83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 439: Gang Warfare

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson dive headfirst into the controversy surrounding their recent comments about Roman Reigns. Has the Tribal Chief's act become stale in the eyes of some fans, or does Roman still have plenty left in the tank? Eric addresses the reaction and explains exactly where he stands. Then, the guys tackle the online buzz surrounding second generation wrestlers following the in-ring debut of AJ Styles' son. Does having a famous last name open doors or create expectations that are almost impossible to live up to? Eric discusses the pressure of following in a legendary parent's footsteps and why wrestling fans can be especially unforgiving. Plus, we turn back the clock 30 years to WCW Hog Wild 1996! Just weeks after the formation of the New World Order, Hollywood Hogan challenged The Giant for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and delivered one of the most unforgettable images of the nWo era spray-painting the letters "nWo" across the Big Gold Belt!     THIS WEEKS SPONSORS CAR GURUS - It's no wonder CarGurus is the number 1 most visited car shopping site, according to Similarweb's estimated traffic data. Buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at http://cargurus.com  CASH APP - Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/j5ojws30  #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Savings provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. LARINECO - Larineco is better-for-you chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made of to support daily enamel health. Right now, Larineco is offering our listeners up to 50% off at BuyLarine.com/83Weeks RIDGE - Get 10% Off your entire order & take advantage of Ridge's Annual Sweepstakes by going to https://www.Ridge.com/83WEEKS  #Ridgepod NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to legal residents of the promotion territory, who have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence. Void elsewhere & where prohibited by law. Enter by 9:00 a.m. USPT on 8 September 2026. 2 winners, prizes total ARV: up to approx. $539,165 CAD / £284,170. Skill-testing question required in CA. See Official Rules at ridge.com/pages/rules for complete eligibility, entry instructions, how to enter without a purchase, entry limits, prize details, odds, and restrictions. Sponsor: The Ridge Wallet LLC. 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 ROCKET MONEY - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://RocketMoney.com/83WEEKS  SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com  to learn more. 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

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. It'll also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order at bluechew.com. Hey, 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? I'm doing well, just into all things Florida, but enjoying every minute of it. I got up this morning and Karen and MJ and Wayj,

Waylon lived right like five houses down. So I got up early, Lori was busy doing something, grab my cup of coffee and walk down to say good morning to my grandson. How good is that? Oh, man, I didn't realize you were five houses apart. I understand why you relocated now. Yeah, it's making more sense now. I get it.

It's awesome. Well, it is awesome. We're excited to be with you this morning. Happy Monday to everyone who has already hit that subscribe button at 83 weeks.com. Be sure to turn on your notifications bell and don't miss us the next time we're live. We were live last week and, well, we created a little bit of controversy accidentally. We'll get to that in due time. But first, let's start with some real news.

The merger settlement update. WWE had to release their earnings call. and of course now we get to dig through the financials and see, hey, what really happened with that shareholder lawsuit, Eric? And now we've got some data. Vince McMahon and his insurers have agreed to pay $42.5 million as part of a proposed settlement. This is all a piece of the shareholder lawsuit that really challenged the 2023 merger between WWB and UFC.

I think sometimes people misclassify this and call it a sale, but it was a merger, and as a result, Vince McMahon has made a whole pile of money a lot more than $42.5 million, but it looks like that's the way he's going to be taxed here. It comes in addition to the $105 million that was previously agreed to by WWE. So the total proposed settlement for this shareholder lawsuit that we recently saw the WWE settled several weeks back is $147,500,000, Eric. I'm sure you saw the news. In the scheme of things, I mean, WWE has looked like they have more than doubled their value. This is, what is this?

Is this a tax essentially? How would you classify this? I mean, it's an operating expense at this point. Not probably, you know, by an accounting definition per se, but essentially, you know, tax is probably another way to look at that. It's just the cost of doing business in this. particular case. Sure, they would have rather avoided it, but I think when you break out your calculator

and look at the cost of doing business, and in this case, the lawsuit that manifests as a result of the decisions that they made, yeah, it's, it's unfortunate, but it's cost of doing business, it's a tax, it's take your pick. It's probably a drop in a bucket compared to the overall revenue that's been generated. There's really no way for us to know this, so I'm not setting you up to fail with a question like this. But I know a lot of people are going to raise an eyebrow and wonder, hey, when it says Vince McMahon and his insurers have agreed, I know that some companies would have like E&O insurance and obviously lots of companies at this scale would have umbrella policies and that sort of thing.

But I am curious, like, based on what you understand of the case, how much of this winds up with an insurance company, how much of this winds up just coming out of Vince's pocket? There's no way for us to know the particulars of that, but I know it's going to jump off the page out a lot of people like, hey, what exactly is Vince insuring? Do you think this is a part of an umbrella policy or how would you reconcile this, Eric? I would guess it's a wildest guess, but I would guess it's an error and omissions, you know, policy coverage. given the scope of WWE's business around the world, I'm sure they have a substantial E&L policy.

And I don't want to go into too much detail of describing what that insurance policy is, but it kind of speaks for itself. Mistakes that you make in the normal course of business, omissions that occur that result in, you know, cost, expenses, lawsuits, whatever. Essentially, that's what errors in omission or ENO insurance is. And I would assume and probably be willing to bet a decent amount of money. This is covered by their, you know, insurance policy. It is going to be interesting to see what Vince McMahon does next.

I think a lot of people, myself included, were curious when we saw him settle the shareholder lawsuit. And then now the Janelle Grant thing has gone to private arbitration. It does feel like he's clearing the path to become more of a public person. the jury's still out as to what that looks like. But thankfully, there are no juries involved. So Vince is able to sort of chart his own course at this point. I don't know. You know, we always say that.

Everybody's kind of like assuming Vince wants to get back in the spotlight. I'm not sold on that. I highly doubt that we're going to see a high profile Vince McMahon. I think we'll see him. I wouldn't be surprised if he makes sense. some smaller appearances in WWE, Hall of Fame type appearances, but I don't,

he's not going to be on regular programming. I don't see a storyline with him. I don't see him being kind of a face of the company in any way, shape, or form. The baggage that he has with him, regardless of how these things settle out, um, it's just outweighs the benefit.

Uh, I just, I don't see it. But, you know, Look, I'd like to see Vince get his life kind of back in order. It'll never be what it was from a reputation perspective. He won't be able to buy back his reputation.

He can mitigate it and get past it and have a great life. But I don't think being front and center and spending a lot of time as the face of anything is in his future. Yeah, I don't mean to insinuate that he's going to start a rival wrestling league or anything like that. but it's hard for me to imagine that the last note we hear about Vince McMahon is going to be scandal. It does feel like he's been working on something. Maybe that's just the telling of his own personal story. I mean, even if you go back to like 2018, 2019, I remember there being discussions of him releasing a movie about his life.

And then there being a series. And then we know he did sit down with Netflix, but that got cut short because of some of his legal stuff. and he didn't really finish that. I tend to imagine that he's going to want to share his story. I think legacy is important to him. I mean, this is a guy he used to put the family crest on the freaking ring belts. It's hard for me to imagine that, you know, he's going to get sued a couple of times

and there'll be some ugly headlines and then that's the final note on Vince. I can't imagine that. But I'm with you, Eric. I don't know that at 80-some-odd years old, he's going to go launch a new company and be a television character. I don't see that. but doing a little bit of reputational damage control, I think that's got to happen, don't you? That I would bet up.

And it also would kind of, it would be, I want to say fun, but if Vince decides that he's going to use a feature film or possibly a Netflix type of streaming platform series to tell his story, instead of other people telling his story for him, that I definitely see.

It's creative, it's business, it's high stakes, it's high profile. I could definitely see Vince, you know, not that I know Vince that well, I don't know Vince Will at all, to be honest. I think very few people really do. A lot of people think they do, but I think very few people really know Vince well. But I, from the little bit that I've been exposed to Vince Wickman,

I can't imagine a world where he doesn't want to have the last say about his legacy and his reputation and at least make an attempt to resurrect it or reposition it. Let's put it that way. Rewrite history probably will flow into it as well because he's very good at that. We've seen that over the years. Vince is quite capable of rewriting, rewriting history. I know you and I have no inside knowledge here. we're just shooting from the hip, just two pals talking about wrestling. But it does occur to me that at different times, you know, the whole stock game,

if you're trying to pump a stock price and build value and court investors, every now and again, you need some fun headlines. And if you do have some moments that aren't just an overwhelming success, well, we need to come over the top with some more positive news. I think you and I are both aligned in that given the success that Nick Conn and the rest of the TKO management group has had, it's hard to imagine that Vince is going to step back in and have a ton of power. But it does feel like given his association with the brand and everyone who acknowledges his prior success, do you think there is, at some point it's inevitable that he

gets a board seat? Because it feels like just appointing him to the board is going to be a positive headline for potential investors when WWE or TKO decide they need it. It feels like they could just keep that in their back pockets. And hey, we're getting some negative headlines out there. We need some good news. Now, let's just, let's announce that we're giving Vince a board seat back. Could you see that? Is that possible or am I reaching there?

I mean, I don't know the rest of the board, right? I don't know Ari Emanuel. I don't know any of them. So it's hard to really say from my perspective. I don't see that either. In fact, I see that even being more remote. What added value does Vince McMahon bring to the board? He doesn't.

I just, and he brings baggage. I mean, he's not Harvey Weinstein, Weinstein. He's not quite there. He's not Bill Cosby. But he's in the same neighborhood. It's the same zip code. And that's, Baggin, look, I want to be clear about this.

I don't like talking about it much because there's a lot of inferred judgment, and I don't want to do that. Right. I don't judge people's actions like this, but I will say that the judgment that Vince demonstrated he lacked by having whatever the relationship was, consensual or otherwise, Having it on corporate property and corporate time using corporate funds and resources to one extent or the other, involving another executive in the company, these are fatal flaws from a corporate judgment perspective. And introducing someone with such a high-profile laundry list of fatal flaws from a character.

perspective. I mean, how do you rationalize having someone on your board that was willing to put the company at as much risk as Vince McMahon was willing to put not only himself, but the company? I don't know. Maybe, maybe there's some value in a Vince McMahon board seat that I just don't understand. And that's quite possible. I mean, that's, I understand. I'm aware of the world. I kind of understand it, but there's levels to everything. And now we're talking about a multi-billion dollar public company. And that complicates everything. But I, for one, I can't see the upside. I can see the downside, but I can't see the upside. Well, you don't have to look very far to find the upside in the latest TKO earnings report. They reported revenue, Eric. I can't believe this is real.

in the second quarter of this year, $1.547 billion of that. WWE brought in $620.9 million. That is a 12% increase over the same period last year. Mark Shapiro was on the record saying the two-day show, SummerSlam was extraordinary. The sold-out corresponding WWFANFest delivered strong, enhanced or strong engagement metrics. Across TCO, we prioritize both the fans

fan experience and improving profitability. They are not mutually exclusive and they are not always in that order. Look, we could have done SummerSlam on one night and likely had a higher ticket per cap. But in looking at the event, we chose two days because we thought it would be an overall fan experience. We thought it would be better viewing experience on ESPN. We thought it would get more marketing for our brand on ESPN. We thought it was important to go back to the Midwest.

outside of Elimination Chamber in Chicago, we really haven't been doing enough of our PLEs in the Midwest. As I said in my prepared remarks, it's not always the actual bottom line. We prioritize both the fan experience and improving profitability. They're not mutually exclusive and they're not always in that order. This has been a quote that has been covered quite a bit this week, Eric, because a lot of fans disagree with this.

They say that, hey, the fan experience isn't good if we're watching a PLE and it's broken up, because there's so many commercials, we can't really get into it. Hey, the fan experience isn't good. If the tickets are priced really, really unaffordable, and even if you bite the bullet and pull the trigger on those tickets, if you wait closer to the event, maybe you'll get a deal. I know that there are some sour grapes from wrestling fans,

and I also know that we don't really have all the details here in the statement from Shapiro, because the earnings that are surrounding these PLEs largely start with these different municipalities, he's bidding on the event. And so when they're looking for economic impact, they want you to stay longer too. So I tend to think all of the major WWs are probably going to be two night affairs. I think if they're concerned about the optics

of them playing to sort of half a house, like it looked like at times when they shot across from the hard cam, or on the hard cam side at SummerSlam, it's like, hey, they could have solved that just by running an arena and maybe that would have been a better atmosphere from a fan experience. but you don't always know how the tickets are going to go. I mean, some of this is based on the economics. Some of it is based on the location.

A lot of it's based on story. There's so much that goes into, you know, how many tickets you really sold. It's hard for me to say that they made the wrong call, but I do think the right call is more two-night events. I mean, it does feel like you're leaving money on the table to not do that. I think it's kind of a no-brainer for a two-night summer. or slam, a two-night WrestleMania. And I guess there's even

discussion or chatter about now a two-night Royal Rumble, like that feels inevitable. This feels like the evolution of where we're going right now, don't you think? I absolutely agree. And I think it's a great idea, by the way. I think we're doing much the same at Real American Free Sell, just for the record.

We're turning our weekends into a fan experience for an entire weekend, as opposed to having a big event on a Saturday night. soon will grow into certain events on Friday evenings, small, informal, but our fan fest, our meet and greet, whatever you want to call it, on Saturdays are huge, unbelievable turnouts. And that is part of the experience. The fan experience is kind of, that's fairly broad, right?

It's easy to go, yeah, but there's too many commercials I don't enjoy. You're going to have that low-level, you know, anti-WWE internet wrestling chatter, you know, perspective. It's always going to be there. But if you look at the weekend, if you're a WWE fan and you choose to go to an event, you choose to go to Minneapolis, right? You're, there are things to do Friday night. There are things to do Saturday. There's obviously things to do Saturday night and Sunday night. But there's so much going on that you're experiencing a whole weekend.

at you're not experiencing a PLE, just a PLE. And I think that's where entertainment in general is going, not just wrestling, not just WWE, but I think entertainment in general is going in that direction. And I think it's great. You're always going to have people who are going to bid you about the price of the tickets. Tough shit. Get an extra job. Save some money up.

You know, quit drinking, you know, three, 12 packs of fucking Mountain Dew during the week. and throw a couple bucks in a jar and you'll be able to afford to go, whatever. But I think the overall fan experience is what they're focusing on. And I think they're doing it smart. And oh, by the way, and we'll get to this when we talk about the controversy that you created. I supported it, but you started it. Look at the revenues that we just got done talking about. How big of an issue is creative right now?

subjectively, it may not trip my trigger. I'm kind of bored personally. There's nothing really new or exciting or compelling going on that makes me go, I know I'm really busy, but I think I've got to watch. There's none of that. But it's still working and the numbers don't lie. The numbers don't lie indeed and they don't lie with our friends over at car gurus. I got to tell you, I'm a big believer in this because I am a car guy,

Anybody who's ever spent any time with me in real life knows that I look at cars every day before Eric jumped on. I was looking at cars today. And what was I looking at? Car gurus.com. Listen, we all know a car guy and they're all going to say something like, oh, you need something good on gas and highly reliable. But listen, I get that.

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That's Cargooros.com, C-A-R-G-U-U-S-com.com.com. Urues.com. Eric, let's talk a little bit about Royal Rumble. We're talking about these big premium live events, and certainly that's where WWE has been cleaning up, not just on ticket sales, not just on television rights, not just on licensing the PLEs to ESPN, but the fan experience.

I mean, they were printing money with all that Danhausen merch this past weekend, and now the bus is really rolling into your town for Arizona. They have announced, and it was actually Dana White, who made the announce that the 2027 Royal Rumble is going to be at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. They haven't announced the date, but they have revealed that it's February. We're going to have to get used to this. I think there has been a February Royal Rumble before back in 2025.

But now, 27 is also in February. Now, as a reminder, WrestleMania has gotten later and later each year. So maybe this makes sense. Maybe they're trying to space it out. or maybe they're just trying to get closer to the Super Bowl. I do want to put it on everyone's radar because guys need to know this now to start planning appropriately. The Super Bowl next year is on Valentine's Day, Eric.

It's on February 14th. So now there's some question about Royal Rumble. Hey, is it going to be a two-night affair? Is it going to be one night? And if it's one night, what weekend will it fall? I tend to imagine that it's going to be the first weekend of the month, like February 6th. What do you think about a February Royal Rumble and is there a strategy to avoiding the Super Bowl? Because it feels like no matter what, you don't want to, I can't imagine you'd want to

run it the same weekend as the Super Bowl if you're recording celebrity because it feels like from an ESPN perspective, you're going to cut your coverage in half, right? Yeah, I think you do want some, they do definitely want some distance from Super Bowl. I don't think it would affect the turnout. So once the ticket sales, it should probably have some impact about it. But I don't think it would be significant. I do think from a promotional perspective, and you touched on it, you know, they're just not going to get as much coverage pre-event from the ESPNs of the world and the Pat McAfee's and whomever else is out there promoting WWE outside of WWE. They're just not going to have the time to do it. So I think distance from Super Bowl is probably a priority.

This, you know, Arizona in February is about one of the nicest places on planet Earth to be. It's going to be great weather talking about the fan experience again. It makes it a whole lot easier for everybody to have a great time when it's not, you know, 15 degrees in snowing outside. So I think the choice of Arizona, particularly that time of year, I wouldn't do it like in June or July in Arizona. But there's a, I believe there's a new stadium going into, to Phoenix or is or has open recently. It's got a movable roof, convertible roof and things like that. So if that's the facility that they're going to,

that's the venue that they're choosing. Great. It'll make it even more fun. But if not, and it's just in a typical stadium or venue, it's still going to be a great time of year to enjoy the weekend in Phoenix. And I think it'll be a, it'll be a premium experience for sure. Well, I don't think there's any doubt of that. I also wonder, you know, this is going to be another stadium event.

And that does make me wonder, you know, if you were in charge of this, and I know it's not your call. But from an optic standpoint, you know, you don't really want to run a big show and it beat a half a house. I mean, from a perception standpoint, I think anybody who's ever seen like a new restaurant or a new bar or a new nightclub in your town open up, you want there to be a line to get in. You want it to be difficult to get in. Like the perception of success is certainly important. You're looking for that bandwagon effect as a promoter. And I'm curious, you know,

if this is really the course and we're going to run a big stadium and we're going to run it in Arizona, does it make sense to do that to try to do the two-night thing again in a big building like that? Does it make sense to do it in a basketball-type arena? I only ask because it does feel like the Royal Rumble, since we're going to have a men's Royal Rumble and a Women's Royal Rumble, and we have two world titles for each respective show,

it does really lend itself to being a two-night event. But I would think if that was the direction, hey, let's run a 20,000-seat NBA arena and charge a bunch of money for tickets and have an incredible atmosphere. I don't know if that's the case here. We don't know if this is a two-night event yet or a one-night event, But moving forward, if you knew you were going to be doing a two-night event, from an optic standpoint, where would you lean?

Would you go to the stadium? Would you go to the arena? It's hard to say without knowing the economics of it all. Again, it's a wild-ass guess here, but I'm guessing the amount of the rights fees associated with a two-night event and an entire weekend of activities might be significant enough to mitigate the negative kind of impact, the perception of not selling out.

Because let's be real. The only people that really focus talk about, debate, a complete sellout or not, are internet wrestling fans. The non-melzer types, just your casual, regular fan that spends money on WWE merchandise and goes to events and brings their kids. I don't think any of them think about or talk about.

Well, it was only 80% full. They couldn't sell it out like they did last time. That's a dirt sheet conversation. It's not real business conversation. I do agree with you that, you know, the optics, the perception of seeing empty seats is just fundamentally something that you try to avoid. But you can avoid that to a certain degree. in the way you produce the event and the way you shoot the event,

you can mitigate, minimize that perception of empty seats. But if the cash flow that comes with a two-day event and the support that you're going to get from the local city or state, in some cases, it may make that just not as important as we as wrestling fans think it is, particularly if we're comparing WWE to whoever else. You know, that's just my opinion. I mean, if it's, well, okay, Eric, here's the deal.

We'll give you $100. The state will give you $100 if you come in, you know, for a one-night event. Or we'll give you $350. But you're going to go into a little bigger building and you might not be able to sell it out. I would have to make a business decision. not a dirt sheet decision. Yeah, to be clear, I'm not trying to have a dirt sheet discussion. I'm really looking at the economics of, and again, I've never done it, so I don't know.

I ran exactly one show, and I can tell you how expensive it was to like that thing for that one arena show. And in my head, the production budget for a stadium show versus an arena show has to be a totally different ballgame, just based on the lighting and trusting and the scale and the scope, just the size of things that are kind of, things that are kind of already on your side in a basketball arena, they're just, they're here versus they may not be for a stadium. And I just want to talk about the economics of this for a minute. I think the all-time attendance record for a Royal Rumble is 67,843. And they did that in Royal Rumble 2025, so not that long ago.

This stadium they're running here has a capacity of 73,000. It'd be really hard for me to imagine they're going to try to aim to do that too, the most tickets they've sold this year was night two of WrestleMania and that was 55,000 again I'm not saying that they can't do it I'm just wondering when you factor in the number of tickets from an optics standpoint and I know that they're also going to offset a lot of this with a huge fan fest event I mean and they may but I don't know I don't know what that looks like just yet so there's a lot of unknowns hell we didn't even know what

days this is yet we know it's in February but it does feel like the cost of running a stadium. Am I wrong on that? The cost of running a stadium has to be way more than an arena, just from a production piece, not the rent. Set that aside for a minute. Just the production has to be a whole other level, right?

Yeah, because you need, for example, and you mentioned it already, but you're lighting, you know, you go into an arena, you've got trusses. You know, I'm sure the WWE, you know,

crew could probably hang, hang their trusses in their, sleep, they do it so frequently and they come back to the same buildings over and over and over again. So they know the infrastructure of the venues they're working in probably by heart in some cases. But you're right. When you go to a stadium show, for example, when we would do Sturgis, which is going on right now, by the way. Shout out to all my buddies are up there. Sturgis having a great time. But the additional expense of doing something outside of a venue where everything is self-contained.

Now, in these venues, even though there's stadiums, there's still a lot of infrastructure that is there, right? But what you don't have generally is, you know, your lighting grid, and you have to bring in different lighting. You have to bring in different crews or more crews. It takes longer. Sure, there are some additional expenses, but they're not as significant as we might think. if it cost $100 to produce the show in an arena,

it may cost $135 to produce it in a stadium. But then you're doubling your revenue in some respects. So it's an economic decision. I'm sure it's a tough decision, but the numbers are going to tell you what the best choice is. It's not a subjective thing. It comes down to dollars and cents.

And I think the dollars and cents will make sense to go into a stadium over two nights as opposed to an arena for one night to accomplish optics. I can't wait to see a two-night summer slam and a two-night WrestleMania and a two-night Royal Rumble. Those events sort of lend themselves to being two-night events. It does feel like with them. running a giant stadium here and it being in February. Perhaps this is not going to be the year.

Maybe we see a two-night Royal Rumble in 2028. Eric, I know you and I are both aligned in that we like the idea of a two-night rumble. Is there another show that WWE does every year that you think would warrant that? I mean, Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, and SummerSlam feel like the big three. And I know some people would point to Survivor Series, but I think that thing's been dead for a long time just as a concept. Is there another event that you can think of that maybe king of the ring?

Maybe there's a queen of the ring day and a king. I don't know. Is there another event? Those feel like the only no-brainers to me, those three. Yeah, I don't, I don't, look, could they make any of the other PLEs feel is important or important enough to go to nights, especially in the stadium? Of course, they could. They'd have to work at it.

I think the three that we have now, are great tent polls. They've been tent poll events, primary events, you know, that everybody, they're branded, everybody knows what they are. People look forward to those particular events because of the way they've been branded over the years. I don't think there's anything else on their schedule

that currently reaches that level of significance, but it's not possible to make it feel that way. It just would take an effort and a commitment in about two years. Well, it's going to take some money too. Cash App can help you and your kids stay on top of their money. We're proud to have Cash App as a sponsor here this week too because I really believe in their services, especially when it comes to teaching kids all about responsible spending, responsible saving at a young age.

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See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, the Sutton Debit Flex card, and the Bank Corp Debit Flex card, savings provided by Cash app, a Block Inc brand. Visit Cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. Eric, we got to talk a little bit about AEW. We haven't spent any time talking about AEW in recent weeks. Jerko was recently talking about what it is to change the perception. He says, quote, I think it's the same as always in that we never worried about WWE ever.

We've only ever worried about our own show, our own product, the quality of what we're doing, and it's not a perceived upswing. You can see it in the numbers, the tickets sold, the ratings. I think all of that is just because, no matter what's going around us, we keep our noses to the grindstone, and we worry about what we're doing. and what kind of matches and quality and variety. We've never been a WWE light. We've been AEW since day one,

and that's never changed. Sometimes you like it and sometimes you don't, but we've never changed it. And you know, when I saw this, I thought, well, Eric's going to have a field day with this one.

And then I thought, you know what? It has been a while since we've seen anyone inside the tent with AEW make a comparison to WW. Do you think that that was something that, that management, because some of that included Cody Rhodes. I mean, Cody Rhodes was loud and proud, loud and proud when AEW first kicked off, being very critical of WWE, and we know he's now the face of WWE or one of them.

Do you think that that whole poking the WWE with the stick thing is in the rearview mirror now? No. I think that is the most bullshit, Stephen. I love Chris. I have nothing but respect for Chris, but that was a bullshit comment, Chris. This is the guy that came out and said with him. six months, AEW is going to overtake WWE.

What? I mean, how many of their, Will Osprey can't keep WWE out of his mouth. So, look, maybe like within the last 30 days, they've made a, you know, executive decision and,

and instructed talent, you know, not to talk about WWE. Maybe that. Like, you know, that's possible. But if you look at the, last since 2019. That's all they freaking do from Tony con to the talent. That's all they've been doing is trying to create an us versus them. We're the we're the underdogs we're going to take over and they're evil. I mean, come on, Chris, there's nothing. I'm surprised he made that statement. Chris is a smart guy, but that wasn't a smart thing to say.

Let's talk a little bit about AAA and WWE. This is something that I'm sure you had to deal with with Conan and maybe others, but Dominic Mysterio, there's a report out there that Dominic Mysterio was frustrated with how he's booked on one show and how different than he's booked on a different show. Specifically, what we're talking about is he is the AAA champion. AAA is obviously owned by WWE, but it's a big deal in Mexico to be the AAA. a champion. It's a big deal in AAA to be their world champion. And respectfully, he's been doing comedy grab-ass stuff with Danhausen at SummerSlam. And I can see how that's hard for him to

reconcile. And I'm sure at different times you had similar conversations like this. And maybe you had to explain, well, it is a different show. But if it's the same guy, does Dominic have a valid argument here? How do you wrap your head around the way he's positioned in AAA versus how he's positioned in WWE right now? Well, I was never faced with anything like this, to be honest, because obviously WWE owns both companies. But there are two separate audiences, I would think. I don't know this, but the AAA product is decidedly a much different product,

at least what I've seen of it over the years. It's different psychology, different characters, the audience for AAA reacts differently to different things than a typical American audience. At least they did. So I can understand while there's one style of creative for AAA and a different use case scenario for a character like Dominic. I can see how and why that approach may be utilized. But I can also understand from the character's perspective that it feels like one step forward and two steps backwards sometimes, when particularly if the character that is being portrayed in WWE programming, Rawl SmackDown, whatever, is a lot different than the character that's being portrayed in AAA.

So I understand it. I was never faced with it. I wouldn't, sitting here right now, I wouldn't know how to manage that. I'd have to really think through that and decide whether or not perhaps in the long run. In the short run, you get away with a lot of things. When you've got momentum and, you know, I've experienced it with that. There were points in time when regardless of how stupid of a mistake we had made creatively or poor judgment would have executed creatively.

or a chance that I decided to take creatively, no matter how bad it failed, it didn't really slow us down. You just chalk it up to a learning experience and move on and knock the hell out of it next week, and you're right back to where you were. You can enjoy that kind of, you're a little bulletproof when you've got a lot of momentum behind you. It's when you've stalled, you don't have momentum,

you're kind of on a little bit of shaky ground in terms of your audience and they're reacting to your product. that's when you really have to be careful with a character and ask yourself, would it not be better long term to have some consistency in the way we portray this character because there will be some crossover, not a lot. But imagine, again, don't know. You know, you're hardcore, you don't have to watch everything kind of wrestling fan, obviously, but that's a very small percentage of the audience.

I'm guessing that 90% of the AAA the audience, doesn't even pay attention to Raw on SmackDown and probably an equal number really don't pay attention to AAA. So it gives you the ability to have essentially one person playing two different types of characters if what I just said is true. If what I said is not true in their significant crossover, then you're going to have to start making some creative decisions based on one person who's key in both programs or both organizations.

is doing it this way if if wwee was doing this with t and a's world champion then i think the iwc would be up in arms about oh we're not treating their champion with respect look how we're making him look like a goof you know this human money's on a pole match sort of thing why is the t and a champion involved in this this is less than but it is inside the tent but to me, it does make it feel like AAA is a secondary brand to WWB. And duh, we all know it is by every meaningful metric. I'm not arguing that. But isn't part of the trick to elevating those

brands have lifted up? I'm really legitimately asking that. I'm wondering, does WWE do a disservice when they do this? This feels a little bit like, hey, we've got the invasion. So let's bring the WCW guys over. And I know they want the dream story, but let's just beat them all. like you could do more with this right like when we're positioning triple a this way it's going to be hard for dominic mysterio as triple a champion to try to say hey we're going to see at some sort of clash of the champions worlds collide type thing what would happen if the triple a champion wrestled the so-and-so champion it's like yeah but your champion was just on a human monies in a poll match and we wouldn't do that with see i mean we're shooting all over the match with dan house we're talking about about AAA and Lucha Libric. My God, if that is not human amination in action, I don't know what it is. So, yeah, this is a little, the human money on a pole match is not my idea of a great idea. You know how I feel about gimmick matches.

There's nothing different about this one other than it will probably be far more entertaining than most gimmick matches because of Danhausen. But is it that much of a stretch from some of the stuff? you see typically in AAA? Is it that crazy? I mean, I'm asking the question because I don't watch a lot of AAA, obviously. I see clips of it. I don't know.

I used to watch a significant amount of it, but it was always kind of over the top, goofy as hell to me. Now, maybe that's changed, okay? But unless it's changed, this human money on a pole match feels more AAA than it does WWE in some respects. So I don't know. I think it's so easy for us to go, oh,

we're treating him like crap because he's in a gimmick match. What do we see in AAA? I mean, seriously asking that question, it's not a statement. So I think we tend to overthink because we want to be smart.

We want people to respect our opinion. when we give them, sometimes we try a little too hard and we outsmart ourselves. I just don't see the human money on a poll match while it is not Mike Up Adi, I just don't see it as negatively as it is being kind of portrayed. So you think Dominic Mysterio is overreacting? I think he's sensitive because he's in a tough situation. I think he's probably trying to navigate it.

And there's probably a degree of frustration, but I think he's probably overreacting. Well, that's why we ask the question. You know what? He's got so much talent. Yeah. I mean, is this an awkward position for him to be in no doubt?

Dominic has so much talent when you've got the ability to get heat and you're good at it. Yeah, this is a, this is a cornball kind of gimmick match. It is. That doesn't mean that someone like Dominic material can't make it work for him. He's a heel. he could make it really work for him. And it won't ding his career or his trajectory in any way, shape, or form.

That's possible. So I just don't see it as being the big, you know, challenge that some people do. Yeah, we, uh, we are aligned that we think Dominic Mysterio was a tremendous talent. It does feel like for whatever reason, he's kind of been in the same position with WWE for a while. And he's probably hoping for more.

That's not a unique. frustration, though. I think a lot of talent in his spot. They feel that way and then something happens and they break on through and they're off to the races. And that's still the inevitable. And Conrad, that is so common. It is so common, but really good talent. And I think Dominic is in that category. They find a way to make it work and turn these opportunities. If you look at it is a challenge for Dominant because of where his head is at personally. He'll, because he has the talent, he'll find a way to make it work for it. And I think six months from now, nobody will be talking about it because he will have moved

on and he will have heat. Well, the internet will have moved on from the controversy of the weekend. I don't know if you saw it, but the young Avery Styles. Have you seen any of Avery style stuff yet? I did. I've seen a couple clips of it. I have and I'm so excited for him. I mean, it's been really, really fun to see.

I mean, just phenomenal what we've seen, pardon the pun, especially for someone who's so new. But over the weekend, I guess there was some controversy stirred up. He was booked for an event. He works the show. And then people took to Twitter to say, boy, he was a big star. He was a diva. He didn't help set up the ring or set up chairs. He's not paying his due.

and AJ came to the defense of his son and reminded everybody that he was booked and they reached out, quote, he was paid to wrestle at GCW, not help you put up and take down the ring. That sounds like your job. You just sound like a jealous douche. And of course, people were fired up about this and felt like, boy, you can't be doing that. Don't be, your son needs to go through the same process you did. sort of thing. And Brian Pilman Jr., we know him these days in WWE as Lexus King, he points out that, hey, it's not the same if you're a multi-generation talent like this. If you're a son of

somebody like AJ Styles, your experience is not going to be the same. Here's what he had to say. As someone who walked in this kid's very shoes, being the son of a legendary high flyer and taking to the Indies for the first time, all I can say is that it's a different path than most. I was five matches in and promoters would fly me in, tell me to hang out at the hotel until a call time, and then when I get there, the ring would already be set up. To put it plainly, people treat you differently when you're one of us, and it's not his fault.

There's a different type of baggage this boy carries, an expectation to live up to his father's greatness that most will never understand. I hadn't set up or torn down a single ring until I got to NXT, yet I'm so glad I started because it taught me a lot about the work that goes into making the magic that is pro wrestling. I was treated like royalty by everyone in the business until I walked into NXT,

and their leadership here humbled me and treated me like everyone else. I think that's pretty cool. It's been up to the leadership on the Indies to show him the way. He's putting his body on the line and drawing extra eyes for your show at a young age, and you want to blast him on the internet instead of talking to him in person?

Well, guess what? Your tweet didn't sell any more tickets for the next show, and I bet every styles being on the card will because it's his birthright. I mean, shout out to Brian Pilman, Jr. For being the adult in the room here, didn't see it coming. But I think he's on the money. People are booking this young man because of who his dad is. He's got a lot of pressure on him.

He is navigating a new space. It's a different approach probably. It is, I was really excited to hear from Brian on this because he lived it. And I'm not going to compare the two styles and the. the two eras. It is a different world right now. I get that. But the criticism of him not setting up chairs, Eric, I can't wait to hear your take on this. First of all, so impressed with young Mr. Philman, what what a clear-headed and mature perspective to bring. He articulated it so well, very proud of him, very, very proud of it. And he's also very right. Obviously, he lived it. So,

Of course he's right. It's his perspective based on his experience as opposed to you and I on the sidelines looking in, right? The part that really caught my attention and I was so happy to see was the aspect of his quote where he talked about the kind of pressure that Avery is under. It's one of the reasons why I didn't want my son to get into the wrestling business because I saw what happened to Eric Watts. I saw what happened to a lot of sons of extremely successful wrestlers who become bitter, never being able to live up to their father's expectation has an impact on that. It puts pressure on that. And ultimately, if they don't succeed, it's, you know, Mike Graham, God rest of soul, had a serious case of it.

Greg Gagne, a serious case of it. I watched what Eric Watts went through. I felt bad for Eric because it's a different kind of pressure. And now with social media and these knuckleheads out there, well, he's got to pay his deuce, who the hell are you? Who? I mean, it's like where people feel like they have solid ground to stand on and make comments like that when they've never been near a wrestling ring. They've never been near the business. They're just a very small fraction of a fan base that takes to social media and pretends,

cosplays their way through the day, pretending that they have some kind of institutional knowledge of a business that they've never been near. And it's the kind of comments that, and it's one of the reasons why people wonder, why does Bishop get so hot about dirt sheets that they melts their douchebags of the planet? And it's because of this. Because of these, the culture and the culture that it creates, the cesspool, it is the internet wrestling community. Not all of them.

I mean, I'm part of it. So are you. So it sounds like I'm saying everybody in it. But there is a solid nucleus of the most vocal amongst internet wrestling community members that take this position as if there's, like the fucking Undertaker or the rock or steve austin and you're going to be my shoes and you're sitting on a couch picking your nose in your underwear really that kind of stuff bothers me and i think young mr pillman nailed it and i hope that avery and i'm sure he does because AJ knows he's been through it all.

Just simply ignores those knuckleheads because their opinions don't matter to anyone. It's just ignore it. Move on. Don't even acknowledge it. It's not worth it. It's not worth your energy or your focus. Just keep doing what you're doing. I'm happy for AJ because I know the feeling of being able to help your son or your daughter,

as the case may be, get such a unique opportunity and to have your son or daughter want to follow in your footsteps is, it's very rewarding as a parent. So I'm very excited for both AJ and April. Hey, I do want to ask, do you think, and obviously shout out to AJ Styles. You can hear him on his new podcast, the AJ Style Show, anywhere you enjoy podcast. I'm sure he's going to address this. But I feel like he's in a bad spot because when someone who is a respected member of the independence, I mean, Eric Cannon even got a shout out from C.M. Punk after SummerSlam the other

day. I mean, he does a phenomenal job with his promotion. And you can see, you know, with the crowd shots. I mean, you've seen some of his stuff before Eric in Minnesota. Like, the guy knows what he's doing. He does a great job. And he's been around the game for a long, long time. So I assume that he probably knows AJ in real life and has probably for decades. But I feel like AJ's in an unwinnable spot here because it's got to be on him as the dad. Hey, I got to defend my son and stand up for what's right and say my peace. But on the other hand, when AJ responds, it kind of shines a light on the whole thing, right? Yeah, it's in that is the hard part.

I mean, and I kind of have to live through that a little bit. with Garrett. When people found out basically that he wasn't Jackson James, he was Garrett Bischoff, and you want to, your instinct is always to protect, right, and support. But it's almost better if you don't. Not only because you're bringing attention, but just from a 35,000 feet kind of looking down, dad is coming to young Avery's rescue. And that's not the perception that Avery's going to want.

You just got to, you have to let them suffer the slings and arrows on their own because trying to defend against it only encourages more. That's the unfortunate part about it. So you just have to sit back and bite your tongue and know that just because they're saying these things, the internet wrestling community, you're saying these things this week by next week nobody will remember and they'll be talking about other shit it won't really matter and that's that's social media in general not just wrestling let's talk a little bit about something that everybody's talking about lately and that's our

friends at lorino you know you and i may disagree about what a j should or shouldn't do but something we think we should all do is try the better for you chewing gum lorinoko this is what it looks like This is what it sounds like. I'm actually going to pop one in right now. It's a cute little cube, right? But here's the best part. This is good for the enamel in your teeth. Specifically, I've learned a lot more about our dental health and a ton of what we eat or drink.

Things like coffee, tea, acidic foods. And that can all do really long-term damage to your teeth. So you can level up your chewing gum routine with lorinco. This is a chewing gum that actually makes your teeth stronger every time you use it. And how do they do it? Well, it's because Lorinco is better for you chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made of to support daily enamel health. Specifically, the Rinko uses nano-hydroxyapotite. That's the mineral that your enamel and your teeth are made of. It uses this to strengthen your enamel and repair the damage. They've got a lot of great flavors.

I'm rocking the mint right now. They even have a great fluoride-free toothpaste as well. Eric and I have both been sent the gum. We're huge fans. Not only does it take taste great and the flavor really lasts. It also gives you a brighter smile. It's plastic free. And I find whenever I use it after a meal, it really gets the saliva going to help rinse away the debris. And I think I've noticed that it feels like my teeth are less sensitive to hot or cold now. Either way, I just feel better knowing that I'm doing what I can to help my teeth stay strong and healthy every time I use it. I consider Lorinco a totally effortless way to make sure I'm taking the best care of my teeth possible. And right now, Lorincoe,

is offering our listeners up to 50% off at bylorine.com slash 83 weeks. That's B-U-Y-L-A-R-I-N-E dot com slash 83 weeks. From up to 50% off bylorine. com slash 83 weeks. What do you think of Larenko, Eric? It's good stuff, isn't it? I like it. I don't normally chew gum because the artificial sweeteners and all the junk that's in it

It just, you know, you put a piece of gum in your mouth and it tastes great for about 30 seconds and then there's something about the flavor because it's it just tastes natural. That's the best way I say it. It's not like you're sucking on a, you know, a saccharine pat, so to speak. There's a natural flavor to it and I also like the texture of it. You know, it's just a little square, right? It doesn't look like it would be that substantial of a. gum, but it is. And I love the natural kind of flavor that it has as opposed to something that's so

obviously artificial. Bylorine.com slash 83 weeks. Hey, and speaking of being natural, there's a clip that's going wild from this past weekend SummerSlam tryout. A lot of great independent talent. Shout out to J. Rod, who I've seen quite a bit over at 1FW in Atlanta. she was a part of this class, and they had one of the headwriters

from NXT, Johnny Russo, sort of talked to the talent about how to improve their promos and what WWE is looking for in a promo. I wanted to have you listen to this advice, and then give us your feedback. Tell us what you thought. Let's roll the clip.

Things that I see that a bunch of people do. Don't talk in phrases. Talking complete senses. So when I talk like this, I don't sound like a real person. Just talk normally. Don't ask questions. No one's answering.

Hey, you got you want to know something? No one says anything and you continue. Don't ask questions. Just say what you guys say. Don't be generic. I've heard a lot of generic stuff. I want to be the best I can be. This is my dream.

I work hard. I was that unique to you. Everyone's journey is different. No one person's saying. You can attack you. You guys have a different story, journey. How does that make you different? How do you stand out from that?

Any questions? How would you say you effectively ruled during the promo? Like what's too much motion? As long as it doesn't take away. If you're like, I'm Ryan. I'm here. But if you're just going and walking and it doesn't take away from the promo, it's not distracting.

Same thing with your hands. If I'm doing this talking, you're like, you're like, what I'm just talking? And emphasizing, that's fine. Great first day. Here we go. What do you think, Eric? Great advice.

The most significant thing that I heard there, and I think it's something that every one of those, we'll call them students, trainees, whatever they are at, should really pay attention to is right when at the very beginning he was talking about don't speak in phrases it's there's a there's a rhythm or pattern to a good promo and I've heard guys who've been in the business for a long time and are very successful they get locked into my camera's doing crazy shit here they get locked into this pattern of talking like they're doing a wrestling promo.

And it just takes the viewer out of it. There's no authenticity to it. There's nothing about it that feels real. And you're disconnecting from the viewer at home. You're basically unplugging the television for them because they're not paying attention to you when you talk like that. Nobody talks like that. And it's a big problem across the board.

And it's more obvious with younger talent, you know, people that haven't really been on camera a lot or have been on camera a long time and haven't really had any great direction because then it becomes a habit. But I think being able to speak in a normal speaking pattern, even if you're, you know, you're caught in a hot promo and you're pissed off and you're, you know, threatening to do damage to somebody. Do it like you'd really do it. Imagine you're in a bar and you're talking to a guy you're just about ready to kick his ass. You wouldn't talk to him like this as you're trying to make your point. It's so unnatural that it disconnects you. So I think that is of all the things that I heard there, you know, some of it is pretty obvious,

but of all the things that I heard in that speech, that's the one that I think people should pay most attention to because so many people are guilty of it. Unless you have a good producer that knows how to produce around you, around that habit, you know, you'll just continue to do it and it'll become, you know, muscle memory, so to speak. And it's hard to break. AJ Stiles is a big part of what WW is doing.

He's been working to try to recruit from the Indies and, and now he's even doing a guest spot down in NXT as, and I don't know that that's permanent. I think it is temporary. But he was recently on his podcast talking about what WWB is looking for with their young talent. and we've got a clip. Let's take a look. Again, you know, WWE seems to me moving in a different direction as far as younger talent.

So to me that sounds like something that that's a direction that we're going, which is time to get out the old, getting the new. Doesn't mean that's always a good thing because you need experience to be really good in this wrestling business. you need that experience. Very few can get in here within a couple of years and understand what it's like and what you need to be to be a top star.

So I don't know how well this is going to work out in the end, you know, because you lose a lot of experience talent. That's an interesting take from AJ Styles. We say that after a year where we've seen Goldberg and John Sina and Brock Lesnar and himself all retire. We've also seen WWE release a lot of, talent that's been there for a long time, like New Day and Seamus. And they've parted ways with a lot of talent that's been there a long time.

It's a necessary part of the business. I get that. They've been bringing up a lot of new talent, whether it's Javon Evans or Tripp Williams, or maybe most notably Obafemi, Obafemi now in the main event of a Summer Slam, retiring Brock Lesner. But he's talking about how necessary the experience is. And I'm wondering, Eric, because you've seen this both ways. You've seen, you know, who would have ever predicted or,

expected that Goldberg would catch fire like he did. Granted, he didn't have a ton of experience, but WCW was able to work together, rally around him, and create some pretty memorable moments. But AJ here saying that, you know, they're moving away from experience that we, we kind of need. Is it a necessary evil? Or some of these releases too premature? Do you think they're pushing Oba too soon?

What is the balance? I mean, I feel like you've said before here, and maybe there was a number, but that maybe you and bully ray at different points have quoted a number of years like hey you got to be in the business X number of years that sort of thing does that exist for you or is that is that is that old and we've got to have a new way of thinking now no i think it's more true than ever and i think we're going to work we're about to see how true that really is over the next couple of years um you mentioned a lot of really top names that you could bank on you could bet up you If you're WWE management and you're looking at your schedule and your big PLEs, you, and it's again, going back to the Roman Raines controversy we made, I don't find him interesting to watch because I've seen it all.

I've seen every match that he's, I can watch half of one of his matches and see everything he's done in the last two years. There's a sameness to it, much like there was Rick Flair. That was the bitch on Rick Flair. That was, that was, I want to say the bitch.

That was guys like, I remember specifically, Olli Anderson, just livid about the kind of push that Rick Flair was getting because he has the same freaking match every single time. That was Oly's position. And my position was, yeah, but people like it. So, you know, as long as they like it, it doesn't really matter, does it? If they're buying tickets, if they're watching on television, if they're showing up buying your merchandise, as they were in the case of Riffler,

when Oly Anderson was complaining about the fact that every one of his matches looked exactly the same. Well, so does Roman Arrains' matches lately. But guess what? People are still buying his merchandise. People are still showing up. People are still buying tickets. So, yeah, maybe creatively from a subjective perspective, I'm bored.

There's just nothing new going on there for me. And that's what I said last week. But from a business perspective, he's bankable. And I think what we're seeing, based on what AJ said, because I'm obviously not watching this closely, but if they're looking to kind of bring up that next batch of stars, AJ is so correct. It takes time. This is art. It's not science. You can't sit down, as Dave Meltzer would say, and study this and learn how to go out and perform. The only way you're going to learn how to perform is sure, you watch tape, you look at things that others have done in the past. that maybe gives you an idea of something that you can do in a similar way, but make it your own. Of course you do that.

But until you get out in that ring in front of real people, when I say real people, not a studio audience, not a soundstage, not a free audience, not a state fair, I'm talking about going to small towns, venues, big towns, if you're so fortunate, and learning how to get people to react the way you want them to react when you want to react that way. That's what Hulk Hogan used to talk about all the time.

And you ever really went into great detail. But others, including Rick Flair and Steve Austin, will tell you you have to listen to the crowd because every crowd is different. They don't all want the exact same thing at the same time. They're not all in the same frame of mind every single time. time when your match is about to go down, you've got to listen to that audience. You've got to know when to do what you know how to do in order to get the reaction that you want what you want it. That is just nothing but repetition. You cannot teach that. It is impossible to teach it in an

artificial environment like a training facility or a free audience or, God forbid, a studio audience. That's not going to teach you at all. It'll teach you bad habits. You'll think you're better than you are. in some cases, but that experience is critical. Your original question was, oh, sorry, when you just popped. Does that every once in a while, but I get excited. You can ask my wife. I think for me, you're looking at five to seven years. Yeah.

Of experience in front of a real crowd. Just look at it. Other than Goldberg and Rock, both Goldberg and Rock were the beneficiaries of breaking into, now, before I say this, we make it clear. Rock, Goldberg came to the dance with instinct and qualities. They had the potential. It's not like they became huge stars solely because of the time.

timing. But what I'm suggesting is the timing of their entry into the industry, which is pretty close to each other. They both entered the business at a point in time when the business was white, freaking hot, hotter than it is now, not in terms of how much money it was generating, but in terms of the zeitgeist, in terms of the energy and the focus and the conversation, you know, even before social media. Competition between WWE and Nitro created an unbelievably hot environment so that it was so much easier for two guys like Rock and Goldberg, but each one of them had their unique attributes as characters and athletes, right? If either one of them would have broken the business five years sooner or five years later,

they wouldn't have become the juggernauts that they became. They had unique timing in their corner. But if you take those two aside from off in a corner, because you can't recreate that. It was just fate, right, timing. I don't think they would have ever reached the level of success that they had. They would have been more exposed. The audience would have turned on them much sooner.

And they both got huge pushes because of the potential that they had. And it worked. But if you take those two sides and you look at every, you know, how long was Steve Austin at the highest level of professional wrestling before he became Steve, before he became Stone Cold? 12 years? 15 years? That's how long he had to work on the Stone Cold Steve Austin character. Because the Stone Cold Steve Austin character, and I encourage you, if you question anything I'm about to say, do some homework, go find Steve Austin's podcast. where I was a guest and we talked about this very thing.

Stone Cold Steve Austin, the character, and I'm paraphrasing a lot of this, okay, so don't quote me, please. But the character, Stone Cold Steve Austin was the manifestation of a lot of experience, frustration, and perspective that allowed Steve to really deliver the Stone Cold Steve Austin character in a way that he could probably not have delivered if somebody would have written that character for him and he didn't go through all the shit that he went through throughout his whole career including the injuries all the bad stuff that came with it helped make him stone cold steve austin the experience that he got in front of those crowds

taught him instinctively how to manipulate the crowd to get the reaction he wanted when he wanted it that's the art it's not a science you can't teach it you just have to develop bit over time. And without, we've talked about this a little bit before, by eliminating, for the most part, house shows, you're eliminating a large percentage of the opportunity that guys like Steve Austin and others had to develop their characters. Where are you going to go to get that experience in today's world? It's going to be hard. Will we see characters? is it as compelling as a Roman race was, has been. You can argue whether he is or he isn't all he wants.

That's a subjective opinion. I see a huge star to see him. And he brings the bank with it. So you can decide whether or not you like it, but you can't deny that it's a fact. When you look at John Sina, who went through some of the same internet wrestling community bullshit, you know,

is he going to, are you going to get another John Sina without the opportunity to devournish? develop those characters and that instinct. That's what I'm really trying to say. You're developing instinct. And I don't know how you develop that instinct in a sterile environment. And that's what we're looking at.

I think that's what AJ was talking about. Experience. Chris Jericho told me once. I think when I first got to WWE, we're talking about stuff in general. And he was talking about his transition from WCW to WWE. And I'm paraphrasing this, so don't quote me. Sorry, Chris, if I butcher it, but I think you know my intentions here. As confident as Chris Jericho was in his abilities the day he left WCW to join WWE,

and Chris was very confident. He had a reason to be. He realized once he got the WWE, what he didn't know. but he was in WCW for what WCW was in the expectations of our audience and in management. Chris was ready to go. He mastered it. He did extremely well. They got to WWE and realized it's a different ballgame here.

There really are levels. And the expectations were different. Vince McBad had a much different expectation than Eric Bishop did. So it, and it took him a while. It took Chris Jericho a while, if I remember the conversation correctly, to really begin to understand the style. Where, where is it Chris Jericho back in whatever year that was? Where's that next Chris Jericho going to get that opportunity to figure it out? Look, I think that the performance center and everything that can be taught there and can be learned there,

and can be practiced there is just an incredible opportunity and much needed. But it's not a total solution. Not if you want to really build stars. Well, I think they may be building a star accidentally over in the NFL right now. Some news we didn't think we'd be talking about today. Brock Reksteiner, who we know played a Jacksonville state here in Alabama and was on the roster for the New Orleans Saints. He's been suspended for the first six games of the

2026 regular season. He's 23 years old. He has impressed at rookie mini-camp. He's competing for a spot on the team's 53-man roster. Of course, we won't know how that shakes out for a few more weeks. But the suspension wouldn't begin until after the final roster cuts on August 30th. But here. Here's my favorite part of this.

WWE had someone quoted to the Rastlin media as saying there is a 99.9% chance that Brock is going to get a WWE offer whenever his NFL career is up. He is the real life son, of course, of Big Papa Pump, the big bad booty daddy. He is the real life cousin of Braun Breaker. Rick Steiner is his uncle. like this feels like can't miss for WWE. I hate seeing that he's suspended, but it does make me smile and make me wonder,

did they send Triple H to pick him up to go test together, or what happened here? What do you make of this news about Brock being suspended? But more importantly, 99.9% chance he signs to WWE. As a kid who grew up with the Steiner brothers as his favorite tag team, sign me up for the Steiner Cousins, I guess. I would love to see this, Eric. So would I.

And, you know, I can't really comment on the suspension. I'm assuming it's performance enhancing issues or something of that nature. And I feel, whatever it is, I feel bad for Brock because it's such a great opportunity. And, you know, you've got to kind of think, you're trying to make the roster, you're a rookie. and before you even make the team, you're suspended for six games. Something suggests to me without knowing anything at all about earning a spot in NFL team. This is cards you probably stacked against you. And I feel bad for a young man who got as far as he has and knows that it's unlikely he's going to make the team in no small part due to something like this.

That being said, I'm with you, man. I think those two stank. I'm so disappointed that we haven't seen more of Braun. You know, I said it wouldn't happen. I think the injury prior to WrestleMania really turned a lot of creative plans upside down. I firmly believe that. I thought Brawling is getting ready for the focus, the push, injury, whatever. But now with his cousin coming in and a chance to really, hopefully they lean into the Steiner,

Steiner Brothers brand a little bit and lose the gimmick names and kind of pay homage to two of the best tag team wrestlers in the history of the sport, my opinion. They're great. Scott was unique. Rick was amazing. These guys were great. I really enjoyed watching him working for the most part. Rick, both Scott, enjoyed work. working with them. So yeah, if there's a version 2.0 of the Steiner brothers,

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after you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Eric, we've got some less than awesome news to talk about. I don't know if you saw this, but she used to work with two cold Scorpio. After wrestling, he decided to get into the security business, and he took a position with Love's Trubstock. And this happened in Kansas City, Missouri. And I guess way back in June of 2024,

a patron was coming in at like three in the morning. Scorpio thought he had a lit cigarette, told him to put the cigarette out. The guy claims he thought he did, but Scorpio said he did not confronts him in the store with the smoke still coming off the cigarette. A scrap ensues, and at one point, Scorpio reaches in his pocket, pulls out a blade, and stabs the dude multiple times. And now he's taken a plea deal. He's not going to have to go through a jury trial, but he is going to be sentenced on

October 9th. It's an ugly situation. It looks like the authorities have decided that Skaggs was the aggressor in the situation here. The person he was in battle with was bleeding from their head, their chest, their buttocks, their legs, their abdomen, just an ugly scene. And this is probably one of the more unsung heroes. You want to talk about a guy who was ahead of his time. If Two Cold Scorpio comes a generation after, his style of wrestling, the big man who could do stuff off the top. It stood out. I was a fan of his in WCW and in ECW and in the WWF. And I hate that he's in this spot. This is just an ugly story. It's hard for me to find a silver lining in this one, Eric. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that.

I spent a little bit of time with Tukul a couple years ago. We were at an event together and we were writing together or whatever the situation was. But we got together and reminisced. you know, too cold went over to North Korea as a part of that trip. So got to spend some time and get to know him, became friends with him. And I'm, you know, I'm sorry for him. His life is, you know, is going to be altered permanently because of this situation. Unfortunately, the victim survived. I'm grateful for that.

But as far as Too Cold goes, his life is going to change rather abrupt. And that's too bad. He, too cold is, I don't know him well. I don't want to pretend I do. But he grew up hard. He grew up in a very, very dangerous environment. And his instincts got the better of it. Got the better of his judgment in this case from the sounds of it.

I mean, to pull a knife on somebody that doesn't have a weapon already, situation must be pretty bad in order to not get charged with that. You have a hard time defending yourself, and obviously that's going to be the case here. I'm sorry to hear it. I'm sorry to hear it. But Tukol was amazing to watch. He was amazing to watch Rossell because he was deceptively big.

I mean, he looked big, but he was, you know, in real life, he was heavier, denser, bigger than he even looked on TV. And he moved like a cat. his balance, his speed, his timing, things he could do in the ring for someone over 155 pounds was pretty freaking amazing. Given the idea that it was, you know, he's working security, it's the middle of the night, blah, blah, blah.

Do you think this is something that ultimately he has to do time for, or can he get away with probation on this? I mean, we're not legal experts. So much of it, look, all you have to do is what you know. It depends what state he's in. you know, what he, who knows anymore. I mean, hearing stories about people that pull a gun to shoot somebody in the face and they're out walking on the streets of Chicago, you know, eight hours later.

So who knows anymore, what, what a judge is going to do. It depends on the judge. Let's talk a little bit about some other sad news. We lost Dory Funk Jr. I mean, you want to talk about an incredible performer, a man whose contributions to wrestling are just huge. just in the ring where he was the NWA champion from 1969 to 1973. I mean,

you want to talk about number of days as champ like the longest run. Luthaz number one, Dory Funk Jr. number two, he was Bruce Pritchard's favorite wrestler. And when Jim Ross and Vince McMahon decided they wanted to start working towards developmental and working with some individual talents, they started running camps,

the Funkin Conservatory. And a who's who came through there, including a young edge and Christian, and even Kurt Angle. And Kurt Engel had phenomenal things to say, as did so many others who worked with him, one of the best teachers in wrestling. But it is from a bygone era, Eric, is in ring stuff. I feel like there's a lot of fans my age and younger who maybe didn't have a chance

to see very much Dory because so much of, you know, these days almost no one wrestles without it being recorded. Like it's going to be live streamed or there's a five camera shoot or somebody's in the audience holding up a video camera. camera on their phone, something. But that was not the case back in the day. Did you ever get to spend any time with Dory? And what do you think his legacy will be?

Will it be as an NWA champion or will it be his influence as a trainer behind the scenes? I think it'll be NWA champion. I spent a little bit of time with Dory. Not a lot. He never worked with me or for me or I with him. But he would often come, you know, he was down at the Disney MGM tapings. I think he was at just about every one of them.

And he was always there and he was backstage. He was very engaging. He liked sharing thoughts, notes, ideas with young talent. And they would often approach to you. And I think that part of the reason that he would come to a lot of events is because he genuinely just loved sharing his knowledge or his perspective on on the sport. And you can see the joy he had.

He was one of those, he was one of the people, and there's a number of them that are so good at teaching. He was so good at teaching because it was his passion. It made, it brought joy to him. And it showed.

So it's a loss. It's definitely a loss, but I really do believe that he'll be remembered as an NWA champion more than anything. We also got the news that Brock Lesnar has made it official. He is retired. We all wondered, hey, uh, felt like you were retiring after WrestleMania, but he comes back and passes the torch and does the whole glove routine again in Minnesota.

But this time he jumped on the Pat McAfee show and announced it is official. He is retiring from in-ring competition. He's going to spend more time with his family. His daughter has her eye on the 2028 Olympics. He's going to get in the woods. He's going to do some hunting. He's going to reap what he's sown. He's going to enjoy life.

He's a 10-time WWE world champion. He won the king of the ring back in 02. He won the Royal Rumble twice. He won the money in the bank. Of course, he was also an NCAA Division 1 champion, the UFC heavyweight champion. He was even the IWGP champ over in New Japan. He's kind of done it all.

And Pat McAfee and his crew couldn't wait to ask. ask, hey, you're going to do one of these attractions with Jake Paul on Netflix? Brock was quick to shut that down. I ain't doing Jack shit. He's earned it. Good for him. But if this really is it for Brock, and I'm not sold on that, I think he gets a call. He's at WrestleMania next year, just a guess.

But if he really is done for good, which is really hard to imagine in pro wrestling terms these days, what do you think Brock's legacy in wrestling will be? You almost never hear him in like that Mount Rushmore conversation. It was actually JBL a few weeks ago when we were previewing SummerSlam where he's like, I don't know why people don't talk about him like he's one of the greatest of all time. And I've talked to guys who've wrestled him and they're like, hey, I knew he was good, but I didn't know how good until I was in the ring with him. What do you think his legacy will be?

Does he deserve to be in that Rushmore conversation? Or was he more like Andre for Vince and modern TKO in the, he was a special attraction. I asked that, Eric, because since he returned to WWE in 2012, across the last 14 years, he wrestled 84 matches. So it feels like Vince really understood he's an attraction and he positioned him as such these last 14 years. Does that affect his legacy in the Rushmore conversation or how do you reconcile it? I think it does. I think it does. And I think the fact that Vince used to, use Brock as an attraction is a big part of it.

The fact that Brock avoided press. He didn't court media. He didn't court publicity. He came in. He did his work. And he went back to the farm. And you didn't hear from him again until it was time to come back and, you know, rinse and repeat.

The same formula over. and over and over again. And it didn't have to change the formula because it was so freaking profitable. It worked. But I think because he avoided the media and because of the way he was positioned, you didn't ever hear a lot from Brock. He heard from Paul.

He'd catch a couple syllables from Brock here and there, but you never really got close to Brock as a character. He was a machine that you love to watch an act. but it wasn't really a character in a traditional sense. Is he top 10 for you? Is he top 20 for you? I think, you know, we often talk about, you know, in the categories of big men,

Bader, Andre. One of the best. I mean, as a, I mean, the matches he had, his ability, his athletic ability, alone puts him in a top 10. And then because of the way he was used, he was such a dominant, powerful, you know, force within WWE and had accumulated so many great moments as you laid out. He definitely top 10 for sure.

Mount Rushmore, you know, time has a funny way of really affecting perception. And I think when Brock is finally, we've talked about this before, when Brock finally but when the audience actually believes that he's going to step away, when the absence makes the heart growth, fonder factor begins to kick in, you'll hear a lot more conversation about Brock being, you know, I'm out Rushmore candidate.

But I don't think people like you, I don't think people really bought into the idea that he's really going to retire. That just takes some time. Well, I hope he has, we want to wish him good luck in his retirement. I hope that he has a bunch of fun, enjoying his time and his family. You know, my grandfather used to say there's no stress like money stress, son.

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Savewithconrad.com. Speaking of luck, I don't know if you saw, but I feel all. awful for Chelsea Green. She announced and she said if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Eric, it was one of the feel-good moments of SummerSlam weekend. It feels like every time she got her big break on her way to WWE, she would get injured. And even when she's on the main roster, she'd get a little momentum. She'd get injured.

But by God, finally, at SummerSlam, she climbed that ladder. She pulled that belt down, even if it was a replica title, because Ria Ripley was out with the real one. She was now the new interim women's champion. Then they announced on Friday, Maria Ripley had surgery. She's out. So it's no longer interim. No, no. You're the champ, champ. And she wrestled that night and broke her orbital bone. Oh, no. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. So she's clearly going to try to figure out, is there a way to continue defending her title with a broken orbital bone. Can she use a mask or some new apparatus?

Is there a way? I mean, when she was in a footcast, she tried to make it part of what she was doing. I know she's going to do that with her face, but this is obviously a little different because now you've got broken bones floating around in your head. I just feel awful for her, Eric. Goodness gracious, gracious.

The timing. Hey, you know what? You're right. She's out. Ria's out of her. You're the champ champ, champ. Not the interim champ. You're just the champ, champ, and it's official today.

A few moments later, broken orbital bone. Eric, this sucks for Chelsea Green, does it not? It does. I don't even know her. I've never met her. But, man, do I feel bad for her? I can put myself in her shoes and imagine how she feels, and it's not good. She has been through so much.

The only thing that I can say is if she can find a way to hang in there and overcome this obstacle, she'll have the respect of a lot of people, fans, peers, old fuckers like me, look at her and go, you know, whatever success she enjoys in the future, she's definitely earned. I hate to ask this, Eric, I'm not trying to borrow trouble. I hope that no one suggests this. I hope this isn't reality. But once upon a time, under Vince McMahon's WWB,

and I don't know if you recall this, but let's go back several years. The night after WrestleMania in 2013, Dolf Sigler cashed in the money in the bank. It was a thunderous pop. He took the title off Alberto Del Rio. I mean, it's one of the loudest reactions in WW history.

But it wasn't too terribly long, and Dolf suffered a concussion. And as a result, they had to pivot. He never got another world title opportunity again. And I don't know. I wasn't there. this was a long time ago,

but it does stand to reason that he may have been labeled injury prone. And under Vince McMahon's WWE, that was almost like the kiss of death. If they felt like you were frail or fragile or injury prone,

that meant they couldn't really rely on you because we can't make long-term booking plans and promote cards if you're getting injured and then do you think, and I even wondered, is that why Finn Baller never got another sniff at the world title because the night 10 years ago at Somerslam when he won the big red belt in the same match where he wins the belt he gets thrown into the barricade, braces himself,

hurts his shoulder as a result. He's never had another sniff at that opportunity again too. I desperately hope that doesn't happen for Chelsea Green because she's been such a scene stealer. I'm pulling for her. She feels like perennial underdog. I want it to happen for her. but is there a chance they're going to start throwing that phrase around for her and she's just

going to be used as an attraction and not afforded these opportunities. I hope that's not the case, Eric. Obviously don't have a crystal ball and really don't know other than, you know, Bruce and Paul Levack and a handful of others don't really know anybody in WCW that are making decisions, or excuse me, WWE that are making decisions. So I can't predict. But here's the bright side of. it if there is a bright side, it's not a bright side. Here's what I would take into consideration

before I would start throwing injury prone around. It's a broken fucking orbital bone. That's not like a joint. It's not like weak joints or any other types of injury. Sounds like a bad bump, not so great of a working punch. Something had to happen to her, aside from her, her being fragile to break your orbital bone. Maybe it was, you know, maybe she missed a move. Maybe she forgot the duck. I don't know. I didn't see it.

But a broken orbital bone doesn't necessarily scream injury prone. Unlucky? Yeah. Bad timing? Yeah. Maybe she made a mistake that was a result of it, but it's not the same as having bad knees or a bad shoulder or bad hips or neck, Something that can go out under something that you can sustain the injury with in ways that doesn't even look like it should have created an injury.

You know, bad knees are the worst. There are times when, you know, I can be walking across the lawn doing nothing. And if I step wrong or my weight isn't in the right position, my knee goes out. That's injury probe. A broken orbital bone is more like getting hit in a face with a brick. that's not the same thing. So I'm hoping that whatever caused that injury, you know,

people look at it as something other than being injury problem. We sure are pulling for Chelsea Green, man. She's got to be one of the unsung heroes of women's wrestling over the last several months. He's got so much charisma. You said it, Conrad, you said you want her to succeed. Yes.

And I think that's the way the, that's the way I feel about her. And I'd never met her. Just the energy she brings, you can feel it. You can feel it in her social media posts. She's a genuine, authentic, passionate about the business and performing. She loves to perform.

So I think, and like I said, I've never met her. But that's how I feel about her, because that's the way she makes me feel about her. And I'm sure that's her fan base, reacting to the same things I am. And you want to see somebody like that succeed. And hopefully, you know, WWE management recognizes that. I'm sure they do. Well, Eric, let's talk about it. We got a little bit of controversy from our last episode.

You and I were reviewing SummerSlam. And apparently, Eric, if you and I go on a program like this and we're talking about wrestling and you share your opinion, that's fine. But if I share my opinion, how dare you? People are upset that I shared my personal opinion. It is interesting that there's a consensus out there that a lot of people believe that I'm wrong in my opinion. I said overrated.

That's a relative term. That's not subjective. But even like the good Gary, as we're getting ready to record this morning over on social. Eric, I don't know if you had a chance to see this tweet, but I'll just let you read this one, I think this is going to be right up your alley.

Go ahead and read it for us. He says, Hey, Hey, Conrad and Eric Bischoff lost a lot of respect from the wrestling community with their ridiculous take

on WWE Roman rates. They should apologize to Roman. It ain't going to friggin' happen, period, and stop podcasting after that embarrassing take they had. It's embarrassing we shared our opinion. It's embarrassing. Yeah,

You know, it's it's the internet wrestling community fought police. How dare you have an opinion that differs from mine? That's funny. It's, look, I respect the hell out of Rome. I'm sure you do. It has nothing to do with respect. I look up to him in a lot of ways, you know, as a human being. Look what he's overcome.

Yes. Look at his priorities. I don't know Roman. I've maybe said four words to Roman in my life. So I don't know him, but I know of him. And I know what a priority his family is. I know what he's gone through. How many of us have faced the types of things and fear that Roman has?

and then not only overcome it, but reach the level of success that he has. So my opinion of his performances as of this moment have nothing to do with the respect I have for the man, even though I don't really know him personally, don't have to. But as, you know, and obviously I saw the controversy kind of bubbling up over the week. and it reminds me a lot of Hulk you know even I'm you know kind of

taking a shout of my own take so to speak but it doesn't change the way I feel I'm bored with him I don't see anything new from him I don't see a character evolving when you look at any character

that is playing a role over an extended period of time or even if it's in 90-minute movie. Part of what makes watching a story and a character really compelling and interesting is the evolution of that character. We're not seeing any evolution. We're seeing maintenance, and it's good.

It's definitely working from a financial perspective. So there's nothing wrong with it. There's just nothing compelling about it, and there's no, evolution to the character and until there's something unique, something different, something that is an evolution of an already powerful character, I've seen that movie. There's no, there's no match out there until something changes in the way that character. And maybe it never will, because maybe it never has to, by the way. So let's, let's point that out.

Why does he have to change? Do you want to wrestle another 15 years? something tells me no. Is this his number one priority? I think professionally the answer is yes, but I think on a personal level, the answer is no. So until and unless there's an evolution in his character in the way he's being presented and the states

for the opportunity, I'm just not interested anymore because I've seen it all. There's just nothing different, just like a Rick Flair man. Rich Flair wrestled the same match over and over over again. It didn't matter what his opponent's, who his opponent was. He basically had the same match. There were phenomenal.

His interviews were always different. And that's one of the reasons why people still loved watching Rick Flair work. You know, a lot of it had to do with his promos. But his work in the ring as great as it was, and he made everybody look ten times better than they really were. That had a lot to do with it as well. well, but Rick's character never changed. Didn't have to. So, and I think that's where Roman is, but that doesn't mean that he's number one,

not valuable. And number two, it doesn't mean that I can't be bored with it. It's just, those two things are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, I mean, I guess I want to start by, uh, clearing up what I didn't say. I, I didn't say that Roman Raines isn't a great talent. He is. He has, you know, good to very good matches. He's had some great matches.

He's been the top guy during the most successful boom period. Here's a little fun fact for you, Eric. Out of the three most financially successful events in the history of pro wrestling, in the history of the industry, he's in two of those three. He was the headline act in two of the most three most financially successful events of all time. You can't take that away from him. No. my point last week was I'm kind of ready for something else.

You know, this guy has been at the top of the scene for 12 years and I was so bold and sharing my opinion here on the program. And that got everybody fired up. And I guess my question is, why? Why was it a fire starter conversation, not just on our podcast, but on every other podcast and every form of social media? Why was this so polarizing? Seemingly split 50-50.

I see a lot of people agreeing with us. I see other people saying that this is ridiculous and we're wrong. I don't know how someone's opinion can be wrong. You know, it's the old Bruce Pritchard. Hey, you like chocolate. I like vanilla. Well, if you like vanilla, you love Roman rains because it's been here for 12 years. It's been here at the very beginning.

I suggested I'm looking for something new. J.R. says it on his program all the time. Wrestling fans want something new. And I was talking to a guy who everyone agrees had maybe the number one storyline of all time in the NWO. But everyone also agrees it needed a proper ending and it probably went on too long and had too many members. And if any of that's sounding familiar, that's kind of what we were saying last week.

But boy, people got fired up about it, Eric. And I don't know. It was hard for me to wrap my hand around that. It's almost like people think we have a hard on for Roman rains. We don't. But we can have a hard on for you anytime with blue chew gold. Measure your days not in minutes or in hours, but in boners and in rounders and in round with your woman. Here's what you won't hear with blue chew. Wait, are those booze?

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You'll also receive an additional. 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Bluetooth for sponsoring the day's pod and the bedroom. Eric, let's talk about it. The Romans place in wrestling, you know, basically what I was trying to insinuate is, I'm not saying he didn't have good matches.

We even said it was the best match of the weekend. We enjoyed the match. We enjoyed the story. It was good. But we were ready for something. new. And the conversation that I had online, I don't know if you saw any of the back and forth, because I was taking some arrows. And by the way, keep them coming. Hey, hey, it's Conrad. I don't mind the discourse. You'll learn, you'll actually learn to love it. At first,

it's very unnerving because nobody likes to be disliked. Nobody likes, you know, to be pulled apart and, you know, criticize publicly until you get used to it. And that once you learn to embrace the heat and actually love it, it changes everything. I think what changed everything for Roman Reigns is the association with Paul Heyman, and it feels like people have forgotten. It's almost, you know, Paul Heyman was the third guy standing next to Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, and he came up to us in men in black and held his pen and bang. We all forgot that they had been pushing Roman uphill for years and years and years.

The bloodline story was masterful. But the puppeteer who deserves a lot of the credit there, my point, was Paul Heyman. Paul Heyman was phenomenal in that. So were the Uso, so was Sammy Zane, so was the bloodline. And no one individual did all of that. And did Roman more than carry his end to the deal? Absolutely. But my point is, when we're thinking about the all-time greats and goat conversation,

I mean, just a few minutes ago, we talked about whether or not we were going to include Brock in that conversation. and JBL has asked that out loud on the pod for a while now. Why isn't Brock talked about as one of the all-time greats? And when I posed that same question when Brock made it official this week on the Pat McAfee show, does he belong in the Rushmore conversation? A good portion of the responses where, well, no, he's a part-timer. He's ineligible. He didn't work enough matches.

It's like, wait a minute. And even when we think about people who were polarizing as the top guy, I like a John Cena, because I made the claim here on the program, that I don't remember anyone as a babyface champion being booed out of the building. Now, some smart assets would say, well, he wasn't getting great reactions. Polk Hogan in 1995, before the NWO, I hear you, but not to this level. It's not exactly the same comparison, but let's go with it. My point is, Hogan had to switch something up.

He had to change something. Something changed. And then as a result, Hogan had the biggest, I don't know, second run in the history of wrestling. I mean, there is an argument to be made that Hogan had the best babyface run in the WWF, and then that he had the best heel run in WCW. As a reminder, all the Hogan critics who say that Hulk Hogan ruined WCW, WCW never turned to profit without Hulk Hogan. So just baronade on that.

So I don't know what he ruined, but if he did ruin it, he ruined what he built. And that's the conversation. And so that's the proper context for the conversation, at least in my mind. Yes, they booed John Sina, but they booed John Sina by himself. When we have all, as adult fans, felt differently about John Sina, if he had Paul Heyman and Sammy Zane and the Uso's and the greatest storyline, that's not what they were doing with him. They did with Sina what they did with Roman,

which is super Sina, just run through all these guys, and we fans didn't want it. We wanted something different than. But us saying that last week really pissed a lot of people off, and I'm really trying to wrap my head around why. I mean, even, I know that you're not, this is going to be a shock to you, but even today, I saw clips of Dave Meltzer not saying my name, but basically saying, oh, the journalists have just gotten so bad, you know, to just come out and say that Roman Raines is no good when you don't

study the business. I never said Roman Raines is no good. I said, I was tired of it and I was ready for something else and he's overrated. Overrated means, in my opinion, I don't lump him in the same category as a Hulk Hogan. Kazim over on Twitter tried to argue. with me this week, Eric, that Roman Reigns has been more important to WWE than Hulk Kogan was. That is ridiculous. No reasonable person would make that argument. It's not a legitimate argument.

And we have these conversations in other sports, Eric, and it's like, hey, is it LeBron or Jordan? Do we forget that Kobe existed? He was pretty good. Do we know about Bill Russell? Have we talked about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Will Chamberlain? We just decide it's these two. and it feels like in wrestling we kind of decide that it's Hogan or it's Austin but even now no one's saying or is it John Sina so why would we automatically say

well it could be Roman rank come on man that's all I'm saying ready for something new I think Roman's done a great job but he was an industry plant they had to push him uphill for several years before it started to hit yes he deserves it now and by the way I don't feel bad about sharing my opinion Eric I saw some guys like Ryback basically saying, oh, take it easy on poor Roman, you shouldn't be critical. When are we ever critical of anyone who's out there trying to earn a living right now? There are other podcasters out there who review every show on TV, and if they don't like something, they gut and quarter their performers.

And oftentimes they're 20-some-odd-year-old kids trying to pay their rent, and they're trying to make their audience of one their boss happy and deliver this script and get all their time right and work with a guy who's got an injury and and and we're not going to get on here and gut and quarter those individuals. That's not what we did last week. And even if you think we did, we did it with the highest paid wrestler in the history of pro wrestling. Roman Raines, I found out over the weekend, everybody knows how much he makes.

It's not a secret. And it is a lot. Roman rains between last year and this year will make more than Rick Claire did in his entire career. And people are saying that we can't be critical. Like, what the hell is going on? Eric? Well, first of all, people probably aren't used to you taking a position like that. You, at least for the several years I've been working with you, are pretty, you, you keep a lot of

your opinions to yourself. Yes. In time, you shared one. And that's unusual for people. Now, again, you have to remember who are the people that are reacting? You use Dave Meltzer. as an example. And what he said, Dave Meltzer is the most out of touch, socially divergent member, one of members of the Internet Wrestling community.

And he's got his own little, you know, pool of people like him that agree and believe everything that Dave Meltzer says is the way things are. Dave is clearly, I mean, I don't even think I have to say it anymore.

There's very few people out there that talk about wrestling that know as little about the actual business of the wrestling business as Dave Meltzer. He can study, you talk about studying all he wants. He is clueless. His insight is, again, I'll just say socially divergent. And there are, there are a lot of people like it that really don't function well outside of the basement in the kind of group of people that support and, and, and, and, and, and, you know,

and communicate with Dave. That's the part of the internet wrestling community that I think is so unproductive for the entire industry. And get used to it, bro, when you share your opinion, I don't care if it's politics, if it's wrestling, if it's art, if it's sports. If you have an opinion, there are certain groups of people that only get any dopamine at all. from being contrary to what you said. And trying to establish their knowledge or their superior perspective, that would be Dave Meltzer because he studies the business. What the fuck do you study?

But just, hey, embrace it. If people weren't listening, they wouldn't be complaining. So have at it. Bring it on. learn to love it. I think it's great. I ain't mad at it. You know, I will admit it is fun to go back and forth with people on Twitter.

I had a blast. I mean, we talked about, you know, the booze were so loud that they had to turn them down in the truck. You know, that was a real thing. And we had fun with it in the discourse online. And I said something that I know from people the wrong way where I said, hey, the only way they could get fans to stop booing roaming out of the building was to stop letting fans in. Of course, I'm referencing COVID, but I just knew, ah, they're pissed off. Let's just have some fun with it. But the other thing that really did annoy me, Eric, is people just assumed,

because I happened to be friends with Cody, that, oh, I must be, this must be a calculated attack. Like, I planned something with Cody where I'm going to attack Roman on the podcast. Like, you know how silly that even sounds? Like, do you, I mean, when you think about the fact that Roman Raines makes like two million dollars a match, do you think he gives a shit what we say on this podcast? He does. Oh, and that's the other part of this, you know,

the people that feel the need to defend Roman, right? I can only imagine if somebody walked up to Roman and played them a clip of our show, if he even paid enough of attention to warrant a dismissive smile, I'd be amazed. He does not give that shit. No, I think what you think, or really what the dirt sheet marks because that's what they are. Dave Meltzer,

they are Dave Meltzer dirt sheet marks. Nobody cares what you think. Absolutely no one cares what you think other than those like me who are entertained by just how irrelevant you've become. I do want to chat a little bit about the whole Cody discourse. No, I did not talk to Cody. They're not even working in a program. them, they're like on different shows.

It's not the same thing. The point I was making was the W.W.E. got behind Roman Reins and decided he's our top star and we're going to push him like his top star. The fans didn't make him the top star and then the machine got behind him. The machine got behind him. And then eventually when they put Paul Heyman

and the Usos and the bloodline and stopped letting fans in the building and made him the champ and he never lost and he had the longest entrance and the longest matches, it worked. My point was, W.W.E could do that with anyone else, but they've never done it with anyone else. And so to make the comparison between the way they've positioned Cody and the way they've

positioned Roman are two totally different animals. Cody came back from the Royal Rumble, at the Royal Rumble from injury on January 28th, 2023. So I'm not talking about when he first comes over. I'm saying post-thorn Peck when he returns three and a half years ago at the Rumble in 2023. Since that time, he's wrestled 289 matches since he came back from the torn peg. During that same time period, Romans wrestled 29 times. It's not the same thing. I'm not saying Cody is better than.

I'm not saying he's different than. I'm just saying we're having a conversation about Roman as the top guy and he's wrestled 29 times. And when I bring that up about, hey, well, since Brock came back 12 years ago, he only wrestled 84 times. People in the comments are saying, well, he's not eligible to be in the Rushmore conversation. He was a part-timer. How does that same math not apply to Roman? And there's nothing wrong with that. You want to talk about guys who have negotiated the hell out of WWE? Okay, the panda, the real WWF, they kicked Vince's ass. And so did Brock Lesnar.

I mean, he used to, oh, is he in or is he out? Let me just fly out to the UFC and sit ringside with Dana White, see if I can't get a bump out of old Vince McMahon. Like, good on these guys. Being able to make more money than ever before for less dates. That's not a bad thing. That's great for the industry. It's high fives all around. I'm just saying.

I'm going to jump in here and point one thing out. Again, not so much anymore, but I used to be criticized often for allowing all COVID to have creative control. If any of you dirt sheet morons out there think that Brock Lesnar did not have creative control that Roman doesn't? You are more clueless than even I can imagine. I don't give any of you all credit for having much of a mind of your own. I don't think you do.

But if you're one of those who think that Brock Lesnar or Roman reigns don't have creative control, you clearly, clearly are out of touch and know less about the business than even I thought you did. It's just interesting to me that the people who are so critical about Hulk Hogan and him holding people down. I mean, let's imagine for a minute last week, Hulk Hogan on Monday Night Raw, or let's go back an era,

Hulk Hogan on Monday Nitro has a young Chris Jericho standing in front of him, cutting a promo, getting great crowd reactions. And Hogan tells the camera, zoom in on my half a million dollar watch and then look at his Walmart watch. Like if Hulk Hogan did that to Chris Jericho,

they would have gut and quartered Hulk Hogan for years to come. But when Roman does it, oh, it's cool. I just, I mean, it's fascinating to me to see. And people have pointed out the hypocrisy of other stars in similar positions. But like the idea that all of a sudden Roman is this golden boy and we can't be critical of him at all. It's like, when did that start? because people were critical of Hulk Hogan having the top spot for a long time.

But what guys used to say, if you recall, and we've heard this in every book, every shoot interview, hey man, when the WWF really exploded and we had three towns, and the cards came out, we were all just praying. We had our fingers crossed. Oh, Lord, please put me on the Hogan card. I'll make more money. That's not the case with Roman reigns. It's guaranteed money.

It's a different deal. And he doesn't work the shows. Like, I don't understand why Roman can't be critical. criticized, but boy, we can just lob it all at Hulk Hogan or whoever. It doesn't make sense to me. Well, you gave them something to be upset about. Yeah. That's what they live for.

It's the highlight of their day, Conrad. You should, I mean, really, they should be thanking you because you gave them the own dopamine hit that they probably will get all week. And that's what they live for. That's the only thing they live for because it's the only thing they have. And like I said, I think it's humorous. I think it's funny. By the way, not shitting on Roman Raines.

He did a great thing. He's more than held up his end of the bargain. We said last week he had the best match on the weekend. Looking forward to what's next for Roman Raines. And I just want to state clearly for the record. I enjoyed all seven of his matches last year. I enjoyed all six of his matches in 2024. Like this, I mean, every time he wrestles,

that has a big fight feel because he does it so infrequently. I'm not saying that to be shitty. I'm saying the formula is working. And that's part of the formula. Let's give a little credit to Roman as to why perhaps Vince stuck with him as long as he did. When you look at Roman rains from across an arena, you're looking at a star. Whether you could be dropped out of a friggin spaceship, find yourself planted firmly inside of an arena or a stadium.

And when Roman Reins walks through that curtain, you don't need to know his backstory. You don't need to know how many matches he's had this year. You don't need to know any of that shit. When he walks through the curtain, you know you're looking at a star. And perhaps some of that is because he wasn't overexposed. There's different ways of getting people over. This is going to be a flip side of the conversation. There are different ways of getting people.

over. And when you have someone like Roman who drips charisma, you didn't even have to talk. He just has to look over a shoulder at you. And it makes an impression. Who else has that? Who has that in AEW? Nobody. Who else in WW has that? Nobody? That is special. That is a unique characteristic when you have that much charisma that you can walk into a 50,000 seat arena and control everybody's attention without Paul Heyman and without saying a word because of the aura. And I think that's the best way to describe Roman success and why he's able to go out there and have the kind of matches he does. And to only wrestle 10 times a year, whatever the number is, I don't even think about that

shit. I think about how does he make me feel when he does wrestle? And I bank on that. And the reason you can bank on that is because Roman Rays has an aura that nobody else has or has in quite some time. Well, Eric, to be clear, I don't mean to cut you off, but the wrestling infrequently is what makes him a star. I mean, if you, if you, what's the old, what's the old Cornett thing? Hey, if you got a locker room full of seven footers, you ain't got no giants.

The idea being if he wrestles every week, it's not special. If you see him every week, it's not special. So the absence is what makes the heart grow fonder. And then, I mean, listen, he's one of the only guys that he can make an entrance, start making an entrance. They go to commercial, they come back. He's still making the entrance. But it's the lights.

It's the pyro. It's the slow walk. It's the volume turned all the way up. Like, if we make it feel special, it will be special. If the Undertaker just ran to the ring and they didn't kill the lights and hit the purple light and he walks real slowly with the organ, the whole thing's changing. Like they borrowed a little bit of The Undertaker and his slow, methodical for Roman Raines. That's not debatable. That certainly was the formula and it's worked.

All I'm saying is I'm kind of ready for him to do whatever the American badass version of his character is. That's all I'm saying. I'm ready for him to switch gears a little bit. and do something a little different than. And I guess it's, you know, how dare you? We're going to, we're going to endeavor to persevere,

but everybody got in on the act. Socially diversion. Yeah. I saw something excellent this week. Bill Pritchard posted this. I wanted to make sure that you saw it, thought it was pretty fun. He's going through some old stuff,

found old vacation photos from this past week, 1996. He went to Nitro. And I thought, man, photo this is. I can't wait to show Eric. You can actually see the set of Nitro outdoors at Disney and GM. Just a really cool photo and we're going to share it for you guys here. Go check us out on YouTube if you haven't already at 83 weeks.com. But what a cool shot that is Eric,

because it's before it's filled with fans. It's before all the chaos is happening. Nobody's been lawn darted just yet, but just like a sneak peek of what life was like 30 years ago this week. I'm a big believer in this product and Eric is too, you know, it's the old cliche. It's not how much you make, but how you save. Well, Rocket Money can give you the ability to track your subscriptions and it has the ability to cancel the unwanted ones within the app, all within just a few taps. It's going to give the users the ability to stop paying for things that they don't use. Isn't that nice? You're overpaying and you didn't even realize it. And I think we've all done this before.

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That's RocketMoney.com slash 83 weeks. Rocketmoney.com slash 83 weeks. Eric, I stopped short of it. But you know, it did cross my mind this week. If we were still doing the T-shirts hard and heavy where anytime we say something silly as shit on this show that we create a t-shirt, I thought, what if I created like an OTC shirt? Not the one tribal chief, but overrated tribal chief.

I think you'll let it go unless you just want to bask in the glow of the heat. I'm not going to do that. Suffering suck a tass, son. Let's talk a little bit about the NWO. 30 years ago this week, actually 30 years ago today, as folks are listening to this, Eric, it was August 10th, 1996. it was the very first and last hog wild. You heard Eric mention it just a few moments ago.

They're in Wyoming right now, I'm sorry, South Dakota right now doing their thing at Sturgis. And of course, after this initial hog wild, it became road wild, it became the event that people love to poke fun at old easy E for, but they forget the main event was something special. The undercard was pretty solid too. Let's run through some of the matches.

We did have a WCW Saturday night. This was a Saturday night show. So we would do a Saturday night. And then we would go right into the pay-per-view, almost like a pre-show. So it was public enemy over Rough and Ready. That's Mike Enos and Dick Slater. Conan and Chavo Guerrero Jr. The Nasty Boys in High Voltage, Alex Wright, and Earl Robert Eaton.

That's Bobby Eden, being fancy. The Dungeon of Doom in there with Jim Powers, Joe Gomez and Mark Starr. David Taylor and Mr. JL, that's Jerry Lynn. Shout out to him. He just had a birthday. DDP beat Renegade, who they just did a whole dark side of the ring on this past week. Arne Anderson beat Hugh Morris,

but now it's time for the pay-per-view. The paper-view itself, think about this opening match, folks. Ray Mysterio versus Ultimo Dragon. Yolly, what a match. Sign me up. I want to watch that one today. Scott Norton versus Ice Train. Medusa versus Bull McConnell.

Chris Benoit versus Dean Malenko. another one outstanding. Harlem Heat against the Steiner brothers. Flair versus Eddie Guerrero. The outsiders versus Sting and Lex Lugar. Listen, we can be critical of that WCW Saturday Night card all we want to. But this pay-per-view is stacked, brother. Mysterio and Ultimo, Benoit and Melenko, Flair and Guerrero, sign me up.

But then the main event, that's where the real history comes in. It's Hollywood Hogan. He's just turned bad the month before. This is the first time we're saying. seeing Hogan on a pay-per-view as a bad guy ever. He's never been on a pay-per-view as a bad guy, ever. This is his heel debut, and he's wrestling the giant for the big gold belt. Not just that, but after the win, because of course he wins, brother.

He's got the same amount of creative control that Roman Raines does. He takes the big gold belt. He brings his pals in the ring, and they spray paint the big gold belt. he tagged it NWO The belt at this point had been around since February of 86 Where 10 years and changed removed from when Dusty

took this belt off of Rick Flair The same three plates, the same strip of leather This represented heritage, It represented tradition It didn't just represent WCW It represented the NWA That was the NWA world title.

And the NWA was the number one organization in all of wrestling until Vince McMahon went national. And who did he go national with this man, Polk Hogan? And now he's come to WCW and won the NWA title. Now we're calling it the WCW belt, but we all know what it really is. It's the richest prize in all of pro wrestling. It's the most important belt in wrestling history.

And now he's spray-painted it. Not NWA, but NWO. And as a reminder, this served as WCW's world title. The letters WCW weren't anywhere on the belt. It was made when the Crockett's were thinking of defecting from the NWA. So the original concept art had NWA at the very top. Crocett put a line through it and said, nah, let's just call it World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion.

So now the WCW champion is carrying a belt that doesn't even, even say WCW on it and instead it's spray painted NWO, the same belt that Ricky Steamboat held, the same belt that Sting held, the same belt that Rick Flair held and Dusty Roads and Ronnie Garvin and so many others, and now he spray painted it. I got to hear about the idea who comes up with this concept. Was there any pushback from the office? Any of the talent give you any shit about this? Talk to me about what a major moment this was for the NWO and the story. And spray painting a belt, it's never happened before.

It's been done since. But this is real wrestling history and it happened 30 years ago today, Eric. I'd have to talk to Kevin Nash. Obviously, Kevin Sullivan, I would love to talk to if that were possible. Maybe down the road. But my guess is that it was an improvisation. moment. I don't think it was a plan. Wow. It wasn't a discussion that I had. I think it was just one of those things in the moment. Probably Kevin is the one that I would guess stirred it up. Said, hey,

oh, spray the camp, spray the belt. Let's tag it. I could hear him saying it. So, I mean, in my mind, I could hear it. I'm guessing it was either a Scott Hall or Kevin Nash idea that got communicated to Hulk. He said, oh, hell yeah, brother. Because it'll be a moment, and it was, and it still is

to this day. It was brilliant. But I didn't come up with it. I didn't approve it in advance. I was just grateful for it when it happened because it made sense. It was totally in line with the NWO story, with the characters we were trying to create,

with the feeling of anarchy that we were shooting for, all of those things that helped make the NWO, what it became, and this was a perfect representation of that psychology, if you will. It was a major moment for wrestling fans, for WCW, for the NWO, for Hulk Hogan, for belt collectors. I mean, how many times do you think you've seen spray-painted big gold belts with NWO on it? I mean, we even occasionally get tagged.

When people spray that cleaner that you use on like a smooth cook top, like an electric cup, they'll spray NWO or they're going to windex, you know, or do some sort of tire shine or on their windshield or they're going to do it on their mirror. Everybody loves the NWO spray paint thing. And after you guys do it with the belt, it becomes a thing. You start tagging individuals. It adds so much to that gangland style takeover. Does it not? That's exactly it.

We did the same thing with a production truck. And I think that was spontaneous because I guarantee you I wouldn't have approved that because I know I would have to pay to get it cleaned up. And that was a spontaneous thing that just worked. Sometimes the best things in wrestling just happen. You like to think that all the really good stuff is planned out most of the time it is. But some of the best stuff happens in the spur of the moment. I think the tagging of the belt and the production truck,

and for a while it became, okay, this is what we do now. But tagging the belt like this, sure, it was an improv moment that just resonated and still does. Such a cool moment in wrestling history. We want to hear from you guys. What do you remember about Hogwild, 1996? Do you think it's been unfairly criticized? 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. And, you know, Eric, I do think a lot of the criticism of your booking this event comes from the Dirtcheet newsletters who are always talking about, oh, he sacrificed the gate. Yes, you sacrifice the gate in order to land oil sponsors. They never put two and two together until you said that. And they never do it because they don't study the business the way they say they do.

Yeah, I probably gave up maybe $140,000, $150,000 to maybe $200,000 in ticket sales. We were pretty hot back then in exchange for probably $4 to $6 billion of new advertising and sponsorship. I'd make that deal three times a day. I could. You just sacrificed the gate over and over again, wouldn't it? You big goof? I'd let people in for free. If they were willing to ride up on their motorcycles and make a bunch of noise and have a bunch

of fun, and I was able to attract millions of dollars worth a new sponsorship that was otherwise impossible to get. Nobody in the gas and oil business, which they call the automotive industry in the ad space, nobody in the gas and oil business wanted to spend a nickel with WCW. until they did. And the reason they did was because of Hog Wild.

But, you know, they study. What a card that is, too. Like, I want to challenge people who've decided, oh, this show sucks. Okay, maybe you don't like the look of the venue. You would have preferred it in an arena. Okay, I'll listen to that criticism. But the card again, Mysterio and Ultimo Dragon for the Cruiserweight title, that's awesome.

Benoit and Dean Malenko, give me some of that. The Harlem Heat and the Steiner brothers, the two most decorated WCW tag teams in history, Rick Flair and Eddie Guerrero for the U.S. title, the outsiders versus Sting and Lex, Hogan and Andre, well, the son of Andre, the giant. And there are two other matches. But let's remember the WWF wasn't even doing women's wrestling. People are often critical about, well, Eric didn't bring in enough female talent. The WWF didn't even have a division at this point.

We've got Medusa versus Bull Nakano here, and they tried to have some stakes. So we're at a motorcycle rally. We're going to beat up the import bike. I like that. It's silly. It's fun. It's wrestling. And then we tried something with Scott Norton and Ice Train.

Maybe it wasn't that great. Maybe it was. That's up for you to decide. But the rest of this card, Eric, if this was held in an arena in Atlanta or Chicago, fans would have talked about this like this could be one of the best wrestling cards of all time just based on the talent alone, don't you think? Possibly. And the card was great.

I mean, it was a solid card. I mean, Rick Flair and Eddie Carrero, I'd like to go back and just watch that. That had to be a great match. But people are weird, especially those that feel the need to, you know, speak out against certain things in that nobody likes change, right? The minute you do something different, people, many people react negatively because it's different. It's not what they expected.

How dare you? For me, I took the opposite approach. We had 12 freaking paper views a year. If I couldn't find a way to give each one of them its own unique personality, I wasn't doing my job. We're targeting men 18 to 39. That Harley Davidson demo at Sturgis demo was our sweet spot for wrestling. it was a perfect choice to give that event its own unique personality to brand it so that it felt unique and different than the other 11 paper views that we were trying to motivate people to watch.

You have to give each one of these big events at that time a unique personality, a character of its own. and Sturgis was a brilliant freaking idea for doing just that. It gave that pay-per-view its own unique personality that laser-focused on the demo that happened to be one of the most sponsored events in the country is you go to Sturgis, go to Sturgis tomorrow, charter a jet, fly there tomorrow, walk up and down the street. You're going to see two types of sponsorship. It's liquor and it's gas and oil and you're going to see a ton of it.

Well, I wanted some of that. And in order to get some of that, I had to go where they were. They weren't going to come to an arena and sit there with a bunch of wrestling fans. We had to go to them. We had to prove that we were a viable, sponsorable media opportunity

to advertise it. And we did. The audience loved it. Sponsors loved it. It was a success to everybody except for, you know, Dave Meltzer and a couple dirt sheet writers like it. Because, you know, they must have studied the wrong book or something. I don't know.

You gave Mysterio and Ultimov 11.5 minutes. Meltzer gave it three and three quarter stars. You gave Benoit Malenko 26 minutes and 55 seconds on pay-per-view in 1996. they got four and a quarter stars. Flair and Eddie Guerrero got three and a half stars for 14 minutes and 14 seconds. I do want to ask you, though, we sort of glossed over. This is the first time that Hulk Hogan has ever worked as a heel on a pay-per-view. It's never happened before.

I mean, at this point, it feels like this guy's done it all. But he's been a stone cold baby face, pardon the pun, at this point for over a decade. Now he's going to have to try something new. and if you go back and watch this, I think even Hogan would say I hadn't quite yet figured it out yet, brother. I'm not going to say it was his best match because this is his first time trying to be a heel.

It's probably for me, like trying to write with your left hand. Like I know how to do it with my right hand and I can, it might be legible with my left hand, but I don't have enough practice yet there. Was Hulk worried or did he share that with you before after the match? Like, brother, it's been a long time since.

since I worked as a heel. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. He didn't say anything like that. And I didn't get the impression that he was uncomfortable in any way with his role. I'm sure once he got out there, though, it was different. His reactions all had to be different. He had to carry himself differently.

He had to walk to the ring differently. You know, so one thing I will say about some characters that I've seen. seen in the WWE is they'll go from heel to baby face or vice versa, but nothing really changes. The entrance stays the same. Triple H is a perfect example. His entrance as a heel was really not that much different than his entrance is a baby face. He entered the ring the same way. You know, it's awkward to make that change.

And I don't think that you do it all at once. I think it happens, maybe over the course of a couple weeks or a couple months, you have to get comfortable with it and react differently than you do as a baby face or if you were to heal react differently than you would as a heel. But Hulk never talked about it. We didn't talk about it before the match. We didn't talk about it after the match. But I think going back and looking at it, it's pretty obvious.

He wasn't quite in that heel groove yet. He wasn't sure who that character really was yet. And that I feel pretty confident in saying because I know that Scott and Kevin really worked with Hulk to get him comfortable as a part of, you know, I think if Hulk would have just gone out by himself, you know, if he wouldn't have been part of the NWO, if it would have been just Hulk Hogan turning heel, that that heel would have been whatever it would have been. But I think because Hulk turned heel and Kevin and Scott were such a big part of. of the story as well as the ongoing presentation. They had a lot of influence. They helped Hulk become the kind of cool heel that they were. That was a bit of a transition.

That didn't happen naturally for Halt. That happened as a result of a little bit of subtle coaching. And a lot of it from not for me, but from Scott and Kevin, and probably Kevin Sullivan to a degree too. But I think Scott Hall, I think Kevin Nash probably had more influence. Scott had a lot of influence on him, but Scott was inconsistent.

Kevin was pretty consistent. And I'm sure it just took a little time for Hulk to really get comfortable with that heel presentation. Well, little did we know the run he was going to go on was going to make people question, was this run bigger than the golden era of the WWF? And at this point, 30 years ago today, No one would have questioned that.

Polk Hogan is the face of the WWF, the back that WrestleMania was built on, what it created. It just felt insurmountable. But here comes the NWO and they're gaining steam each and every week. We'll continue to break it down as the weeks roll on here. I can't believe it. 30 years of the NWO. When you guys think about the Big Gold Belt, where does this moment rank for you? Let us know in the comments below.

At this point, this belt is 12 years old. It's being spray painted for the first time as a part of this takeover angle. This is the same belt that when Rick Flair quit or got fired, whoever you want to believe, five years prior to this, he ships the belt to Vince McMahon. They blur it out on WWF TV. It's back. This feels like the definitive WCW title.

And Hulk Hogan spray painted it 30 years ago today. Sound off in the comments. Let's keep the conversation going. on social and if you got a question for us, keep them coming. You can ask your questions now and even leave us a message at 83 weeks.com and we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff.