83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff #67: WWE Elimination Chamber in Australia

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

In this edition of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff and Jon Alba welcome in Australian sports journalist Bharat Sundaresan to discuss the cultural and economical impact of WWE running its Elimination Chamber PLE in Perth! Plus, thoughts on AEW hiring Jennifer Pepperman, Sting's big promo, and more! Special thanks to this week's sponsors! 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

The New York Fed just announced credit card debt hit $1.13 trillion. And while the nation's credit card debt is at an all-time high, yours does not have to be. Here's a little secret. Your home value is still likely higher than it was when you actually bought it. So why not put that equity you've built to work and use it to pay off those high-interest credit cards? Go to save withconrad.com. Oh, and did we mention skipping your next two house payments? That's right.

No house payments for two months. Let the team at Save with Conrad run the numbers and see what's possible for you. Give them a call at 888-4250105 or go to www. www. savewithconrad.com today. NMLS number 32416, equal housing lender, savewithconrad.com. How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff, presented to you by the ad-free shows and podcast, heat networks. I am John Alba, and this is a very fun episode we have ahead.

Eric and I are going to be talking about a big AW hire, and then we're going to be looking at the massive WWE Elimination Chamber. coming to Perth, Australian. We got a special guest with us to break that down. But I'm joined by the man of the hour. Mr. Eric Bischoff coming to us from just outside of Detroit this week, correct? Yeah, I'm in Rochester Hills, suburb of Detroit. My cousins live up here. First cousin, Larry, and his wife, Sherry, and my second cousins all live here.

So I'm, you know, I agree to do this. It's a Comic-Con happening in Detroit. and I thought, man, it's been so long since I visited family. I'm really bad at that. Like, anybody that knows me knows I suck at staying in touch. My brother or sister, who I love dearly, they may hear for me on a phone, maybe twice a year or four, I don't know, three, four minutes a call. I'm just not a phone guy.

But I was so excited to get here and get caught up with family. So, yeah, I'm outside of Detroit. Actually, I'm heading over this afternoon at 2 o'clock. I'm heading over to visit the home that I grew up in. as a child. I stopped by there the other day, just drove by it. I saw a car in a driveway, and I thought, you know, I'm just going to knock out a door and hopefully not get shot and see if, you know, I can talk my way in just to get a look around. And it took a little bit of talking, but I'm heading over there at 2 o'clock this afternoon, and that's going to be

awesome. How does that make you feel? How does what make you feel that I didn't get shot? I mean, I'm glad about that part, but just the idea of being able to review. visit that time. You know, it's, I've been thinking a lot about that. And I'm really excited about it. I did kind of yesterday. I had some free time. So I took a drive around some of the areas that I remembered as a child and everything changes. You know, sometimes the memories are better than the reality when you go back. But the neighborhood that I grew up in, the house that I grew up in, at least from the outside, it's all, you know, the elementary school is still there. It's in great shape and it it brings back so many memories that honestly i had just set aside and haven't

hadn't revisited or visited in so long it it brought back memories of my mother and my father which which i value and help put my current life in perspective in many respects so it's it's been a it's been a good experience i love hearing that for you that's great and get it on out there. Anytime you get a chance to meet Eric Bischoff at a Comic Con, a wrestling convention, make sure you do, because Eric always makes the time

for everyone who comes up to chat with him and maybe even clowns a couple people along the way, too. Oh, I have fun doing it, man. I have fun, love meeting people. I love hearing their stories. So many of them have such great stories about how they started wrestling and why and with who and how they've, you know, started watching with their grandmother.

In fact, I was talking to my cousin Larry last night. Now, he's 10 years older than I am. He's 78, but he still acts like he's 38. And we were talking about it. And I don't know how the subject came up, but it was basically, when did you, how did you end up in that business and how did it all start? And my cousin Larry remembered, even though he's 10 years older than me, and this was going back a bit, he goes, yeah, you used to watch wrestling with your grandma Agnes. My grandmother's name was Agnes, and she was mean. She was mean, mean, nasty, tough woman.

Polish German descent, smoke like a chimney, and she didn't like me at all. We did not get along. She doted on my little brother, Mark. She just thought he walked on water. I on the other hand, she couldn't stand me, but the only time we got along was when we were watching wrestling. So that was our bonding experience. And I hear so many stories like that that it's always fascinating to me.

Yeah. And it transcends generations. and it generationally lives on to today. So we're going to be talking a little bit about cultural impact of pro wrestling on today's edition of Strictly Business, really just putting into perspective how massive this WW PLE elimination chamber is going to be for Perth and for the country of Australia. We got a great guest coming on in just a little bit here on Strictly Business. But I did want to open the show, Eric, by having a quick conversation about a pretty big high

that AW made this past week. AW announced Jennifer Pepperman as the Vice President of Content Development. She's a three-time Daytime Emmy Award winner, and she's joining Tony Kahn to head creative, essentially. The press release was released and quote from Tony Kahn, saying, adding Jennifer Pepperman's brilliant mind to the A&W team opens the door for exciting new ideas

and will help us build upon the incredible stories currently developing on the road, the AW Revolution across our three weekly shows on TBS and TNT, and the effects of Jennifer's arrival in AW will be felt for many years in the future. We're thrilled to welcome her today, and I look forward to her creativity and collaboration with our team across the board in what will be AW's biggest year yet and beyond. Now, I've taken the temperature a little bit on some people about her and pretty much everyone I've spoken to who worked with her, really enjoyed working with her and thought she had a lot to contribute. You seem pretty head over heels about this move, too. What

kind of insight can you provide us here well i worked why i shouldn't say i worked i didn't work closely with jennifer um when i was in wwe for a minute back in 2019 she was not a part of my team although that didn't really mean much because nobody was nobody was nobody really knew who was on which staff which writing staff whether smackdown or raw there was so much discussion and transition but i got to know jennifer and and really really liked her respect her work she's you know she's got a tremendous background she understands storytelling i she's she's tough like she's a she's a very sweet person she's easy to get along with she's got a great personality she's very outgoing um but she's also tough she's not going to be intimidated and i've you know

i watch her interact with vince and vince can be very very intimidating right and and And I watched her stand up to Vince. I watched her react to pressure that a lot of creative people that I've worked with in a past would probably take pretty hard. And she digs in and does the work. I'm real, this is the most exciting thing I've heard out of AEW in the last three years, maybe longer. Because I think it indicates a couple things to me. One is, Tony recognizes he has a problem. you can't fix a problem or come up with a solution to a problem or improve your product if you

don't recognize what's wrong with it first and the fact that Tony is bringing in Jen at a high level suggests to me now part of this is wishful thinking on my part but I do hope I'm right that Tony is recognizing that his creative his you know fantasy wrestling matches and all that dream match nonsense and and creating wrestling that appeals to the internet is not working. And I've been banging on that freaking drum for over two years now. And I've gotten a lot of hate from it. Of course, everybody thinks, oh, you're a hater. You're just bitter because Tony won't hire. None of that is true. I would rather chew off my arm than go to work for AEW. But the fact that Tony recognizes that he has a problem,

recognizes that he needs to bring somebody in, as I've been saying for years now, two at least, two and a half, you need somebody that understands a disciplined storytelling structure, not only a beginning in the middle and an end, but understanding the plot points along that arc that need to happen. It's almost like a checklist that need to happen over the course of an arc in order to have any chance of building or even retaining an audience. And that's what Tony has had a hard time doing, building and retaining an audience. He's gone from a premiere of 1.4 million viewers down to averaging around 800,000. That's a problem, especially when the overall audience for

wrestling is growing vis-a-vis WWE and their success. So I think the fact that Tony recognizes he has a problem, hopefully, and brought somebody in who absolutely has the tools and the experience and I believe the personality, because that's a big part of it. Jen brings all of that to the table. Now, the question I have, and this is not being negative, this is just being honest and having been in situations, maybe not exactly like AEW, but similar. If Tony allows Jennifer to do what she's capable of doing and gives her the time because it's not going to happen overnight.

I think Jennifer's impact on the product, storytelling, the discipline, the structure is something that people will start to recognize over the next month or two a little bit, but it's going to take six months for Jennifer to really get a few for the talent because, you know, some of the talent that's there, she's obviously worked with in the past. But she's going to have to get a feel for the talent, understand where they're all at in terms of their current stories.

And this is the hard part. This is the part that takes time to really understand the strengths and weaknesses. I don't want to call them weaknesses, the strengths and limitations that some talent have. Some talents are really, really good at certain things, but not so good at others. So learning how to manage that, to take advantage of the strengths and mitigate camouflage, some of the weaknesses or challenges, that just takes time. You can't, you can't rush it. But if Tony gives her the runway, meaning the time, gives her control to the maximum extent possible

and stays out of it, stays out of her process other than to learn. because Tony needs to learn what a great story is and how it's constructed and how to manage it over a period of time. If Tony works with her almost in a, let her mentor Tony in that aspect of his business, I think this could be one of the best things that that's happened in AEW. Really, I think this is absolutely necessary. I think it can be one of the things that has the most significant positive impact on AEW, far beyond any time. talent. How many times have you heard me say on this show with you, John, or in 83 weeks, it doesn't matter who you bring in. It doesn't matter if the creative isn't there to maximize

it and support it. Jennifer Pepperman brings that potential to the table. The question remains, will Tony give her the autonomy to do it, the trust and confidence for her to do it, and the time to do it. If he does, I predict this will be one of the most significant, positive things to happen in AEW really since maybe the first time they announced Arthur Ash. This is big. This is really big. And I know it's not a big headline, a big talent that everybody's excited about. It's actually more important than that. So I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled for Jennifer. She deserves it. She's just a wonderful human being. And she's extremely talented. And Tony desperately needs her. And all that suggests to me that there's a reason to be optimistic.

I know you hate the term synergy, but I'd like to ask you, how is that synergy formed between a Hollywood writer or a script writer and the traditional wrestling mind in putting creative together? it's a challenge because wrestling talent thinks in terms of the match sometimes the story in the match but if the story in a match doesn't reflect the narrative that's being told around the story there's a disconnect and it doesn't matter it's it again over the last few weeks i've been talking when it comes to story and I don't even like to use the word story because it's not story in

AEW for the most part it's weak story at best it's flimsy there's no discipline there's holes in the in the in the arc it's just a freaking mess right but if you can get talent to trust and try to what it comes down to is they have to learn they have to learn that there's more to a wrestling story than the story that takes place in the ring and they have to be connected and i think it's a if you take out the word synergy and insert trust that's what it's going to take it's going to take tony trusting jennifer's instinct and experience she has far more experience than tony does of this i mean it's not even comparable so if if tony's ego and that's what it comes down to if Tony's ego allows someone else, in this case Jennifer Pepperman, to come in and apply

her experience and knowledge and the talent has trust in her and is willing to do things differently, that's when magic happens. Otherwise, you're bringing in an incredibly talented person and if there's no trust, there'll be no support, there'll be no execution. There'll be people trying to find ways to work around it, maybe even in some ways sabotage the effort. I've seen that happen a couple times. Hopefully that won't happen. Look, I don't know all the talent in AW. I know several of them, and I have a sense that there's going to be a lot of support for her, for Jennifer, and I hope that that's true.

I hope my gut feeling is true because it's, like I said, I'm more excited about this and other than WrestleMania and what's going on with Cody, I'm more excited about this right now than I am just about anything in the business of the wrestling business because I know how important it is. Like I've been beating that drum for two and a half years. My timeline of social media is filled up with people that want to set me on fire because I point out the flaws and I'm honest about it. And this move suggests to me that Tony's listening, not to me necessarily, but he's listening to his audience and is ready to make a big move. And I'm thrilled Congratulations, Tony Kahn.

Smartest move you've made in a long time. Best move you made in a long time. Tony is a smart guy, but this is a really, really great move. We'll see if it changes the chemical makeup of AW storytelling and how that translates to TV. It's also been widely reported that she worked extremely closely with Mercedes-Money, Sasha Banks, and WWE, and as we know, Mercedes is likely on her way over to AEW. So we'll see if that, I mean, can you provide some perspective on that? you ever come across that in your career where there is a talent who worked very closely with

one specific writer and they felt comfortable working with one specific writer, even during your days as a talent in WWE. Did you see that often? Oh, I did for sure. You know, you, there were, in its chemistry, you know, you can have a great, somebody that is very, very creative and understands the storytelling discipline and, and arc and all that. It was very creative. knows the business. But if the chemistry's not there, it's really hard to get talent on the same page as your writer. And you don't want that disconnect, right? Yeah, I've seen it a bunch of times. And in WWE in particular, there were writers who typically were assigned to talent. And when I got there, for example, I'm not going to name names, but when I got there, for example,

there were probably three or four talents at the top of the food chain there. And the roster that would only work with certain writers, you know, it's just the way it was. Well, one of the way we know is the Rock and Brian Goertz. I mean, that's obviously widely known, and he worked extremely closely with him, and Goertz worked closely with Kurt Engel and Edgich Christian. He's talked about that in his book and look at what that relationship did for their respective careers. Yeah, well, especially with Brian.

You know, Brian's a great guy, extraordinarily talented. But, yeah, you know, you strike that. that relationship with the right talent and as in the case of Brian Goertz, you know, his career has been outstanding ever since he left WWE as a result of it. Well, and two, it's like you understand, right, like motivation, you understand the why of these characters. And that helps create a more consistent product across the board. Well, it's in its collaboration, John. I need another word.

It's just collaboration. And you know, when you've got the right chemistry and trust and you enjoy the people you work with, the quality of that collaboration, you know, increases exponentially as opposed to having it bad or no chemistry. You know, then it's just a chore. Then you've got to sit through it and listen to it. And it's hard to get excited about the creative. And if you have issues, you don't really know how to deal with it. And I've seen that a bunch of times too. But when the chemistry is right and the talent is there, the collaboration process is what really, that's where the magic happens.

Yeah, really, really curious to see how this one plays out for them because it could be a long, and I think what you said was important there too, where you said it might take six months to start to see the fabric change a little bit. It's not going to happen over now. No, no. And honestly, given where AEW is right now in terms of their approach to. creative and not behind the scenes but i can you know do i watch their show every week fuck no i again i'd rather chew off my arm than sit down and watch two hours of a w it's that bad creatively for me but i do drop in i do follow certain aspects of AEW that either i'm interested in or i want to better understand for the purposes of doing this show for example and you know i know i

often get in you've said about you don't really even watch a product i don't have to fucking watch I don't have to sit down and watch two hours. I've been in the business for a minute or two. I can watch a segment or I can watch a half hour of a show or I can watch an hour or so of a show. And I can see the patterns. I understand what's going on from my perspective. I believe I understand what's going on most of the time, about 88% of the time I'm right. And in this case, I think, again, I don't want to keep harping on Jen Pepperman,

think the product needs either Jen or needed someone like Jen and now she's made it to the scene. So it's all chemistry. She's got all the tools. Let's hope Tony has his ego in check so that he allows her and gives her the autonomy and the authority and takes a chance out of her just because some of it's going to be difficult for some talent. Some talent are just stubborn or they're intimidated because now they're they're being forced or asked to to operate in a different way and human nature is going to resist that we're all human but i'm i'm so hopeful i'm really this is i was so when i read that last night i almost jumped out of my chair i was so happy well and you know women the booking of the women in a w has come under a lot of scrutiny since a w launched and

she was heavily involved in the smackdown women's team writing specifically for a long period of time. So having some of that representation might be a good thing across the board for the company too to have someone of her stature in that position. Real quick, before we get into our guests, you just talked about some of the storytelling.

I got to ask you, did you see the Sting promo that everyone's talking about heading into this last match here that we saw in Dynamite this week? One of the more passionate promos about Sting that we've seen from him. Yeah, it's almost like Tony Con is listening to the show, right?

because I railed an 83 weeks because I railed on the giant fucking hole you could fly a plane through in the current Bucks Sting Darby storyline and lo and behold a week

later you know we get we get the reaction from Sting and Darby I thought the execution was great to see Sting kind of break character and and bring that reality to the table in the creative and in the execution of that promo,

I thought was it was pitch perfect. I wish it would have happened the week before because it would have made so much more sense. But Tony needs to listen to 83 weeks and he needs to listen to strictly business to get an idea of what to do next. And the fact that he listened and he made the adjustment

and then Sting and Darby delivers such a fantastic promo is, you know, it's not perfect, but it's better than not doing it. at all. But I agree the quality of that promo, the fact that it was so real and it wasn't your typical. And when I get in the, I'm going to, you know, that's, you know, if I never see another rassling promo again like that, it'll be five minutes too soon. But that, that promo was executed perfectly. I want to shout out Matt Coon real quick because he brought up a great point about Sting that I thought was so apropos with this. And it's that.

But Sting, his, you know, he didn't grow up a fan of pro wrestling. No. He was a great athlete who found his way into the business. And he always seemed like one of those rare top stars who was able to separate the business from his personal life, right? And here we are now ahead of his final match. This is the last major Sting promo we're probably ever going to see. And he intertwined all of it together to make it feel like this match. had every stake on the line for him.

And I thought that was a great point that Matt brought up because it's like the genesis of these 35 years of sting that we've seen come together. And I just thought that was such a fantastic moment of pro wrestling television. I can't wait. I'm excited for the match, man. We have special guests joining us here momentarily, Eric.

We've got the WWE Elimination Chamber pay-per-view in Perth, the PLE. Any thoughts on the show before we have. pop into this interview? No, it's going to be exciting. You know, Barat is our guest, ad-free shows member, by the way, and a sports journalist, he covers cricket. And we're going to learn a lot about cricket and its popularity, but also covers sport in Australia and is certainly wired in with everything that's going on in Perth. And the impact that WWE is having in Western Australia. So I'm excited to dig in and get some details. Give me the deets, bro. Give me the deets. We are on the road to WrestleMania, and the road to your bedroom can be expedited as this episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. Let's talk about sex, gents. Remember the days when you are always ready to go? Well, now you can increase your performance and get that extra confidence in bed. Listen up. Here's how you do it. Bluechew.com. Blue Chew is a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, but in chewable tablets and at a fraction of the cost. You can take them any time, day or night,

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right now creative has hotter than ever we got mega main events i know that's enough to get you excited but just in case it's not blue chew is there to bail you out whenever you need it wherever you need it whether it's at wrestlemania in philadelphia or in the privacy of your own dorm room your own bedroom wherever it may be blue chew wants to help you have better sex discover your options at bluechoo dot com chew it and do it and we got a special deal for our listeners try Bluetooth free when you use our promo code wrestle biz at checkout. Just pay $5 shipping. That's bluechew.com promo code wrestle biz,

WR, E, S-T-L-E-B-I-Z to receive your first month absolutely free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information, and we thank Bluetooth for sponsoring strictly business. So, Eric, this elimination chamber event going down in Australia is one of the most talked about international WWE premium events in a long time. So who better to break it down than, well, Australia's official

media representative. Of course, Burrett Sundarason, I think I got that right. If I didn't, I apologize. Joining us all the way from Australia on Strictly Business, the time zones are screwed up, but we are here together. We appreciate your time, man. How are you? I'm doing very well, guys. Thank you so much for having me.

It is pretty late. It's just past midnight. My wife's fast asleep. It is a school night. but she's used to me yelling, so I don't think it will disturb her one bit. Well, hopefully we won't make you yell. Usually it's me that does the yelling, and I'm in a little fairfield in a suites hotel just outside of Detroit, and I don't think there's anybody in the room next to me. So I can yell my ass off, but we'll hope that you don't wake the kids. We really appreciate you, hop-in-on with us.

You're a sports journalist, and why don't you live? let everyone know a little bit more about your background. Oh, I'm a cricket journalist, commentator, broadcaster, all rolled into one. Originally from India, and I moved to Australia, what, six years ago. So, yeah, before I moved to Australia, I was following the Indian cricket team around the world. Now I followed the Australian team around the world. Best job in the business get paid to do what everybody wants to do. Travel the world, eat free food, and watch live sport.

can't get any better. You're such a lucky man, Brad. That's awesome. Does your wife get to travel with you while you're traveling around the world enjoying cricket and covering it? Not always, Eric. And you're right. She does tell everyone that, you know, I do a job.

My husband just travels the world and watches sports. So she doesn't consider this a job at all. But interesting, you should ask. I am off to New Zealand in, what, two days time, three days time. and after quite a while she is going to join me in New Zealand so that's why I'm so relaxed generally a few days before a long international tour I'm always stressed and you know always looking over my shoulder but yeah this time around she is coming so it'll be fun it is difficult you know with the dogs and everything else to for both the fastest travel but it's always good when she's around and

she calls herself a cricket widow and she is cricket does go on for a long time So you can feel like your life is just slipping away from you if you're not getting paid to do it, of course. So have you been to New Zealand before? I have. She hasn't. I think I went there just before COVID. It is an outrageously beautiful country. And the best way to travel in New Zealand is by car. Just go there, rent a car, drive around the North Island, get onto the ferry that takes you to the South Island.

And Eric, trust me, it's just out of this world. You, both of you would just love it. I mean, I should talk on behalf of Australia, but New Zealand, the younger, younger sibling, as they say in this part of the world, is just out of this world. I mean, and you see a lot of sheep, very few human beings. Oh, it sounds like my kind of place, Pratt. It is. I love that. It is.

It is a lot of great wine, a lot of great beer. All right. That's good. I'm moving. Call Mrs. B. I've got to make a note from my stuff. Cross Mrs. B, we're moving to New Zealand. Trout fishing or the fly fishing there is amazing. I've never been, obviously, but I've read a lot about it, and it's certainly on my bucket list. As is, I love Australia. I'm going back next month for a few days and really looking forward to. Australia is a wonderful country. Well, one of the reasons we brought on this episode of Strictly Business is because he's extremely

embedded in the pro wrestling scene as well and I know you're a long time ad free shows guy as well so I wanted to get some sort of perspective on the pulse of the country going into this pay-per-view because I feel like over here stateside and maybe some of our UK listeners we don't really have perspective on just how enormous or maybe not enormous an event like this is for you guys down there. And I know you're not specifically near Perth, but I'd love to get some perspective as to the gigantism of just a show like this happening. So when you heard that they were going to go all in on a pre-Ressalmania PLE like this, what was your initial reaction down there? Firstly, you just said, I'm not near Perth. But the thing with Perth is nobody's near Perth,

unless you are in Perth. It is so far, far away from the rest of the country that whether it's geography or i mean if you're speaking about it geographically or culturally it is just cut off from the rest of the country and they love it like that so when i did hear john that uh w w you are planning this massive event in australia i was a little surprised with why they chose perth uh because like i said it's so so far away it is expensive to get to perth i just read somewhere that 14 000 people from from the eastern seaboard are traveling to Perth or are already in Perth for the big event. Adelaide, where I come from, is the south central.

So it's central. So this is the closest capital to Perth. And it's a three and a half-hour flight from here. So it kind of puts in perspective where it is. The time of the year was also interesting about it's mid-February. So the cricket season's finished. But the football season, Australian Roots football seasons just picked up. And that's the be-all and end-all of sport around Australia.

Schools just started. It's peak summer now. So I was a little surprised why Perth, but then when I read further into it, you knew why, because it's best in Australia, the state which birth is a capital of, trying their best to put themselves on the map. Because whether it's Taylor Swift, who is in Australia currently, she just sold out the MCG for three straight days, the Melbourne Cricket Ground that is last weekend, and she's about to sell out a big massive venues in Sydney this weekend. So there's a clash there. So what's happened historically is all the big acts have always gone to the Eastern Seaboard, Sydney, Melbourne, to an extent even some have come to Adelaide. But nobody goes to Perth.

So they decided, the government decided that we need to bring these big acts. So they started with Coldplay last year. And then they said we need to bring the WWE. And what? The WDUB is coming to Australia for a big event for the first time since 2018. So that in itself is a major draw. but and I'm sure we will discuss a lot about this particular person I think but the biggest draw is the fact that they finally have a mega star in Ria Ripley who comes from my neck of the woods she's from Adelaide but at least they have an Australian who they can kind of rally it on and that in many ways is how Australians are they kind of feel like especially when it comes to the USA that we need to be represented and finally they have someone I think so that just makes it it takes it from from being a big event to a mega event,

purely on the basis of one superstar. Isn't that amazing? And I don't know a lot about Rhea. I've spoken with her recently on the phone a couple of times. And she just strikes me as a very, very classy, intelligent young woman. But I had no idea she was from Adelaide. That's great.

Not only she from Adelaide, Eric, you know when they took Jinder Mahal to India, and you know, I can speak on behalf of Indians, then Australians now, as the Maharaja and all of that, what seven years ago, whenever it was as champion, I knew. I think we were on a podcast together, Eric, and I told you this is never going to work because the average Indian cannot relate with the Jinder Mahal as a Maharaja or that gimmick, because Maharaja is a long gone. I mean, they were there around, last time around in India when the British were there. So that was never going to connect with the Indian Pulse.

But Ria Ripley is the consummate, she's the ultimate Australian story. I mean, this young girl, hardworking girl from a corner of Australia in a way, Glenel Beach, where I was actually at earlier today, a beautiful day to be on the beach. Actually, that's the part of the city she comes from. And she came up the hard way in that sense. She came into wrestling with nothing as went and watched Riot City Wrestling, which is a big promotion, as you guys know, in South Australia. As a fan just starts wrestling. And from there, what in the space of nearly seven or eight years, she's climbed the mountain in in WWE and in the wrestling world.

So she is someone that every Australian can relate with because I write about sport here, as you know, and when we write sports stories, when they have that. kind of sort of an underdog story, someone who is not expected to become a star. When they become star, that's when Australians take even more pride in someone like her. And I think she's just, she just kind of sums up or ticks every box there is to be a great Australian sports story, not just a wrestling story or an entertainment story. Do you think it matters brought that she's also like a female superstar too in terms of representation? How much does that play into that? Massively. Because if you just look at a Australian sport, the amount of money that gets spent on women's sport across the board.

I mean, okay, let's talk cricket. So cricket's been played by men for 150, 170 years. But women's cricket was always around on the periphery. It was Australia who nearly eight, nine years ago took the mantle and said, you know, we want to promote women's cricket and we want to make it as professional as men's cricket and put a lot of money into it. To the extent we reached a point where in Australia, men and women get paid the same to play. cricket, even though men's cricket in some ways is still bigger than women's cricket. And similarly with the other sporting leagues as well, I spoke about the Australian Football or Australian Rules Football, the AFA. So they started the AFLW, Women's AFL, maybe seven years ago.

Now they sell out stadiums. Similarly with the National Rugby League in Queensland and New South Wales. So there's something about women's sport that Australians and Australia as a country has always invested a lot of energy time and money into so the fact that like you said john a female athlete a female from from from south australia or australia has gone to the u.s and become such a mega star that just adds what i think doubles her her a star value and the fact that she's going to wrestle for the first time uh sort of in home soil i will say that it would have made an even bigger it would have been an even bigger story if she was from western australia but that's only because of how parochial they are.

And just to put that into context, the former Australian test team or men's team coach, the national team coach was from Western Australia. When he got sacked or when he quit, the whole state turned on the national cricket team. So that's how parochial they are. So if Ria Ripley had been Western Australian, she would not just be on the front page,

she would have been on every page. That's all I'll say. But despite all of that, just the fact that she's coming back. I can see it. Like she's been on every radio station. She's been on the cover of the Adelaide advertiser, our local newspaper, many times already, but she's filled up a few pages today.

It is big, big news that she's coming to Australia. And finally, not just coming back as a star, but she's going to get into the ring and wrestle in front of an Australian audience. How much, Barat, do you know, how much the government, local state government, I'm guessing, in Western Australia, How much money is involved in their subsidizing or contributing to this tour? Do you have any idea? So when we talk about money, Eric, the figure that was quoted in terms of what they think they'll make from bringing WWE event here was, I think, around 33 million. So they kind of clubbed it with Coldplay when they put it in the budget last year, late last year, around September or October is when this got announced, right? They said with Coldplay and WWC, and Coldplay came and performed late last year, they said around $70 million, or Aussie dollars, that is, will come into the state through tourism and everything else.

And I said already 14,000 people from not just other parts of Australia, but New Zealand have gone there as well. I'm not 100% sure of how much they have subsidized it. As you know, those numbers will come out once the event is done and dust it. And then, you know, those start of those kind of numbers and figures that's coming out as John, you'd be able to say that's how it works out, right? But I'm sure there will be a lot of that, Eric. But just in terms of what's happening on the ground itself, I mean, they, and this is classic WWE, they know how to put on a show. So they put in this merchandise store in the middle of the city. And I've been to Perk many times to cover cricket.

And that's the busiest part of a very quiet city. And they've nailed it right outside the railway station. And you can see like a long snaking queues all around the city today just to get into that store. So they're playing it very smartly as well, both WWE and the state of Western Australia, especially their tourism guide. Yeah, we do know from TCO's chief financial officer, Andrew Schleimer, that this is the largest site fee for a WWE event in history. So we don't know what that number is, at least.

right now we don't but we do know per tk o that this is the largest in company history so clearly the region values having this form of entertainment why do you think that specifically is i didn't get a question actually jorge so why why is the region willing to invest this much money into wwe of all companies specifically i think it's like i said it's it's There is this big wrestling interest or interest for wrestling in Australia anyway. I'm sure you guys would have read about this late 22, Fox Tell, which is our main broadcaster here in Australia. They signed up a deal with WWU.

So what we have now or have had since late 2022 is all WW content, including what was on the WW network, like all the archival footage, and all the old wrestling shows, WCW and all of that, is on Foxtell. So I can just have a Foxstall subscription, watch my cricket, but also tune into wrestling. So I think that was a big deal. And as any good journalists should,

I did reach out to people at Fox Tell because I do some work for them as well. And I'm going to get some numbers, which I'll forward to you guys tomorrow, in terms of how big WWE has been, I mean, the deal that they signed with WWE has been for the broadcasters. I mean, it's a new SCOP company. It's a Murdoch company, Foxhill, as you know.

And in terms of why it's so big for Western Australia as a region, A, it is just a simple fact that they want, they look at WWEs being as a global, you know, it is a barement in terms of an entertainment company. And so they want WW to come here and go to Perth and put on a show. But there were also reports in December one day where the tourism minister was trying to strike a deal with WW. This is before the Rock jumped on board with TKO. And there was some inner dealings.

I think an email got leaked where they were trying to reach out to WW and say, okay, fine, have the event. And if you can bring the Rock, even better. And we can strike an even better deal. So I won't be surprised. I know at the moment he's not advertised to be here. But if there is any way they can get the Rock over to Perth as well, that will really, really put them on the map. it's also done in a way to say that, okay, we're getting music or musicians or music band like a big stage band like Coldplay. But if we can get WWE as well, we can even get not just entertainment or pro wrestling in there, but also maybe promote best in Australia as a state for tourism and also attract Hollywood because a lot of movies, as you know, get shot in

Australia, but it's mostly on the eastern seaboard. Jaws was shot, by the way, the famous Jaws was shot on the South Australian coast because more people die of shark attacks in this state than anywhere else in the world. And similarly there's a lot of movies that get shot on the Gold Coast and around Sydney and in that region. So I think this is also

a way of them reaching out to Hollywood and reaching out to the American market and saying, hey, you can kind of come to our shows as well. It's a really smart move. And I've been fortunate enough to have been to Perth back in whenever it was 2008, I believe. for 2009 with the Hulk Hogan tour.

I was there with Rick Flair and a whole cast and crew of incorrigible talent. And we had an absolute blast. Perth was a beautiful city, beautiful city, but it is remote. It's really interesting that so much money and effort is going into an area that is lightly populated at best. And there's also the venue as well, Eric. It's a beautiful city. So the Opters Stadium where, which will host this event, it was built in 2017 and it was launched in 2018.

So just a little bit of history on that. And that's another reason, John, to your question, earlier question on why Western Australia are so desperate to bring these big acts is to pretty much sell the stadium to their own people. Because originally sport was played at the Western Australian Cricket Association Grounders or it was called the WACA. It was an iconic venue. it's still an iconic venue for cricket and most stadiums in australia are multi-sports so cricket during the summer football during the winter and even soccer at times so uh they said okay we need to move on from the waka because it's an old iconic venue but we can't it's not a modern venue and we need to fit more people in so they started building the stadium and it's a

it's a it's not my favorite stadium in terms of covering cricket because it's so massive it's like an arena and you'll see it's just made for wrestling so the every time i go there and it's even before wwee announced or the deal was announced that they're coming i always used to look at it and go well it's not a great cricket stadium but imagine a w w event here because uh the the LED lights that they have around the ground the the aerial shots that you get of the ground and i'm seeing i'm sure you guys have seen some pictures of the of the venue from outside already on social media it's quite the spectacle unfortunately from a cricket sense it it doesn't fill up so it looks very empty on camera but what 47 000 tickets have already been sold i hear and i read uh so it's it's a perfect

venue for uh something like the wwee or cold play or you know if they can get k tay o'er next time around as well uh because that's going to be interesting it's a clash so 24 24th uh taylor swift will be uh selling stadiums like i said in sydney which will clash with the elimination chamber in Perth let's see how that plays out but I think that's more so they're trying to kind of justify having built this state-of-the-art stadium and COVID really ruined everything for Western Australia because because Australia like the US is sort of a federation Western Australia just shut the rest of the world out so you couldn't go in and out so they couldn't host cricket they couldn't host

football for two long years so they're kind of making up for lost time as well What are the Barat, do you have a sense of the average ticket price for the event? Has that been published? Actually, I was just looking them up Eric on Ticketmaster sometime back. I was curious

as well. And I've never been to a major live wrestling event outside Australia. I don't think I was allowed to go when they had the show in India many years ago. But I think the average price is around 80 Australian dollars which is not a bad amount like if you want to sit in the in the outer reaches of the venue but obviously the closer you get to the ring I saw the price is still ranged between around 180 dollars to to

210 dollars and as you know Eric Australia has a bloody expensive country anyway so people don't mind spending that kind of event on a or that kind of money on an event which is never gone to Perth before also and you don't know when you're going to get to see your next WW event so it's it's been priced well i think i'm quite impressed with the fact that they haven't gone overboard and like you know really uh kind of spiked up the prices so the average i would say it's between 80 and 110 for for your general seating it really is so interesting because you know historically speaking the pre-resselmania pay-per-view has never been something super overwhelming in the wwe program lineage

right like you'd get a no way out show or an elimination chamber show that would happen at an arena and it was more or less just a stop on the way there but instead they they saw an opportunity to really monetize this and try to go international with something right before their biggest show of the year which is such a fascinating strategy but it's what we've seen a lot of from wwe in recent years especially since nick con came into the fold what has the appetite been for the show in the sense that they're getting a major gimmick show, too, like elimination chamber is, I mean, that's a huge cell of just that stipulation.

I mean, we're talking to the man who obviously invented the elimination chamber right here. I saw you with that crowbar hitting the steel there. But, I mean, is that helping the appetite with this as well? I think even if it was just a random WWE, when you could still have been major just because it hasn't come to that market before,

but you're absolutely right because it's gimmick and because there's suddenly so many eyes on the WWU product to start with and they're also playing up the whole press conference thing that they did what was it in Las Vegas yeah it was in Las Vegas right so they're doing another press conference like event tomorrow I think yeah it is tomorrow so and so they built it up like and I don't know how the performers whoever I think Seth Rollins and roads are going to be there. It's going to be a steamy afternoon. And Perth, Eric, you've been there. It feels like there are two or three suns shining on you. It gets really, really hot. It's going to be a steamy 35 degree afternoon. So they're going to do an outdoor press conference,

John. And already I was reading in the Western Australian newspaper that there are free trains. So it's a free event. Anybody can come. So people can just take the trains from all around the city and just rock up in the center of the city to firstly, very, witness the press conference and obviously the event itself is on Saturday or Saturday for us anyway. And it helps that suddenly it's not just a throw away or we are coming to Australia and putting on a show like they did in 2018 or the shows you can you see at times in India or places like that. This is an actual show with stakes in it, right? Something that happens or most of what takes place during the elimination chamber has an impact on what you'll see in Western India. So suddenly, even if you are someone just going to the show, you're like, wow, I'm not just witnessing a random Australia-centric show, but I'm seeing something which will have a huge impact on what I'm going to see next, and the next thing is WrestleMania.

So I think whoever has taken this decision, and it has to be Nick Kahn, they've played it out beautifully. So they've told Australia, hey, we're not just giving you an event, we're giving you an event that matters. And I think that's become even bigger sale. That's why so many people, not just in Perth, but from around the country are traveling for this event. that's so great to hear and and what a what a great observation on your part because stakes matter the fact that this the outcome of what we see what we're going to see in perth is going to be tied so directly to wrestlemania didn't really think about that until you brought it up but it's so true episodic television man it works i love it storytelling works

bro what is the the temperature on you've talked about ria ripply are the other major stars in australia the same ones that we're seeing in the u.s here like is cody roads as popular there as he is over here stateside is there someone else that stands out because i always get so fascinated when i see who wb puts on press tours when they do these types of events and like i know LA night has been pushed huge in that. I know Grayson Waller's been obviously a significant part of that promotion too. Is there anyone else that people should expect major responses for? Generally, just the usual stars that you mentioned, John, I know Seth Rollins has a huge market

in Australia, and I'll give you an example. So I'm known for my colorful clothes on television and generally wherever I go. And I get the Seth Rollins thing more than any other wrestler, a few macho men's as well. But I think he's not just in Australia, right around the world as well. I know a lot of people in India who are massive Seth Rollins fan, who you might not expect. I mean, Cody Rolls and Roman Rains, yeah, they're more, you expect them to be in the top three people that matter from a WWS for people outside the US. but someone like Seth Rollins, someone like L.A. Knight as well.

And wrestling fans in Australia are interesting. So I've gone to a few live events here locally, and there's the hard-core wrestlers who go for these events. I remember going for a Mick Foley one-man show in Adelaide two years ago. I even dragged my wife along, and she had a great time because that's how great Mick Foley is. But just looking around the crowd as well, you could see there was there were the wrestlers there were the what eric loved to call lapsed fans

or coming back to see someone who they had grown up seeing but then there's also this younger generation of australian fans because it's such an outdoorsy country and because all their sports leave cricket aside is our contact sports there's something about mMA and there's something about wrestling that resonates with Australians more than a lot of other people from a lot of other country. So I think a lot of those stars, like L.A. Knight and Seth Thoreland would be my fix out of the, say, your Roman reigns, Cody Rhodes bracket, who I think have really, really made that kind of impact on an Australian audience. And they love their gimmicks as well because you just have to follow the footy media. It is another level. Cricket because it's a slowish

sport. They look at their cricketers differently, Australians. They want their cricketers to have really high model values and cricket is that kind of sport but when it comes to their rugby players and their football players some of their personal stories are better than any wrestling story you will ever see so I think the slightly over-the-top nature of wrestling and I was actually reading a very interesting article today so while this event's going on in Perth among the many other events going on right now it's festival season in Australia is the Mardi Gras in Sydney and I was reading this article about how the LGBTQ community around Australia has really taken to wrestling, because they look at it as a drag. I don't know the exact expression for it, but a drag competition

in that sense. And I think I thought that was fascinating, right? Like we've never thought about that angle before. So and it was someone like, you know, an LGBTQ person who had written about this as well. So Andrea Ripley even cuts across that bracket. So she, the way she uses a social media and I read about her in that article as well. So it's pretty widespread in that sense. That is so fast. Very, very interesting. The cultural, it's, and it's interesting that you bring up culturally what sports is like in Australia, the fact that so many of the most popular sports are contact sports a little bit over the top and that's that is the template of professional wrestling it's interesting is that how different is that in india barad i think in india eric the

storytelling aspect of wrestling is what makes it so popular um and you know we've spoken about this before uh cable television came into india around the early 90s so it was a first exposure to America, wrestling told us, or kind of our first exposure to America was wrestling and then friends happened in 1997. So before that, we really did think growing up in middle class India that Americans are a little crazy. I mean, The Undertaker is like a real American. Those are the kind of people you see on the streets over there. And I'm not even kidding. You do in New York. Go to New York any day of the week. I'm sure. I'm sure there are a lot of those over there. I think in India, where it works differently is because it's such a Bollywood-centric country

and Bollywood rules everything. Now, Bollywood rules cricket as well. Even when it comes to cricket, as a cricket writer, I remember every time you were writing about the Indian team, which is bigger than any other sporting team in the world in terms of support when you have over a billion people following one particular team, if India just kept winning, after a while it was difficult to write about it because I saw the readership drop. they want the Indian team to win a couple of games and then lose and then win again. They love the roller coaster nature of sport.

And wrestling kind of feeds into it, right? Like you don't know who's going to win. You don't know who's going to lose. And I've always found it fascinating that even though it's in a way, like everybody speaks in English and wrestling and not a lot of people speak in English in India when you look at the critical mass anyway, wrestling cut across the cultural, the class, the class divides in India, more than anything else I've seen. I remember as a child I would go into a tiny shop to buy some milk and there would be these people that, you know, and dairy farmers in India are really poor. And they would be sitting and watching wrestling, not understanding a word of what's being spoken, but still following the story just through the actions.

And that's why wrestling, the greatest form of theatre, you've always called it, Eric. And it's in India that you see it more than anywhere else. Brod, I heard, I don't know where I read this or heard it, but somewhere along the line, I believe I read that India has 350 million, not wrestling fans, WWE fans. Does that sound possible? Oh, very possible. In a country with 1.4 billion people, Eric, I think even that number might be not actually.

in that sense there might be even more than that because wrestling is massive and it is WWE I mean WWE changed our outlook to to like it just happened at the right time I think the whole Monday night was thanks to you it just happened at the right time because India was just opening up as a country like we were getting the whole globalization happened in the early 90s because of the political party were in power at that point so everything from Coca-Cola to WW came at the right time and you know the internet happened as well and there are fewer lapsed fans in India than I think even in the US like people have just stayed loyal to the product whatever has happened even though there was a three four year period from 2002 to 2006 where

we didn't get the WW there was no broadcaster bringing it to us but we would still find clips here and there and the video percent business in India during the late 90s was massive I don't think it gets spoken about enough because you could get video cassettes pirated ones all over the place and people were making millions and millions of Indian rupees by just selling those the trump cards that he used to get the figurines that we used to they used to sell in India whether they were made in India or not or whether they actually came from the US nobody knew but it it was a huge market then but it's just gone bigger and bigger and bigger and I hear you

talk about the YouTube subscribers that they have in India which keeps growing but it goes exponentially it's a And I don't think it will ever drop. And when you look at AEW, I think AW found a broadcaster in India before they performed a broadcaster in Australia, because now it's on ESPN2 here in Australia. But I know a lot of people back in India who started watching AEW pretty early on. But then it was always the plus two product. They always kept going back to the WWE because it's like a newspaper that you get used

to reading, right? When my father was alive, I know, he always read the Times of India. I wrote for the Indian Express. He never read my stuff because he was so used to reading that other newspaper. And the only time you'd pick up and read my piece is when India had lost and he would call me a traitor. But that story for another day. I mean, that's a testament to the fact that I really truly believe that in any business. But I think in wrestling in particular, he who gets their first wins.

And when you plant the flag and you're able to introduce your product to the market, place and you've been there for a couple of years, it makes it really difficult for a competitor in any business, maybe even more so in wrestling because the fan base is so loyal and that loyalty can convert to what's, I guess, called tribalism where people get so entrenched and their characters and the story and the stories behind the scenes, which are probably more interesting and addictive in some ways than the stories that take place inside of the ring. But once you've established yourself you plant the flight first you open up the market it's really difficult for somebody to come along and upset the incumbent whatever it is well so i was going to i was going to ask you so

is there an appetite for wrestling outside of wwe within australia or is it really just this one brand that rules all because i mean we've seen other companies make endeavors to go down under and try and grow i mean eric just mentioned the hulkomania tour i mean that was a very i would imagine we can talk about it too after Eric, but that was probably a very strategic decision in that sense too. So is there an appetite for stuff beyond WWE?

Not a massive appetite, John. I'll be very honest. Going back to what I was saying earlier about Foxdale and cable television here, most Australians still prefer watching free to wear because it is very expensive. So they still have

just 4.5 million subscribers out of a population of around 27 million when you talk about the whole of Australia so that's still not a very big number is it uh so i think uh the appetite is mainly w w you have to go really and there's also a massive appetite for the ufc though so uh in a way tk o kind of fills uh fills it uh or ticks all the boxes for the martial arts fans in the in the country as well because i know a lot of cricketers who played for australia or or continue to play for australia are wrestling fans but they're also massive MMA fans, UFC fans.

So I think what also happens is there's WWE, there's UFC, and there's the only small little margin who have the appetite for everything else, like, you know, whether it's A.W or it's TNA or all those other promotions. So I doubt the AE product or AEW product has the space really to encroach which WW, like I said, first come, first up, they've just taken over. They always stayed through that. So, Brad, as you know, we're coming to Australia with Starcast, April 14, 15th, and 16th. Villarot.

What's Villarot like? Tell me about the market. Oh, Ballarat is on route from Adelaide to Melbourne. I drive from Adelaide to Melbourne, boxing day test every year. Eric, it's one of the coldest places in Australia. but it would be very cold oh no I think it will have started turning cold by by the time you come in April it's a beautiful historic town you I know you love your history there's a lot of history there because a lot of early gold mining happened in and around Ballarat so you learn a lot about the history there I can't wait to come see you there I'm still trying to smuggle you into Adelaide after that hopefully that works out as well but it's it's sort of closer to Melbourne but it is on the route from from Adelaide. It's a beautiful city and some lovely pubs, some lovely food, and a beautiful over there as well. So I'm excited that it's a country town sort of in Victoria that you're

coming to. So are there good Indian restaurants in Beloit? There is one. I have a friend an Australian guy who's married to an Indian woman and they talk up this one particular Indian restaurant a lot. So you and I can go and you and I will go there. I love that. I can also get you home-cooked Indian food if you come home. But it is Melbourne, Melbourne is a melting pot of Australia, the best food in the country. But because Ballarat is just an hour away by train, you kind of kind of blends into it as well. So there is a lot of good food and Indian people. Only an hour away.

I've made much longer trips for less. So that's a possibility. I may have to make sure that my return ticket home is open-ended. Honey, Eric Bischoff's coming over for day. it's fine. Hey, this has been awesome, man. We really appreciate your time. ACDC is going on what's probably going to be their farewell tour and they're going to get down to Australia and I'm going to try to get down there if that happens because that's like bucketless shit. So, hey man, I'm so glad that you guys have this event going down there whether you're

able to make it or not. It's clearly very important to this country. So tell us where everyone can find your work, man. Oh, so my Twitter handle or X handle is beastie boy 07 yes I'm not proudest of that like actually I have you know I've become beastie boy in the last 17 years I write for the number one cricket website in the world called Crick Bus which is also the sixth most visited website across the board it's right up there with YouTube and everything else but also kind of tells you how how big cricket is so that's who I write for my radio stuff is mainly for S-E-N sports entertainment network is in Australian radio station where all, everyone from Ria Ripley to all the other stars,

Triple H was on ACN as well this morning. And I do TV work for everyone. Basically, I'm just the media whore. I'm just a face on Australian television that they just can't get rid of. Well, I'm proud to know a media whore. I am one myself. I mean, you got to keep yourself out there. Brat, I'm really looking forward to see you.

I know we've been talking a long time and we've connected through ad-free shows and I, you know, I follow your stuff. and I'm really looking forward to seeing you. And we've been talking about visiting each other for a long time. I know. I'm going to come to Valrat. We're going to have some Indian food, get to hang out a little bit, and then we're going to have to get you over to Wyoming.

And I'm going to throw you on the back of a horse and take you up into the mountains. With this hair, it's made to be on the back of a horse. It is. I can see you now galloping on your horse through the mountains with your hair flowing in the background. It could be a shampoo commercial. oh let's do it and you know what i am coming to the u.s in june there is a big t20 world cup and john i've told you about it uh india and pakistan are going to play a match and when india and pakistan play each other in cricket uh more than three four billion people watch

uh all around the world eric how many people uh three three billion uh plus three plus billion people watch around the world three billion with a bee yes indeed sir so india and pakistan cricket matches And so for the first time ever, they're going to play each other in a makeshift venue in New York, just somewhere away from Manhattan. So it's going to be the biggest event you will ever see. Eric, I think you should get there. I think you should get yourself to New York for that. I think it would be very interesting. And I love exploring cultures through sport and entertainment.

And what a great way to do that. That's awesome. You're going to be there for that. You're going to cover it, right? Very much so, Eric. So I'll be there in the U.S. for half a month. And then, yeah, I hope to see both of you when I'm there in June and July. Eric, obviously, I'll see you with Ballarat.

But thank you so much for having me, guys. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm in New York City every other day. Thank you for seeing up so late to do this. I appreciate that. Very much. Appreciate you, Brat. Thanks so much for hopping on Strictly Business.

Great stuff there from our pal Barat. Just fantastic insight. And I'm really happy, Eric, that we got. perspective as to the grandiose nature of this event for Australia, it really helps us stateside kind of understand that this wrestling bubble is so much larger than many of us perceive it to be, you know? Absolutely is. It is a global entertainment phenomenon and getting Barat's experience and his perspective

from down under makes me even more excited about it. I want to ask you real quick there, the Hulkomania tour that you were part of. when this thing happened, I thought it was one of the more fascinating tours, especially since this was Hulk's last set of matches, technically speaking. Why did you guys choose Australia for that? They chose us. They were a promoter in Sydney, big promoter too, typically did rock and roll. They promoted the Rolling Stones and every major act. They were massive, massive of promoters in Australia, perhaps the biggest in the country, and wanted to bring Hulk Hogan and a Hulk Hogan tour to Australia. So they funded it. They made the offer through my agents

at the time, William Morris, and brought us all together, and we did it. It was exciting in many respects. It was tough, and unfortunately, you know, the promoters, I think, had expectations that were a little bit unrealistic and made financial commitments that were a little bit unrealistic. They booked some of the best buildings in the country. Sydney, Melbourne, Perth. And they didn't make the money that they should have made, but we had an amazing experience. It was a lot of fun. Rick Flair, of course, was a part of it.

And the nasty boys and Umaga was there. And it was, Ken Anderson was a part of the tour. A lot of that, I can't name them all, because it was. were so many of them. But we had, my wife was able to join us on the tour. So it was a great opportunity for her to see Australia. So I have very, very fond memories of it as long as I don't think about the financial part of it. I think that was one of Umaga's last set of matches, too. It was indeed. It absolutely was indeed. And unfortunately, we, we, we shot that show for television. Actually, Fox, Fox out, as Brat was talking about, actually produced it for television.

And as part of the deal that was going to be released throughout around the world, we were going to release it as a series. And I say we, they were going to release it as a series. But as a result of some of the issues that came up contractually, that footage is sitting in a vault right now somewhere in Sydney and hopefully someday it'll see the light of day but right now it's kind of caught up in litigation that's a gold mine of content right there man that's hopefully it could be but again it was kind of a financial mess not so much on our end but on the promoters end and some of the relationships that the promoter had and some of the deals the promoter made with third parties that affected us dramatically the promoter was an honest guy I mean they were not just

out as people. They worked their guts out. They lost money. They invested some of their own money in this, obviously. So it wasn't intentional or as a result of bad character or bad faith. It was just, I think, overestimated a little bit. And it caught up to us. But somewhere that footage is there. Amaga's last match is sitting in a vault somewhere over at Foxxel. And perhaps the rock, perhaps the rock could go over there and solve that issue and get that footage released. Who knows? anyone could it's dwayne we know that send over send over dwayne johnson and then nick con and we'll see what happens hey as we wrap here eric uh we've got the pay-per-view the ple in australia

coming up in just a matter of hours i'm going to put you on the spot here do you think we know the wrestlemania main events by the end of this show this pay-per-view what do we have about seven weeks after that no not even that yeah maybe about seven weeks of tv after this pay-per-view or PLE. Not 100%. I think you'll get that about four weeks out. Okay. Little early.

I say that just because you're going to want to build. You want to keep that momentum going. You come out and announce the whole card right away. It's kind of difficult to kind of build anticipation once everybody knows what's going to happen. So I think they'll continue to build on the anticipation element. And as a result of that, you won't have a defyceive. additive card till about four weeks out that would be my guess yeah curious if they as barra was kind of insinuating surprise appearance by the rock and we get this build and i wouldn't be surprised if

we get a tag team match announcement by the end of the pay-per-view to get us tonight one of a russlemania because i certainly think a cody roads and set ralins versus rock and roman match is very much on the table for night one yeah it sure looks at it sure looks at way yeah so i mean which i mean Again, you're talking about what a way to elevate Roman Raines and Cody Rhodes where both of them would potentially be competing on each night of WrestleMania and just that really makes it feel like the biggest WrestleMania ever. So we'll see if that is the route they end up going and give me a great event, really excited for it.

Again, guys, we appreciate you tune in every week to Strictly Business. Head on over to advertise witherick.com. Get your business, get your product out in front of thousands of listeners every single week here on Strictly Business, the 83 Weeks, channel is one of the biggest in all of pro wrestling podcasting and we want you to join us there advertise with eric.com you got a fun weekend ahead here eric anything else you want to add no man just uh excited to get on with my day and uh visit family hang out and head on over to the to comic con here at the what is it the maccombe civic center i think it's at i should

have that information in front of me and i don't i'll post it on social media as soon as we're down i'll put it up so everybody can follow it posted on elon musk's x and you'll be a i love x i think i think elon musk has done a phenomenal job with that platform it's better now than ever and i can't wait to post on it i said that just to piss you up wouldn't be strictly business without a good job this has been strictly business.