83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #010: Raj Giri

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

On this episode of Strictly Business we are joined by Raj Giri Special thanks to this week's sponsor! 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/ 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! Get all of your Strictly Business merchandise at https://boxofgimmicks.com/collections/83-weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How's it going, guys? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff, presented to you by podcast, heat, and ad-free shows.com. I'm John Alba, and not only are Eric and I joined by a very special guest this week, but we are going to talk all things business-oriented with one of the most successful wrestling websites in the world and dig a little more into an area that we probably haven't gotten too much into. Eric Bischoff, how are you, my friend? are joined by Raj Geary, the editorial strategist for Wrestling Inc. today. This is going to be a great one. Raj, what's going on, man? How are you? I'm doing great. Great to see you. Great to see you again. Eric, how are things treating you this week? I'm well. I'm kicking out of this crud that I caught about a week ago. My wife's got it now. So that's, you know, at least she knows how I feel. She never gets sick. She like never, ever, ever get sick. And I rarely do. But that crud put me

flat on my back. I've been living off of Sudafed and hot tea for the last three days. But I'm kicking out. I'm feeling almost back to myself. Nice. It's funny. Last year on the podcast, I said like how I never get sick. I hadn't been

sick in like 15 years. And that weekend I got COVID. Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, we're glad that you're all right. Eric, glad to hear. You're doing better. Eric and I had you covered guys if you were not paying attention this past week. Two episodes of Strictly business including a breaking news podcast about all the Vince McMahon news it is our biggest

episode to date if you haven't checked it out yet 83 weeks.com make sure you're subscribed in the archives eric before we get into our interview here with raj is there anything you want to bow tie on the Vince McMahon situation that you didn't get to on strictly business or 83 weeks no my gosh between you know those two podcasts uh I think I'm talked out about that subject and we just don't know anymore right I think the only thing that I noticed yesterday and even today is going into the weekend, there was a lot of conversation about, is Vince going to show up in the office Monday morning? Is he going to show up at TV Monday night? You know, people were waiting to see if there was going to be any kind of indication

that, you know, Vince was going to kind of come back and go back to, you know, the way things were before all this craziness. And now that didn't happen. From what I've read or what I haven't were at, I should say, doesn't appear as though Vince McMahon made any spectacular reappearances at the offices on Monday, nor did he show up a TV, to the best of my knowledge. So there you go. Raj, 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 them about, you know, close to a billion anyway or, you know, between those three properties, 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, you're an entrepreneur. We're going to learn a lot more about you and, 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. So 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 company like NBC, that's just paying so much for it to finally

owned 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 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, the right to match an offer if they're, you know, if they get another media rights offer for Raw. And I think it's, WW is such an important part to their, their library that, that they're going

don't want to, you know, match any offer that's made to the company. As far as Liberty Media, you know, I saw that CNBC article that listed, you know, potential suitors for the company. And it's basically, it was 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, WW under their umbrella. You know, FX averages, you know, 450,000, something like that in prime time. And that's what USA Network average. 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 a brand coming out of the shoot with Rock attached to it. And I'm sure he's going to be a big part of the promotion of it. 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 hey real quick want to give a shout out to james up in stoneville north Carolina he's a friend of the show hell he's a friend of the family now we were able to go ahead and help his family recently save more than $1,200 a month really think about this my man robbie didn't save $1,200 one time he's going to save it each and every month all because he went to save with conrad dot com he left us a five-star review earlier this week and he said this from the first phone call with christian all the hard work diane put in jennifer taking time to explain things and help me understand where we were at with the deal right up to steve helping me get this survey through nothing but professionalism all around

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NMLS number 65084, equal housing lender. And oh, by the way, you don't need perfect credit. You don't need money out of your pocket. What are you waiting for? Find out how much money you can save for free at save withconrad.com. And I'm sure, Eric, we will get to talk to it, talk to others about it at length in the ensuing weeks. But, Raj, we really wanted to bring you on because a few weeks back, we did a series on the editorial side of wrestling news sites. And you obviously have editorial experience.

But what has really captivated me about you, and I know that Wrestling Inc. is one of Eric's favorite wrestling websites, is that you are so skilled in the business side of the operations. And you got into the game very early on before the big boom of the wrestling site. So we would love to pick your brain about how you were able to navigate that space and leverage wrestling website success into other ventures for yourself as well. And we're so appreciative that you joined us here on Strictly Business. let's turn back the clock or so to the mid-90s. I know you'd been a wrestling fan for a long time. Where does the idea for wrestling, Inc. come about for you, Raj? So actually, I was at this engineering college here in Colorado.

It's called the Colorado School of Mines. And a couple of years in, I was like, God, I just hate this. I hate engineering. But the problem was, I didn't like anything else. And I was a big wrestling fan from basically 87 to 93. I was like hardcore, you know, watching everything, buying all the pay-per-views. And then it faded away. And Eric, I got, I have you to thank for it.

Once Nitro started, you know, in late 95, then my interest started peaking. And then I was back in, you know, early 96. When the NWO started, I was fully in. And I just got so interested. So I was like, I need to move away from engineering. I'm buying a computer. This internet stuff is starting to take off. I want to learn how to make a website.

And so I needed a topic. I picked wrestling. And so I just went to this company called GeoCities that they gave out free websites. And I picked a, you know, create an account, picked a name. And it was called a wrestling exet. And I basically was just posting my opinions on Nitro and Raw. And then it just took off. I remember the first day I had like eight visitors.

And I was like, oh my gosh, eight people just saw what I read. broke and I just got hooked and I never thought this would become a full-time job or anything I could make a living off of but I was like this was so much fun and I just got more and more into it 1997 it got big enough that I got its own domain name moved it to wrestling ink.com and yeah the rest was history and I used the stuff I was doing with wrestling ink to start other websites and and other companies and tell us about that how did you how did you 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 in 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, 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 tetr because i wrote it while i read it well i said i wrote it i read it while i was working for him. 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 Hill billies and, you know, down the down of the reach, a lot of just old stuff. that 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 a 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, and 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 and 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 Leibon 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. Cool. Sorry to interrupt you, man. No, seriously, though, Raj, the whole Indian dating stuff, I want to know what you learned 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, So I 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 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 covering a paper, you know, a WWE pay-per-view. or impact or whatever it was that night. And it was,

it was handling a lot. And it's two different mindsets because Indian dating, it's, it's, it's relationships and it's, it's, you know, there's,

it's subscriptions, whereas Wrestling Inc. was all advertising based and there were no subscription. So it's putting on different hats and, 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 that 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, once I sold Indy 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 site when we're having a lot of success with this we launched it off a wrestling website hey guys it's the hardcore legend mick foley here and i need to call a quick timeout a brief timeout because i wanted to tell your listeners what i have been telling foley is pod listeners for a while now about all the cool things happening

over on ad-freeshows.com. We kick off 2023 by going back to 1983 and the debut of the NWA U.S. heavyweight championship commonly referred to as the 10 pounds of silver on an all-new edition of title chase. Overtime has just kind of worn out and then Magnum T.A. told me himself that he finally just polished some of the rest of it out

because it just had some little bit in the corners or whatever that had hung on and so he just finished the job. Our book series continues, and this time we turn to Jim Crockett Promotions. Conrad and David Crockett dive into Jim Crockett Jr.'s handwritten booking logs from January 1985. So tell us exactly what we're looking at here, The Red Books. All right, the Red Books, I have to tell you, are basically, and I'll hold one up, this is a calendar for a book for 1985.

All right. In it, I'm just going to turn full page, handwritten the matches and also the gross of the city, towns that were in, the matchups. And this is the Bible. It was started with my father. On January 24th, ad-free shows is bringing you another premium watchalong event as we celebrate the 35-year anniversary of the very first Royal Rumble. and we're watching it live with the winner of that historic match, Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Hello. Hey folks, I'm WWE All-famer Haxaw Jim Duggan from the Golden Age of Wrestling. And I'm celebrating the 35th anniversary of my win in the first ever Royal Rumble by watching this Royal Rumble on ad-freeshows.com. Join me January 24th at 9 p.m. ad-free shows.com.

Tough guy, first ever winner. That's just a small taste, a sampling, if you will, of what we have waiting for you, with four levels to choose from four. See for yourself why Ad Free Shows is the best value in wrestling today. Sign up now, right now, at AdPreyshows.com. Yeah. Let's come up with a wrestling dating site. because i can tell you that that would probably the only problem with it is it only be about

you know four percent it would be the biggest testicle festival in america but it had to question mine yeah it would be like you know women get free accounts you just charge men uh you know yeah like a strip club exactly don't give away the good ideas for free i know we'll have to talk online world on this podcast. I mean, niche dating sites is where it's at, right? Farmer's only. Yeah, I get Matt Matt Matches.com. Farmers only, that's the one like, you know, this is embarrassing to say, but like I'm fascinated by things, you know, like new, you know, online, you know, business models, you know, Indian dating, you know, had I stumbled across it back then I would have probably had to, you know,

come up with a fake name and stuff and just because I like to see how they work. You know, I like to, I like to understand not only how they work from a functional point of view as a website or an app, right, but the psychology behind it is what I find fascinating. You know, I remember Nick Hausman, you know, Nick, right? Yeah. Nick and I about six years ago, seven years ago, I had the idea, brought Nick into it. And the idea was to create a website. It was like IRW, whatever it was called,

or IWR, whatever. It was a website, though, and we were going to aggregate independent wrestling, you know, guys that produced their shows for their local market, but they, you know, they produced them. And we're going to, you know, kind of just build, aggregate all that and have like the largest independent wrestling, you know, single point of purchase, I guess, if you will, or stream.

And somewhere along the line, Nick Hausman said and he goes, Eric, you know, this basic model, there's a lot of girls out there that would now probably enjoy the freedom and the flexibility and the safety and all the that goes along with what became only fans Nick didn't know it at the time but he was describing only fans right and now you look at that phenomenon and you know we're here about you know Mandy rose and a million dollars over two and a half months and it's just like right so there's a lot of stuff out there so if I throw out a wrestling dating site, you know, to you there. I'm only half kidding. Yeah. You know, again, uh, hey, it's, um, is, is available for

purchase there. So there you go. Come on. And you can do the same thing. You're going to get right there right. You guys could follow or run. And everybody would meet at Starcast. I've seen a little bit of, I've seen a little motion in the ocean going on out there in a crowd. You know, you know, what we did with, with the Indian dating events is, you know, we limited it to it. It would be like, you know, 60 guys and 60 girls. So you're not, so you're proportionate. So you do that the same with Matt matches. It doesn't matter if it's mostly men or women on the site as long as these singles events, you keep it, keep it even. So hey, think you're on to something. We've got two days where this thing dropped. So expect to get a call from Conrad Thompson. Expect to get a call from

Conrad Thompson, 20 minute after the show dropped. Yeah, doing those singles events at Starcast, that'd be huge. You got me thinking now. well so i still have all the code too no startup expense it is it is 13 years old but so the event aspect of that is very interesting though you had these meetup events with indian dating did you ever think about how that kind of format could translate into a wrestling website and holding wrestling exclusive events

which is obviously something we know became a big thing as eric just mentioned and Starcast being one of them, but even I see like post wrestling just did a five-year anniversary for just their biggest fans and subscribers and stuff like that. Was that ever part of the business model in your mind in the earlier days of Wrestling Inc? Not necessarily. I did think about having, you know, wrestlers like Sanjay Dutt, you know, coming and appearing and just and doing, you know, just saying hi at the events and, you know, doing photo ops. But one thing I realized, you know, at these events is how few wrestling fans, you know, I tell them my other job and they, they didn't really follow it.

Or they would know, you know, Goldberg and Stone Cold Steve Austin, you know, in the 2000s. They were no longer following the current product. And so, you know, once Indian dating start took off, there just really wasn't much synergy between the two. They were completely different. I don't know this is the last pitch I'm making here brother and if I go through to like my my followers like every hot chick that ever you know retweets me or whatever like something

it's always some chick with an only fan that's trying to suck me in you know what I mean every once by I look at my followers go wow I got some really hot followers here but there might be some real I know I do have some followers that are very attractive single women so I'm just telling you do some research i'll i'll show you my uh follower list and there have been some wrestlers right and there've been some wrestlers on some of those other dating sites in the truly you know i when i lived in orlando and i'm on the the the apps and i'm swiping the amount of pro wrestlers including

wwe signed pro wrestlers i would see on dating apps right it's the real so you never know you never know now eric hypothetically speaking if i wanted to pitch a dating app for people who are fans of the the best crab cakes in the world. Well, who would we be talking about? Oh, we'd be talking about. We'd have to go in. Would there be some kind of a strategic partnership? Maybe we could get Raj involved to help, you know, create that deal.

But there would have to be some kind of a deal between us and Jimmy's seafoods because there is no better seafood in the world than Jimmy's famous. I mean, effing famous seafood. And the beauty is you can go to jimmy's famous seafood.com. Put in your order. And on any order, over $125, excluding steamed crabs and fresh items, you can get free two-day nationwide shipping

by using the promo code wrestle biz. And what am I talking about? This is the best stuff in the world. Maryland crab cakes, soups, chowders, oysters, signature steaks, desserts, gluten-free items. If you want to pick and choose, you can do that. If you want to pick their packages, well, they've got some fantastic ones,

including four of the world's best colossal Maryland crab cakes. two different crab soups, crab dip, seafood seasoning, and their signature bay sauce, or even the tailgate bundle, the NFL playoffs, the postseason getting underway, Eric, two pounds of wings, full racker ribs, pint of crab dip, crab cake mix. You can create your own package. I know you got that rec tech there, maybe fire it up, get those ribs on there, not too shabby, right? Good, good package deal there.

Good package deal. And I tell you what, if you want to be hitman in your neighborhood, not be a hitman like in a mafia hitman. but I mean if you want to be a hit man in your neighborhood then yeah order yourself a bunch of jimmy's famous seafood have some neighbors over throw that stuff on a table and people will be people will be writing stories about you in the local newspaper jimmy's famous seafood dot com use that promo code wrestle biz again you get free two day nationwide shipping on orders over $125 or more i've had family members take advantage of this deal it was absolutely absolutely fantastic. I even got to get in on some of the fun, which always benefits me in a good way. So wrestle biz, W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-I-Z, just plug that code in at jimmy's-famous seafood.com and take care of yourself. Eat good. I promise you it will be worth your time. And we thank Jimmy's Famous Seafood for sponsoring strictly business every single week.

Now, Raj, you maintained ownership over wrestling ink for a very long period of time. We're talking 25 years here. How did you adapt the business model as the field became more saturated? I don't necessarily mean from an editorial standpoint, but from a business standpoint. Well, a lot of it was, and there was actually like a four-month period where I got so busy with Indian dating that I took wrestling and golf line. I was like, I just can't do both anymore. And I'm so glad I brought it back because I was like, man, it was so fun. I'm just missing it. I need to have this bad. So I brought it back. Over the years, you know, it's staying on top of trends.

And this is what I do with whether it's stock market or investing or whatever it is, is looking at the trends, looking at where people are going, what they're doing, you know, at least once a year, I'm looking at the design of the site. And I'm like, should this change? What should change, you know, should we do a complete overhaul and just really staying on top? And then also, you know, making adjustments as times change, you know, in the late 90s, websites were so crude and the writing. It didn't have to be, you know, a top notch. And, you know, a lot of stuff was way more forgivable back then and just having to always adjust.

And, you know, wrestling ink, you know, we have broken a lot of stories over the years. We do tons of exclusive interviews, but we are also admittedly an aggregator site. And just making sure at anyone, any news we're using from another source, from, you know, whether it's Mike Johnson or Fightful or whoever else, that first of all, it's from a credible source. And also, it's something that if it's anything controversial that the writers know that we can't just post that, we do have to follow up and just contact AEW or WWE and just be like, you know, is there any comment that you have? So we can also include that, you know, with those

stories. So it's just always that keeping up with the times, keeping up with, you know, how internet journalism works and making those adjustments. There are a period of time that you can remember business-wise where Wrestling Inc. really started to peak. Did that correlate with anything happening in the wrestling industry in particular? You know what? We grew year over year. I mean, you know, when I sold last year to static media, that was our biggest year ever. Revenue-wise, by far was the biggest, the best we've ever done. Traffic-wise, we just grew every single year.

And I think it was just more and more and more of the wrestling audience was now following it on the internet. You know, in the late 90s, you probably had a small percentage. And again, you know, when I think of like Ultimate Warrior appearing on Nitro, you saw the signs in the crowd. So people, they're worse people starting to follow wrestling on the internet. And it was, you know, not a huge amount, but enough that people kind of anticipated that. They had, you know, people had signs in the crowd and they knew it was a small percentage, but there were people that knew it was coming. And now everyone knows, you know, when CM Punk was coming back last year.

I mean, that was, it sold out because of the internet and everyone knowing. So the number of the percentage of wrestling fans that now following the internet is just, it's just really high. And that helped our business year after year. You mentioned the sale to static media. That feels like something that's been happening with a lot of wrestling websites in recent years. WrestleMania Zone, which was an institution in its own right, was sold to mandatory. Now Wrestling Inc.

another institution is sold to static media. Why do you think there's interest in these wrestling websites for these bigger companies? Well, profitable. We've been profitable every year since 2000, 2001. And it's just something that it's year-round, right? Like football, you're following it from, really you're following it from like September to January. You know, everything has their seasons. UFC, you have, you know, your peaks and valleys.

Connor McGregor is not fighting every month or every other month. Your big stars, it's rare that you have those huge fights. So, you know, most of the year, it's these fights that aren't as big. And you just don't have the same amount of interest year-round. Whereas with wrestling pretty much year-round, there's something going on. It's just the traffic, obviously, at peaks, you know, late spring, early summer, with WrestleMania and everything, but it's just consistent year round and it's got a very loyal fan base that they're not just coming in here and there. They're going every day. I mean,

the amount of return visitors that we have on Wrestling Inc. is just, you know, it's insane. I think any other genre would love to have that, you know, with movie websites and things like that. Again, it's when a big movie is coming out that people are really going, whereas wrestling is just obviously there's going to be more interest when something big happens but still when nothing big is happening you're still getting that consistent traffic and that was just an ad revenue what's so cool about this conversation is it it parallels again the reasons why people like comcast and fox and disney and anybody else would be interested in this content because it is consistent it has that loyal fan base it's 52 weeks a year and there's very little else you can put

on your network that does. That's where the value is. And it's just fun to hear this, man. It's like the same principles are true with regard to your wrestling website and your ability to sell it, your profitability from day one for the same exact reasons that we're seeing seven or eight major conglomerates looking at WWE. It's the same thing. Yeah, absolutely.

One thing I'd like to ask you, Eric, because one thing with the media rights negotiations, that's not talked about a lot because you hear people talking about 18 to 49, the rating. But that rating doesn't always translate to ad rates. You know, it came out last year when you're looking at ad rates, that Young Rock had much higher ad rates than SmackDown, even though Smackdown blows it away in 18 to 49 and in total viewers. And it's just that wrestling has always had that handicap,

even though WWE has done a great job turning it around, making it more advertiser-friendly. But that handicap of not being able to get the same ad rates, for similar ratings as other scripted programming or other sports. A 0.40 in wrestling is not the same as a point four and with the NHL. They're going to get much higher ad rates. And just what kind of gap did you see when you were in charge of WCW with those kind of ad rates where you're destroying other shows, but they're getting higher ad rates?

It was a big problem. And it was one of the things that I wanted to attack early on because advertising drives the business. It still does to the stay. people don't want to admit it. They want to kind of downplay television because, you know, cable television is losing audience probably 5, 6, 7% a year because of streaming and everything else.

But you cannot have a successful wrestling company without television today. Now, maybe 10 years from now you can. I don't know. We'll see what streaming looks like and what entertainment looks like then. But as of today, if you took television away from WWE or AEW, they would last five minutes as a business. Right. The business that we recognize. So television and advertising is always driven the business. But if you look at the evolution of television on wrestling, you go to the 60s, the 70s, even into the 80s, through the 80s, syndication was a big part of the business model, right?

And those syndication deals were typically bartered deals. So if I was selling syndication, as I did for AWA, that's why I started the business. I would go to a local television station, convince them, beg them, plead with them, whatever, to, you know, slip one-hour wrestling show into their Saturday morning, Sunday morning lineup. And the deal would always be, okay, we'll give you the show. It's not going to cost you nickel. You don't have to give us anything. We'll even pay for shipping, which we did. We'll provide you the show.

We want to retain two minutes of advertising. And that two minutes of advertising was for local promotion in the event that we were to promote live events there. The television network would often take that show because it got a rating and they would use it to fulfill commitments to advertisers like Eminem Mars, for example, because they were bottom feeders. They were opportunistic buyers. They weren't buying a wrestling audience.

They weren't buying a baseball audience. They weren't buying a movie audience. They were buying a set of eyeballs. They didn't care where the eyeballs came from. They didn't how old they were, whether they were males or female. They didn't care. Just eyeballs. And as a result of buying eyeballs, they were able to buy at probably at $3 cost per thousand as opposed to someone who wanted to buy specifically in your show for $6 or $8,000 a thousand.

Same thing was true in cable. Now, syndication kind of became less of an issue, even in WWE, probably by the early to mid-90s, the syndication world was just, kind of collapsing and everything was cable. About that time is when I really took over WCW. Now, I had had exposure to the ad world business previously because I was in syndication. It's part of that. But really focusing on trying to get ad sales up and what we could do to increase traditional advertising, not opportunistic buys, but one of the reasons I did the deal with Randy Savage was because of Slim Jim.

Slim Jim was a national advertiser. It wasn't an opportunistic bottom feeder like some were. It was a fairly attractive, I won't say blue chip advertiser, but one that advertised 52 weeks a year and had a significant budget. And I bent over backwards for Slim Jim, not because I wanted, well, yes, of course I wanted to keep the clients happy. That's part of the doing business. But I wanted to make an example out of them in a good way.

way. I wanted to show other potential big ticket advertisers that weren't opportunistic buyers that were paying, if not premium CPMs, mid-level CPMs, because that would dramatically affect WCW's business if I could achieve that. And it took a lot of time because wrestling has a stigma. And you're absolutely right, Raj, you know, and it's funny because there's so much chatter about demos today. And people correlating, for example, one program's demo and then comparing it to the NHL. That conversation was going on about six months ago, a year ago, eight months ago. And they're two different things, because you're so right on the money. A 0.40 in NHL is the example you gave, is probably worth two and a half times as much as a

0.40 in wrestling. So it's not apples and apples. It is in the eyes of the fans or those people who don't really understand the ad sales market, but wrestling has suffered horribly over the years. And you also pointed out, WWE has done a great job of mainstreaming the product. You know, wrestling fans complained about, you know, the attitude error was better because it was more extreme and, you know,

it was more provocative in a lot of different ways. It was targeted towards an 18 to 49 year old audience. The problem with that is, And I've discussed this almost a nauseam on my podcast, and probably here too occasionally, is 83 weeks, is that you can appeal to the audience and you can satisfy the largest, the most vocal part of your audience that wants to see, you know, a more salacious type of content or even more violent, you know, it's one of the reasons I always speak out when I see excessive amounts of blood. Because I know that's going to throw wrestling back into that opportunistic buy category as opposed to, yeah, I know wrestling's wrestling, but man, it's mainstream. And WWE is, I, you know, I had a hand in it, you know, I did things that attracted motor oil companies and things like that. And it worked to a degree, but WWE has really taken that to the next level and has gotten at least their ad rates.

up to the point, or to my knowledge when I was there last, to the point where they're no longer opportunistic buys. They're mid-level. And in some cases, even Blue Chip level tier one buys. But it's taken what, 20, 30 years to do that. Yeah. And the reason why I brought it up with wrestling is, you know, on Wrestling Inc, just looking at the advertising rates. And we'd sometimes get the sheets where we're seeing a movie campaign running on our site. then like a movie site, a music site, and our CPM would be half, you know, that of the other sites. And it's like, really, if we were getting the same CPM still to this day as a, as an entertainment site or a football site, you know, we'd be probably triple with the advertising

rates. And I'm going to sound like a greedy asshole here because we did great. But wrestling still has that handicap. I mean, I think you still see it. You see Battle of the Belt now is on Fridays at 11 p.m. And if it was doing, if it was garnering great ad rates, it would be on at a better time slot. Rampage would be in a different time slot by now if it was getting those big ad rates. So even though we delivered the, you know, with the websites, even though we're delivering that demo that they're looking for, we weren't getting the same ad rates as a lot of the other different genres of websites. And that's one of the reasons why, again, I've been very outspoken. And I notice that you have too. You know, you don't, you're not shy with your opinions.

which I appreciate and respect. But one of the reasons, anytime I see the excessive amount of blood on television and I'm thinking, oh, advertising. And when I bring that stuff up, of course, you know, people that like that, whether it's in WWE or AEW anywhere else, of course, you know, I'm, you know, they react negatively to my comments. But you pointed out something really interesting is that if wrestling was commanding decent CPMs, they wouldn't be infringed time spots.

they would not. They'd be in prime time. What's just right now that they're, what they probably are right now are make good inventory. Meaning if you've sold a blue chip advertiser and you're coming short, you're not delivering what you promised.

Okay, in the up fronts, for example, then you've got to do make goods. You've got to get that audience in the demo back to what you, what you guaranteed, essentially. And that's where wrestling can become very valuable because there's a big audience there with a decent demo, but it's being used as make goods as opposed to an advertiser coming

to you and say, hey, Mr. TBS, I really want to be on that show on Wednesday night, or hey, Mr. USA, I really, really want to be on Raw or Smackdown. It's still an uphill battle. What's just so fascinating about that is, based on how I hear this conversation, it's a very fascinating conversation, the disparity is in the optic, right? You mentioned the point four-0 doesn't mean the same thing for each one, and the optic in wrestling, it's this low-grade entertainment where people are getting beat up and all this stuff. Well, what is the biggest spaceship right now in sports advertising, the NFL?

Football is a gladiator sport. Football is an inherently extremely violent sport. Look what just happened with DeMar Hamlin from the Buffalo Bills. A man nearly died on the field. The NHL is an incredibly violent sport. So why, from an advertising perspective, and this is me genuinely asking here, Why is there a difference in that sense? Well, well, I think, I think also, you know, I think a lot of, just the audience is different.

Is it because one's fake and one's real? I mean, I think you just, once, like NFL, there's just nothing that's going to touch that. It's just such a broad, but, you know, there's a reason. I mean, is a wrestling fan that is a hardcore wrestling fan, as much on these products as, say, an NFL fan. You're not going to advertise a Rolls-Royce or Buick on a wrestling show. And look, golf doesn't get any outside of the Masters and things like that. They're not getting anywhere near the ratings of wrestling.

They have Rolex. Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah, BMW. You know, I watch CNBC. These shows aren't getting anywhere near the, the, the, the, the ratings of WWE, but you see private jet commercials and things like that. Again, it's optic, and that's so fascinating to be because I want to turn that then into your sale to static.

Let me hit you down before you go there. I think another reason, and there's more than one reason, I think part of it is our culture. You know, we've grown up as a culture of embracing sports, you know, football long before, you know, we started talking about concussion protocols and CTE and the issues that we've seen most recently, for example. Um, back then it was just wrestling. It's just a sport. Baseball's a sport. Boxing. You know, what's more inherently violent than two guys beating the hell out of each other trying to knock each other out. But we've accepted that as a culture. And now it is a sport and it's categorized as a sport with advertisers and, and everybody else. Wrestling is like what? It's not a sport. You can call it a sport if it makes you feel good. You can call it a sport if you're trying to sell it as one to an advertiser who doesn't really think about it too much. But at the end of the day, it's, it's script. entertainment. It's not a sport. It's like trying to, you know, somebody comes up to you at a grocery store says, hey, can I get a dozen apples? And you say, well, like, I'm out of apples,

but I got some bananas here. It's the same thing. Just have some bananas. No, it's not. Apples, bananas, sports, and wrestling. But wrestling as a non-scripted sport is like, it's not fish and it's not foul. From an advertising agency point of view, from an advertisers's point of view, who uses an advertising agency. Hey, Mr. Client, what are you interested in? I'm interested in sports. Okay, here's how much that cost. I can't afford that. What else are you interested in? I like comedies. Okay, we've got these comedies. Okay, I can afford that. Wrestling is like what? What category do you put wrestling in? It's not a sport, despite however much Kool-Aid you want to drink, whatever color it is, purple being your probably favorite choice, if you believe that. Wrestling is not a sport.

it's not a comedy although it can be oh by the way and it is kind of a sport because it's very athletic but it's not a sport you can't bet on it you it's not a comedy although it can sometimes be funny like dominic mysterio talking about martha stewart i just love that i think that's comical i think it's probably going to get dominic more over than anything else they could possibly do with him because he looks like he's 12 i don't care of his last name for mysterio he looks like he's 12 He should have a paper route. That's the way he looks. I'm not taking anything away from what he's able to do.

But as a character, that's a fun character. So it's kind of a comedy, but it's really not. There's a lot of drama in wrestling right now, or outside of the ring than inside of the ring. There's some drama in wrestling. Of course there is, but it's not a drama. So if it's not a sport, it's not a sitcom, it's not a drama, and it's not news, what is it?

And that's where people that sell advertising, if you work for Turner or you work for USA or you work for Fox in the ad sales department, that is the commentary, that is the conversation you're having every single day as you walk up and down Madison Avenue trying to sell your wares. What is it? It's not, eh, and people inherently resist what they don't understand. I don't know why people like watching wrestling. It's foreign to them.

It's like watching, you know, a Chinese sitcom. I don't get it. Of course you don't, because you're not a fan of it, despite the fact that there's 8 million people that watch it every week or whatever. But the fact that it doesn't fit into a nice little box is also a big problem. It is a strange thing because, you know,

when people will be like, you know, if a wrestler says something controversial, they're like, well, so in movies they do that. And it's like, well, that's different. You can't have John Cena saying something controversial because that's his real name that's attached to it. don't have Robert Downey Jr. doing appearances as, as, you know, what's his name, Robert Stark? Tony Stark. And similarly, and Roman Raines is out there. No one is calling him Joe

in Hawaii. They're calling him Roman Raines. They're glued to their wrestling characters, unlike any other form of entertainment. And wrestling is just a fascinating thing. I remember I'd sit on these, you'd go to these press conferences, like New Japan would have these press conferences afterwards or when I do impact conference calls and you get all these questions where they're asking questions like it's real like oh that was a tough match how do how do you recover from a match you know or how do you beat someone like this and it's just such a bizarre thing you know like you're sitting there like what is this what am I doing yeah weird isn't it I mean and I do it too by the way I'm guilty as charged because you you you're

You slip, I even do it on the podcast. You know, I'll slip, and sometimes it's subconscious. Sometimes I do it on purpose, but oftentimes it's really subconscious where I'm slipping in and out of character, you know, in one conversation on 83 weeks with Conrad, you know, I'm straight up business like we are now, and then we'll get into something that's not straight up business, and I find myself becoming that character again. And it's insidious, and it does exist 24 hours a day. It's probably one of the reasons why people, certain.

people to remain unnamed have a hard time separating their real life character from that guy in a ring because you end up living at 24 hours a day whether you want to or not so Raj as far as your sale is concerned then those stigmas that we just talked about do you think that had any effect on potential suitors or where you would be able to take your sale when you wanted to do it because I know static media firsthand they have a lot of entertainment properties. They have video game properties. They have film and media and television properties. I'm curious if that had any effect on where you would take your business there. No, no. You know, like I mentioned, I've had other sites, Fightline.com, which was an

MMA site. I started in the mid-2000s, Indian dating. And I sold those and the companies that bought it. I mean, is it okay to use to cuss on this? Sure. All right. Fuck yeah. Come on. They didn't do jack's shit. those and they just went downhill and it sucks seeing something you created from scratch your baby and then it just dies out and so when static media i had other offers um you know last year i was like man it's 25 years i'm spending more hours than ever you know i'm up at 3 a m double checking my phone making sure everything is running fine there's no big news and you know i got

two daughters they're becoming teenagers i'm like i just can't i've just burnt the candle on both then so I just can't do this anymore so I'm opening it up to a sale and static I saw what they've done with their other sites they've all grown you know slash film looper they have they own a bunch of other entertainment sites and and I knew it'd be in good hands and they've done a fantastic job and uh you know that was a that was a huge part of my decision and that as far as the wrestling stigma I don't think it affected um the suitors that I had but it did, you know, again, like we were talking with Eric, you know, with the CPMs and things like that, it does affect the sale price because if I was getting higher, you know,

wrestling Inc was getting higher CPMs, the sale price would have been higher. But it is what it is. Again, it's, I had to, no, I can't complain. It worked out fantastic. But, you know, there's just, it's just that thing with wrestling that, that it always kind of, there's always something kind of holding it back. And, you know, we're talking about, we're in a media rights, you know, negotiation here with AEW and WWE. And AEW, we don't know what kind of ad rates they're getting. That's not public information like the Smackdown one was. And the fact, you know, with AEW, they get really great ratings in the demo for their night.

But, you know, Warner Brothers Discovery didn't bring on R.O.H. They didn't bring on R.O.H TV. And if they were getting decent ad rates, you would think they would have made some sort of deal. So I'm cautiously optimistic and just using my own personal experience and seeing the disparate, you know, the difference in ad rates between wrestling and when I saw IGN getting or other entertainment sites getting. I'm always cautiously optimistic, but I do know the realities of what that is. And you're the first person I've heard expressed that. And I think you're right, again, right on the money because as everybody, you know, I'm not going to name any name. because I don't like always picking on people,

but there are certain pretty high-profile people in the Internet universe that cover wrestling, one in particular that is constantly talking about ratings and demographics and things like that and potential media rights deals and upsides and things. And Meltzer does it as well. But what none of them know and none of them are talking about, and I'm not even sure they're factoring it into their narrative,

is that if you don't know how well TBS is doing with their ad set, If they're struggling to sell AEW, for example, or dynamite, because every advertiser out there that wants wrestling has the cream of the crop on Raw or SmackDown, if those ad rates aren't there, it doesn't matter how great the matches are. It doesn't matter even if you've got, you know, a million viewers a week and you're the number three show and cable that night. it doesn't matter if you can't sell it. That's the only thing that matters is the ad sales and the success or lack thereof. And if anybody that's covering this on a daily basis, it likes to get into the weeds and really sound or, you know, attempt to dig into this. Somebody needs to dig into that because without that piece of the puzzle,

any projection or prediction about what's going to happen with AEW and their rights is a wild-ass guess at best. Now, the one thing I will say, Rush, like you, I'm optimistic for AEW. Again, I have no idea. There are a lot of things that suggest to me it's probably not a great franchise for them. But the one thing that suggests that it is is they were, at least up until recently, and maybe they still are, they're apparently looking for bumper programming. They're looking for a lead in and they're looking for a lead out with Dana White's slap league or whatever that's called.

That at least indicates to me that they want to try to build on the franchise. And that's a glimmer of hope for me if I was in AEW. Yeah, the positives are, they do very well on their nights. The negatives are right now, ad rates are down across the board. You see why Google stock is so far down because YouTube ad rates are, anyone with the YouTube channel, they see the difference in, you know, their CPMs from where they were two years ago. And Apple, you know, all these media companies, they're hurting right now.

with ad sales and they're you know Warner Brothers Discovery they've slashed their ad sales team so it's just it's just a very uncertain time this year and but again their ratings are strong but ad sales are down across the board with everything so it'll be it'll be it's really weird rush is you're right ad sales are down across the board for everybody but I wonder why because the economy consumer spending it's not like you know consumers are now sitting on all their cash and afraid to spend any money, they're spending more money than ever, or at least as much as they ever have. You know, consumer spending is what it is. The stock market is what it is. It's not suffering. We're not, you know, in so many respects, we're

technically, we may be bordering on a recession or N1, depending on who you want to believe, but it doesn't seem to affect consumer spending. Why is it affected ad rates? Well, I think a lot of it is the companies themselves, the companies themselves, you got Amazon, Google, you know, all these giant media companies, Netflix, that their stock has just dropped tremendously over the past year, Apple. And so they're trying to cut back costs. And one of the areas where it's easy to cut back costs is advertising. So they're not going out there and advertising and spending.

And, you know, it's so much in tech, Tesla, I mean, Tesla didn't really advertise anyway, but all these giant media conglomerates, that's the first thing they cut down. And when you do that, that just affects the whole market as a whole. especially a brand name too that is almost self-sustainable like an apple right yeah it's really not and google you know google as well right um roj you did a great job with wrestling ink any website that gets eric bischoff checking it every day i'd say you're doing pretty successful in the wrestling realm so and you know what else you did roj that there's another site that i follow i wish they would do it um i'll have this conversation with them privately but your mobile app you know you're you're

site and your mobile interface are seamless and they're very user-friendly and you're not getting bombarded with ads while you're in the middle of a story and things like that. So great job on that too because that's, you know, that's something that is a pretty advanced decision early on to really focus on that mobile app. Because back when you first started this, people were like, oh, who needs to worry about a mobile app? Right. You know, 75% of the people that, you know, are on the computer or on your desktop or their laptop. Well, that's flipped now. Last night, I checked about four years ago, it's exactly the opposite where 70% of the traffic

comes from mobile and a smaller percentage comes from traditional laptops or desktops. Yeah, I mean, that's been my thing from day one. If I find something on the site that annoys me personally, I don't care how much money it's bringing in. I'm nixing it. If there's two ads jumping out, that's it. It's got to go. It cuts our revenue, but if I can't stand it, it's gone.

And so I always try to make the site. I can tell it that John is about trying to wrap this up. So before we go, in case I forget, what's the best Indian restaurant in Denver? There's a new one that opened up that we just started going into called Coriander. And I heard, I listen to your podcast all the time. I heard the one you mentioned in Las Vegas. So I'll have to check that out. We're going to Vegas here.

Here's a deal. Well, first of all, you're probably a much more of a connoisseur of good Indian food than I am because I don't have a lot of options where I live. Although, you know what's really cool? there's a bar here and I don't know if anybody's in a hurry but I'm having fun so there's a bar and restaurant here in town called Trailhead and they have great food you know for Cody it's like some of the best food they've ever had really they've got a great chef and high quality food and all that and there's a bar tender there his name is Dershaw his family is Indian and ironically they live in Wyoming on the eastern side of

Wyoming they own hotels and motels and things like that Dershan moved to He's a young man about 25 years old, super guy, and we got to talk and I, you know, I had to ask about Indian food because I want to know, right? And we're talking about Indian food and he came over to my house. He and another bartender friend came over to my house and prepared butter chicken for us. I mean, like in my, I mean, they made everything. It was just butter chicken. I mean, they had none and they made everything in my house. My wife, I just sit back and had a glass of wine. And I talked to him into doing that here in Wyoming because there were a lot of, lot of people that would love to have, you know, for people in Wyoming, an exotic meal

prepared by somebody that's really, really good. And Dachad grew up cooking. So, yeah, Indian food is a passion of mine along with Japanese food. But that place in Las Vegas, you have to go in there with the right expectations. It used to be a pizza hut, right? So you can picture the, and they spent a couple bucks remodeling, but they didn't like break the bank. So the minute you walk in, you know it used to be a pizza hut. but it's family owned and it's the food is really great but if you're going for ambiance don't go there how is deshawn's butter chicken i am now obsessed i have a butter chicken app on my phone like i'm we're going to do it i'm not prepared yet to give it a try because no i don't want to

have something that's less than what dershan made for me and dershan called his mom and she sent him some of the ingredients that she uses that actually come from india that you can't buy at Albertsons, right? So I know I'm not going to measure up. I just want to get close, but I'm not quite there yet. I don't have the guts to try it yet. Because butter chicken and none, they're both hard to make at home. Because butter chicken, you've got to marinate the chicken overnight.

And then you're supposed to have a tunduri oven with the chicken to get at the right consistency. It's, I cook Indian food a lot and butter chicken. That's when I always get at the restaurant because it's so hard to make at home. It's one of my favorites. It blew me away. It blew me away. and put a little bit of the butter chicken and the gravy on a piece of none and just oh it makes my jaws cramp up just thinking about it we're gonna have more food talk here on

sure i know john steve eric next time you guys are in denver i'll i'll treat you guys there are some good places out here i like the sound of that now roj like i said you did a great job with wrestling you have a great editorial team nick houseman does an excellent job as well there but you also have your own series that you just started up recently talking about some financial advice for some people. And obviously over the course of this conversation, we've learned you have quite a substantial background and you know what you're doing. So tell us a little bit about practical money and what that's about. Yeah. So myself, Jack Farmer, who we did the wrestling podcast together. And it's not financial advice. It's just sharing some of the stuff I've done

over the years and over the decades because I've been investing for, you know, over 25 years and started with penny stocks, lost everything. And, you know, just kind of got smarter and smarter with investments and just kind of showing real time what I'm doing. And like we just did our last video on index funds. And I went and I bought an index fund and I'm buying weekly and I'm showing the returns that that's going to do over the next three years as opposed to doing the hypotheticals. And so yeah, just stuff like that. You know, the end of the year we talked about tax loss harvesting and how to use that to your advantage and just stuff like that. So yeah, YouTube.com slash at practical money. It's something we're just doing for fun. It's not.

not a serious thing. We don't make any money on it. It's just sharing some of the investment tips that have worked for me over the years. Excellent. What's the site again? So it's YouTube.com. It's just a YouTube channel slash at sign practical money. Yeah, yeah, there it is. So if you take out the stuff at the end, yeah, there it is, at practical money. We just started a few weeks ago and we try to keep it simple. We're not getting into options. trading or shorting stocks or anything like that. It's just common sense stuff that, you know, ultimately it beats like 90% of hedge fund managers over time. So, you know, definitely check it out. What's your take on crypto?

Yeah. I always stayed away from that. If I don't understand it, I don't get into it. And crypto, NFTs, those things. I'm not against it. If it works for someone great, but it just never made sense to me. And wrestling tried. Wrestling tried with those things. And then not work out. I hope you did buy your WrestleMania John Sina NFT, Rod. It's like you could just screenshot it. I don't get the value. Rodge, this is so great, man. Thank you so much for joining us here on Strictly Biz. Where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter at the Roggearie. Check out wrestling inc.com. And yeah, if you have time, check out Practical Money, YouTube.com slash at Practical Money.

And this was really fun. Thanks for having me on. I'm a huge fan of the podcast. I mention it all the time on Twitter. I really enjoy what you guys do. So thanks for having me on. Thank you, by the way, I'm going to be in Denver next week. I may hit you up.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, definitely do. I got FOMO now. Fear of missing out. This was great stuff. Thank you for tuning into Strictly Business right here on 8. We appreciate all of you.

We'll see you next time.