83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Wise Choices: Shaved Steel Chairs!?!?

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

On this episode of Wise Choices. Eric answers questions LIVE questions from our 83Weeks.com viewers about all things professional wrestling including the claims that AEW shaves their steel chairs! Eric share this thoughts and so much more on this fun edition of Wise Choices. ARENA CLUB - Whether you’re buying, selling, trading, or displaying—Arena Club is the card-collecting platform you have to check out. Get 10% off your first purchase at https://arenaclub.com/WRESTLEBIZ  BLUECHEW - Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code WRESTLEBIZ at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. That’s https://bluechew.com/, promo code WRESTLEBIZ to receive your first month FREE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, hello, everybody. God, it's been a while. I don't know why, but it feels like it's been six months since I've done one of these. And I think it was just last week. I don't know. So much going on. I got every year, and I'm going to say it again this year. At the end of the summer, I'm going to look at my wife, and I'm going to say, Lori, let's promise each other that next summer,

we're going to pump the brakes we're going to slow down we're going to take the time to enjoy each and every day we're not going to fill it with so many things and so many places to go and things to do that you blink and the summer's gone like really it's gone by so fast already and what's frustrating is I haven't gotten a whole lot done. It's been all, and, you know, I'm grateful for it. Don't give you wrong. I'm blessed. A lot of traveling with friends and family, and I've enjoyed every minute of it.

But then, you know, you've got another part of your life. You've got to manage too. So anyway, my commitment next summer, I'm going to slow down to about 50% of what this summer was, just so I can enjoy it. Stay on top of my shit. all right let's see uh it's going to take me a minute to warm up here again i got i feel like i'm new at this i'm going to get into these comments here because you guys always get there we go you guys always give me the energy help me come up with material get me a little fired up

so yeah i don't have anything to talk about today you know i didn't come here with a you know a lot of times i'll come here and i'll see something kind of lit me up and i'll get fired up and i'll jump on here and i'll start talking about that and i'll think about 50 other things but there's nothing to let me up today i mean of course part of it is i've been unplugged i really haven't paid attention to much of anything with regard to wrestling really the whole month of july has been hard excuse me come up you know i watch the news you know drop in check the headlines out see if there's anything really urgent going on i need to dig into or that i'm interested in that i want to you know dvr or something if something's

happen on television but I haven't like engaged the way I normally do so that's part of it that's part of it let's see if we've got a couple questions here that'll fire me up and then we're going to go to the news we're going to pick up some news over at wrestling ink that's my new site today that we're going to pick on or utilize all right oh Travis medway here you are blessed I know I am sir the easy E t-shirts do they ship to the UK Okay, I don't know the answer to that one, but I guarantee. That's how they say it down in New Orleans. Guarantee.

We'll get that answer to you. I'm imagining that yes, the answer is yes, but it always comes down to cost, doesn't it? We'll find out. We'll find out. Thank you, Travis. Blessed indeed, my friend. We all are. We're all here.

I mean, we could be doing something else. It isn't nearly as much fun as this, right? especially me. Jonathan, actually, Mr. Bischoff, first by thanks for your contributions to the industry. My question is, has there ever been a match or storyline that you thought would be the drizzly shits that ended up being a hit? That's a cool question. I've never been asked that before.

I always get it the other way around. Is there ever a storyline that you thought was going to be great if they're not to be? I get that one all the time. I mean, there's a lot of those. But was there ever a storyline that I thought would be bad but turned out to be good? Nothing comes to mind. No, I can't think of it. I'm sure there have been.

I'm sure there have been. To varying degrees. You know, I don't think there's been like a shocker. But I'm sure there's been many times that, you know, the first couple times I see a matchup or I see the beginning of a story. It's kind of like, eh, I don't know. feeling it and then of course it ends up getting a lot hotter. Same thing happens when I watch television. Like if there's a new series coming out and we hear about it if there's actors or actresses or directors or writers associated with it that really are fans of, I know at this point

just because the way shows are formatted, particularly the high budget stuff, the way shows are formatted and the characters are so rich that it takes at least two or three episodes for me to begin, just to get a sense of the characters. I don't even really start thinking too much about the storyline. Because, you know, Act 1, the first part of Act 1 is generally just getting familiar with all the characters and the environment and the world, right? There's not a lot of detail with regard to where the story is going until probably the end of the first act, beginning to the second act.

But the beginning, especially in, you know, eight-episode series, the high-budget stuff. Like we're watching Outlander. I know it's an older one, but we just got into it. Holy smokes, is that a phenomenal series? Same thing, though. That took me two or three episodes before I finally got to the point I went, okay, now I get what the hype is about. You know, the things started out at $10 million an episode?

10 million dollars an episode. that's a big budget it's a big budget all right well thank you for that by the way god i hope i answered that question i just went off on another tangent i do that all the time what else we got super dave ask a bum who wins a real fight between haku and pop-a-pump oh gosh i don't know i sure would hate to be the guy to break it up though huh i don't know you know because the the truth about Haku and the perception and the reality and the mythology. I don't know where one begins and one ends. I've talked to so many people that I know don't exaggerate and tell the truth.

And I just can't imagine anybody being tougher than Haku. However, Big Papa Pump, let's not forget, you know, as big as he is, as strong as he is, he was an amazing, amazing amateur athlete, amateur wrestler. And that matters. All I can say is I'm just glad I'm not the referee for that one. I'm not even sure I'd want a ticket to watch it, to be honest with you. That'd be a mess.

Hey, honey, let's go down on the intersection and watch some car crashes for fun. Whatever. What else we got? Bobby. Heelow, Foxx, Rout 5. golf tango x-ray well i haven't i haven't used my ham radio speak in a long time if ted had not merged with time warner was he close to owning one of the major networks he i think you know i i couldn't speak to this in great detail but what i remember working there you know all of us who worked at

turner were pretty familiar with the fact that that was ted's goal was to own one of the big three networks and from what i remember hearing if i remember remember it correctly. He was primarily interested in NBC. I don't know where I heard it, but that's what I heard. And yeah, that was his big goal. I think at one point, he was into some meaningful negotiations. I don't know how far they went. Again, I'm just hearing the stuff second of their hand. And I may have read it somewhere as well. But there was always strong interest. I don't think they ever got close to due diligence or anything like that or an offer, but yeah, there's always one of his goals.

And I think once it's a goal started slipping through his fingers and Ted realized that was probably no longer in the future for him. I think that's when he started to look at Tom Warner in other ways to grow the Turner franchise by merging with a bigger, a more powerful media partner. Yeah, that's one of those deals I wish that wouldn't happen, right? It's hard to imagine what that world would have looked like. but I'm sure would have been fun to find out. What we got, Super Dave, Genovius, Mac.

Let's say the deal for you and the investors did happen was rebranding a part of the plan. Would you have all new champions or some of the people held their respective titles? Yeah, we've talked a lot about this at Ovious on 83 weeks. There was never a tremendous amount of detail to a creative plan. The majority of the effort, the thought, the resources were poured into restructuring the company as a whole post-acquisition.

It's like, okay, what do we do with this? And once we buy it, how do we restructure it? How soon can we get into production? And figuring out creative was probably out of 10 things to do every day was probably right around 8 or 9. There were so many other things that were bigger priorities because of the time frame we were working at. So we never really got deep into creative. We had a general idea of what we wanted to do in terms of branding.

It still would have been Nitro. It still would have been WCW. The look of the logo, like we wouldn't have had that cat's ass logo. I can assure you that. That would not have happened. But it would have been some graphics redesign and things like that, the logo redesign. But the show still would have been called Nitro.

It still would have been called WCW. Beyond that, I just don't think there was a lot of thought given to creative or titles or which ones we're going to keep, which ones are we're going to like on that type of thing. You know, one of my favorite card collecting memories as a kid were those trading card binders that everybody had. We'd soup them up, deck them out, stickers, pictures of cars on them. But inside, well, it was like a whole playground marketplace, displaying, trading, judging each other's collections. It was really fun, and it changed all the time.

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Club.com slash RussellBiz 10% off your first purchase. Yes, you can thank me later. Hopefully that answered that question. Ephron! Let's talk about how you shave down a steel chair. I'm confused. Super Dave.

Can you help me out on this one? well they effort's referring to claims because obviously last week it hit the internet it was all across that chair shot jack perry took during uh the

blood and guts match straight chair shot internet was up and a buzz upset cTE um it looked terrible and uh there's been buzz that uh

AEW shaves down their chairs to where it doesn't do any damage because they have a prop master and he handles all that. So they shave a chair. They shave a chair. I guess I'm sorry? They say they shave a chair down. They repaint it. And when it's used, it gives you the sound and the look of a full steel chair.

but it's it's like getting hit with a cookie sheet. All right, all right. I get the gist of that, David, and I'm not, thank you very much for enlightening me. Because as I said, I don't know anything about shave chairs or Jungle Jack Perry or any other, anything else. But I want to get back to shaving a chair, though. How does one shave a chair? I'm guessing you're talking about like with a grinder or some kind of a belt sander. something to make it thinner and lighter?

I would imagine so. It's not like a manscape thing, right? It's a Hansen shaving thing. Maybe. Hansen could do it, though. I love my Hansen, right? You know, I just bought two more of them? Yeah, I know.

I'm sitting here in Envy because I don't even have one yet. I kept losing them. And I fall in love of these things. It's like I actually look forward to shaving. Is that crazy? I'm very surprised that you left. I'm very surprised you left your hotel room without it because I hear the weight and the feel like you can't use anything else besides.

No, of course, I said I had to because I had to get home and an order new one, right? And I go to the Walgreens and I buy this one. It's super cool looking. It costs like $28 or something. You get one razor and one extra blade for cartridge, but it looks like a Ferrari. You know, it's like, man, it's a bad. badass looking razor, it's just a freaking razor. I don't care what it looks like. And you hold it in your hand and it's like it doesn't exist. It's all plastic. I like that. My hensen razor is heavy.

It's heavy. I like it. It reminds me my grandpa. So let's talk about shave that look. I don't know, man. It seems like a lot of work. Like if you're manually doing it and you're gimmicking up each year every time we want to use one, that sounds to me like mostly bullshit just because it would be so time consuming, so difficult, and it would be inconsistent as hell. Like sometimes it work really well and sometimes it wouldn't work really well. So I just have a hard time. You know, I spent a little time in shock class when I was in high school. I'm just going, yeah, I get the idea, but I don't believe that that's an effective. way to gimmick up a chair i could be proven wrong i do think that there might be or should be

chairs that you can buy professionally manufactured from a prompt manufacturer that would that might do that job seems like a lot of work though like why go through all that work for a freaking chair shot come up with something else see that's a hard part they do somebody ridiculously cool but devastating looking finishes and spots that you become, it's like, like I had this friend. His name was Danny. I'm not going to say his whole name, but it started with a G. So I'm just going to call him Danny G. But now this is going back in the 60s.

So we went like, you know, oh, gee, he's trying to be cool. I'm just saying Danny G. And every time I'd go over to Danny G's house, I'd walk in and it was like, ooh, wow, it was different, we'll put it that way. It had an odor. And I used to dread it because when I first got in there, it was like, oh, my God, can I stand this? And after about 20 minutes or half an hour, you just go nose blind to it, right? You get used to it. And I think that's what's happening with so many of those big devastating moves in AEW.

And this is the risk of doing them. I mean, they are cool to watch and people, this is awesome. And I mean, it is amazing. It's like watching Simone Biles doing gymnastics only, you know, in a rain. Well, they're not nearly as good as Simone Biles. But you get my point. That's the analogy I'm making.

It's very impressive visually that people can do that crazy shit with their bodies. but when it comes time for something to look devastating and relatable like everybody can kind of imagine what it might feel like to get hit in the head with a chair you may not relate to what it might feel like to get hit with some of that other stuff but yeah getting hit in a face with a chair is pretty relatable and maybe there's just run on stuff that looks devastating I don't know but I've never thought chair shots for that. I know people love them. It's because you got the sound, boom.

You only got the sound if it's real. Because I guarantee you a shaved chair isn't going to make that same sound. It might go ping, but it's not going to have that same sound that a full metal chair has, like full metal jacket. I don't think so. And that's the other thing is we've heard those chair shots. We know what they sound like. So if it sounds different than that, yeah, I smell a rat.

We're talking about tears. Thank you, Ephron. Who's calling me there? Well, politicians looking for money. What do we got? The video. TV show idea for you. Kitchen Nightmares version of indie wrestling.

Spend a month with an indie helping them get back on their feet. Wait a minute. so the indie comes who are we helping here so we've got come on Lewis help me out here so we've got an idea for an indie themed reality show is this where I let an indie wrestler

who's down on his or her luck coming to my home and I feed them for a month I'll try to bed on this one Eric. What the hell? Titchin Nightmares is a show done by Gordon Ramsey and what he does is he goes in and spends, quote, unquote, a week with, like, a local mom and pop restaurant that is losing

money. It's a family business. There's always a pull on the heartstring story. And he brings in his own chef, and they help the cook figure out the menu. He gives the whole place a facelift. And at the end of the episode, he's like, hooray, okay, you're on your own. Good luck. and then they do like at the end the end the end slate is six months later they're up in profits they're doing great so it's like our rescue it's but yeah it's pretty much that it's but you know what all those you know what's so fun about tv you know all those shows are a variation of one of the biggest primetime reality shows ever um what's the one where they build the houses um extreme home makeover Extreme Home Makeover.

I mean, it's just, it's a before and after. You know, you're watching the process and the emotion and all the things to go with it, but it's essentially a before and after with a happy, happy ending. The ideas are always essentially the same. It's just all the little variations. It's kind of like there's only seven really basic stories that ever been told. But now, let's go back to this idea. So, okay, this is where my fat ass gets in my truck with my dog.

Because Nikki comes everywhere with me. So it can be kind of about an old man and his dog, kind of like the backstory. So, yeah, we throw my dog. We don't throw my dog. We bring my dog, Nikki, into the truck with me, and I travel. And I'm driving to some small town, middle of nowhere. I'm a fish out of water. I get out of my truck.

I pull up to this Quonset hut looking building. I don't know if it's a barn. I don't know what it is, if it's an old pump house. But it's the address I was given. I get out of my truck. I look at my dog, Nikki, and I said, Nicky, oh, that's right. We're here to help.

Okay, come on, let's go. We live to enlighten and to help. So we get out of the truck and we go into the Kwanza. You know what I mean about Kwanza? Not like Marine Barracks looking. It looks like half a beer can laying on the side. So we open up the door and lo and behold, there's a ring. There's like 22 chairs around the ring.

I don't know who that is in the back, but it's scary looking. I don't know. That person is sober or not, but I'm getting nervous. So, yeah, there's the scene, and I'm here to help. Huh. I'll be damn. That could be fun, huh? I know a guy who knows a guy, who knows a guy who's working on an independent wrestling-themed kind of an idea.

So I may have to run that by him. Good work. Could be fun. Maybe I will get a gig on TV again. Me and Nikki, I love it. All right, Super Dave. I know I'm here to bitch about something. I can't remember what it was.

I have to go look at the news. Travis Medway, again, hey, Eric, you'd probably answer this a few times, but how manic was a Monday back in the day? Would you travel the day before? How would you play the day out backstage? So, in the beginning, in the beginning, it was time. I've been listening to too much news. The essence of time and the meaning of time.

No, in the beginning, we would go in the day before. You know, before Nitro became like a really big hit. You know, 95, obviously, when we first started. And for the first probably five, six, seven months, but as we started picking up steam and making a lot more money, it became apparent that if, If I planned things properly, I could charter a private jet for me and five or six other people who typically WCW would pay for a first class seat for them.

So we're obligated to fly them anyway. And what I would do is I would have Janie Engel, my assistant, she would make a list of all the people that were on TV, and she would look at all the people who lived in Atlanta who contractually had to fly first class. so that I could usually charter a jet and make sure I invited five or six other people on with me and it was no more expensive than all of us flying commercial. So I could justify it without looking like an ass

and flying around in a private jet, right? Because financially it actually made sense on paper. And it made even more sense because I would fly back that night and I'd be in the office the next morning as opposed to finishing up the show at 11 o'clock at night on the East Coast and not being able to get a flight out until 6 or 7 in the morning, not probably getting back into the office until 1 or 2 in the afternoon by the time you get home and change clothes, get back to the office.

So it actually not only broke even financially, but also made economic sense. There you go. Now you know. Good question, Travis. ask a bum what wrestler has the strongest grip i geez i don't know that's a great one now and i you know i would imagine i mean just because of his sheer size and and freaky strength that would be brock lesnar but even more so because he's been wrestling amateur wrestling since i don't know he came out of the world or something close to it and usually wrestlers have

really good grips. So I, if I had to bet on one person, I bet on Brock Lesnar. All right. What's controversial? Somebody come up with you. Come on, Super Dave. You keep up with stuff. What's going on is controversial?

Well, the big thing that was all of us was the chair shot. That's kind of been the biggest thing. And I see in some of these comments, the ratings for last week's big blood and guts um Wednesday night the ratings were pretty dismal um and that this is like their version of war games um one of their flagpole events of the year uh and according to our folks in our chat uh it didn't do very well um that's pretty much the big buzz right now i mean what's it what's it i mean i keep here i've been hearing about Dave Meltzer's been talking about the renewal of AEW's Warner Brothers contract for a year and a half now.

And isn't it supposed to expire, like, soon? I think it's any day now. Wow. Well, hopefully they'll get that damn thing signed. It's weird that it's taken so long. But I guess with the NBA stuff and now litigation, and I think the last time I heard that we're even considering putting part of the company up for sale. So there might be just so many moving pieces that they might not find out for the last minute.

That would be tough. You don't know, kind of tough to plan. Just theoretically, they're not out talking to other networks. But, you know, there's a way to work around that. I mean, there truly is. That's what agents are for. And really, that's what attorneys are for. Because attorneys can have conversations with attorneys representing their clients.

that is nobody's going to have any nobody's going to disclose that you can't subpoena those records right so is it ethical probably not does it happen every day i can only imagine it happens every day all day so i guess what i'm saying is if if wbd just say yep sorry guys can't do it or if they offer an amount of money that's just not suitable for Tony Con. I guess he could always just say, okay, we're going to go shop. But Tony has zero leverage.

See, that's a problem. And you can listen to guys like Dave Meltzer justify the value of AEW as a property. I mean, that's going back, we're talking about a year or so. I mean, it's just like over and over and over. They're going to be worth them. They're going to be a billion-dollar company.

Bullshit. This company is losing money, hand over fist, has never made any money, and is deteriorating. It's rotting faster than roadkill in July. I mean, come on. It's, but who knows? Who knows? Maybe somebody will buy it, but the problem with Tony is now. If Warner Brothers doesn't, if Warner Brothers chooses not to negotiate or just withdraw their offer

and Tony's free to go anywhere he wants, you're selling damaged goods. No network wants some other networks sloppy seconds, especially if those sloppy seconds aren't attractive to anybody else, advertisers. It's not as easy as saying, well, if WBD goes, then we're just going to, we're going to shop it. There's not a lot of, anybody that wants wrestling has it. And anybody that doesn't want it is only going to want a version of the WWE. And the track record that AEW would have to sell to another network

or another studio right now is pretty bleak. so Tony just like I said doesn't have a lot of leverage it's going to be interesting I hope they do I hope they and I've said all along there's no way of knowing it all is going to come down to the strategy we're one of brothers discovery is there some reason from a programming perspective is there a value to AEW dynamite and and the other programs is there a value other than financial value that that type of content brings to the network? There could be an argument that live action, whether it be wrestling or anything else, American Gladiators back in a day was an example of live action.

It wasn't really a sport, but it was live and it was action, cool, fun, whatever. if it's live action and it's targeted at 18 to 49, you're going to get attention because that's a sweet spot, and it's pretty predictably successful programming most of the time. But wrestling's a little different. We've covered that a lot. So it'll be fun. It'll be fun for me, interesting, I should say more than fun. It's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out. It is a little weird that we're only hearing from the dirt sheet side of things, and, of course, Tony Kahn is keeping everybody update with all the wonderful conversations he has with the great leader, Mr. Zazlov. I mean, he's putting him over,

like, he's George Soros or something. It's pretty interesting. But we haven't heard anything out of Warner Brothers, which is not unusual, by the way. Typically, in these types of deals, you don't hear a lot of chatter from the principals. It typically like to keep negotiations pretty quiet because they don't want anybody else are negotiating with to hear what may or may not going on with their other properties. All right, Super Dave, we got anything else? I'm going to look for something here on the news site that may piss me off enough to get excited, but Dr. Harley Quinn, how much, if any involvement did you have with Jimmy Hart

of creating theme music? Did you ever have suggestions like you saw that sounds like Marilyn Manson, for example? Any stories on music? No, Harley, I let that, you know, I don't, I have no talent when it comes to music. I have no interest in having talent when it comes to music. I know what I like, like everybody else, you know, just like everybody when it comes to that. You know what you like. But I never, I just never felt like I had a vibe, a feel for that vibe when it came to music.

The only exception was I just really had to have voodoo child for Hulk Hogan, but that's as close as I ever got to getting too close to music. And Jimmy was good at it. That was his passion. He was knowledgeable. He had history, especially in wrestling. He had a feel for the audience. And typically when I find people that are good at what they do, I don't get too

involved in their world. I don't slow them down. I don't second-guess them. It's called macro-managing, by the way. But it's hard sometimes to find people that you can trust that. much. But anyway, yeah, there's that. So yeah, I didn't give Jimmy a lot of heads up. I didn't give him a lot of direction. That was all Jimmy. What else do we have? I was just reading on Wrestling Inc. that Bill Goberg did an interview recently with Chris Van Fleet on his Inside

podcast. And Bill Goeberg compared Tony Kahn to Dixie Carter. he's not the first one by the way what are your thoughts on that uh there's a lot of similarities well i should say a lot there are several similarities that jump out at me right away i think for both of them they you know dixie really really wanted to be the first she wanted to be the female vince man so bad. I think, and I'm not saying this is, I don't mean, this is going to sound like I'm making fun of her, and I don't mean that. That's not what I mean. I don't think there's anything wrong with aspiring to be the first female, successful female executives in professional

wrestling. I don't think there's anything wrong. In fact, I think it's cool as shit, right? But when that's like the most important thing and a lot of other things that should be important in order for you to get there aren't because you're focusing too much on the perception and the image and what people think of you and perceive you when so much of your thought goes into that as opposed to figuring out how to get where you want to be and then it's a little tough to deal with and i see a lot of that with tony tony wants so badly to be considered of Vince McMahon and Vince's primer to achieve what Vince did or Paul Heyman or probably even yours truly back in the 90s to be in that kind of fraternity of major league promoters that

had a major impact on the industry and he's never going to be that guy he's going to be the guy that spent a lot of money in the industry but he's never going to he never going to have that impact. Nobody's going to ever have the impact that Vince McMahon had on the industry ever again. It's just not going to happen. Probably very few, if any, people, in fact, I don't think anybody's going to ever do what Paul Heyman did with ECW and have the long-lasting, definitely long-lasting impact. And to this day, it still affects the business that Paul Heyman did. Tony Conn is never to come close to a fraction of the success of Nitro or WCW, ever, ever. But when he wants to be considered in that category so badly,

which is why you see him out in front of everything. It's one of the biggest mistakes Tony made early on, and I saw it coming in the very beginning, in the very beginning of AEW, I was under the impression. And Chris Jericho and I are friends, although we don't speak. First of all, I don't spend a lot of time on my phone. talking to anybody, to be honestly, to be honest with you. But it's not like we're close friends.

We're friendly. Let's put it that. Very friendly. And when I saw the, what I saw in the beginning in the way that Chris Jericho was being positioned, I thought, okay, this is, in a way, using Jericho in a similar fashion, I'm not comparing the levels or blah, blah, blah, bullshit wrestling gaga i'm talking about the fact that chris jericho was a very well-established brand at the highest level obviously and they were i thought that a ew was going to really leverage jericho in a similar fashion to the way that i leveraged hogan when i wanted to establish wcdb was a player and it was unfair to guys like flare and sting and others because they're very very valuable but i had to make

I had to make a big move, something that represented a seismic shift in the industry. And I was able to accomplish that with Hogan. And I really thought that that's what Tony Kahn was doing with Chris Jericho. And it would have been nobody better because, again, Chris had all the credibility in the world. He was viewed as a megastar in that industry and associated so much with WWE, which is a good thing, right? especially to advertisers and potential sponsors and all the people that make the real world go around not the dirt sheet world but the real world which is advertising and revenue that's all that really matters but i digress i thought that's the way they were going to use jericho and i was

disappointed once i saw tony start and it took place over the course of if i remember right about eight to 12 weeks all of a sudden i'm because i i was i thought i was right i'm going to move it Chris Jericho is going to be the face of this company. Yeah, he's going to wrestle, but they're going to use him differently. And eight, 12 weeks yet, I went, oh no, Tony wants to be that guy. It became obvious to me. All of a sudden, Tony is out in front of all these comments. And now you can't look at a news site without pictures of Tony Con,

not popping up on every third story about AEW. Well, tried to warn him. told you tony don't blow up that goodwill quit picking on the 800 pound gorilla if you're not willing to take a swing but telling people how great you are when you're not there yet don't burn up the goodwill but they did they did this episode is brought to you by blue chute let's talk about sex i mean Conrad's favorite subject but since Conrad's not here let's talk about it anyway guys you remember the days when you were always ready to go like if the wind changed direction

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thank Blue Chew for their ongoing support of everything we do. All right, I'm going to wrap this up here in a few minutes, but I see, oh, we got Ross here too as well. Maybe I won't be wrapping this up. Let's see what we got going on here. How difficult is it to balance leading a wrestling company with a lot of great talent and fan base while also striving to make it a product that appeals to networks and advertisers? Great question.

It's always a fine line. And it's hard, particularly when it comes to wrestling. And again, I can speak to this. My partner, Jason Hervey, and I, former business partner, we produced, we created it. We like sat down at a table. Okay, let's come up with an idea. I didn't work that way. But we would create the ideas in our heads.

We would develop those ideas on paper. We would take that paper and we would sell a network executive. And then once we sold the executive, we were charged with producing. that show. Now, most of the time when you're producing general television shows, you're working with executives that have had a lot of experience producing general television and general entertainment, whether it's reality, non-scripted, whether it's drama or scripted, whatever. You're working with other, you're collaborating with network executives or studio executives who have some experience, so a tremendous amount of experience. But when you're producing a

wrestling show, now you're having to interface with network executives who don't have no idea about a professional wrestling audience. They don't understand the professional wrestling business, the product, and more importantly, they don't understand the audience. The professional wrestling audience has a lot of the same basic characteristics and instincts as anybody else so much as entertainment. But depending on how long they've been watching, they have been conditioned to accept and anticipate certain elements that is unique to professional wrestling.

If you take somebody who's never watched professional wrestling before and you sit them down next to somebody who's really into it, it will be a study in human psychology. I mean, it would be fun to watch that. right and that's kind of what happens when you're developing a professional wrestling show or you're overseeing one and you're interfacing with network executives that just don't understand why you're doing half the stuff you're doing because it doesn't make sense in their world that they have experience in so that's where it gets like it's walking a fine line you've got to you've got to realize that you know if you're in the professional wrestling business you're dealing with someone who isn't but but who is savvy in the world of entertainment. You know, you've got to respect their perspectives and you've got to hear them out and vice versa.

In the right situation, right chemistry, you can learn a lot from each other, a lot. So it can be good or it can make you crazy. Either way. All right, Seth Myers, who would you have liked to work with in 2006? Had you not been fired as a raw GM, you know, I got to work with everybody. I was really hoping to, you know, I never worked with The Undertaker. I guess just from a personal bucket list kind of thing, that would have been fun.

But other than that, I worked with everybody that I had hoped to work with. You know, I was really grateful to work with Steve Austin. So I never really worked with Steve in WCW. I mean, I held the microphone from a few times. but that was fun. Yeah, I can't think of anybody really, man. Can't think. Craig.

Hensler. There we go. Herrick. Any thoughts on Freddie Prince, Jr. starting his own wrestling promotion and would he succeed? I don't know, Freddie Prince, Jr. I've never met him. I know who he is.

I really don't know much about him. I don't know if he's, like, a genius waiting to happen. I don't know if he's just a wrestling fan with a famous name. I don't know. I hope if I've heard this rumor about him starting a wrestling company for a couple of months now. But it takes time. I hope it's true. Give us something else to talk about and have fun with.

Just a chance for somebody to have another place to work. So, yeah. Go, Freddie. Do it, Freddie. M. I'm not even going to say it, Phenomeno. M. Finamano. Hmm.

Which Attitude Era WWFEs would you like to have written creative for? Ooh. Ooh. I don't know. I have to give that one some thought. Who did I not get a chance to work with creatively? It was in WWF in the attitude era that I would have liked to work with creative I'm gonna get I'm gonna throw Steve Austin in there that would have been

you know I would have just like to have been a bit of fly on the wall just to watch how it developed obviously rock I mean come on just from a professional perspective just to be able to say you worked with him would it would be cool given the success that he's had so but I got to work with everybody I really wanted to work with really less than that regard I'm honest with you. Mission Impossible Reviews. Is it not accurate to say that the only thing that matters is what AEW can generate in add dollars compared to programming? Okay.

I'm sorry. Let me read that again. I'm reading to myself. Is it not accurate to say that the only thing that matters is what AEW can generate in ad dollars compared to? to programming, Warner Brothers Discovery already holds the rights to air. It always comes down to add dollars. But here's an example. I don't know these numbers.

So I'm just pulling numbers literally out of thin air, but I've heard them. So whether they're true or not. Let's say dynamite costs, Warner Brothers, $45 million a year for all, for the entire year's worth of dynamite. that cost of that the licensing fee for that is $45 million. And let's say that dynamite generates $50 million in ad revenue. Well, that means they made $5 million, right? On paper, at least.

But what if Warner Bros. Discovery has this massive freaking library filled with all kinds of things they already own. And they don't have to pay a license fee to anybody. Well, what if it only generates $40 million instead of the $50 million in AEW generated? But it doesn't have any cost. So instead of making $5 million, they made $40 million with no risk. That's where it gets tricky. And that's a very simple kind of scenario.

Obviously, I want to keep it simple because. I'm not good at explaining complicated things, but it's that simple. It's that simple. The other, you know, the other variable, that's the one that we never hear about. We never read about. Nobody tries to talk about it. What dog just came in. Is we know what the ratings are, sub-800,000 every week, okay?

Pretty easy to figure it out. Let's just say they average 800,000 viewers. what the demo is. Are they able to sell that? In other words, is that 800,000 viewers with a 0.20 demo, whatever that is, can they sell that 0.2 demo for a value to an advertiser, to add a value or a cost that's representative of other 0.2 demos and other types of programming? That's where it gets dicey too, because wrestling is a harder.

sell. It's the very reason why Fox chose not to continue airing SmackDown, even though SmackDown won the night on network with over 2 million viewers consistently throughout the year, each and every week, 0.4, 0.5, 0.55 in the demo, crushing it. But the problem is, even though it's WWE, far more mainstream than AEW, clearly. Fox couldn't sell the advertising that the numbers that show was delivering deserved because advertisers just weren't into wrestling. If that situation exists for WWE and Fox, how easy or not do you think it is for the salespeople at Warner Brothers Discovery to sell AEW to advertisers?

which is why you hear me talking all the time about blood, about not having story, about not having growth. All of the things that I've been bitching about have a lot to do with marketing your product to advertisers. And if the advertisers aren't buying it, the network won't be either. That's as close as I'm going to get to getting pissed off tonight.

I saw we had one from Barat. Is he in there Super Dave? Because I'm running out of gas here. Oh, he's just saying hello. Barat, so what we're doing, just so you know, my buddy Barat and his buddy, Sid, Sid came here from India. Barat was in Australia. They were covering the cricket, got a cricket tournament.

I think I'm in the West Indies or somewhere, the Pacific. Anyway, they were there because they're both journalists. They were covering cricket. And Barat, when I ran into him in Australia a couple months ago, I said, oh, you should come out for the first. Fourth of July and Cody. He goes, okay, I will, and I didn't think he would. He did, and he brought his buddy, Sid, and we had a great time.

I got to introduce Sid and Barat to Cody, Wyoming, Cowboy Stuff. And then they both made, Lori and I, an incredible Indian two different types of curries for brunch right before they left. It was so good. And Barat gave us the recipe, and this is what I wanted to tell you, Brat, we are going to be making your chicken curry, dry chicken curry. next weekend. So we're going to give it to the world.

All right. Hey, man. I promise I'm going to give back to you again. Maybe this week, if not for sure, next week. We're going to light this thing back up and ramp up our schedule here for the fall. So we'll be trying out some new ideas. Thanks for joining. And hope everybody has a great rest of the week.

Savewithconrad.com. My name is Doug Gustafson. And we are from Columbus, Ohio. First learned of Conrad through his podcast network. I'm a big 83 weeks fan. Probably got into a little bit more credit card debt than what we wanted to during the course of the pandemic. We wanted to get rid of some of that. My wife and I had luckily bought the house many years ago and had quite a bit of equity built up in that.

We are looking to actually redo our bathroom, things around the house that we wanted to do with the other equity that we have left over. We've been talking about refinancing forever, and I finally just took the plunge and called the number, got a hold of him. and from start to finish, it was just fantastic. I had Diane within the day. The communication with her was fantastic. The process moved quicker than I could have ever hoped. My name is Doug Gustafen from Columbus, Ohio. I ended up saving $800 a month.

It was saved with Conrad, and am able to also update our bathroom. NMLS number 32416 Equal Housing Lender, SavewithConrad.com.