83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff #42: Bray Wyatt, CM Punk's Future, WWE NFL Championship Belts

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

In this week's edition of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff offers his thoughts on Bray Wyatt's passing. After, Eric and Jon Alba discuss CM Punk's future in AEW following the incident at AEW All In, All In's fallout, and look at WWE's new deal with the NFL for licensed championship belts. Special thanks to this week's sponsor! BlueChew- Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code WRESTLEBIZ at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. 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 On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get rid of your credit card debt, get a lower monthly payment, and skip your next two house payments at save withconrad.com. NMLS number 65084, equal housing lender. You don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket to save thousands with save withconrad.com. Find out how much money you can save right now at save with Conrad.com. What's going on, everyone, it's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff, presented to you by the ad-free shows and podcast. He networks. I'm John Alba, and I'm joined, as I am every single week by the man of the hour. Mr. Eric Bischoff.

Oh, and the crowd goes wild. Oh, I love each and everyone. Okay. There it is. Right there. There it is. I'm grateful every single week I get a chance to talk to you. This week I talk to like five different people that are like, I'm so jealous.

You get to sit across from Eric Bischoff every single week. I said this week, I got to sit across them twice because we hopped on 83 weeks together. We did our all-in recap. Now we're doing strictly business, all available on the ad-free shows network for early access. Of course, how's it going today? It's going good. And by the way, speaking of the recap of All In, I have to do a recap of a recap or of the recap, I should say. And it really is more than that.

It's just an apology because in my, I'm going to call it passion, but whatever, some people might call it an exaggeration. My wife would call it an exaggeration. I get a little, you know, over the top sometimes. It's happened. really me trying to make a point as emphatically as i'm capable of making and i made a broad generalization fairly broad generalization that with the exception of of one or two matches it was basically a gimmick fest because there were so many gimmick matches and so much blood and so much ridiculous stuff and that is even though a lot of people like it and for all of you that do

yeah you got a mega dose for me it's just it's not my thing But in the process of trying to make a point, I kind of threw the FTR box match in kind of that same category, and I shouldn't have. It wasn't a gimmick match. In fact, the match stayed in the ring. There was no blood. It was just a great wrestling match. Now, I did have a couple issues with it. I'm not going to go over it again.

But these are little details, really. It was a great match. It was a solid match. and it was not a gimmick match. And to kind of throw them into that bucket was a mistake of my part. I apologize for it. Okay. There you go.

There's a definitely. And I got that word. I got that note from someone for whom I have a lot of trust and respect. So there you go. Okay. I, there was a lot of discourse over the indie show. on steroids comment i think this is a wrestling podcast on steroids that's a t-shirt there i'm telling you because this is that you never know what's going to get out of the woodworks here on strictly

business it was a good recap go out of your way check it out 83 weeks dot com eric and i ran through the entire all-in card which we are not going to be doing here on this edition of strictly business because we do have a lot to talk about and because we were in such a time crunch on 83 weeks for the recording was the last second recording we didn't get a chance to talk about the passing of Bray Wyatt, which occurred pretty much the news broke, I think maybe an hour after you and I stopped recording last week. So it's certainly a loss that has impacted a lot of people in the wrestling industry. I know you put a lot of emphasis on creativity and forward thinking and storytelling. And I think Bray was one of those people who was at the forefront of that.

What are your thoughts about Bray's passing and any words you'd like to offer here? well i certainly my i can't imagine what the rotunda family's going through i just i cannot put myself in their shoes it's impossible for me to do that it hurts too much to be honest to to to really try um and i pray for him and you know mike rotunda and the rest of the family i don't really know mike that well we work together for a brief period of time and nothing but respect for him as a pro, but as a human being, I can't, I can't fathom. And, and all I can do is say prayer. You know, I didn't, I didn't get, I didn't get to know, Bray. Um, you know, Bray was obviously in WWE for that cup of coffee that I had there back in 2019. But I didn't

work with Bray. In fact, not too many people did. Ray had his own team, um, and a small team of people that he worked very closely with on the creative. I would hear about it. But I was, I never got, I never even got to be a fly on the wall. And my loss, you know, everybody that I've talked to and read, who posted so much great stuff about Gray, who really did know him, he clearly was a very special person. And the creativity that manifests as a result of his gifts, I don't think we'll see anything like that in a long time

because it was special. It was real for him, and it was special. And he touched people with it. And you wouldn't think that, would you? You know, because it's such an if you just,

like if you'd never heard of professional wrestling and you completely outside of the culture and get dropped down by a UFO or whatever they're calling them now, and you said you were plopped down in front of a television, you saw that character. You wouldn't think that that was a character, just visually speaking, that would touch people the way it clearly, clearly did, but it did.

So I wish I would have gotten at home. It's my loss. The original Bray Wyatt presentation with the Wyatt family and that backwoods, cult figure style character, I felt was one of the most innovative characters of the last 15, 20 years. And it really felt to me, and I'm curious because you knew Dusty so well, watching it from afar, it felt like there was so many Dusty Road. fingerprints all over that character yeah there's some there's some there's some Rhodes DNA floating around you know in the in creative space out there in the

universe because that really was it just had that feel it just did and you know I remember watching that you know this I wasn't even associated with with wrestling at all during that period of time I think I was and I remember watching that cool that's good but yeah it's uh it certainly had a Dusty Roads influence, didn't it? There's a great story. It's in the NXT book that WW put out in NXT book maybe eight years ago, seven years ago,

where Wyndham talked about how when he was conceiving this character after he had a short run on the main roster as Husky Harris, he conceived this character with Dusty Rhodes. And he wasn't really sure if he could fully immerse himself in it. And you're going to love this. Dusty told him, Wyndham got called for Jersey.

duty he told him to go to jerry duty in full character as oh my gosh so oh he went so awesome he went to jerry duty in the white pants the Hawaiian backwoodsy shirt the hat and everything and he presented himself as windham rotunda but all in character as bray wyatt as he was workshopping it and he didn't get picked for jury duty needless to say but he said it was one of those experiences that kind of allowed him to really find who the Bray Wyatt character was. Isn't that, I mean, that's method acting. You know, that advice that Dusty gave to, to Bray, Wyndham, was classic method acting, become the character,

get comfortable in that character outside of the environment that you're going to be performing in. Wow. That's so freaking cool. Isn't it? that's cool it is cool what a loss for the pro wrestling world i thought w w w just did a stellar job with its tribute to him and to terry funk as well over the course of the past few days so our condolences here at strictly business to the rotunda family the terry funk family and

everyone who is affected by that certainly so okay eric all in we talked about the card on 83 weeks now we've had a few days to digest some of the fallout of it it. We know that the 81,000 people plus number was a legitimate number per PW insider. They confirmed Tony Kahn's claim on that. And Tony said altogether there were about 90,000 plus people in the building, all things considered. Now that you've had a few days to marinate on the show, what kind of impact do you think this will have, if any at all, on the industry moving forward? We heard all in two is going to be happening next year at Wembley Stadium as well. and it seems like the all-in, all-out package is going to be a thing going forward.

So your first question was, what impact do I think it will have on the wrestling business going forward? If any at all, if any at all. And I don't think it will. I think not on the business as a whole, certainly for AEW it will, right? I mean, they've got bragging rights. They've got something to talk about. You know, you can sit down with advertisers and potential sponsors. and you've got something that's real and matters.

So for AEW, I think it's going to mean a lot for a while. When I say, wow, I mean a long while, not a short while. But will it affect the industry as a whole? No, it won't. The industry is going to continue to grow, apparently. It's certainly not showing any signs of decline. You know, WWE is breaking records every single day. Their revenues are breaking records all the time.

Their quarterly reports are just keep getting better. I think the business is very, very healthy. And no reason to think it won't continue to grow. But I don't think the success, the undeniable success of All In is going to affect it one way or the other. It's just another indicator. that it's a very healthy business. I guess my reason for asking was let's turn the clock back five years ago before the original All In show.

And all of this built on that one Twitter exchange between Cody Rhodes and Dave Meltzer, where Dave suggested that nobody anytime soon could fill out 10,000 fans in arena outside of WWE. And we know they took on that challenge. It happened. That ultimately leads to AW's existence. with a company doing 81,000 plus fans for a pro wrestling show, does that pave the way for viability for other companies

should the right circumstances come together? And there's a lot of circumstances, obviously. But does it show that this marketplace is an area where growth can exist? Or is this a microcosm and just a one-off kind of thing in your opinion? I don't think either of those things are true. Okay. let's be honest you know Tony is the son of a multi-billionaire sure and Tony's father if based on what I've read now I obviously don't know how much of this is true if any but from

what I've been led to believe and I think perhaps Tony has said it himself something to the effect of Tony's father decided hey well than waiting until I die to get your inheritance Why don't you take it now? And that's a pretty unique situation, right? How often does that happen? Very, very unique. And Tony, being passionate about wanting to be in the rest in business, was willing and able to spend an unlimited amount of money.

I say unlimited. Everything's going to limit. An enormous amount of money, whatever that is, I think initially what I heard was $100 million that he had set aside out of his early inheritance to build the AEW brand. Again, don't know if it's accurate, inaccurate, whatever. But the end of the story is, Tony has a lot of money to pursue his passion. I think it'll be a long time before we see a circumstance like that again.

And what does that mean? Well, within the context of your question, if we're looking at the wrestling business as any other industry, and take Tony out of it or take Tony's unique entry into the business and put that off to the side. Are there other businesses? Are there other entertainment conglomerates or startups that would be willing to do the same thing? I kind of doubt it. And the reason I say that is because the the market for wrestling is fairly saturated do I see within the television universe and I and I don't believe you can really have a successful wrestling company or a live event company without television

unless you're in a music yeah and then you radio and streaming and all that um I I don't see it I don't see a big entertainment company I'm just going to pick a name out of the hat you know lion's gate for example they make movies they make television Do I see them going, hey, this wrestling thing looks pretty interesting. Maybe we can have the success of an AEW in such a short period of time. I don't think so. In fact, I absolutely don't think so. And again, let me finish up on Tony.

Tony's in a unique position where he doesn't have to answer to anybody. Obviously, he does the network, right? But he's not under any financial pressure. We don't hear how much AEW is actually making or losing. that's all privately held and no reason that we should it's privately held companies private investment they want us to know to tell us if they don't they won't but as long as you're operating in a unique world where you have effectively an unlimited amount of money and you're not being held to account financially like most businesses that would invest in wrestling would example

a lion's gate if they're going to if lionsgate or any other company was going to invest a hundred million dollars in the effort, there would be benchmarks, there would be goals, there would be people making sure that you're making progress along the way according to a business plan. Tony doesn't have to worry about that. Any other big company would. And I don't think another company would come along and make the kind of financial decisions that Tony has made within a typical corporate investment framework. I just will see it. Tony did confirm on the media call, by the way, something that we had talked about on Strictly Business, which was that there was a bundle option explored for all in and all out for this year. And he said that,

The way that traditional cable companies lay out their pay-per-view currently, it just was not viable due to all of them having different options. There was not a one-size-fits-all way of actually getting that done. But he did say that going forward with all in and all out, they are going to look at the real estate that exists out there in the space and determine how they can distribute something like that. So I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility for a bundle to exist in the future, just not at this moment in time without how things currently. exist. Yeah, and who knows, 12 months from now, 11 months from now, the technology may exist. And the distributors of live, I'm going to call them pay-per-view events, whatever you want to call them, premium live events, whatever. Maybe they'll be, maybe it'll be an easier function. And the framework will be there 11 months from now. Technology is moving pretty quick. So who knows? Now one thing we do got to talk about coming out of

all in you know those those old like scenes in movies or tv shows and you go to the factory it says it has been x amount of days since our last accident or x amount of days since our last incident well we made it when do we make it two and a half weeks without our last cm punk incident and unfortunately we did get one here yeah you got one 48 hours after you know i called out CM Punk. And we talked about, you know, my thoughts on CM Punk. And I've predicted in the past that this isn't over. The one incident where guys were biting each other and fighting back in a locker and all that said, that wasn't a one-off deal. You've got a guy that, you know, like an incident happens. It happened under my watch. It's not like, you know, there weren't confrontations

backstage or certainly were. But when you're done, they're done. And you move on. And you move on and everybody's a pro it's not what you've got right now in ewe and i said it right after the first incident and and social media universe oh you're the old man yelling at the clouds and you're jealous of tony con and tony won't hire you so you're just man all this you know third grade bullshit but i predicted it it's a pattern you know one-offs happen but when they happen over and over and over again, you know, it's a dot here. It's a dot there. It's another doubt over there. Oh, hey, right before his match, he gets into a confrontation with Jack Perry. You could pick him up in lawn dart him across a parking lot for crying out loud.

What is Jack Perry doing getting to anybody's face for crying out loud? That's a separate subject. But, you know, you take those dots, those one-off incidents, and you start connecting them. And before you know it, you've got a picture. And I don't know. And it's why I was so outsour. spoken it's you know i was probably a little tough referring to tony and the way he's not handling the situation and and i i get emotional or passion whatever you want to call it about it because i see it happening it's like being able to see a movie before it's made i and partly because i lived it a version of it yeah and it just it's it's mind boggling to me you know in in all of the the discourse that I saw in social media after the all-in event.

And I made a point not to read any of it until after we did our recap show because I really, again, I'm capable of being influenced by things I read or hear or see. And I just wanted to come at that recap completely off of having just watched it without any noise affecting my perception of it at all. but after we got done and I started looking through social media it's like I would say seven out of ten posts were all about Jack Perry and see and punk getting into bra and by the way remember when we did the recap I'm going to do another recap version of the recap and I said you know I think I

rated that match of six with Samoa Joe and see a punk you liked it you said you enjoyed it no I said it was solid I didn't it wasn't my think my exact words were it's not good. It's not bad. It's solid, but I thought the pace was slow. I thought that punk looked like he was out of gas, two minutes going, you know, two minutes into the match. And I didn't think he was out of gas. I want to make that clear. He just was selling, like he just got done running a marathon and then jumped in the ring. But maybe the fact that they had to have a pull apart and not to physically, probably didn't take too much out of them. But that's a pretty distracting thing. Right. And Joe was involved.

evidently, from what I've read, it's true. Imagine you're a business owner relying on a dozen different software programs. Each one disconnected, more expensive, and more complicated than the last. It can be incredibly stressful, right? Now, picture Odu. Odu brings all the tools your business needs into one simple platform, CRM, accounting, inventory, manufacturing, marketing, HR, and more. All seamlessly connected.

Everything works together giving you the peace of mind that your business is running smoothly from every angle. Odu's open source applications are user-friendly and designed to scale with your business, save you time and money. Say goodbye to juggling multiple platforms and hello to efficient integrated management. Stop wasting resources on complicated systems and make the switch to O-D-O-2 today. Visit O-D-O-O-D-O-com and discover how O-D-O-D-O-O-D-com and discover how O-D-S simplify in streamline your business operations. Odu, modern management made simple.

Man, what a weird way to start pay-per-view. Yeah, well, and I think the saddest part about it is all in, regardless of whether you liked the show itself in terms of the content on the show, it's undoubtedly the biggest business success AW has had to date in terms of all the tickets, sold, the pay-per-views,

everything. The $10 million gate, it's a huge success for them in a vacuum. but then for the headlines to be stolen so much from this incident that occurred in the first match of the main card, it really takes away from the goodwill that you're building up in the public discourse. Does that ultimately matter? Who's to say, right? At the end of the day, who's to say how much that stuff matters? I think it's a precarious situation, Eric, because punk clearly has a high degree of value to some one or some entity associated with my my gut and but i'm saying to someone my gut is given how

everything's been presented with collision is that warner brother's discovery and we talked about this with andrew zarian when he was on our podcast they view cm punk as an important piece of marketing that show and i just think the leverage there aids him it was a mistake and here's what happens when you have executives who don't know anything about the wrestling business or the people in it making decisions like that. If indeed that was the case, we don't know that. But let's assume that you're right. And Tony kind of hoped all of the negative stuff was behind him because this collision is opportunity there because there are executives in Turner that have this value that they think that punk provides.

Well, they're not wrestling fans for the most part. They don't know. They've never worked with them. So what do they do? They do research. And I've been part of this. I've seen, believe me, I talk about research all the time. You know, when the subject comes up, I love talking about research.

I was, I had, I was blessed to be a part of a pretty extensive research project while we were developing nitro that really, really impressed me and helped guided the creation of nitro on some of the unique things that I was doing. At the time, they were very, very innovative. Nobody else was doing them. And a lot of those ideas came from the research that we did. So I'm a firm believer in research. Why I follow Brandon Thurston, for example.

I'm a numbers guy at heart. But research can also come back to bite you in the ass. Now, I've not talked about this too much in the past, maybe occasionally. But I've also been involved in some pretty horrible research. while working for WCW early on when I was still and I was an announcer but I was getting more involved and I think I was actually interviewed by the group that was doing some of the research and you know Turner spent a fortune on it it was a very extensive research a lot of focus groups and all that and they took all that data and they reduced it down into a presentation and part of that

presentation, I'm going to paraphrase all of this. I don't remember exactly what it said. But essentially, they walked us through all their findings and why they thought this research was so valuable. And then they got to the section of the presentation where they talked about talent. And I'm trying to remember specifically the way it was presented, and it might be hard on this podcast. But essentially, they sat down and said, we think you have a problem because you've got a small handful of, you know, talent. that the audience really likes. But a lot of these guys, the audience hates them.

They were heels. You laugh. You laugh. So, Turner probably spent $250,000, $300,000 in this research. That's unbelievable. And they get us all together in a room, you know, a lot of the executives

and some of the people that were involved in helping with the research. And I was one of those people. and they're making this presentation to us. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, everybody on that list, they call it a cue rating or something. Everybody that's on this list of people that have a low Q factor or whatever, how are they referred to it, those are all heels.

They're supposed to be hated. And all the people that are on that we like that, those guys list were all baby faces. And Turner execs thought that was, great research. Yikes. So when we talk about, well, perhaps somebody in Turner, I'm sure they did their research. How many wrestling fans know who see him punk is? Well, he spent a fair amount of time at WWE and had a very high profile there. So amongst a wrestling audience that you're doing research with, you're going to get a very, very favorable reaction to that question, one that

would lead an executive that doesn't know the story behind it or has never worked with the talent to go, let's bet on that horse. That's a horse that can run. Well, if what you suggested or we're hanging out there as a possibility is true, you've got some executives that made a decision about a guy who, in my opinion, is cancer. Let's bring him into, let's double down. Let's bet on that horse. And Tony, of course, he's in a position where he's got, he's servicing his client. His client is turned. And if your client wants something, your job is to try to make it happen. Perhaps that's what went down. Or perhaps it's Tony. And Tony is just so confident in seeing punk. I use the word confident there because I'm really trying to be, is understanding as I could be in

the situation because I do have some empathy for Tony. I really do. Perhaps it was Tony that wanted to double down on that horse. Either way, whoever was behind it, I think, and I said it when it first happened, making a huge mistake. It is not a good idea. In the long run, it is still, as I said almost a year ago, whenever it was, when I got lambasted on social media by saying it was one of the worst financial investments in wrestling. Guess what? It's proven to be true. Long term. Well, and now you've got the All-Out show this week, which is in Chicago, CM Punk's territory. CM Punk being on that show is one of the big draws for that local crowd. And I would imagine for a portion of the audience that wants to purchase the pay-per-view as well,

and now you're in a position where we don't even know if he's going to be on the card this week. Tony did say on the media call he was asked about at point blank is seampunk going to be on this and he pretty much couldn't commit to it either way because they're still doing their investigation what's another bullshit thing okay I hear this so much about what's under investigation Tony was standing right there for crying out loud it it is what it is there what investigation what are you calling in the CSI team this is such and that's a part Now, that kind of flakiness doesn't work for me, brother. This is the time when a leader leads.

And if that means for all of you that bought tickets, because you thought CM Punk was going to be part of this event, we apologize. Obviously, a situation happened, and it had to be handled the correct way. For the sake of the rest of the roster and the business, long term. We apologize. Punks aren't going to be here this time.

Maybe next time. Take the bullet. It's a wound. It's going to bleed. It's going to hurt. You're going to limp a little bit after. But people will respect you for that. The rest of the roster will respect you. The fans will respect. They may not like it at first. Of course you're not going to like it, especially if they bought tickets because they wanted to see Punk.

But, man, you got it. At some point, it's a. The answer is yes or no, and it's under investigation for crying out loud. It's that as much empathy as I have for Tony and as much as I'm really trying to put myself in his shoes because I've been in not that type of a situation, but I've been in situations that are parallel in many respects. But you've got to make a stand. and being wishy-washy and what was supposed to be a press conference and saying, well, we're not really sure.

You owe it to your audience to either say, yes, he will or no, he won't. And there's nothing wrong with if you need a compromise because he was advertised on the show, let him work the show and then suspend him. But this, oh, I don't know if he will or he won't. That's weak.

I don't care who you are. I don't care how much you love AEW. I don't care how compassionate or how much grace you may have. That's just weak. I think Tony underestimates a little bit the goodwill that he would have by taking a firm stance on it in a way similar to what you're describing. I think a lot of wrestling fans, you're going to get the vocal people, but I think a lot of people do like Tony Khan as a person.

and when you take a stance a hard stance on something like that just as any other sports team put in that situation would if an incident akin to that even though it's hard to imagine something akin to that happening in some other league if something like that happened you have to have some sort of this is what we're doing about it this is what you can expect and when we have more we'll let you know and i do think he underestimates how much goodwill that he would get from fans in taking a position like that but we'll see and the opposite john you're absolutely sure i think he would actually make himself a baby face i mean in a weird way yes you're going to get some vocal audience because look it is what it is that's right social media social media it's a hate fest

so you're going to get people that are they're they're going to react negatively but I would venture to say the vast majority of the audience would have some respect for Tony for having a backbone and because it also respects the rest of the roster which I think is important and here's another advantage in just coming out and calling it down the middle and quit playing games with the audience

because that's what it is is it holds punk accountable. Tony didn't get, Tony didn't choke. Jack Perry or whatever his name is, jungle, I keep wanting to call him Jungle Boy, and I know he doesn't go by that anymore, so I'm just hesitating. Tony didn't do that.

Those two did that. Let them pay the price. And that price also includes, aside from if they're suspended with pay or without pay, we don't know that either, do we? And that's a contractual issue. If they are suspended without pay, they're also going to pay the price with the audience

because now the audience is upset with them instead of being upset with Tony. I don't get it. This is not hard. This is really not complicated. It doesn't take a forensic. You don't have to call on the FBI, the Secret Service.

You don't have to do any of that stuff. You were standing right freaking there. Well, and Sean Ross Sapp report that there's actually security camps. camera footage. I caught the whole thing, too. I was going to take five minutes to do that investigation. I was standing there. Let me take a look at the footage to make sure I didn't miss

anything. Boom, we're done. So we'll see. Come on. Hey, Jack, take a walk. Go put on 30 or 40 pounds while you're gone. Look like a rest of a jiffy-loop guy. Come on. You know. Look, I respect talent. But I don't

have respect for people that do stupid shit like that. I mean, it's a one-off. It's a one-off. I think they're both bearing the brunt of this. I think both of them are taking fault. No, they're not. Punk will come back out and the audience was still good and not as far because he's the bad boy.

But I think in the public forum, there is blame to be passed around on both of them from people, but that's just my opinion. I think either way, regardless of which way the discipline happens here, Tony Conn is estimating how much goodwill he would earn. from fans by having a clear direction on where this goes. But look, there's still a couple more days before the show. So hopefully by the time that most people are purchasing the show, there will be some sort of direction made very clear. I mean,

they tease the idea that Ricky Steamboat might come out of retirement to face Ricky Starks in a strap match at this pay-per-view. So, hey, if that's what the substitute is for CM Punk not being on the show, and flipside, John, to your goodwill. And I agree with you. I think the audience will respect Tony. and respect the brand. Here's the flip side.

Since he wouldn't come out in his own press conference, 72 or so hours before the actual event or whatever it is, he wouldn't come out and tell the audience what's up. The same audience that is well aware of everything that's going on, obviously, most of them. Certainly within that press conference, people that are covering what's going on. If Tony decides not to put him on,

he's going to look horrible because people are going to know, wait a minute, you knew all this stuff and you didn't tell us till the last minute. There's great opportunity to create even more goodwill than AEW already has. And there's also a way to avoid the backlash that's going to come if punk's not there and you didn't tell everybody in advance. That's not good. That ain't good. I want to apologize, too, by the way, if my voice sounds a little hoary,

I was at Springsteen last night and you know for me Eric that's like my mental health clarity live music is like everything for me and everyone I should try that maybe it'll work for me oh dude I can't even tell you just go find a bar where there's a band playing

and just sit there for a couple hours and just take it all in it is the absolute best that's how my mental health checks go down every single week I make sure I get some live music in but everyone has their own method And I'm glad that we're living at a time and place where people are putting an emphasis on mental health.

And I want to talk to you about someone that we're pairing up with here on Strictly Business, who wants to help you guys out as well. I think it's so great. We're bringing mental health into discourse. Mental health is increasingly important. And it's something that, honestly, none of us really like to truly address. So I got a question for here. Are you feeling stuck?

Or does your mind? have you maybe dressing sharp but feeling dull at the same time, perhaps it's time for you to talk to a life coach. And I'd like to introduce you to fellow ad-free show supporter and wrestling fan, Steve, from a damn healthy dose of coaching. Steve is a certified ADHD life coach and getting you unstuck is what he does, period. Working together, he's going to come up with strategies and provide you with the tools you need to set you on the way. Eric Bischoff, I know life coaching is something you know firsthand very well quite a bit about and when it comes to mental health it's important how have you found life coaching from your very near and dear wife is helping other people

and how it can be maybe applied to the mental health spectrum well you know i i don't know a lot about life coaching other than the fact that my wife has been passionate about coaching and you know even the term life coaching it has a kind of a negative connotation sometimes You know, Laurie still refers to herself as a life coach. I guess she's just gotten so used to it. She doesn't think about it too much. But it's really a performance coaching to me because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a coaching system, technique, support that helps you to become better at what you need to become better at. You know, if you're a major league baseball player and I'm going to talk about something I know absolutely nothing about, but it seems kind of.

common sense if you're if you're a professional baseball player you just can't seem to connect with the ball you're good at all you're good at your position you're great at everything else but just can't seem to make contact what are you going to do you're going to go you're going to work with the batting coach yep to improve your performance to fix that one thing and it may be just one thing that's holding you back so whether you call life coaching performance coaching whatever you call it, to have somebody who's trained and can really help you isolate the things that are holding you back or causing you to engage in behavior or not engage in certain behaviors that will benefit you.

Why would you not do that? And I especially am interested. I'm going to learn more because I just heard about this recently, like right before the show. I'm very, very concerned about that diagnosis. Like anybody that follows me on social media knows, I'm kind of nervous about Big Pharma. I think far too often the go-to solution to almost any problem is a pill, a drug.

In this case, you know, you're talking about SSRIs. And these are chemicals, these are drugs that can rewire your brain, and not necessarily in a good way. So I think any alternative, especially with a good coach who knows how to work with people that have the ADHD issue, and there are a lot of them out there.

I know it's real, but getting to the cause of it and learning how to manage it so that it doesn't control you, I think that's an invaluable opportunity. And I know there's a lot of people out there that are either clinically diagnosed with ADHD or have convinced themselves they are.

Man, what a great opportunity to take a step in the right direction without taking a fist full of pills with it. And, you know, being comfortable with your coach is important too. And as I said, Steve is an ad-free shows fan. He's part of our family. He's a wrestling fan. So you know you're in good hands with someone you can feel comfortable talking to just on that alone.

And we want to help you out here at Strictly Business. To learn more, visit damn healthydose.com. that's d-a-M-N-Halthydose.com or email Steve, that's S-T-E-E-V at damn-healthydose.com for a free 30-minute consultation. And guess what? If you mention strictly business, Steve's going to provide you with the first two sessions for free to see if life coaching is a fit for you. So you got absolutely nothing to lose with our pal, Steve, here.

Don't wait if you're feeling stuck. Visit damn healthy dose. and put the work in with our pal, Steve. Hey, guys, need to call a quick time out here. I wanted to tell your listeners what I've been telling my listeners over at OU didn't know for a while now about all the cool things happening over at ads-free shows.com. On the latest edition of the False Finish, Zach Gowan talks about reaching the top of the pro wrestling world against incredible physical odds

before issues with immaturity got in his way. It's not a talent issue, it's a maturity issue. We want to see you continue to wrestle. try new characters, become a heel, try new things, find a groove, the doors open, just mature a little bit. But it was almost fatherly the way he sat me down and explained to me exactly why I was being released. And I'll always remember that. And I'll always thank Jim Ross every time I see him for that. As Dog and Cassio finished up their latest Ask Dog Anything, they kept the party going for ad-free shows members,

answering more questions on a bonus overrun. We were the main event. Me and Brian Christopher were the main event. Doug was in a up there match. Jamie Dundee was in a tag title match, I'm sure. And we just stopped and started playing pool and drinking. Like that was what we did. We pulled through the median and turned around and just called from a pay phone and said,

yeah, our car can't make it. That's just a small taste of what we got waiting for you with four levels to choose from. See for yourself why ads free shows is the best. value in wrestling today. Sign up now at ad-freeshows.com. I want to get to a couple of WWE items here on Strictly Business. This was a really interesting one, Eric, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this. Saudi Arabia invested $100 million in the PFL, the PFL being the professional Fighters League, which has existed.

I believe since 2017, 2018, as an alternative MMA organization to UFC, and Saudi Arabia invested $100 million in it this week. And as a result, the WWE stock actually took a little bit of a hit in anticipation of this TKO merger. As we know, WWE and UFC are going to be merging under one entity here. And the stock dropped on looking at the latest. It is down about 13 or about 12% today as things stand. And so significant, that's a significant drop.

How is the rest of the market doing? Is that not, not insignificant. I can look at the rest of the market right now. But as I pull that up, do you have any reaction to that? I know it's not anything you know anything about, but clearly Saudi Arabia investing in another entity that will directly compete with WWE, someone that it already has a working relationship with. That seems interesting, doesn't it? I mean, sure, it is interesting.

That's a lot for me to digest quickly and have a good, you know, since I know so little about it until just this moment. But I guess you could probably sit back if you're an investor, go, well, wait a minute. If Saudi Arabia is investing in this professional flight league and WWE and UFC are one company now, do we want to support wrestling and therefore a company that's competing against us in UFC or a parent company that owns UFC? Yeah, maybe I could see that could be a concern, but WWE is WWE and PFL is PFL. I just think that, you know, if you think about it for a second, obviously Saudi Arabia between what they've done in golf and their investment in sports across the board, they're trying to bring live event entertainment, mainstream entertainment to Saudi Arabia, perhaps not a conflict at all. Yeah, I mean, $100 million is not insignificant.

for an organization like PFL, especially as it looks to gain more grounds in the space. This does seem like it's somewhat of an anomaly from the rest of the market. I just did an overview, mostly everything's kind of holding as is today. So this is a pretty significant development, just maybe not something to look into long term. But as things stand today, it's 11.5% down as of 3.40 p.m. last check. So that was just an interesting note I wanted to pull up. But this is the one that I've been waiting to talk to you about. This is so fascinating from a license discussion.

I'm going to throw these belts up here, Eric, if you're watching on the 83 weeks, YouTube, you get a chance to see it there. This was announced on August 28th. The NFL and WWE announced a multi-year licensing deal to create NFL-inspired WWE legacy title belts featuring the official colors and branding of at the time, all 32 teams. The line of officially licensed NFL products launched at NFL Shopping. dot com, www.com, and fanatics.com. This marks the first ever licensing agreement between the WWE and NFL. So two of the biggest entities out there coming together here to create this. Now, there's one thing that stood out to me, right off the bat, Eric, looking at these championship belts, there is no WWE branding on them whatsoever. It is strictly just the NFL team's logos all

over it. And we've seen the sports leagues adapt the WWE championship as a way to celebrate winning a world championship in their respective sports with the WWE branding on it. But this is uniquely different. And the price tag on each of these is more than $500 a piece. What do you think about this from a licensing perspective for WWE? Clearly, if their logo is not on this, they got to be getting a pretty good cut of this deal overall. Do you think? And here's what I love a love this deal is how many years ago was it when w we first started just sending those belts to championship teams right just and of course the players got a whole of it and they're having fun and they're partying they're on a parade and a float drinking beer having champagne celebrating

a big win and they hold up their wwe belt that was that to me is brilliant that's i'm going to go off the track here and i'm because this will explain why i think it was brilliant Years ago, I heard a story about how, and I'm searching my memory here. I don't know if it was, I think it was Polo, Ralph Lauren, maybe branded men's stuff. And it got over big in a hip-hop community. And what I heard, don't know if it's true, but what I heard is the initial marketing strategy for that product, because they wanted to get it to that to that younger audience and especially the hip hop audience and they wanted to see it on MTV so what the company did was take semi-trucks full of merchandise

and just leave them sitting in a parking lot somewhere well guess what's going to happen and over time relatively short period of time it was kind of like a badge of honor amongst that younger demo in that world. And before you know, you saw it everywhere. It's like, I think the word is incongruent. You kind of like, what, square peg, round hole? It doesn't make any sense. You think they would be selling, you know,

they'd be marketing to the super, super high-in, you know, audience or demo. But it was just, it's like a form of guerrilla marketing. And WWE did the same type of thing just by sending Bell. and hoping that some of the NFL players would, you know, be proud of that belt and show them off while they're having a great time. And it worked. Now, this is the next step in that. So I'm sure from a financial point of view, of course, they're going to make a ton of cash. But you asked me early in this broadcast or in this podcast, you know, do I think that the success of all in will have any effect on the business of the wrestling business, not just AEWs, but the business as a whole. And I don't think it will. It's not a bad thing. It's just not going to change anything. This is the type of deal.

And it won't seem that way to most of the people listening to the show and you're going to bury me again in social media, which is just fine. Because I love you for, I love you guys for doing that. Thank you so much. But this is the kind of move that can affect the business overall. I agree. And the reason I feel that way, and I'm glad you agree, is because it is. one more door that's coming down, one more big, high-profile step. It's a marriage between WWE and the NFL. It's going to make it a lot easier for potential advertisers and sponsors

to get real comfortable, real comfortable. That affects business. It's normalization of the brand, too. For so long, as we've talked about length on this show, pro wrestling, carried that stigma, regardless of whether it was an advertising or mainstream pop culture, whatever may be, it's something that people didn't want to associate with, especially real sports. He would never combine real sports with pro wrestling. So to have this mediated where now it's totally normalized that there's this collaboration, I think that's huge in opening the doors for future products, regardless of whether it's championship belts or maybe specific branded basketballs or i mean whatever maybe jerseys they're a w wwe inspired NBA jersey you know

you never know there's so many opportunities out there in this field and i also think for fans there one thing that this helps with too there were probably some fans who would see like oh here's a kansas city chiefs championship belt but it's got the wb uvue logo on i'm not really wrestling fan i don't really care about that but when they just see a championship belt that only has their team's logo on it i think that's further incentive to want to buy that thing and strut your ass with it everywhere. And I saw a great tweet. Someone was like,

think of the most obnoxious sports fan that you know in your life. They just got even more obnoxious with something like this. Oh, yeah. Let me show you. They'll be wearing it to parties going out to dinner, wearing their championship belt. Oh, yeah. Hats off to,

WWE. Again, you know, they're breaking down, you know, to turn breaking down barriers. I hear that all the time. It's most people who know what they're talking about. But this is another example.

Is it a barrier? No, but is it a, is, is, is mainstreaming WWE that much better now as a result of this deal? Yes. And by becoming more mainstream, it opens the door to other sponsors and advertisers. And that will affect the business, both for WWE and for AEW. Let's step aside for a second, Eric, to remind the Strictly Business listeners out there that this episode of Strictly Business is presented by Blue Chew. Let's talk about sex, gentlemen. Guys, remember the days, and it might have been a while ago. It's okay if it was. It might have even been just a few weeks ago when you were always ready to go on a moment's notice. No shame. Our bodies change. Now you can increase your performance and get that extra confidence in bed by heading on over to bluechew.com.

Bluechew is a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis, and Lovitra. but in chewable tablets and at a fraction of the cost. You can take them any time day or night, so you can plan ahead or just be ready whenever the opportunity arises, and the process is so simple. Sign up, bluechew.com, consult with one of their licensed medical providers, and once you're approved, you're going to receive your prescription within just days. And the best part, it's all done online, so no visits to the doctor's office,

no awkward conversations and no waiting in line at the pharmacy. Blue choose tablets are made right here in the United States of America and prepared and shipped directly to your door in a discreet package. I know it can be awkward sometimes when you have a product delivered to you that is for personal enhancement or improvement, but have no fear when Blue Chew arrives at my door. I don't have to worry about anyone picking up on my business. It's strictly my business here when it comes to Blue Chew.

And I know that I'm making a first impression that is going to last a lifetime with Blue Chew. So we want to help you out here on Strictly Business, as does Blu-Chue. Discover your options at Blu-Too.com. Chew it and do it, and we got a special deal for our listeners. Try Blu-T-E-T-B-T-B-E-B-Z when you use our promo code wrestle biz. That's W-R-E-T-L-E-S-T-L-E-Z at checkout. Just pay $5 shipping. That's Blu-T-C-Row-Bus to receive your first month absolutely free.

Visit Blu2.com for more details and important safety information, and we thank Blu-choo for sponsoring Strictly Business. It's still a pretty cool product, I think, for wrestling fans for football fans whatever you may be and uh yeah definitely like it and i think that could break down not that the jaguars i need to worry about a championship belt anytime in your hey and now hold on now hold on in now jaguars made the playoffs last year they've got arguably one of the best quarterbacks in the league and they got a damn good coach i i think things are on the up and up i think they're on the up and up but i listen to my buddy sean

pendergast will they will they be much improved or improved sure will they maybe win a playoff game or so yes but championship belt i don't know i mean he's got some biases in his own right because he's covering the texans and they're in the same division as the jaguar so i don't know there's there's a little bit of bias there perhaps from our friend sean pender gas but we'll have to get him back on the podcast and maybe we can grill him a little bit i'd love to talk to him going to the football you know i miss him and i i reached out to him a couple weeks ago and i i can find his local houston show you know on the internet um but man my sundays were listening to to sean on cbs and sean got me interested in sports you know he got me

interested in in the nva when i typically am not you know he is certainly football because i kind of phased out of football i just was no longer interested in it really and i started listening to Sean, just because I like the way he, I love listening to him. He's a great, great radio guy. And the more I listen to him, the more I got interested in football again. So, yeah, I miss Sean. Sunday afternoons are not the same. Me and my dog, Nicky, man, we jumped in the truck.

We go right around the reservoir, maybe going up and down a mountain or two, listen to CBS Sports with Sean Pendergast. I'm shocked. You've got reception out there. That's the biggest surprise. Oh, it was on local radio. CBS Sports Radio. It was on the local radio station.

Okay. I'm glad to hear that. It was. It's no longer. No longer. Hope to make it work. We'll find a way to get that to you. Good stuff here this week.

Eric, as always, everyone, we'd love for you to be part of our team here on Strictly Business. Head on over to advertise with Eric.com. Get your product out in front of thousands of listeners every single week, whether it's via our audio streams at 83 weeks.com or if it is via our YouTube on 83 weeks, we present this podcast in a multitude of ways you get a chance to hear the weekly gospel from the mouth of Eric Bischoff on strictly business in one of the most unique podcasts in all of the wrestling space anything else like that are we wrapping up already I mean do you have anything else right now would you like to BS and talk about some you know I'm down to BS you know I will tell you I went out to dinner last night with Mrs. B we went to Our nephew, Grayson, is here. He's moving back down to San Antonio. He just graduated from culinary school.

Okay. The kids, 22 years old, he graduated from one of the best culinary schools in the country. As soon as he graduated, he went to California and got his level one Somalié certification. Fantastic. So he's 22 years old. He's a culinary institute trained chef. he's working in a Michelin five-star restaurant down in San Antonio. And he's also a Somalia.

He's 22 years old. But anyway, he's been up here this summer with us hanging out, taking him up horseback wreck and stuff. He just got connected with a couple of people in town, one of whom owns a wine store and the other a Middle Eastern restaurant. And got them together and they put on this super cool seven-course dinner. and they did wine pairings along the way. And it was so good.

And I'm so proud of Grayson because he got up in front of people. And he's kind of a shy kid, you know, always has been. But he got up there and talked about the food and where it came from and the ingredients and how it was prepared. And he did it in a way that made me hungry. I couldn't wait to try it. And then the lady who owned the restaurant we're at, she comes in and talks about the wine that they chose to go along with this particular food.

It was really an amazing experience that had nothing to do with professional wrestling or business other than the fact that I had a blast and I'm proud of my nephew. I love to hear that so much and you know that I never need an excuse to talk about food. So that's always a good thing. And you bought us a little time too, Eric, because as you were telling that story there, the dynamite ratings just dropped. So if you were looking for any indication as to whether or not business was going to move forward from all in or anything or how much carryover would have a dynamite per.

wrestlenomics was watched by 871,000 viewers on average, including about 390, 389,000 aged 18 to 49 for a 0.30 rating. This week's dynamite was up less than 1% compared to last week's total viewership of 870,000 among viewers 18 to 49 viewership was down 8% from last week's 0.32 coming coming out of all in and leading into all out. That's not a good sign. That's just not. I mean, with all of the noise and positive energy and social media and the 81,000 the most watch wrestling event in history, all of which is true. And then you get nothing on your post show.

I mean, am I the only one that thinks that that's not a good thing? probably probably according to social media but social media isn't real anyway but that's that's very disappointing it's very disappointing and perhaps it's a reflection of the fact there was no real story nothing really built

and I'm not critiquing that I supported it but if you don't have a big story there's nothing for people to tune into to see what happened hold on we just talked about the On 83 weeks, we talked about how fantastic the story of the main event was and the intrigue that built off. No, but that's a story of, this is a psychology in one match and a story, you know, the longer-term story of those two. That's one. That's one.

But that's a story? Is it not? Is that not one? Yeah, but there was how many matches were on that car? Couldn't you argue that half the reason that people were tuning into Smackdown and droves for months was because of the success of the bloodline story specifically? Which we're either saying the same things or we're on different planets and I'm not catching it. My point is, aside from the MJF story and, and, okay, there is nothing there. That thing was thrown together. And I'm not criticizing that, but it was what it was. That was the bitch, you know, in social media going into it is there's no build for it.

And I'm saying because there was no build, there's nothing to tune into for those that didn't see the pay-per-view. There's no curiosity. zero flat not a and i don't take joy in saying that it's mystifying to me it's not actually i know why but and we've talked about it's a secret it's obvious it's obvious to a lot of wrestling fans too six months ago a year ago when i complained about lack of story and i would come out and say the ratings are not going to grow they're not going to grow their audience and everybody wanted to burn me at the social media stake for saying it and that was the old man you'll eat the clouds and all that other third grade bullshit but guess what i was right once again 80% of the time i'm freaking right it just

is what it is but when you have an event like that it that big with that much publicity it's hard for me to understand why there wasn't at least a 12 to 16 18% bump in the ratings even if it was only for that one episode shocking the quarter quarter hours just dropped as you were saying that as well and all things considered it was a mostly steady show dropped a little bit towards the end but then did bounce back up in the main event just a little bit so and let me ask you i know we're going over here are you in a hurry you got a gun no no you're good all right do you happen to know what the attendance was for dynamite last night in the venue they were in i can try and find that out for your moment or perhaps perhaps and i saw it earlier i should have written it down

more interestingly where is all out what's a what's the venue they were in Chicago last night and they're in Chicago this weekend what's the venue they're at the United Center what was the attendance the last time they were there in June probably more

oh no that's collision I'm looking at right now attendance so you're asking for the forbidden door show what the attendance was whatever whatever the show was the last time they were there for I can pull it up right now here for you. The attendance for forbidden. We get people real time information. These are real time discussion.

Forbidden Door was in Toronto rather. That wasn't an, it was, let's see, AW United Center Attendance, 2023. This is what we're trying to do this here in real time here, guys. Let's see. They did. Pulling this up here. Sorry, folks.

I had a lamb street taco last night. Did you really? That was one of the courses. It was a Mediterranean. It's actually Israeli because they use a different kind of bread. And it was made with, it was so good. I actually took an extra one home and had it for breakfast this morning. So good.

Hmm. Israeli street tacos. I'm having a hard time finding the last time they were there at the United States. Let's cover it next week. Let's take a, let's take a snapshot of. what they did this week, because we'll be doing it next week. So let's take a look at the attendance for this pay-per-view in Chicago and compare it to the attendance of the last time,

the previous time they were in Chicago. Well, I can tell you last night, which was in Hoffman Estates, the now arena, so just outside of Chicago, they were set up for 4,439, and they distributed about 4,000, it looks like, for that show. They didn't sell out. They did not sell out and then it looks like collision and all out at the United Centers will sell out what they are set up for which is what collision is set up for

5,000 and I believe the United Center is set up for much more than that for the pay-per-view they are they are set up for 10,564 so there are about a thousand tickets remaining so they still haven't sold that out they have not sold a out. Not a good sign. Not a good side. We will soon. All right. Let's do a review of the pay-per-view next week. All right, my friend, this has been strictly business with Eric Bischoff. We'll be back with you right here on the ad-free shows and podcasts. Heat Networks. We'll see you then.