83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 425: No Contract Is Forever

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson pull back the curtain on some of wrestling's hottest business topics and biggest misconceptions. Eric explains why he believes Ted Turner is one of the biggest reasons WWE is still thriving today, and how the Monday Night Wars forever changed the industry. He also dives into the reality of talent contracts, discussing why a WWE deal never guaranteed The New Day lifetime job security and why, sometimes, audiences simply move on from an act. The guys welcome gimmick attorney, Michael Dockins to the show. Mike breaks down the often misunderstood 90-day non-compete clause, revealing how it actually works behind the scenes, while Mike and Eric analyzes the new "delightfully vague" language appearing in modern talent agreements. Plus, Bischoff gives his take on the myth of "no-cut contracts" and why guaranteed deals aren't always what fans think they are. Business takes center stage as Eric praises TKO Group Holdings's partnership with ESPN, calling it a brilliant marketing move for the future of wrestling media. He also reflects on the financial disasters of World Championship Wrestling house shows, revealing just how much money the company burned during its peak years. And in one of the wildest conversations yet, Eric explores how OpenAI and artificial intelligence could help shape future wrestling storylines before 83 Weeks actually uses ChatGPT to fantasy book the main event of SummerSlam!       ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS    BLUECHEW - Right now, when you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for FREE with promo code 83WEEKS. Visit http://BlueChew.com  for more details and important safety information, and we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast.   JCW LUNACY - Juggalo Championship Wrestling drops BRAND NEW episodes of Lunacy every Thursday at 7pm ET exclusively on their YouTube channel http://youtube.com/@psychopathic_records check it out!   MORGAN & MORGAN - If you're ever injured, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. Their fee is FREE unless they win. For more information go to ForThePeople.Com/83weeks or dial #LAW (#529) from your cell phone.    BETTER WILD - Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at http://betterwild.com/BISCHOFF    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  .   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.    

Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Choo Studio right now. When you buy two months of Bluetooth gold, you get the third for free with promo code 83 weeks at bluechew.com. Hey, it's Conrad the mortgage guy and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric fish off here. What's going on, man? How are you? I'm doing great, Conrad. Just got a lot of irons in the fire, so to speak, and staying busy. But life is good.

Well, we're excited to be here with you. we are recording a day earlier than we normally do. Usually we record on Thursday. I've got some traveled this week. Some recording on Wednesday. Just a few minutes after lunch. And this morning, we got some big news that we all know was inevitable,

but news that, Lord, we certainly never hoped would happen. It's finally here. Ted Turner has passed away, 87 years old. What didn't Ted Turner do? A Maverick,

a pioneer, a leader, a legend. Not just in the wrestling space, but the rest of the world too. I saw someone actually make a comment, hey, go look at Ted Turner's Wikipedia page. And I thought, well, that's kind of a weird thing to do.

But they said specifically zero in on the known for section. Known for being the founder of T&T, CBS. I'm sorry, TNT, TBS, CNN and the Cartoon Network, the co-founder of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Atlanta Hawks owner, Atlanta Braves owner, Atlanta Thrashers owner. world championship wrestling owner, co-founder of Ted's Montana group,

he just goes on and on and on. Like if this guy had a resume, it would read like a book, wouldn't it? Yeah, and it's interesting. And I'm sure somewhere in that long list of things that Ted is responsible for directly,

you know, the Goodwill Games. And that's an interesting piece of conversation because in a way, the Goodwill Games and WCW had one thing in common. And that's that all of the executives who were incentivized in their salaries and their packages to get bonuses based on performance hated both of those companies because both of them were a financial drain on TBS as a whole, right? The Goodwill Games was a serious money loser. WCW was up until 94, 95, 95 probably a money loser.

So both of them, obviously, you know, other people in the company that want to lift the value of the company because that's how you make money, struggled night and day to get rid of both of them. But Ted believed in the Goodwill Games because he really truly believed that sport could cure or help heal or help develop lines of communication between cultures in a way that nothing else could. you know, sports were a common denominator amongst cultures, and Ted believed that the Goodwill Games was a great way to help promote kind of a global family to sound cheesy. That's how Ted thought. Obviously, WCW, although there were a lot of executives that wanted to pull the plug on it, for much the same reason. It was a financial drain on the company, thereby inhibiting everybody else's ability to grow in some ways.

But Ted believed in WCW. He believed in it as a business enterprise. He really truly believed that wrestling had a solid, predictable, predictable in the sense that they'll always be their audience. Stable audience is a better way to say it. And he valued that the eyeballs, the stability, the base audience that help build the network. You can't build a network without a solid base to do it with.

providing that solid base. And he loved it. So he defended it. And it's, it's an interesting, you know, look back at the way his mind works sometimes. What a career and what a legacy leaves behind,

you know, not just sports, but obviously what we're talking about here today, pro wrestling and specifically television. You know, I think that a lot of times people just sort of gloss over the fact that, oh yeah, Ted Turner owned WCW.

But it was Ted Turner, who actually had the gall and the gumption to say, hey, why don't we challenge Vince? Why don't we go head to head? Like, I know you obviously get a lot of the credit for the execution, but Ted Turner deserves a whole heap of credit.

For even like this year's 2K game, the new WWE game featuring the Monday Night Wars, like that's all Ted Turner's legacy, is it not? There's so much of it. I mean, if you really wanted to look at today's product and draw the connection,

back to WCW. And believe me, there's a lot of them. The very format that we watched today, that format didn't exist until I created it because Ted wanted to go ahead to head, and we had to do something different. Prior to Nitro, Monday Night Raw, WWF, was a teen and preteen kiddie product.

It targeted teens and preteens. Their entire revenue model was built around teens and preteens. And when Nitro came along and we went, no, we're not going to do that, we're going to go live every week. They're not doing that. And we're going to go after that 18 to 49 year old demo because they're underserved. We can't compete with the WWE doing what they're good at, but we can sure as hell make a dent

in this underserved market of 18 to 49 year olds. Now, that sounds really cool. It sounds like something you'd hear in a marketing class or some. but he's trying to pat themselves on the back, so to speak. But here's why it's important. Those two key pivots, and they were dramatic pivots. Live every week was a big, big pivot because it's expensive, and it's logistically difficult.

It wasn't a little thing. It was a monster move and commitment. The other one was going after the 18 to 49-year-old audience because that required a different creative approach, philosophical approach, different branding and messaging. We're going after a different audience. How do we get them? How does it change creative? How does it change, whatever it needs to change?

Those two decisions, live 18 to 49, are the only reason that WWE exists today. It's the only reason that AEW is on a Turner network today. because had Vince not had WCWCW, curb stomping him for 83 straight weeks, and really over a period of two years consistently, I think it was 83 straight, but it was 104 weeks to two years, legitimately. Well, after about the first year of getting his ass kicked, I think it was in November of 1987, he came out and said,

okay, we're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to insult our audience's intelligence. We're going to whatever, however you phrase it. But essentially that's where the attitude era was born. WWE is now live weekly, one big pivot. The other one was going after the 18 to 49 year old audience with the over the top approach that he took to it, which obviously were. Those two things are the only reasons WWE exist today.

Old statement here from Eric Bishop. But no way for somebody to argue with me about it. I do want to ask, you know, what do you think, um, what do you think was the primary issue between Vince and Ted? Did was Vince intimidated by Ted? Was Vince, uh, I mean, obviously we know that, you know, people could argue, oh, well, Ted was, was getting into his business, but technically Ted had been on the wrestling business for quite a while from a television perspective, but why do you think Vince was

was so gotten to by Ted? You know, for years and years, we would hear people talk about Vince and say things like, oh, he'll never, he'll never sell. He was selling for Ted quite a bit, was he not? Right. He sold like a bitch. Yeah, he sold billionaire Ted skits. All the cry into the media, the big bad billionaire Ted is trying to put our family-owned

business out of business, all that bullshit. But here's what it is, because they're very similar. people. That's probably why. They're both very competitive. I don't think Vince is intimidated by anybody. If he's ever been intimidated by anybody, I don't know who that was. Hopefully I won't have to meet that person. Vince is not intimidated. Vince would see somebody like Ted Turner and want to compete against him or if that other individual decided he was going to go compete with Ted, that would get Vince fired up, but it was an intimidation. It is interesting to take a look at these guys as former rivals, because as much as Vince

seemingly at different times was kind of obsessed with Ted Turner, I never got the impression that Ted really gave a shit. I mean, yeah, he tried to buy the WWF, but when it didn't work, he just started his own, but then he was on to a million other things. It was never his life's work for it was for Vince, right? No. No. And for that reason, to be honest, I think I did.

One of the first documentaries I ever did for WWE, many years ago now, maybe 10. It ended, you know, I was out at a fire pit in front of my bunkhouse. And we were just talking about, you know, the way things have ended up. And I said something to the effect that, you know, things actually worked out exactly the way they should have regarding. WCW, meaning that I was glad ultimately that it still am, to this day, that it's acquired WCW because it still exists. I can go watch WCW programming if I choose to, when my grandson is about another year or too older, I'm going to be able to go visit my grandson in Florida and pick up the remote

and watch WCW Monday Nitro with my grandson because it's available to me through WWF. had WCW been sold first of all here's the truth if Brian Bidal Steve Greenberg and Eric Bischoff would have been able

to buy WCW it likely would have been successfully successful financially but it would have been built up for the sole purpose of selling it to somebody else

right it would have been a transactional long-term rebuild you know play right media play it's not like like Brian Bedal and Steve Greenberg ever planned on buying WCW building it up and holding it forever, they were going to buy it at a discount, build it up, make a couple really cool deals and flip it.

That's what people do at that level, right? That's what they had done with a lot of their sports content. That's how they created ESPN sports classic and all that stuff. Exact same thing. And that's the model they would apply to WCW. Why is that important? It's important because you're paying on how many. time, how many hands it passed through ultimately, more than likely no one would have ever made

the long-term financial commitment to the brand that Vince did. Vince made big moves that were long-term, futuristic type moves, OTT, for example, pulling the plug on direct on paper view, that model and plugging into an OTT model, that's a big move. That is a long-term move because the short-term hits going to be there. You know there's going to be a transition in the marketplace. But he made that move. My point is Vince made moves because he looked at WWE as a family legacy. Brian Bedal, Steve Greenberg, Turner Broadcasting, AOL Time Warner,

all looked at it as a piece of business that you could sell. And there's a difference. Well, we think about Vince making the move from pay-per-view to OTT. I think history would prove he was about 10 years too soon on that. I've heard JBL often say on his podcast that Vince would often say that, you know, he he didn't want to be first.

He wanted to be second. And it does feel like that move to OTT. Was that just ahead of its time? Like we know eventually WWB cashed in with that move, but it was like 10 years later. Yeah, but they got there first. And you look at where they,

are today, one of the reasons they are where they are today is because in many respects, they got their first. And you can go back and look at the history of their online business. You know, when they really started getting involved in the internet in probably 96, 97, they had a dedicated team. At 96, 97, half of the people in business didn't really use internet. and adapted yet, they were already ahead of that curve. And I think they've stayed ahead of the curve in so many respects that's why they are

where they are today. It's interesting. I think the old cliche that JBL always uses about that with Vince, as he, I guess he said Vince would often say something like, you know, pioneers get arrows and settlers get land. But I know that that was a big issue, you know, financially. if you take a look at the old CEOs of WWE, because there used to be two folks who sort of charted the course,

Michelle Wilson being one of them. And then eventually we know that they fold the OTT. The network goes away. But now look at all these deals, whether it's with Netflix or it's ESPN. It was the future. Vince was just ahead of the curve. Well, I mean, yeah,

they close on the OTT business, but they had an audience. Now they've got an audience. that they can leverage to bring into their streaming deal and make the kind of money that they've been able to make because of the advancements that they made and the data they collected through the OTT experience. As we're talking about Ted Turner today, of course, everybody is going to have their story for what they remember Ted most for. Baseball fans are always going to point to the Braves. We know wrestling fans will point to WCW. but if you just had like, you know, one thing that you think Ted Turner's going to be most known for, is it CNN, do you think?

Yeah. Yes, because it's global because he did do it. It's funny. I was just watching a tribute to Ted on Fox News, which is really interesting. Because when I want to go back just for a second, my very first meeting with Ted. I had spent, and I've talked about this before, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I was in a position where I could see light at the end of our financial tunnel, meaning about April or May, I could see the way projections were going and forecast were going.

I could see us being very close to profitable, like within a couple hundred grand of being profitable. And that was like the goal, turn one dollar profit. $1, $1 million wouldn't have made that much difference, really. So I'm focusing on the buck. Now, I get a deal, an offer for International from a network called Star TV, which was a pay network, I think, in China. Now, normally that wouldn't have been a problem. I wouldn't have even asked anybody.

I would have just booked the business and what about mine, right? But Star TV was owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch launched, you know, Ted launched CNN in 1980, okay? Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 96 to compete with Ted. So as I'm, you know, walking in to pitch this Star TV deal, which, by the way, now this was 1990, five. So I guess Fox didn't really exist yet, but clearly the conversation was happening. Well, the Fox network does, just not Fox News. Right. So anyway, there was a, it was public. You would see, you know, Ted would take shots at Rupert, Rupert would take shots. It was like on a much larger, more sophisticated scale. It was like me and Vince

McMahon or me and Paul Hey, but, you know, taking shots at each other in a wrestling internet kind of thing, right? But with them, it was, you know, it was Rupert Murdoch versus, and Ted was like anti-Rupert Murdoch at the time for obvious reasons, right? So now I'm stuck in this position. It's like, well, I got this deal and it can take it, put us into profit. And I know that's what everybody needs and wants, but it's going to put money in Rupert Murdoch's pocket, too. So I knew I had to get it approved. And I took it into Ted and I didn't even get to pitch out of my mouth. The next thing I knew I'm producing nitro.

But that competition between Rupert Murdoch and Ted was a very, very real deal. And I was just watching the tribute to Ted and Rupert Murdoch and very, very nice things to say about Ted and acknowledged him as a pioneer and a friend. So that was cool to see. It is cool to see. We hate to hear the sad news about Ted Turner passing away. 87 years old, what a life. I mean, he got all of it out. I mean, you talk about a real pioneer, a maverick, a leader, an innovator.

I mean, we can't heap enough praise on this guy. But since you and I've been doing this podcast off and on every now and again, we'd get pestered by folks who said, hey, why don't you bring Ted on? And the rumor in innuendo was he had a variety of health issues and he was no longer making personal appearances. So sad as I am to hear that he's no longer with us, I do hope that whatever pain was coming his way, it's finally over here. Yeah, Ted had, and I can't remember what the actual medical condition is called, but it is like dementia.

Not necessarily, it was a life-threatening like dementia can be, but it was some of the same characteristics for getting who people were, you know, getting lost in conversations. So I talked to Bill Shaw to this day. We run into each other or talk once or twice a year, and Bill was still very close to Ted, even. recently went to his last birthday party and things like that. And Bill would kind of keep you in the loop as to where Ted was at. And they didn't really, they meaning his family and the people that took care of Ted didn't really let him do too much public speaking or any, for that matter, because of that. So as much as I would have loved to do it and he doesn't live, didn't live that far for me actually. It's only a couple hours away. It would have been

great to do. But yeah, that just wasn't possible. Well, peace and love, thoughts and prayers for the entire Turner family. What a legacy he lives behind. All right, Eric, I got a theory. I think a lot of families do this. I think over the weekend, that's the first time that moms and dads actually get to connect. Of course, during the week, everybody's got their job.

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Join right now at RocketMoney.com slash 83 weeks. That's rocket money.com slash 83 weeks. Eric, I'm excited for us to get to the big news this week. There's been a lot of cuts in WWE land. We've talked about some of these cuts in recent weeks, but there were some new names that popped up since you and I recorded last week that we were all sort of taken aback by. Somehow, some way, New Day is no longer with WWE.

Now, the rumor in innuendo is that TKO went to New Day and apparently at least a half a dozen other talent, and said, hey, we need to renegotiate your contract. And some of those talents renegotiated. None of those names have been named publicly, but people in the know have heard a few of those names, and I keep hearing the same two names over and over. I'm sure there's more.

But two we know who said, thanks, but no thanks for Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. Now, Kofi Kingston was one of the longest tenured employees over at WW. Well, my apologies, independent contractors. They've been on the roster forever. tag team guy world championship material that still is a sentimental spot for a lot of people all these years later. I don't know.

This is a head scratcher to me. Were you surprised to hear that New Day was allowed to ask for and granted their release from WWE? Nope. For all the reasons you just stated. I mean, I agree with everything that you just said, which is probably is the reason why their time was essentially up.

it had played itself out. I mean, I know, first of all, I know that statement is going to get just a ton of negative feedback, but that's okay. I know where it's coming from. Because if you just, you have to look at the wrestling business as a business. How many times do the same internet wrestling community audience, now probably not this same audience,

but one just like it back in the day, criticize me for holding on to people too long. Pass their prime. You're paying them too much money. I mean, that was the narrative. AT Ameri, America, you can retire there, never have to work again. Get hurt, still get paid. All those issues, which were valid issues, by the way.

Not that they weren't. we've discussed the why of that, you know, and why at that point in time we had to do certain things the way we did them in terms of guaranteed contracts as such. I don't want to get to that conversation. The point is, you know, the Internet Wrestling Committee audience in general can be very, they can virtue signal their asses off. Oh, my gosh, they've been with the company forever. They were so loyal. And I'm not discounting any of that, by the way, because all of it is true. but none of it guarantees you a job for life.

What the hell. Everything you said was 100% true. But it doesn't mean that you're going to get paid, especially a lot of money, I'm guessing, if whatever contract that they were being asked to renegotiate was a contract that was in one way, shape, or form predicated on a previous agreement, which most of the time they are. You may make lateral moves along the way when you sign new agreements,

but if you're a high-profile talent like New Day was back then when they signed their most recent agreement before leaving, that agreement probably had a lot to do with 250 days a year on the road. That doesn't exist anymore. So can the company afford to pay someone that was going to be provided services at a certain level when that's no longer required. You can for a while, but you can't indefinitely. And I think what we're seeing now is maturation of that process where you're going to see people who still had, I'll call them hangover agreements, meaning that they were based upon

primarily, you know, the amount of money that they had been making two years before. Five years before, in some cases, or more. Those deals are going to have to be rewritten because the business model has changed. Live events, they exist on a limited basis, but not like they did. So everything changes. You have to evolve. And they had been around a long time. And here's the other thing, folks.

If I was a tag team, this goes back to when I was running WCW and why I tried to unwind. Well, I did unwind, I deemphasized the tag team division because if you just look at it from a dollars and cents perspective, you're putting twice as many assets. You're using, utilizing, paying for twice as many assets for a tag team match as you have to pay for in singles match. You get the same out of it in terms of content, time, but you have more labor. twice as much labor. Well, it doesn't sound like much when they say it that way, but when you're talking about paying people 600, 800, 900, $900, a million a year, downside guarantees, and you need four of those people for one tag team match. But if you want to have a tag team division, you've got to have a bunch of those people.

Otherwise, the same four guys are going to wrestle each other every week. That sucks. So if you're going to commit to a tag team, now you're committing to twice the late. favor costs for talent just to have a tag team division. From a mathematical point of view, it doesn't work. Now, you can argue creatively that there's something special about tag teams that still satisfies a certain niche in the audience. I'll buy it.

I probably not only buy it would support that, agree with it. But is it a big enough part of the audience to justify it? What happens? You know, if you just run the math, what happens if it goes? away and maybe 3% of the audience, 1% of the audience, whatever the percentage is, it would be minimal. It goes, oh, they don't have tag team wrestling anymore. I'm not going to watch. Actually, I don't think 1% would do that, but whatever. We'll say 1%. Is it worth it? Probably to eliminate tag team because financially it does not make sense. And the more TCO

looks at the WWE, the property as a business, the more you're going to see those kinds of changes. This is from a macro perspective, there's no arguing what you're saying. I totally get it. And I don't disagree.

It does make me wonder what the long-term future of tag team wrestling and WWE is. When you're going to look at it from a P&L perspective, you make a lot of sense. However, I do have to push back a little bit when you're talking about, hey, the business has changed. Based on running a lot of dates way back when and now running much fewer shows,

yes, that's true. But the rumor and innuendo, again, we don't have any of this confirmed. Nobody that I know of knows all the particular details. But the report coming out of WWV is that New Day had just signed this new deal last year. And respectfully, Eric, nothing has changed from last year to this year except revenues are up. But they're running the same number of shows, just generating more money, and now asking their performers who signed agreements last year, allegedly going through 20,

was a five-year deal, so 20-25 to 2030, hey, we know he signed that deal last year, but we can't honor it. That, I think, is going to rub a certain amount of the fan base wrong, but maybe more than the fan base. I don't know that it's necessarily the fan base is concerned, but if you're one of the boys, I think it would be a primary concern of years.

Hey, I just signed this deal last year. I showed up on time. I was a model employee. I did everything that was asked of me. And now the game has changed. I know they don't have any leverage outside of saying, no, no thanks. I'll just go find,

you know, other employment. And they will. But there's not been any material change from last year to this year that I know of, right, Eric? I mean,

not from the outside looking in, not from the business dynamics, you know, ratings, revenue primarily. That's the only thing that really matters is revenue, right? And if anything,

revenue is up. performance is up. So from a revenue position, no, nothing has changed. But I don't think any business, especially a publicly held company and especially one, the scope, the size, scale of TCO, operates on a month-to-month basis or year-to-year basis. I'm sure, I'm guessing at some point, and I agree, it's pretty salty to, you know, being asked to renegotiate a contract, a five-year deal that's only 12 months old. That is unfortunate. But I can also see a situation where there was an internal audit. There was somebody sat down with a financial team and said,

okay, let's play out the next five years. Based on what we know and the trends we see, what does the next five years look like? And in an exercise like that, it doesn't matter what it looks like today because we don't have a lot of the data that would be used to kind of project a five-year financial model to the detail that they probably would or would try to. And if you're looking at a picture five years from now that suggests we can't afford to continue with these type of agreements, you're forced to. I don't think anybody was excited to do it.

I don't think anybody was going, wow, which one of us get to pick up the phone and call new day and tell them, we're asking to renegotiate their deal. This will be a great day. Let's go get cocktails when it's over. That didn't happen. but I'm guessing that the reason the decision was made to do it is because they had information that suggested they needed to manage their budget better or differently. I don't think that's a secret.

Again, I don't have any inside information, but we've seen folks who worked in their television division who've been with the company since 2001, who were recently let go as well. So it makes sense to me that there was probably a mandate handed down. Every department needs to reduce their costs by X percent. we're trying to meet this goal. But I know that the optics of that are less than ideal when we just saw what the earnings

were for the people at the top of the food chain at TKO. And again, this is none of the fans' business, but I imagine this can't be great for morale in the locker room. What do you think? I'm sure there are some who are greatly affected by it. I'm sure there are some that are kind of indifference to it. And I'm sure that there are some that are basically being professionals and going, okay, this is my decision.

I don't have to stay here. I don't have to make the decision to sign this piece of paper. I can ask for my release if I don't like it here. I can, I have options and I can exercise them. So what do I want to do? Do I want to bet on myself here or do I want to bet on myself somewhere else? All of them have the right to do that. Nobody's putting a gun to anybody's head to stay there.

And I know that sounds really cold because they have families and the bills. Well, guess what? We've all been fired or had to, for whatever reason, had to change careers, change direction unexpectedly. That's life. And you get through it. And more often than not, you come out better than when you started. But there's just no guarantees. And, you know, if this type of thing happens at a company that manufactures battery clips, Nobody cares. The locals do, obviously, people love to. Maybe the local newspaper runs an article about it. But, you know, big manufacturing companies, Google, all these big companies that are laying off 16,000 people.

Nobody gets emotional over that, unless you're one of them. But this is different, right? Because now we know, we think we know these people. These are our characters. We love them. Because of that connection that you create on television, all of a sudden, the fan base is getting upset because Ari Emanuel makes so much money when we have to cut new day. That's just not fair. It's probably not, but it's life.

It happens everywhere, every day. It especially happens in sports. I think that's probably the best analogy. You know, you could have a long-tenured, you know, club favorite. Everybody loves this guy. He's the local hero and he's beloved and he's been here for so long. But they're doing another draft every year and they're going to find someone younger, faster and cheaper.

So this is an athletic endeavor. I think the most apt comparison is probably to make a sports comparison. But the difference here is it's not traditional sport. Your success and how much you're featured is not really necessarily up to you. It's up to creative. Meltzer even said, the reason you would be asked to renegotiate is because the contract you signed was when they perceived you as being far more valuable than they perceive you as being now. That's why they would renegotiate a contract. In the case of the particular person who did take the pay cut, it's someone who would fit into that category.

And the reason was not that he's not good or not that he's not great, but that they creatively didn't take advantage of what they had. I would say is the best way of putting it, but he accepted it. He didn't take the risk of going elsewhere. It's still a lot of money he's earning. You could say that. I was talking in code. We won't say the person's name,

but a lot of people in and around the wrestling business know who he's talking about. But let me say this. I couldn't make out what the fuck he was talking about, more or less who he was talking about. Why don't you decode that for me? Because I can't understand it. There was someone who was in the top, storyline and now they're not in the top storyline and they've moved on and subsequently they've

moved down the card and that's where they are and they're still making seven figures a year from what I understand. That's the other thing. It's not like these guys are going to, the person who accepted the pay cut and we'll get back to New Day in a minute. But this person from what I've heard was making, I don't know, like four million a year or something crazy. And now allegedly if he took a 50% pay cut. Now he's making like $2 million a year. And when you look at the number of television appearances, the amount of travel and the amount of matches that one has to do to earn that

kind of money, hey, this is not something where you can just go shop your resume and I'll just go replace that income somewhere else. Granted, he could have certainly went to AW. There's no doubt this wrestler in particular could have went to AW. But if you've made a name for yourself and you're comfortable and you live within your

means, it's still a gart, it's still a king's ransom. So the fan based online who were like saying, Hey, you got to name this guy and out him. He's not standing up for his peers. He's, Oh, God.

Please virtue signaling. Oh, God. You guys got to make a decision that's best for him and his family. And it's funny because when guys like Kevin Nash or Scott Hall would leave WWF to go to WCW, nobody was saying that then. I don't know why they're saying it now. Like you've got to make a decision that's best for you and your family. But I do think.

it's something that a lot of people are going to throw the flag on, Eric, when it's like, hey, these guys could have been featured more for you to justify what you were paying them, but you agreed to pay them that amount for this number of years last year. What the hell has changed? I don't think there's, there's anybody in creative who's like, boy, we have a hard on for New Day. Like that just, that doesn't feel realistic to me. No, it's because it's not. These guys are generally, even a little bit of time that I spent there while they were there back in 2019. It was clear that they were, you know, adored by everybody. Backstage in the office, they worked well with every department, whether it be marketing or personal appearances or any of that.

It's just, no, they were, they were beloved. I'm sure still are. It is a financial situation. And again, you know, I've heard the, I've heard the narrative, well, it's up to creative, make them as valuable as they were a year ago. It's, geez, if it was just that easy, folks, you know, if it was that easy,

just everybody could do it. And everybody would be working for minimum wage, because it would be so easy. You just sit down with creative and make somebody a star. Make the audience really fall in love with them just by giving them more TV time. Because that's all it really takes. Put them out there.

Write some good stories that I like. It's not that easy. Sometimes the audience just gets, tired of an act. It's true. Do they still have a connection to the audience? Absolutely. Are you going to get a Pavlov's dog reaction most of the time? Sure. If you limit their appearances and if you start moving them into that nostalgic category, now you could argue, well, they should have seen that coming and not sign them to a new deal. Well, think of it this way. They got one year. They squeezed one more year out of that maximum contract. And now they had demer.

make a decision to take something less than because they weren't going to be able to be used in the same manner. You can't take somebody that's been over as long as New Day and keep them over for as long as for the next four years. Now again, you can argue, well then they shouldn't sign a five-year deal. Okay, that's a good argument. They should have never been offered a five-year deal in the first place, but they were. And when it became apparent because the revenue model, The business model changed. No longer going to be doing as many appearances, realizing that we can't just keep putting them out there on TV

because they've been there forever and we're kind of played it out. But we can bring them back as a special. We can bring them back four, five, six, eight times a year. And then maybe we've them into an important story now and that. But that's not the same as the way they were anticipated being used last year, I guess. I don't know. I'm not trying to defend it. Just trying to give people to think differently about it.

You literally have to think about it from the business side before you, my opinion, before you get so emotionally attached to your position, because that's all I'm reading and seeing is emotionally based discussions about this. I don't disagree. I think there's a lot of emotion in this. And certainly these are two of our emotional favorites. So it makes sense. But if you are trying to run a budget,

I mean, and you have said this. J.R. has said this. It's an old adage. Wrestling fans like new. And we've seen all these recent call-ups from NXT and in developmental and some of these outside forces. And you're probably not going to go to your tippy type guys who are on your WrestleMania main events.

You're not going to go ask them to take a pay cut. And you're trying to bring in new talent. So all that leaves is some of the higher priced, most tenured, most paid guys in the middle. I just don't think anybody there has a hard on for Blue Chew the way, well, I screwed it up. I don't think anybody there has a hard on for New Day, but they could with Blue Chew.

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so let's bring in our resident gimmick attorney, your friend in mine, the one and only Mike Dawkins. Mike, how are you, man? How are you guys doing? Good, Mike. This is going to be fun. It is. It is. Boy, I was just chopping at the bit over here, listening to you guys talk about the due day and everything going on. It's just interesting, particularly because wrestling is such a different business than any other business.

You know, Eric, you were talking about what if it was the widget manufacturer and Conrad, you brought up sports franchises and sports teams. You know, the difference is for widget manufacturers and those employees, they're at will, right? They can leave. They can be fired at any time and no time. If there's non-competes, they're usually very narrow and scope, that sort of thing. And sports teams, you've got unions and it's collectively bargained. Wrestling has neither, right? It's not a union. It's not collectively bargained and they're not at-will employees. They have some pretty significant restrictions put on them, some new restrictions that I think we're going to talk about here that I found very interesting. But it's just the

wild world of wrestling and we love it. Doc, I know that you have seen, obviously, a lot of contracts in wrestling. You've seen contracts for performers in AEW and TNA and WW and every major company. But I've heard pretty routinely the phrase 90 days coming up on a WWB contract. Can you explain the difference and when that sort of policy came to be as far as you know? Yeah, the 90 days. So what you see a lot online is, that 90-day non-compete. It's not a non-compete. The, the WWE contracts have a requirement of 90 days

notice of termination. So it's one-sided, right? WWE gets to say, hey, we're not going to need your services any further 90 days from now. But you're a contracted talent for WWE. Whether you're on TV or not, or they use you or not, doesn't really matter. For the next 90 days, you're under contract and you're going to be with and stay with the company. And when that 90 days is up, you're done. You're free. You can go wherever you want. So it's, it's not a non-compete in the traditional way, which is, hey, we're firing you. And for some amount of time after you're fired, you are no longer allowed to compete with us. That's different. This is, hey, you're under contract for the next 90 days. And when that 90 days ends, you're done. And you can go do whatever you want. So as long as I've

been seeing these contracts. And then I've certainly seen some contracts that are very old that predate, even me being a lawyer. It's been in there for a long, long time. So this essentially, three months severance pay. Yeah. That's right. That's a good way to look at it. If I get three months severance pay, they didn't give me three months severance pay. When I left, what the hell? What's so bad about that? No, there's nothing bad about that. I mean, I've never had a problem with that. I just, anytime I've corrected anybody online or talking with friends, hey, it's not an uncompeat. Don't look at it that way. You're just, you have 90 days left of employment. That's a very important distinction. I'm glad you pointed that out. It is a very important distinction.

I do want to ask Doc, you know, one of the things I've seen a lot, and I don't know if this is true or not. I do know that more often than not, when a talent signs a contract with Tony Con and AEW, he may not use them creatively how he wants, but it's rare that anybody gets released or fired. He sometimes just opts to say, hey, we'll put them in time out, we'll sit them on the bench, we'll let their contract run out. So maybe they're not being used. They're not at TV, but they're getting paid to sit at home, almost like a fired college head coach or something like that. that does not seem to be the way of the world in WWE.

Are the contracts written differently as best you understand? Is there standard language in a WWE contract with regard to how quote unquote one-sided it is versus WWE? Or is that simply just management style? It's more management style. There are definitely some differences between the contracts. There's definitely different things you can and can't negotiate with each company that, you know, AEW will negotiate. WW will have no part of negotiating it.

But they both in that regard are similar. There's not necessarily a 90-day notice in AEW. And I think Tony has said it publicly to his credit. Hey, I hired these people. I brought them on, whether I use them or don't use them. That's kind of not up for them. That's up for me. I'm going to honor the contracts.

I am not aware of anyone who's been terminated from an AW contract other than CM Punk in that whole situation. I think they've all been allowed to just expire naturally on their own. There might be a couple of others. It's always been for cause, though. That's right. Bad actors. It's not just been, we don't want you anymore.

Let me, you want to jump in the middle of that. First of all, good on Tony. Also, I want to mention, I saw, I want to shout out to Rebel. Yes. So what she's going through. And also, for her. And being grateful to Tony Kahn, which makes me really respect the guy. So good on you, Tony.

That being said, you've got a publicly held company. Mm-hmm. You've got management that has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And you've got a multibillionaire that is not necessarily focused on the bottom line. Yeah, and privately held. So, and, but the part, now the important part, privately held is privately held. We're a privately held company at Real American Preestyle. There is a tremendous amount of focus on the bottom line.

Sure. That is not the case with Tony. And we have to acknowledge that. So it's a, it's a privilege, I guess, a luxury that Tony has and a privilege that people that work for Tony have potentially that Tony's in that spot. It's not a business decision. personal decision. And it's one that only somebody who's not responsible to the bottom line has the

can afford to make. Well, those same people who were responsible for the bottom line signed up for five year contracts and now they've unwound them a year later while they're giving themselves massive bonuses. Doc, you're familiar with a lot of talent. You work with a lot of talent.

What's the morale like that you're hearing? What is the scuttle butt amongst the talent when you see such a precedent set like it's it's not great i mean i've gotten a fair number of texts and phone calls hey can we talk things aren't great right now at work what what's going to happen i don't know what's going to happen with me can we just can we talk through it i don't know that anybody's necessarily going to say although some have said i'm going to ask for my release let's just get out of this and part ways friends i don't know if that'll actually happen or if they just want somebody to listen to because i get the feeling they're not really being listened to they're not being considered these things

are just kind of coming down from on high and you know whether you think you have that to them or not, that's a debate. I personally would are on the side of communication, but if they're not, they're not. And so be it. And you know, you mentioned Conrad and you mentioned this when you and Eric were talking about the new day that they signed five-year contracts. I oftentimes, I'm talking to people who have or will contract with WWE. You don't have a five-year contract.

You don't have a three-year contract. You don't have a one-year contract. You have a contract of a rolling 90 days. Yes. That's it. So yes, that rolling 90-day. stops, well, used to stop at the term at five years, but you really just have a 90-day contract. There's absolute pluses and minuses with both companies.

And that's why I tried a way with clients, is, hey, if this is what's more important to you, then you should go to this company. If that is what's more important to you, then you should go to that company, you know, the plus and minus list, right? Let's write it down on positives, WWE, big platform. You can be a megastar all over God's creation, all over the world. you can be in movies, big movies, blockbuster movies, but you're on a 90-day contract. And you're not going to really get to negotiate much of anything, and you're responsible for certain costs that AEW often covers for their talent.

So it's not really a five-year contract, is my point. That was the long way of getting there. And do you think, I mean, I've been in that spot in a way. I don't think I've ever had 90-day rollovers. I think that I'd like to know, and I don't know if you know, Doc, but I wonder when that 90-day, kind of roll over formula when that started to take place. Because there was a time, at least when I signed my first agreement with WWE, there was no 90-day rollover in my deal.

You know, unless I breached the contract, I was there for the term, which I think was two years initially. So do you know when that 90-day rollover started really becoming common? I don't. I don't. I've seen it in some older contracts, some, you know, early 2000s, mid-2000s contracts, but I don't know when it started. And I wonder how many wrestlers, because when you're young, when it's your, you get your foot

in the door at WWE, you're looking at a contract that's got a lot of big numbers on it, and you're not really as concerned about the language. I mean, I'm describing myself early on here. How many guys do you think really understand that 90-day rollover before they sign? fewer than 10% honestly. That's good, man. A lot of what I have, a lot of the reasons that I took my legal practice and said, hey, man, I want to help wrestlers.

I grew up a wrestling fan. I've loved wrestling. Who better to help him than a wrestling fan who also happens to be a lawyer and knows the law, knows intellectual property, knows about trademarks and names and contracts and these things. That's why I started doing it because my thought, as I'm laying on my couch watching Raw, was I don't feel like these talent know what they don't know. And it is proven out. I've seen it.

I've talked to them year after year, person after person, about how, man, I was just happy to get a contract from WWE. That's the Mountain Top. That's Disney. That's Nike. That's McDonald's. Like, that's it. I didn't really look at it that closely.

I didn't ask anybody, you know, it says in there that I could talk to a lawyer, but I was told, hey, don't talk to lawyers. Don't get agents involved. That's because that's your advocate, right? And so they, while they say, they encourage, people to talk to lawyers. They don't really. They don't want them involved. And so they're just happy to sign what gets put in front of them. And you're right, Eric, that, you know, you put the right dollar figure on it. The rest doesn't matter until it does. That's unfortunate, because I

think that's where a lot of this, I mean, some of it probably starts with talent that, unfortunately, you know, become well acquainted with that 90-day language and the implications that come with it. And there's a resentment, there's a disappointment, there's an anger. It's their fault 90% of the time, but it still hurts. And then that carries over to the social media and the chatter. And that's where the narrative picks up, a good portion of that, I think. Well, there's some new language, Eric, that I'm really curious to get your take on. Conrad and I've had a little bit of sidebar conversations about it that started popping up in some contracts.

And there's two different versions of the language. and I've got them up over here on this other screen, so we'll kind of go through it. I won't read it word for it because that'd be boring. But the first language is what I like to sarcastically referred to as the delightfully vague. And I've had clients tell me before, hey, Mike, I don't really care if it's enforceable. I'm just looking for the intimidation factor. And I think that's kind of what some of this language that's delightfully vague is, is aiming to do. because if you're the talent, are you really going to challenge a massive company with

endless amounts of money to fight legal fees on their home court? And if you're a rival company looking to hire people, are you going to run the risk that you get yourself caught up in litigation against a massive company fighting a fight on their home court? So here's the language. The first part doesn't bother me. I think the length of time is a little unreasonable. But I think as far as challenging, it's probably a coin flip whether or not you win.

But it is now being explicitly written into contracts that the wrestlers and the promotion have an exclusive negotiation period where you as a wrestler are not allowed to talk to any other company, you know, talk about your future. You cannot prepare for your next contract. And that length of period is nine months. I think that's an unreasonable amount of time. 30 days, 60 days. I mean, these things take time and get dragged out through nobody's fault. I've seen it. So let me ask you, Doc, I'm a little confused.

When does that, when does that 90 days start? What, what should actually cover? Nine months. So if you've got a five year, let's say it's a new day, five year contract, starting at year four and three months, a year four, three months, you cannot talk to anybody else. So if I last nine months of your deal, you can't talk to AW or P&A or G. or P&A or GCW or whomever.

You can't talk to anybody. You can only talk to WWA during that nine months. Again, that doesn't necessarily bother me. People like to, this is another thing misunderstood about wrestling contracts and probably the law in general is people like to throw out contract tampering. Oh, there's tampering, there's tampering. There's tampering. Tampering is a pro sports thing.

It's a collective bargaining thing. Contract tampering is not a contract thing. You do have cautious interference with contracts. where you are interfering with a business relationship or with a contract. Having a conversation about preparing for your next contract is not interference. Now, if you have coached somebody, urged somebody, done whatever to get them to breach their contract or leave their contract early, somehow, whatever way they can, that's different.

That probably is tortious interference or maybe tortious interference. The contract tampering really isn't anything. You're allowed to prepare for your next deal, prepare for your next job. So what this is effectively doing is saying, hey, you can't do that. I mean, you can do it, you know, starting in year three or year four, month one, month, two, month three.

But following that, the next nine months, you can't talk to anybody. You cannot prepare for your next gig. Well, as you know, Eric, having been in creative and been involved with wrestling a long time, nine months in the world of creative is a lifetime. So a promotion is not going to talk to you now and say, well, yeah, nine months will bring in and do this.

So much changes. that realistically nine months is just so long that nobody's going to talk to you and strike a deal that early anyway. So that part doesn't necessarily bother me. I don't like it. I think nine months is unreasonable. I think if you challenge it at best, what a court would say is, yeah, nine months is a little too long. We're going to make it five or four or something like this, but you're not going to win on that. Here's the second part of it. Here's where I have a little bit of a problem. So assuming they get through that period, they haven't reached a deal, your contract has ended or it also sits and or your contract is terminated so they've ended it they've given you

your 90 day notice and at the end of those 90 days for six months after the end of your contract for six months after they terminate you so six months after the 90 days if you get a long-term booking contract from any other wrestling promotion you have to bring it to them and they get a right to match it on the same financial terms now where the language is delightfully vague is what does matching it mean? Hmm. Is it just an offer to say, hey, you know, again, we'll bring up new day. I don't know anything anymore than you guys do, but let, we didn't want you at two

million dollars a year each and you didn't want to take a pay cut so you're gone. So now they go to AW and say, hey, Tony want to get hired and Tony says, yeah, I'll give you two million. Well, then WW would have the right to say, okay, we'll match it. Come back. At least that's what they're saying or suggesting in this language because it just says they have a right to match. Well, what does that mean? Does that just mean you now have two offers? Because to have a contract, have something binding, you have to have consideration and offer and

acceptance. That's how you have something binding. So it's vague enough that people are going to be intimidated if they tell them, hey, if we match it, you have to work here. They're probably going to believe it. Or you would have to fight and prove that that language doesn't mean that you're bound to them. It's just a matching offer. Well, who's going to fight them? Is New Day going to fight? in their legal team is AW going to? Probably not. So you've got this six-month tail that says, if you get a long-term booking contract, you have to bring it back to us and we get a right to match, whatever that means. And the reason it's vague, like I said, is, is it really just an offer or does that mean you're bound to work for them? Because if you're bound to work for them,

boy, that looks a lot like indentured servitude. And that's not something the court systems really like, particularly in services contracts. It's different. Like the example you brought up, Eric, of widgets where you have a right of first refusal and if you find somebody else who will make it cheaper, we get a right to match their price and you're going to stay with us. Very different thing. That doesn't bother me. Happens in contracts all the time. Personal services contracts, that's different. It's personal services. So that's one set of new language, right? Let's move on to the next one. The next one is very comparable. Same thing. There's an exclusive window. in which you have to negotiate.

The 90-day window, that's more reasonable, doesn't bother me at all. But after that 90 days, and your contract has ended, this company gives you 90 days where you have to bring them a deal. You have to tell them we've got an offer from somebody else, and they get a chance to match it, and the language says, and if we decide to match it, you are hereby bound to work for us. So it's no longer delightfully vague. It is explicit that they basically have a right of first refusal on your services.

So I raised the question. I said, what happens if there's a disagreement? I don't get along with somebody, a coworker. I don't get along with management. I don't get along with you owner or president or whomever. I'm miserable here. It's bad for my mental health, whatever. And I get an offer and you guys match it.

You're forcing me to work in an environment. I don't want to be it. Oh, we would never do that. So what do you mean? Well, you know, if somebody doesn't want to be here, we wouldn't force them to be here. Okay, then let's put that on the contract. That if they give you that notice, that you won't execute it, or let's just take the language up.

Now we can't do that either. Well, wait a minute. So I'm just supposed to trust your word that you say, well, we would never exercise it under those circumstances. And that's going to be something we just have to trust, but it's not in writing. We have no evidence, nothing that stands up in court. Yeah, you're just going to have to trust us.

It doesn't work for me as somebody who represents talent, but they're being intractable about it. And if you get an offer and they have a certain amount of time, 15 days to match it or not match it, and if the offer changes in some material way, you have to bring it back to them and you start that 15 days over again. So essentially you're beholden to them to give them any offers that you've gotten for up to 105 days after your contract is ended and without any further compensation. Look, this is going to be really popular, but you've got to kind of admire the team to put together that that construct is obviously it's lopsided as hell but i kind of admire it you know i mean there's there's some genius to it but i i in fact i agree with you eric it may be popular but in the

conversation i said look if i were running a company i'd want language like this too oh don't get me wrong even that run bonuses yeah but it's not i don't and and so as somebody who routinely represents talents this language it is bullshit it I mean, it's terrible language. It's almost bordering on being a contract of adhesion. And so people know what that is. It's basically a take it or leave it contract. I don't know that you normally see it in personal services contracts,

but I pulled up the general provisions, the general things that make a contract of adhesion. One, it's a standardized form and standardized terms. That's pretty true for nearly all the wrestling contracts I've ever seen. Certainly there is different language in some spots, dates, money, things like that. By and large, the starting place is exactly the same for every contract. Unequal bargaining power is the second element. There's a significant disparity in bargaining position between the parties.

The drafting party typically has economic, informational, or market dominance, while the adhering party lacks meaningful leverage to demand changes. That's 100% true. That's true of all companies. The contracts are so one-sided for the companies, and it's kind of a take it or leave it. negotiate these one or two, four things. Everything else, we ain't changed it. We don't change it for anybody.

Nobody gets it. Step three, part three. The take it or leave a presentation. The weaker party has no realistic opportunity to negotiate or modify the terms. The only practical choices to accept the contract in its entirety or reject it altogether. Again, it's not quite that. There are a few things that can be modified and negotiated, but boy, 80, 90% of those contracts, it's take it or leave it.

And the last typical element is it's drafted by the stronger party. Contracts prepared entirely or almost entirely by the party with the superior bargaining power, and its terms tend to favor that party's interests. So what the courts will look at, or if somebody claims that it's a contract of adhesion, is that it's unconscionable, it's unexpected, or there's hidden language. That's probably not going to apply here, and whether or not it's contrary to public policy. Some of these contracts, in my opinion, are borderline contracts. of adhesion, again, challenging billionaires. Boy, that's no easy task.

And it's funny, it's like non-competes. You know, when I first started getting involved in negotiating contracts, and, you know, we had attorneys that actually negotiated and made sure that they were written correctly and everything else. But I was involved in the, you know, the basic architecture, the blueprint of the agreements, term, money, dates, that kind of thing. And, you know, I would run across the, you know, non-compete issues. And the answer that I would always get from attorneys is, look, no judge is going to enforce it non-compete anyway. So if somebody decides they're going to challenge, this was back then the way the contracts were written back in the 90s, even my own attorneys would say, if anybody ever challenges, we're going to get our ass kicked. Is that not the case?

I mean, just you reading to me the kind of blueprint for the contract of adhesion, it's not that complicated. You know, I don't think you have to go to law school to figure that one out. It's pretty obvious, isn't it? Yeah. Would anybody that challenges that court pretty much slam dunk it out of the park?

Well, here's the thing. I give this advice truly on a daily basis to clients, not just wrestling, the non-resling clients as well. There's what's legal and there's what's practical. And those two things don't always line up. So we might have a great legal case where, I mean, as certain as any lawyer will give you certainty, we don't typically give you certainty to say, boy, I'd rather be us than them.

We've got a really strong case. I'm very confident we're going to win this subject to a judge or jury and they can always go off the rails. Is you've got to fight a company or companies who have lawyers who are, you know, making one, two, three thousand dollars an hour to represent them who will staff it with eight or ten people and they will paper you to death. They will file every motion under the sun, which then you have to respond to. Of course, you're not paying $3,000 an hour attorneys, but you are going to pay some, your attorneys to respond to it. You just wear them down and grind them down. So do I think they would win, Eric?

Sure do. Do I think they have the money to do it and the stomach to do it? Just because even just to get that first court appearance would probably cost you if you're the talent. Based on what you just said, I would not be shocked to see a $75,000. attorney bill in my mailbox by the time it was all said and done. Oh, more than that. More than that.

I would say six figures probably. I mean, if I'm the other company, I'm going to immediately file a motion to dismiss for failure state a claim, whether it's legitimate or not. I'm going to file it because I can do that just from the get-go. Then I'm probably going to file,

depending on where the lawsuit was initiated, I would file motion to move it, to change the venue, to change whatever. I could to question the court's jurisdiction, whatever it was. Or in the example of WWE, for example, I would assume TNA is Tennessee, but I don't know that. But in the case of WWE, you're going to Connecticut. You're fighting in Connecticut courts. And it's been proven time and time again the folks who have challenged, hey, I'm not really independent contractors.

The Connecticut courts won't even look at it. What they will say is, hey, this is a freely entered and freely negotiated contract. We all know that's not true. But the courts say it's freely entered, freely negotiated, you signed it, and both parties acknowledge in the contract, big and bold, I'm an independent contractor. You can't be heard to complain now. And they dismiss it. So you don't even get into the substance of it. Who has to get into the substance of it is the IRS. The IRS says if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. So I don't care if you call yourself an independent contractor. I don't care if you call yourself an employee, if you go according to this checklist of 21 different steps, 21 different considerations, and you're

more an independent contractor than an employee, then you're an independent contractor. And if you're more an employee, then you're an employee and somebody owes us taxes. But it requires, it's going to take the IRS taking that step before there's going to be meaningful change because you can't fight WWD in Connecticut and get there on that issue anyway. No, any, I mean, look, this, this topic was a hot topic when I first got into management at WCW. The independent contractor versus non-independent contractor. That was a serious topic of conversation a half a dozen times throughout my career. IRS never gets involved.

Yeah. That's been my experience too. Yeah, they turn the other way. I guess if you're getting your employment, self-employment taxes from the talent, what do you really care versus having it split and withholdings and getting it from a company? Yep. Doc, let me ask you about this phrase, no-cut contract. You know, I first heard that phrase when AEW.

was first an idea. I know there were talent who had heard for years and years these same long tales of, oh, this Nigerian prince is going to open a TV deal. He's going to invest billions of dollars and it's going to be on so-and-so network in prime time. And of course, it never really happens. So I believe that some of the original AEW contracts may have actually had no cut language in there if people were walking away from WWE opportunities and things like that. I've started to see that phrase a little bit more in the last couple of weeks, that perhaps there are some talent who either have no cut contracts or they've tried to get those contracts. You and I know of a talent from, I guess it was 2021 when we were first talking about this.

There was one performer who was certain he was going to be able to get a no cut contract. I don't know if he did or didn't, but I know that that has become a common phrase, especially in the last two weeks. Do you think there are no cut contracts in TKO now? And would they even entertain them moving forward? Because that was under Vince. This is a whole new ballgame now, right? Yeah.

And there, I don't know firsthand definitively if there are any with WV and TKO. I strongly suspect there are people who have them. But what I say there are people, I mean the tippy, tippy, tippy top. The one percenters, if you will, you know, there's probably fewer than a handful. I've had conversations. I've had negotiations for very, very, very high level talent. And they were not having it. They would not have any part of any sort of guarantee or even making it a six month notice instead of 90 day.

There was nothing. They were intractable. They would not change it whatsoever. So do I think there are some? I do. I think that it is very, very few and far between where you'd be hard pressed to say, I'm just making somebody else. I don't know anything about his contract.

Don't know him personally. But Brock Lesner, you know, he was just the attraction there for years. I would be surprised if Brock had something like that. And if you're going to argue, well, I'm on the same level as Brock, they're probably going to laugh in your face, right? He's just kind of on a different level. A Roman or a Cody might have it. I don't know.

But they definitely do not have very many of them. You're right about the early days of AEW that did exist. I think that language has been modified. It's not quite a no-cut contract anymore. It might be a guaranteed contract, but the company has to have the ability to cut people. So I don't know if I'm making the distinction clear, but if you have done something wrong, you get accused of something and the court system has to play out, you probably don't want

that person on your website or holding themselves out as a company representative, a company employee, something like that, because you don't know what's going to happen yet, right? It hasn't been adjudicated. So they need to have the ability to say, hey, you are not associated with us anymore. We'll pay out what we owe you on the two years remaining, six months remaining. nine, whatever, 19 months remaining, but we have cut you. It's just you're going to get paid. So to Eric's kind of earlier point, we're like a separance, right?

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J.C.W. Lunacy. But let's move along from that piece. I guess what I wanted to get to is I've heard rumor in innuendo that there are mega contracts being signed and negotiated right now in TKO. So I don't think that this is a talent cut across the board. the reason I bring it up is there's lots of speculation. Roman was advertised for these shows and now he's not. I don't think that they're likely to go ask a Roman reins to take a pay cut.

Of course, that's everyone's knee-jerk response. I think that was more probably about managing a P&L. Maybe he had it in his contract that he got private air travel. Maybe he was advertised for all these European dates without someone actually putting pen to paper and realizing, you know how much it's going to cost to get a private jet from South Florida over and over and over to different parts of Europe, three or four weeks in a row.

Like it could take the shows from being profitable to money losers. So, hey, let's just scratch one name off and that's an easy solution. I'm saying all that to say, I just don't think that the Codes, the punks, the Romans,

they're not likely to get a pay cut in my opinion, right, Doc? I wouldn't think so. And what's the saying, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it? A lot of this is not all that dissimilar from all the past things that have happened in wrestling.

I mean, your father-in-law, for Pete's sake, has brought up the sale to Ted Turner and how it was, it was pending or they needed Rick, right? They wanted to make sure Rick was there and Rick would have used that and leveraged it as he should to renegotiate his contract and get more money because the deal was kind of pending on him. If you think about this as a company and you think about it as not wrestling, but any other company, Eric, you went through this with Turner. Let's shed some debt. Let's look real good on paper.

I'm not saying they're going to sell out or sell to somebody else. But boy, if you were going to, what would you do? You'd trim some fat, you'd trim some money, you'd make yourself look profitable, and you'd lock in the people that you view or that the potential buyers view as the most important assets. So, of course, they're going to give those mega deals. That's how I think that the WWE is operating is they've probably got a roster of, let's say, 20 or 30 folks that are at the top that they value the most. and everybody else underneath is kind of fungible.

And you'll let them go, you'll move them up, you'll move them down, you'll see if it works, and you move on. And you keep trying that until you get the next start. As we know, not everybody can be a super duper star. Some people are just mid card or they'll have a moment at the top. And then they move on, move down, move out. But there are those people that have the lasting power, the staying power. They're going to protect them because that's what everything's being built on.

And I think that's what everything for a potential sale, if that's in the mix or not, I don't know. But if there's a potential sale, it's going to hinge upon that. But it's interesting. You throw out the potential sale, and you're absolutely right. It's no difference. And, you know, if you're going to sell your house, you're going to put, you know, if you need a fresh coat of paint, we're going to do that.

We're going to make sure the one looks good. And let's, you know, fix anything that needs to be fixed so that, you know, the house sells for the highest possible amount of money, right? You would do the same thing for your company. Let's make it look as financially healthy as we can. getting ready for a sale, an exit strategy. Or that's exactly the same approach you take to increasing the value of your stock. Yep.

You would do all the same things. It would be absolutely no different whether you're trying to exercise your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders or flip it. Either way, you're doing the same thing. Agreed. Doc, I do want to ask one more thing. I know that you've seen a lot of these different talent contracts, and I know one of the big things that wrestling fans really get caught up on is when someone leaves WWE will they be able to use their name or not.

I do want to ask you about Xavier Woods and Kofi Kinks and get you to look in your crystal ball and sort of forecast there. But I also wanted to ask you, you know, as far as restrictions, what they can do sort of outside of the tent. Because from where I see it, it does feel like, man, if I'm Xavier Woods or Kofi Kingston, hey, I'm going to actually have a better quality of life and make a whole lot more money with what's coming up. Now, granted, I think what is lost in translation a lot of times is, and you gave the hypothetical a minute ago, neither of us know, but let's pretend that a guy like Kofi was making $2 million a year.

They came back and offered $1 million a year. A wrestling fan may say, well, he'll just go to AEW and get $2 million. Well, my question would be, why would Tony give him $2 million if he knows that they won't? So that's out the door. He's lost any leverage, but even if he just gets a million dollars and process how silly that sentence is, even if he just gets a million. even if he just gets a million dollars. He's working on freaking Wednesdays. Are you telling me that New Day couldn't go hit every Tom Dick and Harry Comic

Con every weekend and make a hundred grand a weekend for as long as they want? Yes, they absolutely could and do their gaming show and do a podcast and do outside merch deals. Like there is an opportunity for them to have a much better quality of life, I believe, and be more entrepreneurial and have a little more freedom outside the tent with a smaller guarantee, they could still wind up making more. Am I wrong here? You're spot on correct, because AW, God bless them to their credit, is willing to work with people on outside ventures.

Now, there's certain lanes you can't, you know, they have exclusive agreements, shoes, for example, if you wanted a shoe deal, probably not going to happen. Action figures may be a little trickier, but outside of that, those guys want to, you know, their YouTube channel and all that stuff, that's all part of the negotiation, carve it out. We're going to monetize it, tell us what we can, can't do, you know, you don't want us playing or reviewing WWU games. Done. Easy. No problem. But we're going to do Mortal Kombat. We're going to do Tekken. We're going to do whatever. Absolutely. Absolutely. They, they now have the potential for more revenue streams that they have not had ever in their career. As far as names are concerned,

I believe Kofi's real name is Kofi, right? It's not Kingston, but I think his first name is Kobe. You can legally use your name. You just can't stop that. You might remember. Jim Helwig became Jim Warrior, became Warrior Warrior. That was all trademark stuff with WWE. So his wife and his daughter, their last name was Warrior, because he legally changed his name to Warrior

because you can use your name however you want. So Kofi can still be Kofi. Probably can't use the Kingston. Depending on the last name, like if he wanted to make a kingdom, that's probably a problem. But if you wanted to make it, Kofi Bischoff, he can do that.

God, that would get over. show, oh my God, printing money, Michael. As for his savior, yeah, he's probably going to go back to, it was Austin Creed, right? Or Apollo Creed, what was this? It was Apollo Creed. Yeah, he did Austin Creed. And I think his real name is Austin. So Austin and Kofi does feel like an easy pivot.

Really? And absent, sorry, Conrad, sorry, got you off. Absent, and this happens all the time going back to our early conversation about, do people just sometimes sign whatever is put in front of him. Boy, they sure do. And in some instances, they will sign away their rights in their prior names. Not always. And certainly there's plenty of circumstances where the contract will say,

hey, this is wrestler IP. This is your stuff. It was yours before you ever got here. It's still yours. We do not lay claim to it, though we can protect it if we want to. And then you've got to come back and ask for it back from us. That happens more than not. But sometimes they'll say, we want to own that name.

So you're going to assign it to us. Maybe we'll pay you more, maybe throw you a little money your way to assign it to us. So assuming that Xavier hasn't signed something that assigned them Austin Creed, he can absolutely go back to that, pick it up, and run with it. Doc, I know that you have often been referred to on our program as our gimmick attorney because you've handled trademarks and I know that you work in a lot of patent law, but you've actually started to do some representation. Can you tell us what all you do in the wrestling space?

And if we have someone who's in the wrestling industry listening, how can they reach out to you? Yeah, well, first of all, you can reach, you know, I've got gimmickattorney.com. It goes to my law firm address. Socials always work at gimmick attorney, both on Instagram and Twitter, or X, I suppose. As far as what I've done, what I've tried to do is as much as possible, even if I can't do it personally, I'm at a general practice firm, Shoemaker Luke and Kendrick. And I've got friends here who are also big wrestling fans that, hey, I'm happy to help anybody need something. So we have done lots of things like help people form LLCs and form companies and get companies set up for them and their spouses.

We've helped people with their trust in estate planning. That's a very important thing to have your living will and power of attorney and medical care and all that kind of in place because, God forbid, you get hurt. You don't want your wife to be the one that has to decide I'm going to pull the plug. If you've got a directive that says, hey, if this happens and the doctors say this, that and the other wife, family, daughter, son, you don't have a choice. these are my wishes, getting that in place, avoiding probate, avoiding taxes, that sort of thing. But you're right. Also, a lot of negotiation of contracts to make sure that they're protected as much as they can and they get all the things they want.

And what really started at all was helping people with their trademarks, owning their name, being able to own them regardless of what company they're with and moving forward. Check them out. Gimicatorney.com. Mike, this was fascinating. Greatly appreciate all the time. Thanks for jumping on with us. This was terrific.

Yeah, thanks for having. guess. Thank you. And hey, by the way, our dogs are going to go to love you when you get home. Because if you're rocking better wild, I just want you to know your dog's never been happier. At least that's the case with my dog, Ginger. My mom recently visited me and she couldn't wait to tell me. Hey, Ginger is the happiest dog. Maybe I've ever seen. What's the difference at 11 years old, better wild. I have to admit, once upon a time, maybe it wasn't the best dog parent. I didn't realize that was the case. But my jump, my dog, Ginger was scratching her ears and licking her paws. And I just thought, hey, this is normal dog stuff.

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non-issue. I could be wrong. But boy, they got everybody up in arms this past. weekend. I think it was Thursday or Friday. They started to advertise Roman on all the June raw dates. Three of those four are international dates. Only one domestic in Baltimore. And then over the weekend, he was pulled. His picture was no longer on the graphic. And Meltzer even reported that, hey, he's not going to be on the Saudi Arabia night of champions car, but he was on the poster. Now, if you go to www.com, his image is not on there. But if you actually click the link to buy tickets for Saudi. His image is there. This to me just feels like servicing a P&L and less like a contract negotiation, but I know wrestling fans want to believe Eric. He's defending the title

against Jacob Pahoo this weekend. And there's two schools of thought on this. Is it too much too soon? Are they just doing a good tease? Are they going to do a non-finish? People are talking about the title match this weekend, which I think is a good thing for WWV. What do you make of Roman being advertised and then pulled, especially with all the chatter around him having a title defense against Jacob Patu, a bright rising star fresh off a WrestleMania win over Drew McIntyre. You think we get a new champ this weekend or is there nothing to this? You know, this is where I question myself in my thought process because I spent 30, however many years in the wrestling business, when you're constantly manipulating.

manipulating perception in order to create interest. And oftentimes you're doing it outside of the arena where you're shooting TV, right? It's kind of like a 24-7 gimmick sometimes. And WWE's gotten pretty good at manipulating the Internet lately over the last year. Sometimes I just see, you know, I see attempts. I see patterns of things that they're doing. And it seems to me like there is an attempt to really blur the lines between what's real and what's not. In order to create the very conversation that's taking place about the title match coming up.

Wait a minute. Roman's going to be off. Well, maybe that's because he doesn't have, are we going to see a title? now you're interested. Now you're talking. Now you're going to watch to find out. You're engaged. So it's so difficult to tell me more because, you know, putting them into the schedule

and taking them out of the schedule could be completely deliberate. Or it could have just been somebody screwed up. Or maybe somebody went, hey, did anybody talk to finance about this? Because, you know, you got $300,000 worth of jet fuel to make this work. anything could have happened. So here's my answer. I don't freaking know. But I'm interested.

Either way, I'm kind of curious. I think the entire wrestling world is curious. We're all going to be watching backlash. We all want to see what's going down here. And there's another intrigue this weekend. Dan Housen is being advertised with a mystery tag team partner. He's going to be taken on Kit Wilson and the Miz. And of course, we know Dan Housen first came to the WWE with a mystery.

and I don't know if you saw this on Twitter. I know he's one of your favorites, but he's actually gone out of his way to offer Sean Michaels, The Undertaker, A.J. Stiles, Steve Austin, and even John Cena, $400 human dollars to be his tag team partner this weekend. So for 400 bucks, man, there's no telling. Maybe that's all it takes for the rattlesnake to return to WWE.

He's also thrown out names like Kyrgyn, Papa Shango, Naked Midian. Now, you and I have talked a little bit about, managing expectations before. I don't know what to expect at this point with Dan Housen and a mystery partner. Is it the ghost of Mabel? What do you think, Eric? Who could this be? I don't know, but it sure is fun, isn't it?

I mean, this is, this is an example of what Dusty Rhodes used to talk about, about, I think it was Dusty where I kind of took it on is wrestling should be a buffet. There should be a little bit of something for everybody. this is Dan Hauser and he's doing such a phenomenal job. It's strictly entertainment. Here's what the expectation is and the expectation the bar is high. What I think is going to be achieved and may be overachieved because all people want us to be entertained. They're not looking for a five-star match.

Did a bunch of little nerds can circle jerk two in your grandma's basement. you know, this is, this is just fun. And I'm looking forward to it either way. The $400 thing is funny as hell, by the way, I love that. It's super fun. Hey, you know, this weekend, just like at WrestleMania, they're going to be showing a preview show on ESPN2. So Saturday, May 9th, this Saturdays are listening.

It'll be tomorrow. There's going to be two key matches for free on ESPN2. It's Seth Rollins versus Braun Breaker. There's a lot of people would almost consider like maybe the co-be main event for this thing. And also Trick Williams and Sammy Zane. Now that means that there are three other matches that are on the pay-per-view, the actual paper review, which will be behind the paywall on the ESPN Unlimited app. That's that title match we talked about with Roman Raines and Jacob Batu, Eoskai versus Aska, and then that whole mystery deal with Danhausen. We're also

getting a tease for a John Sina announcement. We'll come back to the John Sina announcement. But Eric, I think one of the crazy lack of Fox things that WWE has done here, and I know it took a little bit of criticism for putting all their PLEs on the ESPN Unlimited app. But in a weird way, what it's sort of done is it's forced more media coverage for WWE. You want to talk about what the value of this deal with WWE is. It's a lot more than just the cash that they're getting the exclusive rights for the PLEs. I can only imagine that either they weren't feeling like they were getting a return,

so they wanted to do this preview on WrestleMania or the preview worked so well at WrestleMania, they're going to do it again. Well, moving forward, we're seeing a big media press just this morning. I saw Paul Heyman on ESPN on a Wednesday. They're going to have WWE sprinkled all over ESPN every PLE week now or so it seems. So it feels like by striking such a lucrative deal with ESPN, ESPN now feels an obligation to help promote their app and the event this weekend. So your added value of getting overwhelming ESPN coverage. This may be one of the more genius moves Nick Kahn's put together so far, I think, Eric.

Yeah, talk about, you know, whenever you enter into a deal with somebody, you want to make sure they have skin in the game, right? Yes. They've got something to lose as well as gain. Well, there's a lot of skin in this game, and it is brilliant. And the added value, which is probably what this is referred to as, the added value that comes on top of the revenue is indeed the value of that media. And we all know how important that is. It's absolutely critical because that ESP and those ESPN appearances are going to turn into social media clips.

the reach is going to be phenomenal. So yeah, pretty brilliant. It really is to know that you've not only got ESPN promoting your event this weekend, but they're also paying you for that event this weekend. Man, it's like it's a power move to not only get a big check from somebody, but then get to take over their airwaves. It's like hiring Morgan and Morgan is a power move. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury law firm.

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That's pound 529 on your cell phone. One more time, that's F-O-R-the-people.com slash 83 weeks. for Dow Pound Law. That's Pound 529 on your cell phone. This is a paid advertisement. Eric, I want to get your take on house shows, and then we're going to finally touch on AI,

which seemingly is taking over the world, now may be wrestling too. Drew McIntyre was recently on the Bobby Bones podcast, and he was asked about how wrestling has changed, and days on the road have changed, and certainly house shows in particular. He says, these days I probably wrestle one match every couple of months.

they finally eliminated most of the non-televised shows. For one, the talent were just getting hurt all the time and going out of the biz quicker. And two, from a profit standpoint, it just didn't make sense. House shows never made sense to me profit-wise. So now the money's in the TV deals and all the other massive deals that the billion-dollar man, Nick Kahn, is constantly making. So because I'm wrestling once every two months, every three months, I do feel like I've been in a car crash after the matches.

And I train for each match now, like I assume a, boxer would train for a fight. UFC fighters trained for a fight. I trained for each pro wrestling match. This is a major about face from the way the business used to be. Guys like Brock Lesnar have had this contract for quite a while, but now WWE as a whole does this. So your tippy top talent, they're not wrestling a ton.

Guys like Roman Raines can only wrestle a handful of matches a year and make absolute bank. But when he said, hey, house shows never made sense to me, all I could do, was thinking to myself, self, I think I've heard that before. What do you think of this statement, Eric? Well, it's true. And, you know, Vince fought it for a long time. House shows were always tricky.

WCW never made any money in the house show. But in fact, they lost train car fulls of money doing live events all the way up to the point where I shut down live events, which was a really, really a popular. choice. Wrestlers got nervous about it. Everybody in the industry thought I was out of my mind. We just stopped doing house shows. Couldn't afford it.

And eventually we put all of our resources in the TV. TV got hot, night show, NW, blah, blah, blah, blah. During that window, yes, we made money on house shows. But if you look at, you know, my run, I mean, the period of time I was associated with WCW, whether I wrestled, whether I was in management or not, It goes back to whatever, 91 to whenever I left, call it 99 realistically. You know, I was eight years that I was there. Okay, for two or three of them, we made money because we were super hot.

And when I went back to WWE in 2019, they were getting their asses kicked. They were losing buckets of money. But Vince hung on to, I think, until the very end, with the idea that this is still a live touring business that has television. It's a very big distinction. Vince, old school Vince, still looked at the house show business. I don't know how much. He and I never had that conversation. But the fact that, you know, I was in some meetings with Michael Hayes

because he was running the house show business and booking it. And those conversations were really, really uncomfortable conversations. Not so much for me because I didn't have anything to do with that division, but I was a part of the conversation. It was brutal, but he hung on because that. That was the nature of the business. It's what's always been done. Now, as Drew pointed out, that part of the business no longer exists financially.

It's no longer viable. It's too expensive. Well, I want to talk about the risks of injury in just a minute. But since that business so longer exists, it kind of goes back to what we talked about with the new day being asked to renegotiate because now the reality of we're just not doing that stuff anymore has set in. And that's what Drew's addressing here from his perspective. Now, the one thing he does talk about here that I'm interested in learning more about

or talking to more people about is when he says, guys were on the house show circuit, they were getting hurt all the time. Probably true. Obviously true. He's not going to lie about it. True. But I've also heard the opposite where if you're not out there bumping three or four

or five nights a week, it's more likely you're going to get hurt, meaning wrestling part-time. And Drew is addressing it by training for each match. But it shouldn't be lost because not everybody does that. It's not a requirement, I doubt, in your contract. It's whether you decide to do it or not. And if you're a talent and you're not taking those bumps,

you don't have a wrestling ring to bounce around in and in a meaningful way, keep yourself in in, in bump shape, the chances of you getting hurt, wrestling three or four times a month, go up substantially based on what I've been told, obviously not my experience,

but I've talked to so many wrestlers that have described it that way. Lack of bumps is, will make you more fragile than taking too many sometimes. Quickly over at cagematch.comnet, I took a look in the last year. So we're going to say the calendar year 2025 instead of going back a year from now, just over the course of 2025,

Roman wrestled seven times, Drew wrestled 27 times, punk wrestled 37 times, Cody wrestled 35 times. Meanwhile, another type guy from AEW, for instance, a guy like Kenny Omega,

I think he wrestled like 15 times. You compare this to like the peak of Hulkomania in the old era or, you know, know the NWA champion touring schedule of Rick Flair in 1985. I mean, we're talking hundreds of matches versus a dozen or three dozen, but it is a much different touring schedule and opportunity and for a lot more money now. So I think this highlights a great point that once upon a time, you know, the business was a lot different. And once upon a time, maybe there were guaranteed contracts that went all the way and you didn't have these deals. And I

not arguing that it's not lopsided. We beat that up. Overall, the quality of life that these performers enjoy now relative to before. I mean, time on the road, the bumps, the family, the travel expenses, there's been great strides in wrestling for the performers, don't you think? It's an entirely different world. I mean, you don't have to go back to early Rick Flair or, or Holcogan or Roddy Piper, Harley Race for all those stories. You can go back to 1996, So when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash came to me, they were wrestling 254, 250 nights a year.

That's five days a week. There's travel in there. I mean, that's brutal compared to who wrestled the most, punk, 37 matches. That would be three weeks or whatever. Yeah, quality of life is different, much, much different. It's a different world. It's a completely different business than it used to be. Even for me, I mean, it's not like I'm going back to the 60s and the 70s and the 80s necessarily.

It's going back to the 90s. It's a completely different world than it was in the 90s. Well, let's talk about one of the things that's changed. The world has changed, but AI is here now. And the Internet wrestling community recently lost their mind at the idea that WWE was using AI. Now, I think we can go into this kick and in screaming or we can just acknowledge that AI is probably going to be a bigger part of our lives right now than maybe any of us ever imagined or hoped. But I do think it can be used as a tool and be used

effectively or it can be used to eliminate jobs. And I'm not exactly sure what business purpose WWE is using it for. I would imagine it's just regular business to create efficiency. I've got friends in business who will dump spreadsheets in there and get analysis and find blind spots that maybe they didn't see. So I can see a business case use for and make a great argument for AI. But the creative piece is something that's always going to be debated. And I've seen some wrestling luminaries and talking heads in the last few days say, hey AI is never going to write wrestling stories because AI has no soul. It doesn't understand human emotion.

Hey, why don't we actually beat that? I could argue so does half of the people that perform in the ring and 75% of the people that write this stuff. Same is true. Look in the freaking mirror, bro. Shapiro's quote here that I want to make sure we're highlighting. This is Mark Shapiro from TKO. He says,

Nick Kine and Triple H are using AI for, storylines with the WWE. What's resigning? What superstars are resonating? In what pockets of the country are they resonating? That helps us obviously. Our content, our editorial, our creative, our mapping, our touring, and of course, maximizing revenue and getting our product out to the fans most

in need of it. So that's the end of the quote. But the internet wrestling community has run with the idea that all these storylines are now being booked by chat. GPT. Okay. Can I jump in here, Conrad? Yes. You know why they're all upset? You know why the internet wrestling community is so convinced that Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro and Triple A's going to go along with it because he's just a lap dog now? He doesn't really run creative. R. Emmanuel does. These executives from T.K.O. and all the money they make, they're ruining our WWE. What Mark

Shapiro said is basically you knuckleheads, I'm trying to get better at this stuff. What Mike Shapiro said is they're using AI for research. Every subject that he covered in that quote was research. Yes. And if you're not using AI for research, you're dumb some bitch. As somebody I used to know would say, you're stupid. You're you're signing up for ignorance if you don't use AI for research because there's no better way to do it. And by the way, let me segue into the creative side,

which everybody's afraid of or afraid they're already doing, which is not what Mark Shapiro was talking about. It's pure research. I'm going to suggest that AI should be used for storyline purposes, because you can craft an architecture, not the detail of the story, not the drama of the story necessarily, but you can craft a plot line. So to use, almost as research, to make sure that your story is moving the way it should be moving,

depending on where you are in the arc of the story you're trying to tell. And there are a number of ways to do that. I mess around with it all the time, not for business purposes, not writing any wrestling fiction, real American free styles, the real deal. I don't have to get creative there in the same way. But I think AI should be, if you learn, if you aspire, if I was 20-some-odd years old, I'm listening to this or whatever, and I aspire to be a writer in wrestling, man, the first thing I would do is,

or in any other form, dive into AI and learn how to use it. the better you are at prompts, the more artful and imaginative and creative you are, because you have to be to be a writer anyway, theoretically at least, that's what they say. But if you have that creativity and you learn how to apply that creativity in kind of a new format, AI, and use your creativity to get even more ideas, then you, would sitting around a table talking to your friends. Damn, that's what you should be doing because it's possible. I mean, I just have fun with it. I mess around with it. I'm not trying to learn anything while I am trying to learn by a little bit of experience and just have fun with it,

really, just have fun with it. But if I was really, really serious about it, I knew exactly what I would start doing. And I know that I'd get some good stuff. And you could literally start writing sample stories. If nothing else, it gives you a beginning, which is oftentimes, is the hardest thing for people who are new to creative. And you could always go back to the, you know, three bags, three things you have in your bag of tricks and every wrestling company uses over and over and over and over again. There's a formula that's obvious to a 12-year-old, generally speaking, in a wrestling business, right? But if you really wanted to try to come up with a really interesting three-month story,

to use as a sample story, to send to Tony Connor, to send it to WWE, to say, hey, here's my name, I really want to be a writer. Here's a couple samples of some stuff I've done. And you really learn how to use AI to do it. You can write some sample stories. And then you can take what you get from AI and then apply your own instincts to it. Put it into some of your own words. Maybe twist and turn it a little bit. But it's a starting point in which you'll end up with is a story that follows a logical progression, which is what 75% of the stories we see in wrestling, sometimes don't. And at least it gives you an idea how to do something. So I think people are way too afraid of AI. And it's like anything else, you know, people are afraid of what's going to happen

with the computer. And maybe they were right, you know, because AI kind of followed that. But I don't know. I think, I think AI is going to create more opportunities for more creative people than it's going to take away. The difference is you're going to have to learn how to use your creativity in a different way. Yeah, I think your creative juices will always be present. The human element will always be present. But they are embracing AI. When I say they, I mean, NXC, they just recently put out an AI generated promo.

I know that UFC has done one like that for their White House promotion. Even Real American Freestyle recently announced a UFC champion signing with RAF and AI was used for that. So I don't think it's all bad. To your point, what Shapiro was laying out, just to give some context, what you're saying is, it helps with our content, our editorial,

our creative, our mapping, our touring, and of course, maximizing revenue. So here's it just silly, for instance. Why would we expect everyone on the writing team to know everyone on the roster's hometown and collegiate athletic background and things like that? But if they're using it to map out touring and to create some efficiencies,

we could also say, hey, did you know that so-and-so graduated college? Okay, well, we should come up with a piece of merch for that and time, blah, blah, blah. So there is a practical reason to use AI, but I do want to bank on the idea that we can use it for creative, and we actually did an exercise here together, and Eric and I are going to break it down for you. But before we do, I want to tell you about our friends at Chime.

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Head on over to chime.com slash 83 weeks. That's chime.com slash 83 weeks. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Time is a financial technology company, not a bank, banking services, secured time visa credit card and my pay line of credit provided by the Bank or Bank N.A or Spride Bank N.A. My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Option. Option and products may have fees or charges.

See time.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with time plus status only. Otherwise, 1.000% AP apply. No imbalance required. Time card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. Be time.com for details and applicable terms. So, Eric, I thought it would be fun.

Why don't we use some AI to help maybe write a cool story for a, SummerSlam. So 83 weeks decided, hey, let's get a main event ready for SummerSlam. We thought it might be fun to dump some WWE storylines in. You've overseen a lot of the biggest storylines in WCW history and certainly were a part of a lot of those in WWE as well. So we tagged in chat GPT here and here's what we prompted it with. Book, C and Punk storylines leading to a big SummerSlam main event, pick a big name opponent, Cody has not wrestled recently, assume the feud begins three months before SummerSlam, and explain what both Punk and his opponent do in the storylines to make this

a worthy main event. And here's what AI spit out at us. CM Punk, one last run. It says the cast is CM Punk, age 49, coming off his WrestleMania 42 loss. The clock is real. Cody Rhodes is the WWE champion and the standard bearer. and here's the core hook according to chat GPT. Punk doesn't deny it.

He's almost out of time to win another belt. Quote, I ran out of gas at WrestleMania. But he flips it into, so now I stop wasting the gas I got left. And Funk's clear mission is win the WWE undisputed championship from Cody Rhodes or walk away forever.

No long runway, no second chances. Month one is acceptance. Punk cuts a grounded promo, no ego, just truth. acknowledges his age, his lost to Roman reigns at mania. Punk announces a final run for the title. He's on limited time. Every match matters now.

He wins matches, but they're shorter, the scrappier. His stamina isn't the same. He has to win early now. And commentary is pushing the idea, quote, punk's adapting his style to win one more WWB title. Now we move into month two. This is titled Desperation. Punk is going to suffer a shock loss on Raw.

punk will start cutting corners to win. Subtily at first, he'll grab the ropes, he'll take some count out wins, he's going to push the limits, and punk says, you fight fair when you've got time, I don't. And Cody confronts him, that's not who you are, but punk fires back. That's why I never stayed on top as long as you will, but that's why I will beat you. Now it's philosophical.

It's not heel versus face. There's a desperate mate running out of time, not an evil man. versus a hero on top of the mountain. And here's month three. In July, punk will earn the title shot versus Cody at SummerSlam, but controversially, not cleanly. The question becomes,

will punk sell out to win? What means more? Who he was or winning one more title? You get a final face-to-face before SummerSlam and Cody says, went it the right way or don't win it at all. Punk says there is no right way when it's your last shot. I will win ugly if I have to.

Now we get to the SummerSlam match. It's high drama, slower pace, storytelling heavy. Punk has multiple chances to cheat, and he thinks about it. There's a ref pump. Punk has a title belt in his hand. Funk can beat Cody for the title if he cheats now. And here's the decision point. He hesitates.

Does he cheat to win? And now there's an option A and an option B at this point, Eric. Option A, which it says is stronger long term. is punk doesn't cheat, tries to beat Cody but loses clean. Punk proves who he is, that he always was who he said he was, not what he can get away with. And he says goodbye to the fans going out of legend who refused a cheap win. Or there's option B, which Chat GPT classifies as darker and riskier.

And it says punk does cheat. He wins the title. He becomes a desperate short-term champion. And it sets up the ultimate downfall at a future piece. ELE. So with option A, punk exit the main event scene, a legend, and leaves the door open for future moments as a heel. Option B, punk gets one last run on top, and the story becomes he got it, but he lost himself.

So this is chat GPT, taking a stab at a Cody and Punk summer slam main event. What do you think of chat GPT and the way they laid that out? I mean, that's, it's, I mean, first of all, I was entertaining to listen to. And the devil and the drama is in the details. The basic outline as it was described there is a basic Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey Story template, at least option A, more so, because he's a hero in that. See, that's a great starting point.

If you're sitting around a writer's room and you're going, damn, what are we going to do with this guy? I got an idea. Let's do that. We did that three months ago. Oh, shit. I'm going to, I'm going to show you what it's like to be in 75% of the meetings that I was in in WWE for the cup of coffee that I was there.

All right, what are we going to do? I got an idea. We do this with this guy. We got this program over here and it sets this up. And then what's the next? what happens after the first match. Well, then we do this with it. We did that.

You run into that so many, I did, ran into that so many times in WWE. Because they produce so much with so many of the same people that it's inevitable that you're going to bump into yourself along the way creatively, especially when the same people are doing it because you tend to go back to the well

consciously or subconsciously to the same creative formulas. We all do. This is everybody. This story gives you a really cool arc, and now you've got an option. Heel or Babyface, which I really, really love. The only thing that I would say again, the devil in the drama is in the details, is in option A, yeah, the real story in option A is whether Punk is really a heel or not. Does he make the commitment? Does he walk across that line to screw Cody to get that

title because he's out of time? He doesn't do it in a classic heel way. You know, Snitlea whiplash, jenny, die, lie cheat and steel, kind of, he does not doing that. He's just planning doubt. We're not sure what he's going to do when that time comes. And when he doesn't turn heel. He's got a new lease on life because he'll be a bigger baby face than he's ever been because he didn't turn heel and he did stay true to himself. So that character grows as a result of the loss or you can go the other way and I don't know that his run would be so short term if he actually take the same journey, keep us to the point where it's not obvious whether you're going to turn heel or not. Nobody knows. The surprise and

the story, anticipation reality, surprise, and action is in the finish when he does turn heel. Now we know for sure, but he'd be hot as hell. He'd be a hot heel for quite a while. So they're both good, and that came from AI. And you could add so many different angles to that story and the way that story was presented by asking for, you know, from the eyes of, you know, Oliver Stone, you know, how does this story play out or whoever you want it,

whatever great filmmaker you like, director, um, you can apply that tone to it so that it feels a little more dramatic. There's a lot of good, I mean, this is just fun here. Can you imagine how much fun if you,

you know, you know, four or five people sitting around a room and you've got six or eight of these ideas to play with. That's how you're going to use AI and creative. We want to hear from you guys. Let us know in the comments below. What do you think about AI in wrestling?

Could it work? Are you a fan? I mean, here's the thing. I feel like sometimes you can't have it both ways. Like I see people being critical of WWE creative all the time online. And then when there's all these new resources that are readily available for those same people are throwing the flags at. Oh, we don't want that.

We don't want different ideas. Keep giving us the same shit we've been complaining about. Like, I don't know. What else we did? What do they get their dopamine here if they didn't bitch? What? else nobody else talks to them like it's not like they got a big circle of friends and you know active

in the community and you know part of a team or anything they're just sitting in their basement they've got a handful of friends that complain about wwee a lot uh eric there's almost no chance you saw i know that before i asked but did you happen to catch the debut over the last two weeks in nxte it's a a ukk based wrestler a heavyset fellow over there named will cruise who uses the nxte name now he introduced himself last night as mason Rook, have you seen him? No, we haven't. I'm going to send you some clips, and I can't wait to get your take next week because

it has sparked its own controversy, but we do want to hear what you guys think about this week's controversy about these contracts. Are they lopsided? What do you think is next for New Day? Are we closer or further away? Or has anything changed on the union front? Where are you at with AI? I think it's a good idea.

Does I have a place in wrestling? Let us know in the comments below, and we're going to highlight some of those comments next week here on the program. Eric, I don't know if you saw this, but it's everywhere today. But the news of Ted Turner's passing, it's come out that Ted Turner, thanks to Darren Revell, he pointed this out, was the last owner to actually manage a team happened on a particular night in 1977. But that's not all that happened that night.

And this story's been told on a bunch of different podcast and appearances today. He's not only the last owner to manage a game, he's also the last owner to host a wet t-shirt contest. my man he lived life to the fullest they'll think this was 1997 tickets were like 50 cents for general admission or something absurd like that and if you were field level it was only three bucks but what he promoted and I think this is maybe Ted Turner in a time capsule it's called college night all students submitted a child's prices

The post game fun will include a wet t-shirt contest, a Miller beer party, and bring your friends and your t-shirts and have a great time. And of course, the winner, the person who won, they got 500 bucks and a kiss from Ted Turner. He's one of a kind, man. I mean, how do you not love that guy? He can't help it. He's the best.

He's the best. And as the story goes, the woman who won, her dad was a conservative pastor in Georgia. And yeah, his junior in college, Georgia state daughter won the wet t-shirt contest and got the kiss Ted Turner and got $500. But dude, that guy lived the life, man. Imagine signing the contract for the first ever on pay-per-view, Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair and signing up the cartoon network and creating a cartoon after yourself and a 24-7 news network. But like, if any of us listening to this as

guys, because we're mostly guys right now, if you found out you were an overnight billionaire tomorrow, what better than to say, I'm going to go buy a baseball franchise and an NBA team. And I'm going to do a wrestling league and get Hulk Hogan and Rick Claire. What a man. Shout out to Ted Turner in the whole Turner family, 87.

Still somehow gone way too soon. What a legend. We appreciate you guys hanging out with us here for 83 weeks. We'll hope you'll make plans to hang out with EZE at the end of the month, Arlington, Texas, coming your way. Real American Freestyle, Gable Stephson is going to be on the card. Real American Freestyle.com has all the information for tickets. We'll be talking about it in the coming weeks.

Eric, thanks for all the time today. Special shout out to Mike Dawkins too. I thought he was terrific today, Eric. Yeah, he was. And I'm looking forward to connecting with Raj Raj. It was kind enough to kind of sit back and enjoy this show and give Mike more time. So thanks to you. Raj. We'll talk to you next week. And thanks, Conrad, Dave. This is a fun show. I enjoyed it. Fantastic show. Hit the subscribe button. Tell a friend. And we'll see you next week right here on

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