83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Episode 448: The Business Of NITRO

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

On this LIVE edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad take us back 30 years for a very special indepth look at WCW Monday NITRO. Eric peels back the curtain to explain the business decisions and directions he was taking the company at the time and how it's affected the business. Plus, he answers questions from the LIVE audience. All that and so much more on this edition of 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff.      THIS WEEKS SPONSORS SPRING SLEEP - eXciteOSA is an FDA-cleared, prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. Go to springsleep.com/83WEEKS and unlock 20% off with the code 83WEEKS. HOUSECALL PRO - Ready to save time and win more jobs? For a limited time only, our listeners get 50% OFF their first 3 months at HousecallPro.com/83WEEKS #ad ULTRA - Don't sleep on @ultrapouches. New customers get 15% Off with code 83WEEKS at http://takeultra.com ! #UltraPouches #ad 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 PERFECT JEAN - F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code BISCHOFF15 at https://theperfectjean.nyc/BISCHOFF15#theperfectjeanpod 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 Chewold, you get the third for free with promo code 83 weeks. You'll also receive an additional 10% off plus free overnight shipping on your first order at bluechew.com. Hey, hey, it's Conrad the Mortgage Guy and you're listening to 83 weeks with Eric Fishoff. What's going on, man? How are you? Doing great, Conrad. still in Cody, Wyoming. As you can see, I don't have my gimmick backdrop going on.

But still and Cody had a great wedding here over the weekend at the house. Ended up in the house because the weather went a little south on us. But it was a great event. Had a lot of fun. Family was all in town. So we're just finally sent our last guest home this morning. So just settling in a little bit. Do you and Mrs. B like entertaining or is there a relief when it's just you guys again? It's always a relief when it's just us too because we're. We're very set in our ways. And we've been routines and we enjoy those routines. We work hard to develop them and protect them.

So anytime your life gets turned upside down and your routine is out the window, it's always nice to get back to it. But we do enjoy having, especially family here. You know, we're not big on entertaining large groups at all. I'm quite uncomfortable around large groups of people, to be honest about it, especially in my house. But when it's family, yeah, more the more the merrier, man. So I got to ask, you know, you live in a postcard.

That's what I always used to describe, you know, your landscape on your lot of life there. Have you had a wedding there before? Is this the first one? No, second one. Second one. Bob Niedercorn and his wife, Tammy, I refer to him as Bob from the glizzy king. The glizzy king. That's the man.

He and his wife have been coming out here for like 20 years, 25 years. And when they finally decided to get married, they got married out on our deck. Super cool. We are excited that you guys are with us. It was a big money in the bank weekend. Eric, I know you were hosting and entertaining. I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but surprise, surprise, Roman rains retained. And we are off to the races.

There's been a lot of rumor and innuendo about what's going to happen with Crown Jewel. Of course, we have no information. And we still don't know exactly what to expect with WrestleMania, but we know that it's going to be here before you know it. And it does feel like at this time of the year in the wrestling business, especially on the WWE side of things, it feels like it kind of becomes a little bit of a lull until the Royal Rumble. That's the way I feel as a fan. I know Survivor Series is a big deal.

I get that. But to me, it's just not on the level of like a Summer Slam or a WrestleMania or certainly a Royal Rumble. I don't know. There's a lot of anticipation around that event. But money in the bank has become one of their, I guess we'd call it a tent poll event. Because there are stakes. and you love talking about that here on the program.

Like we know somebody is going to get a title shot, and those somebodies were Tiffany Stratton and Penta. We saw Penta and Roman a few weeks ago, absolutely tear it up in Mexico. I know there's a lot of people who are happy that he has the case. I mean, he's probably going to be a merch monster for that company. Don't you think, Eric? I mean, with the math that they sold with Ray Mysterio,

I mean, Pinta's going to be the new version of that, right? Well, you got Ray Mysterio, and, oh, my gosh. Blanken, who's our newest character from AEWV? Oh, come on now. He's all over the place. He's showed up all over ESP. Oh, Dan Housen. Dan Housen.

I'm sorry. I don't know why I blanked on Dan Housen's name. You know, you've got that highly animated character that's a part of the WWE roster, but those highly animated characters, the loose doors obviously fit right into that naturally. That seems to be where merch is going. And good for them. You know, they've got a roster full of people who work with that can take advantage of the opportunity.

I hate to do business talk. We are going to be talking a lot about business talk. By the way, I heard you on an arrow the other night talking about, oh, I guarantee he's not going to be watching any wrestling. Well, duh, you knew that I was having a wedding at my house, dude. A little tough with a house full of hundred people to watch a wrestling show. But I do. That's a fair statement. Like, I shouldn't be asking you.

No, it was exactly. If you would have been in the court of law, my attorney would have said, objection, your honor, the court would have said, shut up, sit down. What do you have to say? So I'm not saying it wasn't true.

I'm stating it was like, pretty freaking obvious, right? Yes. My point is, this is just a subtle point, is I do drop in. It's not that I'm not aware of where AEW is as a product and what their brand is all about

because I don't watch the show every week because I just don't. but I do drop in occasionally I think it was a month and a half ago we dropped in and watched an entire pay-per-view it did a show about it broke down almost every match so it sounded like I'm unaware and they've made some rapid progress in the quality of the product that I'm not aware of because I don't watch that's not the case nope didn't assume it was I do want to ask though when we're talking about business before that's really what I wanted to ask about like I know Halloween Havoc was a major thing major tent pole event for you guys. And I, as a as a long time in WCWCW fan, I kind of thought Starcade was the A show. And you've made it known years ago here on this program that when you were, when you were at the helm, you considered Halloween havoc to be that. And I think if you go back and you look at the cards, that that proves out. I mean, you had a lot of like, you know,

Battle Bowl type concepts and, you know, uh, global cards where it was America versus Japan. and that sort of thing. Halloween Havoc was certainly at the top of that list. But I'm wondering, from a WWE perspective, it doesn't feel like their Q4 is really that focused. Again, I know they've had Survivor Series since 87, but the luster is off of Survivor Series. Elimination Chamber happens in Q1.

And now I know technically we're in October, but just barely, that was money in the bank. Do you think money in the bank is like their only Q4 opportunity? Or what is the reason? that there's not a bigger show in, say, November or December. And again, I know Survivor Series is a big deal, but it feels like for years and years, Thanksgiving night was always the biggest night in the territory days. And I have to admit, I did not realize until we started doing these podcasts years ago,

that once upon a time in the territory days, hey, the summer was the down part of the year for wrestling ticket sales. Like to me, it feels like, no, with SummerSlam and Great American Bash. And then I realized, oh, wait, maybe those were created to lift up what was normally a down season. Q4, though, feels like it's an opportunity for some thing, some big show. Am I wrong on that? No, you're not wrong. But I think it's timing.

I've often, I thought about it when I was running WCW, and I've thought about it a lot since. It stepped way back, you know, this is kind of a macro view of what, of viewing habits and trends in television. but yes I start at the beginning Starcade was considered by everybody to be the the temple event in WCW when I came to WCW and it was such for a couple years afterwards here's why when I took over WCW

I made the shift to October and there's even back then you know, we were still posting record ratings against Monday night football so much so that the ABC actually took out a full page out of the Wall Street Journal trying to talk advertisers out of advertising in professional wrestling because we were putting such a debt into ABC's ad revs because of the success of not only Nitro but of Raw. That combined number was a significant number. But even during that period of time, when we weren't really sweating the,

that period of time because you lose a lot of audience to football, college and pro. You know, then you've, and then you got basketball in there. And you get used to dealing with sports in back then. But then you throw Thanksgiving and Christmas on top of it. And what you have is a lot less of a hut level households using television. Everybody's busy doing other stuff. So it's harder to compete for the viewers' attention because there's so much other stuff. You know, it's the holidays and it's college football and it's pro football.

And by the way, we're getting closer to playoffs. So the interest in football increases in the fourth quarter. And you have a hangover into the first quarter of the following year. So from my perspective was, okay, if there's less people watching my show, then likely less people are going to buy my. pay-per-view because there is a correlation despite what others think. And in some cases, which may be proven to be true, unique cases. But I decided because of that, primarily the holidays. It's not like moving to October was going to get me out of the NFL, right,

or college football, but it got me away from Thanksgiving and Christmas. And when you think about it, and again, what used to be in the territory days, and like I said, Starcade was a hang-a- over from the old way of thinking in terms of, you know, wrestling is first and foremost an event business and secondarily a television business. Television was just a necessary evil to support your primary revenue street. Once that all changed, what used to work in the territory days didn't really math out in the television era. And that's about the time that television became a more and more significant part of

the wrestling overall business model. I mean, it's always been the heart, right? You couldn't have a territory or a regional wrestling promotion without television. In fact, there was no social media, right? So television has always been critical, but the balance shifted. And once you start looking, once I started looking at television more as a television business in trying to maximize my opportunity in the fourth quarter, do I want to position? myself at the end of the fourth quarter, when people are just tapped out from Christmas,

they've been Christmas partied out, they've been Thanksgivinged out. I mean, it's all too much, right? And I just decided that our resources would be better focused in October as opposed to January. That's the reason I made the shift. And then in a more modern era, you've probably got all of the different streaming services. They've already got dedicated resources. They've already got dedicated resources to promoting one thing or another, whether it's baseball season getting started back or I'm sorry, baseball season winding down in the playoffs, college football getting cranked up and to your point later in the year, you're going to get college football playoffs and bowl games. And then you've got basketball coming back and starting up. It does

feel like there's only so many things that you can really promote and you do need something for those other, I guess we'd call them down periods. Well, and again, I don't mean, to interrupt you, but I got myself sidetracked and I just want to add something to that. So the reason I've thought about this a little bit is I wonder if in today's world, because today's world is much different than it was in 1998 or 1999, right, or 2005. The world has changed a lot and viewing habits have changed a lot too. And I've thought about this off and on recently, really, if I was planning my premium live event model in terms of of scheduling. How would I, knowing what I think I know today or what at least I see,

what kind of, where would I put my resources? Where are my new tent poles that reflect current, maybe a little grusky thrown in where the audience patterns are going? Because that's where you want to be positioned. And I'm wondering if maybe perhaps because of my thought process way back when, when I shifted from Sarkade to October, I wonder if anybody's looking at that fourth quarter and going, let's optimize it and move some things around because it would make sense to me if WWE would not only look at the inherent success of the branded money in the bank, you know, that people know what that is. When you say the title of an event, you know exactly what it is and what it means. And to a certain degree, what some of the rules are.

the event defines itself. It's unique. So I understand why you take advantage of that, but I would put my resources into money in the bank for the very reason we just talked about. It's going to be interesting to say the least what they're going to do moving forward because it feels like my entire life, the Royal Rumble has been a January pay-per-view. But this year, the Royal Rumble is in February.

which I think is a little interesting. We're going to be talking about that, of course, in the coming weeks and months. Today, though, we're going to continue our conversation about the 30-year anniversary of the NWO. We've got some more nostalgia coming your way. And, hey, how about this for some nostalgia? Remember when you had a good night's sleep, you can sleep a little better without snoring? I'm really proud to talk about this product, and I'll be honest, I can't wait to try it. Several years ago, I started using a CPAP machine.

I just got back from a big weekend in Tampa. And let me just tell you, my least favorite part about traveling these days is I got to lug that thing around. I got to set it up. I got to tear it down. I hate packing it. I hate unpacking it. I hate fuddling with it and fussing with it.

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By the way, I should mention, XITSA OSA is an FDA cleared prescription-only device for primary snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea. It's not for everyone. Individual results vary. Risk and benefits at spring sleep.com. Eric, while I was recording this, I got a text from my wife. Mine came in while I was in Tampa,

so I'm trying spring sleep tonight. I can't wait to tell you how it works. Next week here on the program. I want to mention we are live on YouTube. If you guys have a question for EZE, be sure to keep them coming. and we would love to hear from me. We do have a question, not about our show, but I'll answer it.

Trigger Cheese is with us. And he says, where has that damn Bruce Pritchard been hiding? I don't know that Bruce has revealed it, but Bruce has been dealing with a neck injury. It turns out that Bruce is going to have to have some surgery on that rascal. And he hadn't been having the best quality of life recently. He's on the mend. He's doing rehab and all that jazz, but he's hurting for certain. And Eric, I don't know that we've even talked about this, but do you remember way back when he was Brother Love?

and the Ultimate Warrior beat him up. Does you ever see that clip? Yeah, sure. He broke his neck and he just found out just recently. Unbelievable. All these years later, brother. It's a gift that keeps on paying. Unbelievable.

Yeah, that's the deal. But he's on the men. He's going to be all right, but keep him in your thoughts and prayers. You know, he can be a cantankerous cranky son of a gun. And I'm sure with a stiff, uh, He's not very fun some days. But we are going to have some fun today talking about 30 years of the NWO. We're going to get it kicked off talking about Monday Nitro from the Savannah Civic Center in Savannah, Georgia.

It went down October 7, 1996. This was the 56th episode of Monday Nitro. About 4,300 fans are in attendance here, and we are less than three weeks away from Halloween Havoc. Of course, as a reminder, we've seen Randy Savage becoming more unstable. Hollywood Hogan has exploited him and his relationship with Miss Elizabeth after Savage confronted Liz outside of the NWO's hotel room well it feels like the emotional stakes are higher than ever so we went off the air the prior week with a bit of a cliffhanger that was different

from what we've ever seen in WCW before a shot not in the arena not backstage but inside a Marriott meanwhile the Harlem Heat have regained the WCW tag team titles. Jeff Jarrett is making his Nitro debut. Lex Lugar and Arn Anderson's problems are intensifying going back to the war games where WCW was unsuccessful against the NWO, and we are getting ready to kick it off here. We're going to start with the shocking conclusion of the previous week's episode. Randy Savage in that hotel room, looking for Miss Elizabeth. Hogan's attempting to get Liz to join the NWO. He's probably. He's promising money. He's promising opportunities. He's even promising Hollywood connections.

And when Savage makes that confrontation, well, we're kind of left with a cliffhanger. And the NWO is realizing, hey, the best way to get to Randy Savage is to play these mind games. Was, was Randy cool with all this? Was Liz cool with all this? I mean, for the most part in her WCW run, Liz was kind of a background character. She's in like the closing angle of the show. are her and Randy, what's the nature of their relationship here? And is she cool with this? They were both very cool with it.

In fact, they both, I think, really enjoyed it because they were just performing. There was, you know, I think I've described this before, even recently, you know, Randy still loved Liz. There's zero question, but he loved her like a sister. So he was still protective, but not in a jealous boyfriend kind of way, which kind of defined Randy Savage and Elizabeth really on, right? At this point, you know, he was very protective over. You want to make sure nobody took advantage of her or put her in a position where he felt she couldn't live up to her expectations. But beyond that, you know, he was,

he was cool with everything. He didn't really, you know, he was watching her and what we were doing with her, but he never interfered. You know, he'd come up with suggestions from time to time. So that was where Randy's head was at. Here is what I remember that's fun now looking back at it. I was thinking, as you bring these things up, I kind of space and remember it, look back at it. But I remember Liz was very reluctant to do much of anything other than Liz things, walking out, being that silent valet. I know she got way more involved in WWE, but that was the exception, right? As a rule, she preferred to just not attract too much attention.

She was shy. You know, that wasn't an act. She was genuinely, I think, inherently a very shy person in its show, right? So her comfort level was pretty well defined. And now we're asking her to actually perform, to remote, to make people feel you're afraid or you're confused. You know, that's different than just walking out

and looking nice, right? And engaging with the audience, but in a way that just doesn't require a tremendous amount of performance. It takes poise, you know, and timing, and you don't know what you're doing. It'll be comfortable being out for a live audience,

so I'm not dismissing what she previously did. I'm saying that what she's now doing is a giant freaking leap. And it was fun to watch her get more and more comfortable. And it didn't happen fast. It happened slow. But every time we started doing things with her or talking about ideas,

because that's really where you can read it, right? If she's hearing an idea as it's developing or, you know, kind of being pitched, whatever, you know, that's where you're going to see pushback or confusion, not really understanding, right? Once you pitch an idea to someone, okay, this is what you're going to do on TV, now there's less of that processing going on and they're just trying to figure on how they can pull it off. I like to read people in the early part of it because you can tell how much they're really interested in it. And if they're not really interested in doing it in the beginning and they're just going through the motions of what they feel they have to do, it's probably not going to work.

So she leaned in a lot. I saw a lot of fun in her eyes. She was enjoying it. And as she enjoyed it more and more, we kind of layered maybe a little bit more on it and a little bit more that required more. that required more of a performance from her. She was very much into it in a healthy way. It's not like her head got big and she wanted to be, you know, there's a lot of drama queens out there,

women in wrestling that just, if they're not the center of attention, the world's coming to an end. She wasn't one of those people. So yeah, it was a fun period, watching both Randy and her develop this way. All right,

two questions. I'll let you think about the first one. Can you tell us who some of those drama queens were. They know who they are. So you, so I'm not going to do like an internet wrestling chatter up,

but you know what I'm talking about. We all do. I do. But nice try. Nice try to get me to bury myself again on the internet. I appreciate that. I don't think you'd be burying yourself. I think we'd just be getting some views on social.

Hey, let me ask you though. What was the producer situation like back then? Like I know these days, there's like a producer for every segment. I don't know if that was necessarily the case for WCW in this era. I'm only asking because I'm wondering, would it have been you producing the little stuff? Would you have asked Randy to do it? Or is there someone else that maybe we're not

discussing here? I generally did not do it. I would have only got involved if it was something really unique and complicated, only because, you know, questions may arise, you know, once you start rehearsing it. And you may have to deal with some things that you didn't anticipate. So if it involved money, large amounts of it, in this case, a central part of our story, I generally would be in the area, but I wouldn't actually be producing it. It could have been any number of people, could have been Kevin, Sullivan, easily, could have been Craig Leathers, somebody on his team, Neil Pruitt could have easily been one of the producers, more than likely. quite often was the producer for a lot of these, especially with the, you know, A-story, right?

Woody Harrelson, not Woody Harrelson, Woody Harrison, I think his name was. It could have been any number of people, but we didn't have, but they were producer producers. They were like television producers. WWE calls what we used to refer to as agents. Yes. We refers to them as producers. I'm still not in that happen. To me, if you don't know how to produce television, you're not a producer.

But in this case, you're producing a product. You're part of the television process. So I guess it applies, but it's a little confusing for me. We didn't have that. You had, I'll just use Kevin. You know, Kevin had the people that worked on his team underneath him. Sullivan, yes, I'm sorry, Kevin Sullivan. So Kevin Sullivan, he had his own team of people and it buried who is on a team, but, you know, the Terry Taylor's of the world and at different times, different people.

And they would all know what the match is. You know, they know how much time we need out of that particular match. They know if there's a promo at the end of the match or before the match or if there's anything special about the match. All of that is in the format. And everybody goes through that or everybody went through that, you know, kind of as a group. But once it was done, for the most part, except for the more complicated things, guys were kind of on her own. You know, your broker somebody from the team would go to them and say, okay,

here's how much time you have, here's what we need for a finish, and go do what you do. That was as much agenting, WWE verbiage. That was as much WWE agenting has really went on for most of the matter. is I would say 60% of the, you know, lower part of the card, middle of the card. Once you got up to the middle of the card, oh, cruiser weights, we're a little bit more involved in that. But basically anything in the A story category is where Kevin and company, myself included, would get involved.

Shout out to Brody from Wrestling on the Spectrum. He's got a great question here. I want to give him a quick plug. Wrestling on the Spectrum just recently had Mick Foley on as a guest. So check that out with Brody and wrestling on the spectrum. But he wants to know who brought Miss Elizabeth into WCW and how did Miss Elizabeth end up in WCW? As a reminder, we're live on YouTube. Keep those questions coming.

How did Liz wind up in WCW, Eric? Randy. Randy called Hulk and said, hey, she's available. She's interested. What do you think? Hulk called me. I remember exactly where I was. I was at the Detroit airport and when he called me on my way to somewhere.

And I had some time in between flights. So I took the call and I don't remember what the verbiage was. It was a short conversation. And he said, hey, Ms. Elizabeth's available. She's interested in coming in. Randy's got a couple ideas. I've got a couple ideas.

What do you think? So, I mean, I found out, you know, had to figure out how much I was committing the payer and all that. But she didn't ask for a lot of money. she wasn't greedy at all. She was very reasonable, almost too reasonable, initially. So, yeah, it wasn't a real hard decision.

Didn't have to think about it long. Let's talk about something you were thinking about at the time, and it may have been, hey, how do we make the folks watch other shows? With the success of Nitro, did we accidentally cannibalize WCW Saturday night? I bring that up because the first match we see here on this episode of Nitro is Harlem Haley and Public Enemy.

But before we get there, we find out that two days prior, on October 5th, we aired a WCWCW Saturday night. And that's where we would see Booker T and Stevie Ray regain the World Tech Team titles from Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunch. So tonight is a rematch here on Nitro,

but it is a non-title affair. Of course, Public Enemy is looking for revenge. Chat me up, though, because I know that this had to be at least a discussion, because for years and years and years and years, the A show was WCW Saturday Night. And of course, we're starting a new show and it's live. So it does feel like that's going to take precedent.

It's on prime time. It's on a weeknight. It's got everything that a major network would want as far as support for a major show like this. But we don't necessarily want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Is this a way doing a title change, even if it is a tag title change on a Saturday night? just to keep fans interested on some level or how much of a discussion even was that back then?

It wasn't enough of a discussion to be really honest. As you're laying that out, I'm going, man, that I missed an opportunity there. And I recognize it now, you know, with 30-some-odd years experience under my belt. But then I didn't really, I didn't look at Saturday night as the opportunity that I would today. I would have, now in this case, I'm not sure who came up with the idea or how it happened or to be honest with you, why we did it the way we did it. You know, I can come up with a couple different guesses. And I think the best one is probably we wanted that, we wanted to put some urgency on it. We wanted it to feel like it just happened, right?

Not that day, obviously, but we wanted the urgency of the title match and it happened the way it did. it'd be my guess. But what I really should have been thinking about, all of us should have been thinking about, is how to use Saturday night episodically. What big things can we do on Saturday night? Even if it's not main event driven, sometimes you don't want to over-promote or over- you can over-promote if your promotion is weak. Like if you don't have a good hook, people are just not interested in what you're promoting

for whatever they don't like the characters whatever I mean if it's lukewarm out of the shoot there's nothing they're not much you can do but if you've got something and it's hot you almost don't want to push it too hard and it's a fine line I remember and the reason I hold

to this day that position is I remember when I worked for Jim Ross Jim was he was a workhorse he planned pre-production he is notes, he knew that format in his sleep. And he was always, I'll say prepared, better stated, over prepared,

particularly compared to everything I had seen before or anything that I did as an announcer. So I'm thinking, okay, he's my boss. I should kind of model what I do after him. And I remember looking at his formats where he would make his notes and he would make notes about what he's going to promote in each segment. And I remember thinking just reading it through. And again, I'm not thinking about running the company. I don't even think I'm a television producer.

I have no aspirations to do anything other than be a really fucking good announcer who doesn't get fired. That was my goal at that point in time. So this wasn't me being critical. It's me going, huh, I wonder if we're promoting too much. I wonder if we stop telling people what's coming up next week. So by the end of a one-hour show, now the audience has the next week's format in their head because Jim just hammered it,

which was the old school way of doing things. Back when the live event drove the revenue. In television, you're hearing that over, I was at the time, seeing that and hearing it over and over and over, and at the time, again, macro perspective, I'm giving you guys all macro shit today. From a macro perspective, is the audience start tuning that stuff out? Do we actually quit listening?

I know I do, but not wrestling-wise, but if there's something going on on television, it doesn't have me my intention, I'm tuning it out. I'm reaching for my thought. I'm doing something else, right? Or maybe I'll just change the channel. And sometimes I remember feeling, and if you go back, somebody wants to, you know,

did he really do this? Go back and look at the formats in and around the time, even the syndicated shows, which were nothing more than an, infomercial, to be really honest. It was a very entertaining combat sports-ish-like infomercial. It drove people. We drove them to the local events.

We drove them to, especially if there's a sponsor, we're driving them to the sponsor. You know, we're driving them to tell them where to go buy tickets because, you know, there was no ticket master in the day. And now you've got, you can get them at this bookstore. You can get them at this used car. You get it, you know what I mean? So you're pitching so much that in my mind back then, I thought it's taking away from the product. So one of the things I did early on when I had control of the format is I started eliminating that stuff. Started being more selective about what I promoted.

All that backdrop being said, what I should have been thinking about is how do I use the WCW Saturday night as a step to Monday Night Trail? It should be a bridge. It shouldn't be a standalone show. and occasionally something happens that we talk about on nitro. That's really the way we used it, misused it, probably more appropriate. What we should have been thinking about is, no, it's macro. It's just another segment. It's one two-hour segment on TBS.

It's going to help get us or give us a reason to want to watch Nitro on Monday. When did you realize that? Well, probably 10 years ago. Wow. Way too late because I don't think about it. Right. Now it would be right now, if this same opportunity, if that same opportunity was presented to me now,

there would not even be a conversation about it. It would be part of the plan by default. But, you know, that's years of not doing shit right sometimes. You know, you learn from your mistakes. Well, I'll tell you what. In this case, it wasn't even a mistake. It was a missed opportunity, which is worse. Mistakes, missed opportunities, learning, getting better.

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After you sign up, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. So, Eric, let's talk about it, man. We got this tag match going. It's non-title. Harlem Heat are the new tag champs. We're less than three weeks away from Halloween Havoc. So what do you know during this public enemy Harlem Heat match?

Here comes Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Ted DiBiase, Vincent, and Six. They all appear in the crowd. I used to love when they would, you know, start in like the concourse and start making their way down the steps. Hall and Nash are going to make it clear that Harlem Heat's championship reign is, in their sights. It's on borrowed time. The outsiders, of course, are set to take on the Harlem heat and Halloween havoc, and they want everybody to know what's up. Paul and Nash don't even have to interfere physically in the match. Their presence is enough to offer a disruption and the entire atmosphere. I mean, all eyes go to these guys and the outsiders are now looking for some

gold here. I'm curious. You know, we've talked about when when Hogan came over, he wanted to work with certain talent. He was very hesitant to trust people. He wasn't familiar with. So he winds up working a lot with Flair and later Savage. And obviously the Dungeon of Doom is a lot of his old buddies from the WWF. When Hall and Nash come over and it's decided after the heel turn, we'll call it, you know, July. So now we're in early October. Was there consideration for, hey, we're going to have you guys a single stars. I bring this up because they weren't really a tag team. I know they were the click, but on the other channel, they were Razor Ramon and Diesel.

They were single stars. They weren't pursuing tag stuff. And I know Diesel was a tag champ, but you get what I mean. This is a new presentation. Was it just assumed and understood, hey, if Hogan's going for the world title, we're to make you guys a tag team, how did they feel about that? And then did they request the Harlem Heat? Did they say, hey, we want to work with those guys or how does that come to be?

I'm not sure. Completely understand the first question. All in national single stars, now they're tags. Yeah. No, was there resistance to that? That's really the question or concern about it. Not really. Not really.

You know, were they ever officially, you know, designated internally, even in conversations as he, they're one of our tag teams, not really. Now, if there's an opportunity to put them in a position to challenge for the tag battles or get the tag team championships, whatever the case may be, if that opportunity was there creatively and there was a good reason for it, then now they're a tag team. So they were able to, they were kind of like nomads in a way. They were able to come in and out of the territory as needed as opposed to being defined as a tag team. I just find it interesting because on this program, you've sort of told us over and over and over. again that you think tag team wrestling was kind of a waste of time, a waste of resources, because it does cost more money.

I mean, you're going to have, you know, if you think about the, you know, what we're paying per match, so to speak, there's four guys to pay versus two for a match that's probably going to go about the same amount of time. So the investment, just strictly from a P&L standpoint, it does cost more, but I also know that we're talking about former Intercontinental and former world titles, I mean, world champs. We're talking to a former WrestleMania main event. And I know over there, that all mattered because you got paid on the house. And if you may have ended a WrestleMania or you were the world champ,

then you probably got a bigger piece of the pot. That's all out the window now because we're getting guaranteed money on the WCW side of things. But it's hard for me to wrap my head around. Hey, Turner, we're writing checks to these two big megastars, big money checks, and we're going to put them in a tag team because they had to be your highest paid tag team, right? Like nobody would have been in the stratosphere with those guys at this point. well if you would have put sting and luck together they would have been but but they weren't really doing that at this point they're singles guys right right you know it didn't there was no

discussion or did i have to worry about having to have a discussion about justifying how i was paying people you know if you look at where particularly at this time by the way because we were printing money compared to you know what turn our head ever experienced prior to me right actually generating profit, not burning cash every time we went out the door. So there wasn't any real financial pressure on me from a macro perspective, the overall budget. And there was nobody really questioning my decisions creatively. So the discussion about having to justify these two guys are my highest pay guys, that's not a discussion that I even contemplated ever having to have. For me, it was just, it was creative.

You know, we weren't going to eliminate the tag team division. Did I want to devote a lot of time and resources for it, including television time? And obviously, the financial increase. Did I want to do that? Absolutely not. I wanted to get away from doing that. I wanted to mitigate it, reduce it as much as I can. But I didn't want to make it.

It wasn't going to go away. and if there was a way to occasionally, you know, put some focus on that tag team division, May Scott and Kevin tagged a tag team, as we did in this case. It's a creative decision. It wasn't a business. It was a business decision overall in that we were, you know, kind of expanding the reach of the NWO, so to speak. And it was a convenient opportunity for them to just throw their hats in a tag team ring. But I never had to have a conversation about how I was justifying, you know,

Now, I get into the conversation about having to justify, you know, a contract and the total amounts of it, but how I use them once they were under contract was never conversation. Yeah, creatively, it feels like this is the right call. You know, I hate to make an old school example. But when you think about the horseman, you know, they had player as the world guy and then you had Arne and Tully as the tags. And then here's Barry to go after the U.S. Well, if you look at like this core initial NWO group, Hogan's here for the world.

title. The outsiders are here for the tag titles and maybe six. He's here for the cruiserweight. That's the way it felt to me as a fan is, hey, not only are they here to take over, they're also trying to take over all of the WCW titles, right? We're belt hunting. Yeah, there you come. That was the NWO sport. Let's talk about the next segment here on Nitro. Backstage, we're going to see Miss Elizabeth searching for Randy Savage. She's trying to reach him in the dressing room. And I guess she's desperately trying to explain herself. And this is one of the better parts of the storyline because Hogan is continuing to

use Randy's personal life. You know, Elizabeth finds herself caught between the association with Flair and the horseman because let's not forget through all of this, she's been walking out with woman and Rick Flair this year. And now she's got this well-known, complicated history with Savage. Like if you've been watching wrestling for more than two minutes, you know what their history is. Next up, we've got Diamond Dallas Page and Jim Pazer.

DDP is really starting to continue his rise to the WCW ranks. I know 97 is going to be his breakout year, but he starts heating up here in Q4 in a major way. This time he's out here with Jim Powers, who's walking out with Teddy Long. DDP gets the win with the diamond cutter. When was it on your radar that, hey man,

this damn diamond cutter is getting over? Because the diamond cutter we know is going to become one of, if not the hottest move in all of wrestling there for a while. And I know next year, he's going to have the feud of the year with Randy Savage, everyone including Pro Wrestling Illustrated agrees. But the diamond cutter as a move, did you think that that was helping elevate DDP up the ranks? Because the fans react to it in a way that not a lot of other moves are getting that sort of visceral reactionary.

This is going to stir some shit. So, Paiso'll hate me for, you won't hate me for saying it, but he's going to hate that I said it. But I know for Page, that finish in his mind is what made him. I disagree. Finish was a good finish because you knew it was coming. And when it did, it was wide out in the open. You could see it develop. It was devastating. It had a good visual, you know, associated with it. The exact opposite would be, you know, a roll up. You know what I mean? Happens. fast, not exciting to watch. Yeah, could care less.

Looks like prison sex. Yeah. No thanks. And again, with a diamond cutter, because it was such a big visual move that took a little time to develop as good finishes do. It just worked really well for page. But it's not what got him over. What got him over is when he became Paige Falkenberg,

when he allowed himself to go out and be authentic. I was going to ask Super Dave Silva, that image that we used at Diamond Dallas Page, where he's coming out, he's in the entrance. You know, he flesh it up there a minute ago. He had a big cigar in his mouth and he had sunglasses on. I don't think that that shot would have come from that show.

It could be wrong. These are all screen grabs from that nitro. Okay. Then he still had it. We hadn't got rid of it yet. But once he started losing, the gimmick, he just became

Paige, that's when he started getting over. That's when the audience felt like he was one of them. He wasn't trying to be Dusty Rhodes. He wasn't trying to be superstar Billy Graham. He wasn't trying to be this guy, trying to be that guy, putting him

all in a gimmick stew, turn it up the heat, stir it up a little bit, throw on some sunglasses and go out and do it. That's what Paige was prior. I know this sounds very very hard and I don't mean it to sound as hard as it does, but that, that, that, that just jumbo bucket of gimmicks, not one of them made him really stand out. Not one of them was memorable. It's just collage. That's what I was looking for. It's like looking through a kaleidoscope.

You know, all these pretty colors and it's moving around. What does it look like? It's just pretty colors and it moves around, right? But once he started losing all that, then he started getting over and I think because he was getting over the diamond cutter became more effective as a finish. So it probably feels like the diamond cutter was responsible. It was really paid shifting out of the I want to be somebody else's gimmick phase and finally allowing himself to become authentic because that's what the audience connected with. I can tell you that my feelings changed for sure. I remember the first time I saw DDP. He was chewing gum with a toothpick in his mouth.

and smoking a cigar. So there's three mouth gimmicks at the same time. I don't even know how that could happen. And even I thought to myself, his gear, I'm not trying to bash him. He's a friend of mine. His gear looks like it's homemade. Like it looks like what you could see at an Alabama indie. I was not impressed.

But this move caught my attention. And I started to pay some attention. And it does feel like in the next few months, you see an evolution. And I really do believe this. It's early January of 97 when he rejects the opportunity. to join the NWO down in New Orleans. He hits diamond down. He hits the diamond cutter on Scott Hall and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, he doesn't break the table. But still, he escapes through the crowd. And when he sort of pulled a fast one on the NWO and high-tailed it out of there after he hit the finish, I thought,

okay, this is pretty cool, because he's, you know, over on the coolest guys. And what's fun about that as you describe it, because you remember it and I don't, Surprise, surprise. Is that angle the way you just described it, or that beat the moment, is real? Yes. It's believable. What would have taken it out of reality and put it in traditional wrestling 101 Booker mentality would have been previous is he would have, he would have been Superman.

He'd have left people laying. He'd have been a hero. he came in, took a cheap shot and got the fuck out of there before anybody got him. It's kind of real, as opposed to being Superman. I can't wait for us to talk about that in the coming months. We're just three months away from that moment, Eric. And it feels like at that point, his 1997 is made. You know, he's going to be working with Randy Savage through the rest of the year.

And we're going to get there in the coming weeks and months. And we are going to get to some of your questions. I see they're piling up. So we're going to hit those. but before we do, I want to brag about our friends over at Ultra. If you haven't tried this already, what the heck are you waiting on? I know a lot of us, man, we need this instant focus. And a lot of us have been relying on things like caffeine.

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We're live on YouTube and I'm having so much fun talking old WCW with you. I got behind. So we're going to bang out some questions here. Another from Brody, he wants to know, when did you believe in DDP as an in-ring wrestler for the long term? Considering his age, DDP had a lot going against him. That was the chatter, Eric, that he started so late. When did you realize, okay, he's not just my neighbor.

He's not just a pal I like to drink beers with and go have Mexican food with. I'm going to go with him. I think, I don't remember the date. You know, I can't give you the year, but it would have been probably 93, 94. probably 93 would be my plan to zero in on a year I would be 93 and it would be because of the amount of progress that he had been making and the commitment was obvious you know he was not going to be denied trust me I had been trying to deny him for years you know he was he was relentless and I appreciated that I joke about it but it's something

that I, it's one of the reasons why he was my friend is just, I like that part of his personality. And after he'd been training, like, really consistently and the progress he'd be making, because I'd see his tapes, you know, I'd sit down with him and look at some of the stuff. He was, he and Jake, you know, would tape, you know, they just taped everything he did. So, you know, I'd come over, you know, crack a couple of beers and sit down and look and see where he was at. And it became obvious, you know, that he was, you know, going to be able to get in there and do it at a reasonably high level. But I didn't really think about his age. I don't think that ever popped into my mind.

I mean, what was he? 33, something. Yeah, he was like 35 when he started, I think. Yeah. Now, yeah, is that normally, you know, selling after the best used by date? Yeah. But keep in mind, page had been in the business for what, 10 years before that? Yeah.

Oh, wow. 15 years before that. So a lot of the seasoning, I'm not talking about inside of the ring, but learning to really understand the business. And most importantly, and this is the part that's getting lost. And it's just because of, you know, the evolution of the product. There's nobody's fault. but the psychology is really suffering.

You're just not seeing it at the levels or to the extent that we used to see psychology being a central part of a story. Not being critical of anybody because everybody does it, but when you're just watching shit flying, it's cool. I'm not going to say it's not fun to watch. It is. But there's no psychology. In fact, whatever the opposite. of zero psychology is, that's what it is. It's an exhibition of athletic combat like sports.

It's a video game. Yes. And it's not, there's no, it's not story and it's not psychology and nobody's going to convince me and a whole internet wrestling community is going to blow up because they think they're watching stories. They have no idea what they're watching or what they're not watching in this case. because what they're not watching is a story in a traditional sense.

Because people don't watch it for that. In some cases, now there is story. WWE puts a lot of, you know, they put more emphasis on story than anybody else, but there's still sometimes those matches that are really just, let's justify the match and put these people out there because we know they can have a good match. And you're always going to have this, especially when you're doing two and three-hour shows, right? Not every match can have, you know, a story,

But every match can have psychology, that can happen. And that's the part that's lacking now. So Paige, going back to page, yeah, I don't. You just started training at 35. You know, I had the basics down pretty good, maybe better than good. Maybe he had kind of intermediate skills or even a little more than that while he was training at the power plant. So the question about could he go out there and have a great match? Well, could he go out there and have an acceptable match, a good match?

That's that, you know, people won't criticize it for. Yeah, he could do that. And he had 10 years or more of exposure and understanding of the psychology that makes shit work, which actually put him probably further ahead than a lot of people that really don't even try to understand psychology or why you do the things you do, when you do the things you do in the ring. And more importantly, what you can expect or how you anticipate the audience, to react. That's a skill that's developed over time. And Page showed up first day on the job with it in this conversation. I mean, he had 10 years worth of experience before his first

official match. Not many people have that. You know what else? I thought you were going to say. I thought you were going to say one of the unique things about him. And we're talking about DDP, of course, if you're just tuning in. He knows how he knows how to get along with people. He knows how to endear himself to people. He's fearless about making conversation. and trying to, you know, make new friends. The guy, I know that, you know, some of the people who know him, love him and trust him like you and I do, sometimes those people will say, man, he's just, like you said, relentless.

Other people would say he is a shameless self-promoter. Well, you know what that does? It calluses you to rejection. It calluses you to people saying no. And there's a lot of people who get so caught up in their own little bubble and their fear of rejection, they're scared to get their outside of their comfort zone. I don't think Page ever struggled with that. I don't think Paige ever struggled with.

What if I do it and I look stupid? I don't think he had that negative self-talk and self-doubt of what if this looks silly? If he had any of that, he wouldn't have had chewing gum, a toothpick, and a I was just going to say sometimes I wish he had some, just a little bit, just a touch of it. But here's what else he did. He was cool about, and we've all heard this, he would pursue relationships with guys like Jake Roberts and Dusty Rhodes.

He knew that those guys had figured the business out. And if he wanted to learn, why not try to obsessively learn from those guys? And then we hear, who did he travel with on the road? Guys like Mick Foley and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Like, if you can't spend time with those people and get better, you're doing something wrong. And I think he understood that and understood connecting to people. Some people would call that politicking. I don't.

That's how you're successful in life. And I think that's the reason Paige enjoyed so much success. and him being 35 wasn't necessarily negative. It was positive because he had lived enough life to know, I'm not going to get there on my own. I'm going to have to have some help along the way. And it's not always what you know. It's who will claim they know you.

And he learned how to network. Other people would say, oh, well, that's politics. No, he was fearless, not worried about making an ass of himself, not worried about what other people thought, not scared of no. And he understood how to network. I think that's a large portion that people overlook with DDP. Yeah, and also, too, I mean, you mentioned it, you know, Paige, because of that personality that you just described, Paige and Dusty got real tight.

Yes. They're, they're, this was not just, you know, wrestling buddies, right? Russell friends. This is, they were really, really close. And I, I don't want to use the word mentor, but I'll use mentor like, you know, page would put him, you know, But Dusty, because I know, I mean, he loved Dusty. And I think Dusty had a lot of affection from Paige. There are a couple Florida boys, you know, at heart.

And Dusty spent a lot of time with him, you know, talk to any of the NXT talent that got to spend a little time under the Dusty learning tree and hear how much they learned just in a conversation with Dusty. And now you put yourself, now you're DDP and you're, you got a six-hour drive. with Dusty. You're over at Dusty's house. You're talking to Dusty three times a week on the phone for hours at a time. Now, I don't know if the extent of those conversations, obviously, but there was a lot of time that Dusty and Page put together, and they were talking about wrestling. They weren't talking about politics with the economy or art. They were talking about the business, and to be able to sit under that tree, wherever that tree may be, inside of a car on an airplane, in a hotel room or at the bar, to be able to have access to that resource is a huge advantage.

Yes. It would be hard to replicate in today's world. Are there people out there like that still to this day? You know, Steve Austin, you know, I'll throw a Flair's name out there. It depends on the day. if he's in the mood for that kind of thing or not. Undertaker seems to be embracing that role based on what I'm seeing in reading, which I think is great.

There's a few left, but not very many. People that have been there at the highest level have actually done it and are willing and able to do a good job of teaching it, sharing it, so that the people coming up underneath them have an advantage that 99% of the people coming through Rustley schools will never have no matter how much money they pay for. They'll never have that. Page had it at his fingertips. Not only with Dusty, Jake Roberts, they're still tight.

I mean, obviously they're tight, beyond tight, they're brothers. And then they have access to that, all the shit that's going on in that skull. I mean, that's amazing to me to think about. And there were others, you know, that that meant a lot to page that he was able to learn from. So by the time the bell rang for him for the first time, he was way ahead in some respects of a lot of people who had 10 years more experience that he did. Shout out to DDP. AOTV productions is watching with us live. And he says, Hey, Eric, Jim Cornett and Brian Lass listened to a couple of the cameos DDP did. and they laughed at the fact that he plugged DDP yoga into all of them.

Hey, if you know, DDP, that's not a surprise, brother. It used to be obnoxious and now it's endearing. It is. Well said. Wrestling on the spectrum wants to know. Who brought Ted DiBiase in the WCW? How did Ted DiBiase end up in WCW? Did Dibiasi ever talk to you about getting back into the ring?

I know Dibiasi had Lloyd's of London. Yeah, he had a Lloyd's policy. So there was never any kind of. conversation about getting into the ring. And Barry Bloom, who was a friend of mine at that time, and an agent still is to this day. A friend of yours or an agent? Oh, he's an agent now. He's not, we're not friends. I wish him the best and all that, but I found it to be a very untrustworthy person. And I trusted him. I gave complete trust and open the door for him. And he kind of burn me with it. So yeah, the friendship thing is long gone. But he was an agent and a

successful one and is, you know, he's probably reps more high level professional wrestlers right now than anybody else in the business. But, but he had set it up. And I, in fact, I think I met Ted the first time in Barry's office, Donald Wilson, Bullard in Los Angeles. Did Kevin Sullivan only book Nitro or did he book all of WCW television program 95 to 98? How big was Sullivan's team and who all was on it? I know Terry Taylor was. Great question from Brody wrestling on the spectrum. Did he book the other shows or was it primarily Nitro?

No, I gave WCW Saturday night to Jimmy Hart. Eventually or had it already happened by this point? No, it happened pretty quick. Okay. I mean, I could be wrong on that. I don't know what the transition period of time was, but it would have been months, I believe. It would have been years because of what we talked about, you know, the unfortunate perspective I took on Saturday night was it was just something I had to get done that week, as opposed to looking at it as a, you know, segment for Monday Nitro, so to speak. But I handed it off to Jimmy, you know, pro wrestling, the, you know, you.

the emphasis on syndication was becoming less and less significant. Syndication used to be a fairly big opportunity for WCW, for television in general. But even back in the 90s, the syndication market began to just start getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And cable kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So you, you know, spend your time and resource. where you have the greatest amount of success or the potential of it. And it was it was encased. So I was deemphasizing syndication.

And all those syndicated shows were, for the most part, were repackaged matches from WCW Saturday night. Maybe with a fresh match thrown in that wasn't a part of the original WCW Saturday night. But there wasn't a lot of original content. We did, you know, we VOed it to make it feel like it was different and it was live to tape. as people say, meaning we shoot it in a way that we want you to subliminally think it's live, but it's actually tape. So we did all that, all the TV quote-unquote magic at the time, but I really wasn't spending a lot of time thinking about it because it just wasn't significant to the bottom line. Boy, what an out there question this is. I can't wait though. We are live on

YouTube, keep them coming. B40 Brian wants to know what would Eric have done if instead of the NWO Hulk Hogan stayed red and yellow and said me and Brutus are going over the outsiders at the next pay-per-view brother. Like hypothetically, if Hogan had not bought in to this whole invasion concept and he wanted him and Brutus to take on these two guys who were trying to invade and he wants to defend WCW. So the heel turn never happens. We know it wouldn't have been as successful as what happened.

But if he does have some sort of creative control, how would you have navigated that if he doesn't get warmed up to the idea of being a bad guy and he says oh brother they're hot but i i beat them i know that's not what happened but just humor the idea for a minute how would you even navigate that erring i would have said no okay just because he had creative control didn't mean i had to take his ideas okay if it would i mean this is an absurd kind of hypothetical to begin with but just to play it out um there were things. Don't ask me what they were.

I don't remember. Didn't write them down. They weren't that significant. But there were things or times when Hulk had ideas that I just didn't want to do. Didn't feel right. Timing was wrong. Bad fit. Whatever.

Any number of reasons. So it wasn't like he could sit down and dictate the show. That's a Dave Meltzer kind of, you know, rumor mongering, you know, exaggeration. of Hulks, creative control. So I would have just said, no, we can't do that. We'll do something else, but we can't do that. And like I said, it's absurd anyway, but he would have never done that. Well, you know, I say that.

I guess in a weird way, it's possible something like that could have happened, but it's still pretty absurd. Can't imagine it. Wrestling on the spectrum wants to know why was Hulk Hogan against the cruiserweight division? Why did you fight so hard for the cruiserweight division? I didn't I never heard that was Hulk anti cruiserweight division? No, that's it's another kind of, you know, narrative that's floating around out there.

That's a, it started out as bullshit, you know, more dirt sheet kind of commentary to make people think, you know, well, it's probably guys like Chris Jericho who felt like, hey, they see me as a cruiserweight so I can't move up here. No, I look, if there's anything, if there was any initial resistance, to the cruiserweight division. It, and that's not just Hulk.

I don't remember Hulk ever resisting, to be honestly, I think it's all bullshit. I know the rumors out there, but it's a bullshit rumor. But if there was any kind of pushback or concern or something that could have been said that some dirt sheet parasite picked up on, second and third hand, would be, how do we follow that? It was those conversations. And I talked about that.

There were conversations. about holy crap if that's where we're going i'm what the fuck dude come on but that was more i think realization uh than it was being anti even even from some of the people you know sting sting steve boredom steve thought he was he was a thinker and steve expressed concern early on very early on dude, how are we supposed to follow that? You know, but that didn't last long. We're going to get back into the NWO30 conversation, but keep those questions coming.

We will take another break and chat a little bit about some of the questions that you've got coming. Back here on Nitro, though, from early October, 1996, almost at 2000. We got faces of fear in high voltage. Ming and the Barbarian are taking on Kenny Chaos and Rob, Rage. It sounds like power plant names because they were, but I got to admit, it did look like a cool tag team and high voltage is kind of a fun name, but any chaos and Robbie Rage feel like their characters from Mortal Kombat. But we are establishing that we've got a deeper

tag team division here, Harlem Heat, public enemy, faces of fear, the Steiner brothers, the outsiders, and we're taking chances with new characters like Glacier. He's going to get a win here over Mike Winter. You know, the cryonic kick is dominating, but we've said it. It's just maybe not the best timing for this character. But it is time for us to show something new that WCW is going to be bragging about as we get close to Halloween havoc. Randy Savage and the Slim Jim Racing team.

We've got Mike today finally catching up with the macho man who's now going to introduce the Slim Jim sponsored race car. And Savage is proudly pointing out that the Slim Jim. Jim car recently finished 10th in a race while the NWO sponsored car crashed and failed to finish. I love that we're bringing that on the TV here. It's a small victory, but Savage is celebrating anything he can. That's a win over Hogan's organization. And finally, Miss Elizabeth approaches him.

She's trying to discuss what happened last week at the Marriott. And Savage wants absolutely nothing to do with her and walks away with the driver of the car. Elizabeth is left without answers that she desperately wants. So I like that we're getting a little bit of drama, but we're also using sponsor integration, and we're doing it way back in 1996. When you find out that, hey,

we know Slim Jim's a big sponsor. They have been as long as Savage has been here in WCW. We've got an NW race car, so we know there's an initiative from Turner and a commitment that way. Obviously, there's one with Slim Jim as well. It really did happen. and why not acknowledge it on TV? Is this what we would call added value, Eric, or was this a planned, negotiated?

Hey, we're writing a check because we're getting a sponsor integration inside the show. No, it was, it was, hey, I got an idea. I got you. And taking advantage. And honestly, because I love this kind of stuff, you know, and I'm not saying it's the best television we can ever produce. It usually isn't because it's obviously, you know, nothing feels organic like a sponsored segment or an integration segment.

But the more creative we could be and showcasing how flexible WCW was from a creative perspective to integrate sponsorship in an entertaining way as entertaining as possible, to me, it didn't matter what our contract said. It's not like, and I don't remember what the Slim Jim contract was, but I don't think it included any commitment of created kind of vignettes like this, right? More to do with mentions, signage, things under ringposts, use the brand in promotion for paper views and commercials and all that, typical stuff, right? But the integration part was kind of wide open. And we can pitch whatever we wanted to pitch. And I firmly believed, and I probably was right, most likely right, is that the more creative

we could be, so when I'm calling the person at the agency who manages and oversees a Slim Jim account and said, hey, me and my team have a great idea. And it involves Randy Savage. And it's going to be part of a live show. And it's going to be settled around our relationship with NASCAR. the people on the other end of the phone get a really, really good feeling. They like that because it shows them that you give a shit about your relationship with them and you're looking for newer ways, creative ways that perhaps they wouldn't think of

to get the most bang for their buck. And to me, all that did was ensure longevity of the relationship doing that as much as we could. So we look for those opportunities wherever we could. You don't make sure they're not too cornball. You don't want to take away. from a story. But if you can figure out a fun way to include it, it paid big dividends. And I love hearing about how all of those deals come together with sponsors way back when.

And I'm really excited to talk about how Jeff Jarrett's deal comes together. He's going to make his WCW Monday Nitro debut. And I just saw this all over social last week. This is one of the bigger surprises. There's a big black limousine that arrives backstage. And I think we're also used to these limos showing up in the NWO jumping out. that we're kind of surprised when, no, it's not the NWO, it's Jeff Jarrett. Now, I want to give you some context. Jeff Jarrett is most recently been seen on the WWF programming. He walked out on Vince McMahon.

And now he's showing up in WCW. So I think a lot of people would assume, hey, is he going to join the NW2 like some of these other guys did? And he is going to immediately be brought into question like, what is he here for? What is he doing here? And Jared's going to face Hugh Morris in his first match here on Nitro. And what was interesting to me is as he's wrestling the match, he's got the all white, what we would call the Venetian blinds gear, or maybe you referred to as the D dancer gear, but he's got black boots on. And I'll admit, I didn't remember that

until I saw the clip on social and it just jumped off the page. But here he is, Jeff Jarrett, making his WCW debut. He gets the win, having a Hugh Morris submit to the figure four leglock, which you guys actually call on commentary, Rick Flair's figure four. And afterwards, he's going to address the speculation right away.

He's going to do a promo, and he's going to announce that he has no intention of joining Hulk Hogan's organization, and he's taking issue with Hogan's claims about his importance to professional wrestling. He cites Memphis wrestling, and reminds every one of his father's contributions to Hulk Hogan's career. And he says he echoes things recent comments by telling Hogan that the NWO knows where they can stick it.

So now we've got a new star debuting, quote unquote, fresh off the other show. It had been a little while, but not a terrible amount of time. And he's not joining the NWO. He's with WCW. So it begs the question, Eric, how does Jeff Jurek come into WCW? Does he call? does his dad call. How does the relationship get formed for him to become a Turner employee?

You can call me. I didn't really have a relationship with Jeff. So it wasn't like, you know, he had my phone number or all that. So he would have called me. I would have guessed Kevin Sullivan may have been somebody else inside of he had a lot of relationships, obviously, within WCW. But honestly, I don't remember. I'm the one that negotiated his deal, of course,

or at least signed off on it. I remember negotiating with Jeff. I don't think I did, actually. It was more than likely it was Kevin Sullivan. Brody's watching with us here live from wrestling on the spectrum, and he wants to know how long was Jerry Jera involved with WCW and what years was Jerry Jera involved here with WCW? And specifically, what was Jerry's role?

I'm going to guess it was 95. I'm pretty sure I'm right about 94. And I'm going to give you some context. 94 is when Vince is on trial. So I feel like it would have been 95. Okay. I was going to say, here's the only thing I remember.

It was around Disney. Okay. We'll call it 95, um, if that's what it was. And I brought in Disney, excuse me, I brought in Jerry.

I brought in Greg Gagne, I think around that same time. No, I didn't bring Greg. Greg was already there. I think Greg was already there. I can't remember. Fuck. It tries me crazy.

Try to remember specific dates, but from 30 years ago. But there was, in terms of why, let me just get to the why. Why was, I knew I was going in a, you know, an unusual direction. You know, some of the things I was doing, and I want to make it sound like, was, you know, earth-shattering at the time. but there were significant departures from the formula, right, in the way wrestling had always been produced. And I knew what my, felt like I had some strengths in the creative side of thing. I felt like I knew way more about the television business than Greg Garrett or Greg Gagne or certainly Jerry Jarrett did.

Because they just been out of it. You know, they didn't really understand television in 1995 the way they needed to understand it. But I valued some of their creative input. When I say creative, I mean more psychology. I liked hearing an idea thrown around a room, and I want to hear why it's going to be fun to watch. I'm going to want to hear the story, but I'm going to want to also understand the wrestling psychology for the story,

meaning how are you going to manipulate that audience in a way that's going to be? get that response that you want. Tell me how that works. Tell me why people are going to feel it. Don't just tell me people are going to react and I'm going to get heat. Maybe, maybe not. But I have to understand why you think that. You can explain to me why you think something is going to get over or why you think a scene is going to create the right kind of heat that you need at that point in time. I really want to get into that. And that's what I would, was looking for.

I wanted somebody that could shoot down some of the stuff we were doing. I didn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of yes, man. I wanted people from that generation, if Byrne would have been able to out, hired Vern. Sure, it would have hired Vern. Greg would have really, really done a good job in that role, but Greg was bitter because he wasn't the boss. Greg has always been trying to fill his father's footsteps from the time he was a young kid.

and he always came up short. So when he did have an opportunity to come in to Turner and could have really used his experience and what he learned from his dad to help the company, he instead tried really hard to gain more control or to gain position. He was a political prostitute. He never really, and what's sad about it is because he had so much ability.

Greg was one of those guys And he got it from his dad Because that's where I was first exposed really to psychology At that level And he was just like his dad in that respect He understood And he not only understood He understood how to teach it

And that's the part that You know, disappoints me for Right, because he could have gone much further But his pride Just It is right my grandma was the same way. My grandma was the exact same way.

It's because they weren't the guy. And in my case, some guy that's never even wrestled before was, just on a personal level that ate at them. Is that why anytime I watch one of their old shoot interviews, it feels like they always had a hard on for you? Oh, yeah. And, you know,

and you know, and you know, there's a lot to do with it too. You know, people generally don't have a great opinion of people that fire them. But again, Again, especially, well, Greg and Mike both, and I'm going to say too much about Mike, but if you listen to both of them, you'll hear, but that was really my idea.

I mean, it's embarrassing in some respects. I'm embarrassed for them, but it's just, it's, it represents that severe need that they both had to be recognized for, to be something more than they really were. And I think that has a lot to do with who their fathers were. We had this conversation a couple of weeks ago about second, third generation's wrestlers. And it's a tough position for them, for people like that to be in. Because you always feel, especially from the audience's perspective, there's this need to feel like you're living up to, you know, a standard that you really, you know, probably can't live up to. Or if you do, it'll be a long time.

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com. NMLS number 203902, Equal Housing Lender FDIC. By the way, save with Conrad.com. And Eric has finished his peepe break and we are back live here. Sorry about that. Arne Anderson and the Renegator out next. And we've got Arne walking to the ring with woman. I don't know that he or you know it yet, but we are on a collision course for the end of Arn's career.

He's going to wrap it up and he doesn't know he's wrapping it up in three weeks of Halloween havoc. That'll be his last major PLE. He's going to have surgery and he'll never really return for in-ring competition. Yes, he's done a spine buster or two, but going back and watching this, it was all over me. Like, man, his entering career is less than 30 days out and he doesn't know it yet. And sadly, his opponent is the renegade. I say sadly, because we know he's no longer with us here. But Arne Anderson is on a collision course with Lex Lugar, his former stablemate. Arn is still furious. that WCW got defeated at war games,

and he places the blame on Lex Lugar. Of course, the DDT is all she wrote for the renegade, and after the match, Arns not satisfied. He's going to hang the renegade upside down in the corner and keep attacking him. Lex Lugar is going to come out to try to save the day and force Arne to retreat, and it sets up Lex Lugar versus Squire David Taylor,

who was accompanied by Jeeves. We've talked about him before recently here on the program. Shout out to Jeeves. Lugar makes relatively quick work of Taylor and forces him to submit to the torture rack and then Lugar's going to cut a promo saying he wants that television championship from Lord Stephen Regal but his immediate problem of course is Arne Anderson

and after the Lugar win Arn's going to attack him from behind with a steel chair and the officials have to separate them I don't know why but in 1996 I still really dig Arne and Lex And this feels like it would be from a decade prior. But I think with Arn, he's just timeless, man. He looked the same as he did in 86 and 96. So maybe that's why I feel that way. Yeah.

And I think Arn is just kind of going back to what we talked about or I talked about with DDP and how he ultimately ended up really connecting with the audience is he just, he's authentic. And Arn is obviously tremendous technician in the ring really understood psychology, really understood psychology. And he was relatable. It's kind of like, you know, there's inspiring and aspiring. You know, the average guy could aspire to B.R.

Because he just didn't look that different from them. He was one of them. Like DDP became one of them. And that's, you know, there's the larger than life character. You know, Hulk Hogan, the Rick Flair, St.C. Boss, Undertaker, right? These are larger than life characters. And they obviously, not obviously,

because it's rare that they really, really get over, but they become popular for, for obvious reasons, because they do feel and look larger than life. But then you get that category of a performer, I think that gets over because they're just, and that's also the category I think Steve Austin was in.

Is there just believable and relatable. Austin, it was drinking very, and tell his boss to go fuck himself. That's, that was the essence of Austin's character. And Arne was just a straightforward, he's going to look in the eye, he's going to tell you,

he's going to kick your ass, he'll tell you how he's going to kick your ass, and he's going to give you a chance to swallow him, and he's going to kick your ass. He's just going to do what he tells he's going to do. He's believable when he does it. That's what I think made Art Arne so valuable. How about this match,

Chris Benoit and Rick Steiner. This is one of the more hard-hating matches you're going to see, certainly of the night, lots of big suplexes and stiff exchanges. And what's really going on here is who's on the outside of the ring. We've got Steve Mongo, McMichael, and Deborah coming out with Benoit. Of course, they're representing the horseman. And Scott Steiner is here supporting his brother Rick.

Eventually, Deborah is going to distract the referee, Nick Patrick. Mongo's going to try to use the Halliburton. Scott's going to keep Mongo from using it. And Rick manages to get the briefcase himself. He nails Mongo and Benoit with it. he gets the victory. So Rick Steiner gets the win. I know that nobody was necessarily for clamoring for a Mongo match,

but I would have loved to have seen Benoit and somebody against the Steiner's in this era. It just feels like you want to talk about physicality turned all the way up. That could have been something else. I miss Rick. I love Rick. He was a good friend. Yeah, it's still it. We just don't, you know, I'm the worst phone friend in the world.

probably already know that agree coson but but i've always really enjoyed reg get down-to-earth guy and he was always fun to watch and yet he and scott both together absolutely devastating when it comes came to and they loved it they loved it they wanted to get in there and banks why they loved working in japan as much as they did because they can work stiff and they like take it in as much as they like giving it yeah would have been a fun to watch. Remember now at the start of the show we had a tag match and that's where we saw a lot of the NWO on the concourse, but now we're seeing a black limousine arrived backstage. But it's not Jeff Gerard this time. Now it's Hollywood Hogan and the giant and Hogan's making

it clear that he has business to handle inside the arena. Meanwhile, seeing the nasty boys approach Hogan and Ted DiBiase offering to watch their backs. DeBiase has paperwork for knobs and sacks to consider and this sort of continues the suggestion that maybe Hogan's looking out for his long-time friends and getting them a gig here in the NWO, but Randy Savage is scheduled to take on Rick Flair in the main event, but Hulk Hogan has no intention of that happening without him making a statement. The advertised main event is supposed to feature the WCW United States champion. He won that a few months prior from Conan,

and now he's supposed to wrestle. Randy Savage in the main event. Savage comes out for his entrance, but Flair never makes it. And backstage, we see why. The NWO has attacked the nature boy before he can get to the ring. And Hogan's group is overwhelming Flair here. He's unable to compete. Now, Miss Elizabeth is nearby. She's frightened by the violence. Of course, she's supposed to be there with Flair. And the giant has now taken possession of Flair's U.S. title belt. So with Flair incapacitated, the NWO is now shifting all of their attention to Randy and Liz. So the giant is going to start intimidating Liz,

force her towards the ring. Randy Savage sees what's going on, grabs the steel chair, and rushes to her defense. But Savage looks like he's ready to confront the giant, and then Hollywood Hogan attacks him from behind before he can do anything at all. Savage now picks up the battered Randy Savage,

starts carrying him toward the ring, and well, Hogan forces Elizabeth to accompany them and it's clear Savage is completely helpless. The NWO has exactly what Hogan wanted here. Savage's former wife now has to watch while Hogan personally humiliates Randy. And inside the ring,

the giant is preparing a monster choke slam, but Hogan stops him because he wants to do the punishment himself. So multiple leg drops to an already helpless savage, And the giant is restraining Elizabeth, so she's got to watch. She can't save him. And then here comes Hulk pulling out the black spray paint. And he outlines Savage's body on the canvas, like it's a crime scene marking of some sort. And it's once again, one of these deliberately humiliating attacks.

Hogan's not done, though. He wants to break his spirit a little bit. Here comes Hall and Nash. Here comes a lot of trash in the ring. and Hogan's going to turn towards Miss Elizabeth. He's going to boast that he's not only controlling the NWO, but he's controlling her, and he's taunting Savage, of course, this entire time.

And we know the real life history with these two, and we know that Hogan, according to the rumor and innuendo, was in the middle of all that years ago. Hogan's going to spray paint an NWO message on the canvas. He's celebrating. Savage is beaten, flares taken out backstage, Liz is terrorized. And we've just dominated and hijacked the show again with the NWO.

And all of a sudden, here comes the NWO monster truck. And it actually destroys the broadcast desk. You're sort of refusing to leave. But six arrives. And this monster truck is something else. That's bad. Come on. That is badass.

You got to love that. This is just, now, isn't this the one from Halloween Havoc the prior year that was just repainted at this point? But when it was Savage and Hogan and they were on top of the Cobo Hall or wherever they were in Detroit, this is that same truck with the big arms. They just gave it a new paint job, is it not? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. They just repurposed. I mean, that's what they do with those trucks.

I mean, so. They get pretty trashed on the circuit. We saw, I mean, this is kind of interesting because it does add some realism and it shows that, hey, this is a big deal, the end of. But we're talking about the NWO race car. We saw the Slim Jim race car driver. And now we've got the monster truck. Is this too much? Are we showing too many vehicles?

Do we have too much integration here? Or is it more about we're just dominating and we want to show that, hey, they've got a little car. We've got the big jacked up truck and we're taking over the women and all the belts and everything in between. Gas and oil, brother. There's a lot of money being spent in the ad space in the gas and oil business. So if you've got Harley Davidson over here, you got motorcycle, you know, affectionados over here.

You've got NASCAR over here. Oh, we've got Monster Truck for the kids over here. What's the one thing they all have in common? Yeah. Gas and oil business, brother. So that's what it was more than, hey, we've got momentum. We're number one. We can go do whatever fun stuff we want to do.

There was a really good reason behind it. Well, there's a really good reason that all of my hosts are wearing the perfect Gene every time they're on TV. You're going to see Eric at Real American Freestyle before you know it right there in Las Vegas. What a main event they've got too. And when you see Eric, notice he's wearing the perfect gene. I have it on good authority that an airline not too long ago lost Eric's luggage and his number one goal was, I got to find the perfect gene. And he managed to do it because not only is he comfortable, but he looks slick too. And you can do the exact same, especially if you've got some of these family outings that are going to be coming up. I mean, we all know what we're

talking about. Maybe you're going to be watching football with the in-laws. Maybe you're going to a postseason game with a family member. Maybe it's just these holiday parties or how about Halloween right around the corner. You need something that you can be comfortable in. And maybe you're even going to sit down to Thanksgiving with, so hopefully it'll breathe with you a little bit. But you're going to love about the perfect gene is it's not going to feel like it's cutting you in half. You're going to look put together. You're going to look sharp, but you're going to be comfortable. If you go check out the reviews for the perfect gene, which you're going to see over and over and is, the people are saying, hey, these are as comfortable as sweat pants.

You can do a full squat, actual depth, not like a little polite knee bend. You can actually feel like an athlete in these. And here's the best part of this. You look nice while you're wearing them. I mean, you can dress these up or dress them down. You want to wear them casually around the house? You look great doing it. You don't wear them on date night? No problem. You're going to look, You're going to look good there too. Go check out the perfect gene. I'm telling you, you're going to love the way they feel, and your person is going to love that you don't look sloppy.

And by the way, I think it is a great value. They're like 79 or 89 bucks. All the other competitors, go down to the mall. What will you see? A bunch of $200 jeans. Right now, you should go check them out, especially when it's starting to cool down. We're starting to get some cooler weather.

We're back to gene everyday weather. And right now, our listeners can get 50, 15% off their first order plus free shipping at the perfect gene. Or just Google the perfect gene and use our code Bischoff 15. That'll get you 15% off. And don't just take our word for it. Check out what Eugene said. Skeptical not being able to see them or try them on,

but wow, I just ordered two more pairs. What about what Harrison wrote as a review? I literally donated all of my old jeans and only have the perfect jeans in my closet. Guys, go check it out right now. get 15% off at the perfect gene. NYC when you use our code Bischoff 15. That's Bischoff 15.

It gets you 15% off. Eric, we are live and I'll let those questions back up on us again. We'll hit a few of these before we put a button on this week's show. Next week we're going to be talking about the Guerrero's. We love talking about Eddie Guerrero here on the show. That family legacy continues to grow. Be sure to tune in next week. AOTV production says,

Monster Jam introduced me to WCW with their monster truck, so many memories. Brody wants to know, when did Jim Barnett depart from WCW? Did you realize Jim Barnett's significance in the wrestling history when you worked with him? And what was Vern's relationship with Jim Barnett when you worked for Vern? I think Jim Barnett left WCW, I don't know, 96, 97, perhaps. I don't really remember. I'm not, I mean, Vern obviously went way back with Jim, knew of Jim, probably did business with Jim over the years. I think Vern had respect for Jim.

There's no question about that. But I don't think there was a, you know, a close personal relationship there. When did you realize Kevin Nash had a mind for booking? Did Nash replace Sullivan in 99 as the head booker? I mean, Kevin did step in. You know, we've written about that, talked about that. Well-known fact, yes, Kevin did roll in in a really, really critical time for me. I was just at the end of my rope dealing with the fallout from the AOL-time order Turner merger.

Kind of took my eye off the ball, knew it, and I needed some help, and Kevin was there. We were good friends. And, you know, we had been commiserating, I guess, and frustrated in the way things. were going on together one night. And in my office, he was just hanging out after hours. And we just, I don't remember what the conversation was, but as a part of that conversation, Kevin said, hey, man, let me, let me take it for a while. Because he do.

I was fried. He knew I needed a break. And he was a good friend. Jumped in. He knew all the heat he was going to get. Anybody that's been in the business for more than five minutes knows that if you go from being one of the wrestlers to one of the bookers, it's going to come with a tremendous price tag

and not the kind you're looking forward to. So, you know, but Kevin took it anyway, did it. It wasn't meant to be permanent. It wasn't, you know, Kevin aspiring to take over anything. It was Kevin helping out a friend. When did I know that he'd be capable of doing that? Probably the first time I sat down with him

when we started bouncing ideas around and listening to his psychology and the wise to whatever it is idea, we were discussing my my first question is why why is this a good idea how are we going to make sure it's a good idea and listening to kevin and his psychology and the way he approached things it was pretty obvious to be that you know with help not by himself you know i never saw kevin sitting down formatting a show and that wasn't what i needed kevin for but um yeah probably early on as i got to know kevin i realized it uh

Hey, Eric, did you have to get permission from Nirvana to use the theme song for DDP since it sounded so much like the smells like teen spirit theme song? I think that was a Jimmy Hart song, but clearly inspired by the Nirvana song, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, we didn't get any rights and we weren't in violation of any copyright or trademark or any that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that was, you know, I mean, people generally recognize it,

but you can take a really popular song that you like, give it through a good producer and they'll change just enough where you can, you know, avoid any kind of copyright issues, but it still has that same general tone. I try not to do that. Yeah, you can get away with it, but it's, it's kind of a cheap way out.

So I try not to do it. Uh, a wrestling historian wants to know. Mr. Bischoff, was it your idea or Hulk Hogan's idea for him to go back to wearing the yellow and red in 99 and why? Pretty sure that was his idea.

And I can't answer the why. I'm sure he had a reason. I just don't remember what it was. In 1999, it wouldn't have taken much to convince me to try anything to it. I think it happened like the month before you left too. Yeah. Well. Yeah.

Darren Staley says, I've been in a debate with Dustin Rhodes. Do y'all put beans in your chili? I don't know why, but that tickles me. But I know that you and Mrs. B cook a lot at home. Are you a beans in the chili guy or no?

I'm all beans, not all beans, but beans, definitely. Yeah, I'm beans too. I know that for whatever reason, that's not his jam. Donovius is with us. And he says, hindsight being 2020, would you, would you kept, if you could, WCW Saturday night instead of Thursday night, Thunder? No, and I'm going to answer that.

Why, but Conrad, if you could just give me a quick minute, I'll be right back. Folks, we appreciate you guys hanging out with us. We are doing it live here at 83 weeks. If you haven't already hit that subscribe button, turn on your notifications bell. I'm going to try to talk Eric into doing more of these live, and we'll make sure that he doesn't drink quite as much caffeine or coffee or water beforehand.

But it is a big deal that you guys hung in there with us. I know normally we like to record on the weekends and drop it in time for your morning drive on Monday, but with Eric hosting a wedding this weekend and me being in Tampa for ringclassics.com, well, that was a little more challenging. So we jumped in the car. I knocked out seven hours on the ride home,

and we were glad to be live with you here today. And I want you to know that the intercontinental title is the reason I was on Ariel Hawani last week. It's why I was on Busted Open last week, is why it was on the masked man show. And I want you to check it out. It's WrestleMania belt.com, and you might be saying to yourself, self,

is that the WrestleMania belt? It is. It is the belt from WrestleMania, 3, the one that was debuted in late 85 by Tito Santana and Poughkeepsie, New York. I believe it was September. Fast forward to February, and the macho man won the intercontinental title. And I think this belt is most synonymous with Randy Savage as a result. I know we always think about Randy as being one of the all-time greats, and he certainly was.

But when it comes to national promotions, he only held four physical titles. He held the big gold belt, which I own. He had the WrestleMania 8 belt that he won for. from Rick Flair, which the WVE has. He had the WrestleMania 4 belt where he became the world champion for the first time, but that one has been lost the time forever. Even the Pafo family has no idea where that belt is. But this belt in particular was with the WWF from 1988 when it was retired until 2020.

When Pat Patterson died, they wanted to celebrate Paterson by maintaining ownership of the very first Intercontinental. The only trouble was they didn't have that belt. I did. So they traded it to me. And now as a result, I have the first belt from a WrestleMania moment. It was the match of the year, whether you read Pro Wrestling Illustrated or the observer. And people are still talking about it all these years later. We've got the entire history of the belt, how it was made, why it's significant, every appearance we ever saw on TV, all the magazine photos, all the newspaper clippings, all that and more at WrestleManiaBelt.com.

Now, why does the website exist? Because I'm auctioning it off. And the auction ends next Saturday night, October 24th. And you can get in on the action. Just go check it out right now at wrestlemania belt.com. Eric, let's close with this. If you had it to do over again, would you have just maintained WCW Saturday night

instead of doing Thursday Thunder? No. No, from a revenue perspective, being in prime time on a Thursday night It was a much better opportunity than Saturday. Saturday afternoon, it's 605, Eastern 305 Pacific. The revenue wasn't there for Saturday night. I still wish we would never would have had Thursday.

I think it would have probably altered history a little bit. But that really wasn't an option. But no, we could have never switched one for the other. And we can never switch anybody out with Eric. He's one of a kind. we're grateful to have him. Be sure to check out Real American Freestyle.com. A huge event coming up in Las Vegas.

Tickets are on sale now or do what I'm doing and watch on Fox Nation. We greatly appreciate you guys hanging out with us and watching on YouTube. It was a rare live show for us. We appreciate your support. I hope you'll hit that subscribe button. Turn all that notifications bell.

We'll see you next week right here on 83 weeks with Derek Bisham.