83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 428: 30th Anniversary of Scott Hall's Invasion of Monday Nitro

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

On this episode of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff, Eric and Conrad go LIVE to celebrate the 30th anniversary of one of the most shocking moments in wrestling history, Scott Hall's unforgettable invasion of Monday Nitro. Eric pulls back the curtain on how the angle came together behind the scenes, the risks involved, and the massive impact it had on the wrestling business forever. Joining the show is Nitro and Beyond Nitro author Guy Evans, who brings his extensive research and insight into the creation of the storyline, the backstage reactions, and how the moment helped change the course of professional wrestling during the Monday Night Wars. Plus, the guys discuss all the latest happenings across the wrestling world in another loaded edition of 83 Weeks.       THIS WEEKS SPONSORS 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. 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. MUDWATER - Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code 83WEEKS at http://mudwtr.com/83WEEKS  ! #mudwtrpod BETTER WILD - Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at http://betterwild.com/BISCHOFF  HARRY'S PLUS - Get the Harry's Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://harrys.com/83WEEKS #Harryspod 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  . QUINCE - Pieces that feel as good as they look. Go to http://Quince.com/83WEEKS  for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com  to learn more.

Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Chew Studio right now. When you buy two months of Bluetooth gold, you get the third for free with the promo code 83 weeks at Bluetooth. com. Hey, hang, it's Conrad the Mortgage Guy and you're listening to 80s. And of course we couldn't do it without the birthday boy. Happy birthday. Mr. Eric Vischoff, how are you kind, sir? I'm good.

I'm good. I woke up this morning and forgot it was my birthday. until I picked up my phone and saw my social media and remembered it was my birthday. So thank you very much. It's great to be a lot. Well, you're looking better than ever. What part of the world are you in today? I'm in Dallas, Arlington, to be specific, evidently people in Arlington get a little pissed

off when you refer to them as Dallas and vice versa. So I am in Arlington at a beautiful hotel. I'll keep that quiet for now. But yeah, enjoying it. Just got in this afternoon and looking forward to a fun of four days here. I spent a lot of time in Arlington last July. I hope you have a great time at the lows, just a guess. But it is, they have two unbelievable properties there that every time I would go in there,

I'm like, what, where am I? Arlington, who knew? Yep. I do want to start with some big news. Of course, we're here to celebrate. I can't believe this is real. Eric, it's been 30 years since Scott Hall came down the stairs on a Monday night row and changed wrestling forever.

We're going to be talking about that. If you've got questions for Eric, we certainly wanted to do this live to give you an opportunity to pick his brain just right off the cuff. It's crazy to think that was 30 years ago. Is it not, Eric? It's trippy for sure. It plays games with my head because to be honest with you, you know, I'm sitting. I'm 71 years old, right, today. And in my head, I'm 28, maybe 33, 35 tops.

I so when I you know get up in the morning like I said I looked at my social media and you know because it should the 30 years ago happened on my birthday I turned 41 years old the day that Scott Hall made this move but it just seems like yesterday and I in just this morning I was thinking about that because that really was I always think we've talked about this before I was like to go back and think what where was the very beginning of an idea or concept or a product, a new product that's being developed or something new and unique to the marketplace. And in this case, it was a storyline. And this isn't about me, really.

This is about timing and just the unique position the audience was in, much like they are right now in this moment, kind of a little bit bored with what's been going on in WW back then, F, and looking for something a little different. through no design of my own, all because of Ted Turner, we end up going head to head. That's where WCW kicks in and we decide to do something completely different than a WWF. And it all started really with Scott Hall coming down through that audience and making that state, you know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here.

And of course, at the end of the show, you want a war, you got a war. just the state of the industry, the state of television, Ted's mentality at the time and my hunger and passion for doing something different, it literally did that one moment when Scott came down through the crowd. Mike Enos was in a match with somebody. And that moment is what really, and people say this all the time, oh, this guy changed the wrestling business or this company has changed the business. Bullshit.

not to the degree Scott Hall coming down through the crowd in igniting a fuse that exploded into, I think, other than the early 80s, the most popular time sports entertainment has ever seen, and we're continuing to enjoy the benefits of that to this day. When it's all said and done with Eric Bischoff's venture into pro wrestling, obviously you're writing the second chapter of your life with this Real American Freestyle. and we're going to talk about that. You've got a big event coming up in Dallas this weekend. But when you think about your time in wrestling,

will anything ever compare do you think to the NWO storyline or for that matter, just as far as trying to contextualize the importance and the significance of the NWO storyline, it's clearly number one in WCW history, but I think there's an argument for wrestling as a whole. I want to hear from you guys live right now on YouTube. Where do you think the NWA,

the NWO's story will rank all time. But as far as just your personal connective tissue to wrestling, that's really your legacy, the NWO, right? More than anything else, maybe, or is it Nitro? What do you think? Well, it's probably NWO because that's, I mean, that's what people still talk about to this day.

There's no WCW merchandise for sale and available in the WWE online shop. There's a lot of NWO merch still out there. So it, obviously, be NWL, probably because of what I just said, just because it was such a seismic shift in the nature of the way wrestling was presented to the audience not only in WCW and Nitro, but eventually through the attitude era in WWE, when they had basically adopted our 18 to 49 year old live to action video, or excuse me, live to action, live action presentation. So it will always be that because that gets me. probably received a much broader exposure. But to me,

I think real American freestyle is going to become a close second just because of professionally what we will be able to achieve in such a very short period of time. And to be able to, you know, with WCW, I took something that was broken and fixed it. With Real American Freestyle, We all, Chad Bronstein, Izzy Martinez, Hal Cogan, and Eric Bischoff sat around a table in Tampa, Florida just about 13 months ago and went, well, what should we do with this idea? And to go from just trying to create something, you know, around a kitchen table, you know, in the fun of the moment and the commitment we all made, okay, let's figure it out.

We didn't know what it was. So to be able to create a format that takes a property, amateur wrestling, and be able to present it in an fast-paced, entertaining way, because that's the code, right? If you could correct that code, you've got a hot property. Make it entertaining, make it fast-paced. And to be able to look at amateur wrestling and other people have tried to do it, it's not like we were the first ones.

but nobody figured out how to make it fun and entertaining. And that really came from my experience in wrestling. Not only what I did, but watching what Vince did and watching what others in wrestling did. I didn't just learn from my own set of successes and failures. I learned from a lot of other people's too during that same period of time because I was watching fairly closely. What was working and what wasn't. Not what I liked and what I didn't like, what was working and what wasn't. So I don't know.

I think Real American Free style I'm hoping is going to be my legacy because it's, it's becoming such a thing. You know, you're going to be hearing, you know, news here in the next couple weeks pretty consistently about some of the moves we're making domestically as well as internationally, which I'm really,

really excited about because it's going to happen fast. It's not lost on me. I don't know if it's Kismet or what, but the idea that the NWO, what so many wrestling fans associate with you, they think of that. be your legacy. It was also on your birthday. Like, how special is that? I mean, imagine if Hulk Hogan and Hulkomania and the WWF title win, if that was on his

birthday or WrestleMania 3 was, but the creation of the NWO is on your dog on birthday. It's like it was supposed to be this way, Eric. Yeah, it's, well, it makes it impossible to forget. Every year somebody reminds me. Thank goodness. I appreciate it. We have. We, our live viewers, we greatly appreciate you guys hanging out with us right now. And 74% think the NWO was the greatest storyline ever. 20% say it's top three and the rest say top 10. Not a single person thinks the NWO idea and concept is not a top 10 idea. Let me go ahead and give you a top 10 idea.

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you get the third for free with the promo code 83 weeks. That's promo code 83 weeks. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Bluetooth for sponsoring today's podcast. So we are live with Eric right now. We're talking all things NWO and Scott Hall on this 30th anniversary. It is a big day. Keep those questions coming.

We're going to get to all of them. But before we get into the NWO business, there has been a major shift in the pro wrestling landscape that we're just learning about today. And we're going to see how these changes unfold. But somehow, some way, New Japan pro wrestling has been sold, Eric.

Have you heard about this? I did hear about it. I left Cody this morning at 5.21 a.m. I was proud of myself to make that flight. It was close. Very close. But yeah, I did read about it this morning on my way here. Well, I'm excited for us to dig in and I'll admit, I don't keep up with everything

New Japan the way maybe I should. I've been trying to read and keep up, but I thought maybe we should invite in a friend of the show, a first timer. Let's welcome to the program from the pro wrestling torch. I can't believe this is real. Todd, what's going on. Oh, man. How are you?

Hi, Conrad. Hi, Eric. It's nice to be here with you. Oh, it works. We're excited to have you with us. man, thanks for making time. Hope everybody will check out the pro wrestling torch, but I know you've been monitoring this situation.

What's the latest, Todd? What can you tell us about what to expect with this New Japan business dealings? Yeah, it's a big story, and we're waiting to see more and how it ends up transpiring. Bushi Road, which was the owner of the company going back to 2012,

and had overseen the rise in popularity of the product, both domestically in Japan as well as internationally, has sold their shares to a combination of TV Asai, which has been their television partners since really the beginning days of the company back in 1970s, as well as cyber agent, which are the owners of NOAA and DDT in Japan. So we're going to see what happens from here. There are reasons to be optimistic. Bushi Road has generally been good stewards of the product, but in late it hasn't been as good.

You mentioned Conrad. You haven't been following it as much as you'd like. And I think a lot of people that want to like the product have trouble with the current product. They took too long to develop new stars after a number of stars left for the United States. And there's a time period there where they could have used their older stars like Tetsu Yanito, Kuzhoka, Will Osprey, to get over a new generation of stars like Yodosugi, Yulamura, people like that, sort of Umano. But they didn't really do it. They didn't really use the older stars to put over the newer stars.

And they had a doldrums period after those stars left. And they took their time getting around to newer stars. and the company's result lost a lot of popularity. The amount that they sold for is way under their valuation the last time they did it back in 2019. So there's going to be some digging out. And the fact that they're doing it with their television partner, I think is a cause for optimism

because potentially that can mean better time slots, maybe better, more access to specials. They're going to be more invested in them. But not necessarily. I mean, we saw this in the United States with Bellator selling itself to Viacom back in the day, I'm forgetting the year was 2011, 12, 13. And at the time, we thought this is great.

You know, it's going to be an opportunity for Bellator to be featured more on Viacom. They're going to be invested in them. And for a while, it was a good partnership between the two. But the issue with television partner having such a big stake is that if it's not producing the numbers that they hope for, they can lose interest in a hurry. And, you know, once Viacom no longer thought Bellator was a good property, that was kind of bit for Bellator. They sold them out for a very low amount and got bit of them. And that was the end of Bellator. So the question is, how invested is TV ASE in the product, as well as what their thoughts

are going to be on the product and whether they're going to make changes to it? I really appreciate the download. This is all valuable info. I wanted to ask, you said that you feel like it sold for a lot less than what the 2019 valuation was. Am I reading correctly that it was around a $22 million deal today because in terms, I'll admit, I don't know anything about Japanese television, but in terms of American television, spending $22 million on a product doesn't feel like a substantial investment. And I guess the TV side of this transfer was only like 15 million. So if they only have 15 million invested, that doesn't sound like a huge commitment. Am I wrong time?

No, you're right. And that's a good question to be asking because obviously the amount that you invest in a property is going to dictate how much of an effort you're going to put into it. you know, we've seen with UFC, they got a billion-dollar deal from Paramount. Paramount is going to do absolutely everything they can to make sure that that deal profits and pays off for them, even if they struggle at the beginning of it. Whereas if you have, you know, you take a flyer on a pilot for a television show and you budget them enough for the initial season, you don't have as much of a commitment to them. So that's very much question as to how they feel about it in the amount

of money could potentially signal what that might be. when you take a look at you know what that 2019 valuation was are you privy to what that number was and and percentage wise where do we think we are now and was the big differentiator COVID or a combination of COVID and the exodus of so many stars I would say a combination the I don't have in front me but I believe it was around 140 150 million so it's it's much much smaller but that makes intuitive sense because back then they had all of their stars AW had not started off so there wasn't that pressure and Dadavi hadn't shown as much interest in bringing in Japanese talent as they did later. They had bought in Nakamura, of course, but they hadn't bought in a whole host of

stars that they bought in since then from Japan. So I think there's reason for the average person to think that New Japan doesn't have as good of a place in the marketplace, along with the fact their numbers have gone down. You know, those Tokyo Dome shows around the time back then, they were selling out the Tokyo Dome in January. They're doing big numbers for the big shows at Vyugoku and other places. And then after that, they ended up moving back. They'd moved to two domes shows. They moved back to one.

They weren't drawing very well in recent years. This past year, they did well with Prosh Tanaashi's retirement. But that's a one-time thing. You're not going to be able to do that again. So I think there's good reasons to be cautious about how much New Japan is worth right now relative to what it was back then. Todd, do you have a sense of what the Ring of Honor final sale price was? I know there was lots of rumor and innuendo out there.

about what the Ring of Honor asked was before Tony Con acquired it. But I guess the reason I bring this about is it makes me wonder, do you think Tony Con had an opportunity to purchase New Japan, or was that not even viable because of the television partners? Yeah, I don't believe that Tony has ever released the numbers on what he paid for ROH. So I don't think that information is publicly available. That, by the way, is another example that I mentioned before, of television properties owning companies,

because Sinclair was the one that owned R.O.H, which on a bunch of syndicated networks and then ultimately decided to get rid of it. So another example of how television companies can sour on a property. As far as whether Tony Khan was offered a New Japan, I highly doubt it. I have no insight information on that. But Japan has a different way of doing business than the United States. And the Japanese way of doing business is if it's at all possible, they like to keep Japanese companies in Japanese hands.

And that's particularly true for a company like New Japan. which has been in Japanese hands for decades. When Pride sold to the UFC, it was a big issue in Japan. They were sort of forced to sell. They didn't have a lot of options at that point. And they sold UFC sort of the bare bones of it, but they didn't sell them a lot of. It made it difficult because the way the contracts were done

for UFC to get what they thought they were buying. And that speaks to the way that Japanese companies tend to not like to sell to foreign entities. So I strongly doubt. that Tony Kahn was approached with an offer because I think he would have offered more money, quite frankly, but I also think that New Japan wouldn't have been wildly interested in doing so. This is also fascinating to me. I do want to ask if you can talk to us a little bit about cyber agent.

From what I hear online, I guess they obviously platform a lot of other Japanese wrestling promotions, but I guess they have some ties to WWB as well. And my understanding is maybe some of that is coming to an end with WWB transitioning to Netflix. but does that represent an opportunity for WWE? I guess what I'm driving at is, do we think this could be a fork in the road in the new Japan AEW relationship because it does feel like WW probably has a larger global presence in Japan

and maybe that TCO would want to capitalize on that, especially if they have an existing partnership or where does all that stand? And I know at this point is just speculation. Yeah, it's another very interesting question. Yeah, WVE is out of relationship with cyberhansans through pro wrestling, no and is sent over some of their stars into pro wrestling no as recently as a few weeks ago. So yeah, there is a relationship there. And I suppose it's conceivable that this purchase would lead to the cyber agent slash TV assay side being more interested potentially in working with

NDAB. If I had to guess, I would say they don't move in that direction. I think there's more to be gained from the AEW side, both in terms of talent they have access to, and both in terms of being able to have more leverage in terms of trying to dictate where people are going to go when they become available. I'm sorry to interrupt you, and you're making some really good points, but if you're, if you're T. V. Asahi or New Japan or wrestling or both, and you're kind of doing either or AEW or WWE, you know, the handwriting on the wall isn't all that pretty for AEW, whereas WWE is standing on pretty solid ground, business-wise.

Well, that remains to be seen. I mean, certainly that it be because of their name equity and because of the deals that they have, has a stronger footing and a larger imprint than AW does. But not always is the best partner, the one that is the strongest company. Sometimes there are other benefits to working with the company in the way that they deal with people. How about a company that is likely to lose their television distribution within the next 24 months? Well, I'm not sure. That's true. I mean, I think it's possible.

but, you know, AED has proven to be a pretty reliable ratings draw for the WBD side. And I think there will be other companies that will be potentially interested in them afterwards. So I think it's an open question. I mean, certainly it could happen. But I would not take that as a given. And I think that's something that Cyber Asian and TBSC would be looking to do their due diligence on to try to determine whether they think that AEW's footing would be. How do you do due diligence on? Paramount.

It's up to them. So how do you do due diligence on a network that may or may not even know for sure what it wants to do yet? Well, you can get your feelers out there, talk to Tony Kahn. I wouldn't think that they would have a lot of other networks that would be particularly keen to talk about it. But if you sense that there are other partners that would be interested in potentially working with them, then that would give you more of a sense of what they're going to do along with just what Tony Kahn would be doing afterwards. you know, there's a lot of money there. So I think even if they lost their television for a time,

they would have more wherewithal to stick with it and to wait for the right deal to come along if that would happen. But you're certainly right that I don't think they're going to be able to contact Paramount directly and say, hey, Paramount, can you confirm for us whether you're going to be... That's what due diligence is. You use the term not me, so I was just curious. Well, no, there's all sorts of due diligence. You can learn about entities in a number of different channels,

a number of different ways, aside from just asking one particular partner directly. Let's talk a little bit about comps. I hate that my brain works this way, but a guy who's been in the real estate business for a long time, I always look for what I would call a comparable sale. And there's been a rumor out there for a while that T&A was looking for a partner. They wanted to be acquired. There was a sale price floated around. I've heard the number.

Other people have heard the number. But when I hear the number that New Japan just sold for, and I know that the library is a big piece of this. I wanted to sort of have a conversation about that because I see lots of clips through the years on social media, social media that have been taken down because their television partner didn't want those clips out there. Where does the ownership of the New Japan Library truly lie? Is it now better suited to be monetized and packaged? Maybe New Japan didn't have that opportunity before. And is that maybe what affected the sale price? Or is this selling so much lower going to negatively affect future opportunities for TNA or because those are so separate

North America versus Japan, it's not even apples to apples as apples to pomegranate. I don't know if it's that distinct between the two, but it's certainly not an apples to apples comparison because as you bring up, the American market and the Japanese market are very different in terms of the amount of money that's coming in with some of these rights deals. And in general, American properties are able to be monetized in a lot of different places that Japanese companies aren't necessarily going to be monetized as strong. You know, for example, Europe generally are going to be able to do better with American properties than the Japanese products.

Although the New Japan world did pretty well in different parts of the world. So I think it's an open question as to whether they're able to get a larger deal in the future and how that'll compare to TNA. I will say this in terms of TVA being able to dictate the amount of availability of videos. They were able to put up a lot of old videos on a New Japan world. A lot of them were dubbed over by the New Japan announcers. And it didn't seem to cause too much of a problem in terms of being able to use some of those videos to sell to potential consumers.

So I don't know that this would make a big difference in terms of the available, in terms of the way that they're able to monetize their video libraries. But I do think that there's a difference in terms of the video library quality and the amount that they can monetize for between. TNA and New Japan with the key differences being New Japan I think has a much more I would say valuable library in like a larger sense in just terms of like the amount of wrestlers that are in it the amount of different interesting things you can show as compared to TNA but I think the fact the TNA is in the United States there's a larger market in the United States than Japan and you can

sell that to more different places than you potentially can in New Japan gives TNA advantages in that regard so I would say if I'm TNA and I look at this deal I wouldn't make me particularly excited, but I also wouldn't be terribly concerned by it. If I were looking to sell the TNA promotion and sell it, sell its library, I wouldn't view this as necessarily something they would dictate what they would be able to get. I do want to ask you about the WWE archives. You know, for years and years, we were all fortunate here in North America to be able to watch it on the WWE network. It feels like a lot of the archival stuff is now popping up on YouTube. Does that represent an opportunity for the television partner, the now majority owner of New

Japan, perhaps doing some sort of deal to get the, the WW archives, perhaps dubbed in Japanese on that platform. Is that an opportunity, do you think? I mean, there would be a lot of things that have to do before that, because obviously they'd have to switch their allegiances more to DEDAB. They'd also have to get those rights and distributions. And I don't know how keen DEDAB would be on that. I think DEDAB might think, hey, if we want to start marketing more of our stuff towards

the Japanese market, we have the, resources to do that ourselves. We don't necessarily need someone to be the conduit for that. So I mean, potentially, but it seems to me unlikely it would come to that. It's interesting to think about just how nominal in a scheme of things that the investment was here. So I just can't help but think there's going to be another play down the road. Of course, we're talking about things and there's still some uncertainty in the air. I don't think anybody or haven't read any firm answers. Maybe you know, Todd. what should we expect with stardom?

Well, stardom is still going to be under ownership of bushy road, and so stardom will still be run by them. This could potentially hurt their relationship with New Japan, which has been pretty strong because it's not the same umbrella that they're under. But I would think that the two partners would generally be happy to work together, at least for the time being. But it's something worth monitoring because the other side does, the cyber agent rather, does have their own.

women's promotion, Tokyo Joshi Pro. So it's conceivable that they would prioritize Tokyo Joshi Pro when they have women's wresters in New Japan, and that would hurt stardom's role. I'm sure it's something they discussed, and I would think that they wouldn't have been keen on this relationship, Bouchie Vaux, that is, if they thought that it was going to lead to stardom just sort of being pushed out of the way of any relationship with New Japan. But, you know, as we've seen with, with, what happened with Vincent Mann selling, selling his company, what you think is going to happen when you go into a sale doesn't necessarily indicate what's going to happen after sales

complete. We are just about a month away. I think it's June 28th from AEW Forbidden Door. Historically, they've done that with CMLL and New Japan. I know this New Japan deal was announced today, Todd, but when does it like go into, when does it become effective? Do we know a date yet? I don't know.

Well, I, uh, sorry. No, no, no, I think that's great. I appreciate the transparency. I just know a lot of times these deals are announced, and then they don't close for weeks or months. But this is just sort of announcing the intention. Eric, what's your read on all of this? I mean, you've been perhaps victim number one of a television network owning a wrestling company.

What do you make of this New Japan development today? Not much because I don't know much about it. It's a lot of little tiny moving pieces. New Japan hasn't been much of anything since probably the, what, mid, late 90s, early 2000s, it started just deteriorating as a brand that I kind of lost interest in it. And part of that is, you know, I moved on and a lot of the people like Inoki and Masa Sayido and Baizu San and a lot of people that ran the operation were no longer there. And that's when things really started to deteriorate.

I think right now it's a lot of conversation about a relatively insignificant outside of Japan business. I think there's a lot of wrestling fans here in America who love them, some WWE and AEW, and a lot of those rosters were developed by New Japan. So people are going to be paying attention to this in the coming weeks and months. Todd, this was fantastic. You were dynamic.

I greatly appreciate all the time. Tell everybody how they can keep up with all the fabulous work you do with the torch. Yeah, thanks for having me on. And yeah, I do my pro wrestling torch VIP show with Wade Keller every week. It's called The Fix. We talk about all contemporary views in pro wrestling. I also have my own YouTube show now. It's called Wrestling Through the Years.

Only started out in the last month or so. So I'd encourage people to check that out. We talk about wrestling history. So we've been talking about the War of 1984, the Rise of the Road Warriors. Actually, I was just talking the other week about Ricky Choshu jumping from New Japan to All Japan in 1984, which was a precursor to NWO deal that you were just talking about with Eric, where he jumped as sort of an outsider of sorts to the other country. You're high as fuck.

He's just, I can't tell you anymore. You are just, you're done. We're wrapping this segment. Wait a minute. Hang on now. Let's let Todd. I'm fascinated by this. You're telling the Ricky Toshu story for 1984.

Where can we keep up with that? No, he's telling us that the NWO idea came. At least that's how I'm understanding this conversation. It was an inspiration. I'm not saying so. By the way, you have no idea what you're talking about. Well, that's fine. I thought the NW.O. angle was, as you mentioned, the beginning,

one of the most successful angles in wrestling history. It was. It had nothing to do with Ricky Shoshu, you knucklehead. Oh, my gosh. That's fine, John. Tell us the name of the YouTube channel. Yeah, it's wrestling through the years. And I appreciate being on.

No offense taken, Eric. No, and you know what? I appreciate you being on as well. Hopefully you took it in this spirit it was intended, which is semi lighthearted fun. Well, we appreciate Todd jumping on. We learned a lot about New Japan. Let's learn a little bit about mud water. I know this is something that Eric and I can both agree on. Are you one of those people who loves coffee, the taste, the smell, the whole ritual, but the caffeine sends you straight into an anxiety spiral? Well, a lot of people feel that way, including my wife. She loves to try new coffee shops and fun seasonal drinks, but after one full cup, suddenly her heart is sprinting, her brain is running in five different directions.

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you. That's what you get for having knuckleheads on our show. I can't sit here to listen to it. I just can't. I sat here for the longest time and I'm bite my lip. I'm just squirming in my chair. I'm looking at my phone. I'm doing everything I could to not pay attention to this

idiot. And I couldn't take it anymore. I just couldn't take it. When he said Ricky Chosho's the inspiration for the NW.S. Like, okay, no, I can't take it. He didn't say it was the inspiration. He said it was a similar story. of one guy jumping from her. It wasn't a similar story. It's stupid. I'm not even going to entertain

the conversation because one had nothing to do with the other except for in the minds of these dirt sheet readers and wannabes and now editors and writers. It's ridiculous. It's entertaining, but still. I love that he got you so fired up. I mean, he was simply saying that a guy jumped from one group to another. And that was the inspiration for one of the biggest storylines in wrestling. That's what he was saying. He's a fucking idiot for saying it. He didn't say it was an inspiration. He said that something like that happened in 84 in Japan, where you had a guy switched to a rival league. Nobody's comparing Ricky Choshu jumping ship to the NW. He didn't say that. Hmm. Well, okay. I thought he did. I love that you're so defensive of

your idea that we're all here to celebrate. I just don't like stupid shit. I'm not defensive at all. I honestly, in the big scheme of things, hey, it's great. I'm really proud of it. Help me get to where I am today in many respects. But other than that, I really don't think about it until we talk about it. But if we're going to talk about it and I'm going to sit here and listen to somebody that doesn't have any clue whatsoever what the inspiration of the NWO was to tell me, which he did, we could go back and listen. It was the inspiration. His words, not mine.

So, eh. I'm just having fun. I love that we got red-ass Eric. By the way, I'm smiling for crying out loud. How many people do you know that smile when they're hot? I'm fine. I'm just saying I'd like for the record to show that I lined up a guest

who I thought could talk about a major wrestling news story for you to then say, don't give a shit, it's always sucked, and this guy sucks. Get him off the show. When he's giving a plug for his goddamn shit, come on help me out. That's what he gets for being stupid. Oh, say stupid shit, get stupid prizes.

So what can I tell you? Todd, that was fantastic. Thank you very much. Everybody. Hey, if you want to come on again next week, I promise I won't beat you up. I'll put you over. Zero chance Todd ever wants to come back.

And I actually don't care. I thought you liked Wade Keller. Wade, Wade, Wade helped us out and got us Todd. Now you don't like Wade. either. What's the heat, brother? I don't, look, if Wade would have said something stupid like that, I would have called it out. If my best friend would have said something stupid like that, I would have called it out. So it's got nothing to do with how I feel about somebody. I just, I just don't like people saying stupid shit. Well, I'm going to watch some fucking Ricky

Cherokee chair sheet videos after. I feel so bad. I, I mean, I lined up. the guest and you just got it and quartered it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know, that's what I apologize to me. The guy who needed to hear it's fucking gone. He's closed to lap. Trust me. This is the biggest day of his life. This is the most exciting thing that's probably happened to him in the last 10 years.

So it's okay. I'm not feeling bad about it. He's listening right now. Todd, I know you are. You can come back anytime and I promise I'll be kinder and much more gentle. Maybe. Here's what I love about this. I think people feel like every now and again, a certain way about Eric Bischoff.

And every now and again, he has to remind you, he's a new. This is EZE right here at his best. It's 1996 all over again. I can't help. I understand. Frost is what just happened. We have one of the biggest news stories that you and I are not familiar with. It's not in our wheelhouse to keep up with network.

television deals in Japan. So I find an expert. He gets to the very end after we've gotten everything we needed out of him. And I throw to him to the plugs and you just cut it off at the knees. That, my friends, is a power move. Just like how hiring Morgan and Morgan is a power move. They are America's largest injury law firm. They've got over a thousand attorneys across a hundred different locations here in the United States. They've helped recover more than $30 billion for more than half a million clients. I think it's fair to say that more. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. Don't take my word for it, though. Check this success story out. Down in Florida, a client recently

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This is a paid advertisement. Okay, Eric, I'm almost sensitive about doing this now. But in order to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the greatest angle that ever happened in wrestling on your dog. That's not going to do with Ricky Joshua either. Can I bring Guy Evans in or do you hate him too? No, he's good. See, he does his research.

He knows of which he speaks. Okay, well, let's welcome him to the show, the author of your book and the greatest book on WCW ever written, Nitro. And now he's working on some other big stuff. Let's welcome him into the program. Ladies and gentlemen, your friend in mine, Mr. Guy Evans. Guy, Guy, how are you, man? I'm doing great, guys. Always great to be with you.

How are you doing? And happy birthday, Eric. Thank you, Guy. Good to see, man. Listen, man, we're celebrating the big anniversary today of arguably, maybe it's not even arguable, the greatest angle in the history of WCW and maybe pro wrestling, the NWO, it was a shot in the arm of realism. You know, it sort of broke your concentration about everything that was going on in wrestling. On the other channel, we had silly occupational gimmicks.

We had pig farmers and trash bin and everything in between plumbers. And now all of a sudden, we've got Scott Hall coming down those steps. And we still to this day talk about this era as the Monday Night War. And I think Scott Hall's the first person to ever say that word in reference to what was going on. Guy, can you contextualize how big a story this was 30 years ago today? I think it's impossible to put it into context. And it's remarkable, isn't it? That not only has it been 30 years, it doesn't seem like it, but the fact that you go back and you watch that moment and it's still so impactful, you know, all of these years later and just such a.

break from the norm as compared to what we had seen before. You know, I think in other instances, a sort of more traditional approach would have been, you know, to announce Hall's arrival coming next week. There's going to be this major star coming back to the company from the WWF or just having him, you know, come down the entrance way or do something with Mean Gene on the microphone. But the way that he was introduced just so novel, so shocking, so groundbreaking. And, you know, a number of things struck me when I went back. knowing we were going to do this and watch that again today.

You know, the fact that once all is done with his promo in the ring, the crowd is absolutely stunned. I mean, it's like total silence, right? It's like the processing what they've seen, what they've heard, what this means, are the companies, you know, working together, is he with WCW now? Just unbelievable delivery, you know, by Hall, a pitch perfect sort of presentation. the fact that it wasn't a 20, 25 minute meandering, you know, promo with the whole cast of characters. It was quick to the point it completely, you know, you completely understood the gist of what he was talking about in those two minutes.

But equally, so many questions coming out of that. And I think, you know, now we look back on this as just the perfect first step in, you know, what I would consider, you know, the greatest storyline in wrestling history, certainly. and, you know, just an amazing thing to go back and watch all of these years later. You know, it's interesting, I'll jump in real quick and I'll keep it short. One of the, as you were speaking, I was, you know, kind of going back in time and analyzing, you know, some of the reasons why. Some of those little things, those nuances, some of them were big things, but why did they work? And when you look at the audience back then, this was before social media, right? This is early internet.

Really dirt sheets were probably the only way. that inside information or leaks or rumors, you know, mostly bullshit, got into the hands of people who would buy a ticket and go see a show. And then therefore, potentially be kind of smartened up and not surprised that Scott Hall showed up. It was easier to contain that kind of information back then. And that audience, I would say 90% of them or more, was just generally confused. Like, Wait a minute. He's a WW. Wait, that confusion, that state of confusion, because they'd never heard that it could happen. Again, no social media, very little dirt sheet penetration, I'm sure, in Macon, Georgia. And it was unusual. And it was that confusion, I think, that, and in fact, we got sued for this.

Like, federal lawsuit, trademark, all kinds of nasty stuff. big damn deal and part of the claim was intentional confusion of the audience. I can't deny that the audience was confused and I also can't deny that I helped create that confusion, but it really was the holy crap that would be hard to replicate now because I often talk about it wasn't necessarily my idea. It was that idea in that moment when the television audience was in that kind of state is the reason that it worked. But boy, it's. It's just like luck, really, a lot of it, timing. And you mentioned the subtleties, the little things.

I love the fact that, you know, the match was just thrown out, right? That's just a complete afterthought. Even the announcers are basically mumbling under their breath. Like, well, what happened to this match that was in progress? Completely took a backseat to what was happening with the promo. So absolutely, I think you see, don't you, especially in this era of wrestling that, you know, you guys talk about and that we all love, you know, there's so many sort of forces. multipliers that make what was actually happening on screen even bigger.

And I think, as you said that, that the timing in which this all took place is such a critical consideration because of where the internet was at the time, you know, where the audience was in terms of having access to that inside information. So I think, you know, you're absolutely right in terms of to go back to Conrad's question, putting it all in context, you know, that really has to be understood for sure. Dave Meltzer actually wrote about this angle, June 3rd, 1996.

Eric, I don't know that you ever heard this. But here's what Meltzer wrote at the time. From a one-up spinship category, it was the biggest strike Bischoff has pulled off, including the Lex Lugar debut in that he's using McMahon's own storyline parody angles that were supposed to be used against WCW and ended up being used in WCW's biggest angle against the WWF as a way to draw money doing a Japanese-style fake shoot angle built around the promotional war. So we'll set aside the whole Japanese conversation. We know how you feel about that.

No, but that's what, by the way, that's exactly. exactly where that bullshit started right there. Yeah. That's exactly where it started and it's been repeated that Dave Meltzer narrative, that that's where the inspiration came from, from Dave's perspective as he wrote what you just read to me is what is why that knucklehead said the stupid shit he said. I think sometimes when we talk about Scott Hall coming down the steps,

we really talk about that like that's act one, like that was the very beginning. And it certainly was the very, beginning of the NWO. But if you step back and you look at it a little more macro, you would see that, you know, obviously Labor Day 1995, that's when Nitro first gets going. And it is very competitive with Monday Night Raw almost immediately. That sort of gets glossed over quite a bit. But I also think it's worth mentioning that as we got closer and closer to WrestleMania throughout January, February, and March, we were seeing consistently billionaire Ted

skits and the war room stuff with the Huckster and the Nacho man and all of the shenan. against that failed. And that comes to an end at WrestleMania. So we'll call it late March or early April. And now here we are like a month or so later. And now here comes Scott Hall down the steps. If I'm honest with you,

until I reread this quote from Dave Meltzer, I kind of forgot that those were so close that they had just been taking shots at WCW on Monday Night Raw. And now you've got two of those performers showing up. I kind of didn't even imagine Eric or draw the conclusion that, wow, if you were just a wrestling fan who was not smart to the business, I could see how that could be fun to think about.

Hey, they're making fun of Nitro on Raw and all of the sudden characters from Raw show up on WCW. And I know that wasn't your idea necessarily, but the timeline of that, I don't think really clicked for me until we reread that in order to prepare for this show today. No, I agree with you. And again, one didn't necessarily have. anything to do with the other. Meaning, it wasn't like those billionaire Ted's spots motivated me or Ted or anybody else in a way that led us to using Scott Hall and Kevin Nash the way we did.

It was coincidental, you know, but it, there was no connective tissue other than timing of it. It worked out really well because it made it. It's another layer deep, right? It's another, wait a minute. They were just, and now they're throwing shots in each. Now they're showing up. Oh, it's going to get physical. I don't know what percentage of the audience either consciously or subconsciously

was thinking that. I would venture to guess it was probably 80 or 90%. If they noticed at all, if they watched WWE and WCW at all, they noticed that. And it just added to that state of confusion that worked for our benefit. I can't believe this is real, but it was about five years ago that we had Scott Hall joined the program here on 83 weeks and talk about that moment. Of course, at the time, we were celebrating the 25 year anniversary.

Now it's been 30 years. And we've actually got a clip that I wanted to play from Scott's appearance with us, where he's talking about the idea of walking through the crowd. Let's take a listen. I remember we were standing around somewhere in like the production office back stage in Macon. And I was just so happy that I left WAA and I didn't get hurt. And, you know, there was about a half or a third of a house in Macon. And I said, well, you know, I just left Masters Square Garden sold out.

So I've already had, you know, I've already been in front of sold out crowds. And I want that money in the bank. You know, I'm not going to be a mark for myself. So I remember kind of standing around I remember They were talking about Well, he's going to walk down the aisle We're going to play music

We're not going to play music And there was this discussion I remember Larry's Obisco Who I'm a big mark for Was in the meeting Because he was an announcer at the time And he was like, no, no No, no, he doesn't work for us

He's got to come through the crowd I remember that was Larry's contribution It worked out being really Kind of crucial talk to me about that Eric do you remember that meeting i mean i love this conversation and that detail about there's a debate about how to debut him and it was a larry's a visco idea what do you remember that i remember where it was because it it this conversation is funny listening to scott's voice kind of just throws me back it's like time tunnel crazy shit listening to him talk

um i remember the room we were in um It was a kind of a longer, narrow production office, and there was a lot going on in there. And I was actually writing the promo for Scott while we were talking about this issue. And if Scott remembered it specifically, Larry Zabisco, it was Larry Zabisco. And Larry and Scott had a really good relationship. That's why I feel really confident and suggesting that it was that. because Scott and Larry went all the way back to AWA. And they kind of thought, you know, creatively and as far as character work and making things believable,

they were very much on the same page in terms of the way psychology wise and work wise. So that makes sense to me. But I remember, you know, we didn't have it figured out. Now Scott rode with me all the way to make and I picked him up at his own. tell he was saying that they're modeled by the airport picked them up and drove for an hour and a half to make and never once talked about what we were going to do and we didn't start talking about it till we got there really i had a general idea i mean i knew generally what i wanted to do but hadn't laid on any of the color commentary so to speak guy as a fan you know scott hall walking through the

crowd made all the difference in the world to me how about to you it did as i said if you can just contrast that to sort of conventional wisdom as we talked about the way the other wrestling companies previous to that and subsequent to that would have introduced him the way that they did it you know it get impossible to replicate and again impossible to overstate just what an impact that made and you know going back and looking at the the footage now you know 30 years later and thinking about even things like the changes in the production of wrestling and how it's shot and how things come across to the viewer at home, seeing as you're talking about the fan perspective there,

one of the things that jumped out to me actually going back and watching the clip today, and this was by no means, you know, atypical. This was pretty standard at the time for WCW. But the fact that, you know, we've got a single camera trained on Scott the entire time, right? We're not going back and forth from what he's saying to the stunned look of someone in the audience

and then back to Scott and then someone in the crowd, as you see a lot of times today. Things like that, again, from a viewer's standpoint, I think sometimes take you out at the moment. But the fact that you know, you as the viewer at home, by virtue of the way they presented it, we're absolutely tuned in with tunnel vision to what this guy was saying,

as evidently was everyone in the arena. I have evidence by, by this complete silence when he was done. I really love that presentation, that very simple sort of straightforward way of dialing into what a character is saying. And, you know, everyone just, played their part magnificently.

You know, you think about the end of the show when Hall comes back out and, you know, the way that Eric yourself and Bobby Heenan, you know, if I could use this term, you know, sell what just happened to conclude the show and the fact that, you know, Heenan is, you know,

we know him as someone who's never usually lost the words and he's always got acquit and he's totally speechless and has a look of, you know, genuine concern on his face. From a, from a, the way that they presented it,

the way that it was all put together, They're just absolutely magic. And it's really no surprise that we're still talking about it. I'm sure when it's the 40-year anniversary of the 50-year, we'll still be talking about it. You know what, guy, you pointed out something that's really important. And it's so much of it is the little things that I actually forgot about until I hear you speak of them. But Bobby Heenan, the way he sold that, because I forgot until you described it just now, go back and watch. Like, if you're all interested in why the angle worked.

a lot of it was timing and luck and whatever, but a lot of it was in the execution. And a lot of that execution came instinctively by the talent. Scott Hall, Kevin Nash. You know, so much of this was them kind of creating these characters and apply. But Bobby Heenan, the way Bobby sold it because of what guy said, Bobby Hennan's never lost words. He'd usually oversell something, in my opinion,

but the audience loved it most of the time. But when Bobby shifted gears went into speechless mode, which people weren't used to seeing, it must be real. What? Shit matters so much. And when we think about, could it happen again today? Yeah, if you could be fortunate enough to get enough people together with the right instincts that just let it happen.

It would be great. Eric, I do want to ask you. I love something else that God pointed out. The single camera shot on Scott. the entire way through. We've never really talked about that. Is that a Keith Mitchell decision or who deserves the credit for that? Probably it could have been correct. It's hard to say who came up with the idea. It's called an ENG shot or electronic news gathering shot. The premise behind that is if something happens spontaneous, to guys point earlier, you don't want three cameras,

you know, trading, trading angles, right? Because that's produced. That's planned for. cameras are in the right position. Directors calling the shots. That's what we normally see. But if somebody shows up with a machete and there's a camera there, that camera's staying on it. That's news. That's breaking news. That's why they call it an ENG shot, electronic news gathering.

So that's why. Now, who determined that that should be the right shot? Could have been the director. Could have been. Keith was more post-production at that point. David Crockett was on-site. live production, you know, the physical production of the show. Troy Leathers was the director and had a lot more to do with the creative.

And when it came, when creative shots, me, we're live right now with Guy Evans and Eric Bischoff. If you've got a question for us, keep them coming right now on YouTube. By the way, if you're online, I want you to cruise on over to guy Evansbooks.com. Be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. You can get 20% off everything at guy Evansbooks.com. just be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. I still have a few more questions for you,

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That's betterwild.com slash fish off, up to 40% off your order. Betterwild.com slash bischoff. I feel so fortunate, Eric, that five years ago we were able to pin down Scott Hall and have a conversation about this moment. And we actually talked about him interrupting a match with a promo and how different that was. Let's take a listen. well, it felt really cool because to walk out and then people pop for you. And I remember something, and I think maybe, I think you gave me the lead on this, Eric,

just when I interrupted the match, and it wasn't you brony, so there was a couple guys that I knew both of them. Mike Enis was one of them. I can't remember the other guy's name. Yeah. But I was just supposed to hit the ring and grab the mic and start talking. Like, not hit the ring and beat the ring. and beat them up and then hit the sirens.

Ooh, angle alert, angle alert. You know, we were, I think you said, no, just don't go to them. They're just, because then it looked great. I remember Enis looking at me going, what are you doing, man? Like, you know, I think that was the start of it being kind of real, you know. And I don't know, it was a good time since then. I think every week after that, the crowd got bigger, the ratings got better, and we were off to the races.

Isn't that fascinating? Listen to Scott talk about, there's another nuance that I forgot all about until this. But Scott was absolutely right. Coming down, if he would have come down to the ring and done what we've always seen, it would have been another angle, as Scott said, in his own words. But in this was Scott's instinct. Remember what I said a few moments ago about instinct? Scott's instinct was, no, don't go to the ring.

And that confused Mike, as it should, because Mike didn't. know what was going on. Nobody knew. They didn't know. And I didn't want them to know. I wanted their real reaction. So again, if you, you know, recall and reading the narrative about me, one of the things that was kind of true and blown out of proportion was that I didn't like to smarten up announcers. I didn't like to smarten up anybody that didn't need to be smartened up because when you do, you don't get a real reaction. And that was a perfect example of a real reaction. It's awesome. little just those little details being on what makes stuff work you know we've we've seen a boost recently eric in in all things pro wrestling nostalgia from a collectibility standpoint from a

memorabilia standpoint can you imagine what scott hall's jean jacket vest would be worth today if somebody knew where that thing was it'd be unbelievable isn't it oh sure would sure would guys you think about these uh origins of the nw o story i know you've done more research on this than anything else. You also heard Eric sort of pee this whole conversation up by saying, hey, it felt so real, I got sued over it. Can you give us any contact those lawsuits that emerged after this appearance? Yeah, I mean, if you read the first Nitro book,

it's pretty exhaustive coverage of that entire affair and everything that came out of that. And as Eric talked about, that was a serious legal situation that arose out of the presentation. of Hall and Nash initially and everything that followed. So, you know, one of the things I think that comes to mind when you ask that question is some of the deliberations that were going on prior to Hall's arrival that came out in the lawsuit in terms of some of the discussions that were going on internally, what should we call this guy, what can we call this guy, and the same, you know, as it relates to Nash as well. But there were some really remarkable exchanges that came out of some of those some of those depositions. Again, you can read the book, you know, some instances of Eric getting frustrated, not suffering, falls gladly in the courtroom, which I find, you know, entertaining. And some of the sarcastic quips from Hall and Nash when they were grilled by various attorneys as to why they were not providing.

detailed enough answers and you can just kind of picture yourself and put yourself in the courtroom. So, yeah, I would say go and read that Nitro book and there's tons and tons of stuff all about what's happening, you know, before, two, during, and then after the lawsuit as well. But very interesting stuff. And Guy, you actually have an audible version of that book right now too, right? Yeah, that's right. Thank you for mentioning that. Actually, all of the books, or both of the books, I should say, both of the Nitro books are on

audible. The first one, Nitro and then beyond Nitro. So certainly if you're a fan of, you know, consuming your wrestling content via audio, which everyone listening to this is, certainly recommends that you do that. You're going to be in for about 31 hours, I think, in total between the two books. But you can go and check out all the, you know, hundreds upon hundreds of five-star reviews and consistently those books are at the top of the bestseller charts. And yeah, I do appreciate you mentioning that. People can go on Audible and listen to the books out. Eric, tell me a little bit about those depositions, as best you can recall.

Do you remember you and Kevin and Scott having some sort of powwow ahead of time? I mean, I think everybody listening to this knows that, hey, being in a deposition can be awfully scary if you're the person who's going to be on the hook. But in this particular case, it's going to be Turner that's going to deal with it. And they've got an army of lawyers. Was this something that you were nervous about or took very? seriously or was it like, hey, this is a nuisance. This is silly. Let's go have some fun with it. Do you recall? No, I had to take it seriously. It was a federal trademark lawsuit. There was a lot of money in state. And also, I didn't want my creative liberty to be jeopardized by a bullshit

lawsuit. That's what I thought this was still do to this to this. Yeah, Turner had lawyers, guess what? They didn't want to defend this at all. All they wanted to do was figure out how small the check could be. That's all they cared about. He did not care about winning. If they would have cared about winning, one of the issues that you can find in guys' work in his book is Jerry McDivitt talking about Scott Hall with the curly thing and the trademark, you know, toothpick thing. That's a WW. That's a Vince McMahon creation for Godson. No, it wasn't. He did it as a diamond stud with the curly cue and the toothpick. But our lawyers folded like cheap tents when WWB brought that up. That's just one example. Guys' book probably has a bunch of them in there.

But I had to take it seriously. But in terms of pow-out, no. There was no getting stories straight. I knew exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it, who I spoke to, who I didn't speak to, and who I did reveal certain information to. I kept that very, very close, primarily because I didn't wanted to leak out. But the benefit to that is because I kept everything so close, there was a limited amount of people that I had to, you know, worry about testifying. When do I say worry just about, you know, whether they get something right or wrong, right? Not necessarily whether they're telling the truth or not. So I wasn't concerned about everybody else. For me, they, you know, Turner's attorney, lead attorney, prepped me pretty well.

and because I was party to it initially, it's answer any question with either a yes or a no. And keep your answer short and keep them sweet. I think if you go back and look at my testimony in Guy's book, you'll see that I take direction pretty well. And there were a couple times when I get into it with Jerry McDivitt a little bit because he thought he was a hard ass and he was intimidating and he wasn't. but he was a really good attorney.

So, you know, he came out on top. But I had fun with him in terms of, you know, not taking his shit. But it was unproductive for WCW because like I said, our attorneys, all they wanted to do was settle for as little as possible. That's how they went into this lawsuit. And the crux of the lawsuit, just so I can remind everybody here, Eric, is that WWE was trying to assert that you were trying to confuse the marketplace and to mislead the, of you were into believing that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were both actively employed by Titan Sports and Vince McMahon and the WWF and there was some sort of interpromotional, but you push back on that, but that's basically the crux of the lawsuit, correct?

Yeah, I mean, this is the crux of the lawsuit. It was, you know, trademark infringement. I don't think confusingly similar was the claim, but it was something like that, you know, intentionally confuse the audience. And look, I will admit, I knew the audience was going to be confused because I didn't, identify them as new characters. Of course the audience is going to be confused. How could they not be confused?

But I didn't do the confusing. The state of the business did the confusing. The fact that I didn't bring them in and call Scott Hall, you know, whatever, and give Kevin Nash a gimmick name, that created confusion. But that's just normal course of business. It wasn't intentional. I just didn't discourage it. That's what I was guilty of, not discouraging the natural kind of engagement of the audience.

I didn't disrupt it. I go, no, no, no, I know what you're probably thinking. Everybody. Don't think that because I don't want to upset Mr. McMahon. So here's what we're doing. No, I didn't do that. I just let nature take its course and didn't correct anybody. do you remember there being other ideas about how to debut i mean i know it sounds like it was that

that day we're coming up with the idea of does he come to the ring you know down the aisle or down the stairs like do you think you had wcw or someone pick out theme music for scott hall like what would that have even sounded like at that point right we wouldn't have had theme music because scott wouldn't have theme music if somebody's interrupting your show they don't have theme music to do it with. Right. And it was in the middle of a mat. So no, there was no theme music. It, we knew generally we knew what we were going to do with Scott All and Kevin Nash. We just didn't fill in, you know, the fine detail of how we were going to do it. We know what. We generally knew how, but we hadn't figured out from an execution point of view the details of how.

As a reminder, we're just a couple of months removed, if that from the whole curtain call. And so it was a big discussion inside the wrestling business of, hey, had they exposed the business? Do you remember, was there ever discussion about acknowledging the fact that, hey, they were Scott Hall?

I mean, that they were the diamond stud and Oz and Master Blaster and Vinnie Vegas and all that silliness ahead of time. That's kind of not addressed here. Did you feel like doing so would have been too inside baseball? It would have taken a shine off of her. Why would Vinnie Vegas? Master Blaster, Wizard?

Who wants to remind people to that? That's some horrible shit. I don't disagree at all. And I think Scott Hall would agree. He actually talked about why he thinks the NWO worked. Let's take a listen. In my opinion, it worked because after the, you know, I guess after the story came out or, you know,

we were still the same looking guys that in the back story was kind of like well we were disgruntled you know we never got an opportunity at wcW and once we got an opportunity wow look what happened we ended up on top now the storyline the way i perceived i remember as i was ever sitting around and discussing it in my head the way i looked at it was like yeah then sent us here to take over I love that, Eric. How great is that clip from Scott? In his head. Yeah. And you know what? That's the way he carried it. And that's the way he performed it. And that's what the audience believed. Well, I believe that we'll be talking about this moment for a long, long time. Guy, you've been

such a resource to us through the years here on 83 weeks. And I know that I don't want to spoil anything, but I think you're working on a real big project right now. People can pick up all of your books right now at guy Evansbooks.com. They can use the promo code 83 weeks and save themselves 20% off. You can also catch both of the Nitro books on Audible. So if you like consuming your content like you are now,

listening to 83 weeks, be sure to check out Nitro and the sequel on Audible. But can you give us a teaser and tell us where we're going with this new project? Maybe some of our listeners don't even know what you've got cooking right now. Yes, and I certainly enjoy

or look forward to you, I should say, speaking to Eric about this as soon as possible, perhaps the next time he's back down here in Florida. Very briefly, at the end of last year, I started a Kickstarter campaign for a Hulk Hogan biographical project, actually a trilogy of books is what I proposed. And, you know, was beyond blown away

at the support of so many people who listened to this podcast, who've read the books in the past, who were just so thrilled that I was going to take this on as a project. And really, it was something that I was spurred to do in large part based on the reaction to Hulks, you know, an untimely death. And just seeing, you know, even in this sort of fragmented media landscape and we all know we're not living in sort of the monoculture that we used to, that we used to live in and so forth, but seeing what genuinely, you know, a massive story that was and unsurprisingly

so, you know, for quite some time after he passed and seeing the reactions pour in, not only in this country, but from all over the world and just the incredible cross-section of people who were affected by this and had their own stories to tell. And it was something that I had already been playing with and sort of did some initial research in that direction. But once that happened, as I say, it really spurred me on to take this on as a project. And it's something that I haven't really done to date. You know, I've done sort of these, I suppose, sweeping sort of historical works like Nitro, Beyond Nitro, and of course helped out people like Eric and Dave Penza with their autobiographies and helping them tell their stories. But I haven't done anything

in the biographical realm. So, you know, as I said, we started this Kickstarter just before Thanksgiving and I think we doubled the funding target which I was so grateful for and so blown away by. And, you know, at this time, I'm about sort of six months in. So I've been focusing my research to date really on Hulk's early years and, you know, growing up in this area and some of the people who were still around who remember him from from those days and really trying to educate myself about, you know, who he was as a person from the very beginning. And I'm sort of slowly making my way now to getting into more of the wrestling days. And, you know, of course, someone like Eric, I'm sure is going to be an absolutely invaluable resource. So it is something that's going to take a little bit of time because, as I mentioned, we're looking at, you know, a series of books here. In my mind, I'd love to get them all out at the same time. You know, I don't want this to be a thing where people read the first book and, you know, have to wait a long period of time for the second one.

So, you know, it is something that is very, very much in daily development. And I'd love to come back on here, you know, in the future and give more updates about it. But it's something I'm really excited about. And I think people should be as well. I'll let you off the hook. But hypothetically, is this a 2027 thing? Yes. So we, on the Kickstarter page originally, we did specify, you know, December of 27 as sort of the ideal

publication date and uh i think at this time at the moment we're on schedule certainly um and as we get closer to that time i'll have a better idea but there's uh nothing to date that tells me that can't be that can't be reached but there's still uh still an awful lot of work to do but yes that's that's the goal that we have in mind for sure well you're doing the lord's work man we wrestling fans can't get enough i can't thank you enough for all the time encourage everybody if you're looking to celebrate NWO. There's no better way to do that than checking out Guy's books. Nitro 1 and 2 is what I'll call them here. You can call them guy Evansbooks.com. Be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. Save yourself 20% off and be sure to catch it on Audible too. Guy, this was terrific, man.

Thank you for all the time today. I really appreciate it. Anytime, guys. It's always great to be with you. Thank you. Thank you, Guy. Thanks, Eric. Hey, we were talking a little bit about Scott Hall. He used to be known as Razor Ramon. I wonder how he would feel about Harry's Plus. I bet he'd dig it. I bet he'd say, hey, yo, I want you to know that your old razor is dulling too fast. It's irritating your neck.

I just know it. That's what everybody says. That's why you need to make the switch to Harry's Plus. And what you're going to realize is how bad your old razor was, especially in those danger zones, you know, your neck, your jawline, under your chin. If you're getting some sort of irritation, it's probably because you don't have the right razor. But what I love about Harry's Plus is it's not. some gimmick with a bunch of features you don't need, you're actually going to love Harry's Plus.

What you're going to find is that every cartridge has a lubricating strip with aloe and vitamin E to help calm that skin down while you're shaving. The blade spacing with Harry's Plus is optimized to glide smoothly and avoid clogging. Those drugstore blades clogged so fast. We all know that. All the blades here honed at three different angles to cut that hair cleanly at the root without tugging. It's true. With Harry's Plus, you get a barbershop quality shave with German engineered blades.

What I love most about Harry's Plus is this is Harry's heaviest handle ever. It's got this advanced pivoting system to reach every corner of your face. It's got that refined blade tech we've been talking about for that closer, smoother shave. But the weighted metal handle just adds more of a sense of control and comfort. But maybe the best part about Harry's Plus is just how doggone affordable it is. Harry owns their own world-class blade factory right here in Germany. There's no outsourcing, no middleman. the same facility. It's all been used for more than 100 years just for blade making.

Harries controls the entire process. From the steel itself, all the way to the shelf, they know how to keep cost low. I mean, why would you pay $30 for refills when Harries gives you the better blades and at a fraction of that price? Harris has the most advanced razor ever. I'm talking Harry's Plus, and it's still cheaper than Gillette Fusion 5. By the way, if you don't love your shave, Harry's is going to make it right, no questions asked. A risk-free truck. means there's zero downside to giving it a shot, and they're making a whole lot more than just razors.

They've got all your grooming essentials. So why not check it out? For a limited time, our listeners can get the Harry's Plus trial set for only $10 at harries.com slash 83 weeks. This set includes the all new Harry's Plus razor. You got one refined five blade cartridge and a two ounce foaming shave gel with all a travel cover to protect it all and all your blades on the go.

Just head on over right now to Harry's. com slash 83 weeks and claim this offer. And once you purchase, they're going to ask you how you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Eric, what an off the rails live episode this has been of 83 weeks. We're celebrating your birthday. We're talking about New Japan. We got clips from Scott Hall that kind of freaked you out.

We got Guy Evans here. But we've also got a studio audience. They've been asking questions. So let's, let's jump to it. If you've got a question for EasyE, now is your chance. AOTV production says, where you can start a fan might attack Scott while walking through the crowd with no security around him. That's something we've never talked about it.

Does it represent some sort of a security risk? Because these days, if we see a WWB or AEW performer go through the crowd, they're flanked with security. But that was not necessary back then, I don't think. Chat me up about that. I think it's more because of litigation issues, you know, fear of lawsuits. So you, now, because we become such a litigious society, and once people figure out, you can kind of take advantage of situations and go home with a payday, you tend to see more and more incidents. And I think everybody kind of smartened up to the fact that it's just too risky from a litigation perspective to have talent making their way through the crowd. And it could be something as innocuous as somebody, you know, running over, coming up a flight of steps to reach out and touch somebody and breaking an ankle.

well, the next thing you know, it's costing you $300,000. So I think in today's environment, it's more about just protecting the company from the fans than it is protecting the talent from the fans. Robbie Red, 1126, a huge fan. Thanks for the amazing memories, Eric. Rated RADU wanted to throw you a little love here as well. Greatly appreciate your support. here's one from it's

Alice it's a solid simulation man who says seeing Nitro from the Mall of America stop me in my channel surfing tracks as a kid can't thank you enough for all of your past efforts and insights Eric a lot of love for you today on your birthday I'm loving that Catherine Summers is with us as she always is

greatly appreciate her being with us for 23 months She says, this happened eight days after my high school graduation in 1996. The same day I told my grandma, I wanted to join the wrestling business. That said, was there anything with the NWO you would have done differently? You know, we heat praise on at the beginning of the show, Eric, and said, this is probably the most important angle in the history of wrestling. And I know other people may discuss, you know, Austin versus McMahon, but would that have ever happened without the NWO?

Probably not. I mean, he was the ringmaster pre-NWO. Chat me up, though. Do you have any regrets about the NWO if you could go back and change one or two things, would you? Of course. Of course. I would have had an ending, not a better ending, just an ending.

Just an ending would have been a better ending, right? Of course. We can talk about all the reasons why none of it matters. We've covered it before. But of course, if there was one thing I could, you know, go back and change. history and and things like that, it would be to be able to come up and be focused on coming up with a really, really good end of that story so that we could begin another one. Just an idea, no bad idea in a brainstorming session.

What about this year in order to celebrate this 30 year anniversary of the NWO? What if we took a little time and spent a little time sort of rebooking a proper ending to the NWI. Would that be fun? Yeah, I would take some time and some thought and some research, but sure, that would be fun because it's fun to go back in time in a what-if scenario. And I get, you know, the wild-ass, you know, what-if scenarios that aren't realistic are a little hard for me to stay interested in. But if we go back and we really look at, you know, what talent was available, what actually could have happened. We've talked about some of this, even with Ant Evans over YouTube.

We've talked about this in the past. If you could recreate a story that was based on what was accessible to you to do and rewrite that story, that would be interesting to me. And you know what? Then the Undertaker comes over and doesn't run in. I don't want, now that shit drives me up a wall. I won't waste my time on that. But if we look at what was actually available and maybe what we think,

could have been available in terms of resources, people, talent. Yeah, let's do that sometimes. I think we'll do it later this year. Ann Evans has named it already. The end WO. So we'll work on that in the coming months. I love that. The end W.O.

Let us know in the comments below. If you had the book, you had the pencil, what would have been the proper ending for the NWO if it was your call? Let us know your ideas and your comments below. and again, take Eric's advice in mind because we're going to look through these comments. We're going to find some good ideas. We're going to shout them out in future episodes. But if you're pitching something like, and then the Undertaker comes over,

we're probably not going to highlight it. But if you've got a good idea, a proper ending for the NWO, we'll talk about it in the coming weeks and months here, as we're celebrating 30 years of the NWO together here. By the way, we did a, I don't know if you saw, but we did a live poll here on YouTube during the show, Eric. and 100% of our fans still use the NWO for life hand signal in real life. How many times a year do people around you just hit you with the four life?

You know, probably three or four or five times a year if I'm at a wrestling related venue, you know, or a convention or something like that, or if I do something, autographed signings, things like that, I see it. But other than that, you know, just walking through the airport, it doesn't happen to. People don't really recognize me anymore. I mean, when they saw me on TV, it looked a little different. So occasionally people will recognize, but it's very rare. I love the idea of us fantasy booking this, uh, a proper end to the NWO.

Off the top of your head, and I know we'll talk about it later, but with the benefit of hindsight, would the time have been 99 or 2000? To end the story? Yeah. 99. Yeah. think so, so.

Yeah. Or even as early as 98. If the idea is to end one story so that you're launching into another, just like a series,

completely different storyline, shifting of characters, new character here or there, but an entirely different arc. I mean, it should go like this,

the arc is going, it's going, it's going, boom, this one stops, this one starts, right? You want to,

just a constant continuation. of story. And I think ending it in 98 would have been, would have been better than 99. How about that? So there's some little Easter eggs for you. If you're interested in giving us your ideas, let us know in the comments below. What would be the best ending that you could book a proper ending for the NWO? And keep in mind, Eric said 98, 99, take a look at those rosters, take a look at the landscape, see what's going on on the other channel. And let us know your

ideas in the comments below right here on YouTube. This is a great question from Alex and Ason 12. What's the coolest thing you ever saw Scott Hall do that you don't tell often? As a young kid, I thought he was the coolest dude ever turning beer into hair jail, but I'm sure he was way cooler off screen. Of course, Kevin Nash refers to him as a movie star. Hard to argue. I mean, he looks like a matinee idol. If you drew a wrestler, it might look like Scott Hall. He did just, come across as cool. Some guys are and some guys aren't. I think that's probably the word we would all use to describe Scott Hall as cool. Did you ever see Scott off camera do something that even in your head, another fellow cool guy, Eric Bischoff would say, hey, you know what,

that's a cool cat right there. It wasn't any one thing that I remember. You know, Scott had a way of speaking. If you go, you know, just listening to him talking to the show from five years ago, He just had this laid-back way of communicating and his cadence, his pace, the tone of his voice. He was a great storyteller, but he always had that kind of laid-back absolutely in control of the room vibe. And that's the cool factor to me. And it was nothing that he would say. It was just the way he carried himself, the way he reacted. I never saw Scott get hot.

When Scott would get angry, he'd start just picking you apart verbally, you know, but you almost couldn't tell if he was pissed or not. That's how good he was at it. Everybody else around knew you were kind of like, oh, that hurt. Is he ribbon? Is this just fun or is he serious? He had that ability to just get under your skin in a way you didn't know how to. react and that was another way of Scott kind of controlling the room he was pretty amazing he had an

aura about him that was just different i don't know if you heard this but there's something that made the news cycle this week that had a lot of people including sean ross sap going huh anthony pyers actually says here uh what are your thoughts on w w writer chris dillon or i guess he's former W.W. writer, Chris Donne. He told the story about how an NWO reboot was planned in 2020, and it would have featured Seamus, Shenzhoui Nakamura, and Lars Sullivan. Have you heard about this? And would this have been the worst idea since the new Midnight Express?

You know, it's funny. I had a couple people that, well, one in particular, Sean Walman reached out to me and said, Hey, did you ever hear anything about this? I said, no, I never heard anything about that. And neither to Kevin Nash, apparently, according to Sean Wilkman. So, you know, the three surviving members of the NWO knew nothing about it. So obviously, we weren't involved in it, which makes me think, maybe there's something lost in translation along the way here.

I don't know, but it seems very unlikely for a lot of reasons. Yeah, could be just silly. internet stupid shit. Let's do a another question here. This one comes to us from a wrestling historian. And he's sort of touching on something I teased earlier. Mr. Bischoff, what if Scott Hall and Kevin Nash came back to WCW as the Diamond Stud and Oz?

Thanks at advance and happy birthday. I don't speak for wrestling historian, but I do think if we're trying to sort of break the fourth wall in realism, I could see, I'm glad it worked out the way it did. But another way of getting there that I don't think have been nearly as effective is to bring these guys back as those characters and then they shed them and talk about how stupid it was or whatever and I'm just Scott Hall and this is just Kevin Nash or whatever whatever it may be but I do feel like those ideas probably get bandied around

as a part of a booking committee as opposed to the singular focus that you had and you were keeping it close to the vest and not really sharing all the information and you didn't want it to leak So as a result, maybe some of those competing voices didn't have a chance to pitch that idea. But thank God. You hate the idea, right? Yeah. Yeah. A lot.

I actually hate the idea of even trying to think about giving Kevin Nash, getting Kevin Nash to put the Oz gimmick on. After he's coming back from WWE as diesel, he's coming back to WZW as fucking Oz. Like pitching that idea. would have been, that would have been entertaining in and of itself. Could have ended up on paper. It could have got me killed. Well, maybe you've been getting killed at your bank.

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Results may vary. See time.com for details and applicable terms. I use a lot. Talk just like that. What, you dated a girl who would talk just like that? Just like that. Just like that. You go out to order, you should, you go out to a restaurant and she'd order food.

She'd order just like that. Poor waiter or waitress and just be like, what? What's worse? When someone orders really, really fast like that or when they modify every single thing they order. Hey, I want this, but can you hold this? Can you not do that? I'll take fast every time. That's what I was going to say.

No, change in the, would you mind if we change this? this and not too much sauce. Oh, my God. Because you know what's going to happen when that order gets to the chef, right? Oh, God. Or the cook. Hopefully it's a chef. If it's a chef, he might come out okay.

If it's just a cook, hungover, maybe, pissed off because it's hot. Yeah. And then you send an order that's like customized. Nah. That happened. We are live right now with Eric Bischoff. It is his birthday and it's the 30-year anniversary of Scott Hall walking down those steps to create the NWO. Rami 8444 is with us here live and wants to know.

Eric, why were you so comfortable talking about the business of wrestling to the audience? I remember your nitro promos talking about schedules, contracts, bookings, popping the hood in a way that Vince never would. Chat me up about that. I think it's because I've always found the business of the wrestling business, the most interesting aspect of it. I didn't get into, well, first of all, I didn't get into the wrestling business because of my own intentions.

It just kind of happened, right place, right time, right opportunity. But even once I got into the wrestling business, it wasn't that I was so fascinated with the wrestling portion of it. Of course, I was interested and entertained by it. How could you not be? But I was really, really motivated by and wanted to learn, even in my early years at AWA, I wanted to learn how the business of the wrestling business worked. I learned how syndication worked, which was a very important part of the revenue stream for AWA at that time, including

their promotional opportunities. Even though it was a very small scale, it allowed me to kind of see how it all worked together. And once I did that, I wanted to learn. I knew nothing about how to produce a show. Zero. I knew which end of a camera to point in which direction. That was it. And to be able to sit down Joe Chupak, Polish Joe, listener to the show. He was our editor at AWA, and he let me sit in at night. And he, you know, didn't teach me how to edit a show, but he taught me how to edit. He taught me the process. He taught me how to thread one-inch tape machines so I could dub tapes because I wanted to learn that part of the wrestling business. So between learning, the advertising side, the television side, the physical production side, and yeah, yeah, even promoting live events. I did a couple of those.

I just was always interested in all of the business units that fall under the umbrella of sports entertainment or professional wrestling. J.F. Pollard is with us. He's got a great question. He wants to know, do you think it was a mistake that the NWO went months without showing any vulnerability and WCW not getting the upper hand in any angles? That's an interesting question. Is there a case to be made otherwise? No, well, yes. I mean, the answer is yes and no. Take your pit. If you want the answer to be yes, then enough said. But I think the question is whether it went on too long. In other words, yes, it went on too long. Had there been a definitive ending, the length of time it would have taken to it,

it would have been less significant. Had there been a satisfying ending of the NWO, nobody would be analyzing how much time you spent in a certain aspect of the arc. Does that make sense? Yes. So yes, the answer is yes, because it didn't have a definitive end, but it very easily could have had we focused on that. And we didn't.

We're getting lots of comments about how much people love the original nitro entrance or just the intro video, the kickoff, the pre-roll, if you will. But rated, or I'm sorry, rare tragedy says in 1997, the NWO took over nitro and took down the set and had its own opening video and music. Do you know who produced the music for the new opening? That's a deep cut, but I imagine that's a Jimmy Hart thing. I'd have to listen to it. I don't think so.

Jimmy's taste was not right. Because you know, Jimmy had a good ear for high energy stuff, kind of get the crowd up and get them excited and motivated. But it had a certain. poppiness to it, sameness to Jimmy's music. So I would have more than likely gone outside for it. And I don't remember where we found it. I'd have to hear it.

I might remember it if I heard it. Sam Murray 1212 wants to know. Eric, while you were at WWE during 02 to 05, did you like the presentation of Monday Night Raw, meaning the Titan Trine, the lighting, the staging, etc. You know, we got your opinion on the way things look when you were in WCW, you, but we never did talk about how you felt about the WWE's presentation. When you were there, 02 to 05, what did you think of their presentation? I didn't think about it much.

You know, I mean, critically, I felt very comfortable. It was pretty much what I was used to at Nitro, only, you know, the Titan Tram was a little nicer and the pyro is a little better or whatever, but the physical presentation of the show really wasn't that much different than what I'd been used to. So no real difference there. I liked it. I was comfortable in it. But as a performer, I didn't really watch the show and think about,

man, I wish Kevin Dunn would do this instead of that. I just didn't look at it that way. I just looked at my performance and everybody else's performance and kind of thought about ways that I can be a better performer. I didn't really think at all about the production side of it. We've got another question here. This one comes to us from AOTV. Productions. This is another big story that everybody's been talking about today. Hey guys,

it was just reported this morning that Vince McMahon and Nick Con destroyed evidence in the merger lawsuit. What do you think of this? To be clear, and add some context here. I think the actual allegation is they were using an app called Signal, which I know a lot of people use, and I guess there are messages that can be automatically deleted. And I think that's kind of the crux of the lawsuit here. Brandon Thurston from Post Wrestling says a new ruling in the WW merger lawsuit, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster found that Vince McMahon and Nick Con destroyed evidence. As a consequence, the court will treat five damaging acts as presumptively true when the case goes to trial next month. Vince, Con, as well as three others, Paul Levec, Stephanie McMahon, and Brad Blum, all use signal auto-delete

function, which wiped out messages they had a legal duty to preserve. The ruling is significant setback for the defendants who are Vince, Kine, Levec, Berrios, and Wilson. The case will now be harder, specifically for McMahon and Khan to prevail against the shareholders plaintiffs allegations. That's the report from Post Wrestling and Brandon Thurston. You know, listen, I don't pretend to be an attorney or really understand all the intricacies of this lawsuit, but I think I do know a little thing about damages. And I just take a look at where the WWE stock was before the merger and where it is now.

And I can't really figure out how anybody lost money. It feels like everybody has made money hand over fifth cents. I don't know. Does this feel like a nuisance lawsuit? Is there something more to it that I'm missing? Where are you on all this, Eric? I have a rather dark view of lawyers and this type of thing to begin with. I'm very cynical. It's just too easy to sue people in this country. And it's too difficult to be innocent in this country. I think we should go to like the British legal system, which is far more fair, which basically says if I'm going to sue you, Conrad, and you have to defend yourself,

if you win, I pay your legal fees. That's what we need in this country because right now you've got lawyers, unfortunately, and we both have friends that are litigators and good ones and good human beings. so I'm not casting an dispersion or a wide net towards all attorneys, but let's be real. There's a lot of them out there that know that, you know, they're not really trying to get, they're trying to get a settlement. They're just in it for a payday. And things are played out in the public domain and cases are tried in the media all the time

right up until the day of court. I just, I'm tired of it all. And I don't believe any of it. No matter who it comes from, I don't believe it. If it's something legal and it's being publicized, I don't believe it. So that's my take. I can't, number one, I don't have the bandwidth to think about it too much because it's complicated, right? If you're really going to think about what this means and what it could mean and wrap your head around the legalities of it all and do the research to find out.

If you're going to spend any time with it, you're going to spend a lot of time with it if you really want to dig into it. have that time or really the interest. So for me, it's just like, man, we'll sit back and wait and see. Too hard to predict. I mean, I think the crux of the lawsuit is, hey, TCO should have taken a better deal. And I get that. In theory, that sounds like a nice idea. But had they taken one of those other deals, what would the stock look like? What opportunity would there have been in the year since? Now, that could have been maybe a richer result at the moment. But if you take a look at the WWE or TKO stock since.

Man, it's been like a hockey stick. It's just straight up. So, and I'm really not following this. So I'm not being a smart ass, but let me see if I get this straight. So you've got stock shareholders who follow class action lawsuit because they feel like Vince manipulated an opportunity that would favor him versus the shareholders, possibly, but that deal enriched shareholders. So what the shareholders are really questioning and suing for is Vince's motivation.

What was his motivation? Was his motivation to make the most money possible for shareholders? Well, if it was, he did. Or was it because he might end up with a favorable deal with this group who just happened to be a favorable financial picture for shareholders? Who cares? Who cares what the motivation was? You won.

Does it matter whether the coach originally intended to throw a touchdown, but the quarterback decided in the huddle to go with a running play instead? Who cares? You won the game? You're going to sue the coach? You're going to sue the quarterback? It's stupid. That's what I mean.

It's just like, uh, in just the amount of money that's being spent here. The, the legal side of this, the fees, it's just, it's,

let's do what the, let's do what the British do. Only when it comes to lawsuits. Oh, the rest of their stuff is crazy. Yeah, I mean, I know that,

um, you know, Vince McMahon is not going to get a sympathetic year for, for all of that. And, and I, understand that. The online sentiment for him is largely negative. But I know it was for Ted DiBiase Jr. as well. And he was found not guilty. But now his life is effectively ruined. And there's

no telling what his lawsuit cost him. Like he had to be several hundreds of thousands of dollars deep. And now that he's won, okay, congrats for your grand prize. You get your reputation slaughtered online and you have a big two comma bill. Like that just feels. unfair. Now, this is a totally different circumstance here. And I'm with you. I just don't know how they're going to be able to find any sort of damages. In that very moment, do I think in my heart of hearts that Vince was looking out to make sure that he was taking care of on the other side? Of course. I think that's natural. I think a lot of people would. And I think that's the heart of the argument is, hey, maybe at that one time event, shareholders could have made more money.

But what I'm saying is in the subsequent months, WWE was cleaning up. They're worth more than ever. right now. It's just hard for me to imagine this being something where there is a big check written, but we'll see. We will be taking over. There's going to be a big check written and the big part of the check is going to go to the lawyers. Yeah. No doubt about that. I do want to talk to you a little bit about Dan Housen. We're going to talk about real American freestyle, but right now we've got to talk about our friends at Quince. You know, lately, a lot of us have had to be more intentional about what we're wearing day to day. I like leaning into pieces that feel easy, comfortable, but still put together, it really just makes getting dressed simpler. And Quince has become a go-to. Their fabrics feel

elevated, the fits are clean, and everything just works without needing to overthink it. Quince has all the wardrobe staples for spring, too. Think European 100% linen shorts and shirts from just 34 bucks, lightweight, breathable, comfortable, but you still look put together and it's clean. 100% hema cotton teas. They have like a softness that you've just got to feel to believe. Their pants also that same balance, relaxed and comfortable, but still polished enough to wear pretty much anywhere. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen.

So you wind up getting premium materials without the markup. And I recently gifted one of those linen shirts. And it's been on a constant rotation. Every time I see my buddy, he's wearing it. And I had to make sure he knew that he can get more where that comes from. It's lightweight, is breathable, but it still looks put. together and it didn't cost what he probably thought it cost. I was almost embarrassed to let him know what a good deal I got. Go refresh your everyday with luxury that you'll actually use.

I'm talking about heading to quince.com slash 83 weeks to hook you up with free shipping on your order and even give me 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash 83 weeks. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash 83 weeks for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash 83 weeks. So, Eric, we are going to talk about real American freestyle, but we just recently talked about Dan Housen and what a juggernaut he's become. And last week here on the program, we pointed out that he was the number two merch seller behind only Cody Rhodes. Well, Cody Rhodes was on ESPN today. promoting their big clash in Italy show.

And he says, Danhausen is the top merch seller. Quote, I think it's safe to say Danhausen is one of the most popular people in all of WWE. He overtook the merch game. I'll tell you who's the king right now with the merch game in WWE. It's Danhausen. He's beating us all. Like, this is unbelievable.

What a great story this is. And it continues to evolve. Danhausen, not number two, number one, says, Cody Rhodes. What do you make of this? I think I said it last time we talked about this. Whatever threshold that Danhausen reached to become number one, according to Cody, he will eclipse that by a multiple of, I said 1.5 last time I'm going to say 1.8 over the fourth quarter. Between Halloween and Christmas, I think Danhausen merch is just going to be stupid. Well, before we get to Halloween, we got to talk about this weekend.

It's Clash in Italy. I don't know if you've been keeping up with this. I briefly want to run through some of the matches. One of the bigger matches that we've seen announced is Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi. I know you don't have the pencil. You're not really in charge of WWE creative to say the least. But we saw what we thought was a retirement from Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania after Oba beat Brock.

There's been lots of rumor and innuendo that no, he's actually going to retire at SummerSlam, but there's also been a whisper about a goonther match. Hypothetically, if you had the book, what would you do this weekend with Brock Lesnar Oba Femi too? Would you have Brock up, Oba up? Would you do something different? Where would this lead if you were in charge? I don't know.

I don't have a feel for this at all. It's clunky as hell. It's, I would have, I would have let her. and retire. I would have just, I mean, I think we talked about this last time. It seems like, you know, Brock in a kind of state of mind, made one decision and found

out legally afterwards that he didn't have that option. That's kind of what it feels like to me. Let me throw this out, actually. There's been speculation that WWE was in on this and this wasn't Brock going rogue, so to speak. They just wanted to make sure that they gave ESPN. a moment on their first sort of WrestleMania simulcast, and it would feel big. Maybe it could be a topic for unreal season, whatever the hell they're working on.

And now it evolves into a series of matches with Oba. I think conventional wrestling wisdom would say, okay, Oba won the first one. Brock wins the second one. And then we have the blow off. Well, if that's the direction that we're headed and that was to hypothetically happen, and I don't know that this is the case in Minneapolis, well, now we never really get that Gunther.

match. Does it make sense to do this one in Italy with Brock and then have the rematch next month in June, the rubber match being in June, and that's going to be in Saudi Arabia. We know the Saudi Arabia shows are big money deals. I feel like the rubber match might not be Minneapolis, but Saudi next month. What say you? Possibly. I mean, there's so many different ways, I guess. If this was to satisfy a television partner, you kind of created this anti-climactic ending. It was a very climatic ending, but an anti-clamatic, I guess, is the right word, funky, at the very least, act one of the next story between Oba or continuing that story.

I don't know, because it felt like the story ended. For me, watching the story ended between Oba and Brock. Brock ended. our story's over and then all of a sudden it's not i'm sorry you got to help me out with that one you got to convince me the reason there's a reason why i'm i'm watching this what happened what's what's he thinking what external force woke brock up in the middle of the night and said go kick his ass i got to know otherwise i can't buy into it i can't even and think about a way to make it make sense because it doesn't make sense to start with.

If you want a story to make sense at the end or even in the middle, it's got to kind of make sense in the beginning. If you can't get me in the beginning, there's no way I'm going to get to the end. That's where I'm at. I don't know. Hopefully they come up with something, though, because this is kind of weird. Let's talk a little bit about what we've got going on with the world title. It's Cody Rhodes versus Gunter this weekend in Italy.

and if I were a betting man, I would say that Goonther gets the win here. It does feel like they built a lot of equity into him last year, and even the beginning of this year. He ends Goldberg's career last July. He finishes up John Cena in December. In January, he retires A.J. Stiles. The rumor in innuendo is that we might be getting Goonther versus Brock

Lesnar at SummerSlam. Maybe that's going to happen. Maybe it's not. But I could totally see them. switching the title to Gunther here after building all of that equity. If they don't do that, what does it mean for Gunther? And do you think Cody needs to have the title? What would you do this weekend?

I don't, I'd turn to go to heal. I don't, Cody probably has no interest in it, but I don't know if he does or doesn't. But I, I need to hit the refresh button here. It's great in all, but it's been great in all for a long time. I need something that's a little different in order to engage. Not that it's not good. It's great. It's great business.

Business-wise, it's great. Business-wise, maybe there's no reason to make any changes. And it's all about the business. It dictates what you do. But if the business is not what it once was, and there's an opportunity to light a new fire under it and create new, business, I'd be all about it, especially right now. So, WWE's kind of reached a flatline.

Flatline, I said it. That doesn't mean it's dead. That just means it's kind of cruising along, just doing the same old stuff every week. That's not a good TV. Good TV grows. There's certain times a year, it's a little harder. It's harder this time of year for a lot of reasons. It's harder in the fall when football kicks in.

But there's a period between. the end of the football season, the regular season at playoffs, especially at the end of the playoffs in about now when NBA playoffs get hot. So you can a window there a couple months. You can really, really heat things up so that you could go into the summer with the audience engaged as best you can. Seasonal. So hopefully they're going to come up with something that kicks in gear and Cody's.

I'd love to see a different character out of Cody. You mentioned that, listen, in TK. corporate speak, they may say that creative is stable, not flatlining, but we know what you mean. How do you feel about Jacob Pitu and Roman Drain's? They're hooking it up for the title this weekend. It's been Roman's time, a long time. Would you strap the rocket to Jacob Pahoo, or is it too much too soon, at least in your mind at this point? From a distant perspective on the outside looking in. I think my instinct would be to protect Roman.

This might not be the best opportunity or the right time. Well, we're going to remain to see what happens. It happens this Sunday. We're going to talk about it next week here on the program. Something everybody's been talking about this week, though, and the comments continue to pour in.

I don't know if you've been keeping up with this, but the Knicks have swept everybody. They've played the playoffs or so. it seems. Now they're in the finals for the first time since like 1999. It's a big damn deal. And along the way, WWE managed to send Danhausen to ESPN, where he cursed the cavaliers. And somehow, some way, he's taking credit for this. It feels like a huge opportunity to capitalize on some basketball fandom and get some eyeballs on the WWE product. And when I think about that crossover, I don't think, I don't have to think very hard. I think about you in 19,

1997 with Dennis Rodman. Have you been keeping up with any of the Danhausen-Nick stuff this off-season? Yeah, I think it's fun. I'm just so impressed with Danhausen and the thinking and the effort on his part, the professionalism is so entertaining. It's so fun. It's harmless. It's harmless fun.

And it's nice to see some of that for a change. My favorite part of the Dan Housen character is that he's so out front about what he wants you to do, but he says it in a joking way. Like we've heard stories, and I won't name names here, but apparently some fans have had less than ideal interactions with legends at conventions where they would say, hey, buy a picture, buy an autograph, or whatever. Dan Housen just comes out and says, give me human monies for my merch.

And it works. Like the idea that we just softened it up a little. bit by calling it human monies. It's working. And I think old Danhausen is going to make a lot of human monies. I don't know if you've seen, but they've done creative in the WWE calling this European tour, the Danhausen summer vacation tour. He's not in the main events. These are not world title fights. He's not necessarily a ratings juggernaut, but fans just love that Danhausen. And now they're calling it the Danhausen summer vacation tour. This has got to be a case study in wrestling for years to come, don't you think,

Eric? Man, you just took the words out of my mouth, but I'm going to taking a step further. So there's two schools of thought when it comes to sports entertainment. Is that it's entertainment. It's a character-driven, storyline-driven, over-the-top form of entertainment. And the best wrestlers are the ones who create the most entertaining properties

and content. Those are the best wrestlers. And they're measured by their financial success as professional wrestlers or professional sports entertainers. Take your pick. Dave Meltzer, on the other hand, in his ilk of sociopaths, think that the best wrestlers are the most gymnastics ability. Whoa. There goes my camera. We are live, folks.

at 83. Be sure to hit that subscribe button and turn on the notifications bill. You never know what can happen on live TV. I'm in a hotel room. I started talking with my hands. The shit started flying. Anyway,

my point is maybe the best wrestlers, sports entertainers, professional or otherwise, are the ones that make the most money. And right now, Danhausen, although he is not what you would call a ratings getter,

as you said, he's probably making top money. And he's good for business. That's the best part. He's really good for business. That crossover, yes, it's revenue, but it's also good branding. It's good for the business. It's good for business for Real American Freestyle in Arlington.

Tickets are on sale now at real American freestyle.com or you can do what I'm doing this weekend. I'm going to be watching on the Fox Nation app. I'll be watching the main event with Gable Stephson. That's right. You've seen him everywhere, including winning medals in the Olympics. Now he's in the main event in the heavyweight division. Colby Covington is doubling down and spending more time with Real American Freestyle to take on Chris

Weidman this weekend. It's the co-main event at a catchweight. We've got Kyle Snyder on the card, Frankie Edgar on the card, Real Woods on the card. I mean, this is a loaded-ass card. Tickets are on sale now at Real American Freestyle.com. What are you looking forward to the most this weekend, Eric? I'm a big Kyle Snyder fan. I think Kyle Snyder is going to be a breakout.

Breakout Star and R.A.F. He loves freestyle wrestling. Kyle Snyder, if he wanted to, could certainly correct the MMA business, but he loves freestyle wrestling, and he's such a powerhouse. Obviously, Colby Covington is becoming kind of a face of real American freestyle. I'll tell you one that's going to be fun to watch is Armand and Mugsy. I know Mugsy's an influencer. people who kind of have their own opinion about that. Armand, you know, he comes from a grappling background from Armenia for crying out loud.

Agostan, he's trained in those environments as a grappler, but he's really aggressive, and he can go with restyllers. So that's going to be a fun one to watch. They're all going to be great. I mean, we just have some of the best freestyle wrestlers absolutely in the world, and we have a lot of great crossover. C MMA stars who have a freestyle background who love what we're doing and are coming to us hoping to be able to participate. It's a, it's a great thing. It's a beautiful thing, actually.

Kyle Snyder is going to be defending his light heavyweight championship. Check him and all the rest of the card out this weekend. It's going down this Saturday. Tickets are on sale now at real American freestyle.com or do what I'm doing. Watch on the Fox Nation app. It's happening this Saturday at 8 o'clock Eastern. Eric's on site now. And Eric, man, I appreciate you spending so much time with us on your birthday today. What's on the birthday dinner? What do you got lined up? Is it a t-bone? Is it a porterhouse? You go in filet? What kind of steak are you eating for dinner tonight? I'm feeling a ribby. I'm feeling a ribby. Ribyes get a little bit more fat marbling in it, nutritional fat. I'm strict carnivore for the last couple months now and really digging it. So I think

ribbyes in my future. Well, Real American Freestyle's in our future. Be sure to check out Real American Freestyle this weekend. Real American Freestyle.com and the Fox Nation app. And let's throw one up for Scott Hall today. Can't believe it's been 30 years. Thanks again for all the NWO memories. And we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Fishaw.