83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly BEST OF

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Special thanks to this week's sponsors! Manscaped- Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code WRESTLEBIZ at Manscaped.com. Jimmy's Seafood-Free 2-day nationwide shipping on orders over $125 (excluding steamed crabs and fresh items) use the promo code: WRESTLEBIZ FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com Get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9 over on AdFreeShows.com. That's less than 15 cents an episode each month! You can also listen to them directly through Apple Podcasts or your other regular podcast apps! AdFreeShows.com also has thousands of hours worth of bonus content including popular series like Title Chase, Eric Fires Back, Conversations with Conrad, Mike Chioda's Mailbag and many more! Plus, live, interactive virtual chats with your favorite podcasts hosts and wrestling legends. All that and much more! Sign up today at AdFreeShows.com! If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on Strictly Business. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with Strictly Business. Get all of your Strictly Business merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks 00:00 INTRO 01:19 Isaac Wriston 07:18 WWE Sale 15:25 BREAK MANSCAPED 18:54 IndianDating.com 28:00 Saudi Sale Rumors 41:32 BREAK SaveWithConrad.com 42:03 Bloodline 42:48 The Progression of a story 48:35 BREAK Jimmy's Seafood 50:22 SRS on Media Literacy 01:04:07 BREAK AdFreeShows 01:06:26 OUTRO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is going on, everyone? It is time for another edition of Strictly Business, presented to you exclusively by podcast, eat, and ad-freeshows.com. I, of course, am John Alba. Now, normally every single week here on the podcast, I'm joined by the man I refer to as the man of the hour, Mr. Eric Bischoff. But unfortunately, Eric had some technical difficulties this week, just as we were about to record. We wanted to get you something new and fresh, but unfortunately, the powers that be just will not let us.

but I promise you next week we will be back with a very, very, very cool concept. We're going to take a look at the breakdowns for AW Dynamite and some WW programming, and we're going to take a deep dive into what makes the structure of a great professional wrestling program. And Eric Bischoff has so many years of experience in that area. It's going to be a great episode. That's going to be coming to you next week on 83 weeks, wherever you get your podcast or at 83 weeks.com. So make sure you're subscribed to the 83 weeks feed because it's true. drops right there. We try to aim for every single Thursday. Again, this week, unfortunately,

technology did not work in our favor. But we're doing the best of the business here on Strictly business because I get it. We've blitzed you with some great content over the course of the last few months. And we want to give you some of that right now if you've got to catch up and take some time because we've had some great guests. And one of those guests in particular was Isaac Riston. This man's been nominated for Grammys Up the Wazoo, including a recent Grammy win. So congratulations to Isaac and ad-free shows member a four guest on the show. In fact, just a few weeks ago, we had Isaac on to discuss the incorporation of music into professional wrestling. Now, I'm a mute buff, so I love talking to Isaac, but he really broke down

the importance of having music ingrained in your professional wrestling program. And then also some of the logistics that come with actually going out and trying to procure. music for wrestling programs. So without further ado, let's take a look back at that episode as we welcomed on Isaac Riston. When we talked on the phone, the very first time, you told me that you're, now this, now we're talking, for those of you that perhaps just joined us, we're talking to Isaac Riston. He's a Grammy, a warm winning nine times nominated, multi-platin, studio musician. You've had a tremendous amount of success. And you were just recently nominated, again, correct? Yep. Yes, sir. But his, but Isaac,

his dream job. Forget about all the success that he's having now. His dream job is to be the next version of Jim Johnson. Yeah. I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, that's one thing. And I think there's a better way to do it too. Um, there is a, uh, a unique opportunity that professional wrestlers can have. If you look at Chris Jericho. I would love to know how much either T-B or T&T or whoever, Turner is paying to use Judas every week all the way until the chorus even. And then it's the chorus of people when the song, when they finally fade it down and you hear the crowd singing Judas. What a great move. What if every wrestler could have that opportunity?

What if we could create you a song and not only do you get to use it, we allow the licensing to kind of flow through whatever medium that you're on, or whatever network you're on, but you also get a percentage of publishing, and you might even get a percentage of the master, that would be a real big game changer in that industry, not only for professional wrestlers, but for any athlete, anybody that's using, you know, a licensed music. All music needs to be licensed anyway. Why not own a little bit of it? Well, that, you know, I think WWE has done that, you know, for a long time. And I know Jimmy Hart, when Jimmy worked for me and unfortunately I wasn't I just wasn't that knowledgeable of the revenue model for music it was just it was very hard to follow for me because I never really

looked into it closely enough to understand it but Jimmy Hart was big on that you know he really believed in trying to create that music so you can know and I know Hulk coconut owns a lot of you know music that that he originally did and he gets paid on publishing and I'm sure Chris Jericho because I know his manager Barry Bloom I would be shocked if Chris Jericho is not receiving Bonzo-sized checks from the publishing of Judas because it's getting used all over the world. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty wild.

Well, I just want to say this, and I'm curious how you react to this, Isaac. Eric, you mentioned Indies and everything. I had a conversation recently with someone very high up in the WWD recruiting process from Indy talent about coming into NXT. and he said one thing they look for and a lot of independent wrestling talent

is whether or not they're using copyright and music or if they have their own theme custom made for themselves because it's so accessible now where there are so many creators of this stuff as someone who makes music and produces this at a wide scale why would it be worth an investment

for someone to carve out that identity for themselves as they try to make it you own more of your IP You know, I think it doesn't need to, there was a lawsuit recently over tattoos by an artist, and those tattoos were seen in a WWE video game. Randy Orton. Exactly. And, like, it's your body. It's your gimmick.

You know, it's your persona. It's your livelihood. If you're using copyrighted music or if you're using somebody who says copyright free, that's a joke. Don't even try to go down that rabbit hole. Don't try to use copyright-free music. It's stay away from it. But if you can own more of your intellectual property that you can have ownership and get paid for in the future, why would you not do that? The same thing with your gear.

I see people designing gear all the time. Do you not think about a provisional patent for that type of structured garment? You can do that. The same thing with your music, your name, the way you wear your hair, your tattoos. you can own all of that. Outstanding stuff, Isaac. This is really fantastic conversation. Where can people find you if they wish to get in contact with you or see more of your work?

Yeah. What do we tell Bruce Pritchard? How does Bruce Pritchard in WWE get all? Do you know? Oh, man. I'll let you know. Instagram, Isaac Riston, Twitter, Isaac Riston, or Isaac Riston.com. Outstanding.

Well, thank you so much for being part of this episode of Strictly Business and forming that connection there with Eric. I thought this was just outstanding, and we'll definitely have to get you back down the line because there's more on this bone to pick at. But we appreciate you, Isaac, and we appreciate all of you guys tuning into this edition of Strictly Business. Spread the word. We're public now, baby. We're in front of that paywall. All you got to do is check us out every single Thursday. And on behalf of Eric, we are genuinely so appreciative of all of you.

And we'll see you next week right here on Strictly Business. Great stuff there from Isaac. and once again, congratulations to him. He is absolutely killing it right now in the music industry. This guy's got more than two decades of experience working with some of the biggest artists in the world, and you heard him right here on Strictly Business. Again, if you're not subscribed to Strictly Business already, why haven't you?

Make sure that you just search 83 weeks wherever you get your podcast, hit that subscribe button, and Strictly Business will drop every single week, including right there on the 83 weeks YouTube as well. And if you have been following Strictly, business you know that we have been all over this potential wwe sale news on nick con this past week just even said that he expects if a deal gets done it's going to get done within three months i've been saying i said on this

podcast in fact that i suspect that they'll do this big russomania rollout where we hear the news wrestlemania weekend if it happens because they want to steal the show well this is something that eric and i have been literally all over and we actually had a few weeks back, Raj Geary, who's been involved with Wrestling Inc. for years. He was the owner of Wrestling Inc. for so long. We brought him on, and he gave some great insight, given his own history with transactions, to give us a perspective on what we could potentially see out of a WWE sale. So let's toss it over to Raj and hear what he had to say. I want to ping you on this, because I know you've been very interested in the business ramifications of all of this. I've been

following your Twitter account at the Raj Gehry pretty closely. And I know the sale side of things have really interested you. Do you have any thoughts in the days that have since passed on what the direction may be here? I mean, it's just everything has been so unpredictable with this. I mean, Ventry retired what, like six months ago and he's back. So it's just impossible to say where this is going to go. Obviously, you would think it makes all the sense in the world for Comcast to purchase WWE, especially with the media rights coming up, you know, between Smackdown and Raw already, it's a half a billion dollars plus Peacock is another $200 million a year. So that's 700 without increases. So with increases, that would probably cost him about, you know, close to a billion

anyway or, you know, between those three properties, not to not, not to mention NXT, which is a small piece of the puzzle. But so yeah, it just makes, it just makes all the sense for Comcast to purchase it because the WWE's market cap is six and a half billion dollars right now. But, you know, if they, if they spent seven billion, let's say, on it and they were going to be spending a billion on media rights anyway, you know, you're recouping that in seven years, but also you can add other WWE programming and do other things. So it just, that one just makes all the sense in the world. Raj, you, you're an entrepreneur. We're going to learn a lot more about you and I'm going to learn a lot more about you. But clearly you're a very successful entrepreneur, businessman,

and you probably have a better perspective, perhaps, on a potential sale or acquisition than I do in many respects. But I want to ask you, you know, you talk about Comcast, is there any other, aside from recouping the investment over the course of seven or eight years, whatever that ends up being, is there any other strategic value in controlling and owning a property like WWE? beyond just the potential revenue upside? Well, it has a built-in audience, but Eric, I think as you've seen over the years and when you were running WCW,

a lot of times that wrestling audience, you can promote something else to that wrestling audience, but they won't follow. I always remember that Nitro where the end of the giant Hulk Hogan match went through Robin Hood, and that Robin Hood did a gigantic rating. And then it faded away.

after that. You know, those wrestling fans didn't stick with it. So I just think with sports media rights going up and up and up, at some point, you got to think with streaming coming in, it's got to hit a plateau. People have been saying that for decades, but just right, and I think that's why right now, it's such a great time to look at a sale, because you're starting to see your Warner Brothers discovery really cutting back. And you're starting to see the warning signs of people saying, we're paying too much for content. We're paying too much for media rights. And so it seems strategically like the perfect time for them to look at a sale and for a media, you know, a media company like NBC that's just paying so much for it

to finally own the property. And then they could spin it off and do reality shows. And, you know, one of the things you look at every week and when you talk about how great wrestling is doing it on cable, you also got to look at the competition on cable. There's more cable channels than ever, but no longer are companies putting their big shows on cable, you know, Yellowstone kind of came before everyone was moving to streaming, but all the Yellowstone spin-offs, 1883, 1923, they're all moving to streaming, and House of the Dragon and, you know, all these other shows. They're all, it's streaming is where the focus is at.

So cable just keeps getting weaker and weaker and weaker. And so cable is basically just Fox News, football, sports, and wrestling right now. And again, and I'm digging here because I'm venturing into an area that I don't know a lot about. But I read today that Liberty Media may also be in the hunt, so to speak. But when it comes to negotiating, a company like Comcast controls a lot of cable outlets, right? I mean, I think they probably control more cable, local cable outlets than just. just about anybody in the country, does having this, does having WWE or another extremely popular brand like WWE, having that under your roof, does that give you leverage in negotiating going

forward in terms of cable, cable fees? Well, I would think so. I mean, in general, Comcast, right now, NBCU, you know, with media rights deals already, they have, you know, the right of refusal. I mean, there's a right to match an offer if they're you know if they get another media rights offer for raw and um i think it's w w is such an important part to their their library that um that they're going to want to you know match any offer that's made to the company uh as far as liberty media you know i saw that cnbc article that lists listed you know potential suitors for the company and it's basically it's basically any company that can afford it any media company that can afford it. And you could see, like, you know, the advantages that Disney would have by having,

you know, WWU under their umbrella. You know, FX averages, you know, 450,000, something like that in prime time. And that's what USA Network averages without WWE programming. So you move WWE to FX, which is owned by Disney now. All of a sudden, they're beating you. You're number one. You're number one. Yeah, yeah, you're up there. So it makes a big difference to that portfolio, depending on how much they're looking at cable, keeping FX strong. FX is getting the XFL next year or this year. See, I didn't even think about that, man. That's another kind of good fit. If you're programming a network and you're looking at your audience and going, okay, who's in large, who's, who are our audience and you're going to take a run at XFL,

particularly because of the association with Dway Johnson, obviously. I mean, that's brand. I mean, that's a brand coming out of the shoot with with rock attached to it and i'm sure he's going to be a big part of the promotion of it um yeah that also makes it that makes fox a lot more interesting than i thought before we sat down with you so that perspective that is going to be a story that we're going to be following for months here on strictly business okay so for years years have you been watching any of the conrad cinematic universe podcasts or listening to them you know we've been telling you about Manscape. And we're typically talking about, you know,

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That's 20% off with free shipping at manscape.com and use code wrestle biz. Manscape Beardheadhead, one stroke, one guard, 20 lengths. And I used the stuff I was doing with Wrestling Inc to start other websites and other companies. Tell us about that. Tell us about that. How did you do that? Walk us through that, man. Sure. So my first job out of college in 98, you know, they, having Colorado School of Minds, it's a really good engineering school on the resume was great, but they saw the wrestling ink and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, you built this. And so I was hired immediately. I met a guy who actually is not of Indian descent, but we started a site called Indian Dating.com. Because at that time, I was born here and in the U.S. And a lot of the websites out there for Indian singles were based around like marriage. And most of the people I knew, you know, they weren't looking for marriage right off the bat or, you know, looking for it eventually. And so I was like, ah, this would be a great site, you know, there was really nothing like it at that time.

So we started the site called Indian Dating.com. Can I, I'm sorry, I hate being interrupted and I hate it with others. but such interesting points here. When you and your friend said, okay, let's come up with an Indian dating site, not necessarily for people that are interested in marriage, but for casual dating, were you targeting Indians such as yourself,

members of the Indian community such as yourself, that were really born in the United States, had more of a U.S. kind of culture that influenced them throughout their lives, as opposed to the traditional Indian culture who may not be comfortable with what we do here in the country. Exactly, yeah.

We were targeting U.S., UK, Canada, and then the metro areas of India. But then also it was open, you know, we had lots of non-Indians on the site. Oh, yeah. I created that graphic. Look at that. Wow.

It doesn't get much more 90s than that. rush look at that yeah it's uh whoa that's a blast from the past but yeah yeah that was uh that was something that you know a wrestling ink was started as just a hobby and this was started as a business and uh it took off and how did you leverage one into the other rush so i would actually run ads on wrestling on wrestling ink when the site started so actually you know the first thousands of so members the majority were not of Indian descent, so, which was, you know, great. We started doing a bunch of singles events and stuff where, you know, a good majority were not, but, yeah, so I kind of used wrestling ink to leverage that into Indian dating.com.

When I started to fightline.com, I used, again, I used wrestling ink that, you know, MMA and pro wrestling kind of have a very similar audience. And that really got Fightline to take off. So, but yeah, Indian dating, it was a completely different. mindset running that than wrestling ink but i don't i don't know if it would have gotten off the ground without it it's so fascinating because i'm going to go into the weeds just a little bit here but if you read any of the biographies about ted turner and there was one in particular i wish i could remember the name of the book but i think it was maybe one of the first books about ted sure because i wrote it while i read it well i said i wrote it i read it while i was working for

And in that book, there's a portion of it that describes why Ted Turner was such an advocate for professional wrestling with regard to building his network. And if you look at the, you know, the TBS programming grid from back in the early days, you know, it's a lot of Andy Mayberry and Beverly Hillbillies and, you know, down the down of reach of a lot of just old stuff that's. Ted was able to license for very, very little money, if any, because nobody really saw any value in it back then. But Ted believed firmly that in addition to that, because you have to program, you got a 24 hours a day, you've got to program it with something. But Ted believed, according to this book,

that wrestling, and the wrestling audience in particular, was dependable, was consistent, and was a lot larger than most people thought it was. And Ted believed, and yes, he was a wrestling fan, I think a casual wrestling fan, I guess, if you put them in a box, but Ted saw the opportunity because the wrestling audience was so loyal and so unique that you could build off of that audience similar to what you guys did. You used the wrestling audience to build an entire different business model, but you leverage the strength of that audience and your relationship with

them to do that. And if you take that to the next level of thought, that kind of brings me back to the question about Comcast or Liberty Media. And yes, I can tell you for certain because I was involved in that Robin Hood fiasco. And there has been others, by the way, that wasn't the only one. There were other times when, you know, Brad Siegel and T&T really put a lot of thought and effort and time and money behind trying to build a lead in. that would be complimentary to Nitro and a lead out, and almost all of them failed. But the fact that you've got two or three million or in the course of T&T back then, you got six, seven, eight million viewers every week.

That base of audience allows you to promote other, maybe not something that people will watch, but you can promote other things too. And that's what you guys did, man. You and Ted, thinking along the same lines. I love that. And also the UFC. I mean, where would they be if the ultimate fighter didn't start right after raw. And that, they had to get Vince McMahon's permission for that. But

that first season, Ultimate Fighter, which really kicked off the UFC, that was because it aired right after Raw. That's how I became a fan. I got into the Josh Koshchek, Chris Leiband drama, and the rest is history. So UFC owes a huge portion of their success to Raw being their lead in early on. Was that on Spike? Was that on TNN or was that on USA? That was on Spike. On Spike, okay. Sorry to interrupt you, man. No, seriously, though, Raj, the whole indie and dating stuff, I want to know what you learn from that experience.

And if you could provide some background info for those who may not be familiar as well, how long did you own that? What did you learn from running that that helped you to run wrestling ink better? So I have we ran it for 12 years before we sold it to Cupid and gosh it was one thing I learned is I had taken too much on in a lot of ways because I'm you know we would do these singles events all around the country so we'd fly to New York and they would all sell out so we'd go to New York do three events and then that Sunday night's a pay-per-view so I'm like you know leaving an event and then you know making sure everything on the site is. is covering a paper, you know, a WWE pay-per-view or impact or whatever it was that night. And it was handling a lot. And it's two different mindsets because Indian dating, it's, it's relationships and it's, you know, there's a, it's subscriptions, whereas Wrestling Inc. was all advertising based and there were no subscriptions. So it's putting on different hats and switching them off on and off constantly.

But you just, it's two different, two different, complete different businesses. And I learned things from Indian dating, like I wish I would have gotten more aggressive. You know, we hit close to a million subscribers, but we didn't take any investor money. We weren't, you know, we kind of stayed just using our own profits to build a brand and everything. And it did really well. But I think it could have gotten to the next level if we would have been more aggressive. and I got more aggressive. That's the better design.

And if you look at a later design, or maybe an earlier design, but it's actually me and my wife, the girlfriend at the time that we're on there. But yeah, just getting more aggressive. Don't just sit on your laurels and just keep pushing and pushing. And with wrestling ink, once I sold Indie dating, I was, you know, it was, you know, my foot fully on the pedal. So at some point that you guys were sitting down and, you know, having a cocktail talking about business, maybe over dinner, and say, hey, this Indian dating segment, we're having a lot of success with this. We launched it off a wrestling website.

We did get another super chat from Joel that we're going to pull up here and this can kind of launch us into our conversation, Eric. So as we know, after the Stephanie McMahon stuff went down, a whole bunch of chatter stars. I started hearing things. A whole bunch of people started hearing things. You started hearing things. And there were then reports that WWE was either in full agreement on or had sold to Saudi Arabia. And Joel asked, Eric, I value your opinion more than anybody. How likely is it do you think Saudi Arabia buys WWE now? Eric, I spent all night, literally overnight. I've been going for 48 hours straight now, trying to get comment on this, trying to confirm this. No one. all night long would confirm this. They wouldn't deny it because I think genuinely people weren't aware. But firmly this morning, I was able to speak to someone pretty high up in the WW pecking order who said at this time, any report that a sale is done or agreed upon is completely false. And others have also reported similarly.

So, Eric, Joel wants to know how likely is it, do you think Saudi Arabia buys WWE? Yeah, I want to go back. I'm going to answer Joe's question, but I want to go back to those stories in where they, came from as soon as I do. So let's not forget. Um, how likely is it? I, you know, look, anything's, anything's possible. If you, if you step back, you know, kind of take a macro, big picture view of things, you know, Vince McMahon and Saudi Arabia, I've been doing business together for about five years now, right? Six years, whatever spent? 2018 was the first Saudi show. Okay. So about five years, going on five years. A lot of money has

passed back and forth during that period of time, and all parties seem to be, for the most part, except for one little glitch, enjoying the relationship, because it's continuing. If they weren't enjoying it, it wasn't working out, it wouldn't. So it's a good relationship. Who knows how good of a relationship it is between Vince and in the Saudi government? We don't know. So it's possible. That's why it's possible. We know that the Saudis are investing in media properties right we know what the what is it the liv is that what's called live golf so there's a we know that they've invested a ton of money in that there's a turn called sports washing which is

what happens when entities that maybe are controversial or a government like saudi arabia they utilize sports as a way to mediate and do business in a more positive light and that is generally what people refer to what is happening in Saudi Arabia with the live golf tour and some of the other ventures they've done. And this, if that were to be the case, this would be an example of that. Yeah. Well, it would be an extension of, of the Saudi government using WWE currently under its agreement to do that very same thing. But so is it possible? Of course is possible. But here's why I think it's more remote, certainly than we thought last night. Because if, if, if, if, if WW, here's another, before I go there,

Live golf and the Saudi government can't find a TV deal. Nope. Because TV networks don't necessarily want to be in business with Saudis. It's a challenge. It's a controversy and they don't want to do it. So yeah, the Saudis have dumped a ton of money into LiveGolf. But so far, despite having really

a cream of the crop roster of professional golfers, they can't get a TV deal. What's that tell you? So that's why I think, is it possible that Saudis could maybe not buy the whole thing, maybe invest a portion of whatever it's going to take to buy it as a non-active, non-major stakeholder? Yeah, definitely. I see them being a player.

But I think because of the challenge of television rights, so far, at least, I think it's a pretty remote possibility because if you look at the WWE, it's currently a $6.6 million market cap company. A large portion of that is because of the rights fees that it's getting. Well, if you take those rights fees out of the equation for WWE, what does that 6.6 valuation look like? It changes dramatically. That's why I don't think it happens. I could be wrong. You don't know. So let's dig into the reporting then because that was an element of this that I know you wanted to discuss, and I can speak ad nauseum about, but I'd love to hear your initial reactions to that.

Well, I mean, you know, first of all, when I woke up this morning, for the very reasons that I just laid out, I was relieved. And I did, you know, I went right to your comments because I could tell that you were up, you know, all I'd doing it. And, and again, I was relieved to hear that news for the same reasons that I just categorized. But, I want to know who, who first leaked this story that the deal was done. I saw some guy named Malenhausen or some shit. You know, I don't know, by the way, I'm not being critical. I just, he's got a complex name, so I can't remember it.

But if it wasn't him, who was it? So Cassidy Haynes from Body Slam was the first to report it. And Steve Malhausen, and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing it after, then reported it as well. he has since deleted his tweet Steve works for zone and sporting news he since deleted his tweet Cassidy's remains up why would they do that why why would they do what report the news or would they report something that isn't true so my thought process and again this is just my thought process here is I don't think either of them especially Cassidy who was first to report it who has also, by the way, and this needs to be said, reported very accurate information in the past.

There's the tweet from Cassidy. Yeah, I don't care what he's done in the past. Why would he report a story that isn't true? So what I'm saying is I believe he believes that his sources have fed him correct information. I don't believe he is purposely misleading anybody by reporting this. I think he believes in his source. Does he believe in him because he wants to because he wants to be the first one out of the gate and get the clicks? I don't know.

I don't know the answer to that. That's where I glean, because, look, between Conrad and I, and I don't know who your contact was, and I would never ask, and you would never tell me anyway, but between Conrad and I, we can have a conversation, and we all have sources of our own. Why would this guy have a source that he believes? I mean, unless you're in the frickin boardroom, unless you're asked to vote, you don't know. And neither does anybody you're talking to unless they're on the board.

And it is. If they're talking to a board member, if they're talking to a board member, you know, I'll, I'll apologize live in the middle of Times Square. But unless they're talking to somebody on that board, that freaking knows, you're just repeating what somebody else may have heard. It is entirely possible. Who are we to say who is sources? We don't know who is sources.

It's entirely possible that he could be talking to a board member or it might not be as well. I feel like I'm pretty connected with WWE and I couldn't get anybody to confirm this news. No, no, because nobody, first of all, nobody that has any real credibility, forget about friendships. I'm talking about somebody that's high enough in the first of all. food chain to actually have some insight or something to offer, they're not going to talk. Are you kidding me? They may, you may read into something, not you, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about people in general that have sources that they think are, you know,

credible sources that may be work in WWE. But unless you're talking to somebody on the board, you're just spreading rumors. yeah and i do want to underscore this too there is a difference between reporting something like this versus reporting on oh so and so is going to debut on raw or this person is going to feud with brock lesner this is one of the biggest stories in the history of wrestling if not the biggest it very well may be the biggest and you got to make sure that you've got this right and Cassidy has gone on the record and said, hey, I stand by my sources.

So if he feels that that's accurate, then, hey, we'll see. We'll find out, right? But everyone, just think about from a logistical, from a reality perspective, do you know how long it would take to put that deal? Correct. To paper and to a point.

where it would actually come up for a vote. And that's where wording is very important. And I was trying to explain this on social media too. There is a difference. And you know this firsthand from your intentions of purchasing WCW with your investment group. There is a difference between agreeing to a deal and sign seal delivered this deal is finalized.

There's a big difference. And a lot can happen in that little difference between those two aspects of a deal being done. And then I think anyone, Eric, who glosses over that is doing themselves a disservice as well. No, because they're ignorant, meaning lack of information or knowledge. If you don't have the information and you don't have the knowledge firsthand, you're just guessing. You know, and I think people, I don't know, man, it's just so negative out there, you know. And, you know, we're on social media now. I'm part of it.

but I think that just natural tendency to lean in the dungeon of doom. Oh, I hate that I even said that. That's just where the conversation automatically wants to go to. And I'm not suggesting that there's not some Machiavellian slash McNamellian aspect to this. But man, there might not be either. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to make this clear.

I don't think anyone reported this with the intention of misleading anybody. I don't think there was malice in doing that. But if this is incorrect reporting, which we're going to find out very shortly, if it is or isn't, if we haven't found out already, then it just, it requires a really, really, really important step back, take all the information in and just make sure that we're being responsible in our reporting and not jumping to conclusions. It's easy to jump to conclusions because, Eric, there's a lot of speculation after Stephanie stepped down, like this super chat here from Brett. He says, do you think Stephanie stepping down a CEO is connected to a sale to Saudi Arabia or at least positioning the company more favorably since they may not find a female CEO appealing? And I think, Eric, that's why a lot of people were ready to buy right into these Saudi Arabia rumors just on those two inferences alone. No. I don't think it had anything to do.

with a sale to the Saudis. I believe it was a personal decision. And it has nothing to do with Saudis, right? Whether she, however she felt about the potential of that transaction. There's something else to it. There's something emotional about her decision. And I'm going to take what she said at face value because it makes sense to me based on her previous decision to resign.

come back because her father was forced out. Now that her father's back, she's no longer needed to be in that position to watch over her father or watch her father's back because he's back and he can watch his own back. So I'm going to take it at face value and say no, it had nothing to do with whoever is going to buy it. And I'm going to choose to believe that it had everything to do with Stephanie's original statement. She wanted to get back to her family. And she felt She didn't need to be there to protect her father's interest any longer. And again, guys, if you want to leave a super chat, you can. We appreciate your patronage.

And we will ensure that we read your comment on air. If you just want to leave a comment, go ahead. You've just got to be subscribed to 83 weeks on YouTube. There are other super chats that we're going to get to, but I want to make sure we get into every aspect of the Saudi conversation. Again, guys, currently as things stands at this moment of time, I've been told there's no deal in place. There's no agreement in place.

with Saudi Arabia. Others have corroborated such. I'm just trying to think, Eric, is there anything else on the Saudi aspect of this conversation that you'd like to put out there before we move into other elements of a potential sale? Nope. I think we covered it. NMLS number 65084 Equal healthy landed. Woo! The five-star reviews are in and it's confirmed save withconrad.com can save you thousands. Jimmy E. writes that we saved his family more than $1,000 a month. James S says we saved his family more than $1,200 a month. How much can you save? It's free to find out right now at save withconrad.com.

But if you've got a second mortgage, if you've got credit card debt, or even worse, if you're in a third of year loan, it's not a matter of if we can save you money, but a matter of how much at save withconrad.com. So if you've been watching WWD programming, you know that the bloodline story has captured everyone's attention. And it's not just intriguing. It's actually delivering tangibly. This past week's Smackdown delivered some of the highest show and ratings that we've seen.

in terms of viewership in a long time on SmackDown, an actual increase in the final hour because people wanted to see what would happen between Roman Raines and Sammy Zane. And just last week, we brought on a connoisseur of storytelling. Tom DeShane's a professional storyteller and historian in his own right. And we wanted to talk to Tom

about what makes this bloodline story so special. And believe me, this was insight. You're not going to get from anyone else. One of the things I want to really zero in on before we get too far into the story, because you cover some really interesting points that sometimes I think when wrestling fans hear long-term storytelling, to them that means you shoot an angle in January, it kind of floats around, it doesn't really go anywhere, it's active, and then there's some kind of a blowoff months down the road. And that, you know, oftentimes with wrestling fans, at least that I get social media responses from, well, that's a long-term story.

What you just described in the attributes that you assigned to the most recent long-term story in WWE, that being the bloodline, is some really critical elements along the way, you know, compelling characters. I think we can all pretty much agree what a compelling character is. It's subjective, obviously, but there's other elements that aren't, you know, the one thing that you said was logical, progressive, episodic, I think you said it in one sentence, storylines. And to me, that implies a lot more structure and discipline than throwing things up against the wall and just maintaining a story. Talk about the elements, if you can, if I'm clear, that go into the progression. of a storyline into an arc. Yeah, well, let's go all the way thousands of years ago to Aristotle and his poetics. For folks who, you know, subscribe to ad-free shows, Eric's been kind enough to have me on to

break down some other storylines in the past. And recently, my tag team partner, Dominic DeAngelo and I, we have some monthly specials that we upload to ad-free shows where we do deep dives. It's called In-depth. And you can hear us go on for three to four hours breaking down step-by-step the storylines of the mega powers, which in my mind is still the number one greatest story of all time in pro wrestling. But we also break down the NWO storyline. We break down classic sibling rivalries in pro wrestling. Lots of great breakdowns there. And one of the things that I keep

going back to is this isn't anything new. I mean, Aristotle discovered this all the way back in ancient Greece when he sort of laid out the first work of literary criticism, trying to explain to not only audience members, but also to aspiring playwrights and poets, what goes into making a good story? And there were some key tenets that he put in there. You know, the fact that the poet or author should strive to create fictive works that are memetic. Okay, that means imitative of real life. And I think that's one of the things that certainly resonated with this bloodline storyline. I think we've all been bullied. Some of us may have been the bullies in the past. And that storyline that it's a super simple one that's been told with Roman, with his family members, the sort of mental manipulation that's going on, the feelings from Jay Uso that maybe he's, you know, not the man he once thought he was, you know, being really sort of stripped down of all of his morals and his beliefs and everything, you know, some really, really compelling storylines there that are very memetic. And even Sammy's role, Sammy trying to get the attention of the head of the table. Sammy, the guy who is just a.

in the jackass match at WrestleMania 38 and was sort of the laughing stock of the industry, sort of a mid card to lower card sort of talent at the time, trying to get in with the head of the table. You know, we've all been in those situations where we've tried to hitch our star or wagon to a to a star. And so just some of those really simple elements are memetic. But also Aristotle said, you know, you have to have stories that have dramatic, you know, sort of logical parapetia, okay?

and parapetia are simply twists and turns, ups and downs, reversals of fate within a story, or as we and pro wrestling would call them, swerves. And I think that's been one of the most sort of rewarding things about this storyline that we've been getting all the way back since the summer of 2020. So we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute. But when we talk about long-term storytelling, it is now January of 2023. The story is just getting better and better week after week. And yet this is something that started almost two and a half years.

ago now, which is just crazy. But the most important element, according to Aristotle, was that a story must progress in a consistent and unified way. And what's fascinating is when we go all the way back to the summer of 2020 and follow this story through, the same characters have been in it throughout, you know, whether it's Kevin Owens, whether it's the, you know, the bloodline and the Uso's and, you know, Paul Heyman, whether it's Sammy. Zane. And what's fascinating is they've been brushing up against one another over these last several years and now getting to this incredible point where all the pieces are on the chest board just in the right place to make this story as compelling as possible and to get us all of the edges of our seats. But we wouldn't be on the edges of our seats if this story hadn't been told logically, episodically, and making sense from episode to episode week over week, month over month year over year. Again, just that element alone is something that I've certainly missed in modern professional wrestling. That's something that I don't think we've seen very logical

booking, especially from the WWE for many, many years. So all you've got to do is follow Aristotle's Poetics. Follow those checkmarks, and you will write a compelling story. And that's what we're seeing being delivered every week on WWB programming when it relates to the bloodline. Now, if you're listening to Strictly Business right now, as it drops, you know, we are are just days away from the big game and Jimmy's famous seafood wants to hook you up. Now, I know not all of us can be in Baltimore, Maryland. It's understandable. But thankfully, Jimmy's Famousseafood.com is shipping nationwide.

And if you use the promo code, wrestle biz, you'll get free two-day nationwide shipping on most orders over $125. Again, that's jimmy'sfamous seafood.com. Now, what am I talking about? well you know traditionally when you think about a super bowl tailgate maybe you're thinking of a full rack of barbecue ribs a pint of crab dip crab cake mix well you could get that with jimmy's famous seafood signature tailgate bundle they got the wings there as well two pounds of them as a matter of fact but they've also got the maryland crab cakes the soups the chowders the oysters the signature steaks desserts gluten-free items and much much more you can customize your packages

that you purchase from jimmiesfamous seafood.com to give you whatever you want, whenever you want. And again, you can get free two-day nationwide shipping on most orders over $125 by just using promo code wrestle biz. This is a company that's been in business for more than four decades. They've been endorsed and featured by the likes of Guy Fieri, Bobby Flee. If those guys are lending their names to Jimmy's famous seafood, well, then I can tell you, Eric Bischoff is confidently going to do the same. That's Jimmy's famous seafood. food.com. Use promo code wrestlebiz to get free two-day

nationwide shipping on orders over $125, excluding steamed crabs and fresh items. Just use that promo code wrestlebiz. That's jimmiesfamouscefood.com. Tom was absolutely exceptional. He is a guest that we've had before on Strictly Business, and I promise you you will be seeing him again. That will not be the first time. So thank you again to Tom DeShane's for hopping on Strictly Business with Eric just

last week. And the final thing I want to throw a little look back on is our conversation with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp. I thought this was one of the most insightful episodes of Strictly Business that we have had to date more than an hour talking about the industry of wrestling media and specifically the importance of media literacy. Now, that may be a term that some of you aren't all that familiar. Well, thankfully, in our conversation with Sean Ross Sap, we took a deep dive on that as he explained why that is so critical in consuming wrestling news. In your opinion, what is media literacy?

Break that down for our audience. What does that mean? And why is that important in building a business model like what Fightful has? It is the ability to decipher and determine news that is disseminated to you and where it came from. To analyze and look at a story, especially firsthand. say okay this is trustworthy or not trustworthy um i i think that aggregation is absolutely necessary i've made my living i'll be at a very very small one with aggregation but it was with responsible aggregation because i had the benefit of working for wrestling ink the biggest

wrestling website in the world and doing that aggregation and i would see how people would respond to their news that they broke being reported secondhand And it's the ability to determine, okay, is this secondhand accounting reliable? Or do I need to go straight to the source? Do I need to go to Fightfulselect.com and plop down my five bucks? Or is this wrestling ink, wrestling headlines, 411 mania? And now it's just like Twitter accounts that posts like 140 characters in a picture type of thing. There are so many different elements of media literacy.

And as media expands, I feel like that literacy needs. needs to expand too. I really wish it was taught in high school because I think it's a very, very important to not formulate opinions, views that sometimes last a lifetime with people based on 280 characters and a flashy photo. Sure. Eric, did you ever have that on the other side of the equation in that perspective where maybe you thought somebody reported something and then found out that it wasn't actually them? Oh, fuck yeah, all the time. Because in,

first thing i do and i see something i don't like is react right because i'm a i'm kind of a caveman that way um and then there's been times and i i think it may even shan may have corrected me once or twice in the last year or so where i'll fire so because i like to fuck with shot he's fun he's got you know he he he comes right back and i love that because it's you know hey i'm sitting around my house it's me and my dog watching the snow i like to be entertained but there have been seriously there have been times that I've done that and I felt stupid as a result because it is stupid. You call it illiteracy. I call it stupidity.

Same thing. But I think media literacy, a lot of it has to do, yes, it has to do with the consumer, clearly. And the way the consumer's condition because, yeah, it's wrestling. You're checking it. It's on your Twitter. It's not like, you know, not like you're checking in on the stock market to see how bad your cryptocurrency is getting battered. You know, this is just entertainment.

And I think people have become accustomed to, unfortunately, over the years of not taking their sources of information seriously, but assuming it's all, you know, been done in a journalistic way. And I don't mean to get you in between, you know, it's in the middle of me and Meltzer. But I think a lot of it has to do with the illiteracy of some of the people that produce news, including Dave Meltzer. You can't expect that the consumer to be literate if the editor and the publisher is illiterate and doesn't follow. any journalistic standards. And I think it's happening because of you, Sean, and because of others. Again, you know, Wade Keller probably among them as of the last couple of years and certainly Dave Shearer and Mike Johnson and many others, the team over at Wrestling Inc.

For example, and wrestle zone. There's a lot of good people doing good work, but there's still some people that are doing it the same way they've always done it. And it's not with a lot of literacy or grammar or integrity for that matter. Just my opinion. I think it's important in what I do to not, especially on the news report itself, there's never opinion-based stuff in there unless it's the opinion of a source I'm reaching out to. And then I try to balance that.

But there's my opinion is never in a story. Now, if I'm live on the air or something and somebody says, what's your opinion on this? I'll share it. But I feel like at this point, because of especially those engagement accounts on Twitter, that will take anything you say and report it as if you were saying it as fact, you have to preface it was, this is my opinion, it's not a report type of thing. And I hate that that's necessary on like your own streams, your own social media, because it should be assumed in a lot of that stuff.

But also, I am in a unique position where I report objective news about a subjective form of entertainment and there are opinions applied to all those things. That's really, that's a really smart statement you just made. most people just launch a site and kind of figured out as they go or business for that matter any business you kind of started in you looked at where the needs were and worked backwards and i that's i i think it's brilliant brother i think you deserve a lot of credit for approaching this business that way because you may have been one of the first ones in your your your world your your genre to kind of reverse engineer the process and catapultures

to the front of the line in the process. I love that story. And there's a lot of trial and error and stuff like that. And I mentioned the snakes and sparklers thing. But sometimes you do have to trust your own instinct to that note and realize that if you find something, like if I, as somebody who tries to find things out for a living, find something interesting, somebody else probably will as well. And the main thing that I looked at when I would click on a wrestling news website, the thing that I wanted was, okay, I want to know more. I want to know more. I want to learn more. I want to find out things that, one, maybe I'm not supposed to find out, and two, that I didn't know before. And fortunately, like, I had somebody that trusted my vision

and was like, yep, let's go do this. Sean, I want to, before we get into talking about the business model of Fightful, because Eric, as we talk about that, I think you're going to be blown away by how Fightful is able to monetize in the ways that it does. But you keep harping back to that term media literacy. And it's something that Eric and I talked about months ago on this podcast when it was just behind the ad-free shows paywall. By the way, speaking of smart, we often say here, Sean, that we live to enlighten both on the 83 weeks podcast and clearly strictly business.

That's what this podcast is all about. We all want to learn something and walk away at the end of an episode knowing something more about the business of the wrestling business, as we are in this case, then we knew before we sat down. And part of that, thanks to our producer, Steve Kaufman, because you mentioned a Japanese term early on and you weren't sure of the pronunciation, thanks again to Steve, our producer.

It's Ikagai, which is a reason for being. So there you go. Let's get back to you here, Sean. I think that one of the reasons you have found so much success with that business model is because you have become one of the true elite voices in breaking news in professional wrestling. That process is so fast,

as a journalist, as someone who has broken hundreds of stories across different forms of media in my career, I find everyone's process to be so interesting. We heard from Mike Johnson's process

last week. I would love to know what makes your process so efficient for you to be able to break stories left and right. I am willing to tell somebody to get absolutely fucked

if I think they're full of shit. I can't count how many people have come to me and they're like, oh, I've got this news tip, I've got this news tip, and they might be writing, they might be in news, and you're so desperate to get that first news tip or that piece of news

that you're willing to almost believe anything and get whatever it takes to make that a story. And to me, it was always slow and steady, slow and steady, because when you do it slow and steady for long enough, well, then your consistency and accuracy and credibility get to the point to where people are just going to come to you and trust you. And the level of sources that you cultivate and develop will be much higher. Like that was the biggest thing for me. I was willing to pass on so many things. And an unfortunate part about this job is that I have to ask a lot of very important

people, very stupid questions, because I'm not allowed to assume. Like I remember even one time I asked a W to be exec and they're like, you know the answer to this. I'm like, yes, I do know the answer to this in my heart of hearts, but I'm not allowed to assume the answer of this. I'm not allowed to do that. You have to tell me. You have to confirm it. You have to deny it. And in wrestling especially, that can be that can be hard. Like for example, when the MJF

craziness was going on, if he even told me something, I didn't feel comfortable running it. He's MJF. J.F. I had to second source his own words with somebody because I was like, well, this, this ain't going to happen like this. I'm not going to go out like that type of thing. And ultimately, every day I'm talking to the best liars in the world, and I mean that as a compliment, because these people go out and they make you think they're hurt when they're not and make you think they're not hurt when they are hurt and they can barely walk into the arena. So you have to really navigate that in a very special way that you wouldn't in other

other ways like sports like i have a lot of sports writers and journalists that are interested in wrestling and we'll kind of like trade scoops type of thing like i want to know about football they want to know about wrestling we just share what we know type of thing and they're like man i don't never have to deal with somebody trying to work me like that that is the unique aspect of wrestling that you don't get elsewhere and that i had to sort of navigate and fortunately i've i've been pretty good at that. You've been damn good at that. What is the indicator that I am okay reporting this? Like for me personally, if I was breaking news, I always like to try to have two independent sources at minimum before I ran something. What is, because a lot of fans and

readers and viewers don't quite understand what makes someone comfortable with going ahead and reporting a significant piece of news. So I would love to know what that baseline is for you. There are very, very rare instances where I will do anything that doesn't require double sourcing. If somebody wants to put their name on it, on the record, like if we'll just throw out a name and we'll say Eric Bischoff. If Eric Bischoff wants to tell me, Eric Bischoff is starting up a new wrestling company with Conrad Thompson, well, I can run that and say, well, Eric Bischoff tells Fightful Select. I don't really, I'm going to hit up Conrad, obviously, and I'm going to say, Hey, Conrad, what's up with this? Can I gain some more details? Especially if it's anonymous sourced, it's at minimum due. But I'm usually like for the Cody thing, I'm exhausting my sources. I'm hitting up every single person that would possibly have any information about that and exhausting those sources. And they don't have to tell me anything. The way I always say it is nobody owes me information. I owe our readers information.

so like these people know that they don't have to get back to me no sweat no big deal but i'm going to hit them up i'm going to try uh they can tell me to buzz off they can not answer they can answer but you have to try more than you not even try you have to get the information from more than one place to feel comfortable doing it and sometimes it's just about getting that tip sometimes just me finding out like for example goldberg came back a couple different times and I found out and I asked a WDB rep and they're like yep you got us and I don't think they were that heard about that information being out there after that because then they could promote that Goldberg was going to be on raw or something like that where they weren't going

to otherwise so it also it really varies from situation to situation Goldberg is like the Kiss farewell tour that started in 1998 you know and first of all if someone keeps coming back I beg it begs the question did they ever leave in the first place. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. That's, it's very responsible, Sean, that method of how you go about doing it. And I can attest, I've seen your process firsthand. It is tried and trued, and I think your reputation speaks for itself. Hey, guys, Tony Schiavani. I need to call the timeout real quick. Wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling what happened when listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening over on ad-free

shows.com. The road to WrestleMania has begun, and in this ad-free show's exclusive, Tony and J.R. sit down to call the action from some of WrestleMania's biggest matches, including the end of the Undertaker Street. Our inning war, I thought that Taker kept out. I was wrong. And maybe that's because of my prejudice that I wanted to seek Taker wins. I would have liked a Zene 22 and O as well. But this is a historic moment. It really is in not only in Russellmania history, but in all the pro-Russ if you think about it.

What does everybody want? How about a sit-down exclusive with Al Snow who discusses a wide range of topics, including his dear friend, Jim Cornett? Jimmy knows and understands his gimmick. And he knows and understands what draws for him. And like any good worker, Jimmy's going to capitalize on it.

And a lot of what you see is, not Jim Cornett. It's an aspect of Jim Cornett, and it's just an aspect that Jimmy's turned the volume up on, apparently as the years went on, a lot. Ad-free show members recently sat shotgun alongside Kevin Nash for a live watch along of his WWE Championship match against Sean Michaels at In Your House 7. Catch the event now on-demand. A year of brutal matches was too much for the big man too much for the big man's shoulders as he reached in he reached those continually reached those shoulders into his pockets and came out empty from the amount of money that was paid him that's just a small taste of what we got waiting for you with four levels to choose for from See for Yourself by AdFree Shows is the best value in wrestling today.

Sign up now at atfreyshows.com. Thank you again to Sean Ross Sapp. That was one of my favorite episodes we've done here. If you haven't checked that out, go into the archives, 83weeks.com or wherever you get your podcast. Because 83 weeks podcast feed upload strictly business every single week. We try to get it to you every single Thursday. If we can again, this week, we had some technical. difficulties on Eric's end, unfortunately, but I promise you, we will deliver that content

every single week. Next week's episode is going to be great. We're going to talk about structuring wrestling programming and what makes a good show from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock. Eric has a ton of insight to offer on that. We live to enlighten, as he always says. So make sure you're checking that out. Subscribe 83 weeks.com or wherever you get your podcast, just search 83 weeks and check out 83 weeks as well as that drops every single Monday with Eric. Bischoff and Conrad Thompson. It also goes a long way, my friends, if you leave that five-star review for Eric and I, tell them specifically why you love Strictly Business and why it's one of the most unique podcasts in all of the pro wrestling space. I love doing the show with Eric every

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