83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 447: Goodbye PG Era?

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

On this episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson examine what happens behind the scenes when a wrestling company produces an emotional tribute show, and the responsibility that comes with honoring a beloved performer. The guys also debate whether WWE's PG Era is coming to an end and why relying on foul language can become a creative crutch. Eric reacts to Ari Emanuel's declaration that TKO will never be sold, recalls Vince McMahon's complete lack of respect for Spike TV and reveals what Vince and Tony Khan may have in common. Plus, Eric explains why Tony Khan should do more to protect Steven Borden as he begins his wrestling journey. Then, the guys turn back the clock for another unforgettable chapter in This Week in nWo History, only on 83 Weeks!     THIS WEEKS SPONSORS MOD - Visit http://MOD.com  for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order PLUS free shipping with promo code 83WEEKS SPRING SLEEP - eXciteOSA is an FDA-cleared, prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Go to http://springsleep.com/83WEEKS  and unlock 20% off with the code 83WEEKS. 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 http://BuyLarine.com/83Weeks BLUECHEW - When you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third FREE with promo code 83WEEKS. You will also receive an additional 10% OFF + Free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit http://BlueChew.com  for more details and important safety information ULTRA - Don't sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% Off with code 83WEEKS at http://takeultra.com ! #UltraPouches #ad  SAVE WITH CONRAD - Stop throwing money away by paying those high interest rates on your credit card. Roll them into one low monthly payment and on top of that, skip your next two house payments. Go to https://www.savewithconrad.com  to learn more.

Today's episode comes to you from the Blue Chew Studio. When you buy two months of Blue Chew Gold, you get the third for free with the promo code 83 weeks. You'll also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order at Bluechoo.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 good. As you can tell, I'm back in Cody, Wyoming for the month. we have a wedding at our house here next weekend my nephew and his fiancee are getting married on our back porch so yeah Lori and I and the kids are in town and kind of little family reunion get together throw in a wedding when we can well how about that I love it that's going to be awesome congrats to the whole fam we are so appreciative that you're spending your Monday with us if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and be sure to turn on the notifications bell if you're

watching us over on YouTube. We're going to talk about a lot today. Of course, we are going to continue our conversation about the 30 year anniversary of the NWO. We're going to talk a little business about TCO, but first, I do think we should talk about some bad news. I can't believe this is real, but last Saturday night, Pock, PAC, I'm sorry, Chris Hero educated us all. Pack wrestled his very last match against Andrade at AEWs all out in Chicago. It was a fantastic night for wrestling fans over 20,000 fans in attendance between the WW event and the AEW event. They were on like 20 minutes apart.

I mean, special night for pro wrestling, but sadly, the very last one for the real life Ben Saturday. He would pass away less than 24 hours later. A real innovator enjoyed a lot of success in Japan on the independence all across the UK. And then he had a pretty decent little run with WWB. and I felt like was better than ever, as we've seen him recently in AEW. I know you were there for a little bit of time when Pock was around or PAC was around.

Did you ever get to spend any significant time with him at all, Eric? None at all. None at all. Never, I don't think we've ever, ever crossed paths. He was a truly special performer. And I thought AEW did a terrific tribute to him on Wednesday. Dave Meltzer said it may have been the best wrestling show ever because it was just an outpouring of love. There was no furthering of storylines.

There was no pay-per-view plugs, no building of matches. Just one testimonial after another. And Brian Danielson made a surprise return to the ring to pay tribute. It's the first time we've seen Kenny Omega since the pay-per-view. You could tell what a tight-knit crew this was and what a real-life friend Ben was to this crew. an tribute show, Eric, like that's got to be one of the more challenging things for performers to do. Like this is a guy that they've been up and down the roads with and shared so many real life memories, not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera.

And just a couple of days later, they've got to go do a show like nothing happened. Like emotionally, these tribute shows have got to take a toll, don't you think? Of course, you know, it's emotional for a lot of people. And even if you don't, I'll just speak from myself. I've been a part of, unfortunately, a few of the tributes to certain people when I was in WWE out on the stage. And even if it's someone that you don't necessarily have a close relationship with, you're still one of the peers, one of your peers. And whether you were friends or just acquaintances or barely recognize each other, it doesn't really matter at a moment like that. You still feel the emotion everybody else is feeling.

and to have to go out and perform as a character and focus on what you're doing in the ring for your own safety as well as the person you're in there with is got to be challenging. I never had to do it, so I can't speak from experience, but certainly, you know, we saw what happened when an own heart, you know,

died in the ring. And then someone had to go out and follow that. I think it was Jeff Jared, if I'm not mistaken, or at some point, Jeff Jared, who was friends with her own, had to go out and perform in that ring. If I remember correctly, you can correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. But that has to be, like I said, I can't imagine it. I've never been in that position.

I've been close enough to it to know that I can't imagine it. Really an emotional show. And it was, if I'm honest with you, as a viewer, it wasn't very fun to watch. Don't get me wrong. it was amazing. I think the video they did to sign off of the program. Shout out to the entire team for AEW in Nashville for working tirelessly to put together, but maybe the most emotional tribute video ever because it wasn't just wrestling highlights. There was a lot of real emotional levers pulled in about the real guy.

And I don't know. I don't like feeling like that. So I didn't necessarily enjoy it, but I can certainly appreciate that, you know, AEWs had to do way too many damn tribute shows. know in the month of September alone they had the rebel heart show which was planned and rebel still with us and and we hope she's with us for a long time but we know she's battling a terrible disease and then that same weekend they have to do a tribute to Andy Williams the butcher and just fast forward a few weeks and we're going to close the month out with another tribute for ben siderly who we knew is back just I mean the hits just keep coming for this crew emotionally

And I don't know. I just, I don't want to think about that sort of thing. And I want wrestling to be my escape, but this was real. And I thought they handled it with as much care as they possibly could. But personally, it's like,

I wish this wasn't the case, but we don't have a say in the matter. And my heart goes out to everybody who there, who had to sort of put on a mask and go out there and soldier on. Because I don't know, it just feels like 40 is way too damn young. And Eric, I'm not saying that there was any sort of foul play or anything nefarious that happened here.

Every now and again, life just throws you a curveball. But there was once an era. I'd say maybe 99 to 04 where it felt like you were seeing a lot of guys, you know, in their in their early 40s passing away way too young. And it felt like we just see two of them within the last month. So I mean, let's not dance around it. That's, I don't care what. Yeah, every once in a while, you know, someone will get struck by lightning.

but you've got two guys at 40 years old, something's going on. It is not natural. It's not something that you can just go, well, you know, sometimes something happens. You know, it's concerning. And hopefully we're not seeing a pattern like we experienced back in the 90s when it was common, I guess, relatively speaking. It happened too often. Let's put it that way. Let's hope we're not revisiting that.

But, you know, somebody might not want to take a look at that. I hate to be the bear of bad news, but there's another member of our little wrestling community who passed away, the sign guy from WWE. His real name was Rick. And you know exactly who I'm talking about if you've watched WWE in the last 20 years or so. He had a uniform when he would attend ringside at WWE events. Boy, he made quite an impression to the point where even AAA posted about him on Twitter.

Did you ever have any interactions? with the WWE sign guy? I could be wrong, okay? It's been a minute. I think he used to come to Nitro too. Either it was him or somebody that was seeing him in WWE and mocking him. But it's a vague memory.

It's not distinct, but I do believe that he actually came to some WCW shows. And then if it was the same guy, I noticed him in WWE. So I never, talk to him, but certainly in WWE, because there were occasions, I think, when I was involved in something outside the ring, generally getting my ass kicked or chased by someone.

But I do believe I did interact with him a couple of times because you know, you knew you could get a reaction from him if he was at ringside. He'd stand up and get up in your face and, and become part of the show because he was. He was part of the show. So God bless him. Super fans. They have their place in WWE and in all of wrestling. You know, they've become really an important part of the whole program.

You know, I mean, I think we've all, we could all agree on this. You go back and you watch Hulk Hogan wrestle the Rock at WrestleMania 18 and you watch it with the sound down. Boy, it's not quite nearly the same. But with the sound up, boy, that crowd adds so much environment and atmosphere. It's really special. And I'm glad that WWE acknowledged him. and I wish that they would have some sort of a, I'll stop short of calling it a Hall of Fame,

but there should be some sort of an acknowledgement of these super fans like Vladimir in the 80s or Sign Guy here. Like they became a part of our regular programming. We just knew, hey, if they're doing a big show, we're going to count on seeing them there. And I think we look forward to identifying them and seeing them in the crowd. And Sign Guy maybe was the best part of that because he would always have these entertaining signs and jaw jack with the with the crew.

It was a fun time. And we hope that he's got some signs that he's making in the afterlife right now. We are going to talk about some fun stuff today. It's not all going to be doom and gloom. Before we do that, though, I want to take a quick break. And I want to brag about a new sponsor we've got here on the program. 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff is brought to you by Maud. Now, Mod prescribes once or twice daily modafinil drinks that keep you energized

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safety information and we thank mod for sponsoring the pod. And Eric, before we clicked record today, you were telling me you've been hearing a lot about modafinil lately. I've been reading a lot about it. You know, I'm, I'm, as we've talked about before, both Lori and I are, you know, at our ages, obviously. Longevity is kind of an interesting rabbit hole to spend time in. And it's become kind of a hobby. And like any rabbit hole, it kind of branches off. So, you know, we're looking for, you know, it's why I went on the carnivore diet, which, by the way, has worked exceedingly well for me based on my metabolism. It's, it's, you know, I'm down to about really 182, which is about almost 40 pounds that I've lost over the last year.

and a half or so, two years, and feel better than I ever have. And because of my, you know, interest in that, it's led me to other ways to kind of optimize. You know, I'm surrounded by 35-year-olds at Real American Freestyle, very, very active, very high-performing in every way, 35, 40-year-olds. I have to keep up. In many cases, I have to stay ahead. And that's just physically, mentally challenging. So I'm looking for ways to optimize legal, perfectly legal, and more importantly, healthy. That's the fun part of this rabbit hole is finding the right stuff, you know, that is healthy and does help with longevity. But at the same time, as you see my bride coming down to, she's here, she's so cute. She's going out to the, she's going out to the infrared sauna, by the way.

Aren't you, Hunt? Come to say hi to Conrad. And everybody. I'm from off camera. But as we're talking about it, you know, the infrared son is one thing, particularly Lori is very interested in for a lot of very healthy reasons. But in that search, in that rabbit hole, but after now it's something that I've come across, and I'm reading about it, I haven't tried it, don't know if I will, don't know if I'm even qualified. but it is a very interesting new tropic, you know, something that you, a nutraceutical that you take for your brain.

It's a very interesting thing that I want to learn a lot more about and try. If indeed, you know, I do qualify. That's a product that I think I would love to try it because as you described, you know, the symptoms of overcaffeinating, by the way, who we talk to do here? I know about this shit. while we're talking about the crashes from overcaffeinating, which your truly experiences on a multi-times during the day basis, I'd like to try it out and see if it works for me as well as it probably will. Go see if it works for you.

Check them out at mod.com. That's mod.com and be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. Eric, let's talk a little bit about the PG era. I can't believe this is real, but TMZ is reported. that WWE is planning to bring back a mature TVMA version of select shows on Netflix. This is going to feature unblurred content and additional scenes not shown on the regular broadcast. Now, this answers a lot of our questions, Eric. We've been talking about this for the past month or so, like, hey, why are they editing this?

Why are they editing that? Well, maybe we've just gotten our answer. And Eric, if this report is accurate, is it possible that WWE can find a way to serve the adult fans, but also keep their regular main programming accessible to all families. Is that the best of both worlds? Can it work from an advertiser standpoint? That's a complicated, I don't know.

Here's, and it's interesting that we're talking about this because everybody was searching for the conspiracy, who's behind it, why, and, you know, it was like,

I don't know, it just was set up at some sort of dark WWE conspiracy. And I think you and I talked about the fact that it could be a censorship issue because Netflix is worldwide. And I think specifically I talked about how different, for example, in Germany, they have their version of states. Each one of them has their own laws regarding, in their case, violence. Full frontal nudity is fine in a commercial advertisement in prime time in Germany. I know I was there as a kid. I saw it and was pleasantly shocked by then.

No, it was 17. What the hell you think I'm going to think, right? But, you know, in Europe, they treat nudity much different than they treat violence. So this may have been, the initial Edith Fest may have been a reaction to the fact that they're distributing the show worldwide and have to take all of the censorship issues into consideration and mitigate it. Okay. This may be, all right, let's have a channel that we don't have to do that on. And to me, that could very well mean, WWE's not going to do anything different. They're not going to start walking, you know, having women walking around in their underwear with a dog collar on while they are led around the ring on their hands and knees,

or giving birth to hands or all the crazy stuff that WWE did in order to try to get a hold of that 18 to 49-year-old demo that I had built up. and was kicking her ass with. Do I see them going that over the top? I don't. First of all, because Vince isn't there, and I think part of that was to entertain Vince because that was his deal.

He liked that stuff, and he did a lot of things to entertain himself, as we all know. Oh, I didn't set that up on purpose, but it was really good. Folks, don't get excited. We're not going back to women giving birth. It's just an Alzheimer.

I know you don't think you're funny, but every now and again, you'll hit an Alzheimer, bud. Trust me, I won't even know it until I watch it back ago. That was kind of funny. Oh, God. But my point is,

I think this new uncensored channel is strictly going to be what you're seeing anyway or what you would have seen, just not digitize, you know, for the rest of the world. That's what I think. And that show may get geo-blocked

in other, you know, in certain markets, Maybe not. I don't know. You know, you look at the footprint that WWE has in Saudi Arabia, for example. Well, the culture is much different in the Arab states than it is here in pretty significant ways, not subtle ways, significant ways. So maybe this is just an attempt to kind of give the markets what the markets are used to as opposed to creating something that's really, super edgy to satisfy, you know, that part of the audience that wants to see over the top sexual innuendo. I don't, I hope they don't go there, to be honest with you. I hope there's not a way to, to, you know, create this new uncensored channel and then intentionally produce things that are designed to, you know, appeal to the more pure interest. I hope that's not the case,

because I think that's long-term damage to the brand, in my opinion. Well, I agree with you when it comes to the sexual stuff. I will say that sometimes the language takes me out. Meaning, if we've got a real blood feud and one guy's just going to beat the snod out of another guy, you know, they're going to hit him with a car. You know, they just did that on WWU programming. They hit a dude with a car. And when he cuts a promo, if he cuts a promo on his return and he says,

I'm going to kick your rear end, I'm going to kick your butt. Like that is so inauthent. authentic, especially if it is, you know, a guy who we know, like a guy like Jacob Poutu, he has, for lack of a better word, and I realize I'm a 45-year-old white guy from Alabama saying this. He has street cred. He's cool. Like, that guy in real life, if he got hit by a car, it would not say, I'm going to kick your derrier. And it's just so silly. It's inauthent. I need to him, I need him to say what he would say on HBO. I need him to say what he would say on Netflix. and I feel like sometimes we have to dumb that down.

And I think, you know, for instance, we've seen Cody sprinkle in foul language when he felt like it was necessary and it made sense for the story. But if we're just going to totally move away from that, I don't know, it feels inauthentic. So I'm with you on the sexual stuff. And I know I'm in the minority here and I can tell I'm getting old and maybe

I'm a girl dad. But I think I like when the girls are a little more covered. I don't think they should be out there wrestling in thongs anymore. Like we're trying to have young women get excited about wrestling, and we're trying to have young moms allow their young kids to watch wrestling. But a little bit of foul language goes a long way. And I'm not saying it needs to be a Shane Douglas ECW promo where every promo has an F word, but a little bit goes a long way.

So I hope that we can embrace that. I know you're not necessarily a fan of blood and wrestling. I do think it has its time and place. If it's a hell in the cell and it's this war and blah, blah, blah, blah, but there's no blood, that too feels inauthentic. Because if I'm watching a big boxing match or I'm watching a badass UFC fight or some sort of cage match in a real sense, in a shoot, brother, there's probably going to be a little blood.

So I'm okay with that too. I know as a rule, you're not for that. And I get the method of saying, but we're going to put that as a premium live event. But even now, that's not really on pay-per-view. That's a streaming service. So it is going to be interesting to see where is the line? What do you guys think?

What do you wish there was more of? What can you live without? I'm with Eric. I don't think we need to go back to women giving birth to hands, all time line here on 83 weeks. I do think a little bit of foul language is okay. Not in every promo, but when it makes sense. Am I wrong on that, Eric?

No, no. You're way more than right. Look, we see it in the news. We see politicians at the highest level, including the president of the United States. Take what you think of him out of the economy. equation, he's doing it. So are the people that hate his guts at a very high level in politics. So the gloves are off people. It is, it's, you can call it foul language. I tend to

refer to it as real language. Yeah. And, and I think if it's, and this is the best point you made, but this is the part that will escape everybody, especially people producing it, and especially the talent, because they're not as smart as they think they are sometimes. It is if you don't, now, Cody's doing it. Cody understands that language is a tool. Yes. And using real language at the appropriate time and place adds to the drama and the believability, which was your point going into this conversation. It's a valuable, credible, legitimate tool,

whether you're in politics or whether you're in a wrestling right or in a drama series. but if you overdo it, it no longer feels real language. It's contrived. You're making too much of an effort to get my attention. You're trying too hard to make me believe that you're real. That's another way of disconnecting, overacting, I guess, you could call it. It's just too much. So finding that balance and not overdoing it so that it becomes obnoxious,

to the part of the audience, it isn't like you or me, because I agree with you on this one. There is a part of the audience who just rather wish it didn't happen. No, they're not going to lose their shit and swear they're never going to watch it again and let other kids watch it. No, they're not going to react that way. But they will sit there and consciously or subconsciously do they really need that? Don't let it get to that point. Use it carefully, protect it, because it's a valuable tool. Don't get to the. the point where now we can't do it at all because we're overdoing it. So it's a very important point.

And I hope they find that middle ground. And it, because you're so on the money. And if the, if the narrative doesn't fit the visual, if what I'm hearing doesn't fit what I'm seeing, any else I'm out. Yeah, we want to believe. And I think that's why you need to be strategic with it. You know, Jim Cornett famously said on a shoot interview years ago, if you've got a locker room full of seven footers,

you ain't got no giants. So use that same analogy here for course language. If everyone is cursing, now it's not special. It's, you've lost it. So I think old school wrestlers would say, oh,

you should use high spots sparingly. You need to make them mean more. I think that's accurate here with language too. If every promo is a cuss word, now it all just sort of blends together and it's just a foul mouth show. But when someone rarely drops one, now it's like ooh and it stands out and it has more impact i think that makes a lot of sense and i know this isn't the conversation but you know i'm friends with some stand-up comedians

and they would tell me that if you're trying to make money in comedy the guys who have to use a lot of foul language and work blue and they don't have the ability to work clean they don't have an opportunity to work any of those corporate gigs now i'm sure most people do not ever get into comedy hoping that they can go speak at the next coaler convention where they're selling faucets. I get that. But you know, that pays a lot of money. And if you're a comedian and you're trying to make a lot of money and a full time living

doing comedy, it's not the work on your material and improve your material. That's right. So it's not a crutch is my point. And I think sometimes like I've always loved Shane Douglas's promos in ECW. He was one of my favorites. But I'll admit, I was a teenager. And so that was what I was into. it was cool. I thought it was edgy. I thought it was authentic. I thought it was awesome.

And then Bruce Pritchard challenged me once on something to wrestle and said, what's your favorite Shane Douglas promo where he didn't cuss? And I couldn't name one. And I counted Shane as one of my favorite performers, but it was like, well, I like that he cussed. And it's like, well, that can't be the only thing because you box yourself in from a sponsorship and a revenue. And it made total sense for me. But like my buddy Cassio kid, I know around the holidays, he's going to work a bunch of corporate gigs because he knows he can work clean. He can work blue too, but you've got to have that skill set both ways. So I do think they need to be effective in their storytelling to be clean. I think

sprinkling some color in there every now and again is a good thing. And we want to hear from you guys. Would it, would you like a TVMA version? Would you continue to watch the, I guess we'll call it PG version? I do think that the PG version is necessary. And I know you and I have disagreed about this, but I think the attitude era in a lot of ways stunted the growth of pro wrestling. And I know that people would look at that and say, well, how could that be? More people than ever were watching. I'm watching today, because I started watching when I was seven years old. And I don't know that we sort of grew those kids the same way. And I think the reason the audience in WWB, because these studies go

back for more than 10 years, oh, the WWU audience is skewing older than ever. I wonder why that is. And it's because there was a whole section of the audience that didn't get the opportunity. Now, they corrected that. Maybe they over corrected it with John Cena. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that explains why there was a lull in the rearview. So I think they probably do need two versions of the program, but it is going to be interesting to see how they can monetize that from a sponsorship standpoint. I know that this isn't a topic we plan to talk about today, but I don't know if you saw Shapiro a few months ago or a few weeks ago talking about the success WWB has had internationally. And you and I have had the conversation that on some level, it feels like they've

sort of maxed out here domestically in North America. It's like, hey, how much more can you squeeze out of this? You figured out a way to monetize it every which way. And the crowds are kind of apathetic compared to the European crowds. So I was really advocating for these international PLEs and I think you were too. But I couldn't help but notice. but we've got a blank canvas over there. And I know the internet rejoices when that happens. But Shapiro correctly pointed out, hey, we took a loss in revenue for those events

because we couldn't sell the sponsorships internationally, the way we could domestically. So expect more of those domestically. I was looking at it from a critical standpoint of, boy, I love this hot crowd. It adds so much enjoyment to me at home to watch it. But I never even really considered, hey, if they can't really ring the cash register

from a sponsorship standpoint, boy, they're leaving money on the table by doing it internationally. So they're going to try to find more of that balance because they had so many international PLEs this year. That was a blind spot for me. And I'm saying all of that relative to this conversation, because if TVMA is fully embraced, will that cost them sponsorship dollars? And if it does, it's not going to be here to stay, I don't think. I don't either.

And I don't, I just don't think the math, maths. as they say today. Long term, short term, I guess. But long term, I just don't, and it, you know, it's a value proposition. You know, okay, we're not going to be able to sell as much money in sponsorships, but we get a better quality product that reinforces the audience's love for the brand. Don't underestimate that. That's a very valuable asset, right?

So it's something that you would want to consider, yes, I'm not making as much money as I possibly could, but here's what I'm getting in return. At least it needs to be discussed and analyzed versus a straight math formula. If I do them in the United States, I'm going to make a lot more money. But here's what I see happening. And this is part of this conversation. And I hope we get to talk about AEW and what's going on in that world, too. we seem to skim over a lot of the stuff and Steve Borden, his condition. But as we talk a lot about WWE and their business, my impression from afar,

and I'm probably as peripheral of a fan as you could possibly be and still call yourself a peripheral fan, meaning occasional, really on the outside edge of it. And it's just a time thing. It's not a personal taste or judgment or internet shit. It's just bandwidth and time. but what I am seeing based on what I do watch more than what I follow and keep up with things through news and social media is that there's and you said it earlier there's an apathy it's not that the audience isn't excited it's just that they're not as excited as they have been

in the past that's my read when I do watch it okay because I as I've told you a million times I don't watch as much what's going on in the ring as I do what's going on in the audience. That tells me everything that my interest in wrestling needs to understand. The size of the crowd, the makeup of the crowd, what's the composite of that crowd? What percentage of it is kids? What percentage of it is women? What can I, by looking at it, this is all just, you know, anecdotal shit. But it's like, what can I, what impression do I have based on what I see in that crowd? terms of its composition, right? When I see that the level of interest, we'll call it that as opposed to apathy,

when I see the level of interest in the product today, whether the building's sold out or not, it's the energy that's in those seats that matter. Enthusiasm. And I can feel it. You can see it. If the show is produced properly, it's highlighted, right? you bring the audience into the home of the viewer if you're a smart producer. And WWE's the best at that.

And I'm not seeing as much of that as I used to see. I'm not feeling it. Whether they're doing it or not, doesn't matter. I'm not feeling it, right? I don't see clips of it. And I think that there's just too much product. There is too much WWE product. there's too much wrestling product in general.

Now, do they all do pretty well in their relative positions in the market? They all survive. You know, Tony's surviving not because he's a profit center, but because he doesn't need to be a profit center, and he's got a contract with a, at least for now, a television distributor. So he's good. MLW, core power, he's good based on the world that he's set up for himself. He's self-funded, so he doesn't have anybody breathing down his back

and holding him accountable financially other than his banker, right? We all have somebody. And in court's case, it's his banker. He's using his own money, much like Tony Khan. So he doesn't have the same kind of pressure that a publicly held company like WWE has, right? But I would think at some point, WWE is going to have to go, okay, kind of like the Jim Cornett line.

If everybody's seven foot tall, you don't have, or if everybody's got to seven foot giant, nobody's got a giant. They're becoming, because it's just too much. You flooded the market with giants at that point. I think to a, to a point, we have flooded the market with wrestling content. And if I were WWE, I would at least consider the real value, the real difference between slowly but surely losing the emotional attachment of my brand to the audience. slowly versus maybe I don't make as much money as I could,

but I'm keeping the energy up because those fans in the United States will see those people in Europe having a freaking blast. And guess what they'll do? When they go to a WWE show, they'll bring that energy. They'll compete with that. They'll imitate that. You see that a lot in sports. You know, even the chance, you know,

that typically you would only hear in a soccer game, you know, in Europe, you're now hearing at events here in the United States. And they're not even soccer events, right? So it translates. It's, it's, there's such a value to the audience. Elvis Presley said it best. The most important part of the show is the audience. And to be able to harness that, to recognize it,

because you've got to understand it first, and then figure out a way to make sure that you're encouraging it and that you're bringing it home to the viewer, it doesn't have a chance to be there. That's the connection to your audience that I think is very, very valuable that you can lose if you over dilute the market with your product and you're willing to sacrifice audience engagement for dollars. Sorry. No, I agree with you.

I feel like WWB has been trying to serve their investors and serve Wall Street. And there's nothing wrong with that. but I do feel like they are running their business based on a P&L. And that is the efficient way. That is the effective way in business to do it. That's what you're supposed to do. And actually, Conrad, that's interrupt you.

By law, they have to do it. It's a fiduciary responsibility. There's latitude in there, obviously, but every executive in, in TKO has a responsibility to their shareholder to maximize profit.

That's where it gets a little, you know, it's not as cut in, right. But there is a balancing act and we saw that with Vince McMahon. I mean, let's not, let's not make any bones about it. Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro and all of these guys wanted to be in the WWE business because it was successful and it was proven and it had a very loyal fan base. But Vince McMahon found that balancing act and he decided, no, we're not going to make our our canvases look like NASCAR. And by the way, I don't necessarily hate that. You know,

it's common in the UFC. It's common in boxing. I understand it's new to WWE. But I'm saying, even Vince understood, hey, there is, there are lines where I get what you're saying about, we have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize revenue, but even Vince would say, yeah, not like that. We're not doing it like that. And I think the enjoyment for a lot of fans of watching a WWPLE, I mean, you can just log on. It is consistent across the board. Hey, there's too many commercials.

And it is that, that is a function of, hey, we set a new record with this rights deal with Netflix or whoever. And they've got to find a way to get a return on that. and now that we've got this big rights deal, we've got to sing for our suffer a little bit. We've got to earn our keep. So we can have more people watching and more people watching will result in more expensive ads,

which means there can be fewer of them, or we're going to have more ads because we've still got to get to that bottom line number. So they've got two opportunities, I think, to maintain this level of revenue. Grow the audience or keep selling a bunch of ads, but there's kind of no in between.

And I do think that that's where WWB is as, hey, we've got to deliver. We don't want to have, hey, we got one good television right steel and then it torpedoed the next one. No, they have continued to build. Even after people were saying, oh, well, after that Fox deal, they'll never get another one. Well, look out. Bigger check

from Netflix, but that comes at a cost. Yes, the stock had a big rally and it made a run and the value of that company has gone through the roof. But maybe at the expense of some of their long-term fans like you were saying, Eric. And I do think there's a delicate balancing act. And I think

you know, they've navigated it pretty well because let's not make any bones about it. Their shows are selling awfully damn well. The enthusiasm is still there, but will it reach a tipping point? That's what we're going to find out. And by the way, you wanted to talk a little bit about Steve Borden. I'm glad to do that, not avoiding the subject. It just happened since we recorded. It is in my note today.

We'll get to it in just a moment. But first, I want to brag to you about our friends over at spring sleep. Now, this is for you, folks. Do you snore? has somebody ever handed you a CPAP and did you quietly stop using it? Maybe the mask never quite seals. The hose is tugging at your nose every time you roll over. And now there's just a machine sitting abandoned in a closet.

Well, I'm going to tell you right now that is exactly what happened with my dad. I have been a CPAP user and I tried to get my dad on that because I knew that he was not sleeping well. He tried the CPAP. Buddy, it just was not for him. And I get why a lot of people don't like it. They don't like the strap marks on their cheek at breakfast. They don't like the hum of the machine every night forever.

They don't like packing it for a trip and then maybe deciding it's not worth it for my carry on here. They don't like the elbow at two in the morning that does not work anymore. Maybe your loved one has earplugs on the nightstand. And I'm going to tell you right now, there is a better way. It's the pivot. It's excite OSA. It works in a different way. It treats a root cause instead of managing the noise.

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Once again, that's ExciteOSA at spring sleep.com slash 83 weeks. Thanks to SpringSleep for sponsoring this episode. Excite OSA is FDA cleared, prescription only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea, not for everyone. individual results may vary risks and benefits at spring sleep.com. And Eric, I got to tell you, as soon as I found out this was a product, I told my mom and dad immediately. My dad for years and years would go to bed. He'd fall asleep in his chair at like 8 o'clock.

And then mom would wake him up at like 9.30 and say it's time to go to bed. And then he's back out of bed at 3 o'clock. And I can't tell you how many times I'd look over at my dad. And he's got his head cock back and his mouth open. He's just not sleeping. And I said, Dad, you got to get a CPAP machine. He does the study. He tries it.

He gets at home. He fought it for months. And he's just not using it. Folks, he's stopping breathing at night. This is shortening his lifespan. It was important for me and my family to try to convince dad to try again. And it became a constant fight. Spring Sleep now has a solution that dad can try without the inconveniences that he hated

of the CPAP. I think this could be a real life-changing device. I hope our listeners will check it out. SpringSleep. dot com slash 83 weeks be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks this could be a real game changer for a lot of folks eric you know it's it's fun because as we talked earlier i did at least about the rabbit hole that lauren i are in in terms of longevity and just overall health and maximizing your health and all that um i've been learning a lot about sleep a lot i just kind of took sleep for granted

And I, you know, even as recently as five or six years ago would probably make the comment that if I could find a way to go without sleep, I would, because I can get more done during the day that way. That was kind of my mindset, right? I never prioritized sleep. And now as I'm learning, because I'm spending this time in a rabbit hole and one rabbit hole leads to another, there has been a lot of studies. And I'm sure it's always existed to certain extent. but now just because of AI and research and people who are interested in these types of things for longevity in particular and optimizing health, sleep is like a really important component of it. And in my case, I train pretty hard.

I've been for about a year and a half now I've been training pretty hard five or six days a week. And it almost doesn't do me any good if I don't sleep because your body recovers, whether it's from a workout or if you're a postal care, and you're walking all day or you're taking care of kids, whatever it is you're doing, your body repairs itself at night. That's why you sleep. But if you don't sleep and you don't get into like a deep sleep referred to as a REM or rapid eye movement kind of point in your sleep pattern,

your body never triggers a lot of the impulses that needed to be triggered to encourage repair. So, you know, in my case, I'm lifting like an idiot and having fun doing it, But I don't, I only get four hours of sleep a night. I'm wasting time. I'm not giving myself a chance to heal. And maybe you're just working an office or you're taking care of a family of four or five. And you're, you know, you're working hard all day.

At the end of the day, you've got to let your body repair itself and regenerate. And if you've got sleep apnea like your dad did, and I've had friends who have had it, I've probably come close, you know, in my life where I thought it might be a possibility. I don't have the issue anymore. but it can be a real detrimental thing to your overall health, regardless of whether you're an athlete or an office worker or you're retired, whatever it is, you know, don't, don't minimize the impact of lack of sleep and the benefits of really good deep sleep.

Go try it, folks. You're going to love it. Springsleep.com and be sure to use that promo code 83 weeks. That's spring sleep.com slash 83 weeks. and the promo code is 83 weeks. So Eric, I do want to talk a little bit about TCO. I don't know if you saw, but Matt of the town asked Ariel Emanuel to name the ideal buyer of TKO.

And I thought this was interesting because I just assumed that eventually there's going to be a handful of buyers for this thing. They're going to build the value and they're going to have a massive exit. But boy, Emmanuel did not pause or hesitate. He says, no, it won't. no, never. And then when he was pressed, he said, no, not for sale, never. And then he explained why TKO will never be sold.

Why would it be? Here's the thing. In 2016, Egan Durbin, Mark, myself, Patrick, we saw where sports was going and saw where the streamers were going. At the time, people thought that the value that we were about to pay when we bought IMG, crazy that we paid for the two cheapest acquisitions of all time in the sports space. As my son Leo says to me, Thursday is baby Friday. With AI, probably Wednesday is going to be baby Thursday. There's going to be more free time than ever. If we grow at 3% GDP,

we're going to have more money than we've ever had with AI in my opinion. And I agree with that. Take all the bad things that could happen. You're sitting in a situation that's going to be more time for people to consume entertainment or be social animals. Go out, go to sporting events, consume sports. Sports is the greatest reality show of all time. Owning sports assets. Now people are trying to own teams. We own four leagues. It's an incredible asset. The value is going up and to the right. Tegon Durbin, myself, there's no chance of that happening. Zero. Man, I did not expect this. Of course, everybody's been talking about Ari Emanuel

because of the things he's written in his autobiography, certainly in the wrestling space, all the conversations about WWE and Vince McMahon were fascinating. But to hear his strategy of no, we're never going to sell. And I love the idea. Hey, we didn't buy a team. We bought leagues. Of course, he's talking about the UFC. He's talking about WWV.

He's talking about TVR. And of course, he's talking about Zoufa boxing. I'm sure there will be others added to the portfolio. But what do you think of this, man? From a business standpoint, I know this has your, your interest. It does. obviously for what should be obvious reasons as one of the co-founders of Real American Free Cell

and the ridiculous, almost unicorn-esque growth we're experiencing over the past 18 months. It's been amazing. And of course, we're interested in this type of thing. But what it also does is it kind of reinforces the decision that we made a year and a half ago when we went with Fox Nation. You know, Chad Bronsstein, my partner and co-founder, CEO, through his relationship with Hulk and some key people at Fox Nation, we're able to put that deal together pretty quickly.

And your good buddy, Dave Meltzer, of course, crept all over and said no one will watch. Stay tuned for further press announcements, ladies and gentlemen. That's all I'm going to say about that for now. But the world, you know, the fact that I already talked about seeing streaming and where it was going, how many times have I talked about focusing on where the puck is going, not where it is right now, with relation to AEW in particular. Hearing someone like Harry Manuel say basically the same thing in a different way, reassuring, I guess. You know, it's not an ego thing.

It's just reassuring that, you know, instinct, whatever the little voice in the back of my head sometimes that nudged me and got me excited about the opportunity, even though from the outside it didn't really look like much. but you'll find out, as we're finding out, it's going to lead to much bigger and better things. So that part of it was really interesting to me. The other part of it was it just makes so much sense. I didn't read a lot of hype into this. A lot of times when guys like Ari or Shapiro

or other people are out there talking to the media, they're talking to their investors. They're talking to their shareholders. They're not talking to Eric Bischoff or Conrad Thompson, right? or anybody that watches wrestling because they love the product. It's not who he's talking to. So you've got to parse that language. You've got to read into what's being said as much as you listen to what's being said.

You know, read into it, right? There was not a lot to read into here other than, damn. Now I understand life feels the way it feels. How could you feel differently? I mean, basically, he's got it by the balls. He's got it all. What would you do next? You know, I don't know.

And the other thing that really excites me about it, and this is true for everybody, right? I love looking at patterns. And sometimes those patterns can be an individual's behavior, corporate behavior. When I say behavior, I mean tendencies and trends, right? Music, entertainment, whatever. Everything has a pattern to it. And as I'm watching now on what's happening digitally, we got overwhelmed. There's so much.

It's what everybody's still talking about. There's so many. Everybody's watching content on this. And this is something I experience. You know, I drop, I go out with Way J. We go out to a restaurant. We go out to a park. You see other kids, you know, grandparents occasionally like us, but parents often with their kids.

The kids are in a phone. You're in a park, right? Take your kid to a park. kids are playing on a little baby iPads, whatever those things are, little gimmicks. Parents are on their phone and are all just sitting in the park. Nobody's talking, nobody's sharing. It's just weird to me. And you see that so often.

Why does this matter to me? It matters to me because as this keeps getting bigger, that part of our culture and lifestyle becomes more and more obvious. I think the opportunity for a live experience, that creates emotion is only going to get more valuable because it's increasingly becoming more rare. People just aren't able to go out as much. Some of it's with the economy. But most of it, I think, the pattern, at least that I think I see, is that we're becoming

more and more conditioned by digital media and the easy access to all the dopamine hits we need, it's right in our pocket, literally and figuratively, right? Sorry, I had to go there. I'm just trying to be funny this morning, I guess. But as society tends to huddle up in little digital corners and not socialize as much, I think those live sporting experiences are going to be premium entertainment. Now it's just expensive. I think it's going to be kind of. I think it's going to be become even more important in a decade. It sure is interesting to think about. Let's talk about another move that TKO recently made.

I don't know if you saw this, but Bleacher Report in WWB reached a new multi-year content partnership that will bring WWE's biggest moments, superstars and stories to Bleacher Report's massive global audience of sport fans. If this sounds like a press release, it's because it is. per the agreement bleacher report will hold global highlights rights across wb programming that includes monday night raw friday night smackdown nxte the wb premium live events like ressal mania all of that will be distributed distributed across bleacher report house of highlights br wrestling and all of their associated social and digital platforms partnership further expands bleacher reports industry leading portfolio of content relationships across sports Of course, you may be curious to know that Bleacher Reports has deals with NFL, NCAA, Major League Baseball, NHL, NBA, and now the WWE.

So Bleacher Report is going to have a ringside presence at Select WWPLEs, and Bleacher Report and House of Highlights Content Teams. We'll be capturing original storytelling, talent-driven content, and behind-the-scenes moments. And here's the quote. WWE fans don't just watch. They are highly engaged. every detail and debate the sport all week long. That's exactly the kind of passionate fandom,

VR, and House of Highlights were built for. This partnership gives us the opportunity to bring fans closer to the biggest moments happening today while also tapping into the incredible history and personalities that have made WWE part of sports culture for generations. So this is obviously a big deal. This is going to start next weekend, or I guess this weekend, at Money in the Bank, where they're doing a show from New Orleans.

Now, to be clear, Bleacher Report is owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. The Warner Brothers sale with Paramount is supposed to close next week. The name of the new company after the post-merger will be Skydance, but Bleacher Report is one of those verticals. And Bleacher Report, as we said, does have, you know, associations with every other major sports league. It makes sense that they would do this with WWB, much like Sirius just did. Not too long ago, Sirius decided, hey, we would like to be in the WWE business. So we have an NFL channel, we have a hockey channel, we have a baseball channel.

Now we'll have a WWB channel. And they sort of flip the format of Wrestling Nation, the old Busted Open network, now Busted Open still there, but it's on WWE radio. A lot of people were wondering, hey, wait a minute, isn't that a Warner Brothers property? This isn't necessarily a deal to broadcast programming or streaming rights, but it is a partnership. and it tells me that they're going to build a website that caters to wrestling fans and they're going to have social platforms that caters to wrestling fans, but it's even more granular,

WWE fans because WWE wants some sort of exclusivity and, hey, if they can get it, why not? What do you think of this report, Eric? Fascinating. It's a marketing opportunity. It's not a programming opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, I think there's too much programming out there already, but this is nothing more or less than a straight up marketing opportunity. And it's a big one.

It's a massive one in a lot of ways. And it's supportive of the international platform. It's supportive of everything that WWE is doing. It's not duplication in any way. That's what I'm trying to say. Duplication and you get dilution. With this opportunity, you're getting highlight packages, interviews, separate takes in a legitimate-esque news kind of presentation.

I think it's great. I mean, if I was a part of WWE, I'd be doing backflips. It's a great opportunity. I believe so, too. I think it's a huge opportunity. Of course, there's lots of people who think it maybe means something with regard to AEW. We'll talk about that in a moment. But let's talk about the social piece for a minute, Eric.

want to call back to something we just talked about earlier in the program. The social component is what I've really been scratching my head about from this whole, we're going to have a TVMA version of the show and then a PG version of the show. Well, which version are you putting on social? Because that to me is where the rubber meets the road. Because if you really take a look at these big moments that happen in WWE, and we know what we're talking about, the things that are going to get the most traction, the most views, the most clips, whether it's YouTube or it's Twitter or it's Instagram, we all see the,

there are certain moments that just blow up the views. Those are going to be inescapable. And it feels like that is going to be the one that advertisers want to attach themselves to. But how can you really shield the children from these major moments on a PG program if the adult TVMA version is all over social media? That's the part that's going to be most tricky for me because it's not like if if they produce two different shows. Well, but even if they just censor one or censor the other are the. Are they only going to post censored stuff on social? That wouldn't make sense.

Oh, yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm saying if you get on X right now, it's the freaking Wild West. You can find stuff that I think we would all agree. Can we, is this, we shouldn't, this shouldn't be on a social platform, but it's there. And I'm not saying, we're not going to have that debate, but I am just saying, how do you, how do you serve both masters? I get it if we're saying, okay, Netflix has a PG version and a TVMA version.

Social will not. And that's where it's going to get confusing. I think. Wow. I never thought of that. Do you, I don't, I can't even imagine how to approach that challenge.

You can't keep kids from seeing the rock, whipping Cody and calling him a bastard and a four-letter word, whatever it may be. I mean, that is your product. By the way, at some point you have, the rubber has to beat the road and you have to decide,

okay, what is my product? And then you, you build to maximize that. And, and you protect yourself or mitigate, you know, the harm that comes with it. But that harm comes in a form of losing an audience, you know, a composite of the audience, a portion of the audience, having to put up a bad PR, you know, whatever it is that makes going straight,

or going PG more difficult. If that's what you're going to be, you just have to live with it. You can't, it's impossible to make everybody happy. or to not piss anybody off in a world that is begging to be pissed off. In a world that a culture that is praying to become a victim of some sort or another so that we can weaponize and maximize the opportunity, whatever form that comes in. You know, at some point, you just got to recognize you are what you are, take whatever hits you have to take and make a good product.

This idea of, I think, trying to serve two masters, the whole idea is really, it's really challenging for me, as you can tell. Yeah, here's what we should know, though. The Bleacher Report Opportunity, hey, it's high fives all around. I'm sure it came with a check and it's going to come with exposure. It's another win. But listen, there are lots of people who wonder,

is this a breadcrumb for something larger? and I know you wanted to talk about it earlier. We know that next week is the, I guess it'll become formal and official. Skydance is the new way of the world. And AEW's television contract, as best we understand it, runs through the end of next year.

We also know that there is some sort of friendship, partnership, business relationship, whatever it may be with the Ellison's and the cons. Of course, the Ellisons are leading the new acquisition of Warner Brothers. And I know there is the stickiness of the NFL piece. It's not lost on me that, hey, the billionaire boys club gets a lot smaller

when you can say, hey, who owns an NFL franchise and who owns a soccer team? What do you think? Clearly, you have put some thought into this because you teased it earlier. This Warner Brothers or this Bleacher Report association with WWE, does it mean anything larger than that? Or what's your read? So it, it, not necessarily. I think businesses and opportunities are so fragmented and focused now that it's quite possible that this is a deal that just happens to be done with a company that just happens to be owned currently by Time Warner. And it's more of a coincidence than anything else. That could, it could be true. I think it could easily be true.

But there's the other part of it. You know, WWE is a very powerful, very valuable. media platform. Skydance is already in business with TKO. Yeah, there's some kind of relationship between the Ellisons and the cons. I don't know what it is. My gut tells me it's being way overblown in the wrestling world because we're hoping that somehow that means something. And that's the only thing that I really wanted to highlight here is not so much the deal itself because I don't know what that any components of this deal really looked like. Neither does anybody else. So for me to here pretend I do or lay out a couple different ideas based on what I don't actually know is

it's embarrassing for me to do something like that leave that to Dave Meltzer. Here's what I do know and this is what I want to point out. It's going to come down to the math. I think we talked about it last week. This is a math formula. Is that real estate, which is primetime real estate in AW's case, is that real estate returning on the investment? If it is, how much does that meet our threshold?

What are we looking for in terms of EBITA? What's the number? What's the math? If it reaches it already, great, let's support it possibly. There are other things that could come into the equation in terms of does it fit the overall brand of where we want to take the network? Those are other types of conversations. But at least initially, what's going to

happen? What's going to happen to EW now that Skydance? Well, first place you'll stop and look is the math. Beyond that, if the math isn't mathing, what does any personal relationship really mean? Probably not much of anything. Will David Ellison or Larry Ellison be in a room making some of these programming decisions? I have never even been in the same room as either one of them. I can almost guarantee that that will not be the case. There will be somebody in the room that is in charge of programming and all of the Skydance, or most of it, networks, who used to be the chairman and CEO,

I can't remember the gentleman's name. You can Google it, but he used to run Endemol, which is Endemol is one of the first businesses that Jason Harvey and I did business with when we broke into the reality television business, we co-produced with Endemol, an episode or series for NBC called I Want to Be a Hilton. We co-produced that with Edmall. So I had a little bit of exposure into the Endemal organization. And it's basically a European company that built a lot of its value on unscripted formatting.

So what I'm saying to you is here's a person who's at least. going to look at wrestling as, yeah, it's not traditional content, but he understands non-traditional content. Traditional being sitcoms, dramas, you know, documentaries, whatever. This is non-traditional, much like the rest of unscripted content. So that's a plus, I think, for AEW. On the other side the ledger, he's an animal when it comes to numbers. So if the numbers don't work, is there a possibility that this gentleman who's going to be making these decisions might look at AEW a little differently than maybe an executive who hates the idea of it?

That's a possibility and a plus. But it's still going to come down to the math. And I don't think if the math isn't working, I don't think whatever real or perceived relationship is there is going to matter. That's the only point I wanted to make is people keep reading because they want to. They want this drama. They want what they want to become obvious or apparent to everybody else. And end up reading so much into this kind of stuff.

It's going to come down to the numbers. That's said it six months ago. I said it six years ago. And I said it last week and I'll say it again. You know, growth is everything. And the numbers will tell the story. I'm sure you've seen. Maybe you haven't kept up with it, but the guy who's been beating the drum most loud

and proud on the other side of this AEW discussion is Nick Lopico, and I know you used to have a relationship with him. Do you think, what do you think of the way Nick has sort of campaigned actively? Or maybe that's the wrong word. He's been pretty consistent and it is not altogether positive about AEW. What do you think about that? I don't follow them anymore because it's just not my world, the negativity. You know, I know I come off being negative because I'm confrontational,

but just because I'm confrontational doesn't mean I'm negative. On certain topics, I get count because I hate bullshit. I hate ignorance. The real definition of ignorance is last. of information and knowledge. If you need to, Google it, not you, Conrad, but those listening who want to pick everything here I say apart so they can go on social media and try to get whatever dopamine they could get.

I mean, that's the pattern, right? It's pretty obvious. But Nick, I think, went off the deep edge and got obsessively connected to something that makes no sense to me and I didn't have time for it in my feed. I didn't want to be distracted by it. And I like Nick. I mean, Nick is a,

Nick is in the interesting cat who's got a lot of great relationships. I know there's a lot of people out there that want to try to dismiss that. I can tell you firsthand that he has a lot of significant relationships within the business of the entertainment business as opposed to, you know, the stars, although he has some of those relationships as well. But he has had in his career some pretty significant deals with significant people. but I don't know why he's on this rampage.

I really, really don't. But I disconnected from it. Months ago. Three or four months ago. I don't even know what he's saying, to be honest with you. Well, something you haven't disconnected from is Larenko.

You know, you've heard Eric talk about going down this rabbit hall of health and wellness and longevity. But one of the things we've learned is a ton of what we eat and drink, things like coffee, tea, acidic foods. Man, that can all really do. long-term damage to your teeth. So Eric and I have leveled up our chewing gum routine with larynco. This is a chewing gum that actually makes your teeth stronger every time you use it.

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So that meant he had a lot of interactions with the T&A folks. And of course, before that Vince McMahon and, all the WWE folks. These days, he's partnered with your great close personal friend, Scott Coker, for their new MMA brand, Key MMA, which has just now been announced and they're going to be holding their first events soon. So he's on Ariel Hawani show, which I'll be on this Wednesday, by the way.

Go out of your way to check that out if you happen to be an Ariel Hawani fan. And I'll be on busted open on Tuesday. So for whatever reason, I find myself in New York. We'll talk about that in a moment. But Kevin K is going to go on the Harrell-Hawani show and talk about his first meeting with Vince. Now, let me catch you up to speed here. Back in the year 2000, Raw Left Spike, or I'm sorry, Raw Left USA, and they go to TNN. At the time, TNN was the Nashville network.

They're going to flip formats and become Spike TV. But Kevin K is the leader of TNN, and he's sort of told, hey, you need to go meet Vince McMahon. and he recounted that story on Ariel Hawani show. He says, I'll tell you a funny story about Vince. Jim Burns, who was the executive in charge of production of WWE, said,

now that you're running this, you need to go meet Vince and pay your respects. And I said, sure, when's the next show at Madison Square Garden? They just did that one. The next one's not for another year. Well,

where am I going? Louisville. So I went to Louisville, and it was an amazing show. I'd never been live to a WW, event and it was spectacular. They took me down into the bowels of the stadium to meet Vince. There's a men's room there with like 50 urinals.

Vince is at the very end, urinating. We're standing there and I'm with a couple of WWE guys and Jim. And when Vince finishes, he zips up his pants, walks straight to me and puts out his hand. It's a power move. I shook his hand. What are you going to do? I think it was, yeah, I'm in charge.

You'll do what I tell you move. of course this was around the same time that he was taken over spike tv and we know eventually they go back to USA network because Vince had such a great relationship with Bonnie Hammer there and Kevin Kay told some pretty hilarious stories about Vince trying to be cute and plugging the move to USA and Kevin Kay said hey you can't keep plugging your move you can't keep talking about USA you know we know you're leaving you've made your decision but you can't be plug in another network on the show. And Vince basically said, well, what are you going to do about it?

And he goes in the ring, picks up the microphone and starts talking about, oh, we're going to be on USA Network in so many days. And he told Vince, if you do this, I'm going to dump the audio. And Vince thought there was no chance. And Kevin said, not only will I do it, but if you continue to do it, I'll dump the video too. I'll just go to black. And they did.

So if you go back and you look in 2005, you'll see. Vince in the ring doing this, and you can even see the announcers trying to plug it. And when they do, they just go to a full screen and show WWB on Spike is like a still image. But just hearing this gamesmanship of the real life Vince McMahon behind the scenes, not the Mr. McMahon character, but the real life Vince, I don't know why this story tickles me, but it does, whether it's the, hey, what are you going to do about it, defiance at the end of the relationship? but to start the relationship with wet wiener hand shake it hilarious what'd you think

I yes it's like what you described I was able to visualize just like I saw a movie 20 minutes ago yeah that scene it is so easy for me to visualize that because it is classic Vince McMahon power position it's just classic. And the other reason is, I was in WWE for a period of time when WWE was on Spike. Vince had zero respect for Spike. And it probably started that way. I don't know why he ended up moving to Spike in the first place. I don't remember. Perhaps I never really knew. It doesn't matter for this conversation. But for the period of time that I was in WWE and WWE was on Spike. It was so obvious to be that he had no respect for the network

at all. And what made me so confident at that time and willing to say this today is because for whatever reason, I was just talent at the time. I wasn't running Smackdown or anything like that. I was just there as a general manager talent. Somehow I ended up on Vince's plane leaving a Monday night wrong, which at that time I never did that. So there had to be a reason where I had to be wherever we were going early the next morning, or I wouldn't have been on that plane. Also on that plane was the executive that Kevin Kay referred to in the interview with RL, Jim Burns. Jim Burns was on that plane.

And I would imagine Jim Burns, if we found him today and asked him, would tell you that it was the longest two and a half, three hours of his entire life. not because anybody did anything to him, but because he was non-existence on that plane. Now, I'm a passive, I'm like the pot of plant. I'm not in their world. I'm not managing. I'm just the guy that pretends he's run shit, right?

It's acting. It's just playing. And, but I'm also observing this because I know how to read a room and I'm thinking, and this is the network executive treating him like they caught him stealing shit. You know, what? What? And now hearing this, just knowing how Vince felt about that particular network, I think it to Vince, I'm guessing, I don't know this.

I never had this conversation with him. Again, reading the room, knowing the man a little bit, or kind of knowing him a little bit, I think whatever precipitated the move from USA to spike was not a move he wanted to make. And he went there begrudgingly, and when he got an opportunity to go back, shoot his balls to the wall and he really didn't care. I don't know why that story tickles me, but I just love these old Vince McMahon stories.

And I feel like we're going to get more of those in the not too distant future. But you know what, Conrad, and I will say this, how do you not, I mean, I find that story and because I know it's true, believe it to be true,

I can't help but admire it. I can't help but to look up to, that aspect of Vince McMahon's personality. That's, I think what we all would like to, you know, entrepreneurs like us, right, we would all like to be in a position. We aspire to be in a position where we can look at television network executive in the eye, the head of the network more or less, and say, you know what? Fuck you.

That's power. and he had it. He abused it, obviously, but he had it and he can't help it admire. Not so much that he had it in the way he used it in that incident, but what he had to do to get to that point, to be so successful that you could look at the head of a network who's airing your show in primetime television and say, yeah, do whatever you want to do.

I don't care. that's the part I can't help and admire. You know, listen, I appreciate you sharing that because I, um, I wouldn't go so far as to say that I admire it. I think it makes them look like an absolute asshole. That being said, I see it in my mind. I'm not arguing that.

It comes with the price, but I. Yeah, but I'm just saying I don't aspire to be an asshole. Now, some people would say I am an asshole and, and all my hopes and dreams have come true in that regard. But, but I am saying, Did you ever watch the show Billions? Well, yeah. It feels like a Bobby Axelrod movie.

It feels like a Tony Soprano move. Like, hey, I'm the boss. What are you going to do about it? And I find it wildly entertaining because I still, even though he's a real person and this is a real story, it still reads like a character to me. And maybe that's why it's so entertaining to me and I can't get enough of the story. But as a reminder, and I know most of our listeners know this,

If you watch the HBO series, gosh, 20 years ago now, Entourage, the Ari Gold character is loosely based on Ari Emanuel, who's running WWB now. And so, you know, we all have this affection and this affinity and this respect and love for this over the top crazy character, Ari Gold. That is the real guy. I hope that eventually we get some version of a television vince because it just feels, I don't know, entertainment. I do want to ask you about this. John Morrison, who we've known as Johnny Nitro or whatever you want to call him. He recently did an interview with SK wrestling and he made an interesting comparison that jumped off the page to me. He says, as far as Tony Kahn goes, you know, I would compare Tony to Vince a lot. Like Tony Kahn could have possibly done anything he wanted, anything,

you know? That's the freedom you get without a amount of money, but he's a wrestling fan and decided he wanted to work in the business of professional wrestling. And he also decided he wanted to work really hard because he does work really hard. He's at all the tapings. And sometimes I think he's a lot like Vince, except with a good heart, if you know what I mean. Now, I could see the whole idea, maybe the only thing they have in common, because I totally didn't get this, but they were both at all of the shows. Like Tony Kahn is even at the freaking Ring of Honor tapings in Jacksonville.

He's at every collision. He's at every dynamite. He's at every AEW show. He never misses a show. And so we heard that about Vince. Like even when he tore his quads, he's like, I'm going to have surgery on Sunday.

I'll be there on Monday. And it's just silliness. Like, wait, what? You need to stay home under cover, but he never missed a show. But that's probably the end of the comparison,

right? I can't imagine these two guys being any, any different. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't think there's other than, you know, we'll define it as passion. Yes.

I think Vince was proud of his passion for the product and expected everybody around him to be as passionate as him. I think that's a, Bruce, Bruce may argue that a little bit. But Vince, my impression, never a conversation, my impression was Vince would not understand if you're working in WWE in particular, and you don't have a passion for the product, I think he would have a hard time understanding or even being willing to tolerate you being a part of WWE. It doesn't mean that there are not people in WWE who are not fans necessarily who provide,

you know, valuable service to WWE and work there corporately. Yeah, but I'm talking about if you're traveling with the team, if you're on the travel team for for wwe or raw or smackdown or nxte and you're not passionate about the product i don't think you've got a long lifespan of wwee tony probably is of similar nature we know he is right based on what you just said and just by anecdotal information that we've all heard from people that we know and respect he loves what he's doing so yeah that i get the rest of it I don't know if Johnny's, you know, trolling for a paycheck or whatever. It's all sounds really nice, but it ain't true.

Something that is true is that the Jericho cruise is going to be on AEW TV. Chris Jericho was on TMZ this past week and he announced that the AEW collision that goes down on November 7th is actually going to be broadcast from the Jericho cruise. Now, of course, that means the Jericho cruise will be docked at the time. But the crews will also be dedicated to the. now late AEW star packed. This will be the first time that we've seen something like this. I know that they did matches for AEW before on the boat,

but now it's going to be the TV show. And I kind of like this idea. If I'm honest with you, I miss the old spring break nitros. I like when we have these events that are different than. I know it was criticized at the time, but I enjoyed when you did bash at the beach on the beach. I don't know, man.

It seems like a fun idea to me, collision is very clearly positioned as the B show for AEW. So it won't have the big arena feel, but it will be a different vibe on a cruise ship. Now, of course, they also have to worry about weather and a bunch of other things, but it seems like a fun idea. What do you think? I love it. It's you have everything to gain going back to what we talked about earlier without

repeating it. You've got a different crowd. You've got energy that the energy and the reaction. the response, the connection, the engagement, okay, I think I covered it all. The engagement that you'll be able to get from whatever crowd, it'll be decided, well, maybe it's hard to get smaller than collision. I don't know. I don't know what the numbers are.

But it doesn't matter because they'll be easy to see because it'll be light, lit better. You're going to get all kinds of energy that you wouldn't get from an arena in front of 400 people. And that engagement will end up in the home of the view. viewer. It'll give credibility to the product. It's a refresh button. You get to look at something different than you've seen a thousand hours of up to that point. So let's give them something fresh and fun and maybe a little lighthearted that makes you feel good about being a viewer because those people there are having a blast. So it's okay for me to sit here and have a blast. I know that sounds silly, but that's the kind of shit that goes on or you want to be going on

in the mind of a viewer. You want to connect them emotionally to your product. I know it doesn't seem like it's obvious, but just because of the energy exchange being different, I think it's a great idea. Now, if they did it every week, it wouldn't. Right. But, you know, once a year, I think it's awesome. I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll admit, I'm not the biggest collision fan in the world when my buddy Adam Priest wrestles always want to check it out. But otherwise, I'm like, Yeah, I can fast forward that one. But I may actually watch that one live.

That seems like a good time. Yeah. Here's the other thing if it's going to be live. What are the odds of something that's going to go wrong? I say fairly good. You know, it's always, the odds are always, you know, they're always there that's something you can go wrong in a live broadcast. But now you're talking about a lot of variables,

things that, you know, your team doesn't do every week. You know, there's, you know, these guys could probably set up and tear down for AEW television in their sleep and probably often do because they get so good at it. You're doing the same thing every single week for years. You know, a chimp could get good at it eventually, right? So now you're doing something completely different. That increases the odds of something going wrong.

Human nature. Nobody's perfect. you've got the weather component which is really always an issue I think we're still in hurricane season at that point not sure so that means they probably have a plan B and it wouldn't be hard to do if they're going to be docked they know where they're going to be docked

find a venue close by if the weather looks like it's not going to work out so there is manageable solutions to that scenario if it were to occur but still you've got a plan for that or at least you should beyond that, the risk going up a little bit. But as a viewer, I want to see that. Not that I want to see them have a problem. I want to see how they fix it.

I want to see how long it takes them to get their shit back. Because as a producer, that's the kind of stuff that I find fascinating and interesting. And I know, you know, I know some of the people on that crew. And it's a good crew. So I like to, and I like to watch good crews under pressure. So I'll probably be watching just to see the production. Hurricane season, Eric, I guess officially is June 1st and November 30th, but most people say it's like the, you know, August to October.

So technically, yes, November 7th would be there, but we're hoping that's an on issue. We're hoping everybody has a blast and it's super fun. But I do love the idea of live and maybe that's why maybe I didn't know it at the time, but expect the unexpected, the spontaneousness. You don't know what to expect. Maybe that is the underlying reason that I like spring break nitro, and I'm looking forward to the Jericho cruise collision. And if you're looking to have a little surprise, can I recommend blue chew gold?

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save with Conrad.com, equal housing lender, NMLS number 203-902, save with Conrad.com. So, Eric, let's talk a little bit about Gage Goldberg. I don't know if you've seen this, but it turns out that Goldberg's son is interested in pursuing a pro wrestling career. He was recently on the college football coaches show. And of course, we know that he is the son of Hall of Famer Bill Goldberg.

And during the chat, he was asked, are you interested in pro wrestling? and he says, yes, it's definitely there. And he went on to add that his father initially did not want him to get into wrestling. Quote, once I started getting involved a little bit, then it started to change. It's up to me. So, I mean, I would love to do it. Honestly, I would love to have that opportunity to do it. And I feel like it would be a great thing to do after football.

Of course, we know that Goldberg finished up last year at Saturday Night's main event in Atlanta, it wound up being his last match. But this is not, maybe it's surprising. maybe it's not. I don't know that I expected that he would want to do it, but I remember 10 years ago seeing a young gauge in the crowd when when he was upset, his dad was upsetting Brock Lesnar and I thought, hey, that would, what a cool story. I'm glad he got to share that with his son. But the idea that he may actually step between the ropes one day, much like we saw with Dominic Mysterio and Ray Mysterio way back when and now look at Dom now. This is one of the things I love most about wrestling, Eric. You're muted. Sorry about that. It's not surprising in a way. I mean, you look at, you know, Scott Seiner's son, you look at Steve Borden, you know, now you've got this. I mean, it's not unusual to me.

I think it is very cool, though, like you. You know, I still am very proud of Garrett, although briefly, but, you know, learning the craft, disciplining himself to do what he had to do. He had to move to California and live in a shitty little apartment, you know, and train every day, you know, with Rakeshi and his school. He went through that, got a job at T&A, you know, came in, K Fave as a referee, learned from the inside being a referee before we ever let him have a match. So I was part of him when he followed, not necessarily in my first.

footsteps because I wasn't a wrestler, but into the business. It is, it is very satisfying. I'm sure staying Steve Borden, senior is very proud of his son and and Bill would be, it's a very support. Trust me, he would be supportive. Let me, let me just say that Bill would probably do anything to help his son get into the business, but you got to watch out for that. But no, I think it's great. And I'm sure Bill is very proud of. son. Well, I look forward to seeing what happens there. Of course, I hope he has a phenomenal football career, and that's a long,

long time from now. But we saw that, well, Rick Steiner's son, Scott Steiner's son, you know, they're both going to be pursuing pro wrestling. We know that. I mean, you got a Steiner's Goldberg feud here going on. It could, you could be printing money for a decade with that. I mean, it's not lost on me that two of the top dogs in WWE right now. our Dusty Road son and Rick Flair's daughter.

Like it's, I love the, the multi-generational aspect of this. And Dominic Mysterio and and and, I don't know. I think it's great stuff. And, and Ray's daughter soon to be in the business.

Yes. You mentioned him earlier, this past Saturday night in the second match on AEW's All-Out pay-per-view. We saw Kevin Knight, team with Kevin or Kyle Fletcher to take on Darby Allen and Stephen Borden. And very quickly in the match, it came to a complete stop. They, they, they, they try to a coast to coast type spot that we've seen Logan

Paul and ricochet do over on the WWE side of things. The timing was, was off or something happened that resulted in Stephen hitting the back of his head on the canvas. And he immediately went into a fencing position. and if you're a football fan, he went into what a lot of us are calling the two a position where his elbow was bent and his hand was up and it was just,

yeah, it's a fencing position. That's what it's called. And Bryce Rimsberg, shout out to Bryce, recognized it immediately, went over to check on Steven, called Doc Sampson,

who was at ringside over, and they made the decision to stop the match. So once upon a time, you know, the old school rasseling way was, hey, finished the match no matter what. I mean,

Triple H tour is freaking, quad 24 years ago and still finished the match. It's silliness what the commitment was. Thankfully we've gotten better there and the match was just thrown out and it was stopped and then we moved on. It was a scary scene because

we immediately, after going to a wide shot, we cut to the announcers and we saw Taz take his sunglasses off and go serious business for real life Peter talking straight to the audience at home about what they were seeing being real. Tony Chivani did not look happy at all

and Excalibur tried to filibuster to cover. But at home, because I was not in the arena, it felt like, oh, God, is this like an Owen heart thing? This feels very, very bad. And I guess they put him on a stretcher and got him out of there and took him straight to the hospital. He was diagnosed with a concussion. They gave an update on the program about an hour later saying that he was awake

and he was conscious and he was talking. And Tony Kahn announced that the post-match presser that he had, his tests seemed to come back okay and he hoped that he would be able to travel home. I talked to Tony Chivani on Monday and he said he caught up with Stephen on Sunday and Stephen said he was fine. But after all those years of playing football as a tight end to Kentucky, he never got a concussion. This was his first concussion.

And of course, Chivani couldn't help himself and says, I didn't realize that. And Stephen said that I didn't have a concussion. And Tony said, no, that Kentucky played a football program, which is hilarious.

Thank you for that, Tony. but listen, concussions and wrestling are no laughing matter. And we saw a pretty scary situation. And I think just the way they cut to the announcers, and I appreciate that and respect it, it did have calls for concern for me. And you made the, you know, the conversation earlier about Owen Hart's passing.

And when he passed away in the ring, Jeff Gerrit had to come right out. I don't know if you saw the pay-per-viewer the way the lineup happened. But immediately after that match, they had Persephone come out, the CML women's champion, and do an open challenge. And that's what they used to debut an international star. And I'm sure Danny Luna was excited. This is the fulfillment of her lifelong goal.

Oh my God, I'm a contracted television wrestler in America making my debut at a premium live event. And it's right after that happens where the crowd has obviously got a concern. I mean, they just carted off our Elvis's son on a stretcher. And I'm sure she's in gorilla. and here comes a guy on a gurney. And that's like, well, get out there, Tiger. I'm sure emotionally this has got to be one of the craziest head fucks of all time. So certainly think about Persephone and Danny Luna.

I'm glad that Stephen Borden is okay. But clearly you have an opinion about this. You teased it at the top of the show. I can't wait to hear what you think about Stephen Borden and last Saturday night. I think you can go back to whatever podcast we did following Stevens, debut he's green he should never

who let him do that spot of all of these so-called veterans and guys who should know better that are collecting a paycheck why didn't somebody say that's not really the right thing for this kid to be doing at this stage of his career he actually

shouldn't even be wrestling on TV yet he's a deer in the headlights and I don't say that I've been a deer in the headlights. My son Garrett was a deer in the headlights. You have to learn. You have to gain experience. You have to develop the confidence.

Not just memorize what you should do in the ring and the physical part of it. You need the reps and the confidence so that when you do put yourself into a position where your safety is at risk or your opponents, safety is at risk, that you're 100% confident because you've done it. thousands of times. This kid should even be in a main event on television. And I said it a month or six weeks ago. Who's putting him in this position? You're setting the kid up for failure. And I'm really disappointed, particularly because of the head injury.

You only have so many opportunities in life. And you have to protect the. opportunity. Stephen has such a great opportunity ahead of him. But to go up and do these bullshit moves because somebody else did it and you think it looks cool and the people around you think it looks cool and you're just going to be able to go out there and do it in a match. He's still nervous. I don't even know the kid, but I guarantee you before his match, he's still scary shit because he hasn't been doing it long enough. This isn't football. It's a whole different thing. and to put a kid out there,

whoever let him, whoever approved that, whoever the manager was for that, for Tony Kahn to know that that was going to happen. And that's go, wait a minute, let's not expose him too much too soon. Let's not put him at risk

because this is a risky move. He should have known that. The people around him should have known that. I just don't understand how it happens. We're going to say, oh, it's really, it's horrible, it's bad. I hope he gets better. hope this never happens again. Why did it happen in the first place? Because if you don't

address why it happened in the first place, I guarantee you it's going to happen again. He's not addressing it. The elephant in the room is this kid was allowed to go up and put himself and his opponent at risk doing something that anybody with four days in the business would know he's not ready to do. But they did anyway because they like that. They like the hot spot. They like the pop spot. This is awesome. Okay. How awesome is. is it. Sorry, I'm off by, I don't know I say that because I,

I, I have a lot of respect for staying. Yeah. And, and, this situation actually, it, it,

pisses me off. Well, listen, I, I, um, I don't think it's fair necessarily to say that this is Tony con's fault. I understand what you're saying, but I don't think there's a second that,

that every, every match and every, like, no, the guy in charge is not going to know every sequence and every spot that's happening. But to your point, there are agents and producers there. And I think sometimes those agents and producers do have to decide if they want to be one

of the boys or if they want to be the office. Because I know that, and you know this for years and years, it was like the boys versus the office. You're one or the other. It's us versus them. And so if you're really trying to be an ally to the talent and you consider yourself one of the boys, then maybe that conversation sounds something like, hey, I don't know if you should do this.

I mean, are you confident you can do this? Are you sure you can do this? And you sort of now put the onus back on the talent for them to say, yes, I'm comfortable. Yes, I can do it. I feel good about it. Sometimes you do have to protect them from themselves. I was going to say, number one, Tony should have known. Now, can he know every moment in every match and every spot in every match?

No. But he's Stephen Borden. We're putting him on a pedestal. still. We're thrusting him into the limelight to take advantage of his connection to one of the biggest, most iconic figures in the last 20 or 30 years in wrestling. I understand that. But if I'm doing it, I guarantee you I would know what his finish was. And if there's a high spot on the match, I guarantee you I would know what it is and whether or not I wanted him to do it. That would be one of my biggest responsibilities, the day of show. Now, with the same thing,

be true for my opening middle match where there's no you know nothing unusual going on no but in this match with this particular talent knowing what tony and everybody else knows is he's green and is just learning but now we're going to put him in a spot for ray mysterio i'm sorry that's that's that's that's as much tony's fault as it is anybody else's that's his responsibility and we talk about oh, he wants to work and he goes to all these different events, takes them the responsibility for what you're trying to build is one of your key assets. And someone who I know that you have affection for and his father's saying, protect his son.

Protect him physically. I mean, that's, sorry, we should probably change the subject. No, no, I'm glad we're talking about it. I mean, I think what we're saying is sort of the same thing. We need to protect him from himself because he is young. And listen, the reality is sometimes you're, so young that you don't know what you don't know. And I don't mean young in the age. I just mean an experience. And that's the reason there's a lot of, like you've seen the studies before,

like immigrants come over and often they become millionaires faster than people who are native to a community because they don't know what's not possible. They don't know that, hey, every business that's been in that building has failed. And so, you know, not knowing is sometimes a superpower and you can push yourself and have success in business that way. But also there is the risk of, hey, you don't know what you don't know because you lack that experience. So I do think that that someone in the chain of command there should have said, I don't think we should do this. I do appreciate that there's no restrictor played on talent in AEW.

And I know that you would probably disagree with that. But I think, you know, it's not lost on me that we're talking about a guy in his 30s who is an adult who can make his own decisions. And I don't believe for a second that anyone volunteered him for this spot or suggested that, hey, as a condition of your continued employment, we need you to do it. I think it was probably, are you sure you can do this? Are you safe on doing this? Are you confident you can do it?

And then we just took his word for it. But I do think that's where we've got to draw the hard line and say, hey, we're not going to let you. And I know that that's where it becomes a slippery slope. Because, I mean, I've seen a ton of people talking about this is like a whole new tag team in New Day, but based on what they're showing us in AEW versus WW. WWE has a style. For better or worse, they have a style.

and this is what we want, and we don't do that other shit, we do this. And in AEW, they are allowed to sort of paint outside the lines a little bit. And a guy like Darby Allen would not be allowed to do the things that he does in AW if he were on the channel in WW. So I do like that the way I have that creative freedom, but I do think that there was, there's probably if I had to guess, a lot of internal discussions to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again, not to correct you. But this wasn't even the plan finished.

this was just a spot very early in the match. So again, I'm not carrying Tony's water, but I'm saying I feel confident he knows everybody's finish. But the mechanics of every match, that to me feels like a big ass. He's got to be able to delegate that to lieutenants, to sergeants, to producers, to agents. They've got to be able to handle that because respectfully,

Tony's not a wrestler. But he's put wrestlers in those positions and somebody probably should have put their foot down is all I'm saying. I'll say at a minimum. Well, I'll tell you what we're going to agree on is that we're having an absolute blast this year, talking about the 30 year anniversary of the NWO. We're going to pick up our conversation where we left off and talk about September 30th. This is a Monday nitro from Cleveland, Ohio.

And last week, as we know, this is where WCW wrestlers were largely overseas, and the NWO essentially hijacked the show, Hall of Nash took over commentary, the giant became a ring announcer. Vincent debuted. Six would wrestle. Fake sting would appear and the outsiders just inserted themselves into the main event. Now this week, WCW wants their show back. And as a reminder, we're headed towards Halloween Havoc 1996. This is Eric Vishaw's favorite WCW show that he produced. He felt like it was the most fun he had when he was in WCW. But he was not having the most fun in character here as he started the show. This is rare because as you'll recall, this era, it would be Tony Chivani and Larry Zabisco opening the show. They would switch

announcers at the midpoint. So the second hour was always Bobby Heenan, Mike Teney and Eric Bischoff. But this Nitro in particular starts with Eric addressing what happened the previous week. He says he's embarrassed that the NWO took over WCW's television program while many WCWCW stars were in Japan. And Vischoff vowed it would never happen again. He then acknowledged what he considers his greatest mistake. And that was brinkwold. And that was bringing Hulk Hogan to WCW in the first place. WCW has a long history and the NWO isn't going to be allowed to destroy it. There's tremendous irony, of course, in all of this, considering where this story is headed.

But this is fantastic stuff here. And I got to ask, Eric, when you're making this promise to start the show and you're saying it'll never happen again and the worst thing I ever did was bring Hulk Cogan here. At this point, do you have it in your mind's eye? hey, I'm going to be revealed as being a part of this, or did that come after? What was the date? September 30th, 1996. We're in Cleveland, Ohio.

I don't know. I can't put it into context. As you're reading that to me or to us, I'm feeling like I probably knew. Yeah. I went a little over the top with it, you know, falling on the sword, so to speak. I probably wouldn't have done that if I didn't know there was something. coming up next you know i mean soon days weeks months whatever um so i'm six weeks after this is when you do it how long six weeks then i don't think so then i don't

think so because i remember the decisions it it wasn't like we talked about it for a long time it was almost over the course of two weeks wow yeah it was more spontaneous than six weeks for sure. But I didn't have a hair there. Did you see the hair? Dave Silver, go back. It was Super Dave. Go back a couple of slides. There was one way close up. In fact, I think I want this. I'm going to put this in a frame. Oh, look at that. Look at that hair. The focus, the intensity, the hair. I think I think what you're saying right there is real American freestyle is number one. That's it. I was thinking it. Like, I didn't even know what I was thinking. I didn't know what RAF was at the time, but the idea popped in my head.

What a fabulous way to start the show. And here's what I like about this. I know we're having a little fun and talking about the behind the scenes. But in storyline, this is really one of the first times we're going to get, it's not the first time, but it's one of the first times we're going to get acknowledgement that you're sort of the Vince McMahon of this operation. You know, oftentimes you had only been acknowledged as being an announcer on the program. and I know that when Kevin Nash sent you sailing through the set back in,

I guess that was June, at the June pay-per-view, we knew, hey, that, that was interesting. Why would he do that to Eric? But now when you're saying the biggest mistake I made was bringing Hulk Cogan to WCW, this is really like you sort of giving a peek behind the curtain, and it adds a level of realism to the idea that, hey, I shouldn't have done this.

This is my ship. I'm steering the ship, and this was my mistake. and I'll take responsibility for it. Was that strategic? Was it intentional? Did you even think that far? Or did it just make sense for the story here? It just made sense for the story.

Really, the story kind of wrote itself in many ways. You know, it's like I had an idea to start with. And then it became a collaborative process. And then just the way, because we're doing, I've talked about this before, when you're doing live TV every week,

you're basically, you have, if you use it properly, and you think of it correctly, or like I'm thinking of it at least, you've got a focus group that can tell you a lot about what you're doing every. Imagine that. You've got 10,000 people that pay you to come and be a part of your focus group so you can improve your product.

That's the way I looked at it. Research is so valuable, and sometimes you can't afford it. You just don't have the time, and logistically, it's impossible to do intense focus groups at a real regular basis. Good focus groups. Because a focus group is only as good. The focus groups are only valuable if they closely represent your target audience.

Compositions, psychographics, demographics, whatever you want to put on it, you've got to figure out a way to get as many of the people who are your target audience into that focus group, right? Meaning, do they watch wrestling once a week or twice a week? or very rarely or they love it or they could care less about it, whatever.

You go through these questionnaires of people who apply to be part of research groups and you try to find the right, like I said, personalities to make up your group. But to have 10 or 15 or 20,000 of them writing you a check for 3, 400,000, so they can come in and do work for you by giving you the opportunity to essentially react or research the way they're reacting to your product. It's not perfect. It's certainly not as good as a traditional focus group, but it's still very valuable.

It can take you. You can get ideas based on reactions you see. And that happened a lot. I know people, you know, crap all over this, but a big advantage that we all had is to do the show live, get to the hotel room or the hotel bar as they, group, watch the show back, that provided not only a great kind of the camaraderie, and especially because you know your show is winning and we're beating WWF and prevented that, all that shit.

But beyond all that shit, you have the ability as a group to watch this thing together. And you know, you've heard the ideas of guys traveling the cars and that's where the best ideas came from. And I believe that. I've experienced it myself. but now take it to another level. Now we're studying tape together with a beer in our hands, surrounded by a lot of fans who are excited that we're in the bar.

It changes the research in a very fun way. But it also gives you the opportunity just to throw ideas back and forth. So a lot of not on a regular basis, and I can't give you a specific example, but it was kind of like 15 or 20 of us being in a motorhome heading down the road after a show having a couple of beers talking about what we can do next week only now we've got taped to study and sometimes some of the best ideas came from out of that environment i guarantee it i wish kevin selden was here he could talk to you about it because he would he would

engage by the time the show was over and i was at the bar i really didn't want to talk too much about wrestling to be honest but i would watch it you know and i would make mental notes but i wouldn't like start breaking shit down and planning next week in my head i wasn't doing that but I would sit back and watch the group, and I'd listen to guys talk and sit at the table, listen to the ideas, bounce back and forth. And while everybody was having fun, I do miss that period of time. And it was a brief period. You know, once we'd been on top for a while, people started taking it for granted.

It wasn't as exciting anymore. But the first six months or maybe up to a year of us really, you know, proving ourselves, so to speak, and being competitive and then coming out on top, there was just this weird not weird there's just a a lot of camaraderie was borne out of that and bonding so it was fun sorry I went off of just weird tangent no you know listen I've heard that story before I mean I've heard people talk about the idea that they could watch that west coast replay on T&T and and how much fun it was at the bar but I never really considered hey they didn't get to do that on the other channel I mean if you if you talk to a guy like like

jBL for instance and they're blowing a going in the WWF, like they work their match and then they're out the door, they're going to the next one. They don't have a chance to watch their own program, much less a competitor. And I know guys like Howard Finkel, you know, they're in the office, so they're watching everything with the actual talent themselves, the idea that there was almost like an informal get together and guys got to watch it. Because I know not everybody did it at the bar.

I'm sure some of the guys went to their hotel room. But I'm sure a lot of those guys, they'd go up there with a bucket of chicken and they'd eat their dinner or whatever. and watch the show. They could know what's going on everywhere, see what's working, see what's not, and also get ideas of,

hey, I like that spot he did with so-and-so. I've got an idea of how I could use that in my match. Like, that was, that's an interesting, unique and dynamic difference between nitro and raw, but I knew that fans got to enjoy that,

but I never really considered the, the unique selling point that that was for you guys, just internally. because that's that's something nobody ever got to do. Yeah, it was fun. It definitely fun and in its own unconventional way, very productive. Fascinating stuff. Let's talk about the next match for the next segment here on Nitro.

It's public enemy over Huventhu, Guerrera and El Technico. Believe it or not, El Technico is Billy Kidman working under a mask. This is, of course, just a showcase for the new tag team champions. And Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, they want these title belts. They want these tag team titles. Next up,

we've got the horsemen cutting a promo saying that they're ready for the NWO. This is backstage with Mike today interviewing Benoit, Mongo, and Deborah McMichael. Benoit's getting ready for Rick Steiner later that night. And Mongo says he's there to support Benoit and the four horsemen. And more importantly, he's there in case the NWO decides up to show up again. Then we see the NWO having a party. We're going to cut away from the arena.

and find the NWO comfortably hanging out in a suite to Cleveland Marriott and take a look. That is a young Nick Belaya right there. Nick Hogan. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me? How great is that, dude? This is, you know, I see Nick pretty, pretty often, you know, see him at least once a month when he comes through events of Real American Freestyle.

And I'm so used to now see him as a grown-ass man. And he's seen himself in great shape. He's down to about a buck 75. He's leaned out. He's gotten real healthy. And I love hanging out with him when I see him. But I forgot what he looked like when he was a little kid. It's like he's been an adult now for a long time.

Look at that. By the way, could we go back and look at Mike to me? Sure. Any of those shots with Mike today? I now know who he looks like. For decades of knowing Mike today, he's reminded me of somebody and I couldn't think of who. Do you know who I think he reminds me of? Not so much in that shot, but in many others I've seen.

What? Christopher Walken. Oh yeah, I can see that. He's got that. And maybe it's kind of a higher forehead or whatever, something in the eyes. I just expect him to break into a Christopher walking, you know,

improv any moment. I love Christopher Walker, by the other. I got to have more hoovintude. Yeah, the NWO's having a party at the Cleveland Mary. Hollywood Hogan's here. I love seeing that early shot of a young Nick. How about Scott Hall?

Kevin Nash, the giant, Ted DiBiase, six, fake sting, they're all here. And DeBiase is explaining something particularly insulting. He says because WCW lost war games, WCW is now paying for the NW's television time. So the NWO doesn't even have to hijack Nitro anymore. WCW is contractually giving them the air time. Now this is a little storyline beat. It's easy to gloss over. but there is a reason and you guys have have put the thought into everything like hey where are all these shirts coming from well we're going to have vendors outside of the arena selling them and we're going to make it look like it's bootleg and we're going to have a street team fliring cars with the NWO and there's been some intention with everything and an explanation as to hey how is this happening which is why when we run the commercials for the NWO merch the following announcement has been paid for so we do all of that but I think this is neat.

that we're seeing a cutaway from the arena is like, well, wait a minute, how are they doing that? And de Viosity actually explains it. Well, because they lost war games, silly. Now they have to air our stuff. Just the idea that we explained it because I feel like sometimes in WWE land, Vince would say, hey, who gives a shit? It doesn't matter.

They're going to watch it. Let's move on. But we felt the need to actually explain it here. I think that makes all the difference in the world. Such an important point. And something that we had to learn, I had to learn the hard way. And it's interesting that you point out, you know, you reference WWE is sometimes not doing it because, you know, Vince didn't feel it was important at some point. I've seen the opposite, though, by the way, where Vince will get focused on such a little detail that connects the story or binds the story together, that he was almost obsessive about it.

So I've seen both sides of that with Vince. but here's what's interesting is before I, you know, got into management at WCW as a talent. And I talked about this before, Bobby Heenan, mostly Gene Oakland, but occasionally Bobby Heed, and or any other talent that came from WWE would constantly remind me of all the things that Vince did so much better than WCW. Now, this was when they were way up on top and before Nitro.

How much better he was at long-term storytelling, how much better he was at the details, you know, making sure that the story flows and then we're not, you know, leaving out big chunks of story. And, you know, continuity was a word that came up constantly in these types of conversations, as well as examples of how WCW at that time. Again, I wasn't running WCW. So it wasn't, you know, people weren't cautious about hurting my feelings or offending me. it was just me, you know, being in the room hearing other people talk, but it was always, you know, here's what they do so well, here's what we don't do, right? Constantly hearing that so that when I got into a position where I could actually affect

something or impact something, one of the things I wanted to do, as I've said before, on this show is create some long-term storytelling. Sting was the example that we've been talking about for a long time now. and the details to that story were also very important to the success of it in the whole NWO versus WCW thing. I think we did an adequate job initially, I think because of dilution, adding thunder, thinning out our writing staff, crushing timelines, all that human nature, human resource shit that gets in the way, we got sloppy. And I think that sloppiness manifested in a lot of the things that we end up talking about is being boneheaded moments or, you know, not the best idea in the world or not completely

thought through. A lot of that occurred around that time where, okay, or two hours to three hours. And oh, by the way, now you got two hours every Thursday night in prime time. You know, but that, you know, it's just that's what I, what I've said before about, about thunder being actually the straw that really broke the camel's back. It's really because that decision crushed the human resources, crushed creative and their ability to really do a good job. Could we get a show on the air?

Sure. It looked pretty cool? Yeah, sure. But were we able to build stories as effectively as we did before Thunder? Nope. Couldn't do it. something you could do was establish Dean Malenko a little further. He's becoming obsessed with Ray Mysterio Jr.

And he's up next versus Alex Wright. Malenko is bringing Ray's stolen mask to ringside and hanging it on the ring post. I love this. This was my favorite version of Dean Malenko. He and Ray Mysterio are going to have an absolute classic at Halloween Havoc. I'm excited for us to talk about. I know everyone talks about Ray and Eddie at 97's Halloween Havoc, but the 96 with him and Dean Malenko is outstanding.

We'll be talking about that in the coming weeks. Next up, though, it's Randy Savage losing control. We're going to see footage of WCW Saturday night where Savage was facing Big Bubba, and Savage's anger is going to get the better of him. He assaults referee Nick Patrick, who's now wearing a neck brace, and WCW is attempting to interview Savage tonight, but Savage doesn't want to show up and nobody knows where he is. So this becomes one of the central stories of this episode,

because the NWO has figured out Randy's biggest weakness. It's not physical. It's Miss Elizabeth. How comfortable was Randy with this story? I mean, at this point, they've been long divorced. But now you're going to put him and her together again. And I know that she was also involved in the Savage Flair stuff when they did phenomenal business a few years prior to this.

But chat me up about Randy and Liz in 1996. How were they? I would say if I had to kind of describe their relationship, I would say it was a very loving relationship that you would expect out of a brother and a sister. I think it went from the romantic, you know, husband and wife relationship, then divorce, and then over time, I think, like often happens, you know, or occasionally happens, depending on a situation, you know, you can become, if not friends friendly with an ex, right? or at least not to the point where there's still that animosity or hurt, whatever it was.

I think Randy and Liz had gotten to that point by this time where there was still a lot of love. Randy was still protective, but in a different kind of way. Not in a jealous way, but in a big brother way. So it wasn't like Randy went, whatever she wants to do, she can do. No, it wasn't that. It would be as if your sister was coming to work with. the company who you had a close relationship with. And you just wanted to make sure she was not put in a position that she was,

you know, at risk physically or, you know, that wasn't putting her in the best possible light, or at least not doing something that hurt her as a character. He was very aware of everything she was doing creatively. Again, not to have a heavy hand,

but just making sure because he loved her. And Liz was married to, I never met her, her husband. I think he was in real estate down in Miami. I thought he was a lawyer. Was he not? Maybe a lawyer. Yeah, I wasn't sure.

But she, you know, she had obviously moved on and Randy was still, you know, very comfortable being around that and accepted it and all that. So it was a very solid friendship at that point. Well, let's talk about the next match.

We've got Eddie Guerrero and Jim Powers. Eddie Guerrero is obviously going to be next level. He's here against Jim Powers, who's managed by Teddy Long. But the backdrop here is Nick Patrick is going to be officiating with a neck brace on. This is the selling Randy Savage's attack. And I don't know why it tickles me, but it does. Maybe it's because I'm such a big fan of Danny McBride's character from eastbound and down. Kenny Powell.

It looks like Danny McBride there, doesn't he? It looks just like Kenny Powers was a WCW referee here. I mean, this and I don't know, him and a neck brace is just maybe one of my favorite referee gags of all time. Well, he did it so well. That's why. I mean, he played that character just so perfectly. It was fun.

The NWOs got picketers and they're going to make an appearance during the crowd, in the crowd during this match. And Nick Patrick is going to be part of the conversation, of course, about the questionable officiating suspicious decisions. And of course, with this constant NWO presence, yes, Eddie wins the match, but it's more of a backdrop to what's going on with the NWO. You really got to focus on this storyline, which is why I wish back in 1996,

15 year old may knew about Ultra. But of course, Ultra wasn't around back then, but it is now by God it's instant focus in a pouch. But did you know that now they've even got something to help you sleep? You know, just earlier in this very program, he heard Eric talking about how he has started to learn more and prioritize sleep.

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That's the big thing, but I just love feeling more refreshed in the morning. And ultra sleep pouches can deliver you better, deeper sleep with properly dose the natural ingredients. New customers can use the code 83 weeks to get 15% off at take ultra.com. That's take ultra.com 15% off with the code 83 weeks. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Hey, so let's talk about the nasty voice. We've briefly touched on them recently and now they're going to show up at the NWO party.

That's right. Ryan Nobs and Jerry Sags are at the Marion, hanging out with the Hulk shirt. Probably not the first time that's happened. But they're going to talk about how the NWO has done more for them than WCW ever did. And of course, what's underlying here is they have a relationship with Hulk Hogan. And the question is now unavoidable. Are the nasty boys joining the NWO? Now, they're not officially members here, but it certainly looks like they want to be a part of the team. Next up, we've got Arne Anderson confronting Elizabeth. This happens back stage when Mike Teney is interviewing Arne Anderson, woman, and Elizabeth, and Arn wants an answer from Liz.

She's been associated with the horseman, but emotionally, she clearly isn't completely separated from Randy Savage. And Arn's basically telling her to pick aside. And woman is putting the pressure on her as well, and Elizabeth's response is complicated. And that's exactly what the NWO has begun exploiting. They don't need to beat Savage in a wrestling match. They just want to get in his head, and Liz is the easiest way to do that. next up we've got Hugh Morris and Brad Armstrong

two of the unsung heroes from WCW in this era Armstrong is going to get a lot of near falls but Hugh Morris ultimately lands the no laughing matter moonsault and gets the victory and as we enter hour two we're reminded that the savage situation is becoming more concerning before we talk about that I want to talk to you about Hugh Morris

this is a big guy who was in Japan working as Crash the Terminator you've got him in there with one of the best hands in the history of wrestling, Brad Armstrong. And when Hugh Morris at over three bills was hitting that moon salt, it was a sight to see, man. What did you think his ceiling in WCW was going to be? I don't think I ever looked at anybody and tried to determine what their ceiling might be to start with.

It's just not the way I don't work in reverse that way. Trying to reverse engineer talent, which is probably a good way to do. I just go by feel and instinct. And I think with Hugh, I don't recall spending a ton of time thinking about Hugh creatively because I felt like in his current role, his current character, Hugh Morris, laughing matter, you know, the kind of insane clown kind of persona that he would come to the ring with. it wasn't money to me. What was money to me with you was his ability as a big guy to do some amazing things. But it didn't really fit.

I couldn't use him in the Cruiserweight Division. He was too big. I actually didn't want high flyers in our, I'll refer to heavyweight division, because I wanted the contrast. I wanted this to represent that and I want this to represent those, right? I wanted two distinct styles. I didn't want them. This is the reason I had an issue with the X division.

Oh, well, how do you define the X division? What are the rules? Well, the rules are there all no rules. Okay, so it's a hardcore match or whatever. False count anywhere, but whatever. I wanted the Cruiserweight division to be. defined, have parameters, it gave it credibility, and provided an opportunity for something that looked different halfway through the show. At the 9 o'clock hour, if we started at least halfway

through the show, you're going to see something really cool that you're not going to see the rest of the show. That was the reason I wanted it. So Hugh didn't really fit in a heavyweight division. He didn't fit in a cruiserweight division, and I thought his character was kind of goofy. he was more of an 80s character than a 90s character in my my subjective view um and as such I just didn't give him a lot of thought I know it's not the answer anybody wants to hear it he'll probably particularly hate it but it is it's the answer you know what Eric I'll be honest I was a fan of his back then and I thought hey this guy could be a main eventor I mean it felt like obviously that would that would take the right story and the right positioning

But when I saw Vader do a moonsault, I thought, this is unbelievable. And to me, obviously, they're different size human beings and different wrestlers and all that. I thought he had a good look. I thought it looked like, I mean, he's a big Scott Norton type, but he could do this move. And to me, it's like, oh, man, this guy could be something. I don't know what, but this guy's going to be a big star. And it didn't feel like he really achieved all that much success in WCW until he was, and this is probably the Russo era when he was, and it was a terrible name.

but we finally got to see some character work from him when he was general Hugh G. Rection, terrible name, awful name. But boy, he did his best to make some chicken salad there. But when you just explained, I didn't want our heavy weights doing the high flying stuff. I wanted the contrast and I wanted that in the cruiser weights. That was a real light bulb moment for me because the thing that I thought was most interesting and attractive and I was like,

hey, they're going to do something with this guy is the exact thing that made you say, I don't, I don't want him to do that. Like that to me is a real eye opener. I'm glad we had this conversation because I never knew that that was the issue. And I'm sure he's going to hear this and realize for the first time, shit, I wish I would have done the moonfalls. Well, I hope he has no regrets. But I mean, and that's the thing.

It's like if, if we were to take the state, say it's today, you and I are sitting there and we're booking WCW together. And you see what you see in, and, and, and I have. my my concerns let's say you know for the sake of the argument i concede it's okay let's let's build this guy we have that roster that we had at that time let's let's put him right in the middle of things how do we get him over well you got to get his finish over all right you got here's your list of main event main eventers you know we'll get it we'll get his finish over you know underneath mid card matches yeah everybody will know what the finish is and our announcers will put it over and you know okay he'll be that's his signature it's branded finish okay but now in

order to get him where we think he can be a huge star he's going to start beating some meaningful talent with that finish you're sacrificing a lot of known commodities to build something that's an unknown and that's a risk that you have to take it's a point you know, through the evolution of your roster, you've got to make those decisions. I'm not saying that. But I just didn't see it in Hugh, and you'd have to put Hugh in big matches with the Lex Lugar's and the Randy Savage's and he'd have to go over DDP while those guys are on the rise. If we're to do it then, these guys here who have are proven commodities who are continuing

to grow their value from a real revenue perspective, you just got to. look at the numbers and the ratings to see it, now we're going to start feeding them to an unknown. I couldn't do it at that time. Not why we're still, I couldn't do it. Now, you can argue that we should have, and that might be the correct argument, but I couldn't get myself to make that decision at that point when we're finally turning a profit and we're growing, at the rate we're growing, am I going to roll the dice on a new character and sacrifice some of these guys some of these guys over here to do it? I just don't think I could have got myself there. Next up, Eric Bischoff is looking for Randy Savage. This is how we'll kick off hour two.

And you're going to leave the commentary table to go look for Randy Savage and potentially confront the NWO yourself. This is significant because Savage isn't behaving rationally anymore. every week Hogan's pushing another button. Every week, Savage is becoming more unstable. And next up, we get something that, man, I don't even remember this happened. I loved watching it back. Arne Anderson versus Chris Jericho on Nitro. This is just a few weeks into Chris Jericho's WCW run, and it is a big time match for him

against the staple of WCW, Arn Anderson. And Jericho gets enough offense to make you think, hey, he may pull off the upset, But in the end, Arn sees the opportunity when Jericho misses the lion's salt. It's a DDT and a victory. Great stuff. I love these guys. And seeing them do their thing is what made Nitro great in this era. You got the NWO here.

They're going to keep selling their brand. It's time for an NWO ad. This time they're pushing the official NWT shirt and the giant is even involved. So it's Hall Nash and the giant. As a reminder, we're trying to build a whole different. brand here. So they've got ad, they've got merch, they've got a corporate backer, they've got a freaking NASCAR, they've got paid TV time, they've got security. Hell, they've even got their own sting. Next, we'll see Elizabeth start packing her bag. She's made one. And the decision is,

I'm leaving. And now the question is, where is she going? And would Randy Savage want her to leave? What the heck is going on? Next up, it's Lex Lugar and Mr. Wall Street. Lugar is going to a lot of the, Wall Street controls a lot of the match, but eventually Lex makes that comeback. When Wall Street goes for a suplex, Luger escapes, puts them in the torture rack, and that's all she wrote. And then we've got WCW trying to apologize to Sting. WCW has realized they've screwed up by alienating Sting. They accused him adjoining the NWO. So now WCW is attempting, I guess, a peace offering. They've redesigned their motorsports car to feature Sting's likeness on the hood. And it's kind of comical when you think about it.

Sorry we accused you of betraying the company and destroying your trust in us, but we put your face on a race car. Now, I'm sure in real life, this was negotiated and decided way ahead of time, but you've got to have some sort of storyline way to explain it. This is good stuff, don't you think?

I know it was very good. I chuckled while you were explaining because I forgot all about it. But yeah, you talk about product integration into story. Holy smokes. That was really well done. It's probably a textbook example of really super creative product integration. We got the Rock and Roll Express here with the Faces of Fear on Nitro.

Never imagine that that was a thing, but it is. They're going to continue to attack the, of course, the faces of fear get the win, and they continue to beat up the Rock and Roll Express. But the public enemy come out to save the day, and they start targeting Johnny Grunge's knee. This is all sort of backdrop for the NWO story to me. But all of a sudden, Kyle Petty joins the NWO party. That's right, the NASCAR driver, Kyle Petty.

He's at the barriott hanging out with the boys. Remember, they just announced this the prior week. Hogan is using these hotel segments to hype up the pay-per-view at Halloween Havoc. Eric, when do you remember these hotel skits being recorded? I mean, it's unlikely this was live during the show, right? No, they were pre-taped during the day, usually. Probably around 4 or 5 o'clock is when these would be produced. I mean, I just kind of would have assumed you did it the week before, but that's interesting.

No, everybody. We never did anything that we didn't do shit the week before. We didn't even know what we were going to do the week before. So, no, we, uh, no, those are all pre-taped and, um, I didn't really, I didn't go to too many of those. I didn't need to be at those. They were produced by other people who were good at it. So I wasn't there, but I would imagine most of them were like four or five o'clock.

They were pretty easy to edit. So plus to Showtime. Well, it's Showtime for Chris Benoit and Rick Steiner. Yeah, it happened on Nitro. Another fabulous episode. Scott Steiner's at Ringsside. Of course, Mongo's on the other side along with Deborah accompanying Benoit. They're going to get really, really physical, start throwing some super.

twoplexes, lots of intensity. Deborah is going to distract Nick Patrick. Mongo is going to get the Halliburton involved. Rick is attempting a superplex and Mongo nails him in the back with the briefcase and Benoit falls on Rick and gets the three count. So this is interesting because WCW is supposed to be uniting against the NWO, but the horsemen are still cheating to beat up other WCW wrestlers. And this is exactly what the NWO wants and they're exploiting. Speaking of the NWO, Elizabeth shows up at the NWO party. Now she's at the Marriott and she's sitting there with the NWO. Think about this from Randy Savage's perspective. The NWO has humiliated him, beaten him, spray painted him, mocked him, mocked his relationship with Liz. And now Elizabeth is sitting

there with Hulk Hogan. And Hogan is pitching her because the NWO wants Elizabeth to join. the NWO is actually offering her a contract and Hogan is saying he's going to sweeten the deals by getting her into movies in Hollywood. So this is perfect for Hollywood Hogan. He's no longer just a wrestler. He's full-blown Hollywood. He's got the money.

He's got the connections. He's got Ted DiBiasey backing him. He can get her into movies and TV. And Elizabeth is looking kind of conflicted. And eventually she leaves the room and she's walking down the hotel hallway when all of a sudden there's Randy, Savage. He comes flying into the frame. Savage has finally found her and he's furious. He

immediately confronts Elizabeth. Why was she in there? Why was she with Hogan? Why is she sitting with the NWO? Is she setting him up? And that's how Nitro ends. Not with a wrestling match. Not with Hogan hitting a leg drop or Hall of Nash invading the ring, but Randy Savage losing trust and Miss Elizabeth. As a reminder, this is the September 30th edition and we're building towards Halloween havoc. Eric, this is a unique way to end the show. And it's not the way most people remember nitro is going off the air. But most people remember, you know, trash flying in or there's some battle.

There's a pier six brawl and Tony Chivani fans, we got to go. That sort of thing. This is off-site. This is a major departure. And you guys are trying different things. For whatever reason, it feels like Vince never really liked this sort of thing. I've heard from people who would say anything that Vince, you know, wanted to have happened had to happen in the arena.

And I'm not saying that there weren't terrible examples of one guy breaking into another guy's house or Katie Vic or whatever, but it's rare that the show went off that way. That was just a part of the story. The NWO here, the entire thread is they're not even at the building. They're at the Marriott. And to close the show with this, can he trust Ms. Elizabeth? What's going on? This is different than what we've been seeing.

What do you remember of this? this. Not much, to be honest. I didn't produce it, which is why I don't remember much of it, other than that it happened. But I do recall a lot of discussion, decision, debate about how to end shows in general. Interesting about this show is even, I can't recall which one it was, but a few minutes ago, we were talking about something that happened in the show. Oh, it was with Elizabeth. When she walked out, it's like, where does she go? Okay, this is a perfect example. We referenced her leaving the building. In my mind, I'm thinking that's an interesting cliffhanger for sometime in the body of the show, not knowing that we were going to be talking about this, right? Because I didn't

sit down and review this before we talked about it. But it was a cliffhanger that led us to a cliffhanger. And I think the reason that I'm sure I felt comfortable doing this is because I was the one that drove the cliffhanger philosophy. One of the reasons that we always went off hot is because, in my opinion, and it proved to be true, it encouraged, you know, to tune in next week. Give them something to look forward to. Make them ask themselves what's going to happen. Don't tell them. And I talked about this in my first book. My first book, listen to me, But I'm a fucking idiot. In Controversy creates cash, the one that made the New York Times bestseller list,

oh, there I go again, I'm sorry. I talked about how ending with Cliff Haggers was really part of the format change that helped us become successful and how important it is to get people talking about the show after the show. And the difference between promoting what's going to happen next week and getting people to ask themselves a debate what's going to happen next week. One is engagement, one is an announcement. I was leading into the engagement.

The reason I think I would have, I'm sure I felt comfortable of this is because probably nobody within WCW at that time could have pulled this off as well as Liz and Randy. Because it's real. It was real. Elements of this were real.

This is them being able to, like a method, actor would who trains for this and who makes $20 million of film. This is what a method actor would be able to accomplish by getting themselves into the character and actually believing the story that they're representing because in some ways they've immersed themselves in it and can actually feel it and that translates to the audience. Randy and Liz, this was all right there for them. They didn't have to dig. They didn't have to be actors or actresses. They experienced that and were able, because of, you know, the training and pro wrestling to be able to use it and get a good scene out of it. But I don't think we could have put anybody

else in a scene like that that was good enough at acting that could have pulled it off and made it work. But Randy and Liz did because it was almost real to them and therefore became almost real to the viewer. How cool is that in terms of better than, less than different than if you can find a way to emotionally get people to believe what they're seeing is true and then to end a wrestling show with this kind of drama as opposed to violence, that's different then. Obviously it worked, but it could only have worked with those two people. What else is interesting about this to me, Eric, is this show happens on September 30th, Halloween Havoc is October 27th.

So we're still four weeks away. So it's kind of fascinating to me that fall brawl is like mid-September, and it's not four weeks later, it's six weeks later. Now, you've said for years that you feel like Halloween Havoc was the WCW equivalent of WrestleMania. That was your answer to WrestleMania. So you don't give yourself a short runway. You give yourself an even longer runway.

And we've got this paranoia building for weeks already with Randy Savage. I mean, it was two weeks ago that they spray painted him. And now we're a month out and they've quote unquote, you know, stolen his ex-wife and damaged that relationship. and we've still got a month before the show. I can't wait for Halloween Havoc 1996. We'll continue our discussion about the 30-year anniversary of the NWO in the coming weeks. And hey, man, if you haven't already, go check out Real American Freestyle.com.

Later this month, they're back in Vegas. And listen, I never thought we'd see Dylan Dennis back in Real American Freestyle. I was there in St. Louis and April when it became a peer six brawl. The fight literally fell in my lap. It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. I was thrilled with it. It's one thing to watch it on Fox Nation, folks.

It is another to be there in person and see it. Go check it out. Buy some tickets. Real American Freestyle.com is where you can snag those. But man, you're in the fight capital of the world with real American freestyle. This is going to be a big time show, man. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, we're going to be at the Fountain Blue Hotel.

And I'm really looking forward to bringing the show to the home viewer from the Fountain Blue. it's going to have a very cool look to it. Our entire production team is excited about and our ability to bring you some really cool stuff that you haven't seen before. The card is a great card. Vegas, of course, a great fight town. And then we're leaving shortly thereafter.

From Vegas, we go. Next stop is Abu Dhabi. So we're looking forward to that. We're continuing our international expansion. Our youth initiative, and NextGen is going well. Our reality show made it. and we're talking about the series coming up.

So there's so many good things happening at Real American Freestyle. But if you want to know why all these good things are happening, you know, typically capped by co-founding partners, Chad Bronsie and Izzy Martinez, because they're putting together, as Conrad said, some really, really interesting matchups. Whether you're a fan of the elite-level world-class freestyle wrestling that you would see from a Kyle Dayek or Kyle Snyder,

or Bob Bass, and a Real Woods, Kennedy Blades on and on and on, or you're into the crossover action. Hamzat Tomeo, Colby Covington, you know, Armand Sarukian. Robbie Lawler. Robbie Lawler. So many of the great, you know,

MMA fighters, current and previous, that all come from a freestyle background, getting back out onto the mat and making it happen. So it'll be a great night in Las Vegas. Check us out and watch Forest. your way from Abu Dhabi in November. Check it out, Real American Freestyle.com and cheap plug here. I'm going to be on Busted Open tomorrow as you're listening to this.

Be sure to tune in. I should be in that first hour. I'll be in studio with our buddy, Mr. LaGreca. And on Wednesday, I'll be in studio with Ariel Hawani. Why am I going to New York? Well, it's because I've decided to let go of a real piece of wrestling history. The iconic Intercontinental title held by the macho man Randy Savage, won by Ricky the Dragon Steamboat at WrestleMania 3, the greatest

WrestleMania of all, the one that holds all the lore. This was the first Intercontinental title designed by Reggie Parks. It's easily one of the most popular designs amongst collectors up there with the big gold and the winged eagle. But this belt in particular was owned by WWE from 1985 until 2020, and they traded it to me. It's never been offered for public sale or auction ever before. earlier this year we saw Hogan's WrestleMania 1 boots go for a million.

We saw his Hogan WrestleMania 2 belt sell for 400,000. What will WrestleMania 3 bring? This is the Tito Santana belt, the Honky Tonk belt, the Ricky Steamboat belt. But to me, it'll always be the Randy Savage belt.

For more information about the auction and to see the history of the belt, go check it out at WrestleMania belt.com. The auction ends later this month. I'll be in New York this week promoting it, but we thought we would close with a video explaining all about this belt. See all that more at WrestleMania belt.com. And we'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks.

But there, Fish Off. There is a moment. Every wrestler spends a career chasing. It cannot be held. It cannot be won twice. It only happens at WrestleMania. Mike Johnson of pwinsider.com named it. The WrestleMania moment.

The first one, the blueprint every generation has chased for 40 years, was not Hogan slamming Andre. It was two men fighting over this belt. Macho Man Randy Savage, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, and the original Red Letter Intercontinental Championship crafted by the King of Belts, Reggie Parks. Ring used from 1985 to 1988, never offered for public. or private sale. This is the 40th anniversary of the Savage Steamboat Feud. Next March is the 40th anniversary of WrestleMania 3. On October 22nd, Heritage Auctions puts it on the block. This is the

only chance. September 1985, Poughkeepsie. Tito Santana is handed a brand new title on television. Oh, that's beautiful. Reggie Parks had never made this design before. Recessed letters at the top, filled with red paint. A straight plate, no later seashell tooling, no later curve. Belt collectors still rank this among the two most ordered designs in Park's entire library, sitting with the winged eagle and the big gold. This is the first of its kind, the prototype that became the standard. Look at it now, and you can still see the life it lived.

A gash in the leather by the WWF logo? Brasso Tarnish, no later copy can fake. This is the one. February 8, 1986, Boston Garden. Eight months into its WWF run, Randy Savage takes the title from Tito Santana, with a foreign object referee Danny Davis never sees. Johnson wrote that when Savage held this belt, It was the moment Kansas melted into Oz.

He did not wear it. He possessed it. He carried it into WrestleMania 2 at Nassau Coliseum against George the Animal Steel. He defended it against a murderer's row of future Hall of Famers. Santana, Jake Roberts, junkyard dog, Pedro Morales, Roddy Piper. Inside the business, they already had a name for this championship. The Workers' Belt. The world title sold the circus.

This title measured who could actually wrestle. Holding it meant promoters trusted you to carry the live event. It means you were the sport inside sports entertainment. November 22nd, 1986, superstars of wrestling. Savage draped steamboat's throat across the barricade, comes off the top with a double axe handle, Then takes the timekeeper's bell to the top rope and drives it into the dragon's larynx. Steamboat is stretchered out.

Bruno San Martino is so disgusted, he attacks Savage on camera. For three months, the company repeats the assault until every living room in America has seen it. Behind the scenes, they're writing the opposite of a brawl. Yellow legal pads, 160 steps. They quiz each other. hotel rooms until every false finish is memorized. Steamboat's instructions to Savage was simple. Make it a championship match. Not revenge. The Belt. March 29th, 1987, Pontiac Silverdome. A reported 93,000 people. 14 minutes, 35 seconds. 21 false finishes. Jesse Ventura.

For me, it was the greatest match I ever saw, ever. Pro Wrestling Illustrated, Match of the Year. Wrestling Observer, Match of the Year. Steamboat later said it was the moment that defined him as a wrestler. Kids who were not born in 1987 still walk up to him and talk about it. Mike Johnson? This was the first WrestleMania moment. The match that taught every performer who followed what immortality looks like under that spotlight.

The only title change on the most celebrated WrestleMania of all time. The most important title change in WrestleMania history up to that point. Hogan Slamming Andre sold the building. Savage and Steamboat taught the industry what the show was for. The world title from that same card will never come to market. Nick Balea owns it. This is the championship that can. Dave Milliken, who knows this lineage as well as anyone alive,

without question the most historically significant ring-use title to ever be offered for public sale. The story did not end when Steamboat's arm was raised. They wrestled more than 20 rematches, including steel cages. June 2nd, 1987, Buffalo. Honky Talk Man hooks the ropes and steals it in under four minutes. That upset begins a 454-day rain. The longest intercontinental. reign of its era. October, 1987, Saturday night's main event. Savage gets his shot.

The Heart Foundation holds him down. The guitar comes. Elizabeth gets in the way. Hogan makes the save. The mega powers are born in a fight over this belt. November, 1987, Honky walks into the first Survivor series wearing it. By WrestleMania 4, it is gone from television.

retired in 1988, held in the WWE archives until December 2020 when the company traded it after Paterson's passing. It has never been sold publicly or privately until October 22nd. This spring, Heritage sold Hulk Hogan's boots from the first WrestleMania for $1,037,000. Hogan had dozens of pairs of yellow boots. This summer, Heritage sold Hogan's world title from WrestleMania 2 for $414,800. That belt was used briefly on a show history has largely moved past, a design that does not sit in the same conversation as this one. WrestleMania 1 has had its artifact.

WrestleMania 2 has had its artifact. WrestleMania 3, the show WWE itself, treats as the Mountain Peak has never had a ring-used championship offered to the public. A pair of boots from Mania cleared seven figures. A short-used world title from Mania 2 cleared 400,000. This is the title from the most important match on the most important show. It has no equal. The Savage Steamboat feud is still so large it will be profiled on A&E's rivals. This fall marks 40 years since Savage put the bell to Steamboat's throat and started the feud that changed WrestleMania. Next March, March 29, 27 is the 40th anniversary of WrestleMania 3.

WWE is preparing replicas of this design. Replicas are coming. The original is being sold once. On the anniversary window, not after it. You can study the photographs, you can watch the footage, you can read the clippings. All of it lives at WrestleMania Belt.com. The belt itself goes to heritage auctions on October 22nd. Greatness cannot be held in your hand, except this once.

This is the championship that created the WrestleMania moment. This is the one.