevin does, I don't know, but I'm sure it's going to be good. That's what better be. We're about the new generation right now. Not about these, you know, old time guys.

I don't know, why he'd be bothered dealing with them. But to me, this was the sequel to the attitude spot. This was the passing of the torch from the old gore, the older wrestlers, to the new guys that can now fly through the air and walk the top rope and do moon soles and things that the previous generation couldn't do. So Vince came down to the room

where Jim Johnson composed the music and it was nice and dark. They had the music up loud and Vince, we play the spot. And Vince comes down there, his arms are folded like this. He's got Shane on one side, Pat Patterson, on the other. And he won't even look at me like, play it because Vince wanted to hate the spot. And he saw it in 10 seconds.

And then he's like, oh, God. And geez, oh, my gosh. And as a tag page is coming up, the spot something finish, she walks out. And I said, Shane, what does that mean? He's like, Sahadi, you got him. And Conrad, I kid out and out, I walk out of the studio. And Vince there is in a suit sitting on his ass on a cold concrete floor. And he's crying hysterically.

He's like, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. He shakes my hand. He's like, thank you. I want to hold Kevin Dunn. And he goes, great job. I can't want to see it. 15 minutes later, Vince is an different stairwell.

And he's crying his ass off still saying, thank you. thank you. It took me years to wonder why I got that reaction at events. And I think why is because on the visual level for him personally was a passing of the torch, not from the older generation of wrestlers to the modern ones, but from Vince Senior to himself, father and his son. And I think that's why I resonated with him so deeply and why it affected him so much. But that's not the best body ever did, but I have to say my most favorite spot ever did. And again, it's telling the story. I remember that copy to this day. I can seal here the echo is sure in my name.

Time has not silenced the crowd. I never walk the top rope or didn't moonsault. We never flues to the air, blah, blah, blah. It's just, it's telling a story about what they did and about what the guys do right now. And also subconsciously told the story about Vince's father and Vince Jr. Hey man, let me give you a little pro tip. It's spring break in a lot of the country. And if it hasn't happened for you yet, it'll be here before you know it.

And that means some of us are going to get outdoors. We're going to jump on the boat. We're going to head to the beach. And you need to look good and feel. feel good and man, can you do it any better than with Chubbies? Their classic line swim trunk on your vacation is going to get you loaded up with compliments. You're going to love the stretchy fabric. You're going to love that it dries super quickly.

You're going to love that it's both comfy and supportive at the same time. My dad's been rocking there everywhere pants, literally every day. He loves how comfortable the elastic waistband is. It feels like you're wearing sweatpants, but you still look put together. that's what Chubbies is about. Chubbies really exists to make everything feel like vacation. Chubbies was founded in 2011 by a group of friends with a simple mission. Red closets of uncomfortable clothes and put the fun back into functional fits.

They set out to create shorts and trunks and polos to put personality back into wardrobes that fit and look good and feel even better. And this year Chubbies is celebrating 15 years by bringing back the shorts that started it all. the originals. The same iconic fit that thighs everywhere love, the same lightweight, stretchy, comfort first design. I got to tell you, once you try on Chubbies, you won't want to wear anything else. This is a group of guys who just got together and decided, hey, let's make something for us. And when I say us, I mean like me and you. There's over 2.6 million customers, so Chubbies clearly knows how to keep thighs happy and vibes high. Chubbies are

centered around that feeling that we all get towards the end of the day on a Friday, you know, when it's time to knock off about four or five o'clock, they're designed for comfort. They're built with stretch. They're made to feel like you've thrown your best thing shorts ever. Chubby shorts are proof that when you get shorts right the first time, they never really go out of style. They got this stretchy fabric that's not only quick drying, but it's also wrinkle

resistant. It's even anti-microbial. By the way, Chubbies has a lot more than just shorts, but they do have all the shorts you need, like athletic to swimwear to plastic line swim trunks. You're going to absolutely love it. I want you to go check it out. Do me a favor though. Go right now because for a limited time,

Chubbies is giving our listeners 20% off when they use the code Eric at chubby shorts. That's 20% off your order with the code Eric, E-R-I-C. Give your thighs the VIP treatment they deserve with Chubbies. Support our show and tell them we sent you. That's chubbies shorts. That's C-H-U-B-B-I-E-S-H-O-T-S-H-O-T-S dot com. Be sure to use that promo code, Eric.

I love that spot. Just hearing you talk about it gives me goosebumps. I mean, to know that, you know, for a lot of wrestling fans, myself included, we sort of consider Vince almost like our Walt Disney and the idea that you made something that really connected with him emotionally to the point of tears. It's something that, you know, we never really hear about. out. But I'm interested when you say, I don't think it was my best spot, but maybe it was my favorite spot. Well, what do you think was your best spot? I hate to you so cliche. Conrad,

and I had it feels like to be asked. But there's so many I did because I went from comedic to dramatic spots, spots that were kind of eerie and made you feel tense to spots that made you feel disturbed or made you want to root for somebody. I guess overall, my favorite spots were the ones that were comedic. I love doing comedy. I love doing the rural rumble spot. that was a takeoff on field dreams. If you build it, they will come. I always love seeing talent the wrestlers as fish out of water in these environments.

We did a spot that was airing during the baseball playoffs. And as Eric would agree, it's always, know your audience where a spot is playing. This is it playing into a wrestling crowd. It's playing the people out of baseball fans. So we did a takeoff where you see these players that are dressed as Yankee ball players.

So I want to get the baseball person's attention. We had the voice of the Yankees, John Sterling, who he's doing the narration. It all comes down to this, bottom of the ninth, for the big red machine. And the camera pans over, and it's Kane that's at bat in his full gear. I mean, against the Yankees. And he takes a mighty swing. It's like, this could be it.

You know, the flash cubes go off, the crowd stands. And it's a dribbler to the pitcher. It's not a home run. But as a pitcher goes against the ball, he gets speared by edge. As the guy's rounding first base, somebody else takes them out. As Kane is going around second base to Hardy Boys jump off ladders and take out the shortstop. and the second baseman. So those are always the fun spots that I like,

because here you are seeing a talent, dressed as a talent, cane in his full gear, in a normal kind of a setting, which you wouldn't expect. And to me, if you weren't a wrestling fan, it'd make you at least think, hey, you know what, that spot was pretty entertaining. I might check them out. So I guess everything that had to do with humor

was my favorite kind of spot, including the last one I ever did, that was the Brock Lesnar F5 in the Sharks spot, a takeoff on Jaws. So yeah, comedy is always a great tool. It always gives you a good feeling, but also to the audience, it makes sure you think, hey, you know what? They have a sense of humor. I kind of like that company.

What year did you start with WW again? The very end of 1992. I was hired by John Pilpelli. He was there for three weeks. Then he was gone. There was a coup. Kevin Dunn took over and everybody who worked for the World Bodybuilding Federation. That came from NBC.

About 20 people. They were all gone, too. Kevin Dun called me. and said, David, all these people had gone. It was like a scene from the Godfather, Al Pacino, just like, you know, getting me to everybody at the movie. And Kevin Dunn goes, if I had my way, your NBC asked me gone to, but Vince wants to give you a chance,

so you have to do the first opening for Raw. Good luck for your God. And here's one thing that people might not know. Classic Kevin Dunn. I don't really want you here, but here's a project that Vince wants you to have. I hope it's really good, but if not, I get to fire you. Yeah, and Eric, I'll take it one step further.

I think Kevin wanted the spot to suck because I played it for Vince in the edit room. The audio is down so low, you can barely hear it. And, you know, Eric, power of music and the power of audio. It's part of the whole fabric of making a good spot or a good package or telling the story, and you can barely hear that. But Vince saw that, and Vince had his doubts. there's silence for five minutes. And to Bruce Pritchard's credit,

when Vince finally said, when everybody's, there was silence there. And I'm thinking, my job is gone. Can I get my job back at NBC? Dick Ebassol didn't want me to leave. He offered to match my salary.

But by this point, I already made it to convince him. And I was not going to go back on it. Because if there's one thing, Conrad, I'm a man at my work. And he says, well,

what are you all guys think in this room? And Bruce Richie goes, well, I like it. It's kind of different. And Corinne Silfi says, a late great Kerrin Sophie's rest of soul. Yeah, that music is great too.

Then all of a sudden, everybody started chime in, Vince says, good, let's go with it. And there was, but do you know why we call that show Raw, Conrad? Here's something for you. No, I don't. Right now it's such a glossy, great-looking show on TV with all the LD boards and all the power techniques. I think you can spare. We were not making money back then in 1992 going to 1993. So it was called Raw because we were doing it cheap. There was not a big set.

There was no lights. There was no pyro. So it was raw stripped down, but we turned that into something like raw, like, you know, it was raw emotion, raw something else. That was my job. They're like, you know, put a good euphemism on the word raw. But surely because we're losing money. And now it became one of the biggest grossing shows, you know, globally that that's been around for 20 years.

But it really was because we lose the money. If you go back, link to those shows that were shot at the Manhattan Center and later, Peksy, there's no lighting effects. There's no pyro. There's nothing. There's a little entrance when they come out of, which is kind of crappy looking. It was raw. because they're sheep. So we're always a euphemism for cheap.

I love that. I do want to ask, you know, when we think about that time period, 92, I think you left in the summer of 03. So you were really there for what a lot of people, myself included, that would really encapsulate most of their peak fandom. You know, you're there through the new generation era, sort of the end of Hulk Hogan, the transition to the new generation, and then all through the attitude. era. And then I think a lot of us started to feel like by 02 and 03, hey, it's not the exact same. And of course, you audio sometime in the summer of 03, but what was like the high

point of your WWE experience when you feel like WWE as a team creatively, as a company, as an organization, just with regard to the fans, when was the peak of your WWE experience? Was that around WrestleMania 17 in 2001 or is that another time? it was in the late 90s early 2000s when we finally reclaimed it in one spot again when people were watching us and when I knew that it was working was when people

would tell me that were watching wrestling, hey you were for the WWE, don't you? And I said yes and said I know wrestling is fake, but the thing which Stone Cold City Boston and Vince, they really hate each other, don't they? And I'm just like ha ha ha, yeah, we got them. I'm like of course, they hate each other. It wasn't just firing the guy. I'm like, please make a money

off the guy. Why are you fired him? He's making money off the guy. But people would say, I know it's fake except for Vincent's still cold. And that's when I knew we were hitting on all cylinders. I'm like, this is great. It's going to go even higher. And it did. And then all of a sudden it came corporate. And there's, you know, we were in public

and now there's a board. Now there are all these people that come in because they were successful, something that a handful of us only built it first. You know, the attitude error. Just a handful of us built that. And there was no plan for the attitude error either, by the way, if anybody thought there was a grand plan, let's sit down

and how we can get back and WCW try to win the thing again. There wasn't a plan. It started with the single spot that I did that was tagged attitude at the end and the logo, the scratch logo. But that word attitude in itself and the spot that was different. We hear the athletes, you know, saying that they're not just

wrestlers or athletes. They, but in the Super Bowl, the Undertaker played you know, basketball for the University Tennessee. It's like that resident with a lot of people and that word attitude gave everybody there an attitude from the writing teams to the people that were editing. Also, so I doing things with edge and attitude. So it kind of just happened by organically something was building up.

And I kind of like dropped the match on the haystack. But I think Eric likes Kevin Dunn's story. So I'll tell you another great one. It started to become corporate, which meant it sort of become boring. It sort of become sanitized. And I thought our product lost its edge. I know I lost my edge because everything that I was doing that was being, you know, going outside the box and pushing the envelope. I know what can do anymore. They wanted to sanitize my stuff and make it vanilla. And I really just start to lose my desire to work there because when you can't do things that you know right when you can't do things that are creative it's just like you know it's where's the fun because I don't like doing copy and paste I like creating things I like doing things that nobody's done

before which is the one thing we're doing at RIF which I'd like to get into eventually later on but you know I just I finally got to a point where when a WrestleMania spot and I have 30 seconds of so WrestleMania six seconds which is tag page that leaves me 24 seconds and then Bonnie Worth comes on buy and says, you know, we all want these added bonus features where if you buy WrestleMania, you know, you get a free undertaker bandana. That takes another 10 seconds. So I'm down like 14 seconds to promote WrestleMania and put some kind of emotion that spot. And I can't in 14 seconds. And to me, it cheap in WrestleMania that, you know, it's like it's not going to buy on its own that you have to, you know, you're going to get this free bandana if you pay for it.

That's just cheaping the whole thing. So everything they were doing it that one time, I thought was horrible and I can no longer talk to Vince directly. He had to go through three layers of people. So when I finally said, I want to take a break, a leave of absence. I talked to Kevin Dunn. I said, Kevin, you can get rid of me. Today, you get rid of me in three months. I don't care. There's no one point I need a break. And he thought I was joking. And I wasn't joking. And when you finally realized that I was telling the truth, you made it about six weeks. So it was a first July, first Friday in July. And I said, I want to go tell Vince. He was, oh, something like Vince, you cannot tell. I said, I want to. He goes, no, I got to figure out a way

to tell us to break this news to Vince because he's not going to take this easily. And Kevin ended up being a douchebag at the end because what he did was he wouldn't let me tell my staff, I'm shooting that Brock Lesnar spot in California. I cannot be further away. I'm 3,000 miles away. And I get a phone call that Vince is getting ready to tell everybody that I, I mean, Kevin Dunn is getting me to tell everybody that I'm leaving in less than a week. And I first got the sign because we always shot behind the scenes whenever we do

these film commercials that were fish outside, you know, fish out of water kind of spas. And here's Brock Lezor and dressing gear on a beach. And all the behind the scenes guys are getting put down. And I turned to John McBurich, what's going on? He's like, well, Kevin Dunn's going to tell you what's going on. So Vince finds out probably like three or four days beforehand. And I can understand why Vince was angry because to me, I mean, to Vince, I was a golden boy. One thing I have to say about Vince is that there's all this bad stuff that's out there about him.

But I can only judge somebody by how they treat me because I wasn't witnessed that stuff. I'm not saying that it didn't happen. I'm sure I probably did. But Vince seemed like the Golden Boy, the one person, you know, the son that he never had. The one person there in production, I was fortunate. I was blessed. I could almost do no wrong in Vince's eyes. So if Vince thinks I'm only giving a three or four day notice when I was willing to stay for three months and then take a break and come back,

I can understand why I'd be bad, probably even hurts, because here is the one guy, David's tied everything right by. He's accused doing so many horrible things. He's the one guy does everything right by. And that's the one guy that's leaving him. And that's because Kevin Dunn would not let me tell that to Vince way in advance. And Kevin Dunn wanted to spend it in a way that made it look good for Kevin Dunn. No surprise there, is there. What you've heard about Kevin Dunn?

And that bothered me to the day. It still bothers me. So I never got a chance to say goodbye to Vince. When was the last time you spoke to Vince? Last time I saw him there at the TV studios. And he would barely talk to me. Yeah. And I remember I was at a restaurant called Valbell's.

It was Vince and Linda's favorite restaurant. And I was having dinner there was like my second last night there. Linda came over. She's such a gracious woman, you know, and said hello. And Vince just, like, had that attitude. They didn't want to look at me. I mean, what a complete change in just a matter of days? I'm like, hey, how are you doing, pal the pass on the back?

It's like, not even looking at me. And I send a dessert over and Vince sends it back. And I'm like, yeah, I guess he's really pissed at me. I mean, that's a pretty good sign right there without even to thank you. But if I got a chance to think about Vince, I just kind of sad because Vince probably doesn't know it's a day, the reasons why I left and that I was willing to come back. I was willing to come back initially first for just, you know,

a hard time, can get you jumping in full time. And they wouldn't have that. Kevin Dunn, wouldn't have that. John Giburik wouldn't have that. All of a sudden, John is now my boss. John is also the person I think is short TNA, single-handedly. And, you know, it's just like, hey, Jeff's offered me a job. Jeff Garrett at a TNA, just for three months only let me go there and work for three months and he's my way back in the business.

All right, folks, let's talk about Mando. I'm a big believer in this product. They've been advertising with us here for a long time, and we're helping more families than ever before. smell better. I'm talking about whole body deodorant from Mando. It's an absolute game changer, especially when it starts getting warmer outside. This is from the founders of Lumi. Mando whole body deodorant is helping men conquer their odor in a new way. Yeah, your wife maybe is already using Lumi. And now that's why she smells better than ever, even after a long day. You can too.

I can't brag about this enough. I'm talking to you if you got Stinky Nut. That was actually Dave Silva's nickname in middle school. Stinky Nuts Jones. Tass told me that, so it could be true. I'm not sure. But Mando is good for everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean it. Your pips, your balls, your thigh poles, your belly buttons, your butt crack, your feet. Mando was created by a doctor who saw firsthand how normal B.O. was just being misdiagnosed and mistreated. But it's been clinically proven to block odor all day, control it for up to 72 hours. You got a solid stick deodorant, formulated and powered by Mandelic acid to stop odor before it starts.

You got to spray deodorant. It's aluminum-free. Ideal for those hard-to-reach places. No matter what you pick, all the products for Mando are baking soda-free and paraben-free. They're clinically proven to control odor better than just a shower with soap alone. How about that? Not only that, here's a little pro tip for you. Mando is clinically proven to control odor better than Old Spice.

Get you some of that. Some men mask their B-O with scents, but Mando men, well, they get the job done right, so don't mask it. Mando it. Available now when retailers. near you or head on over to shopmando.com because for a limited time new customers can get 20% off site wide with our exclusive code. Just use the code 83 weeks at shopmando.com for 20% off site wide. That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O.com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Mandoz got you covered with deodorant plus sweat control. Say goodbye to sweat stains and say hello

the long-lasting pressure. Hey, listen up guys. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to two pieces that mix well and last. That's where Quince shines, premium fabrics, considered design, and everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable, even as the seasons change. Quince has the everyday essentials that I love with quality that last. They've got lightweight cashmere sweaters. They've got short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos. They've got linen bottoms and shorts. They've even got teas and 100% Pima Cotton and European Jersey linen. The are versatile pieces that make a wardrobe actually work

season to season. Quince works directly with the top factories and cuts out all the middlemen, so you're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores, just quality clothing. By the way, the cashmere is 100% Mongolian. That's the same stuff

that the luxury brands use. The Pima Cotton, well, it's a long staple, meaning it stays soft and it doesn't pill. The European jersey linen is breathable and lightweight. Everything is built to hold up to regular wear, but still look good. And their clothing is rated between a 4.5 and 5 stars by thousands of people who are rocking it every day. And they only partner with factories that meet their rigorous standards for both

craftsmanship and ethical production. I really want you to check it out. I've been able to not only rock some of these pieces myself, but I gifted my dad some. He has a birthday. That's about 10 days prior to Christmas. He liked it so much. I got a rush order. Dad was able to double up this year on the birthday and Christmas. He's loving the way he looks and he's loving the way he feels in the new Quince stuff. You got to go check it out for yourself. And right now I want you to go to quince.com slash 83 weeks. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. That's right. A full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now it's even available in Canada too. So don't keep settling for clothes that don't last.

Go right now to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash 83 weeks for free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash 83 weeks. Can I recommend the cashmere polo? You're going to wear it more often than you think you do. You're going to look good. You're going to feel expensive, but it's actually affordable. It's quince.com slash 83 weeks. And if I can just ramble for a moment, it's just, I don't want to put another whole Pandora's box because they got back at me when I joined TNA by getting back at my father.

We did that incident called Cubuz and balloons, which I won't even get into. But basically, in a way to get back at me, there's a meeting that was held in Kevin Dunn's office between Kevin Dunn, out of Panucci, Chris Chambers, John Gubior, Jim Johnson, and a couple other people. I know this was somebody who's in that meeting. And they said, how do we get back at Sahi? and they said, let's get him where it hurts. Someone says, how? He doesn't work for her anymore. And it's like, well, he loves his father more than anything.

So let's get Vince to take away his father's check. That really stabbed him in the heart. And that's what he did to get back at me. They got back to my father. But doing something my father had no part in of. And I mean, that is just so malicious, so horrible. When Mike Johnson heard the story, Mike Johnson, BW. He said, you know, I kept him done and they were always good at

me, but that is pure evil. Those are Mike Johnson's words, pure evil, what they did to my father, and it is, I mean, shame on them for taking out their wrath on me by hurting my father. He needed that ledgette's check, that monthly ledgette check, and because of that, Conrad, not to sound eotistical, though it will, and I don't mean it to be, but because that you can say, TNA exists today. Because when they did that to my father, I called Jeff Jarrett two days later, and I said, Jeff, do you want me back there full time? And he said, I'd love to you. I said, good. I'm coming back and now that I'm going to get a TV deal within six months. And we got one within four months on Spike TV. It just so happened that we're having a meeting. W.B. He was leaving. I knew Kevin K.

He was ahead of Spike TV at that time because I knew it from the NBC days. And we went to the meeting and Kevin K. was there. He was like, David's the high. Is it really you? Yes, it is. And he gives me a hug because he hated me to NBC because he had a crush on my fiance, heard to Dodd who worked on the Litterman show, but that broke the ice. And Kevin and I started talking to person, everybody in that room got relaxed, and next thing we have a deal on Spike TV. And here's a delicious irony. I'm cutting spots about this new show coming up called TNA and we're airing them on Spike TV during Raw and it pissed them off. But in a way, you can say that if that never happened to my father, I've not gone back to TNA full time and maybe we wouldn't

have gotten a TV deal. Maybe they would have. I don't know. I'm just saying that's one of those things where did what thing lead to another to another we just don't know but that's how things played out when and how did you find out about that meeting about hey how do we get back at sahadi because that that's kind of feel like what a betrayal that even felt like i found out after the fact um i was chipped off about the fact that w was going to be there at the studios a couple days beforehand and that was when teen he was having the first ever victory road uh the immortal hook hoagin was there backstage Randy Savage was there. You know, it was a good PR for us, our first, our first monthly pay-per-view because all their other shows were dying. They were losing money.

This is their last gas. And hey, W.E. is going to be there two days later. So let's just see it was fun, it's been our package. It wasn't meant to hurt. It was meant to be something like our first people view at Universal Studios. Hulk Hogan was backstage. Randy Savage was backstage. And even the W.E. came down there two laters. Two days later, we are the epicenter of the professional wrestling world. It was a fun, goofy package. We had abyss I was going to greet them with balloons. Tracy Brooks with a plate of cookies. Just a harmless little ha-ha gag thing.

And that irritated them so much. It was so irate that they threatened to sue me personally. And Vince and John Guburek, through a PA, wanted me to go into their studio and talk to them alone about this because they're angrious. And I'm not going to a hostile studio alone without some help. Can I bring Shane Douglas? Can I bring a bis? No, you and you only. I said, well, I'll meet them on common ground.

And they refused to. I said, I'll put every camera down. We can talk on common ground, but I'm not walking in there alone into an enemy mind field. And they just came back out and said, if that's what you ever airs, we're going to sue your ass. And then that's when they decided to get back immediately to my dad. But I found out when Kevin Dunn called my father during the holidays, and I'm listening on the other line until bullshit. Lou, good to hear from you. Yeah, good to hear from you too, Kevin.

You know, I hate to give a good man bad news, but I got some bad news. We are losing money. Bullshit. And we're having to make budget cuts because we're losing money. bullshit. And unfortunately, we have to take away your legends check. I'm sorry about that. And Kammer why it bothered me so much is also the fact that my dad was close with Vince McMahon Senior. He did a lot of great reporting for Mr. McMahon Senior. He did more work for Mr. McSeer. He did for Vince Jr. And I mean, it's my father, damn it. You know, it's like, you hurt my father, the person I love more than

anybody in life. The person who met more to me, the person who made me the man I am today who taught me how to lead with integrity and to always do the right thing. Gosh, man. He fought with my father. with me. I hate to cuss on the show. I'm sorry, but that's my one hot. We never do that here. But fucking shame on them. He had nothing to do with this at all. He even said to me when I told him, I hope they don't take my legend check. I said, Daddy, I don't think they go into it. He worked for Vince senior for like two decades, you know, and like he ended up doing work for Vince Jr. whenever we had sports celebrities there.

Like Mike Tyson or L.T. He got the mainstream press. I'm sure they won't do that. They won't sleep that low. Well, they fucking did, you know? And that was like, wait. And that really made me go back to their TNA with their renewed sense of drive, purpose, and ignited me creativity again. And, you know, I'd like to say that I helped make them what they were because of what they did to my dad. There's something written in the book that I think is interesting. There's a lot of great stuff in there. But we're talking about Big. And you point out in the book that you were under the impression that when Big was, it was revealed to you that Big is going to come in.

to T&A that you thought he was coming under maybe a different pretense than what it really was. Let's look at here. Let's pick up a second because Dave identified John Guburick. John Guburick worked, went to, went to school with Kevin Dunn. John, they call him big because he's a big dude. And he played football in high school, probably the star of the football team, really powerful guy. And Kevin Dunn was, you could put him in your pocket and take him for a walk.

a little midget kind of guy. And, you know, probably not the most popular kid in school. John Guburik would be like his bodyguard, right? And Kevin brought John in. John Guburik worked for UPS, I believe, in logistics or some shit. And then Kevin brought John Guburik, aka Big, into WWE to work for Kevin Dunn. So I just want to make sure people understood who big and John Guburik are,

same person. But here's this story that nobody's heard, Conrad. And I really felt bad at the time because I was working with Eric at T&A. And I respected her if you weren't as close as you were right now because I weren't working as close hand in hand. But, you know, I had a tremendous amount of respect for Eric. And Eric, I don't know if you remember this, but, I mean, this stuff was me for a while. It really hurt. But there was a time when John Gabriel was coming in, I was told to replace Kevin Sullivan as head of promotion to manage the department.

Nothing more. and Eric invites me to have a drink with him and Hulk up at, you know, a Hulk's hotel suite in Vegas. And I show up there with, you know, with Brian. We're just having a great drink and talk. And John's name comes up because everybody's, you know, curious about what John's going to be doing. And I told Eric and Hulk that he's not going to be involved in television or all.

He just can be managing the post-production department back in Nashville because that's what I was told. So what I told Eric and Hulk at the time was a truth according to what I was told. And then Eric, I feel bad because, damn, it's just like. Like, you know, a week later, we have our first TV, and there was John taking control of everything. And I'm thinking of my mind, fuck, Eric Bischoff, who I respect right now, and I think respects me in Polk, they probably think I lied to them. And I didn't lie to them. I told them the lie that I was told. I didn't know it was a lie.

So, Eric, that bothered me for a couple of years because I wanted to get that off and back right now, that I felt like I lied to you and I didn't. And shame on them for lying to me and spreading that lie. But John DeBerg took over on day one, and he just thought he knew everything. and he basically didn't know shit. I mean, the guy didn't have a creative bone in his body. I can't think of one thing that happened during his reign, except for maybe EC3, but EC3 was kind of like a gimmick that, you know,

catchy theme song, great entrance, and then, you know, limited talent. And that was about it. I like the guy, really nice guy to work with, but, I mean, I can't think of anyone great thing that, you know, John Giery did. I think he single-handled lead, you know, at the end to TNA wrestling.

I do. Oh, goodness. Listen, if you haven't already, what are you waiting for? go pick up this book now backstage pass it's available for pre-order on amazon i uh i'm blown away by what we're hearing i mean i've read a lot of the book and i i read that line about you know you being out for drinks with with eric and hogan and eric had heard the party line and wanted to confirm with you are you sure that this is why big was coming in eric your spidey

sense was going off you knew the writing was on the wall about big how did you you know this? Just the, the backstory, you knew his personal relationship with Kevin Dunn and that raised an eyebrow or was it something else? No, it wasn't that. I didn't really have a strong, you know, I mean, I, you know, I respect Kevin Dunn to this day. I wouldn't, I'm friendly with Kevin. It's not, he's not the kind of guy I go out and have drinks with or go out to dinner with, but when we've seen each other in the past, it's, it's a friendly get together. But I didn't, I didn't know his backstory. I didn't know a lot about Kevin at the time. other than the product that he was in charge of producing, in my opinion,

was some of the best product I'd ever see, certainly in professional wrestling. So I respected his work, right? I was in a weird spot of TNA because I didn't want to be involved in management. I made it clear in my contract that I wasn't going to participate in management things, like meetings, for example. I made it clear. I'm not going to meetings unless it's involving times.

television or format or creative, please don't invite me because I won't come and you all get pissed off about it. And they were cool with that. And it worked pretty well until Dixie's mother wanted me to be on a conference call to discuss some business-related issue that had nothing to do with television. And I said, now I'm not doing that because I knew once I got sucked in, I'd probably have a hard time extracting myself. So I built a fence around my responsibilities. And as such, I understood that there may be management changes or things going on in management that I may or may not agree with or like, but I really didn't care. I still didn't want to be involved. So when John came in, Dixie was very, she was trying to be careful and communicate John's role in a way that she was hoping wouldn't have.

me or wouldn't piss me off, right? Because I did, while I didn't have an official role, I ended up being involved with a lot of things that probably felt outside of my immediate responsibilities just because if the boat springs a leak and I'm the only one with a bucket, I'm going to keep the boat from going under, right? But Dixie was very, in her effort to be careful and not piss me off, I could tell she was leaving shit out. There was more that she wasn't telling me than she was. That was my instinct. So right off the bat, I knew there was something fishy going on.

And then confirmed it when Dixie convinced me to go to Dallas to meet with Dixie's mother, who was really running the company. from a financial perspective. So she wanted John Guburik and I to go to Dallas to make sure her mom felt like the company was in good hands and that this addition to the staff was going to be smooth and effective. And during the course of that meeting, I'm pretty good at reading people, at least I believe I am, and I'm not right all the time, and I know that. But the majority of the time, I get a pretty good read pretty quick.

And in that meeting, I saw John jockeying for position. Like, John wasn't, I didn't report to John. John had no real influence over anything that I did with respect to being the executive producer. He was indirectly involved, but didn't directly have any influence over me. But I saw in that meeting him do a very amateurish job of trying to position himself as a leader. and he's not. He's, he's got some talent. He's good at some things. A leader, and as they pointed out, anything to do with creative and creating emotion, he would be that he's a UPS truck driver at that point. He had no skill sets. He had no instinct. And that's the other thing that I like about Dave

and it probably wouldn't have come up in his book. But most people that I know that are like Dave, that are very, very creative, have exceptional instincts and intuition. That's really what the skill set is. The fact that you learn how to use tools, equipment, avid, cameras, audio, those are the tools that you use to, not to sound crazy, manifest your instinct and your gut that tells you what the audience will want to see or what will strike the right emotional chord at the right moment. That's all instinct.

And you're either born with that gift and you develop it or you're not. And not very many people are. It's rare that you find really, really creative people. Not rare, but when you do, they're usually extremely successful in the fields of work. John had zero instinct. John knew the mechanics. John understood the process very, very well. And if John's role would have been to oversee process and stay out of creative or talent issues,

John would have been very, very effective because that's what he was good at. But instead, John came in to try to be Vince McMahon, right? He came in and all 350 or 375 pounds of him came in strong and hard. And it just, there was no way it was going to work. He got into any, you know, John didn't take the time to try to understand the dynamics of the Carter family because it was a very, very, I won't say bizarre, probably pretty normal when a family business. But the politics within the Carter family as it related to TNA was was a minefield in and of itself. And John just came in like a bull in a China shop. And I had a little conversation with John immediately after we got out of the meeting.

We jumped in the car, right? He had a car ticket to the airport. He goes, oh, man, that's really good. You know, because Jared was trying to, you know, reconfigure the organization. And she said, you know, she looked at me. How do you, how does you feel about, you know, about John overseeing this part of the company?

And I just, I didn't, I don't know what I said, non-comitial. And John and I get out to the car. He said something, I can remember the words exactly, but it was like, wow, this is great. You know, we're going to have a really great time working to do this. Now there was going to be more shared response. And I said, John, that's not going to happen.

That is not going to happen. And I was gone shortly thereafter. We're talking about politics of T&A, Mr. Sahati. And you're just laughing a little bit. Because Eric's all right. That's why. I mean, that was John. I mean, and anybody knows Eric Bishop, that is not going to happen.

You know, Eric's not going to, you know, take commands or even work with John. I mean, maybe work with John. But it's just like, you know, Eric was there mostly to oversee the creative aspect of Hulk Hogan, and he jumped in there because we need somebody to jump in there at times. And I think that Eric and the Hulk came up with some great ideas. I know, we give them credit for. I think the ACEs and ATS thing that went on for a year.

I thought that was fascinating, especially with the reveal at the end, that fully wears behind this whole thing as well. There was a moment that I don't want to get in a full detail right now. It's probably taking 15 minutes, but where Eric and Hulk had the idea of instead of putting Bobby Wood over, do an angle where you launch two missiles in the sky, as Terry said at the time,

not just one, James Storm and Babood, and that works so well. And it seemed like to me, and I'm taking a guess right now, it seemed like Eric kind of, probably wrong, saw how bad things were,

stepped in there a little bit, that his tongue wanted to step in there more, but just like, you know, he didn't sign on for that, you know, a management kind of role. But I think whatever Eric pretty much touched,

without something like a piece of his ass, I thought it was some really good stuff. And, you know, it's just like John comes there and on day one at TV, he's asking how do you work the go position of the buttons here and right then i'm just like wait he's supposed to be the manager of on-air promotion and and post-production and he's

asked on how to run the go-picion and what the hell's going on here i mean this is not what i was told and i mean i guess i wish i was there seeing you know john saying that to eric i wish i was there because i know john and i know eric pretty well and oh my gosh eric must just been laughing his head and saying you pathetic cool it's like i'll never do that no it's not a great thing have at it see you later pal all right fellas you've probably noticed that eric is in better shape than ever before and a lot of that is because he's figured out how to tap into his testosterone now when you start doing the research on that you're going to get down a little rabbit hole and you're going to start thinking about things like testosterone replacement therapy i want to caution you about doing that but

I understand why you would look into it. I mean, all of us guys, when we get to our mid-30s, it feels like all of a sudden we wake up and something's different. It's like I'm moving through mud. Things are more difficult than they used to be. And that's not just because you're getting older. It's because every year you have a little less testosterone. Now, what's happening is you've got to unlock that testosterone and give your body access to it. What you don't want to do is go sign up for TRT because a lot of doctors act like it's no. big deal. Y'all just go get weekly shots for the rest of your life. And then when you really research it, you realize I'm going to be spending like three grand a year to shut down my own

body's natural production forever. You don't want that. You want Mars men. It gives you the same benefits of optimized testosterone. You get the energy. You get the strength. You get the focus. But without shutting your own body down. By the way, with Mars men, there's no synthetics. There's no needles. There's no dependency. It's like hitting the reset button on your hormone factory instead of just shutting it down. Instead, Mars Men just uses real natural ingredients. Finally, there's something out here that gives you the benefits. Without all the scary long-term stuff, I want you to try it.

I think you'll see more consistent energy. I think you'll have stronger lips. I think you'll have better focus. My focus is off the charts. And I do have more of a sense of steady drive all day when it comes to energy. It's not like I just chugged a cup of coffee or downed an energy drink. Mars men, by the way, made right here in the USA, third party tested. They even give you a 90-day money-back guarantee.

That means there's no risk. I mean, here's the worst case. You don't absolutely love it and you get your money back. But over 91% of users report higher energy levels. Thousands of guys just like you are feeling incredible results. Just check out the reviews on the website and see, for yourself. And for a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to Mars.com. That's men go to Mars.com for 50% off and three free

gifts when you check out after you purchase. They're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. David, I do want to ask you about, you know, the political aspect of TNA with regard to two things. You've mentioned a few times Eric in TNA. and I feel like a lot of the long time guys who were a part of T&A, they usually didn't talk about Eric individually. They would talk about him collectively. It would be Hogan and Bischoff. That was the way it was always said.

It was almost like salt and pepper. You know, it was like these two things go together. But you're very clear in the book that you drew a distinction between the two. Yeah. Whatever your feeling was about Hulk Hogan's contributions to T&A and your feelings towards. Eric, they were different than.

And I feel like a lot of people sort of lumped them together. Can you speak about that? Yeah, and I had a letter with the book two years ago because I said good things about Eric. I said bad things about Eric. I won't be working for Real American Free Sale. But I respect that. That's not actually true, but thank you. But it's just that, you know, Eric had a vision.

Eric is one of those rare guys where it's hard to be a creative and a businessman as well. I consider myself a creative, but I suck a business. I have a hard time doing an expense report. But Eric also is a creative or has a business acumen, which I don't have. And he had a good feel for the business. And the distinction was that Hulk was more of an on-air talent. And we were using him on air a lot of the times of pre-tapes, you know, as he's already figure many times the show. And to me, it's just that, not that was bad, but just it reminded me of what Hulk used to be able to do, but couldn't do anymore. So I'd get Hulk more as like a talent, and Eric is more as a creative thinker and a businessman, even though, you know, Hulk had some good ideas as well. But it's like, you know, I want to see Hulk wrestle, you know, once a month at least,

and his body would not allow him to do that, unfortunately. I'm sure he wanted to as well, too. And that's why I make the distinction. Everybody lumps those two together, but they both brought different things to it as well. I mean, Eric was there, and gosh, we did something that, you know, was foreign in TNA. something called a walkthrough. We would do walk-throughs, Eric. And I'd ask me your opinion half the time,

and half the time we'd like it. And at the time, you wouldn't like it. But thank you, excuse me, I didn't do this. But we were doing walk-throughs before Eric came there. And we're doing live shows and just going out there and winging it. And that's why a lot of times the product was crappy. So walk-thoers, I mean, we do walk-throughs at RIF right now for entrances. And it's just that they're important to see both the talent to feel things

for the director to see camera shots. and for the one who's produced a segment to get a feel for how it's working and then tweak it before you do it live. And we weren't doing a walkthroughs until Larry came there. So, you know, that's why I separate the two because they both together they brought something, but they also had each individual things as well. Speaking of wrestling politics, I think when people think about T&A and politics, inevitably Jeff Jarrett and Dixie Carter come up. And I know you have worked with Jeff for a long time, and I don't know the nature of your relationship today with Jeff.

but I do want to ask, from your perspective, how do you think the whole Jeff Gerrit T&A thing went down? Well, it was bad begin with because Jeff had animosity towards Dixie because, you know, the company winners, they lost their funder with some scandal that happened. I think Enron was their backer or something like that. No, who is, who is the, the, the, Richard Scrooci, health stuff. Richard Scroozy. Yeah, Richard Scroo.

So they were looking for, you know, somebody to invest in this and Dixie's father invest in that and that gave Dixie power. And I think Jeff got upset that. His idea that he had with Bob Broder and his father, now Dixie is the one who's controlling it. But when I first went there, Jeff was controlling it. Jeff was running it. And he was like disregarding Dixie whatsoever.

And Dixie was not like putting a foot down whatsoever. And Vince Riss even told me one of the smarter things Vince said was like, you know, David, I wish Jeff just like one of Dixie's ideas, you know, like go out there. But he shoots everything down because he can't stand Dixie. So I mean, I jumped in there. bad dynamic. Actually, Jeff called me to come to Nashville for an interview just for my initial gig, that three-month gig, to get them to Victory Road. And Jeff wanted me, offered me a salary for three months. I met with Dixie. She was, David, sorry, I can't afford you. I know your talents,

but, you know, it's like, we're not there yet. And so, Jeff, he goes, just come here anyway, and we'll get it done. Don't worry about that. So forget about what Dixie told you. I'm the one in charge here right now. So just, you know, just come, I need you. And he did. I felt the passionately he had in the sleeves he needed me there and i wanted you know give jiff three months because he was good to me when i worked with him at wwee but the dynamic was rotten the entire time and then it came to the head when the whole scandal happened with curtain and karen and all that um it just got ugly and then that's when i i use a word neutered i don't know what the right word is but like jiff kind of got neutered and put to the side and dixie kind of sees control

and of course dixie you know thought that she can be great on television and you know things sort of become all about Dixie. Dixie and she's making all these decisions and she didn't have the experience. She was played by the boys constantly. I like Dixie's a person. She's a wonderful lady. She really is, but she didn't have the senses that somebody who sees him in the business does. Somebody is working you and playing you and all that kind of stuff. I love Kevin Nash. I'm not not in Kevin Nash at all. But here's a story at the hotel, the double tree of land. Yeah. Well, you know, Kevin's a conference. It's coming up. So you know where this is going, Eric, I'm sure.

And he's sitting there with Dixie having wine, you know, Bala Juan. They invite me over. And he's just laying on the schmooze, you know. His contract's up in about a month. He wants to get it renewed. And Dixie just loves Kevin Ash because Dixie wanted to be Vince, you know, McMahon, you know, the female version of Vince McMahon. I don't know if I, it's correct to say female version, but let's just say, you know,

a different version of Vince McMahon. And Kevin's like, you know, I can't wait for Dickson's like. Dixie, she's like, oh, what's that, Kevin? And he smiles and he grabs a bottle of wine, you know, the pause, the hesitation, dramatic. May I please? Of course, more wine? Yes, yes. And he's pouring the wine.

He puts down and he goes, takes a glass, Dixie. I can't wait till we finally beat this man's ass and they toast. And Dixie is just enamored by this. And I'm like, what a fucking load of shit. I mean, you know, there's nothing along with being number two. If you don't have to finance is being number one. You know, you can make a lot of money being number two. It's not what Avis is all about.

You know, we try harder. We're not hurt, so we try harder. And people of teenage work their asses off. They really did. They cared. But to have these grandiose dreams that you're going to be taken on this, you know, gigantic conglomerate known as a WWE with, you know, a bucket full of change. I mean, it's just preposterous.

And she just suck it up. And Kevin got his contract extension. Of course, he did. David, it's so funny. The way you describe that, of course, I know Kevin fairly well, he's a very good friend of my. Yeah, I love to do it. But it is what it is.

And I could see the charm offensive taking shape as you described it. Yeah. And her just eating it up was just, it's amazing. You can see that too, Eric. Her just eating that up and believing this pipe dream. She really believed it. She did. Well, she wanted it.

And look, you know, we won't be careful with Dixie. Look, Dixie didn't really know anything about the wrestling business. I don't think she knew much about it. She said had some exposure to the music. industry like everybody that lives in Nashville. At some point, they probably bumped into the music industry. She had some experience in music. Therefore, she thought, well, I can, I've had experience of music.

I can certainly figure out something as simple as professional wrestling and television. Yeah. And she came into it naive. She's a very nice person. She's a sweet person. She's a big heart. And she's a good human being. But her vulnerability was that.

she could be easily influenced by the right people. And there was a lot of right people who were influencing Dixie. That's what undid her. Really, she didn't have enough of experience of her own that she relied so much. Look, I still do it to this day. If I can sit down and pick somebody's brain that has more experience in some form of entertainment that I do, I'm going to sit down and they're going to have an influence on me. I'm going to sit down and pick their brains. And they will have an influence of me. So I'm not suggesting she shouldn't have listened to people around her, but she'd get pulled to the right, and she'd get pulled to the left, and she'd get pulled to the left, and she'd get pulled over here, and she'd get pulled the opposite direction. She was constantly

being pulled in different directions, depending on who she was talking to and what their agendas happened to be. And then she was trying to make decisions that way. It's just, I mean, I've done it. I've been in her position where you're literally learning on the job, And it doesn't work. And that's really what undid Dixie Carter and TNA. It was just the lack of firm leadership and experience. And Eric, you said the right word. You said naive.

And I think that she was. She had good intentions. I mean, Dixie was a good person. And I think she really believed that she could do this. And she really believed when Kevin Nash was talking to her that, this is achievable. But she was naive, not having the experience. I was naive when I first entered in. And I believed everybody, you know, you learned after a couple of years of business.

she can't believe practically nobody. But, yeah, naive is probably the best word because she didn't have good intentions and she was a good person, but not having that experience in that sense when somebody's playing your work in you, then you can easily get worked and misled. And that leaves a disappointment. Ultimately, you know, you saw T&A at their absolute peak, you know, when they had their biggest audience and their greatest financial success. And we know that it took quite a tumble.

What was the straw that broke the camel's back with T&A at least? in your opinion. John Girovurek. Wow. You know, it was a bunch of things. There were so many people there that were the cause of demise, who I'd rather not thrown to the bus right now. But when you have storylines at start,

one thing that really resonated with me when Eric came in there was about storyline arcs. You know, you have a three-month arc, a six-month arc, a one-year arc with storylines that are intertwined and this and that. But when we'd have stories that would start, and you can probably figure who was writing at the time. And like after six weeks when you start to get invested in emotionally, they abruptly stop for some reason. Their contract isn't signed or somebody just wanted to do something.

And these two adversaries are now like sitting next to others' best friends. And, you know, that whole six week period is forgotten. There were so many storylines that started to even stop that if you're a viewer, you're just left frustrated. It's just like, well, I thought this was going somewhere. And it didn't. There was never payoff. So many lack of non-payoffs. There's nobody that was really leading the locker room.

I think to give Jeff credit he was greatly in the locker room because he was running the show but he was also a talent and people respected that and I'm not sure much respect that the vitroos had that they're in the locker amongst the people and it was kind of like the inmates were running the asylum

because athletes were like pitching their ideas and they were going with them and they want to change ideas and like there's nobody to say no we're going to continue the storyline of this art so it was just it was chaos there's really nobody in control a lot of people trying to be in control. At one point, there was a...

When Eric was there, I think we had Bruce Pritchard there for a moment, Jeff Jared, John DeBurich, and Bruce Pritchard all at the same time. I want to have their say in Dixie. And it's just like, it was just a mess. There were all these different factions and teams, not on television, but behind the scenes. Are you on Team Jared? Are you on Team Dixie?

Are you on Team, John DeBurich? Are you on Team Eric? I was on Team, Conrad. I was playing Switzerland. I just would go back to my hotel room. have a couple of beers with my camera guys and just say out of the politics, including the Red River Cafe

Cafe, which you caught with Keith Mitchell, the producer there, where I'd like gather, everybody there because I don't want to be seen on anybody's side. I just wanted to do what was right for TNA. And I think that a lot of people thought that was on somebody else's side. Well, Sahadi's not here, so it must be hanging out with so-and-so.

I wasn't. I was alone in my hotel room, so I wanted to say out of the politics. And in some odd way, I think they kind of got involved in some politics. But there's a political time. Everybody vying for power. or everybody want, like, you know, have their voice heard. And nobody really like, you know, corralling everybody in.

There was no one single voice shown the last, I would say, seven years or so of TNA, maybe eight years of TNA. I do want to ask you about one more personality before we let you go. And I appreciate you being so gracious with your time. If you haven't already, I want to encourage all of our listeners to go check out Amazon and pick up this book right now. You can pre-order it. You'll have it next week.

Backstage Pass, Tales from Beyond the Squared Circle, written by Mr. David's Hattie. You know, you were at the WWB when they made the transition from getting their ass kicked by Nitro and lots of occupational gimmicks. And now we're going to launch the attitude era. And for better or worse, a lot of people discuss Vince Rousseau in that era. And then you worked with him again in T&A. Now, we know how Eric feels. What was your experience like working with Mr. Rousseau? I like Vince as a person as a friend. Uh, because we talk about things that were non-wrestling. We're talking about spiritual things and stuff like that. As far as the creative writing, you know, hits misses, probably a lot of misses. And that's one thing

when you work with Vinsick Man is Vince would correct his misses and not let him get on air. And in extent, Vince is doing that with Vinsickman as well, because Vinclair had a lot of bad ideas at times also. But when Vince is like, you know, on Gordon, like, untethered, it's just, you know, it's, I think he needs somebody to like, you know, random when his ideas are bad. And some So I never did work on the, I never worked on the creative side. So I would just look at the format and try to execute whoever's vision it was, the best that I thought they wanted it done. Because when I was a TNA, I became the director of the show.

And directing was all storytelling. People forget that, but camera angles mean something. You know, it's like wide shots tell you something. Crowdshots say they're into it, but tight shots show you motion and face. And that's where the real story is. So I was just focusing on directing the telling this story to the use of cameras the best I can. somebody else's story, by the way. It's a lot easier when it's your story.

When it's somebody else's story, you have to kind of guess. But when you never got the current angle, it's just like he tells great stories in the ring. I can direct a current angle match not even know what was going to happen and just follow it. He's such a good storytelling in the ring. But yeah, there's a lack of, you know, one solid leader, I think, during that time. There was Dixie, you know, the boss, but there was a leadership vacuum. There wasn't that one singular person like you had to be where his viz. Or I guess in WCW days, I wasn't there, you know,

Bischoff. There wasn't that one single authority figure that was yes, no. That was also involved in the creative and the management side. And that was probably the, uh, you know, demise of it. Well, I appreciate all the time, man. I can talk to you forever. Luckily, I've got the book. I got an advanced copy. You need to go get your copy right now. Cruise on over to Amazon. Pre-order backstage paths, tales from beyond the squared circle by David Sahati. David, thank you so much for all the time. We've got to have you back on, man. This was fantastic. I love you. Wait to hear my stories about Adam Copeland. Edge, how he never become the character.

I'll just give you a little hint. The original creator was supposed to be like a Jim Morrison character sitting around shooting candles, I mean around candles reading poetry that he wrote. I shot that stuff and I said, it's horrible. And Ed living on the fly, we got shots of him with a jacket on, running around New York City just with some B-roll. And I said the stuff with the candles is shit. It's horrible.

It's going to kill his gimmick, his character. And so we took the B-roll and we put a female voice to it. And there's completely different Vince's idea, but it made him that mysterious character that he was. So I know we're at a time of a lot of stories like that. I'll tell you about characters that nearly became famous like Stone Cold because of backstage reasons. Check it out. You're going to love it.

Backstage Pass available for pre-order right now on Amazon. Thank you so much, Mr. Sahati. This was great. Thank you guys for having you on. It's an honor. It really is. Talk to you later, Dave. Yes, sir.

Thanks, Eric. Something everybody's talking about is Blue Chew. I don't know if you guys saw, but they just dropped something. pretty crazy over there. We're talking blue chew gold. It's the newest innovation from the number one chewable ED brand and buddy, this ain't your grandpa's little blue pill. This is the four in one beast that's setting the gold standard for performance. We're talking two ingredients for blood flow to keep that rocket pump in mixed with apomorphine and oxytocin to turn up the arousal

and connection in your brain and body. Blue chew gold dissolves under your tongue and it works in as little as just 15 minutes. That means you can get it on quicker and stay in the game longer. We're talking elevation without hesitation, peak passion and peak performance, all in a single tablet. If you're back to talk after this, it'd be asking for a break. Make your life easier by getting harder and discover your options at bluechew.com. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. Get 10% off your first month of Bluechew Gold with the promo code 83 weeks. That's promo code 83 weeks.

Visit Blu.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Bluechew for sponsoring the day's podcast. it's time for the wrestling news update with raj gerie rise i'm so excited to talk to you man this has been one of the more monumental news weeks in a while and i guess we should start right with the cover story everybody's talking about it it looks like the paramount deal is finally happening what can you tell us about this well yeah you know unless it gets blocked um unless this gets blocked which looks unlikely but you know people in there California legislature, Senate have said that they plan to block the deal. Now, I think the belief

is that the deal is eventually going to happen and it'll probably be done later this year. And of course, with that, this kind of stuff we talked about last week is that they're going to have a ton of debt with this deal. Now, they said this past week that their net long-term debt will be about $79 billion. And so with that, they're looking to save $6 billion. in cost energies, which is, you know, they're going to be combining HBO Max with Paramount Plus, the streaming services, you know, with the studios and things like that, they got those synergies. So $6 billion in cost synergies, which also means a lot of people will be losing jobs, which usually happens any time there's a gigantic merger of this type. And so, yeah, I mean,

I guess kind of taking a piece by piece, that is not necessarily new information. But it did lead to an article on CNBC by Alex Sherman, who noted that, you know, during the last, because what we care about is how this affects pro wrestling. And one of the things last time with AEW with their last TV deal was that WBD lost the NBA. And by losing the NBA, they really needed to keep, you know, all their second tier sports and entertainment because they carry a trees with, you know, the cable networks. They wanted to keep it higher because, or at least at the same rate, because it was going to drop with the NBA going. So, you know, they acquired these other, you know, lesser known sports or, you know, less popular sports and also renewed AEW. Alex Sherman noted kind of what we talked about with all the cost cutting and now that got

the NFL, you know, under their umbrella, that deal, it doesn't expire until 233, but there's an out clause in 2029. So they're going to get an increase from Paramount. Paramount has already said that they want to keep the NFL for the foreseeable future. They're going to do a big increase. So now that they have all these big sports with that, UFC and others, now it makes the future more murky for the second tier, third tier sports because they are going to be cost cutting like crazy. I mean, they have to. And the value of minor sports basically will not be as important. important to TBS and TNT going forward. And kind of a negative thing was David Ellison talking about UFC and bringing it to TNT on Saturday nights, which is, of course, when collision air. So,

so far, David Ellison has not mentioned AEW at all, which, you know, granted a gigantic deal like this. AEW is kind of small potatoes considering what they're paying for the NFL, the UFC. But talking about openly about UFC on a Saturday night with AEW. obviously they could move the relation to a different night permanently if they want to but it does raise concerns about the next round of negotiations

because this deal will most likely be completed by the end of the year next year nothing should really change that much you know they'll be the first year with the joint venture and everything is supposed to stay the same as far as AEW goes they're not being dropped

most likely. They will be, and chances are now, between HBO Max and Paramount Plus combined, if that happens by then, there'll be a lot more people with access to those shows for at least that next year. Next year is the last year of AEW under the current deal. Now the next, the negotiations for the next deal, that's where things get a little murky, especially with WBD going to cost-cutting mode. And, you know, whether they don't want to renew AEW, you know, for what they have,

their portfolio of sports. It's cheap, but at the same time, it makes no difference on their carriage fees and things like that. And it's pro wrestling, which is not as prestigious as things like the UFC and things like that. So you can't kind of look at AEW and be like, well, it gets half of the ratings of UFC or three quarters or whatever. So it should get that kind of, you know, rights fee. That's just not how it works. They're not even close. So, yeah, so I'd like to kind of. I hear your your thoughts on this. It's complicated.

I still think there's some kabuki bullshit going on with the WBD AEW $185 million a year deal. I think as well as the equity that WBD owns. I think it's more than what's been advertised. and I think part of it, and the reason it's somewhat murky, is because while TNA does, excuse me, AEW doesn't get stellar ratings, averaging 500,000 viewers a show is not a great number. I don't care what anybody says. That's compounded negatively by the fact that, as you just pointed out, Raj,

it's not a high-demand product from advertisers. However, the 500,000 people that do watch, it's got a reasonable 18 to 49-year-old demo. Forget about total viewers. It's a reasonable 18-49-year-old demo. What difference does that make if they can't sell it to advertisers? Here's where it makes a difference. Here's why I think strategically,

WBD structured the deal that they structured, current, is because it's a great place for make goods. By that I mean in the beginning part of the year, all of the cable outlets, all the big networks they go out and they sell their advertising packages in the upfront market, which means they get paid. Now, in turn, they have to deliver an audience. what happens when, for example,

any kind of a mail show that is pre-sold in the upbrance that is supposed to deliver X amount of 18 to 49-year-old males. What happens when the ratings come up short? The network has already taken the money. Now, this is how it used to work. I don't know if it still does. The network takes some money in the up fronts. They have a commitment to deliver an audience of 18 to 49-year-old men.

What happens if they don't make it? Do they give the money back? No. They do make goods. So because AEW is light on sponsorship, obviously, I doubt there's a lot of advertisers knocking down their door to spend money there. Quite the opposite. It's probably a very difficult sell.

But there's a lot of 18 to 49 year old inventory there that the network can use for make goods for other programming that failed to deliver the 18 to 49 year old audience. So while that number is very small comparatively to WWE, for example, it's still a number and it's still an asset when it comes to make goods. And I really think if there's any hope for AEW in the new perma configuration, part of it may be because it's a good place for make goods because that's all it's good for. There's no advertisers that are driving hard. There's no sponsors that are driving their product or trying to reach their audience through AEW. But they are delivering at 18 to 49 year old audience. It is a good place to do make good.

goods. Yeah, I think the one thing with the Sherman article is he said that the sports executives that he spoke to, flat out said that it would be smart from a business standpoint to cut sports on T&T to a bare minimum. So not even, you know, keep some of the lower tier sports for make goods and things like that, but just to cut it all together. And that's where things get, you know, again, I think it gets a little murk. Well, it gets really does.

When the network makes that decision, and I've been through this a couple of times, I went through it with TBS, for example. If you go back and you look at Turner Broadcasting back in the 90s, T&T was their premium network, right? That's where the movies were. That's where the original productions. If Ted decided he wanted to do a Civil War movie

because Ted loved history and particularly Civil War history, Ted would write a check, spend an enormous amount of money making a Civil War movie because he could put it on TNT. All of the original productions, sports, top tier, NBA, when they had the NFL, when he had certain NFL rights, all of that went to TNT. TBS was looked at as kind of like the blue collar non-sports, non-premium programming network, which is really how it started. when a network makes up its mind. And for example, here's where TBS went. TBS, you guys may remember this. TBS was kind of like Andy Mayberry baseball,

because historically that's where it was, wrestling, a lot of reruns on TBS, like really low-budget clip shows like comedy spots, America's Funniest Home Video reruns and shit like that. That was primarily TBS in terms of its program. programming profile. And then I don't, I think it was Steve Burke who came in to take over TBS and said, no, TNT's are premium movie channel and sports.

TBSs are comedy channel. All of the programming that they decided to put on TBS was geared towards comedy. They wanted to be the comedy cable network. So when an executive says something that sounds kind of innocuous, like, you know, I think we and we should maybe drop the second tier sports. It's not so innocuous if you're a second tier sport. But what they're really saying is we're going to give TNT a completely different profile. We're going to take out sports and we're going to insert something.

I don't know what that something is. But when you say we're going to eliminate our second tier sports, the other part of the equation is what are we going to replace it with? And if they make a firm decision to really re-brose, that network of a very specific type of programming. There'll be no gray area. Right now AEW falls into a gray area. It's not really sports.

It's not really drama. It's not really comedy, but it's kind of a little bit of everything. That's one of the problems with wrestling as a whole, not just AEW. It's not a sport, but it kind of is. We try to sell it like a sport,

but it's not really. It's not a drama, but it really is probably more of a drama than it is a sport. It's not comedy, but it's funnier than some sitcoms. So it has this unique place in television history where it's really not any one thing. It's a combination of things,

but you can become a victim of your own success. By being a little bit of everything, you can easily get run over in a rebranding. And that's another, I think, vulnerability right now for AEW. If AEW is a publicly traded stock, I'd be looking at those comments and probably not betting too heavily just because of the rebranding. Even if the ratings were great, even if AEW was pulling a million viewers a week, if there is a corporate rebranding of a network, it won't matter.

You'll be gone if you don't fit into the new profile. Yeah, and that kind of goes. And with that, you kind of also have to kind of look at what some of, alternatives might be when this round, when this current TV deal is up. And there was this thing that Conn would say in interviews a lot, where he would talk about how we're reaching this point in sports media rights where the big brands, the NFL's, the NBA, the UFC, WWE, they're going to continue to get, you know, rights fees increases. But that comes at the detriment of the smaller brands and you're going to see more and more money going to big brands and smaller

brands kind of fading off and you're kind of seeing that happening and after this current deal is up and you look at kind of the landscape and where AEW could land if they don't renew with paramount there's not really that many options that would probably want to pay the price that you know WBD paid for AEW and you kind of look at Fox I know Amazon I I know the budgets. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to you just make, Raj, because you're right on the money. The networks

that I'm currently talking to as potential homes for a second show for Real American freestyle, I have a really good idea of what the budget thresholds are. It's not a pretty picture for your traditional linear. Their budgets

are being crushed. You guys heard of the Savannah banana thing? Oh yeah. I won't say the network because I may be in business with them, but one that everybody would know had wanted that show, one of the television rights to that so badly, but they have an internal budget limit that cannot be exceeded of 200 grand per episode. And this is a pretty significant network.

And it's the same across the board. It's not the same number, right? But the budgets that people have for programming right now are really, really limited. And it's nowhere near the purported cosplay $185 million a year valuation of AEW's current contract, not even a fraction of it. So it'll be real interesting to see what the television landscape looks like for AEW if Paramount doesn't work out. to interrupt, but I want to jump in. I want to remind everybody that this article that we've referenced a few times from Alex Sherman, it's not like this is a mandate or, you know, this is basically an opinion piece. So this is what one guy thinks might happen. And I do think there's value in people who have their ear to the ground and understanding, you know, the dynamics of this sort of deal. But I know that we as wrestling fans, we're all keenly listening to this news about this merger because we've got these eagle ears about. or eagle eyes about, hey, what's this mean for AEW?

As a reminder, a week ago, about 10 days ago, they announced this deal. And two days after that, Paramount paid a $2.8 billion breakup fee to Netflix. So I just want to contextualize that. We all acknowledged last week here on the program that WWE had their greatest financial success in the history of their company, four times larger than the Hogan era, at least double what the attitude era was, adjusted for inflation. And it's still the all-time high. And it was $1.7 billion top-dollar top-top line revenue. That's not profit. That was your top line last year for all of of WWE, all the WrestleMania money, all the ESPN money. Everything globally was 1.7.

And Paramount paid a $2.8 million breakup feed to Netflix, meaning they got nothing. They gave them $2.8 billion for the rights to have this deal. So I'm saying all that to say. I think we as wrestling fans are really caught up and hey, what does this mean for AW? I don't think the decision makers involved have even considered how any of this affects AW. Because when you're talking about that level of cash, it's just not, I don't mean to this be dismissive of wrestling, because clearly we all care about it. We're doing a fucking show about it. I do four or five of them a week, but it is irrelevant to this deal. And it's an afterthought in a major way. And I'm not saying AW is not significant. I'm just saying we all acknowledge.

WWE is the big dog and their top line revenue was 1.7 and just last week, Paramount sent 2.8 billion processed that. 48 hours after they make the announcement, they've already paid it. Not like we're going to have a meeting. How do we raise the capital? Let's do a stock deal? I mean, do you just wire $2.8 billion two days later? I mean, it's unfathomable the level of money at play here.

But I don't think it's anything necessarily to be panicked about because we just don't know. Here's what we do know. There's about 325 million subscribers to Netflix. There's about 200 million subscribers to Amazon. There's about 1995 million subscribers for Disney. But if you're able to combine HBO and Paramount, you'll be in that 200 million subscriber range if you were to merge them. Now, that assumes that there's going to be some duplicates, people who have both, but you should at least be in the range. What this says to me, maybe more than anything, Eric, is that there's a major emphasis on streaming, much less so on, on broadcast and linear TV. But who even watches TV?

I'm not saying that to be funny. I mean that legitimately. I was buying media 15 years ago, 16 years ago. And even I knew back then, I only want live sports and news because we were already in the DVR TVO era. And now everybody watches streaming apps. We have YouTube TV in my house. I'm the only person that opens it. My wife doesn't watch it at all.

Everything she watches is on streaming. She doesn't care about live sports. She doesn't watch the news. So I think if you're really looking for any sort of live programming to keep your freaking linear stations off of life support, you're going to need some sort of live programming or you're just going to sunset the thing and just go all in on streaming. And for them to invest this amount of money and take a look at Netflix and take a look at Amazon and then say, hey, we should be in that ballpark.

those aren't my words. Those are Ellison's words. It feels to me like we're getting the cart before the horse about how this affects at EW. The major move here, at least in my opinion, Eric, is they doubled down on streaming in the biggest possible. Oh, I mean, that's what everybody's doing. That's exactly what this is all about. This isn't all about this has got nothing to do with trying to grow TBS or TNT or any other network they would happen to own or acquire. That's not what this is. This is about using those platforms to funnel subscribers to get people to subscribe. That's all this is.

It's where the puck has been going now for a couple of years, and everybody's just starting to realize it. You're absolutely right, Conrad. This is all about building up that streaming subscription base and using linear television to do it. And Conrad, to your point, what you were saying about the combined entity with HBO Max and Paramount Plus,

Actually, in the U.S., with the combined number of subscribers, Antenna.com, they had an article saying that there's about 7.6 million American subscribers who subscribe to both. So combined, it would be like 87 million subscribers in the U.S., which actually would be more than Netflix. So that combined streaming app would actually be a little more than what Netflix has in the U.S. And that's what we were willing to spend $2.8 billion to achieve. right but the one thing about streaming the one weird thing because i'm the same i mean just i'm 50 i'm even out of the demo but there's a tv show like white lotus i'm not watching it on hbo i'm watching it on streaming but when it comes to sports people still pick television over sports when there's a simulcast the last season uh with the nfl during the season itself you know the games were

streamed on Peacock and aired on NBC. And only 10% were streaming it on Peacock. The rest we're watching it on NBC. Now, great, NBC is broadcast. But still, every time you see that simulcast with sports, I'm not talking about entertainment shows, but with sports, the TV number is always a lot higher than streaming. As of now, now that is going to change.

Every year, it's going to change more and more and more. But for sports, for whatever reason, other than TV shows, people still pick TV. Well, I can't wait for us to talk about this story as it continues to develop, but we do have some news that just broke yesterday that everybody's talking about with regard to WW creative. We'll get to that in just a moment. But first,

let's talk about another type of banking. Chime is changing the way people bank. It's fee free and it's smarter banking built for you. Not like old school banks that charge you overdrafts and monthly fees. No, built for you, not the 1%. And here's why Chime is different. Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay,

giving you access up to $500 of your paycheck anytime and getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Some old banks still don't do this. So forget your overdraft fees and your minimum balance fees and all your monthly fees. Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and real progress. Why wouldn't you want to bank fee free? Why wouldn't you want to have overdraft coverage you can count on? It even helps you build your credit history stress free. You get paid when you say up to $500.

And did I mention you can earn up to 3% APY on savings? That's like seven times higher than a traditional bank. Don't take my word for it. These cats were rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. And why is that? Well, because you're talking to real humans 24-7. And right now they've just launched a new chime card. It's the new way to build credit history with your own money and get rewarded every single day.

There's no annual fees, there's no interest, there's no strings attached. And when you get qualifying direct deposits, you get one and a half percent cash back on eligible time card purchases. I'm a big believer in this product simply because they got rid of the fees. I've often thought that bankers have overcomplicated this. Chime gets my seal of approval. Check it out and you'll see why. Chime is not just smarter banking. it's the most rewarding way to bank.

Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head on over to chime.com slash 83 weeks. That's chime.com slash 83 weeks. Chime.com slash 83 weeks. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank. Bank, and my pay line of credit provided by the Bank or Bank N.A.

My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Option. See chime.com slash fees info. See chime.com slash fees only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies. No men balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary.

See chime.com for details and applicable terms. I just got listening to that. Look, I just ran six miles. Damn. Raj, chat me up. There's big news coming out of WWE land. It looks like two big moves were made as we're reading the tea leaves. I guess Alexandra Williams was promoted to VP and the lead writer for Raw.

She sort of self-reported that on our own Twitter, which was cool. But we also heard through the grapevine that road dog is no longer with WWE. And I think when the news first broke, a lot of people assumed, well, they must have fired him for bad creative when in fact he quit. What are you hearing about this, Roche? He quit. Yeah, he had recently had his annual review. And it's believed it has to do with that. Yeah, I mean, he's been on and off at WWE since 2011. I This was his second stint with creative. And yeah, he had been the co-lead of creative for the past year.

You know, the Smackdown ratings, if you've been following them, they haven't really been setting the world on fire. And the creative on Smackdown hasn't necessarily been getting, you know, the most praise over the past year. So, you know, there have been, there's been talks of WW, kind of shaking up their creative and making some changes. But this wasn't a WWE decision. Road Dog had his annual review.

And there had been some other frustrations. There was a convention that Road Dog was booked for that was coming up. WW had approved and then they changed that. So there had been some other issues behind the scenes. But yeah, ultimately this was his decision and he's gone. Eric, I'll admit this one sort of took me about surprise. I think a lot of people were surprised when Road Dog was released, gosh, back in, I think October of 2021, but it felt like a changing of the guard at the time.

You know, it looked like Triple H was on his way out. He had recently had a heart situation and he was maybe going to be stepping away from WWE. And now Vince, you know, had, I guess, total control in terms of NXT and WWE, not like he didn't always have that. But there was a narrative going around that said, oh, well, you know, William Regal's going. on and Road Dog's gone. It looks like Vince is running off all of Hunter's friends. So it was no surprise that when, when Hunter came into power, hey, Jeff Derek got shown the door and almost immediately they welcomed Road Dog in and that felt kind of on brand. I mean, Triple H is back in power and William Regal was able to secure his release from AEW and go back to WW. But now it feels like,

for lack of a better word, one of the King's men is like, eh, I've had enough. Does this signal a paradigm shift in in in in wwe with regard to management and tk o or is creative just such a monster that it just wears on you no matter who's in charge eric i think it's a little bit of both but road dog was actually let go in 2019 because i took a spot that's when i was hired um we came back though after that he came back after that he came back surely you know i didn't last long i last four or five months. And they did bring road dog back. And I was, my reaction was the same as yours. This is Triple H, you know, putting his team together, which I understand because, look, creative is as much chemistry as it is talent. You've got to have the right people with the right personalities that know

what they're doing. But chemistry in a writer's room is so absolutely fundamental to success. You could have one of the most creative people in that room. Some of the best, best ideas you've ever heard, but if it doesn't fit the room, if you really can't create that collaborative kind of energy around an idea, it doesn't matter whose idea it is. So I think part of it is was chemistry. And by that, I mean, because the road dog's super nice guy, easy to get along with a fun person to be around. I would spend a ton of time with him, but what little time I have, it's pretty easy to figure out what Road Dog is all about. He's a good, he's a good guy, but he's old school and what WWE has become is so polar opposite of what Road Dog's primary experience

in the business has been. Even when he was there before, Vince is there. You can say, oh, you want to say about Vince, but there was a culture there and the culture worked to a large extent. It was a successful culture. And people like Road Dog and William Regal could coexist in that room and still maintain their value to the team because of their experience and because of their history and because of their personalities fit the room. I think, and I don't know because I'm not in it. But from the outside looking in, it has become so corporate that a guy like Road Dog was not a corporate guy.

He didn't come up in a corporate environment. He probably never aspired to be in a corporate environment. Almost sure we could bet on that. But now he's a square peg that's being forced into this round corporate hole. And I don't think it's his whether or not he was good at ideas. I just think the fit no longer fit. The suit no longer fit. He was in the wrong room in the long environment.

So incredibly talented guy, I'm sure, probably has valuable ideas and could probably do really well in a different environment. But in that corporate sanitized ultra-corporate environment, a guy like Road Dog is going to struggle. What do you expect? I mean, what's next for Road Dog? Obviously, he's not going to have any shortage of opportunities to do appearances and conventions and meet and greets and autographs and things like that. Just, you know, we see how successful the Hardys are at their meeting greets and things like that.

An attitude era tag team like that, him and Billy Gunn as part of the New Age outlaws, they're going to be busy almost every weekend if they want to be. But would you be surprised to see if he got involved? creatively with an MLW or a TNA or a AAA or a CMLL or something else? Or do you think that he may take a different path? I don't know because I don't know them well enough to predict that. You're right. You know, he,

Road Dog would be able to stay busy probably three, four weekends a month if that's what he chose to do. But that's kind of, it's not easy. It's fun in the beginning, but it's a grind traveling every single week and all that. And maybe Road Dog is used to that. And maybe he'll do that because it's fun. You know, once you get over the hump of it, you start realizing how much fun those appearances could be.

And a guy like Rodar could make a significant amount of money doing it. I think if he's got desire to stay involved in creative, personally, I would love to see him sit down with Tony Khan because he's exactly what Tony Con needs. I don't think that's going to happen based on what I've been told about Tony and the way he likes to operate and what, his personal goals are. So that might not fit, but Rod Dog is certainly somebody, more than anybody else you mentioned, if I'm AEW and I'm kind of hanging on by a thread

because I don't know what's going to happen corporately and where I'm going to fit in this new organization, the first thing I'd want to do is shore my numbers up, and the first guy I would go to would be someone like Rodolf, because he can help. He can help specifically with the weakness, This isn't the flaws in the AEW approach. That'd be number one.

MLW, sure. I think TNA would probably be the second best choice, AEW being the first, obviously, for financial reasons. But TNA also is in a position now where they've got to make their new network happy. They're going to want another deal when this one's over. And in order to do that, you need to improve story. I don't hear what every Dave Meltzer acolyte out there believes

it's not the five-star matches dude it is not it's the story and the characters and Road Dog could make that happen and contribute it's not that it's not happening in TNA but he could contribute in a way that would really elevate the quality

of the storytelling and the product and the characters. So that would be my, that's probably the most obvious, or most likely place he would land because of their need and his skill sets. Beyond that, MLW, I don't think they've got a budget for him. I think it would be just too much of a step backwards for a guy like Road Dog. You can't go from playing into big leagues to being really, really happy playing AAA ball. Nobody loves baseball that much.

When you've been to the big leagues and you've been a star in the big leagues and now you're a coach in the big leagues, it's really hard to get excited about coaching AAA ball. So I don't see him going to MLW or any smaller organization, T&A, depending on how committed they are to growth. By committed, I mean financially. Are they willing to pay a guy like Road Dog? But if they are, pick up the phone now, today, Carlos, calling today. If not, hopefully Tony will wake up and smell the coffee and decide to take a different approach to his business because Roddoll could really help him a lot.

Roddoll would make Tony look good. It would be a good decision for Tony to bring that guy in because it would make, it would position Tony the way Tony should be positioned in the way Tony should be positioned in that company. not as they had Booker. That's a general innuendo is they had preliminary conversations four or five years ago. And I think they may have even gotten so far as travel was booked. But then somebody got cold feet somewhere and nothing ever came of it. And before you know it, Road Dog was right back at WW. But Eric, a lot of hardcore AEW fans are going to take the quotable that you just said that's now going to be on every wrestling aggregator site about what an asset Road Dog could be at AEW.

and they're going to point to Unreal and they're going to say, this guy's a buffoon, blah, blah, blah. I hate that because I feel like people have now decided what Road Dog's value is based on an edit for a scripted reality show. Like context is king. We've been saying that here on the show forever. But as a reminder, guys,

they're trying to make those 30 or 60 minute episodes of Unreal be as entertaining and compelling as they can. a lot of the context winds up on the cutting room floor and some of the things that you saw I don't know I don't think it tells the whole story this is a guy who behind the scenes has been incredibly successful for years and years and years and for him to almost be dismissed I saw people on WWE IWC stuff sort of celebrating oh god thank you finally and it's like wait what I don't think you really understand how that works Eric you were in those rooms can you speak to that yeah and look

I produced reality shows for most major networks for 10 years. I know the formula for reality shows really, really well. They're all based on conflict and conflict resolution and the drama that comes with it. That's the only reason people watch those shows is to watch conflict and the resolution and the drama that connects it all together. And when you're shooting a reality show as a producer, your job is to create those conflicts, create that drama. And if it doesn't exist, fake it.

How do you fake it with editing? You look for creative ways to create a tension or a conflict that in context didn't really exist, but edited properly makes everybody at home go, Oh, shit, this is not going to do. This isn't going to be good, right? I'm agreeing with everything you're saying, Conrad. You cannot judge anything you see or hear in a reality show.

I don't care who's producing it. It's a nonscripted reality show. They only work when you create the shit out of thin air. And that's what you saw. You saw a road dog more than likely out of context. and the whole writer's room, I don't care what anybody says. It's artificial.

It's not real. We talked about this last time. We talked about this. When you've got cameras all around the room and you know you're on camera, you're not reacting the way you would if there were not cameras in that room. I don't care who you are, what you say. You could look me in the eye and tell me it doesn't affect me. and the only person that's buying your bullshit is you.

So for a viewer to take anything that they saw in that show, what's the name of all again? Unreal. Unreal. To take anything that you see in that show and equate it to real life only makes one look pretty stupid. It's not real life. It's not the real people.

It's not the real situation. It's created specifically to make you think it is, but it's not. Not a documentary, folks. There's a difference between a documentary and a reality show. Well said, Eric, Raj, what do you think is next for Road Dog? I like Eric's suggestion that, hey, TNA may be a good fit. What would you expect next from Road Dog? Yeah, I mean, there were reports, you know, in 2022 that Road Dog had reached out to AEW.

and for whatever reason it didn't end up working out. You know, he's been on and off and, you know, doing that grind for 15 years. If I'm, you know, going to Tahiti for a bit and just relaxing. But I could also see you wanting to kind of strike when the iron's hot and your name is in the news. And also, it was a negative way. He quit.

He was not fired or released. So, yeah, I mean, I think DNA seems almost the most likely. me. But, you know, obviously you're, this is a big difference in pay between what he was doing in WWE and what he'll be getting for TNA. Is it worth it? You know, that's up to him to decide. I don't know what, what his situation is. But yeah, when you, when you've been doing that on and off for 15 years, I can see wanting to take a little time off. I got to tell you, I think the thing I like most about it is, I feel like usually when we hear someone leaving WWB from an office perspective. It's because they were laid off, you know, or they were fired. So, you know,

whether it was David Sahaddy's father or, you know, Chimel or Toyota or Kerwin Silfis or any of these guys who had been around for a long, long time, I love the idea that road dog on his own started looking for the door. I think that's cool. I do want to ask you about this new name that I'll admit a lot of our listeners are probably not familiar with. Alexandra Williams. Now, you've seen some glimpses of her. Maybe you didn't put two and two together on the Unreal show. But she's been around for years. But now she's been promoted to VP and I guess the lead writer for Monday Night Raw.

What can you tell us about Alexandra Williams, Eric? Does you meet her? Do you remember working with her? Do you have any experience with her? No, I don't think I've ever met her. Pretty sure I haven't. God bless her. She's in a hot seat.

and she's under a lot of pressure. You're the lead writer on Monday Night Raw, 52 weeks a year. That's a hell of a big job. Good for her. Congratulations. I just hope she's tough enough. I mean mentally tough enough. What do you think, Raj?

Do you have any context for Alexandra Williams? Do you know who she's worked closely with? What storylines we can attribute to her? Do you have any sort of context you can provide for her? Sure. As far as storylines, actually one of the best segments on raw last year. If you remember after elimination chamber, I think it was the next night on Raw, CM Punk, jumped on the announced table, you cut this pipe bomb, ripping John Cena, ripping the rock,

just a blistering promo. Then Seth Rollins came out and they brawled all over the arena. I thought it was one of the best segments on Raw that year. And she was the producer of that segment. And that was about the time when she got promoted. So, yeah, she's been there for over five years. And all the things, you know, from Unreal to things privately have all been positive. So yeah, yeah, we'll see. But, you know, again, one of the best segments on Rod this year, last year, and she was, she was behind it. Raj, I'm going to need to take a break. But before we do, I want to ask, do you have any, have you read anything about this new shareholder plaintiff lawsuit about WWE deleting messages?

Do you have any insight on that? Yeah, just that those signal messages because you can send messages on signal that are encrypted and delete it. And it's come out before that with WrestleMania plans where Nick Con told Vince McMahon to switch to signal. So, you know, I don't, you know, they can't obviously retrieve those messages. So but that's been added, like saying that they possibly been, you know, hiding information from those messages on signal. So just to give some context to this, because I know that there's been a lot of talk about, oh, WWE's in a lot of trouble. I'm not saying this is a nothing burger because obviously it's making headlines and it's a negative headline.

And that's not something any company wants, especially a publicly traded company. But my understanding is that this lawsuit by and large is brought about by shareholders who are concerned that when Vince McMahon came back into the company positioned it for a sale, one of the requirements was again I'm doing this for memory best guess here I believe Vince said hey we're going to require you to sign an NDA about our discussions about our offers and you won't be able to speak about them now or at any point in the future and they were sealed so I don't guess all those offers were revealed all the shareholders they come out and they make the announcement hey we're doing the TKO merger and now I guess the the crux of this

whole lawsuit and situation and investigation if you want to call it that is hey did Vince McMahon look out for the shareholders? Did he do what was in their best interest? Or did he facilitate a sale where he felt like he could maintain power? So there's been some link text messages and emails and things like that that lead people to say, oh yeah, he definitely manipulated it. Now, I'm not going to argue that. We'll just table that and let somebody else decide that. That's what the lawsuit's about. But how would you show damages with the freaking stocks through the roof. Like, what's the

payoff? To get Vince McMahon's home address so they can send them gifts and thank you cards. Yes. I mean, that is the problem with the whole thing, right? Is the TKO stock has been through the roof since they went public and Vince McMahon is no longer with the company. Now, whether that was not the original plan when the merger

took place between the UFC and WWE to form KKO. But by far, the synergies, everything involved, and where the stock is, it's hard to imagine it working out better under any other sale. And so that's going to be the tough part to prove. Now, I can easily see Vince wanting this particular agreement, partnership to go through so he could stay involved as opposed to other deals where they wouldn't want him. But the cruts of it like you're saying Conrad it's that's just going to be tough that's just going to be a tough one to the proven court when the WWE is making hand over fist the the shareholders are making hand over fist with with this deal and it and it has worked out financially the best for everyone yeah and

Vince is no longer with the company I don't know where it goes I mean if you take a look at the TKF stock I mean it's a tremendous amount like nobody has lost money with the freaking thing so I don't really understand the point of it, but I know that there's a lot of people who get excited about, oh, Vince is in trouble for deleting messages. And it's like, what is the crux of a lawsuit? Aren't you going to, well, we were damaged. We only made five times our return on our, what? Yeah, the stock. Right. The stock is more than doubled since they went public. So it's up 103%. You compare that to the market. It's, it's, you know, it's way high. So again, That's going to be a really tough one to prove in court. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the office of the law firm that is taking this on. Like what do you possibly argue? Yeah. They got to sit around the room.

We go, guys, you know, we're kind of fucked because, you know, this is like the best deal that we've seen in the markets in a long, freaking time. So how do we paint our clients as victims here? I don't know. It's an example of why people just like lawyers as much as Congress people. It's just bizarre to me. I mean, I guess I understand if this was coming from a regulatory body. But if it's from shareholders, it's like, how dare you take my money and give me a better return than I would have otherwise had?

It feels like a stretch, but we'll stay tuned. Raj, how can everybody keep up with what you're doing, week in, week out? Yeah, just keep following me on Twitter at Be Raj Geary. And yeah, thanks again for having me on. I appreciate it. No, we thank you, man. We love catching up with you and we love talking about peace of mind. And that's what comes to mind when I think about policy genius.

You know, we've all got, we got a lot to be thankful for. I'm talking about my family. I'm talking about, you know, the quality of life that we all enjoy. I was just overcome with emotions this past Christmas Eve looking around our formal living room and it's just filled with a lot of love in there. But you know, as the provider of the household, man, that's a little bit of stress too. It's a weighty responsibility to know that you've got to protect your loved ones and that financial planning for the future, let's be honest, it can be overwhelming, especially if

you're trying to plan for the worst case scenario. finding the right insurance policy can help you ease that weight. I want you to check into policy genius. Policy genius is really pretty unbelievable what they do because what they were able to do is they bring about to our listeners a sense of peace of mind that everything's going to be okay. That's kind of what we all want. And you can get that feeling when you lock in your life insurance today.

And policy genius is here as your tag team partner. to make it easy. Policy Genius is truly an online marketplace that allows you to compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side, and you get to do this for free. Their license team will help you get what you need, and they do it fast, so it's one less thing for you to worry about. You can get back going with your life. You'll easily find all the information you need to make an educated decision, an informed decision. Things like, what's the coverage amount? What are the prices? What are the terms? They're licensed. They're licensed, specialist at Policy Genius are going to work with you to bring about clarity. No guesswork here.

Policy Genius will help you find the most affordable policy that meets your needs. They'll answer all your questions. They'll handle the paperwork. They're even going to advocate for you throughout the process. Now, don't just take my word for it. I truly want you to go look at Policy Genius's five-star reviews. You'll see thousands of them on Google and Trust Pilot. This tells you this is the real deal. And if taking care of your family is important, and you are the breadwinner of your household. Man, you want to talk about peace of mind, just knowing that you've done your responsibility by your people.

Woo, makes you feel good. Protect the life you've built with PolicyGenius. You can see if you could find a 20-year life insurance policy, starting to just 276 a year for a million bucks in coverage. Head on over to policygenius.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.

So Eric, there's lots of other news and notes out there. What a show we've had so far, though, with David's a hottie coming in hot and man, I can't wait for people to check his book out. What an entertainer he is. And then there's all this moving and shaking in the wrestling world. We got to touch on with Raj, but I feel like we may have buried the lead because we did have a couple of guests.

You just had a sold out real American freestyle event last weekend. so sold out that you were selling standing room only tickets for like 55 bucks. So let me be clear. They could have took in their happy ass home and got on the Fox Nation app and for a few bucks. Watch the thing and all the archives. Or they could pay $55 to just be in the room. We can't promise you a seat, but just stand your ass over there and take a look. The energy was off the charts.

I feel like there was more buzz coming out of this than we've seen in a lot of real American freestyle events. And some of that was the news of a little bit of a skirmish. I think we've got the video for. Let's take a look. This match is over. It's all broken loose as they are going to get these things sorted out here, folks. Izzy Martinez having to get involved. Chad Bronson having to get involved here, folks.

How about that? What a visual. It was everywhere over the weekend. I know it's not scripted. It wasn't part of the plan, but, hey, this is real competition. And occasionally. that testosterone gets going, maybe some of that ego gets going, the fist start flying.

I don't think a lot of people had that on their bingo card. Was that like a bash at the beach 96 type moment for you right there, Eric? It was a little more intense than that because as you saw, you know, we don't have a cage. You don't even have a ring on a platform. No, we've got a map that's about a foot and a half off the ground. So easy access. You had a bunch of trainers, team members on both sides of the mat there, which we always do. And when this thing got out of hand, Mike, I was backstage.

Actually, Jason Hervey was with me. I was back in our version of guerrilla position, right, with our live production manager and Jason. And this thing broke out. And my first thought was, if the fans get involved, there's just not enough security here. So fortunately that didn't that didn't happen but it was pretty intense and it took for you're like you only the stuff you saw on TV was only part of it. We eventually got Giorgio backstage and that's where I was and it started all over again and had another big pull apart back in the area where I was and it went on for a long time. So it was it was very intense. You know, Bash at the Beach was over in, what, 45 seconds, minute.

Oh, my gosh. This was a good 12 or 15 minutes of a pretty intense drama and very, very physical. It's very physical. These two guys, I mean, Giorgio is an influencer. He's a great wrestler. Obviously, he's a good, great wrestler. Giorgio's got this, take me down for a thousand dollar challenge on Instagram, you know, and he's damn good at it.

He's a very, very good. He's not a elite level world-class competitor, like the majority of the people you'll see on Real American Freestyle, but he's a very successful and well-known influencer, which is why we brought him in. We're broadening the audience. We're trying to make freestyle wrestling exciting for people that are not necessarily wrestlers themselves or friends or family members. So you do that by expanding, you know, the people on your show to attract a different audience.

So we brought Georgia on. This was Chad and Izzy. I'm not involved in booking. But, you know, Chad and Izzy brought him in, and we put him up against Armand. Now, Armand is a unique, you know, he's a billionaire. The kid's a billionaire. His dad is extremely wealthy.

I don't know how many billions he's worth. And Giorgio just travels the world in trains with some of the best MMA trainers, works out with some of the best fighters. He's friends with all the daguels. Danny guys that are dominating UFC right now. That's his, that's his group of friends, right? And he's an extremely good wrestler.

I think he's ranked number two in the UFC in his way class. He might be the number one contender in UFC. But from what I've heard, I haven't talked to anybody about this, but what I've read is that Dana's a little nervous about him because he's so volatile. He's got a track record of being involved, not facility of things just like this, but he's a little volatile.

But he's an interesting guy, an amazing athlete. He didn't even start training in MMHA, I think, until he was 17 years old. So he's a very unique story, but you get these two guys, two different cultures, two different worlds, no respect for each other. I mean, it started at the press conference. You could kind of get a pretty good idea of what was going on at the press conference, and then it all just exploded on the mat. we'll see we'll see where this goes but it you know it's it was unfortunate in some respects

but i'm going to be very honest about it you know it got us more publicity than we could have afford to buy it it really really i mean we got more we were trending more on social media than the ufc was and we were head to head with the ufc we got more activity in social media because of it so it was it was unfortunate it's not something we want to see happen again. But it didn't hurt us. Let's put it that way. Just being honest, business-wise, it didn't hurt us.

Real American Freestyle is going to be in Tampa in about three weeks. By the way, Bob Bassett's on the card, Kennedy Blades is on the card, and something I can't wait to see. Wyatt Hendrickson is on the card. Tickets are on sale now at real American Freestyle.com. It's at the Yingling Center in Tampa, which is going to be fabulous in late March. It almost feels like maybe that's like the new Real American Freestyle Spring Break. I need somebody in a singlet to jump in a swimming pool behind the hotel.

Maybe we'll get one of those little kiddie pools and we'll have it off to the side. Somebody can throw somebody into the kitty pool. Just, you know, pay homage. Speaking of Real American Freestyle, I know that there's a new initiative. And we're going to be talking about collectibles. A huge sale happened over the weekend that we're going to be. talking about, but real American freestyle is in the collectible game. You guys have trading cards now, right, Eric?

We do. And I just got this yesterday. Put it up so the camera can see it. These are our, so ice cold series. It's a 2026 limited edition pack. Now, there are five cards in this pet. Each pack has a card. It's a silver card.

And then there's one out of 20s. somewhere in here, somewhere in one of these packs that somebody has, there is a gold card. It's an autographed relic. Ben Astrin, Kyle Dake, one of the other, it's going to be worth a lot of money. And these things are going like crazy. We cannot keep them on the shelf. You can find them still. I believe there are some left at the Real American Freestyle.com website.

So you want to check it out. But we're going to open this pack here, and I'm going to see what I'd get. I'm hoping for the one out of 26. So here we go. Drum roll, please. No drums. I'll just do it. If my dentist saw me using my teeth to open his card, he'd be hot.

How about Eric Bischoff, rip and packs on 83 weeks? I never thought. And you know what's cool? Like, you know who Jeremy Paddawar is? Sure. Incredibly successful in the toy biz. He's also a member of our board and has invested in a real American freestyle, really helping us out in the collectible category.

But he's a huge collector. Guy by the name of Rob England, also massive collector. He's purchasing up these things. So the first card I've got is Austin Gomez. I worked with Austin Gomez. I think he was our first on our first show. He's a lightweight. He's an Olympian.

But what I liked about Austin, we did the package with him. And this guy is super, super tough, mentally tough. He's gone through a lot. He recently had a bit of an issue in one of his matches. He's got his history of concussions, but he's overcome it. He keeps training. His whole family are, our sisters in the amateur wrestling. In fact, his sister wrestled on one of our events as well.

There's Austin Gomez. David Carr, the king. so much respect for this young man. So much respect. His father, Nate Carr, was just honored. He's our very first Real American Freestyle Legends champion. Nate Carr is an incredible athlete. He's done so much for the sport.

I really encourage people. Go to our YouTube channel over Real American Freestyle. Check out the long form package of Nate Carr, David's father. and you'll understand while I'm so excited. In fact, I had David Carr, who was on the card with us in Phoenix, actually surprised his father and put the real American freestyle Legends championship belt on his father. It was a really touching moment. I got tears in my eyes thinking about it, to be honest with you.

Kennedy Blades, you guys probably already know how I feel about Kennedy Blades. Incredible athlete. She's down on Iowa right now. Silver medalist in the last Olympics. I can't imagine she's not going to be a gold medalist. This woman is a young woman, absolutely beautiful. She looks like she could walk off the cover of Vogue magazine. But if she gets behind you just for fun, she's going to belly to back suplex you

and you're likely going to end up on your head. That's what she's known for. But you'd never guess it by beating her. Parker Kike has one of the biggest names in the sport right now. Look for Parker. I can't wait to see him again on Real American Free Seller. see him on Real American Free Self. This guy's an amazing, amazing athlete.

And Zahid Valencia, this guy, he looks like a movie star. He's an unbelievable wrestler. Great track record. An example of the kind of world-class elite-level talent you're going to see at Real American Freezo. So I didn't get the gold card. I didn't get a silver card, but I did get five really great cards. And I'm excited about these packs are going like crazy. You might want to get one.

I mean, Hulk Hogan's boot, not the boots, not two of them, just one of them went for over a million bucks. Logan Paul had to tap out at $1,200,000 or whatever it was. $1,000, I think, is when Logan Paul taps out, you know it's a collectible. Well, here's your shot. Real American Freestyle, check it out at real American freestyle. com. Get your packs today. If you're collector, you don't want to miss out of this opportunity.

Brand new league, we're only going into our seventh of video. we are going to be around for a long, long time, and you can be one of the first to get in on our collective cards. Real American Freestyle.com. That's your place to hook it up. I do want to talk about the Logan Paul bid. Of course, we're alluding to this unbelievable opportunity that happened last week. Hulk Hogan's boots sold at auction,

thanks to our friends at Heritage Auction, for more than a million dollars. I can't believe this is real. I think it went for like a million 37,000 or something like that. Logan Paul maxed out at a million 21,000. Now, you might be asking yourself, self, how the hell are a pair of Holcogen boots worth a million dollars? And last week here on the show, I freestyle that this was going to break all the records and then it was going to be at least 300,000. And I didn't think that was a crazy number. Boy, I was way low. I think even the original estimate was.

200. As a reminder, it was Gerald Briscoe that got this craziness set off. He found through his shed treasures last year that he had WrestleMania 9 stuff from Hulk Hogan. So when Mr. Briscoe starts sending me all these pictures of the things he found, I said, hey, that's worth a lot of money. You need to put that in your safe. He had a conversation with WWE, wasn't happy with the offer, asked what to do, listed it with golden, he's six figures richer. They sold for over $100,000. A few months later, we saw a single boot from Hulk Hogan and the Rock at WrestleMania 18.

It was airbrushed during the NWO era. And it sold for even more, $100 and some odd thousand dollars. So I don't think it's crazy the estimate they put on these boots of 200 grand, knowing that it was the WrestleMania boot. I guess we should explain. The boots that sold last weekend sold through Golden in 2023, and they went for $66,000. Myself and other collectors saw it and passed on it and thought,

hey, that's good. It's a new high sale for boots. But at the time, all that was photo matched and the only thing we could connect it to was, hey, he wore this in an old school life size Hulk Hogan poster. But now the new owner went to the trouble to photo match these and see, hey,

what matches and moments can we associate this with? And aha, it was the very first WrestleMania in Madison Square Garden. And the photo that they chose to market with it, I thought was cool. Certainly Mr. T's a big star. Of course, Roddy Piper is a big star.

We all love Mr. Wonderful and we love Bob Orton. But Muhammad Ali standing in Madison Square Garden, raising Hulk Hogan's hand less than a year after he passed away, right before WrestleMania, knee deep in WrestleMania season, they sold for a million

freaking dollars, Eric, what did you make of this? Mind-boggling. And did I misstate that only one of the boots sold or did they sell as a pair? This is a pair. So one of the boots was the Rock and that was WrestleMania 18. So that was a single boot,

but obviously, arguably the most famous Hulk Hogan WrestleMania match besides the Andre one is the Rock Hogan match. I mean, that match. match by a guy like Cody Rhodes who's at the top of the mountain in WWB. He points to that and says, hey, that's wrestling at its peak.

Just the crowd response. But it was a single boot. Now, WrestleMania 9, we know was in a down time. But at the time, a lot of people thought, hey,

that'll be Hulk's last WrestleMania. And so Briscoe sold a pair. But this pair of boots sold for a million dollars. This is a high water mark for any wrestling collectible ever. And obviously, I expect things to just come out of the woodwork now that, that we haven't heard about or known their whereabouts for years and years. And I think this is really going to get people in tune with the value of photo matching

because that's always been a big deal with like a game used jersey in the NFL or a helmet. You want to be able to go back and watch the footage and say, oh, there's a gouge in the helmet there and this gouge matches it. This was played in Super Bowl, so and so. And that adds tremendous value. But it's rare that that sort of thing has been applied to wrestling. I think this may be the first instance like that, publicly where it's been done.

What do you expect? What is the ceiling? Is this an anomaly? Is this a one-off? Or is this the start of a huge snowball effect, Eric? I think it's going to be the start of a huge movement and snowball effect, as you put it, just because of the, I mean, the collectible area in general is so fascinating. I'm not involved in it. So we're not an expert. I can't speak to its question.

growth other than as an outsider looking in, as an example, a million dollars per pair of boots. I mean, I don't care who wore them. That's freaking crazy to me, right? But I think it's only going to continue to grow. As this new spreads, everybody else is going to want to get in on collectibles, as many people already are, yourself included. I mean, you've got a hell of a collection of wrestling memorabilia. And it's one of the reasons we're so excited about our packs over at real Americanpristel.com. It's because people are interested in collectibles.

And the business is massive. And I think with social media and all the different ways to get the word out and access information, it's only going to continue to grow. The real question to me at this point is, Eric, who was the buyer? You know, like we talked about it last week here on the program. I felt like the Logan Paul Pokemon sale was a PR of a. for Logan Paul and his new Rip and Pax company that he was launching. It was certainly good PR for Golden, who produces content for Netflix,

and obviously they see the value of Logan's social media presence. But even the buyer, you know, he announced that he just happened to be there on hand, and he announced what his initiative is that he's going to develop the world's biggest collectible, I don't know, display, I guess. But the idea was there was business behind the Pokemon card sale. And that's my question here. I freestled last week there on the show. How is TKO not the buyer?

We don't know that they're not. We don't know who the buyer is. But in my head, I felt like it had to be TKO or I had to be fanatics. There has to be some sort of business driver. Or do you think, to use a casino term, there really is a whale out there who was willing to spend a million bucks on Hogan, but you know who I thought it was or still?

think it is. I mean, it could obviously be TKL. That would make sense, particularly if there's going to be a physical Hall of Fame someday, then obviously it would make a lot of business sense for TKL. Certainly the million $21,000 is it going to hurt them, right? Who else falls into that category other than TKO? This is Vince McMahon. He certainly has the resources. It's worth about $8 billion or whatever it is now. And as you heard David, Sahadi talking about Vince's reaction to history and the significance of history to Vince as a person. I could also see Vince being the whale.

Man, I got to tell you, that would make me happy. I bet, though, I don't know. but it makes logical business sense if it was fanatics. Hear me out on this. If you were going to get into the business of selling ring-worn gear, it feels like by having a record high sale here, you could set a new comp that establishes a new value. The idea being,

hey, well, if Paul Cogan's WrestleMania 1 boots are worth a million dollars, well, Cody Rhodes, WrestleMania 42 boots have got to be worth at least blank. and in my head you just instantly create so much juice and so much equity in the current stuff. So if fanatics did want to start doing, I don't know if you remember, but during the heyday of like the Monday Night Wars, in the middle of a freaking pay-per-view, the announcers would be saying, don't forget, switch over to the home shopping network immediately after the program. We've got your summer slam teas and your blah, blah, blah. I could totally see how there would be a world where again, everything's for sale in WWE these days.

even, you know, the real estate on the canvas. I could totally see if they were trying to launch that. Like you could go by a ton of ring use artifacts from WrestleMania, maybe the night after or the week after or the month after, whatever it may be. And I think that would be a hell of a way to sort of establish the ultimate comp. And then by comparison, now that you've anchored the value, everything feels like a deal.

Does that make sense? 100%. Yeah. 100%. And now I would bet that you were right because it makes such good business sense. Absolutely believe you're right. Well, something else that makes good business sense is getting a good deal on some great looking clothes. All right, folks, real quick, I want to put this on your radar. Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but all of a sudden interest rates are as good as they've been in four years.

Not only that, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's the government, by the way. they have really doubled down in the last three or four months. Let me explain. This past November, they removed their minimum credit score requirement. They did this because they know families, maybe like yours, are maxed out on their credit cards. And maybe you don't even realize this, but your utilization of credit, that is the number

one thing that hurts your credit score. So if you have a low credit score, it may be because you're maxed out on your credit cards or maybe even worse, you're over the limit on your credit cards. And with a lower score, well, that makes it harder to, get a loan. Not through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They said, no more minimum credit score requirement. Now, that change happened in November. But then we fast forward into the new year and Fannie and Freddie announced, hey, we're going to pump $200 billion. I think it was $220 billion back into the bond market. Now, what does that mean? It means they're trying to push rates down. It's working. Rates are

coming down. They're at a four year low right now. But as if that's not enough, Fannie and Freddie have opened it up again just last week and said, hey, we want to expand our debt to income ratios. Here's what that means. Once upon a time, you could have too much debt where the bank would say, sorry, we can't help you. I've always felt that was the cruel joke of banking. Sometimes the people who need help the most, you can't help them. Fannie and Freddie said no more, and they put their money where their mouth is literally. There's $200 extra billion from Fannie and Freddie into the bond market.

They're buying into supporting the American family. not only that, they remove the minimum credit score. I've been able to help families with credit scores in the 530s and 540s. They're saving thousands a year. And you can do this too, especially if you're maxed out. And that's specifically while they're getting rid of this debt to income requirement. Let me explain. The best practice is that you only have about 41% of your gross monthly income.

Go to your bills. Things like your house payment, your car payment, your credit card. But man, there's a lot of families right. now, maybe more than ever, who are carrying credit card balances, who have more month at the end of the money. And if that's you, this new change from Fannie and Freddie is huge. Now they're saying you can't have too much debt. It's almost mathematically impossible. They have expanded it all the way up to 65%. That's unheard of. But it could mean all the difference in the world to you, if you're feeling like you're stressed with too many monthly payments. If you're just stuck making the

minimum payments. Let me ask you, what is the plan? What do we hope changes? Hope isn't a strategy. You need a plan. And nobody plan to get overwhelmed in debt, but you will need a plan to get out of that debt. And we want to help you do that at save with Conrad.com. If you're worried about what's going to happen with your finances next month or later this year or you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, let's do a quick call at 8884250105 or get a quick quote right now at save with Conrad.com. 10 minutes on the phone with us and there's no credit card fit or no credit report fee, no application fee.

We're just going to have a casual conversation about what are your short-term goals, what are your long-term goals. And we want to be your mortgage advisor for life. So we're not the bank. We don't say no. We say not yet, but here's how. And I want to be clear, we don't do subprime loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got rid of that.

There's no more minimum credit scores. So even if you've been late on credit cards this year, Like if you're currently past due on your credit card, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can still help you. So even if you've been turned down before, this is the second chance refinance you've been looking for. Go right now to save withconrad.com or you know what? Just email me your specific scenario. Let's have a chat. Let's talk about it.

Let's save some money together. Conrad at save withconrad.com is my email. Or get a quick quote right now at save with conrad. com. Enimales, number 2129, equal housing lender, save with conrad.com. Paying no payments until May.

How about that? Hey, listen up, guys. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to two pieces that mix well and last. That's where Quince shines, premium fabrics, considered design, and everyday essentials that feel effortless

to wear and dependable, even as the seasons change. Quince has the everyday essentials that I love with quality that last. They've got lightweight cashmere sweaters. They've got short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos. They've got linen bottoms and shorts. They've even got teas and 100% Pima Cotton and European Jersey linen.

These are versatile pieces that make a wardrobe actually work season to season. Quince works directly with the top factories and cuts out all the middlemen. So you're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores. Just quality clothing. By the way, the cashmere is 100% Mongolian. That's the same stuff that the luxury brands use. The Pima Cotton, well, it's a long staple, meaning it stays soft and it doesn't pill. The European Jersey linen is breathable and lightweight.

Everything is built to hold up to regular wear, but still look good. And their clothing is rated between a 4.5 and 5 stars by thousands of people who are rocking it every day. And they only partnered with factories that meet their rigorous standards for both craftsmanship and ethical production. I really want you to check it out. I've been able to not only rock some of these pieces myself, but I gifted my dad some. He has a birthday that's about 10 days prior to Christmas.

He liked it so much. I got a rush order. Dad was able to double up this year on the birthday and Christmas. He's loving the way he looks and he's loving the way he feels in the new Quince stuff. You've got to go check it out for yourself. And right now I want you to go to quince. dot com slash 83 weeks. That'll get you free shipping and 365

day returns. That's right. A full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now it's even available in Canada too. So don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go right now to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash 83 weeks for free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash 83 weeks. can I recommend the cashmere polo? You're going to wear it more often than you think you do. You're going to look good. You're going to feel expensive, but it's actually affordable. It's quince.com slash 83 weeks. Eric, I don't know that you saw the news over the weekend because I know that you were doing real American freestyle, but the same night you're doing it is when WWE was presenting

their Elimination Chamber show. And on that show, they did the big reveal of what's in the box. and we talked about it for weeks here on the show. And a few weeks ago when I suggested, hey, it could be Danhausen, you kind of chuckled thinking, boy, that's going to go over like a fart in church. You chuckled at the idea that there was no way it could possibly be that.

And it was. But to the live crowd, it does feel like it was received like a fart in church. Which I have to say, I'm disappointed in because I do think that the presentation is silly and fun enough to be a murder. juggernaut for WWB for little kids for Halloween for costumes for quirky stuff just for merch alone I think it's a no-brainer to bring Danhausen to WWE but I think that wrestling

fans boy we can build ourselves up and and maybe some some expectations were mismanaged because immediately after that people were saying oh this is the gobbledy goaker and I'm like I don't know like I get Danhausen I understand what he's doing and it was in Chicago, the home of Sven Gouli. So I felt like, okay, this is, that was pretty well done. And then I heard the booze and I thought, okay, I got a little bit of work to do. Did WWE accidentally set Danhausen up for failure with the box and the anticipation and people freestyling saying, oh, it could be this guy, could be that guy.

And then it was quote unquote just Danhausen. It feels like if that crate just would have been introduced at the start of the show. and then it was revealed later. We wouldn't have had this sense of anticipation. I don't think people would have been let down. Am I all face? No, I mean, that's kind of what I think we talked about that. And my reasoning for not being excited about Danhausen or anybody else that wasn't Chris Jericho,

that it's not so much that their idea was bad, but their timing was. If you would have had that mystery, if you would have played it out the same way, if you would have established a box for two, three, four weeks and created a whole mystery around it, at a time when there wasn't a question mark about where Chris Jericho is going to end up, the timing of it led people to want to believe it was going to be Chris Jericho, myself included. I was looking for that really, really big surprise, but we got Danhausen, which is really unfortunate because like you, I see the value.

And I've met him a few times at conventions and spoke with him. I mean, he's a very, very nice young man. And I, too, see an opportunity from a merchandising point of view and also from a programming perspective. Yeah. Because as Dusty Rose once said, you know, good wrestling is a buffet. It's got to be a little bit for everybody. And comedic talent like this, I call him comedic,

but a very, very highly animated character like Danhausen clearly is, is not only good for merchandise, obviously, but it's also good light-hearted entertainment when you need it. And I think it's important to have that element of creative, not in every show, but consistently enough, there's always that opportunity or anticipation for something light-hearted and fun. So I think it was a good acquisition. Danhausen is a good acquisition for development.

because there's nobody better on planet Earth in merchandising a character than WWE. And yeah, I'm throwing a Mattel there too. So it makes sense business-wise. I think the timing, because of the possibility that existed at that time, I think it put a little dent in the character coming out of the shoot, but they'll make up for it very quickly. I think it's going to be a successful run for Danhausen. I think it'll be very successful for WWE from a merchandise point of view.

And I think in another month or two, we'll have forgotten all about the less than stellar debut. And we'll be just enjoying some great Danhausen segments when they come along and just watching the register ring for the merchandise. Pretty fired up for Danhausen. Really excited for him and all of his future success that I know was coming. and I'm pulling for two other talents who recently were released or quit TNA. I'm talking about Mance Warner and Steph Dlanders. Of course, they both quit. This is the report from Fifell Fifell's Sean Ross Sapp has learned that

Mance Warner and his wife, Steph Dallander, have both quit TNA wrestling. We're told that stems from the company refusing to clear Steph Dlander to return from injury. She actually jumped on TMZ. I did an interview recently where she talked about the idea that, you know, she did have a surgery. Maybe there was two surgeries. And WWB's surgeon did the work. So she was cleared by WWBE's doctor.

And I guess for whatever reason, TNA had not put her back to work. And I guess this is one of those contracts with TNA where, hey, if you're working, you get paid. But if you're not working, you don't get paid. And as I understand it, there was a call that happened between Carlos and Steph on Monday. And she said something like, look, if there's been a conversation about me not wrestling again, just let me know. And Carlos apparently called and said, look, we're just not comfortable with you wrestling.

And I was like, well, I'm fully cleared. And he said, yep, not into it. And then I asked, do you know what my injury is? And he didn't know. He couldn't tell me what my injury was. I've not been evaluated by any medical professional on the T&A end. They have a chiropractor at the shows, and I think one other doctor who I've barely spoken with.

So they haven't evaluated my medical history. They haven't contacted my surgeon. They haven't looked at any of my medical stuff. They made a personal decision, and that's where we're at now. So it seems like it came to kind of an ugly end because when she, you know, quits her husband follows suit. And now they're freestyling. They're out here free agenting.

what do you make of this news out of the TNA camp and what do you think is next for these two talents? Not sure what's next for them. I don't know the marketplace for them. Is there an AEW opportunity there? Maybe. Hopefully for them. I met Mansa a few times really enjoy him. He's a great guy.

So I hope they land on their feet somewhere or there's the independency that they can both take advantage of. So I'm not sure what's that. unfortunate situation. Look, anytime you get released, let go, not hired, not activated, you're going to be hurt. And clearly she was and she probably had a right to be. Carlos, unfortunately, was in a position to make a business decision that he felt he had to made and had to make. And unfortunately, you've got a sad outcome as a result, but wish everybody the best. I want to ask you about the canvas before we start to wrap things up. There's two more little nuggets I want to hit, but Logan Paul recently was pretty vocal about the ads that are on

the canvas. And we as fans, we would complain and say, oh, it doesn't look the same. But Logan said something that I don't think a lot of people have thought about. I'm just going to say it. By the end of the night, the middle of that ring gets really slippery with them logos painted in there. I'll just say it, bro. I noticed. I can't get running full speed. I got to be really careful with my feet in my placement because the logos that they now paint in the middle of the ring. And I know this was a thing before, talking about before Prime was on the ring mat. We were going back and forth with WWE about whether or not it was even possible because of the way they paint it.

They actually wanted to stress test the mats and have people wrestle and see if it got oily. And they determined that the type of paint they were using was okay and it wasn't going to be slippery. But then they started using colored paints as well. I don't know what they're using now. but I'm telling you it's slippery. Now, I bring this up because we go back

and we think about maybe the peak of Nitro and the Nitro logo was on the canvas. Do you remember way back when? I'm talking 1998, 1999. Do you remember there being discussions about whether or not the logo for Nitro being on the canvas would affect the end ring? I really don't.

That doesn't mean it wasn't an issue, but it didn't land on me. There may have been Rustlers, who felt that way individually, but it never became an issue that landed on my desk. That's interesting. I am curious to see if that continues or if they make any changes. One last piece of news that came out of left field.

It's not normally the sort of thing that's in my feed, but somebody sent it to me and I did a double take. RFK Jr. announced that his niece has signed a contract with WWE to be a wrestler. Did you see this? I did see that. I mean, I knew she was trained. I had read that months ago that she was in the training program down in Orlando. But yes, she made it and I did see that.

I'm a big fan of Robert F. Kennedy, by the way, big fan. The things that he's doing for health and nutrition and creating awareness, I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of Robert Kennedy. So happy to see it for her and happy to see Robert F. Kennedy put his he's over. I think it's awesome. I mean, who would have thought? I mean, that's where we are. You've got a Kennedy and WWE. Lord knows. We're going to talk. We're going to be continuing the conversation about the good,

the bad, and the ugly of professional wrestling next week here on 83 weeks. But Eric, as we bring things to a close, you're a fairly private guy. I wanted to give you a moment. If there's anything you wanted to share with the world, or we can just peace out and keep it moved. now we'll just keep it moving understood it ladies and gentlemen hit that subscribe button turn on the notifications bell and we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks