83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business #16- Tony Khan on pacing AEW shows. Is endeavor purchasing WWE? Small WM Card?

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

This week on Strictly Business. Eric Bischoff & Jon Alba talk about AEW's ratings, Tony KHan's comments, Endeavor to bow out of WWE? and so much more! Special thanks to this week's sponsor! Empiraa.com- Sign up now and receive free onboarding, your first 14 days for free, and 24/7 support. Get ahead of the game and save 20% on your subscription by using the code 'wrestlebiz' at checkout. Launch your business plan faster and with less effort than ever before. Visit www.empiraa.com/eric today and start your journey to success! 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 0:00 BEGINNING 0:06 START 0:45 How is your week going? 2:01 We Are LIVE 2:56 AEW Ratings up? 9:40 Tony Khan on Show Structure 18:30 the Daniel Bryan/MJF promo 21:34 Endeavor buying WWE? 26:20 WHO is still able to purchase WWE? 30:01 VKM back in charge of creative? 33:14 Shareholders were emailed this morning 34:00 BREAK EMPIREAA.com 40:33 HHH wants a "smaller" Wrestlemania card 46:02 Wrestlemania 34 49:11 LIV GOLF 54:00 TNA did BETTER than AEW? 55:24 We are STILL doing interviews 56:50 OUTRO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff presented to you exclusively by podcast and the ad-free shows network. And this week, our newest sponsor, Impera, who you're going to be hearing quite a bit about later on. Eric and I are both very excited for that one. I'm John Alba and we are joined, as always, by the man of the hour. Mr. Eric Bischoff, Eric, another rapid fire episode coming. Everyone's way this week.

How are you, my friend? Do you have a good week? I've had a great week so far. man, I can't believe it's Thursday already. This was blown by so fast. This has been a very, very fast week. You and I got to spend a little time together earlier this week with our newest partner in Impera,

and we're going to talk more about them. I know you're very excited to share the good word of Empira and what they're doing, and I think our fans who are fans of business are going to be interested in that as well. We are live, guys, live in living color, on both our public feed on 83 weeks, and ad-freeshows.com.

We are not doing super chats today. You can leave your comments there. And if any of them are good, we'll get them up. Like Travis saying, hey, guys. Ibson Arroyo saying it's your friend, Ibzon from Atlantic City. Hello, my friend. Thank you for tuning in.

Genovius, Mac is here. John Hayes. Travis Medway's here. This is awesome. Adam O'Neill. Glad to have everybody here live. Everybody here live. They're joining us live.

And the only way you could do that is by becoming a family member over at ad-freeshows.com, and you can watch along on that feed. Everybody else gets either the podcast version or the YouTube version, both of which are very, very, very good, but there's nothing like live. No doubt about it, Eric. Last week we did rapid fire. We're doing it again this week because we had some breaking news here on Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff.

Before we go any further, this is one of the advantages of being live. Aske Kumar is pointing out. if that Tony Conn's name is spelled wrong. I'm not sure where, but we're going to make sure we get that right before we in the title already fixed it. Okay. All right. Way to go.

Producer Steve on the ball. Thanks, S.K. Hey, that's the thing about being live, man. You see those little warts and a little pimple here and a little hangnail there. That's what makes live so much fun. Otherwise, we just cut that out, give you a clean version, and we look perfect. and nobody's perfect. Absolutely.

And listen, Amicus, the only ribs that Eric Bischoff loves are the ones that he's making on his rec tech every single week, courtesy of 83 weeks. I promise you that. Those are the best over there. Man, listen, again, we appreciate everyone. Tune in live here.

Eric, last week we did rapid fire. This week we're doing rapid fire. We had some breaking news leading up to this broadcast of Strictly Business. We had the AW Revolution Media call. The AW Revolution tape reviews coming up this week. and we got the ratings in for AW, just as that call was going off the air. They took the last question and then Brandon Thurston dropped the numbers right as the last

question was asked. So nobody had a chance to actually ask about the ratings itself. But I believe we have them, producer Steve, can we pop them up for everyone? Because last week was a pretty good number for AW, all things considered, Eric. But this week, they did come back down to Earth a little bit, as you mentioned, on your social media here. they did have some stiff competition we're making do there we go if you could scroll on up there producer steve

so we could see the overall I think the number should be the number was 833,000 and they dropped from last week which was a little over a million yes correct last week Eric they did have the announcement

the major announcement that ended up being the reality show this week things came back down a little bit in the face of the pay-per-view any instant reaction you got here i know you said on social media you're going to explain why you think so well it you know look this is just my opinion you know i happen to have an opinion formed based on 30 plus years of experience in the television and professional wrestling industry and you know had some pretty good successes and a couple of failures along the way but you know from all of which you learn something hopefully you learn and last week we talked to you to everybody was you know

high five and then celebrating you know with an AEW they broke a million which is good you know relatively speaking it's the weakest tv Monday night of the year or the week typically but nonetheless they reached that million mark threshold and surpassed it by a little bit which they only do you know a dozen or so times a year so it it was a good thing but we talked about this I think last week. Why did it jump? It didn't jump because there's great stories. And I said that, I believe, last week. It jumped because of the tease of the special announcement. It's my opinion. And I said this last week. The good news is it jumped

over a million. About 200,000 additional people decided to go along for the AEW ride over the week before. That's a good thing Unless, unless those 200,000 people decided to jump on the AEW ride because they heard about this big announcement. And the announcement was Drek. Drek. Wasn't expected that word. It was presented in a way that only Drek could be presented.

It didn't. didn't mean anything. You can Google Drek if you have a Yiddish Google machine. It was a nothing announcement. And this is exactly what I'm talking about. And I've referred to many times about Dixie, or excuse me, Dixie, that's funny, about Tony Kahn putting too much emphasis on these big announcements because you're raising expectations and you're under delivering. And I called it two weeks ago, whatever it was, when it was in that, when he first started announcing the big announcement, you've got to be careful about doing that. And the more often that you do it, the less impact it has. And the more often you do it where you build it up and let

people down, not only does it have a less of an impact, it has a negative impact. And that's exactly what we saw. So if that, you know, a million plus celebration was the result of we've got an important announcement to make and then people tuned in and went eh i'm not coming back it's actually worse than just losing 200 000 viewers or in this case 20% that's not a slight decrease the 20% drop week over week is not a little decrease to play it's not a little increase when it goes in the other direction it's significant in this case it's a significant loss of audience week over week and in my opinion it's not because of competition the NBA had to head we only delivered a little over a million viewers that is not that's total viewers

two plus that's not exactly monday night football well they did go against the survivor premiere on broadcast and that that did pretty big numbers and survivors there's always been to be competition i don't think any of it i don't think anybody that those 200,000 people that typically that tuned in last week decided no i'm going to watch survivor instead all right you can try and sell me that i ain't buying it. Well, for me, Eric, it's more, this is a go-home show for a pay-per-view, too. Oh, and then there's that. There's that. So, you know, and this is all, by the way, not just fun to pick on, you know, AEW, because it's not my intention. My intention is to point out what I think their flaws are to get a discussion going about those flaws. And not only the flaws, because

anybody can pick anybody else apart, that's the easy part, but talk about the fundamentals and the basic things that AEW could be doing and should be doing to get above a million viewers consistently like it should be an anomaly below to drop below a million viewers it shouldn't be you know an anomaly or an outlier and a cause for celebration to hit that mark you're on the second most watch cable station amongst cable stations second or third probably changes on an ongoing basis. But certainly the top five, top three, there's no reason on the weakest night of the week in terms of television, generally speaking, that you should be losing or not being able to break a million viewers consistently. Well, what did catch my attention and dynamite last night

was the show did end. The main event segment involved MJF and Brian Danielson, your A story, as we've referred to here when we've talked about show structure, the company's A-story, heading into this pay-per-view where they're going to have the 60-minute Iron Man match. And I actually was on the AW media call earlier today, Eric, and I know show structure is something you and I have taken a deep dive on. So I said, well, here's an opportunity to ask Tony Con about show structure, and especially in relations to having the A-story in the main event last night. So I believe we pulled up the clip from that. Let's take a listen in. This night, you guys had a really intense segment to end the show between MJF and Brian Danielson, and I'm someone who regularly follows Brandon Thurston's breakdowns of AW television and show structure has always been something I've been very fascinated.

I would love to know what your philosophy is in putting these shows together, especially in the lead-up to a pay-per-view. This was one of the very few times in the last month or so that Brian Danielson or M.J.F. we're actually in the main event segment. So how do you go about setting that structure for your shows, especially leading into a big blow off at the pay-per-view? It's a great question. And it has been a mixture of trying

to feature all of the prominent stories, most or many of which are featured in this pay-per-view revolution on Sunday. And in doing so, trying to slot things show in a way that would do a favorable TV rating and taking what has happened in prior weeks, trying to learn from that and do a better job the following. I know that last week was the best we've done in a very long time on ratings and one of our real high benchmark results, I really believe.

I think it was tremendous for us to have not only our best audience, our biggest audience, and our biggest number in the 18 to 49 demographic of all of 2023, but also it was our biggest audience since the three-year anniversary show of Dynamite on October 5th, I believe, and also the... All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, right. He had no idea what, I mean, he has an idea what your question was, but he had no idea how to answer it, and he danced around and said, all the things that anybody that's been in a writing room for 45 minutes could say.

And here's, and this is, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. Quit talking about the biggest, the first, the most important in history. You've only been around for whatever it is, four years, barely. he said we have the highest reading in 2023 it's been 62 days it's not that big a deal a million in change for overall and i don't remember what their demo was but it couldn't have been that great with a million in change it's just so insignificant it should not be a benchmark it should be a threshold like the lowest one and his answer did not at all relate to anything other than a general observation of what show structure should be.

You asked specifically about his show and how he does it going in. What did you, did you, maybe it was just me, but did you get anything out of that answer? There was a little more at the back end of that, but not super specific. Look, to me, it suggests that maybe he listens to this podcast. I don't know. Hopefully he'll listen more closely. It's just, look, if there was any story structure, if there was any long-term storytelling in the literal definition of the term,

then the show would be building. It didn't. It did the exact opposite. You went from a low 800 number one week to a million and change based on the big announcement. back down to low 800s again. That's not called building, Tony, especially as you're going into a pay-per-view. It's the opposite of building.

And it doesn't have to be that way. It should be building, and it should be at a fever pitch at this point. This should be the peak of the arc. And it's anything but. There was one thing he did mention in his answer to where he was talking about how, and I believe he would go on a say,

a little more about this. You try different things in the main event to see what the audience gravitates for. You try different things in different spots to see what they take attention to. What do you make of that as a response? That's called

in the TV business I've heard it referred to as complete bullshit. It's the opposite of discipline, structured, pre-planned storytelling. Are we going to suggest there is a, that anybody's sitting there taking notes and are we reading the audience? Are we just sitting backstage and reacting to what appeals to me?

An audience of one. That, that, I'm sorry. That is just complete bullshit. That is, I don't, I don't know what else to say. you know again i i just felt it was relevant to our discourse to to ask about it and uh no i i applaud your brother because now you're gonna now you're gonna i don't know how often tony's going to come to you anymore it was not honestly it was not done as like a gotcha i genuinely found it interesting that it took until last night the go home show for the pay-per-view for

that to be the first time, I'm pretty sure for most of the duration of this view, the first time that MJF and Brian Danielson were featured in the main event segment of the show. And you call that, anybody calls that a build or anybody that's a supporter of Tony and AEW that's defending them to their death? Is that what you would, anybody in their right mind that isn't writing wrestling in a coloring book with some crayons? Is there anybody other than that thinks that that's a story you can't just cut a couple promos back and forth and shoot an angle and call it a storyline i mean i don't want to say that that's what the situation's been i mean they've had stakes and there've been matches and stuff but as we've talked about is is it any of

it relative is any of it tied together in a compelling progressive way see those are the two words compelling is the audience reacting to it if they are it's compelling if it's growing if they're not it's not it's black and white well the funny thing about that is i think that has probably been the most compelling story they've had in recent months and we've looked at numbers where it has shown that when mjf and brian danielsen are on screen the numbers go up we've looked at this in the past few weeks they go up so that's why i just found it so fascinating that last night was the first time that they were in the main event. And that's why I kind of wanted to pitch that question. And unfortunately, and unfortunately for, for MJF and for Ryan, and they're both

going to be just fine. But that match, for the very reasons you just pointed out, you put these two cats on television, people are going to pay attention. Mike Downs has got a ton of equity in that audience, man. Lots of equity. Of course it's going to register. It'll register even more if you do it correctly. And MJF is emerging as one of the top, if not the top talent, the top talent on that show. So of course you're going,

people anticipate what's going to happen when MJF comes out because he's a walking stick of dynamite. People love that. And this is all you got out of it? Your show takes a 20% dip from the previous week on your go home show going into a pay-per-view

and Tony Kahn considers that a good build because they had matches previously. I'm sorry. I'm just not buying it. To be fair, the ratings hadn't come in yet at the rate of this show, but I understand what you're saying.

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but a matter of how much at save with conrad.com. Again, for me, that's like been one of the stronger stories that have been on TV in terms of consistently, but it just, I found it so strange that it took until the go home show for it to be in the. main event as your last drawing it was a great segment it was a great segment that they had

with brian danielsen and mjf last i'm sure it was i i didn't it was the first it was the first wednesday i didn't get a chance to see it um but yeah i think the world of both of those talents i just wish somebody would give them the proper presentation it was great brian was in the ring being interviewed by rene and max comes out to interrupt and brian just grabs the mike he says no you shut up you're going to listen to me for once And Brian runs him down and he says, look, this is an Iron Man match. It's a one hour match. This is my, this is my thing.

Like, you're coming into my world. And at the end of the night, I'm going to kick your fucking ass. And that's what he said verbatim. And it was, it was just this, whoa, that was so, the fire was great. And I was like, man, I wish we saw more main event segments like that coming out of this program leading into the pay-per-view. So, yeah, but, hey, I appreciate it. How did you, does that make, well, you're going to watch that pay-per-view anyway, but do you think the average fan watching that's maybe sitting on the fence,

do you think that that promo, that main event, do you think that tipped the scale for them? I thought personally that it was a very effective promo, because if you're paying attention to the build, Max has been calling all the shots in the build. Brian had to work through all these matches just to get to Max. And then Max would cut him off and, you know, take the upper edge with his words as he always does,

and finally leading up to this match that is on Brian's terms he finally got the upper the upper edge in terms words wise and he's the one who got a little edgy which I thought this feud needed something like that so I personally liked it and I personally think that if people were on the fence it might have convinced

them but again I would have liked to have seen this feud showcase more in the main event just me perhaps yeah and just the way you laid that out to me and the way you described that promo I would probably lean into that pay-per-view now just based only by the way on the strength of that match and that promo and the promos that i did see leading up to it because they got in mjf got into family a little

bit on the last previous week that i did watch and and brian stood up to that you know he bowed up like don't go there you know so that was a good setup for what we saw last night um so yeah i probably we will tune in. Yeah. It's going to be a great main event. A.W, for whatever you want to say, most of their pay-per-views usually deliver. So I feel pretty good about that. It's just how do you follow up from that and see where it goes from that? So you might argue that they need some organization in that regard, Eric. And in just a few minutes here on Strictly Business, we're going to tell you about our newest partner in Pira that helps you get organized in a big way. And we'll be enlightening you as we try to do here.

What we love to do here. Every single week, Eric. But I did want to check in on our pals over at Endeavor. Your surprise pick to potentially purchase WWE if there was a sale to be had here. Last week we talked about Vince McMahon reportedly seeking $9 billion for the company. And actually, this past week, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel was asked on a conference call about the potential purchasing of WWE. And he said, quote, as it relates to WWE, it's an unbelievable product. Vince is an unbelievable dot, dot, dot. He's created a great business. We've had a longstanding relationship with them

over two decades. We're doing, as I indicated, the on location business with them, the endeavor streaming with them. You know, his business is really valuable, but we're not going to do anything as it relates to changing our leverage position right now. What do you make of a response like that, Eric? I found it more interesting than most, well, any press releases I read because that's nothing but Shakespeare in marketing. There's nothing really meaningful. Now, you can read into them and you can kind of get a sense of direction in a very

broad macro kind of perspective, you know, when you read something in a press release. But most of it's Shakespeare. Just be better off just watching the show. But Ari said that on an investor call, I believe. Correct. And things you say on an investor call, typically, at least to me, again, I'm not in the merger and acquisition business, but generally speaking, it carries a little more weight,

and one needs to be a little more exacting. Because those things can come back and bite you in the ass, right? So I liked it. and it stood out to me as a result of that. What he really said there is we love them, we just can't go into any more debt. Right? Did he say anything other than those two things?

So earlier in the call, they did mention that as a company, they need to de-leverage their debt. So there was an implication given that this would probably not be something they'd be interested in taking on at this time. Because they're in debt. they don't want to go into any more debt they want to get out of debt just like me

probably just like you and everybody that's listening we all can relate to that that's why I like to throw out the words like leveraging and de leveraging because it's like financial talk and you know very fundamental level but it is nonetheless and somebody driving down the road right now that's tuning into strictly business because we're all about the business that the rest they did this wants to know how does this how do I better understand that so here's how I took it Ari said We love them. They're an amazing business.

Vince McMahon is an amazing dot, dot, dot. That's funny. That was funny. But we're in debt and we want to get out of debt. We don't want to get into more debt. I like that one. That makes sense. That's what that whole thing said.

That's, okay, I get it. So I'd like to have the ranch down the road for me, but it's 350,000 acres, most of it irrigated with a beautiful view. I'm not sure I can afford that, and I certainly don't want to go into any more debt, even if I could. But if I can find a way to get that ranch

without going into debt, there are ways to do that, then I might buy that ranch. I don't know. But it, it, it, I'm just giving you, I'm just playing devil's advocate with myself here. I guess my, my, the odds that I gave the endeavor acquisition have been reduced significantly. However, I still think there's a play. Well, we've also mentioned this whole time that if Endeavor was going to get in on the pie,

that they'd probably need to bring a partner along with them. That's how they would not get into deal. that. Huh. Oh my gosh. That's funny. Only those watching along on Patreon or on YouTube are going to see me do the home alone. Yeah, the home alone face.

Oh, my gosh. There's a way that they could actually get involved with this acquisition without getting into debt. So let's start breaking that down a little bit here, Eric, because we've heard in recent weeks that Disney's probably out. Comcasts very well may be out. Endeavor could seemingly be out. That doesn't leave a whole lot of options on the table here. If Vince is looking to snag $9 billion with a potential sale here, you know, the Saudis could certainly foot that bill if they truly wanted to or if they could find a partner, they could do that as well. But all of a sudden, we're talking about significantly fewer potential bidders than

we were talking about just a month ago. are we how do you know that no i'm saying hypothetical if those people are out as we've been hearing we're talking about fewer bidders than we were talking about a month ago potentially my point in that is that there are probably people engaged or thinking about becoming engaged that have not occurred to you or i or anybody else that's writing about this stuff and we're all playing this game everybody including me and you and it's fun to play so i'm not not picking on anybody especially myself there's all these different chess pieces scattered all over the board and it's really fun to try to see what the best play will be and where it all shakes

out and to see which of us are right and which of what's are wrong we're engaged in this shakespeare but we don't have any of the information or we have very little of the information. In fact, I don't think we have any of the information in terms of who's really engaged at this point. We just don't. And nobody's going to get it because it's all confidential.

There could be players and groups of players. There could be people that we just didn't expect. Perhaps all these people that we think are obvious aren't obvious or aren't even interested. We just don't know. And I think the more any of us, including me, tries to put forward something, an hypothesis and make us sound like we really have some, we're really, we all know about how this is really going to work or I do, you know, none of us do.

We're just playing this game. Some of us have a little different perspective based on experience. Some don't. Some people that are probably following this are actually in. the M&A business or the entertainment business and media side have a strong interest in this and know some people that know some people, but we're all just guessing. There's a producer Steve pulling up Amazon there. This is Amazon has a $70 billion in cash in cash equivalence.

Producer Steve also suggested that Ari and the Rock form a group to pick up the $5 billion tab and buy out the remaining interest that Vince wouldn't have, which could be interesting. Yeah, I mean, that's another thing. It's only $9 billion. Well, that's what Vince wants is $9 billion, or that's his goal. But even if it's, let's just say the valuation came in at $9 billion.

Depending on how it all comes together, that could be reduced significantly because Vince McBan owns, owns half the shares, more than half. And he doesn't have to buy himself out. So $9 billion turns into $4 million. four and a half billion or whatever the number is four billion i'll tell you man i'm still i'm sticking with my gut i still don't think they sell it all i don't think they sell it all and i think they end up holding and vincent man is back in his position as executive chair

and perhaps eric he's in position to be in a creative role because that's what some of the rumor and innuendo was this week hey guys double j j jeff jared need to call a timeout real quick here. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling my world listeners for a while now. It's about all the incredible things happening over on at-freeshows.com. The debut of our new Monday Mailbag

series is here with a man we love to hate. Long-time WCW and W.E. referee, Nick Patrick. But they didn't know who was going to be the heel out of it because of her the Montreal screwed got on there. I said, I care. I promise you.

I will be the heel. and that they were going to hate me far worse than him. Watch this. And then I went out and that happened. And they say, you're right. 34 years ago, Jim Ross was on the call for the first match in the classic Blair Steamboat trilogy at Chytown Rumble.

And now he's watching it back on a bonus watch-along edition of Grilling J.R. As far as a match is concerned, nobody's going to have a better match in 1989. He's just with us. So many people, you know, this is what got them hooked on wrestling for life this match. At free shows members, that shotgun alongside Impact star Frankie Kazarian and Eric Bischoff, as the pair reflected on their time together in TNA and answered member questions live.

I did as good of a job as I could to substitute for Kurt Angle. There's no filling those shoes, but I did the best I could. I thought we had a great match, and I subsequently tore my tricep. match so it was it was a roller coaster of emotions of a day man but it was it was cool to be put in that position like hey well you know we're throwing you into the main event it's basically sink or swim and i think i carried my weight and it was it was a real real fun experience man what i haven't really talked about a whole lot hey that's just a small taste of what ad free shows has waiting for you including a brand new perk getting to join in on the live recordings of the

shows with four levels to choose from see for yourself while ad free shows is the best value in wrestling today sign up now at atfreyshows.com that's right sign up today at atfreyshows.com first it was sean ross sap who gave indication that he had spoken to a talent who insisted that they had heard that vince was back with some creative say and then wrestle votes who's been fairly accurate on a lot of its reportings in the last couple of years indicated that the Brock Lesner versus Omas match that is slated

for WrestleMania was driven by Vince McMahon himself. Now, Triple H still on the books is the chief content officer. But what do you make of these potential rumblings here, Eric, that Vince potentially has wedged himself back into the creative

fold in some capacity? I don't think too much about it because I don't know for sure. And I don't put a lot of thought into things that people said they have heard. I mean, I'm not saying it's not true, by the way. I could see a scenario where it is true. I mean, my impression of Vince McMahon is that he likes to have his fingerprints all over everything. And that's been his history.

So would it surprise me. But a better question would be, I think, would it surprise me? If Vince has some input into creative, no, it would surprise me if he didn't. Right? It's just, it's part of his DNA. It always has been. And then the follow question might be, well, do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? So far, it's not been a bad thing.

As far as Brock Lesnar and Osmos, I don't know. We'll see. let's see what it looks like it's kind of new just popped up out of nowhere so to speak it's recent so let's see i love brock's character um i love the fact that when he came back he didn't come back as the same character with paul haman destroying everybody being the you know beast that he really is in real life i'm glad that we're seeing a different side of brock because now he's entertaining and he's interesting because we haven't seen him before but as far as this match goes i don't know let's let's judge it after

to WrestleMania. Because if the rumor is true and if Vince had a hand or even a slight hand or a strong hand in that matchup, let's judge it when it's done. Hey, listen, Omas is a big man

and there is certainly an impressive visual if Brock were to get Omas up on his shoulders for an F5 and toss them around the ring. Or not. Or not. Maybe not be able to, right? Exactly. uh there there's definitely an intriguing visual in that it's fascinating because omas hadn't been

on television in about three months and had it wrestled in about three months and all of a sudden this match came from nowhere but again vince did put himself back in this position as executive chair and he pretty much unilaterally can do whatever he wants to do here by the bylaws the bylaws that he changed by the way um i did hear by the way from a stockholder today that this morning the stockholders all got an email officially making them aware of all of the changes that have occurred in the pecking order and the executive board of wwe it took until today but they finally were all given an email that broke down exactly the chain of command and how things went down back in the beginning of january which i just thought was fascinating that it took to this

point but any surprises of that did you look at that or is it was just it was just recapping every that has happened already. And it kind of mentioned that, you know, the stockholders have nothing to worry about or that they can do about it, essentially. It mentioned him removing the three individuals from the executive board previously, all the resignations that have occurred. So John Hay says the original email went to spam. I like that.

And listen, organization is a big thing. And I think it's time we tell our friends, Eric, about our newest friends over at Empira. This has been a company that you and I have gone to know the last week or so. We've had some conference calls with our friends, Ash and Dean. And I'm curious how you can best put this in words for all of our strictly business and even our 83 weeks listeners and viewers here. Because I feel so many people are ambitious with wanting to start a business or maybe they're running a business, but they don't have the organizational skill set or maybe the infrastructure to organize. But Impera wants to change all that, does it not? It does. And in terms

of the best description, I think I heard it on one of those conference calls is Empira is a tool. It's a very intuitive, easy to use, but powerful tool that gives small business owners, whether you're a business of one or a business of 10 or a business of 200 or more. It gives you a very powerful tool that's easy to use that allows you to focus on your business instead of focusing on being in your business. And I can tell you that having that infrastructure behind you, especially, you know, if you're a sole proprietor, if you're sitting there by yourself and you're making widgets half of the day

and the other half of the day, you're shipping those widgets out and you're doing all that work. When you're done shipping widgets at night, you're going to have to sit back and think about your marketing and your promotion and you're going to have to track your business. You're going to have to determine what's working and what's not working. That's a lot of work and a lot of research unless it's kind of all there right in front of you. and you can do it intuitively, and you can have important goalposts or pillars right in front of you

so that you can see if you're reaching your monthly goals or your yearly goals or whatever it is. And it's a fascinating tool, and I think if you're a smaller business and you've got five, 10, 15 people, even more important. Because as a business owner, the person that said, or the people that woke up one morning and said, let's launch this business. We think we can make it work. That's working on your business. But if you're so overwhelmed because you're not keeping track

and you're not managing your business, now you're in your business instead of working on your business. And when I be on your business, I mean, what's the next step in our growth? Where's the next opportunity? How couldn't we improve our customer service? How can we sell more widgets? How can we sell more podcast, damn it? And by the way, John Alba and I are not only excited about this tool,

but we are signed up for this tool and we're going to be using this tool along with producer Steve to help us build strictly business and in our relationship with advertisers and our merchandising and our marketing and our promotion. We're going to do a deep dive in this and I think over the next several weeks and months we're going to be taking you to our dashboard and showing you exactly how we're using this phenomenal tool. And I want to Say this one more time. Anybody that's been listening to my podcast or watching or anything that regularly engages with me digitally,

I'm kind of slow when it comes to tech. When I can figure it out easily, anybody can. And this is a very powerful, intuitive tool. That was the craziest thing. We logged into the dashboard. And then we had Dean, who was one of several representatives who literally, help you step by step understand what the dashboard looks like and how to organize your entire

back plan piece by piece by piece, whether it's, as Eric mentioned, wanting to set objectives or assigning roles to individuals in your company that will help you, and this is the biggest word that we kept talking about. It will help you hold yourself accountable and your employees accountable for getting the job done, whatever your job may be. And Empira wants to help you do that, head on over to Empira.com. That's E-M-P-I-R-A-A dot com forward slash Eric and use the code wrestle biz, W-R-E-S-T-L-E-B-I-Z, for 14 days free and 20% off your subscription.

So you can try this thing out and see firsthand how effective it can be for helping organize your business plan because a lot of us, Eric, creative thinkers. We're big thinkers. We have big ideas, but we need a little help formulating that plan. And that's exactly what Imper is here to help you do. Yeah, and I hate to keep plugging this thing, but I'm so excited about it because, you know, everybody knows, man, if you're going to launch a business, you have to have a really good business plan. Imperi gives you the opportunity to have a tool to help you execute the business plan because a good plan means absolutely nothing if you don't know how to follow it and you don't know

how to track yourself. So I can't wait for next week because we're going to actually show people our dashboard and walk them through it and all that. So it'll be fun. Empira.com. That's EMPI-R-A dot com forward slash Eric. Use that code wrestle biz for 14 days free and 20% off your subscription. This is not just an advertisement, my friends. This is something that Eric and I are practically using here for Strictly Business. And we are so grateful for them and their support of Strictly Business. That's the other thing too. I want to say the guys running impera love pro wrestling they are oh they do they are they are just like you and i they got on that zoom call with eric bischoff and they were freaking out because they love

professional wrestling and we love imperia here at strictly business anything else you want to add on them eric no we're good brother impura dot com forward slash eric use that promo code wrestle biz let's get back to our business at hand as well uh this was one that you actually our way earlier in the week, Eric. And it's regarding some of those creative plans for WrestleMania, perhaps. And it was that Triple H reportedly, according to wrestling news.com, wants a smaller card this year. And that means that a lot of names that you'd figure would be on the WrestleMania card,

which is a two-day event, by the way, may be held off WrestleMania all together here. How does that go over, Eric, when people maybe think that they deserve a spot on the card or They want to get that big payday, and then all of a sudden, well, maybe they find themselves off of it. I understand that. I mean, I've never been in that position, so I don't have first hand experience, obviously, but it's not hard to figure out how that would be disappointing. You know, for a lot of talents, I don't think anybody, well, maybe some, but I think the majority of people that, you know, make that commitment and make a serious commitment

and strive and grow to become a part of the WWE roster, that's a big, you know, it's no different than a high school football player waking up one day and saying, okay, I'm going to be in the NFL. The odds are probably about the same. It's a big, big commitment. And the odds of reaching that level where you can even potentially be involved with WrestleMania is such a rare thing that I can certainly understand as time has gone on now. and I'm guessing a large part of that roster

for as long as they've been associated with WWE, the WWE WrestleMania has been a two-day event and long formats and tons of matches. So, you know, perhaps for some, that brass ring, that dream is within their grasp. And now all of a sudden, because of a potential format change or even a discussion of it,

that stage, called WrestleMania is going to get much smaller, which means we don't need as much, as many actors, right? Performers. So I can understand why that would be disappointing, but that's one of those things. Man, you've got to learn to live with that. You just got to go with that and refine your goals

and decide you're going to get so good that you're not going to be on the chopping block next year, regardless of the format. It's the only way you can look at it and stay positive and be and stay a pro and advance. You know, you've got the choices. You can either be mope, piss and moan about it, moat, feel bad, complain to your significant others

or anybody else that'll listen to you. You can do that. Or you can go, okay, it's going to be a little harder to reach that goal. But guess what? It's going to be more profitable because you're not splitting all that revenue with as many people. The pie has gotten a little smaller, but the chunks of that said,

have gotten a little bigger. It wasn't part of the appeal of moving to two nights being it so that people could get on the card without having to have a seven and a half hour WrestleMania show that was one night instead? You know, I guess that's, yeah, I would assume wasn't part of the discussion, but that makes sense. That makes sense.

I guess by saying, my point in saying that is, so if you're going to make it a smaller card, What was the point of going to two nights in the first place then other than obviously revenue? Yeah, but both of those nights are still pretty long, dude. I mean, for the average fan, how, now I haven't sat through an entire two-day WrestleMania in the audience, but how long of a show is that? Let's keep mind, you're going to get, you're going to get to your seat an hour or so before the show. They're about four-hour shows.

That's a long time, especially back-to-back. There are four-hour shows. You're going to get there an hour before. You've got to park. It's almost a full day. You're going to get up, go eat breakfast, throw your stuff on, and go to the venue to sit for four hours. And then, oh, by the way, it's going to take you an hour and a half

or two hours to get home. It's tough. I don't know. I'm not there. But I understand how people would be disappointed if the actual, format is reduced in terms of time, and therefore instead of 30 matches over two nights or whatever it is, 24 matches over two nights, there's only 18, but those 18 people are going to get more time and they don't have to cut the pie up as many times.

Did you have the privilege or misfortune of ever attending one of those insanely long WrestleMania's from like, WrestleMania like 33 to 39, they were like, six, seven-hour shows. No. Lucky you. Couldn't, wouldn't. Lucky you. Holy geez, was it brutal?

It was brutal. You're talking about full-day events. It's like a 10-plus-hour extravagance. I felt like I went to work when I was watching. It was crazy. Do you like the idea of a two-day show, though, in general? Does that take a, away from the grandiose of WrestleMania, or does that add to it, in your opinion?

I think it adds to it. You know, it makes the week, and now it's a weekend. Not Friday nights, you're part. It's like a Super Bowl for crying out loud, you know, with all the events that go on before the Super Bowl, and it's a social event. And I don't remember, you know, I can never keep the numbers of the pay-per-view straight, but it might have been, when was the last one they had in New York? that was 35 what year was that that was 2019 might have been no because i was working for

wwee in 2019 you weren't back didn't you go back in the summer of that year oh yeah yeah yeah yeah i did so maybe it was and i remember i had i was doing a signing or something i was i was there for that pay-per-view if it's the same one but it was in new york and i stayed at a hotel downtown right right in Manhattan. And I remember sitting around with a bunch of folks and having fun. I remember wrestling fans. A lot of people stayed there.

And fans all aggregated there at the bar. And I remember sitting there and I got the, oh, what was the year that Brett Hart got attacked in his Hall of Fame speech? That was the same year. Okay, that was the year. So I remember sitting there that first night of WrestleMania and thinking, oh, it's going to be kind of fun when the fans come back. in. And so I went up to my room and did whatever I did.

And I came back down to the bar about 11 o'clock thinking, okay, the party's going to be started here shortly. And a lot of the people that were at WrestleMania were still not there. Now, this is not a far ride, right? Turns out a lot of them staggered in after midnight because the trains, they couldn't get on a train. Yeah, the trains that meant like the show went. The trains that met life stadium were brutal and they were literally cut off because the event went so late and that was when it was that was the last one night WrestleMania that yeah that was like and I'm thinking man I would never I'd chew off

my leg before I'd do that it was a long day it was a long day there was even some precipitation too I was at that show and it was definitely long Hulk open up the show early on yeah look at that there you go WrestleMania NJ transit snap foo NJ Trans initially planned for the event to end at 1030 but it actually ended at 1230 wow now it ended at 1230 and you got to get a cab or get on a train you're going to get home at 3 o'clock in the morning yeah but i had fun at the bar there you go that's all that matters at the end of the day we got one more topic here on strictly business and again a reminder guys if you love strictly business make sure you're subscribe to the 83 weeks youtube channel

make sure you're subscribe to the 83 weeks podcast feed 83 weeks dot com is where you're going to find Strictly Business every week in addition to 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff. That's your Monday treat. Strictly Business is usually your Thursday treat, a double dosage of EZE coming straight to your ears and your eyes. Make sure you're subscribed right now. Let's get to this last topic here, Eric. We've been kind of following the live golf stuff out of almost morbid curiosity, if you will. That's a great way of putting it, right? Because, you know, the Saudis are connected to it. feel like they're kind of in the periphery of this WWE conversation. And as we talked about a few weeks ago,

they were able to get a broadcast deal with the CW. And, well, the debut on CW was not great. The Saturday broadcast drew a total, a total nationwide audience of

286,000 fans and on Sunday increased to 291,000 fans. The Honda Classic, the PGA, meanwhile, tallied 1.61 million on Saturday and 2.38 million on Sunday, which of course had broadcast rights. What do you think of those numbers for live golf there, Eric? Is there a little ick with all that? Well, there could be an upside. Like, if every viewer for live golf was in the upper 3% income bracket in the United States and had significant disposable income and all of whom were card carrying members of some country club

and they played golf all the time and were looking to buy really expensive stuff, it might not be horrible. But I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case. And that number just screams. help yeah it just screams help I don't know man

I don't know how they're going to make that work well it's the Saudis they don't care they got plenty of money right it's the thing about people with plenty of money is performance is not really the big thing and this is a long-term play for them I don't know that I mean I don't know anybody in the golf business or certainly don't know

any Saudis but maybe they're looking at this as a long-term long-term play. I don't know. But here's the thing that sucks about that. It goes even beyond how bad it did in terms of ad revenue or any other metric that matters. Who's going to be interested in you now? Sometimes it's better to sell potential than it is performance. Meaning, if I'm whoever it was that was heading up those TV negotiations, I don't know if it wouldn't have been smarter, especially now that I have the benefit of 2020 hindsight to go, you know what, let's just wait a couple years. Let's keep building up this roster. Let's keep

creating some controversy. Let's have some exciting gameplay that we can tease and put out there and social media and other ways and to help promote us before we launch on television. Because once you launch on television and you mess the bed, you're kind of stuck with it. And it's hard to get rid of it. Yeah. And it's crazy because they have name recognition wise some of the biggest names in the game and yet those are the numbers you're attracting producer steve pulls up the xFL stuff 50% decline from week one to week two there with an average of 650,000 viewers across four games in week two first week did a little over a million and then you're seeing there the averages for the live golf ratings on cw around

289 i don't know man i think a lot of it it's kind of what we talked about last week with the xFL too it's just like anything that is not the primary brand is going to come off as less than and that's why i do give a w and tony con credit in that they launched a promotion that certainly did not come off as less than uh for the first few years of its existence you know people had it in the national discourse very strongly much more so than any other national pro wrestling entity that has launched since WCW folded. Well, there have been none.

Come on. Now you're going to get dizzy. You're spinning so hard. TNA. TNA did. I mean, TNA, TNA delivered a higher percentage of WVE's audience at that time for everybody that's going to jump on to,

yeah, but you can't compare then to now. Step back. Get out a calculator. Look at WVE's rating during the TNA period and look at TNA's rating during said period and compare the percentages on those. TNA did a better job in a head-to-head in a compare, on a comparative basis than AEW is doing right now.

I'm pretty sure I'm right. I've never calculated that, but I bet I'm right. I have always wondered if TNA had been around in the age of Twitter, if it might have had it was around. All Dixie Carter ever did. She'd sit in Guerrilla with her phone and she wouldn't even watch the monitor. She's only watching Twitter responses. I mean, I mean the like 0405, 06 era of TNA before, you know, the big guns were brought in like yourself.

If how things might have been different. That's not true either. Come on now. Jeff Hardy was there. But Twitter was not what it was in 2006. when it launched what it is now. The influence was not as significant then as it was now. Real-time content aggregation wasn't happening then like it is now.

Even in 2010. Absolutely. So it's just always been something I've been curious about. That's all. Yeah. So that's just something to peek in on LiveGolf and the Saudis. Yeah, just part of that discourse there. Anything else on your mind here, Eric,

is we can begin to wrap things up on Strictly Business? I know you like these rapid fire discussions where we hit on a few different I do I like them I like hitting on a bunch of little things and we'll do you know we'll do some long farm stuff we get the right interview so it's got to be compelling though we can't just do an interview for the sake of doing an interview and expect people to be engaged and listen just like you can't you know write a crappy storyline and expect it's not compelling people aren't engaged they won't come back to listen so or watch so we're going to we're going to save the long

kind of discussions when we have experts. So it's not just my opinion because I'm not an expert on anything, but having an opinion, really good at that. But yeah, when we get an expert in like Brian Bedal that we had or others that we've had, absolutely. We'll do long form interviews again.

But until we have those really compelling interviews or stories, then we're just going to wrap it fire on headlines about the business, the bids of the rest of the business, empirist style. Empira style again, guys, check out our friends over at Empira. They're doing fantastic work. Empira.com slash Eric and use that promo code wrestle biz for 14 days for free and 20% off with 24-7 support.

They've got people stationed all around the globe, so they are there to help you out. And if you want more strictly business 83 weeks.com, add free shows.com. And the 83 weeks YouTube channel is where you're going to find Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff and myself every single week. And we also encourage you to leave a five-star review. It goes such a long way. You can even do that right on the 83 weeks podcast page. Leave that five-star review.

It helps us grow our brand and grow our show every single week. Eric, thank you so much, my friend. I hope you have a great weekend. I'm looking forward to doing this. Adios, we'll see you all next week right here on Strictly Business.