83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 432: Hall and Nash Made the nWo Cool

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson tackle some of the biggest stories shaping professional wrestling today before taking a fascinating trip back to one of the industry's most influential eras. The guys kick things off by discussing Tubi's emergence as a major destination for professional wrestling content. Eric shares his thoughts on what expanded streaming distribution means for wrestling promotions, how it could change the way fans consume content, and whether free, ad-supported platforms represent the next major battleground in the wrestling business. The conversation then shifts to Road Dogg and the challenges that await him if he joins TNA Wrestling's creative team. Eric breaks down the realities of modern wrestling creative, the obstacles anyone stepping into that role will face, and why building a successful promotion requires far more than simply writing compelling television. Next, Eric and Conrad celebrate the 30th anniversary of one of the most iconic promos in wrestling history—Steve Austin's "Austin 3:16" speech. Eric offers his unique perspective on why the experiences Steve Austin endured during his time in WCW helped forge the "Stone Cold" persona that would eventually change the wrestling business forever. It's an insightful look at how setbacks, frustration, and opportunity combined to create one of the greatest characters the industry has ever seen. Plus, the guys continue their deep dive into the 30th anniversary of the formation of the nWo, revisiting the behind-the-scenes stories that made wrestling history. Eric reveals just how dangerous some of those unforgettable moments really were, including why one wrong move by Kevin Nash or Scott Hall during the early days of the nWo could have had catastrophic consequences. It's another candid look behind the curtain from the man who helped reshape the wrestling industry.     THIS WEEKS SPONSORS 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  . BLUECHEW - When you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third FREE with promo code 83WEEKS. You will also receive an additional 10% OFF + Free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit http://BlueChew.com  for more details and important safety information PODCAST HEAT - Want to grow your business with the power of podcast advertising? Reach loyal, engaged audiences through trusted host endorsements across the Podcast Heat network. Learn more at PodcastHeat.com 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. When you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third for free with the promo code 83 weeks. You'll also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order at Blue Chew.com. Hey, it's Conrad the Mortgage Guy and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric fish off. Eric, what's going on, man? How are you?

Good. Good. it up. I'm ready to rock and roll, bro. Well, I'm excited that we get to catch up with you today. It feels like there's a lot of news going around. But one of the things that I wanted to talk about is the business of professional wrestling. You know, back in your day, everybody was talking about ratings. And it was all about the Monday night wars.

But times have changed. And it feels like streaming is the new world order of content. And there's been an announcement, actually two announcements this week, both AEW, and the NWA have announced that they're both now on Tooby. Tubi, of course, is an app where both of these are going to have fast channels, free ad supported television. I know that AEW is doing this as well with Amazon. It does feel like content is king and the world is a change.

And what do you make of yet another wrestling piece of business on Tooby? It joins Wow, David McLean. I know WWE has evolved there in NXT. there now the NWA and AEW. There's a lot of wrestling on Tubey right now. Yeah, it's interesting. If you step way back and forget about who WWE is and who AEW is and who NWA is and all of the others, TNA, forget all the personalities and the drama and the Gaga and the personal

attachment. Each and every one of us has in some way, shape, or form to any one or more of those organizations. Just set it aside and look at those things as like inanimate objects that have some value. Okay. Wrestling as a whole, the group as we know it today, but wrestling as a whole has survived the evolution of television as an industry since the beginning of its inception for one reason. well, no, that's not fair, for only a small number of reasons. The biggest one of which is the fact that it's cheap to produce. It's relatively speaking a fraction of what it costs to produce anything else.

So it's easy for it to find a home because it's easy to roll the dice on it if you're a streaming platform or a cable network or a terrestrial network like NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox. All of them at one point in time have used wrestling to shore up their overall audience numbers because it consistently delivers an audience, has since a beginning of television time. You can go back to the 50s and 60s, and guys like Dave Meltzer, who, you know, have minds for the history. He doesn't mind just wish shit for anything else.

He's completely out of touch. But he's zeroed in pretty well on history. And I think he may agree that if you go back into the 60s, 50s, 60s, maybe even early 70s, before cable television really became a thing, right? I think that was probably about 1969, 1970. So if you go back and let's say pick 1968, because I'm sure that was one of the last pre-cable numbers years. go back and you look at the performance of television in any market. I'll take Minneapolis because that's where I lived during that period of time.

If you could go back, if it's possible, and look at the ratings for AWA All Star Wrestling on Channel 9 out of Minneapolis, KSTP or KMSP, one of the other. It might have been both at one point, two different networks. But nonetheless, the independent network, which was Channel 9 in Minneapolis when I was the kid there, carried wrestling. I bet you you would find that on a Saturday or Sunday, other than NFL or Major League Sports, AWA was the highest rated show in the market, including NBC, ABC, CBS. It worked on weekends,

and it was probably more profitable or as profitable because it was free. Promoters like Marnagena or Jerry Jarrett were bartering their shows. They weren't getting paid a license fee for those shows. they were giving those shows to the network, hoping that they would air them in a favorable time slot, because then a Vern Ganya or a Jerry Juerich, he's not making any money on the TV shows, but he's making money off the ticket sales.

That was the business model for professional wrestling. So why am I bringing all this up? Because it's extremely cheap programming. It's got a live component to it. There's always been a professional wrestling audience there when it's good or when it's bad. It's still there. So it doesn't surprise me that this phenomenon, look at Ted Turner, not to change the subject again, but look at Ted Turner. Look at the history of the Turner organization.

It was built, at least one of the important legs of that stool, was professional wrestling. So it's always been a viable product when the business is up and when the business is down. Now, where are we today? 2B has got all kinds of, you know what the price of entry is to 2B? and not a big hurdle to cross. They're interesting and aggregating content, much like the websites did a while back. So it's an easy decision for a Tube to make.

They've got a very, very small subscriber base. I think if you looked at Tube, I don't pay close attention to this stuff, but I'm pretty sure, I know Netflix is at the top and you got Amazon or you got whatever, and it works its way down. HBO is about half of what Netflix is. And then you get down around if TubeB is even on the list, it's down towards the bottom. And if you look at the number of people that reach that platform, it's relatively small.

Now, that sounds dismal. That sounds like it's not really a big achievement. It's not that hard, right? It's not a big hurdle to climb. Get your show on YouTubey. You know, it's not like getting prime time on NBC, right? It is what it is. But it's extremely valuable.

because these platforms aren't making any money. They're dumping money into their network, much like Ted Turner, you know, started out, said, okay, I'm going to change the business model. Back then, the model was network, right, and terrestrial television. Ted said, no, I want a superstation. I want 24-hour worldwide news.

No, I'm not going to do what they're going to do. I'm going to do something different. That's what we're seeing now. we're seeing a new form of distribution that's looking at the old model cable television, which was at one point in my lifetime, the new model, and they're looking at that old model and they're going out, we're going to change the way we're doing it. So streaming platforms are dumping all kinds of money into acquisitions. There's a lot of good content that's being acquired.

And I think producers, in this case, Tony Kahn or NWA or anybody else, that's investing in their product and keeping the quality of that product up are going to build an audience on those streaming platforms. And that audience, while it may not be as big as a gross number, they're probably way more valuable to that platform than a CPM, if you know what I mean. So when you can use a program, for example, AEW, let's say they're averaging 600,000 viewers an episode, which is probably pretty close right now. that means that a good percentage of those 600,000 people will likely watch the show on 2B if they find out it's there instead.

If that were to happen, I'm kind of forecasting here a little bit. But if anything were to happen to T&A's distribution or AEW's distribution, and they're embedded or could be embedded quickly into a streaming platform, they're going to bring that audience with them. and that audience is worth an awful lot of money to a new streaming platform. That's the strategic value of wrestling on an emerging streaming platform. In my opinion, I'm not an expert. I just have a little bit of a feel and a little bit of experience. And no, I can kind of see the handwriting on the wall.

Just pay attention. Well, I am curious to see, you know, where this leads. Do you think that, you know, we're not that far away from ratings and, television even being necessary, everything's just bingable and it's on demand? Or do you think that live is really the future and where everybody should be investing? Or can you just be live through an app? Is television just the old way of thinking at this point? I don't think so.

I think a lot of people jump onto that talking point. In fact, because of limited access into streaming numbers, not specific, I don't know anybody's numbers, but just understanding how number raw data is interpreted and evaluated and analyzed all the same word. But it's different than just ratings because all ratings is giving you as eyeball information. How many eyeballs are watching your show? You don't really get much else. And you get a little bit. You know, any pocket diaries or whatever it is, Nielsen does really gets a little bit of information about you.

But when someone subscribes to your platform and you have access to all kinds of information that they provide, it's nothing nefarious, it's a pretty interesting acquisition. That's why it's worth more money than just somebody's eyeballs. If you don't know anything about those eyeballs, really, you can make assumptions based on what somebody from Nielsen is going to tell you. but it's, as we all know now, I've been saying it for 35 years. I've been in the television business. It's freaking voodoo people. Always has been.

This isn't new. The only thing that's new is that there's a lot more technology out there that are giving us choices and people are challenging the status quo being Nielsen. But everybody that's ever been in television has always known that these Nielsen numbers are just flaky as, he is a, but that's all anybody has. everybody goes with it until now. To your point, to your question, I think television ratings, cable television in our lifetimes

will always still be important to professional wrestling for a couple reasons. Again, based on something I'm learning across the boards, while we all assume because of the information that we absorb that everybody's watching their TV on the front, that's not true. there is still a lot of communal viewing, particularly of live sporting events.

I wonder why live sporting events command such high rights fees. Who did it like that? Right? That's what I mean about the, it's kind of obvious. So I forgot where I was going with the point. I was trying to make a point.

I lost it. Well, I think the point is times are changing with OTT and traditional television ratings. I don't think it's, as important, but I know that a lot of people are going to be curious. Hey, what does T&A going to look like on the other side of Tommy Dreamer? The rumor in innuendo is that Road Dog is headed to Slammerversary, which is the big T&A

pay-per-view on Sunday. Allegedly, he's going to be involved in a creative capacity. I think they're stopping short of saying that he's going to head up creative, but that has certainly been a lot of rumor in innuendo online. We briefly touched on it last week. It does feel like it's not a rumor. going to be at the pay-per-view this weekend. I know you and I tuned in with bated breath on the debut of T&A on AMC.

We had really high hopes, and we were both kind of disappointed. We were optimistic, but we were kind of disappointed. I know that this is a sentence we've all said many times as wrestling fans, but I'm ready to give T&A another try. You know, now that I know that Road Dog is going to get his hands on the thing, I'm kind of excited to see, hey, what, if anything, changes? What looks different than? I don't know that you could implement all of that on like night one.

If that's even a thing, it would probably be more gradual. But what do you think we should be looking for with Road Dog at the helm of TNA? If the reports are true. Yeah, I want to finish my last thought. What I wanted to say was much like cable television and wrestling during my career in wrestling, you had cable, but you also still had syndication. it wasn't binary. You had them both.

And I think that's where the relationship between streaming platforms or TNA or AEW is still going to have a television component, much like we did in the past. That was my thought. What do I expect? I hope people manage their expectations. I think that's one of the things that makes, you know, the Internet wrestling community dialogue. is so toxic from time to time. And almost, for me, it's silly. Sometimes it's fun entertainment to read how goofy people can be

and what their thoughts are. You don't take it too seriously. Obviously, it's just crazy talk, most of it, from people that really don't know what they're talking about, no matter how hard they try to make it sound like they do. But here's my take. I think Road Dog is absolutely the, and I've never worked with him. So there.

But based on what I know of him, from people who I have worked with, based on my, I won't say conversations with him, but things I've heard him discuss in detail, whether it be in interviews or other things. And just getting a feel for his approach to the business that way, I think he's, and knowing, knowing firsthand what he had to learn in order to be in the position that he was in in WWE for such a very long period of time. I have two people that work for me that previously worked in WWE that worked for me at Real American Freestyle in production. The first one I won't mention her name.

She said, oh, I worked for seven years for Kevin Donne. I said, you're hired. she said, well, do you want to know more? I don't need them more. If you spend seven years working for Kevin Dunn, that's like the television broadcast equivalent of Navy SEAL Team 6. You're hired. Can you start tomorrow?

So I think what Road Dog has learned by virtue of his position, I think what he's learned as a talent and a performer in the ring and the instinct that he'll have there, I think the combination of those two experiences will make him the most effective person you could probably hire realistically, not even probably, the most qualified person you could possibly hire for that position of anybody walking the face of the earth that's actually available. That being said, he's not going to be able to turn that shit around overnight. That's the part where I get, I know what's going to happen. I hope I'm wrong. I really freaking hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

Everybody will get excited. Everybody will give it a second chance, and that's what they should do. But everybody's also going to raise their expectations to a point that unless he delivers something that, you know, tunes a world upside down, which is impossible. The talent he's got is what the talent he's got. He's walking into stories that preexisted him. And no matter how much talent he may have or vision, anybody, including Roddock may have for the product going forward, it's going to take a year or two years to build there.

And anybody thinks that you're going to come up with some rabbit and pull it out of your hat and all of a sudden turn your fortune around over the course of two or three months, should not be near the television business. The closest you should get to television is buying one at Walmart and bringing it home and plugging it in the wall. Do not get into the business of television if you can't see that. Because in there's what will happen.

I'm really excited. And if they don't deliver something big in the first couple of weeks and the numbers don't shoot through the roof, which they're not going to, no matter how good the show is, you're not going to turn that ship around and all of a sudden have massive numbers of people coming to your network because you came up with a really good wrestling idea in any short period of time.

But if Road Dog gets in there and just makes incremental changes, and this is one of the things that I used to say about TNA, TNAO a year and a half ago, when I first started seeing some of the moves that Carlos was making, never, I don't know Carlos, I mean, I know of Carlos, and we've actually traded a text or two over the years, but never met him a person, never talked to him on a phone, but I was excited about some of the decisions he was making because it said to me from a distance, he's making incremental improvements. He's not taking a swing, trying to knock it out of the park every time. over promising under delivering.

We're all pretty familiar with that. By the way, guilty too. Not throwing stones. It is what it is. It's wrestling. You constantly are over promoting, which really is another way of saying overpromising. And it's really, the better you are at promoting,

the better you damn well be at executing and delivering. And that's what I fear is that the expectations will be too high. Everybody's going to be expecting so much. and when he's not able to deliver like nobody else could deliver, then everybody's going to get nasty about it again and lose interest. And that's unfortunate. Well, something will never be disappointed in is Chime. And Chime is changing the way people bank.

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Head on over to chime.com slash 83 weeks. That's chime.com slash 83 weeks. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank, banking services for my pay and Chime card provided by Chim's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. stated annual percentage yield and cash back for Chime Prime only. No minimum balance required.

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My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Option may have fees or charges. See time.com slash fees info. advertised annual percentage yield with time plus status only otherwise 1.00% APY applied no men balance required time card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score results may vary see time.com for details and applicable terms let's talk a little bit about uh CMLL we don't spend a ton of time talking about mexico and i know that that's not something that you know a lot of our american audience is really paying attention to but we just saw this great resurgence this huge match celebrated by w.E and all their fans of course I'm talking about El Grande Americano and AAA, but CMLL just had their 60th sellout this year so far, Eric. I mean, as just an entertainment group as a company, 60 sellouts in a year would be high fives all around.

But 60 sellouts in six months, that's worth bragging about for CMLL, is it not? That's powerful. I mean, that image, the Super Dave threw up as you were going through that. I mean, look at that. that's cultural impact. Yes. That's not business success. I don't get,

well, obviously, but it's really, it's a cultural impact. That's phenomenal. Congratulations to them. Let's talk a little bit about the big anniversary that everybody celebrated earlier this week.

And there's been some revisionist history through the years. I wanted to spend just a little bit of time in talking about it. Of course, I'm referencing Austin 316. It happened 30 years ago, this week. I can't believe that was 30 years ago. Now, of course, this has been spoken about like this is the moment that started the attitude era. I don't know if that's necessarily true. It was like the NWO a month prior to that, maybe predates it, but certainly in the WWE side of things,

that is the story that's told. It's also repeated a lot that, hey, this was supposed to be Triple H's spot, but he was punished by not winning here and instead winning the Intercontinental title four months later. But Stone Cold Steve Austin was not drawn up in a creative meeting. There's no creative services that have that. It just happened organically. There wasn't a scripted promo that said Austin 316. He just shot from the hip and did it, having beaten the reborn Jake Roberts,

if you will, in the finals along the way. And the narrative was, hey, the next day of TV, those signs were everywhere. And then it became the hottest selling shirt. but it was actually the next doggone year before they started selling the shirt. The NWO shirt, black and white, had already taken over in 96. The WWF followed suit and got in on the game.

Now, to the victor go, the spoils, WV's been telling this story for a long, long time, Eric. What do you think the historical significance is, at least from your perspective, of the Austin 316 promo, 30 years ago this week? Well, clearly, you know,

cultural impact, similar to the comment I made about CMLL. I mean, the Austin 316, the character of the story, the business, you know, for as long as it ran, it got to be one of the, if not the biggest, one of the biggest financial success stories in the history of the industry, particularly when you look at the, you know, collapsed period of time it took place in. So there's no questioning that it had. that much relevance and at least in entertainment. Beyond that, I don't know if the story that you just laid out is true.

And if it really was the result of an improv that caught fire, I love that story even more and have more respect for it than I did two minutes ago. I don't think I've heard that story. pay attention to shit. There's so much nonsense out there. It's hard to know what to pay attention to. But if this is true, the idea, because in the reason I believe it probably is, or at least could be, is because Steve is not a scripted promo guy. So as you started this thing out, it wasn't written down, it wasn't part of a script, blah, okay, that's Steve, because why would you waste your time doing that? He's not going to read shit anyway. You're going to go and he's going to have a conversation with Vince.

He's going to get an idea where this thing is going, and he's going to go out and do what he feels. That's why I loved working with Steve. Because if he gets to go out there and do that, guess what? I don't have to memorize shit either because nobody knows what he's going to say when he gets out there. So you have to improv and add lib. And that's who Steve, that's what he did his best work. He was less effective, in my opinion, if he tried to read a script. I don't even know if you ever really tried.

He didn't with when I worked with him for sure. So I believe that the potential of that story being true is fairly high just because of the way Act 1 started out, right? Which makes it even more fascinating because it's so, most everything that we get over in any kind of business, whether you're selling mortgages or, you know, products, whatever, consumer products of any kind. You've got to spend a lot of time and effort getting out in front of people and telling your story.

But when the audience is telling your story for you, you just have to be smart enough to sit back and listen. And that's what this is. And that's so rare. So it's very cool if it's true. Eric, let's talk a little bit about the timing of this. You know, this is like a year after you let Steve go from WCW.

At any point when you start to see his meteorite rise, do you think, damn it, I missed it on that one or whatever just never happened in WCW the way it was set up? It never would have happened. And, and I, listen, anybody listening to this? Do not take my work for anything I'm about to say. In fact, feel free to doubt everything I'm about to say. As long as you go to find Steve Austin's podcast when Eric Bischoff was a guest, and this was several years ago now, so you have to do some work.

Oh, my God. But go find that podcast and listen to Steve tell his side of our story. so that when I say to you, Conrad, to answer your question, no, I never thought that. There's not a chance in hell because stone cold Steve Austin would never have happened, ever would have happened, according to Steve, if I hadn't fired him. Vince McMahon didn't come up with that character. When Steve Austin left ECW to go to WWE,

he was going to be the freaking ringmaster, Carnival kind. ringmaster. That was the genius creative for Stone Cold Steve Austin to take the guy that got so over in WCW, just being Steve Austin. But when he got the WWE, he went through the cookie maker and came out all shiny and called the ringmaster. And it sucked. Don't take my word for it.

Go listen to Steve to tell you the story. I may be. Maybe making it more. fun to listen to by coloring it a little bit, but it's essentially the story. The character that Steve portrayed when he got to WWE, after I had fired him and he did a little layover in ECW was the ringmaster and it sucked. Steve wasn't feeling it. The audience wasn't feeling it. Nobody was feeling it. And Steve, and I don't remember the transition, either he just went out and just did it or he talked to Vince about it and just tried it with some support.

But Steve, in his words, and again, I encourage you to go back because I can't remember as exactly the way he said it. But essentially the way I interpreted it at least was that he just went back to the, to the what Steve was feeling after I had let him go and he was trying to find his character in ECW. He found Stone Cold Steve Austin. If I remember the story correctly, Steve found that character, so to speak, during his time in ECW.

And when the bottom fell out of the ringmaster gimmick and everybody finally went, that's not working, Steve one way or the other said, hey, let me just go be me. And went out and became Stone Cold Steve Austin and improv to hope most probably a lot or all of it. Because that was his character and he knew it. It wasn't written for him. It wasn't handed down from above by the creative genius. I'm making a joke, Vince McMahon. And it wasn't.

This is really good at picking out other people's really good ideas and tweaking them and make them better. But the idea, at least in my experience with him, never heard one or anything close. That's not true. That's not true. I don't want to say that. That's not true. But I think the perception is that you walk into the door at WWE and somebody hands you

a book, says, here's who you are, go out and do it. It's successful. And that's not how it works. Steve created that character. it only would have happened. If he would have still been working for WCW, he would have gone through that, not to make it sound bigger than it is,

but that kind of creative soul searching. He would have been doing whatever he was doing. And would he have found that character in WCW? I don't think so. Because it was getting fired with an injury and being out flat on his ass after making a lot of money and now not sure what he's going to do for the rest of his life,

at least to make the kind of money he was making. And he was kind of in that no man's land. not sure he wouldn't have found that stone cold Steve Boston character if he wouldn't have been in ECW at that particular time so when you say to me do you ever feel like oh man I should have never let him go I laugh at that not not at you because I've been hearing that a lot over the last 25 or 30 years but no I don't because I know I just know that it's not like this character was inside and all I had to do was go hey go be Steve Boston What I think that the Austin promo had in common with the NWO that really started a month prior,

even if we weren't technically calling at the NWO, was realism. And a thing that's been hammered home quite a bit is that this wasn't a scripted line. It was simply Michael Hayes just giving him a heads up as Austin's coming back from having his lip stitched up at a medical facility, as Vince would call it, after his match with Mark Mero, saying, hey, Jake, just cut a promo, talking about Psalms, talking about this or that. So there you go. That's the inspiration and here he comes. I feel like a lot of the promos that we saw in the NWO

and the ones that we saw in this era of the WWF, they weren't as scripted, at least they didn't feel as scripted. And I think those are the ones that resonate more with fans. When you think about the dusty hard times promo or a lot of the other classic promos, they're not scripted. Is that because, you know, it's harder to write the voice for someone else,

or is it because the performer has to believe it, they themselves, and it has to come from the heart, so to speak, combination of both? What is it about those words being filtered through somebody else or just being from the hip that make all the difference to us? Here's the honest answer is that as great as Dusty was, and he was, he was a legend. to this day there's very few people that I respect as much as Dusty wrote for a lot of reasons. But Dusty was a natural actor. Like he was born with the gift and it came to him so naturally.

But I don't think he was good enough to take somebody else's written word and deliver it the way he could. if he was speaking to you from his heart. In other words, the very act of one person creating a story promo and making it as interesting and compelling as it can possibly be is not the same as someone like Dusty Rhodes who has that natural instinct and experience, right? Cutting promos in front of live audience teaches you a lot. Ask Cassio.

Stand-up comedian in front of a live crowd is a lot different than, you know, doing it in a studio to a camera. It just, everything changes. And Dusty had a lot of experience of grabbing that microphone, cutting promos and getting small audiences and big audiences to connect with his character. That's, that's acting. It's just that Dusty was learning it on the road, doing it. He was learning on the job, so to speak.

so that by the time he's cutting those hard times promos, he had so much experience doing that. But if you would have handed Dusty, if Dusty wouldn't have created that hard times promo in his head from his heart, and he would have showed up at the building because that's how they did it back then. Who was he working for back then? Cricket? Yes.

So if somebody who worked for Crockett, let's say that Crockett at that time had a really, really, really good writer. Been writing great wrestling promos forever. Would have written that, would have written that promo, the same one that Dusty's delivered, would have written to it, put it on a piece of paper, said, here, Dusty, this is going to be a good promo. And Dusty would have looked at it, and he would have delivered it.

It wouldn't have been nearly the same thing. Nobody would be talking about it. But because Dusty had the experience, he could go out there and improvise, he knew his character, he knew his story, he knew where he wanted his character to go. He knew where he wanted the story to go. And he felt it in his heart and he could go out and deliver it passionately. But if it would have been somebody else's words, it wouldn't have connected with the audience. Well, let me connect the dots.

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your first order. Just visit BluCu.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Blue Shoe for sponsoring today's podcast and the bedroom. So, Eric, it's not just a big anniversary for the WWE side of things. Of course, Austin 316 was the talk of the town on Sunday, but come Monday, well, it was a Monday Nitro and a lot of fans, myself included, couldn't wait to check out what was going on on Nitro. And what happened exactly is we had Scott Hall and Kevin Nash come down through the crowd

with bats. And they're going to be here in order to confront Sting and Lex Lugar and Randy Savage. They're all painted up like Sting to show some sort of unity. Now in the main event, here comes Holland Nash through the crowd, carrying baseball bats. And you're going to see the guys actually swing a bat and hit the steel steps on the outside just to prove, hey, these are real bats. And look out. Here comes security.

Here comes the Charlotte Police. They're swarming ringside. And eventually, you know, it all shakes down to, we've got WCW performance. performers in the ring, including Harlem Heat, now all sort of backing off of these outsiders with the baseball bats. I think there's so much to the little details here. They don't come out of the back. They come down through the crowd.

They're not coming with security. They've got their own baseball bats. And while you've got not just security, but armed police officers in the ring with weapons like guns, pistols on their hips. the outside of just have a couple of metal bats. Now, obviously, this was a pretty cool scene. It establishes these guys as a big time threat. But doesn't it also kind of accidentally make them super cool too, Eric?

Because as a fan watching this, like these guys are backing off cops with baseball bats. These are some bad dudes here. I'm all over it. I don't know that it backfired, Conrad. Oh, no, it didn't at all. It made them cool, but it. I'm not sure it was not by design. I mean, it's exactly what we wanted.

We wanted it to feel like an invasion. The reason I love that shot, the Super Dave picked there, to look at it because it was controversial at the time, by the way, it's why I remember this, is I had to have a couple conversations internally with people above my food chain about the fact that the cop reached for his gun and had his hand on his gun. It was cool as hell. trust me it was great i'm not sure how the cameraman knew that that cop was going to put his hand out his gun somebody must have known somebody and had a conversation and everybody felt comfortable enough with it but what it really did is it gave scott and kevin a way out without looking like chicken shits yeah you got a bad i got a gun it's it was a way out of that

seen, nobody looked weak. Baby faces and get the brains beat out with baseball bats. Outsiders didn't get shot. Okay, everybody lived. We can do this another day. That was kind of what we were hoping to achieve. Otherwise, it's, you know, the WCW guys run, you know, NWO, what was going to be, Scott and Kevin, run them out of the building, right? Overwhelmed them. Well, that's not where we wanted to go with Scott and Kevin. We certainly don't want the WCW guys getting hammered by two guys. baseball bats or not. Yes, that's not what we want it. We want intention. We wanted them on a level playing field. What's going to happen? Oh my gosh. What's going to happen next week? You couldn't have

done that if somebody would have had to go down in that scene. So they both left with their dignity, both sides of the equation left with their dignity, but we had to use a cop with the gun to get there. You know, I, I want to pick your brain about making a cool heel because I think you did it better than anybody ever has. And it's so different than what we've historically seen. You would normally see baby faces and heels separated fairly cleanly. Like, if you were a heel, are you a chicken shit heel? Are you going to beg off and then do a thumb in the eye sort of deal? Or are you going to be a guy who just cheats to win? Or are you going to a guy who's going to use brute force and he's going to go too far and he doesn't have a moral compass or whatever it may be? And it just feels like

Normally, this is the same era where you've got some interesting gimmicks inside of WCW. That's a holdover from a few years prior that are now feeling like three-day-old bread. And at that point, it does feel like the nature of the same company that created the Dungeon of Doom is, hey, we need to make it obvious that these guys are the despicable heels and let's boo them. Let's make them chicken shits. We've got to find a way to make them booable. But you found a way to make the bad guys cool. they became the anti-hero.

Like, even though they were the bad guys, we wanted their shirt, we wanted their merch, we wanted to be a part of this gang. That's an interesting deal. And this is happening at an interesting time in America, too. This is 96. A few years after this is when America falls in love with Tony Soprano, who once upon a time, you know, the old archetype, we would have said, well, you boo the murder guy, like he's a criminal.

He's running a criminal organization. He's doing all these horrible things. He's the bad guy. But we as America, we find ourselves pulling for Tony Soprano at different times. But you're doing it in 96. Did you get any pushback from, we'll call it wrestling traditionalists about making the heels cool? I got hammered. Hammered.

And there was one, let me see, let me make something really clear first, though. And if I forget what I was about to say, it was a conversation I had with Sting about heels. baby faces so remind me if i need it but there was a conference there was a scott and kevin i created the platform i created the basic idea of the invasion because these two guys had previously been i mean that's that was the real genesis of this idea despite what other bullshit is floating around out there and all the other people that have taken credit for the idea over the years from Greg Gagne to Mike Graham to whoever the fuck. But here was the genesis of the idea is when Diamond Dallas Page called me and said,

Scott's available. Okay, great. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with Scott. I just knew I love Scott's work since I watched him in the AWA before I ever broke in the business. I love Scott Hall's work and his character. And I knew of him, I worked with him a little bit in WCW before he left to go to WWB.

So when he came in and was available, I was like, oh, great. We got, oh, that's a big deal. Like days, a week, whatever, Kevin Nash is available. Whoa, wait a minute. Now I got two guys who used to be in WCW who jumped ship, became big stars that are coming back. There's a story there. That was it. I'm not going to try to convince anybody that I had any more of a plan than that.

I had the beginning of a story. And I started developing it almost. almost in real time. So I'm going to take all of the credit up until that point because despite what you've heard, read or whatever, nobody was involved in that thought process and it wasn't a result of a storyline or an angle that I saw in Japan. Any idiot that comes to me with that argument or that position is going to have a conversation that they probably don't want to have.

It's not what happened. So I'm going to take credit for being the architect of the very basic idea. Scott and Kevin are the ones that made it cool, not me. Those characters are much like the Dusty Rhodes character in the Hard Times promo. Those characters were here with them. Eric didn't direct anybody, neither did anybody else. Certainly not Kevin Sullivan. Those characters didn't have anything to do with Kevin Sullivan.

but they didn't have anything to do with Eric Bishop. They didn't have anything to do with anybody. It was Scott and Kevin. And the way they carried themselves, Scott Hall's timing, I don't care who you talk to, I don't think I've ever heard anybody that would deny the fact that his timing, whether it was on a mic, whether it was with a look to the camera or whether in the middle of a match in the ring, his timing was perfect. And he used it like an artist, like a surgeon uses a scalpel.

He was that damn good. and Kevin knew how to play off of Scott and makes that look even cooler and keep his strength as a character by being the big bad guy. It was just such a perfect chemistry with those two. That's what made the MWO cool, not any input from anybody else other than those two. Now, going back to the Sting story, because the original question was that I get pushed back. Yes. and I remember this so specifically because I had a decision to make.

It was such an interesting conversation because it was with Steve Borden. And I think, I don't remember what building it is, but it was early, early on, like second or third week after Scott and Kevin, after they both showed up together. There's a second or third week after that. Sting came to me and the reason I remember the conversation and the reason it was a different type of conversation is, Because when Steve would come to me to talk about his thoughts about the way things were going, they were very, very interesting conversations because there was no emotion in it. There was passion. He cared.

Obviously, that's why he would come to me. But it wasn't the defensive push-pull negotiation. That's the best way to say it. Negotiation that typically would take place with those kind of conversations. It was a very analytical conversation. And Steve came to me and he said, Eric, you know, baby faces here, we don't know how to sell this. What do we do? Because we kind of turn the psychology upside down like overnight.

Nobody had a chance to get used to it, right? It just boom. One minute the heels of the bad guys and you get popcorn thrown at them, the next minute people are standing up and cheering them. What the hell? How do I as a baby face make that work in the rain? That turns my, the psychology, a complete 180 degrees. What happens to my character? That's the kind of conversation I had with Steve.

And I remember it because he was right. There was nothing I could say. What am I going to say? No, Steve, you're imagining this shit. Those people are really not standing up and cheering those two guys. What are you high? It was what it was. And it really registered with me for the first time because it was so early.

and Steve did such a great job of laying out the problem in a non-confrontational way that made me just not really listen to him. I went, well, he's right, but Steve, we're going to go with it. It was that moment that I made the decision to commit to the cool heels, fully aware that Sting and a lot of guys like him were a little uncomfortable. with how to go out there and perform in this new psychology. Now, everybody finally, it settled in, right? Everybody got with it. They had to. It was so successful.

What are you going to say? I don't want to do that? I don't want to play. You know, we went from, you know, barely putting 1,500 people in arena in an arena to 30, 40,000 people in an arena because the formula worked. so people adapted eventually, but it took a long time. So yeah, I did get pushed back. And I remember the moment when it became acute.

Want to grow your business with the power of podcast advertising? Reach loyal, engaged audiences through trusted host endorsements across the podcast heat network. To learn more about advertising opportunities, email Dave at podcastheat.com or visit our website at podcastheat.com. Let's talk a little bit about another piece of business. I don't know if you saw this, but we're going to switch gears and talk about modern wrestling. When I think about my peak fandom, there were three companies. So it was the WWF, that was WCW and then it was ECW.

And I still finally remember ECW. Now as an older businessman, I understand why it didn't enjoy more success. But Paul Heyman was recently talking about ECW with Chris Van Bleet and he had this to say. I look at AEW and I realize the influence that AEW had on that project on that product. For example, like Moxley is a total ECW Sandman New Jack style performer. But if you look at the AEW style, it's Rob Van Dam versus Jerry Lynn from 1999. AEW is RVD and if you were a fan of what RVD and Jerry Lynn were doing in 99, a lot of what AEW presents today is derived and is influenced by what RVD and Jerry Lynn were doing back then.

thought that was an interesting quote because I'll admit as a wrestling fan in 1999 I loved seeing van dam and jerry lynn and i could see where a lot of that modern style was influenced by that style and it's not lost on me that rvd has been brought in a few times to a w and to this day jerry lynn is a producer backstage for aew do you see any of the a w in ring performances being influenced by ecw i think that that's That's a really good analogy or a point that Paul made in that interview. And when you first started, I'm thinking, oh, I don't see it, Paul, please. What is he going to say?

But he's right. He's right. And I think using Moxley as an example was the best example, Paul could have used. I'm sure there are others, but that's the most obvious to me. That is not a character that you're going to see in WWE, any version of WWE. It wasn't Vince's cup of tea, number one, even during that. period of time when you could probably get away with doing just about anything you wanted on cable television you know late 90s early 2000s before things tightened up

creatively that's because it wasn't his Vince's cup of tea I wouldn't have gone with that type of character which you know you could art you could go back to yeah it's not really you know it's it's really Terry Falk it predated ECW you could you could closely align the Moxley character to the degree that Paul did with Terry Funk as one example and there are probably others but I do think in modern time if you're comparing one television show to another television show and the characters on it I think I think Paul made a really good a really good point there and I do see it I just I do see the similarities what do you think um I mean it's not necessarily that that's a bad thing but I do think it's

it's kind of understood. You know, we all know that Tony Conn went to ECW, went to the ECW arena as a young person. He loved that type of stuff. He's got a former ECW guy doing commentary for him in Taz. He's, he's given the nod to guys like Rhino and RVD, and Jerry Lynn actively worked backstage.

So I know that he really liked that type of wrestling. And I know that there's been some pretty brutal main events. I assume we're going to have a really brutal main event this Sunday. I don't know if you've seen, but it's 12 men in a cage. And I assume there's going to be a lot of bloodshed. So that does feel like that sort of the AEW lane. But at this point, is that smart to be different than? I know that, you know, we've had a lot of sponsor conversation about what you want to show on TV or not show on TV.

As far as the blood and guts goes, pardon the pun, leaving that for pay-per-view, do you think that's sufficient or is that even a step too far for potential sponsored thing? Well, sponsors aren't going to be comfortable with it. You know, it may, you know, there may be some sponsors, you know, like condom companies and and things like that. Maybe some, you know, new energy drink that's breaking onto the market and has a limited budget and wants to do a sponsorship in wrestling to see what happens, you know, some of that kind of opportunistic money that's lying around out there.

You can probably still access some of that, but it's minimal. It's so incremental that it's probably not worth the time and effort to go chase it. Beyond that, if you're looking at mainstream sponsorship, consumer product of any kind, it's a tough sell, that presentation on a pay-per-view. But it's also very limiting in terms of your potential to grow your audience. There is a very limited pool of potential audience that is interesting. in seeing that. It just is what it is.

It's been that way since the beginning of time. That extreme, hardcore wrestling, it sure, it worked really great for ECW at 2 o'clock in the morning on channel 64. If you had the right antenna, and there was not clouds overhead that night, it was great. And for ECW at that time, by the way he stole all his music,

didn't have to pay rights for his music. How do you get away with that? Because nobody watched a show. So you could do that kind of thing in an environment like ECW at 2 o'clock in a morning on a station and nobody's watching. You can get away a lot. You could steal music. You could do all kinds of stuff that you can't do in prime time when you're trying to make

money. So the idea of taking that ECW-esque presentation, and the genetics that comes with it, creative genetics I'm talking about, and bringing that into a commercial platform in prime time on a major cable outlet, I just think it's a square peg in a round hole from a revenue perspective. I don't see it working. You'll get a certain audience and they'll go, wow, we love it because they will love it. There's a certain segment of the audience out there.

There's just more blood the better. Give me more. We love that. Oh, look at that. Oh, he's just. Oh, great. But you won't grow, to any extent, meaningfully, that pool of audience with that type of presentation, particularly when you rely on it so much.

And it's usually not being critical here. I'm not to help point to any one person, but when you see that kind of match, more often than not, in today's environment, it's to replace or to try to make up for the fact that there's very weak story behind it. so they go over the top of the violence to get people to forget about the lack of any other reason to watch it. Do you think ECW did a lot of that, rely too much on the violence to be the story? It was the brand.

Yeah. So he branded themselves. It wasn't relying on it as a storytelling element. It was the brand. So it worked for them for what Paul was, and it's because I know I'm sounding like I'm tearing it down. And in some ways I am. in the context of it being commercially viable.

Yeah, it had a ceiling. A very low one. Yeah. But we're talking about it. A lot of the talent that emerged from there. Oh, I don't know, like Stone Cold Steve Austin, as we talked about. You could argue that that character, which is the point I was really trying to make in my long-winded way, that character emerged out of ECW and the creative environment and the freedom and the flexibility. that Steve had because they were on at 2 o'clock in the morning and if you'd get away

with just about anything. And Paul gave Steve that creative highway and Steve could do whatever he wanted to do and did. And that's where he found the character. That's what I mean by, well, that's what I was referring to in terms of not feeling bad about Steve because it never would have happened otherwise. Actually, I'm glad it happened. So was Steve. He thanked me.

After all these years of bishing about me firing him with the FedEx, when I saw him, face to face for the first time in Texas as we were getting ready to build our story. He pulled me aside and, you know, we brought beer and handed me a beer. We, you know, talked like we'd been, you know, friends, best friends for the last 20 years. It was that cool, right? And he did say to me, he made a point before he left. And we only spent about 10 minutes together. He just want to come by and say hi because I was shooting scenes and we had all crew there and shit.

And he swung in and he said, you want to say hi in person. And I came downstairs and pulled me off the side. We talked maybe for 10 minutes, total. 10 minutes. And one of the last things he said is he was finishing his beers, I just want to thank you because the truth is, if I wouldn't have gotten fired, I would have never been a stone cold Steve Boston. And he wasn't like, me, it was like, I wouldn't have found that character. But please, go find that. If you're listening to this, go find that podcast because Steve telling this story will give you a much, much different perspective than the ones that you've heard, you know,

anywhere else. So I think what you're trying to say is you're welcome wrestling fans for your hand. No, I'm trying to say at all. I'm just, it's just smart ass. Come on. Oh, okay. No, because here's the truth. I get nervous about talking about certain things because I'm always concerned that it's going

to sound like I'm putting myself over because sometimes I am. And I'm very uncomfortable doing that. But I also can't really draw comparisons and analogies without it sometimes. So no, I'm not asking for thanks for creating Stoke C Boston. I wouldn't mind it like a residual check every now and Steve. If you're listening, bro, I know you're chasing your cats around your ranch in Nevada and shit, but you know, if I wouldn't have fired you, he wouldn't be chasing your cats around your ranch.

I mean, it does feel like it was a good trade. It does feel like you've been, I don't know, you've kind of become like almost a forest gump type character of wrestling. Like you just wind up like wait you were you were there what you were in north korea like you you fired stone cold and then he became stone cold what and we actually found something over this course this week shout out to one of my favorite follows on twitter alan he found a vhs release from 1990 called hulk hogan's highlights now you might be asking yourself self is that an a wa logo on the spine it is the a wa in the

the year 1990 released this VHS. There's actually one of these for sale right now on eBay for 2999. Now this is what's so interesting. The host Eric Bischoff. Eric, you're hosting this VHS collection Hulk Hogan's highlights. Clearly this was sold in stores and on the TV show. But what's fascinating to me is it's a compilation tape and I'll admit I know I probably I'm not proud of this. I know I'm going to get your hate mail. I used to buy compilations all the time from RF video and those were like two hours or four hours. The runtime on this is 30 minutes Eric.

This is the most AWA thing ever. He had been gone for seven years by the time this was released and here you are doing a VO and when I sent it to you, you were real quick to say, I didn't even remember doing this. Talk to me about this. Well, I actually, I do. I didn't, when I first saw it and I thought about it for a couple of things. Oh, that's right.

I forgot about that. I think what this is, I could be wrong. But when I, in 1990, now I've been working for Vern for about two and a half for three years. I'd kind of taught myself or Joe Chupik, Polish Joe, let me sit in on the edit. And I kind of learned that process. I wasn't the editor, but I learned enough about it that I could start thinking. thinking like an editor, even though I wasn't one, which is half the battle, to be honest. So now I'm kind of figuring out how this stuff is made.

And Joe and I, because our video library, or Vern's video library for that, was in the room right behind the edit suite. And we would go in and out of that all the time because we also stored our tapes. Our tape stock was back there in the same area. So I go back on and see all these walls and racks and shelves and shit. of big one-inch reels and VHS tapes, all this footage that went back to the 70s, sometimes beyond. And it was just set there.

And this was before anybody, you know, there was no streaming. There was no internet. There was no, that shit, right? It was just, you could buy a cassette at the video store. That was it. So, and Vern was going broke. He was going broke the day he hired me, but he was, you know, continuing to lose money, hand over fist.

AWA was trying to find a way to create revenue. And it was Joe and I that went in Mike Shields, well, wait a minute, what if we figured out, we go through this stuff because we knew, Hall was obviously 1990. There was nobody hired them. And we had all, Vern owned the footage. So we thought, how do we create a video project with Hall Cogan

so we can get some revenue and money in the door? So Joe Chupick and I went through all of those reels, found all the Hulk Cogan footage, repackaged it, I hosted it. But it was part of a much bigger effort that was best of the 80s is actually the project that we worked on. And I sold that to a company called Famous Players. And Famous Players was in Toronto, Canada is where their headquarters were. Famous Players owned movie theater chains and video distribution retail.

So I actually sold the rights to that they bought the finished product. And then I think what they did is redistributed, for example, they clipped it into smaller segments and flipped it out to, you know, this company in Prior Lake is my guess. Because I didn't do a Hulk Hogan, you know, mini bio, but Hulk Hogan was part of the broader best of the 80s bio. So I think what this is is a compilation of a preexisting probably an hour and a half or two hour. home video. Well, I love it. 30 minutes and it was a VHS release. Little did we know you guys were hooking up in 1990 and four years later. You'd have the biggest WCW pay-per-view of all time. And then two short years later, almost to the day, you're going to change the world. And Holcogne's going to become a bad guy. We're going to be celebrating 30 years of the NWO

all freaking year long. Greatly appreciate you guys showing up and hanging out with us. If you're a member of our family over at ringplastics.com, you get to be a part of our live studio audience and ask questions here. And of course, you get the E-E experience, which we did this past January and Jeff Jarrett's asylum, which we did in May. And we've just recently revealed that we've got a big weekend coming up in October in Tampa. How much wrestling history is there in Tampa, Eric? Oh, my gosh, right? That's going to be cool. And there's some really good people.

I mean, Jerry Briscoe's there, obviously. but there's a lot of other really cool people in Tampa that I'm sure would love to be a part of this and would bring a lot to it, you know, stories that we don't typically hear. So yeah, I think it'll be a great event for sure. I'll be there. Can't wait. It's going to be a blast. We've got some live questions here.

Let's hit a couple of these and then we'll wind it down. Rijiv 8 wants to know could this potentially be viewed similarly to how WWE viewed Smackdown moving to Fox, meaning Fox was broadcast and anyone could watch. Tube is free and anyone can watch. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that. But if you're a cord cutter,

you do get Tooby. I don't know. Is that covering all the bases with Tooby? What do you think? I think the penetration of Tooby as a platform is so insignificant. And again, it's not because it could be huge by this time next year. So I don't mean to piss on it.

but no, it's not at all like Fox and SmackDown. It's not like that at all. It's an alternative distribution platform that is probably willing to pay more than the product is worth. And the product is worth a lot because of the unique viewership and loyal viewership that it comes with it, as we talked about early on. But I don't think you can compare the live versus whatever. I think people looking too much into it.

I can't thank you enough for all the time today, Eric. I know you're excited. You've got a couple of big events coming. Real American Freestyle in Georgia and Real American Freestyle in Milwaukee. I think tickets are on sale right now at real American freestyle.com. You just recently finalized some of the cards. Is it just me or does the Milwaukee show in particular feel like it's getting bigger by the day? It is getting bigger and Milwaukee is already on track to break all revenue records.

But I say that. We've only been, this is our 11th show. So, okay, it's not like an all-time great. But this will be, from a ticket sales point of view, we're having a point of view. This is going to break last month's record. Last month was a record. So we're excited about that. We're going to be a great turnout.

Great matchups. Of course, going to Georgia before I go to Milwaukee, the country, not the state. And has spent some time last night online looking, because we're going to be in the city of Tbilisi. So I spent some time. doing some research. Of course, the first thing I started looking for is best restaurants, because I'm going to find them. And then looking at some of the old churches, and, you know, it's one of the oldest Christian countries in the Eastern Bloc or the former Soviet Union. And the history there is fascinating. And, you know, they got churches and buildings from like

4AD. I love that kind of stuff, open market. So I'm really looking forward to exploring, but the card is unbelievable. It's an unbelievable card. It's a very first, international event at Real American Freestyle. And we're going to be made, Chad will be making so announcements about other international events that are going to be coming up later this year that we're really excited about. I mean, RIF as a company is growing so fast that it's hard for me to keep up with. There's so many good things going on.

It's exciting. We've got our next gen, our youth series is starting on July 19th, the night after Real American Freestyle. We've got our first youth series. that's actually going to air on Fox Nation. So you're going to be watching kids like 15 and under in the finals of what was an all-day preliminary tournament earlier in the day. So that's kind of cool. And launching our Real American Freestyle Wrestling Clubs nationwide, we announced our first one recently in Tampa.

We got a couple more than be announced next week more than likely or the week after with a pretty big plan to roll out the Real American Freestyle Restline. wrestling club. So we're really going after that youth market in a big way, both from an entertainment perspective with putting that, showcasing these kids on Fox Nation to, you know, bringing these kids some of the greatest wrestling talent in the world to help coach them. So it's so much fun, bro. Oh, yeah,

and we're doing a lot of travel. Keep up with all the details right now at real American freestyle.com. If you're like me and you're not able to be in Milwaukee, go ahead and download the Fox Nation app, a couple bucks a month. You can enjoy all the archives, but you can actually watch live. And before that, Georgia.

So Eric, I don't know how you're going to keep finding time for us, but we greatly appreciate it. We are just days away from Hulk Hogan, becoming a bad guy. We're going to be talking about it in the coming weeks here. I still argue it's the biggest moment in the history of wrestling. Who better to talk about than Eric Bischoff?

We'll do it right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff.