TLF Ep. 392: WCW Greed (Part 1)

It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and carn S e O and JP Sorrows He's a lapsed fan. In all my years and wrestling, I've never seen anything like rop kicking. It's the laps Fan man number one in the ring begin about Osada, a real king of swing when the bell goes hang and a kick like me throoming in the corner with its rash like stick. Even Jerry King could say off the crown nodded in his head like Steve low Brown? Would you get low down? We go even high up? Trip

you on your head? But you no cool drive speaking monology and dragon slits fire give you more shot than the edge, retire from dropping more truth than the conn of sniper unless you would a coconut Roddy Piper out, Jack a JP, you a j y D drop a cupcakes and got the brain Bob Beans. The best podcast from the start, the close file of Your Benefit. It's a passic at polls. Time to get greedy. Yes, I mean deep in the archives of ten years of TLF is the history of WCW.

If you arrange it a certain way, Yeah, totally absolutely, but not until now. In the happenstance of the random draw. After our most recent regular episode was the final WCW pay per view Greed in the archive. What do you say we get this one on the shelf and really at a time when WCW is all the rage, Oh, I know right, I believe, I believe it's time to partake in the seventh sins Fame. Here's the goal of every warrior who steps into the ring. Fortune is his reward

for destroying all challengers in the end. What they grave most is power. You cannot imagine what one man will do to stay on top and how far or rest will Joe will bring them down until you order w CW Greed Live and I didn't read Eastern only on paper view. Don't miss out order now. How WCW is that ad Oh? I mean it is. It is quintessential WCWS. It's kind of WW that you need at house. So because it's got that that guy doing that voice, he was the WW guy.

I think he did a couple WWW ones as well, or maybe someone similar, but he was very very like he was about. He was definitely the WCW announcer voice. He's about delivering on a theme. Yes, indeed, because they used to name their pay per views before they had a fucking clue what the matches were going to be. Yeah, so the marketing had to be you know, these broad stroke like philosophical statements about conquering and things like that. That makes sense to me? What's wrong with that? And this

would be the final salvo in that regard. WCW greed from March two thousand and one, Jacksonville, Florida, interestingly, the future home of AW, hosting the final WW pay per view. Where were you in terms of WCW watching at this point in time? I mean, this is essential weird, nothing at all. I mean I've actually just started college at this point. You know, I started January of two thousand and one, so I would have been I would have been completely I mean I was. I was definitely

on WW dot com, and I've pretty much forgotten that WW existed. Yeah, until WW dot COM's main headline was WWW Purchases WCW. Yes, then wow. Matter again. I mean we've talked about that, We've done the final Nitro, We've done Bash of the Beach two thousand, which in many ways was the precursor to say nothing of like New Blood Rising in the full

Starkad Memorial tour. But this time period is just so bizarre because right until the very last minute, you have an Eric Bischoff who's working to facilitate a final purchase of WCW by a company called Fusion Media Ventures, and it's kind of trying to set the pieces for a big relaunch, a big restart, a big reboot on a show which was to be called The Big Bang in May of two thousand and one, right I remember that, which has become

lower because of course it didn't happen. But suffice to say, this show is kind of like the fumes of the late stage planning to create the circumstances for the hiatus. You have all of WCW's highest paid stars, from the Hogans and Goldbergs and Nashes all the way down eventually to DDP at the end of this show being taken out or being sidelined or shelved, many of them

by WCW World Champion at the time, Scott Steiner. And so the idea was that Steiner, with the backing of Rick Flair's Magnificent Seven stable as Flair was storyline CEO of World Championship wrestling at the time and had the spiked hair from losing the hair match to Russo in two thousand. Oh, I didn't even know, you know, I always wonder what that spiked hair was all

about. So it was that's how it grew back. We spent a lot of time dissecting Vince's hair growing back after WRESTLINGIA twenty three, and now it didn't behave as it should have. Yeah right, No, no, no, it did not. And I think the same can be said for the Nature Boy after he got his head shaved in two thousand. You know though, I actually you know, didn't mind his shaved head. Look, it kind of was okay, oh yeah, it wasn't offensive. It just wasn't

what it should have meant. It never got back to the way it should have meant. No, it did not. It did not because then he started you know by aa too. But yeah, no, but you know, when your hair, when you cut your hair, and that much, you know, that much disaster happens to it after the fact. It's just not it's not normal. It's not okay. And uh yeah, I mean yeah, because yeah, he started parting it when he came to w WE in the fall and stuff, and yeah, it's just also not normal or

okay, was World Championship Wrestling of course at this point in time. And so they're they're doing this kind of cleaning of house, and Bishov's notion was to go off the air for a couple of months and then relaunch big time under new ownership, with new contracts in place with TBS and TN or maybe just TBS. There's all kinds of different kind of shades of the deal that

we're being talked about. And as we know, at the last minute, word came across the transom that Turner Networks no longer wanted pro wrestling, and thus interest in the deal that had been put together waned severely without those t FEET contracts, and before you know it, what do you know, the only guy who really has any value or any use rather or sees any value in WCW is Vince McMahon. He's the only guy without television that has a use for what. No, who did it? That was you? Vince?

I don't know if you remember you wanted the IP as I remember correctly, Oh, I wanted well, basically I wanted to create the IP. No, the IP was already created. You just wanted to acquire it for video distributions. I wanted to create the ip of ww okay, well you actually tried to do that for a heartbeat. We'll get to that and so much more. But two thousand and one is the weirdest year ever in wrestling

ever? Are none? Yes, was in such an and to watch this show, this sort of lame duck WCW and see kind of the outlines of like a youth movement. You know, they had this thing. Russo started it where it's like they just went to the power plant. They were like, look all these guys training, Ohair, Jindrak, Plumbo, Elix, Skipper, Alan Funk, so many guys. Let's just bring him up. Let's just pretend they're ready. Oh bizarre, Let's just say they're ready and

men, and some of them were. Most of them weren't in terms of having the inn ring polish where you didn't feel like they were green every step they took right and here agreed. We see them trying, honest to goodness

to put some of these guys over, in particular Plumbo and O'Hare. And this is just such a rich story that we'll get to as they defeat Lex Luger and Buff bagwell two guys that, let's say, weren't necessarily oriented towards making the next generation and at this point in time, we're very much feathering

their own nest. But they put him over here and there's a backstory to it, but it's just like, Wow, this is a WCW just stripped down where it's like anyone who would pull a political power play was sidelined, you know, for purposes of waiting out the deal. And so this is like pure unadultre rated like what WCW has left when you strip away the big

money contracts. And that's a lot of work rate. I mean, the show is just like there's a lot of action, some of it's kind of some of it's kind of like repetitive, like every match is a work rate match, you know, sure if you if that's what you want to call it, Sure, Well what did you think of the show watching it for I presume the first time? Yeah, it was the first time I knew about it. I had never seen it, and I thought it was just

a just a fucking shit show of bizarre yeah randomness. When you say bizarre, yeah, please, well, like I don't I don't know what a Kui Wei is? Oh my god, well we get to that. I don't know what that is. I don't certainly don't know what a Jason Jet is either. I just was like, what the fuck is this? What am I watching? You understand why everything in The Magnificent Seven's locker room is told through the lens of a documentary camera with the record red light on the

screen. No, First of all, I magnificence is Steve McQueen here, right, is Jul Brynner here? I didn't know what is Do they mentioned? Do they even say you're talking about Magnificent seven? As if I know what it is? I don't is it? Would do they actually talk about that? Did they mention that name? I just saw a bunch of weird shit back there. Maybe they talked about They talked about all the time on TV, but perhaps on the actual Greed broadcast they didn't say it more than

once. Uh, at least it didn't it didn't sink in as being a thing. Yeah, they would talk about it a lot during this time when it was Flair and Jarrett and Buff and Luger and Animal and all those guys. You see Rick Steiner, Palin around because the only storyline they really have is group warfare. That's the only thing WCW ever could really wrap its head

around is group warfare. And so whether it's New Blood versus Millionaires Club NW A Wolfpack for Senbo HOLLYWOODWW that was my next one, absolutely, you know, Filthy Ammals and LWO and all the different variations of it. And so the group warfare at the time was Magnificent seven was pretty much the Millionaire's Club. They just went back to what was so successful in two thousand and so

very much righted the ship. This idea of putting all the big earners on this side of the bracket and the lower earners on the left side of the bracket and somehow pretending this time that the older guys were going to do business was again apparently their bright idea, and the outlines of it are here, but it's also so lame duck that it's like, what was this really because when you hear Bischoff talk about it, you know he was just saying,

don't fuck anything up. That's all creative was at the time. Don't get the deal off the rails, and what happens now The idea is no one will remember it when we do the relaunch. So you got to watch this show through that lens in part. But it come to find out as history unfolded. As people showed up to the arena in Jacksonville that night for the final WV pay per view, what would come to be the final ww pay per view, it was already pretty much known WWF was going to buy WSW.

The word was trickling out to a select few. It's kind of like the Benoit tragedy where it's like everyone pretends they didn't know right about, you know, him potentially being the murderer, but they sever It's clear from the timeline that several probably did, and it's clear from watching some of the prevarications on the testimonials shot backstage that people had a guilty conscience about memorializing him,

knowing what this could evidence. But same thing here in terms of, you know, everyone talks about showing up to that final nitro two weeks after this in Panama City, Florida, and everyone really not knowing what's going on and not not really buying that WWF had bought them until Shane McMahon and Bruce Pritchard, another WWF personnel show up at Nitro and we know where it goes from there. They're not buying that, and people aren't buying ww pa per views.

You aren't buying WCW. That's that's why it happened. And people aren't buying w W pay per views. Absolutely, there was there was a stemming of the two thousand bleeding in two thousand and one and the you know, three months that they were on the air, But it was nothing that indicated increased interest. It was just like, okay, it's getting it was getting

worse and getting worse and getting worse from a television rating standpoint. But I'm not sure that two thousand and one, the first three months of two thousand and one were on track to be as challenging as the first three months of two thousand. Maybe they were. I didn't do that analysis. It's going to get worse before it gets better, you know. That's just that's just business, that's true. The idea of calling agreed, by the way,

is seven deadly sins. You know, So like w W SIN started the year if you remember January two thousand and one, Ah, sure, and then they did Super Bowl and then I guess they were going to do or at least the idea on the drawing board before all this sellout talk happened was Greed and then the other sins I guess would be paper ofview names. What would that leave the sloth I can think of. Really, the one that I was actually would be looking forward to is gluttony. Well, yeah,

that was this. That was this main event as Dusty Rhoades eats burritos on the broadcast. And I don't mean one. You tell us that we're making it up when we say it's about food. Oh my god, this whole angle to build to the Dusty and Dustin versus Ricclair and Jeff Jarrett match is a tray of burritos that Dusty is going to ingest. Just a it's a farce. It's a farce. It's such a farce. Put a postal stamp

on it. It's being mailed in. My god, wrath Envy. I wonder if they would have brought Brian Clark back at Brian Clark back for wrath Lust. Plenty of that in the company at the time. Envy. Absolutely yes. So it's greed and Diamond Dall's page challenges Scott Steiner in the main event for the w W World Championship. Solid little match, kind of interesting.

It's almost like a it's an attempt at like an attitude ear a WWF brawling style main event in w's tribute Sure, and you can see Page sort of a I don't know, I'm not saying he did this, but it's almost like auditioning for being able to do the WWF headline style in a way. But Page ends up just another victim of Scott Steiner's rampage of taking everybody

out. The idea ultimate was Goldberg would be the one to return to finally challenge Steiner because they always saw money in a Scott Stent or Goldberg program for the title, which I think makes sense. I could see that that's a that's a decent money program. They got the physical imposing thing done down.

I should say, all those boxes checked, so that that would have been That would have been the closest thing they probably could have put together at that point in time to a money match up, something that had a chance of drawing above the typical audience number. So that's where they were heading. Goldberg

was going to be one to stop this Steiner rampage. It goes through DDP on this show, and it's a wild match in terms of, like I don't know, just kind of out of character for w W man events, say, some of the page ones with like Savage, some of the No DQ style. They fight all over the building, they right crack weapons over

each other's heads. It's it's very it's very much like that. And uh, you know, at a certain point, Paul London, of all people, the future wrestling star Paul London, who apparently was just getting started in the business is front Row, was a planted fan at this show, handing d what appears to be I don't know, a vinyl record or a piece of cookwhere that he cracks over Scott Steiner's had. I don't know what that thing was got me. That was just that was bizarre. There's that it

was him until you told me it was him. Yeah, Yeah, it's definitely him. And he's never talked about it as far as I can tell, having you know, searched for it every way from Sunday, I've never seen him talk about what he was doing there is. It sort of seems to be before he really even broke in and got his first match as a

pro. But that was that was something that struck us as a curiosity and so much more about what the mindset was coming into this final w W pay per view I mentioned and we'll get to who that might be in this category. That why he said, Who fucking hell Jesus did I say anvil?

I'm thinking to myself, why would I say anvil? But those little curiosities and just the general thing of like who knew what coming into greed, you know, in terms of where things were going, and that this would in fact be the final pay per view for the foreseeable future prompted us to do a little outreach. And it's a journey, ladies and gentlemen, but you're

co chairman. Thanks to the resources you in the solar system make possible, was able to secure a bit of let's say, a cameo by w W Green headliner DDP Yo JP, what's up, brother, it is me.

It is d d P. Domindell's page the King about it being the master got that the diamond, three time world Champion, w a W Hall of Famer of course, Pounder Ceo, DDP Yoga and power Cups changing the world, brother, excellent, So JP, this is actually for you, so big fan, reading what you wrote, love w CW and Rader rumble very cool. What was the main event? What was it like main eventing the last w CW PPV. You know, I didn't think it was the last

one because I knew Bischoff at the time was buying w CW. So it's gonna be pretty interesting to see where they go with this Who Killed the w CW. To me, they didn't pick it. They didn't show like the like the the Sonic Rise past w c H, bess WWF. He kind of irritated me a little bit that time on that to build that before you take it down. So long story short, I didn't It'll be, like

said, we're interested to how they handled Who Killed w CW. But Eric Heshoff was buying the company, and I think you'll see that in his next two weeks on that show. But he had the money, he had the backing, he had the contracts. They were going to guarantee they were going to take pay fifty million for the companies. How I remember it, Okay, they're gonna pay fifty million for the company, and as I remember, they were also going to guarantee all the mainstream contacts contracts. Hope show mine,

freg your Nash Hall saying every Goldberg everybody. So this is a mainstream contract. Is that what he said? Its true right, as opposed to I guess the other an independent contry. Yo, JP, How fuck I thought I had it on a pause and resume. Sorry, ruin that for you. We're gonna have to we have to countenance it just for a minute here. But I'll turn I'll turn it way down, so we sorry, fast forward to these sons of bitches? Is there uh not really now?

Fuck? Anyway? We One of the things I'm glad I can this opportunity. Actually, that that we want to ask him about as well, is during the course of the match with Scott Steiner, there's just some random person on crutches in the yeah on the audiences. They're brawling in the crowd, and it grabs the crutch and smashes Scott's center with that. Who is that guy? You know? How did you and why right? And how did

you get that guy? How did he get out of the building if he if he couldn't walk, but how do you get the building for that matter? And how to get over in that particular area of the building. Many people ask the same question about DDP. How did he get over in this particular area? So did he did we ask him what he thought about who killed WCW. No, No, that was not in the that wasn't in

the in the in the questionnaire. I guess he wanted of the four parts, three of them to be about how awesome nineteen ninety eight was nineteen seven? Okay, I mean, sure, Kyle, whatever you do. The sonic rise, I mean, look, yeah, yeah, there is. He thought they were going to play him Diamond cutting Scott Holland refuting the nWo mon didn't happen. But I gotta remember, you know, Bischoff and DDP

thickest thieves DP. I think even was his neighbor for years. And you know, as you see DDP operating in WCW, to me, you always have to see Eric Bischoff operating in WCW because he's a guy who you know, Page talks a lot about, you know, sort of being in Eric's head at the at the time of the of the sale, and has a lot of insight about you know, suggestions made along the way and reading you

know, reading mind. So he's clearly he's clearly connected, and so his insights go beyond just the fact that he was in the ring for the main event, but the fact that he was probably close counsel to Bischoff at the time and perhaps even even today. And as I remember, they were also going to guarantee all the mainstream contacts contracts, whole show mine frigging Nash Hall

saying every Goldberg, everybody that is probably not a thirty million. We had Hulkin and Ship and Goldberg and staying to me it was going to continue like there was no w WF gonna buy the company. No one knew that till that night. Now I don't know if they'll let me say this, because I know I said it when the interviewed before who killed w CW. The only way to me that Vince won the war as if he did this. And there's been this rumor, but I thought of this frigid years ago.

Harvey Harvey, he's und named Jami Kilner was the guy that was a chart of all of TBS, DNT, Turner sports in general. He hated wrestling. He wanted to get rid of wrestling. So when they saw that Bishap was buying it for fifty million, and I had to give ten years of TBS. How I remember it. Jamie's like, why did you guarantee him ten years on TBS? And they were like, well, that's the hottest show we have. He's like, we ain't gonna be to wrestle on network.

Cancel wrestling now. The only reason that he why would he not give Eric Bischoff a month or two or three to get another network and still get their fifty million and get thirty million off their books. But that's not what happened. He didn't do the smart thing. He said, fuck it, we're canceling WCW, which I really didn't. It didn't. It wasn't like something that you know, made me go, oh my god, I can't believe it, because as far as I was concerned at the end of my

career, I was going to end up in a ww IF anyway. What you don't think about when that's happening is all those people who worked for so long for w CW, all the camera guys, all the right I mean, all the people who made it behind the scenes. They might have been doing that job for five, fifteen, twenty twenty five years and now it's gone. So the bottom line is he would just burn it down. Jamie Kilner would just burn it down and then sell it to Vince for five million

dollars the name, all the rights, everything of WCW. There was definitely some under the table money so coming to Jamie Kilner as mister vincent man. And Vince did do that, then he wanted to work. So hey, my mind is that's not part of your question. But you were saying, like, what was I feeling when it was ending? It was like,

I didn't think it was ending. I thought it was just going to keep going and with Eric, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to sign, you know, because I knew I wanted to get to WW where I still had at the time, you know, still had miles to go. I got a couple more runs in me. But it didn't work out that way anyway. And then Vince completely anybody who was WCW just listening to Goldberg talk about how he feels he was treated, and I thought he got treated unbelievably

well compared to me. But it wasn't me. It was whoever the first guy from WCW was going in there that was going to get, you know, beat down, and it was just business for them. What did it feel like with WC was at the ending. I think that pretty much sums it up right there. It was brutal, and it was brutal for what I heard, Like I heard that day and I wasn't scheduled for TV. I heard that day, this is the last nightro and here's our writing TV

and I I heard that. I called up whatever producer and said, you got to give me three or four minutes to thank the w CW fans for allowing me to live the dream that I did, because if they don't get behind me and everybody doesn't start doing this, I get that push. The relationships I had would Here's a great picture of me and Kevin in the early days and Scotty Bingo Flamingo. But that's Raven right there in between our hands. And this is when I was managing Scott hol and created the home gimmick

and everything which would later become raisor Ramone. Look at Scott hole before he looked like that. I created that look for him. And I had real relationships with those guys, so real relationships, and those two, of course Jakey were my mentors. Uh. They guided me through a lot of the friggin treacherous waters that is professional wrestling. So that's the only reason I'd have

given it getting a run ahead. But when I knew we were ending, I wanted to come there and thank the fans, and I got to do that. Who's the kidney crunches? Just somebody's nephew or something. I had no idea. I haven't set that up. I'd be like, Bro, you'd be here with the crutches. I'm going to take the crutch away from you to hit him with it. So I'm sure that's what happened. It was like a spot I would do occasionally. And that's funny. He said,

what did Paul One didn't give you during the match? Like, I don't remember Paul doing something in that. He might have. I'm sure he did, but I don't remember that. I would like to have seen them when I go back and watch that book for that. And was the program Starner going to continue? No, that was like my shot again at that title run, and then Scotty probably was going to keep going with it,

and then it would be wherever wherever it goes. You know what happened At the end, Rouster finally got his way and got the strap on Booker t who I thought it was one of the greatest talents of all time. I mean, he was a great human being, and I mean a guy who went down a very dark path back when he was in high school and Robin and holding up places and ship and did a couple of years time. Well he came out. Man, he was going to be a changed man,

and he led by example and one of my favorite people ever. So I was glad to see that title switch. And then I liked that it ended very last night with Player and Stinger because you know, that was that was the steak you know, for pretty much when I say steak, like steak, meat and potatoes. You know, those guys almost really were the cornerstones of the company before Hulk and Brandy and Kevin Scott all came in. And we did this amazing thing with Lex and uh, it was a hel of

It was al of a run, man. I hope that's what you were looking for. I hope you liked it. I want to give you thirty days free on the app. Just go to dot com backslash cameo or forward slash cameo and you'll get thirty three days on the app bro, Now you choose a JP. Get on that. Damn Matt, I just gave you thirty three days and do your d dpuy or else ba see your brother. I hope you liked it. Leave me a review, all right, I

know what you thought. You know. What's funny is that he uh so so I didn't leave a review right away, and then all of a sudden I got a message from him, Oh my god, could you please a review? Oh my, he's such a he's such a YELP guy, you know, like he's such a review economy guy. He he he survives because of reviews. Yeah, he like he lives for like the play store star ratings like yeah, app Store like top ten for sure. Well, good for good on him. Thanks for the cameo. Had a lot of insight

there, I guess. I guess it says a lot that he doesn't remember the match hardly at all. Yeah. You know, that's always a challenge for us because it's like we're doing surgery on this stuff, and these guys don't even remember when had happened for the most part, right then, I remember what they I mean, they don't remember what they ate for dinner tonight.

I think that is such a drawback of these things. It's like they don't read them until they hit record, and it's like, dude, right, you could have just pulled it up in fourteen seconds and you could have watched like, you know, you could have watched like five seconds of the match and had a lot more to say about it. It'll be fifty more dollars. I'm sure, right, I'm sure, which is fine. I bet she'd have requested that in the in the thing and she's said, can

you please go back and watch this for rep? Yeah, yeah, there you go. But then he'd have to hit stop and he's not going to do that. Yeah, but you know you're talking about like the crutch spot he used to do. Why would since when does DDP need a crutch out there? But it turns out as sort of copasetic as he made it sound between him and Scott Steiner, that this match actually was not the easiest to get in the ring in terms of like the long picture of relations between these

two. Scott Steiner was an absolute headcase at WCW at the time, constantly finding reasons to come back through the curtain and start pushing people and things and knocking things over and expressing frustration at what he perceived to be in competence, or just any little thing would have him fly off the handle. And it's interesting to hear people talk about people that knew him well, like whether he was actually just being big popa Pump twenty four to seven, or if he

actually was just completely out of control of his own emotions an asshole. I know. So he's scary. I mean he's scary. Absolutely everybody was scared of him. And do you use that knowing no one will ever step to you? Do you just keep using that to get your way? You know

what I mean? When you sense that no one's ever going to step to you, if you get physical and you want something that's going to advance your career or keep your character relevant or allow you to say what you want to say in the microphone, you're obliged to go fucking ape shit all the time. You know, if you're scared, if you're scared of me, I'm going to make sure I keep it that way. Yeah, that's why I always kind of surmise. But besides the Michigan connection that Kevin Nash was so

it genuflected so much towards the Steiners and and stuff. You know why they worked with them. Shortly after coming in as the outsiders, he's a little afraid to Scott. I'm sure, sure a guy who could actually shoot on him. But it's it's a wild time because part of Steiner going nuts is getting in ddp's ex wife, Kimberly's face. Remember Kimberly, Oh sure, not only just as Valley and nitroglow by this point. By the time Russo comes in, he puts her on screen as a full on character with dialogue

and romances and intrigues and dolliance's. We talked about her playing a role in ddp's storyline with Jarrett Millionaires Club in two thousand when we the Bash at the Beach run through of Ball of the Russo Bischoff Nitros, which which was just such I had to revisit some of that preparing for this episode. What a we we battled? Man? We had to battle? I summarized like an episode of Nitro. It took me like five minutes without stopping, and you

were just like what happened? Who ran over who in a dumpster and then survived to come back and eat it? Eat a pie? And then jump off a building. You know, ate a pie right page of the six steak reference in there too. He was getting hungry. He almost sudden, he says the steak. I'm like with the what someone someone's got something on

the grill. Yeah. He timed that cameo just for the amount of time for medium Rare oh Man, so he to get a history of Steiner having confronted Kimberly backstage at WCW and causing frick with DDP such that it actually blew up for real one time between the two backstage. It actually came to blows

between these two and a backstage skirmish. It was so weird because at the time WCW was not totally out of the habit of producing backstage shouting matches with the hopes that you know, people would leak it as like a scoop to the sheets and they'd feel good because the sheets would report something they worked as something that was a shoot. But then also to their way of thinking, it would provide you know, further ammo for the television show and make it

seem more real. And there was one between DDP and Buff Bagwell one time that they put on the air shortly after Russo took the book and all of it has just a tremendous track record of great success, is what I'm trying to do. I mean, you know, Pillman literally works the workers and signs with WWF and we'll just keep trying that over and over again because that

one worked out in our favors so well, and why not. But here is from Brian Elvarez's death of WCW what I thought was a handy summation of just several months prior to this December of two thousand going into Starkad, when Sid wrestled Sid in the main event, defending champion a skirmish between DDP and Steiner. That makes it just a little bit more intriguing knowing about this taking

in the greed main event. Boss take it away, all right. The week of December eighteenth saw everything go to hell again as both participants in the Starkad main event were stirring up problems behind the scenes. First, Sid walked out unhappy. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. Sid walked out, i'mhappy about being asked to lose to Steiner at Starkade. He claimed he'd been promised the finish would be a double count out, but then WCW

double crossed him and changed to him getting pinned. He told people that he wasn't ultimately upset about the change, but rather about the fact that nobody was man enough to come up and tell him to his face instead of just handing him a piece of paper with the new plan written on it. In end, Sid agreed to lose, and plans to change it to a three way

so someone else could do the job were scrapped. Then the big fight It started with Steiner cutting one of his now famous unscripted promos, this time on Dallas Page. It was always funny to hear company officials get upset about things like this because historically it was entirely their fault. Steiner, for example, had never really been reprimanded for his behavior. If anything, he'd been rewarded time after time. He famously went off on Rick Flair like crazy, saying

ww's boring and Steve Austin's better. And of course he did all that without having any play approval and having nothing to do with where the storyline was pointing or heading. Just tremendous stuff. Love that earlier in the year he buried Flair in an unscripted promo and was told by management that it was one of the best interviews of the year. Well Sullivan has said that he confronted him about it, said, you know, why are you going in this direction?

It doesn't make any sense, and that Scott just kind of said, you know, kind of like, oh, yeah, I guess you're right, and I'm just trying to be a heal. So Sullivan claims to be the only one who confronted him about this, which I guess it doesn't contradict that because what he's saying there is everyone offered praise in a horrified state for Scott to flying completely off the path. Yeah, of course, what are you gonna do if I can tell you say no to a psychopath? Great

promo? Scott cut nothing but great promos as far as ninety eight percent of the lanyard wearers at WCW back in the day, we're concerned. I see no problem with that, no problem whatsoever. When was I there. Months later, he threatened Terry Taylor and was rewarded with a page vacation over the weekend of July fourth, so as antics continued and instead of being fined or suspended. He found himself the WCW world hadweight champion. If management was upset

with his behavior, they had nobody but themselves to blame. Even more depressing, the guys who actually worked hard, behaved themselves and followed the rules were rewarded by being buried on television. But what it's worth that Terry Taylor episode, according to Scott Center shoot interview he did with our video, was because they were supposed to play someone else's music or his music, and they played the wrong music and it got all switched up and it pissed him off so

much. Then one came back and just went after the first guy he saw, Terry Taylor. So there was no even no reason for it. It wasn't exactly there, all right, that's cool? I dig that. He also quibbled with the idea that there was a suspension related to that one, So who's to say, Yeah, well, rewarded by being buried on television. Consequently, they gave up all hope. Steiner's promo against Page included the following line, you should actually read this, but why don't you convince Diamond

Dallas Page to get a sex change? So he has the balls to come out here and face me. Page was stretching in the locker room when Steiner made the kiss comments. Ironically, this was the same building where earlier in the year Steiner and Paige, which his wife Kimberly, had a verbal incident

that resulted in her quitting the company for good. As soon as Steiner said Paige had no balls, everyone in the locker room imediately turned and looked over at him, as if to see what he was going to do about it. According to one witness quote, the air was totally sucked out of the room. Page finished tying his boots and walked down the stairs near the curtain. As soon as Steiner walked backstage, Page reportedly said quote, so I

don't have the balls to face you. Huh. They started swearing at each other and a fight broke out. Steiner took his fucking children. It's tremendous. He's like, exactly what I want. He's like, you figure about it, Like, okay, who cares that? He said that, Like, Oh, I'm a tough guy. I gotta fucking fight this guy. I think maybe it's like if he's going to say things that I don't even

have anything to do with his storyline just to piss people off. Maybe if I don't confront him, he's just going to keep doing it, and it's going to harm everything, including me. Maybe that's what get to Page's mind. But we'll hear a little bit more about this from an interview he did with Hannibal. In just a moment, all right, Uh, they started, they thought Steiner took Page down and started to pound on his face,

with mobile witnesses saying he went straight for Page's eye. One source said that Steiner had cut his fingernails earlier in the day and that if he hadn't he it would have been much. There's always something like that. Whatever a wrestler like hurts his neck, there's always a doctor that said, you know, if you weren't a wrestler, you'd be dead. Yeah, I mean, okay, So because he's a wrestler, he's not dead. I don't know. He's a wrestler. He's built up, you know, incredible muscle protection

for his neck. I see, Okay, well great. Uh. The other wrestlers immediately jumped in to break it up, and it reportedly took them over one over a full minute to pry Steiner off of Page. And it's like i'd take a full cameo. Another version of what I was saying to is wrestlers cameo. Yeah, that is I know, I mean in terms

of like scale. But another example of what I said was, uh, you know, for a wrestler gets ejected from a car or you know what I mean, takes like a big fall, like they'll say, because they were wrestler, saved their lives because they knew how to bump. Yeah. Right. Of course Page was bleeding and had marks all over his face. Well, I didn't know they let fans back there. What does that have to do with this story exactly? He later told friends that Steiner wasn't just

scary, he was a killer. I mean he was glad he walked away from the fight alive. Page and Nash immediately grabbed their stuff and left the building, with some sources saying their last words were we'll be back when they are new owners. Okay. Steiner then responded by cutting another promo, this time focusing on Kimberly and saying some very bad things about her. Steiner's punishment, he continued to receive the biggest push of his professional career. Goddamn right,

what would that hound bike? Mm hmm. You know, Rick Flair, you're taking your job a CEO way too personal. And I know the reason why. See when you were champion, they said you were just average. See when I'm the champion, now they say I'm the genetic freak. I'm the man with the largest arms in the world. You you were just average. See when you were champion, you streak by victories. Me I dominate, I destroyed because I'm the real deal. And now you'll fight it

out as being CEO. It's a lot more difficult than you thought. See, you can't find enough wrestlers back there brave enough to face me. Why guy Night, dear for you. Why don't you try to convince Diamond Dallas Page to get a sex change. So here's the boss to come out here and face me. There it is, Wow, I know a good surgeon, man, Flair. You're burning this business a long time, and you're

seeing a lot of white trash and a lot of Jabroni's. So when Damond Dallas Breeze comes out here, it says Sun five five, do your job. Sat him back down to the Bushley's wave belongs. He's out a line here when it comes out here, says, by the boom, by the bank, by the bang, I don't even know what the hell that means. Send it back down to the bush LEAs, because he's proof. You could take somebody off the tray of park. But he always be white trash.

He is way out of line here. He is a magnificent order. All on my knees pegging new please be diamond Down's page. My next opponent, sont get tress out here and tell me it is white trash trash? What do I mean? What do you hear in Steiner's voice? I mean, we see Steiner on this show, screaming at ringside fans. We see him bulging at every vein. We hear him just spitting into that microphone.

What is the state of the man? Boss? Make observations? Please the the What I see as a man who is just completely on drugs and it was no fucking sense of what it is that he's actually doing. He doesn't give a shit, all right, He just he's just there to he you know, he doesn't care if he upsets somebody else. You know, he's a champion, he's making money, He's able to do whatever he fucking wants. And nobody does shit. He wants you to get mad so he can

prove again that it doesn't matter exactly. The more you get mad, the more money he makes. I mean, he's just screaming into that microphone, screaming. I mean right, I mean he's making whole Klogan look like he like fucking whispers. What did you think of Steiner back then singles big Papa pump knowing as fuck? Really? Yeah? I didn't. I didn't. I was like when I found out that he was world champion at one point, I'm like him, really, all right, he's got all the tools.

I guess that's what people say. I don't know if I agree with that booting in the fanny pack. At the time, it did feel like, I mean, when he he took the title off book or I think a new Blood Rising, that's when he like broke his sternum with a full Nilsenbaum. Booker that isn't. Booker was gone until February two thousand and one, healing from that injury. But when he won, people popped. It was like, all right, like this is a champion that signals an era.

You know, this isn't a champion that signals, all right, well, when's the next chapter going to start? Here? This is just like someone holding water treading water, like Jarrett's title runs felt that way. Booker, as great as he was, felt that way. You know, you never really felt like, Okay, they're building the company around Booker, like

Booker's going to headline every pay per view and turn away challengers. It never really felt that way with Steiner. It was the first time in a while at WCW, like two years, that it felt like, Okay, they're actually saying this is the guy to care about, and they're putting all their

chips on that table. Really, because you know, they didn't have many other choices as they worked to you know, ice people and potentially renegotiate contracts as part of the Fusian's sale and get people, you know, back on board under new contractual arrangements. But this this brawl became a bit of low as you can imagine, between DDP and Scott Steiner. Backstage here he talks with Devin Nicholson of Hannibal TV. Does page about the encounter, puts a

little more color on it. It was just tempers that flew and uh, Scotty said some things in interview. That figuring put me over the top and uh, when he got down to the edge of the stairs, I said, you think I'm a pussy motherfucker, And Scott Steider put his head down and he drove. It had to be twenty feet before we landed. And when we landed, somehow I had him and like a fucking guilty and I'm

like, holy shit, I got him so breaking. Now the guys are coming around pull him off, like I got hold of him, but he's you know, I'm trying to hold on to him and then bringing them off and then when they pick them up by all arms. Scottie was so fucking big man. He was like me, he said. I was like, damn, he's scary. It was like, it's a real moment for me, bringing and fun. And I just fucking kicked him his arm as I came and then he came down on me and I was like, oh boy,

this is a really bad spot to me. So I went into the fetal position trying to protect myself and I didn't and they're trying to pull him off right at that point, and I didn't realize it, but he said his hand kept that kept coming in, and I didn't really realize it until I went, oh my god, he's trying to take my eye out, and I think, man, that will suck. I finally stood up to that badass sun of a bitch and now you're take my eye out, and

I turned in tried to bite a hold of them. By that time, he pulled up and both came up swaying, and I wasn't laughing at the time, but I was pretty fucking pissed. But but uh, you know, it's like one of those things, like I said, with but just about anybody and everybody. I love all the boys, and uh, you

know, it was so funny with me. We had to do a uh a sit down with Bitschoff and I walked in and I never even knew, but I said when he was doing it, because I didn't feel it that all these scrapes were coming across my eyes, I knew it, so uh of course later on I did, and I had a little what do you call him, uh scamps When I walked through the door, Scotty goes, you know, looks so bad. And then we sat down, we talked it out and that was done. You know, there's uh to me there's

no reason holding any of that ship. You know, guys fite all the time. You know, it's uh, it is what it is. It's like getting a lion attacking you. So he said, ben Steiner went down on him and he likes the boys in the back. Well yeah, uh you know, hey, you know, I'm glad he can be himself. So that's the that's the skirmish. That's Page's recollection. And apparently they're on

they're they're on fine terms by the time Greed came around. But this is definitely an interesting backdrop now as to what Scott Steiner said about Kimberly, well like terms. But you know what, no one can find Scott Steiner for anything fine him, No, no, no, it's perfectly okay to do what he did. Basically is you pick a fight and then when someone stands up to you, you fight them and uh, you know, apparently try to rip their eyes out of their face. And it's fine. That the

the basic headline is it's fine. Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't see a problem. I can tell you're sitting there waiting for the problem, and it just it wasn't happening. You do what you gotta do right. So, as mentioned, Kimberly was becoming something of an entity onto herself, which you know, different sides of people come out when they start to feel like they might just be the stars they always thought they should be, you

know, that syndrome. And Steiner was not impressed. He did not hold the Nitro girls in high regard, in particular because he was no stranger to the Atlanta strip club circuit. Okay, right, that has a lot to do with it. And here's Steiner, what's that he knows okay, right, he knows the whole scene. He knows what you'd be doing if you weren't dancing before the commercial break, and and so, uh, don't say

it, so he uh. Scott Stunner also talked to Devin Nicholson of Hannibal about this fight, and here's his side of it, and in it he talks about the Kimberly element to it all. Well, it was just simple. It was like she was a Nitel girl. She thought she was like she thought she was a big part of the show the South. He was a big star. You know. She actually said that she thought, you know, she actually thought girls were you know, a big party show.

You I was like fucking kid, you know. And I never had a problem telling them the truth, but now I had Actually after I left them doing that promo, it's like, uh, you know, you go backstage and it's all dark because I had to go from there right to the interview

set. I had an interview set with them, because I had I had an interview go through the dark tunnel, go to inter you set with me and Gene Oakland and me me buffing, uh lex you know, I saw, and then so I go through that and I'm going through the dark tunnel. He's he said something to me, you know, and you know, I just double like him, and it was you know, when you go punch him this and uh, security was on the hit what he had done. He had told the security was going to do it, and he said

if anything happens, to jump on them, you know. So before I even got a chance of punching me. So were you, I mean the security guys were you know, I mean they were older at the time, and then they weren't that fast, you know. I mean I took him down like that was gonna rare it back to the punch him in the face. They had grabbed my arm, so you know they were there, you know, well, I was gonna rip his ile, you know, but they grab that too, you know, so uh but you know times of

bishoff, they smoothed it out, you know. Amazing. So he admits he was gonna rip his eye out, and that's nice. He admits that, And I love that. I love the detail of like Page told security he was going to do it, so the page had back up if he

attacked. I was like, why is he telling this long story about how like it was dark in the tunnels and everything, like, oh okay, so we could make it seem like Paige snuck up on them almost, you know, right, that's the wrestler in brain working there where it's like, I know, I don't triumph at the end of this story necessarily, so let me lay the foundation along the way for like, if this wasn't the case, I would have fucking killed them, you know, Yeah, exactly

got to do it. Steiner was even more straightforward relative to his feelings about the Nitro girls and some of the women in the locker room that he took great offense to pretending to be part of the show. What's ironic there is most of the Nitro girls didn't want to wrestle, didn't want to be valets, didn't want to be anything other than you know, the Nitro cheerleaders, which was fine, and Kimberly, with a dancing background, was kind of

put in charge of the Nitro girls and the routines they would do. But it was Rince Russo who came in and had some big hang up with the fact that these women were getting paid to be on the show but weren't participating in angles and storylines, probably because he, you know, considered you know, scantily clad attractive women as an absolute cornerstone of his ability to draw ratings, and it's hard to look at women that you think you can use in

that way and not be able to use them that way. So he pretty much laid down a rule that, you know, if you're not training to be able to know how to wrestle or participate in in ring angles, your time at WCW isn't very long. So really, you know, here's Steiner

sort of blaming them. And you know, of course they had control over how much of an ego they developed from that point, but here Steiner sort of blaming them for pretending to be part of the show, when in reality, no one asked really to be part of the show beyond signing up to

be a dancer. But again, it's Scott's knowledge of where these Nitro girls were sourced from, and not all of them, but enough of them that it came to characterize the group that I think really underlies his his animosity towards them. Here he is in an RF video shoot interview talking about the Nitro Girls and therefore kind of his his animus towards Kimberly and others. Do you remember the promoly you put it on Kimberly Page? Yeah? What inspired that?

Oh, she's she's messed up? Yeah. I think we had a conversation about she thought, you know, women were drawing or something like that, you know, drawing. Yeah, they you allegedly harassed some of the nitroen girls. Oh, they were used a bunch of a bunch of tramps man in Atlanta. I never harassed any of them, you know, I didn't give him the time of the day. You know. It's like one was a cool corps and they were just they were messed up girls, man,

the strippers, you know what I mean. Kimberley Page tried to strip and she was so bad that they fired her. You know, I mean, that's don at Scott's truth. You know, it was like because I know guys that were manager at the strip with at that time. You know, so you ever visit that Gold Club? Yeah, get traded? Well there there Landis. You know that's a good town. Yeah, let's let's let's put it this way. Scott had the Jimmy applied more than once,

not with his own two hands, in some of Atlanta's final establishments. You imagine him bubbling over. Oh my god, yes, god. So yeah, and what's your point. Listen, listen, I'm not saying anything to like make fun or say it's wrong. I'm saying that's what happened. You know, whatever cool got. You know, look, we all, we

all, we all need a hobby. It's amazing that this this this Michigan boy gets all like gassed up and like becomes this wrestling power free can move to Atlanta and just tears ass through the strip clubs, tars ass through them. I mean, can you listen. You look at the size of him, I know, I don't you look at those fucking just those those arms

are completely wrong. All right, he just tears into all those strippers all right, like, and the thing is, he tears into them at the strip club because nobody's gonna you think one of those, you think one of the fucking body, you know, one of the one of the bouncers there is gonna do ship. He'll fucking ripping their eye out, fucking He'll he'll throw his fist into their eye socket, all right and lift them up and then like throw them through a wall. Nobody's touching him except the strippers,

except the strippers. It's pretty tremendous. Actually, it's always you know, it's there's a reason that Marissaitome is a stripper and the wrestler, Yes, because there's no two more peas in a pod in this world than a pro wrestler and a stripper. Of course they live the exact same eistence. They're all working each other, yes, And so that's just tremendous stuff. Steiner there laying it down, and he didn't mince words either in that same interview

that he did that shoot about DDP. And you know, as conciliatory as Page was, and some of the sound we heard towards Scott Steiner, at least upon being asked initially. And this is still that golden era of shoots where guys were actually honest, you know, and there wasn't a whole bunch of shit that happened since WCW clothes that made them feel warmly towards them that they still hold the grudges and nostalgia isn't there yet, So everyone's an asshole,

you know. He's the good old days. Yeah, well it's the honest old days. Yes, you know. I'm developing this sort of like mission statement ten years in. You know here at TLF we're not celebrity fuckers. We're truth fuckers. That's right, Okay, that's what we seek to fuck. And so here's Scott on DDP and why he was where he was in WCW. DDP and Aaron Bischof were knowing to be good friends. You think he got pushed too much because of the friendship. That's the only reason

I got pushed, Joe. That's the way he was treated up when WW went out there too. You know. So from a fellow wrestler, you didn't you didn't see the talent and GDP that maybe he deserved to be where he was. I'm telling you. That's the only reason I got pushed. What do you think your talent? Yeah, he had a little bit of talent, but he had guys help with him too. You know. Of course you don't understand whereas you know, a big machine behind you, you

can it's a lot easier to get over, you know. But everybody knows that's why you got pushed, you know. I mean, it's not like, why do you think I'm telling you guys something? You guys don't know. Everybody, I mean, he makes them like nod to it, he makes them acknowledge his point yep Scott Scott Tyre big you know guy, calm, like you know at the end of everything, absolutely you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, like obviously like it's

it's basically what he's saying, is you all know this. That's a key to Yeah, key rhetorical device, is it not? Yes? I love it so much. He's lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Jpisaro's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast. So he keeps going trailer park trash. He keeps saying trash, called you trash, you white trash. That's his big thing. Meanwhile, everyone in WCW most of the towns. They run and looking at each other like, am I supposed to be against white trash? Right?

Right? I feel attacked like yeah, yeah, right, that's all good. We are what's probably well, I guess. I guess it does work because he is he is impugning DDP for being white trash. But that's supposed to babyface him that he is in fact white trash, I guess. But he was leaning into that heavily. He was leaning into that white trash, and he couldn't stop saying it. In fact, the that's we'll get to the next night on Nitro starts with b roll of trailer parks, Oh my

god, as they replay Scott Steiner beating ddp's asset greed. But here is a promo that aired. I believe in the Greed pre show as it were, as Scott Steiner leans even more heavily into the DDP as white trash rhetoric. I eat the most sad hygiene? What else Medesia? Yes, well that from beer. Oh, he's been seeing Paige's neighbors, very olderiferous Paige. He took a person when I caught you what trash? But I hate all white trash. You say last Man's Canada, not a chest You just

laugh. See I've been leading you here to greed tonight is you're a populace. You're gonna be riding in the same path. It's Spin Goldberg, sid Vicious, Kevin Nash tonight, dead man. How do you say it in Michiganese? Idiot? Some of it's hard to pick up on, But okay, ask Medesia what are your pet peeves? And she says she tries to

like say white trash by saying beer guts and things. But I want to I want you to listen to a positively Mike Tyson moment here from Scott Steiner as he tries to use a very very big word by the way you hate the most? I think he said, what do you hate the most? But he likes he like stutters, you know, sad hygiene? What else? Yeah, well, the gut from beer, guts from beer. Now you can say beer gut, can't you instead of guts from beer. I

mean it's not a specific though. Oh, he's been seeing pages neighbors, some neighbors, neighbors what Scott I think he says? Uh? What he actually said? There was you must be you must be seeing pages neighbors. Yes, clever, very older riffous. I stand, I rest my case very odor riffous. That is like you know, Mike Tyson using ostentatious and stuff. He did he study the dictionary in prison or something. Scott Steiner must have just like you know, there must have been. It must give

me a big word that I can use. Very odorifous, very odorifous. Okay, And as I said, the next night, Nitro opens and this is the second to last Nitro Ladies and gentlemen. Wow, Gainesville, Florida. They opened playing taps over a United States flag and and w flag No. And it's sort of like dissolved over footage of trailer parks. I don't know where they went to shoot these trailer parks, but they have just images of trailer parks that they cut to over the US flag. It's it's it's

it's concept art. I don't know what they were going for here, why they had to show the American flag and taps. I mean, I know that he basically killed DDP in the middle of the ring a greed and left him dead. You know, he puts him in that recliner and DDP passes

out bloody. It's fucking strong, but uh, but that's what they did and then uh And it was kind of poetic because it connects what we've been saying about Scott Steiner is one of a kind promo style to of course, the real heart of the matter here, which is the WCW's about to close,

and stitching together those two narratives is the trailer park footage. And Scott Steiner himself comes out to open that episode of Nitro, and you think it's about Scott Steiner coming to brag about what he had done last night and continuing on in his storyline, but in fact, then Tony Shavani says, this big pop up pop head of gold. Then what was one of them? Are brutal matches you will ever see for the WCW tunnel And here comes Bee

Heavy one chan of the world. Well, come to Monday Night troul Fans. A very vary import announcement to begin our telecast. Less than an hour ago, we learn here to len Engageville that at some point we will get a live call from Eric Bischow, a live telephone call, and Eric has a huge announcement to make we can only wonder at speculate exactly what this huge

Do you remember what the huge announcement is? I'm not buying ww Essentially, yes, I'm sure we excerpted this well, we did our final Nitro episode. Really recall, we'll bring it back here for those who aren't aware, don't remember, But this is Eric phoning in and basically saying, next week is probably the last night of wrestling on the Turner net a lot. Didn't he a live call? Is that what Tony said He's going to give a lot? We know something about that, damn right, we do. So

that's just wild. Like immediately it's like wait, what, like, what do you mean, Eric Bishov's gonna do it? What does that mean? And they start the screen the graphics for Nitro say season finale, So Weird. They start to refer to next week's Nitro from Panama City, Florida, which happened to be the big spring break Nitro where they'd go to that outdoor sort of college club setting with a pool and everything, as the season finale of So Weird of Monday Nitro. So here's a bit more from the Alvre's

book. His co author, By the way, Ardie Reynolds. Thanks to Brian for joining us on our companion pod to the Vice series. TLF tackles Who Killed WCW, and he characterizes kind of where Bischoff was at at this point in time. This way, Bischoff therefore came up with what he thought

was an ingenious storyline. He'd have Steiner, still the top heel and heavyweight champion, take out all the remaining baby faces one by one, leaving only Dallas page that headlined the March etings pay per view in Jacksonville, and then the following night, the new WCW owners would be revealed and saved the day

by bringing all the baby faces back at once. So Alvarez saying here that originally before the overwhelming story became We're not actually going to fuse it, isn't actually going to buy WSW and the future Resilian's certain not going to fart a WWF's purchasing it. Yet that might not have actually been fully in motion quite yet. That this was to be a nitro where Bischoff comes out and brings out all the owners, which is crazy. It brings out all the wrestlers

again. The new ww owners be Revie and then all the baby faces would come back. That's crazy to think about. I don't really know what that's about. There's a bit of color that I think might support this. That's to come later as we revisit some of the court documents we pulled for our Bash at the Beach two thousand episode, Because remember, do you remember why greed Boss came up in all of Hulk Cogan's drama from back then? Do

you recall this at all? I don't recall. Do you remember that Hulk Hogan was issued two million plus dollar checks, yes, for pay per views in two thousand and one that he never appeared on. I remember that vaguely. And the big legal threat as WCW was circling the drain was basically offering Hogan a spot on Greed if you ask a cynic like me, so that he would say, no, I'm not showing up, so they wouldn't have to pay him because they did want to. They owed him for pay per

views in two thousand. They didn't want to book those million plus dollar expenses on the two thousand books to keep the books looking good. This is all from Brad Siegel's testimony, which we'll get to. So they pushed those payments off into twenty oh one, and then had apparently the genius idea of instead of just delaying when we pay those checks, why don't we invite Hult to pay per views. We know he's not going to show up on that, he's not going to want to do, so that we have a reason to

withhold the money. They didn't actually end up doing that, but they send them and send him the checks, and he cashed them without working at all for them. Of course, you're damn right, I'm listening. Those checks came in and he already had the fucking car on to go to the bank.

Absolutely, But I think that's intriguing that there was actually some creative for what the Nitro after Greed would have been had not been for this twist in the road on the WCW sal And the reason I bring that up in this context is part of what's testified as Johnny Ace talks about how they actually did draw up a creative plan if Hogan did agree to do greed and it would involve motorcycles, it would involve him and a lot of motorcycles, and Eric

Bischoff showing up. I mean, he did do greed, I know exactly. I mean, it's way too much that the last pay per view was called greed. To me, it's too poetic. I mean, the serendipity starts there and it ends with in the midst of this ww series on vice and all we're talking about, you randomly pulled greed out of the fucking hat. Totally random. I mean, I was speechless, as the end of the last episode indicates, I could not believe what you'd said and what it

meant that we had to do. Yes so again. The book reads they'd headlined the March eighteenth payer view in Jacksonville. In the following night, the new WCW owners would be revealed and saved the day by bringing all the baby faces back at once. WCW would then scrapped the April pay per views that they'd have seven weeks to build up their biggest show ever on May sixth, when the entire company would be reborn. That is the big bang show we've

talked about. In late February, Bischoff reconsidered his ingenious idea. Alvarez writes the ratings were sinking fast, and he didn't think they'd be able to hold off until May before reintroducing the major stars. Bischoff hates this suggestion when it was brought up on the podcast he did about this pay per view with Conrad.

The idea that Booker sort of was pushed back in even though he was supposed to be one of those big stars that returned all at once, pushed back in prematurely because this idea of like icing the top names, what do you know was costing them significant ratings points to the point that it was it was like not bringing in the advertising revenue expected against those numbers. That that's kind of how it was characterized in The Observer in other places at the time.

Bischoff pushes back on that doesn't really countenance the idea that the freeze or the delay or the shutdown would have heard anything, which I think is kind of wild, Like you think you're gonna go off TV for seven weeks and like not do those ratings, and they're gonna put a movie on there, and then on the other end, they're going to be happy as a clam

to just have you back. Like, yeah, that's it's really weird because he says, like, you know, they could put movies on there that would do equal amount of ratings to WCW with higher CPMs for the for the commercial time. You know, the people would pay more to advertise against a movie than wrestling, And it's like, yeah, so why would they have you back then? I know, you know what I mean. Doesn't that just sort of beg theques question. Doesn't that sort of put you where you

need to be in terms of their mentality? If let's get the fuck out of this thing. I never saw that, but I know why he would want to do that big reset to really take the time to make this show massive. But you just can't do it. You just can't afford to do it. You have to find a way to keep producing programming while having sort of like a separate part of your brain working on that long term plan. You have to be able to do both. You have to chew gum and

walk at the same time. But the fact of the matter is, while the deal was announced in January, the purchase agreement had been reached, the ink was not dry in this final contract. They way prematurely announced it. They announced it and we talked about this in the final night Er episode,

basically coincident with the announcement of the A well Time Warner merger. It was like, we have to get something out about the future of WCW because this announcement of this merger is going to create all kinds of uncertainty about what it means for WCW. But if we can dangle these still come to find out relatively premature discussions we're having with this acquirer, including Brad Siegel going on the conference call and talk about how excited he is that come on, Brad,

you've looked into his eyes. Boss on the Vice series, We've taken the measure of the man so happy, he so fucking hates it. And it's so funny going back to our Bash to the Beach two thousand show, taking guesses as to what his voice sounds like, having heard that he'd were Yankees captive meetings, so we assume he's like, you know, one of these,

like he sounds like Kubby Broccoli. Yeah, right, exactly. Now he's a New Yorker that went to LA and trying to start talking like this, Well, well he's he's a New Yorker because he moved to New York. Oh okay, I didn't know that even better. Yeah, yeah, he was Yeah, you know it's says Eric, like Eric, Yeah, well, he's a guy who came in he you know, I'm sure I don't know if he's I know, you don't know. This is I don't

know, archtyping all day. But he's he's one of those people who like, you know, who lived who you know, who lived other places, but knew he needed to go to some place like New York, you know, and so he got there and from then on the moment he moved there, he started calling himself a New Yorker. Oh my, that's what he did. Yeah, he has he knows the best bagel place, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, it's always you know, you know, he's like notes from all the people that he's ever met on places

that aren't touristy bagel places. Not touristy places you go, but this is where the cool people who know New York go. Oh God help us. That's him, all right. He's got a whole fucking rolodex of fucking and it's like this like triple gentrified area that he thinks is like authentic. But oh yeah, like thirty years ago it didn't look anything like that. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely tremendous. So there, no, Brad, that's what

you get. Damn right. I had to take that detour. But it's so funny to hear you do his voice reading transcripts and stuff like, you know whatever. You know, he's more like an Eric. You know, we thought at the time that no, no, I do don't understand what the hell was going on. My people were into this just wrestling shit, you know, it's just it's just a bunch of bullshit. Remember when DDP said in the cameo that nobody knew showing up to Greed, that nobody kne

until the showed up to the final nightro what was happening. Yeah, uh, maybe Kevin Nash knew, you'd damn right, he knew. Maybe Kevin Nash told QUEEWI, huh fucking talking to Qui, I said, you know shit's going down? Yeah, fucking final pay per view quote. You know Vince is buying the company. H fucking heartbreak called me and told me quee Wee real name Alan Funk, who is in the opening match against Jason Jett on this pay per view and impromptu laid addition to the show. Did he

go ahead? Is he a go ahead? Kind of Funk. I don't know. He's one of the few other funks I've ever heard of in pro wrestling that is not related to the West Texas tribe. So here he is speaking to Hannibal about getting into the business, and well that's the interviews about that. But he gets to this night, he gets to Greed and what do you know, Alan Funk is hearing that WWF has bought WCW way before people claim to have known about it, and he hears it from none other

than Big Sex. Say, listen in. You know, Eric Bischoff used to call me in his office, which was unheard of for the power playing guys because uh Jad Eagle, which was a lawyer for the office. She used to come to the Logger and say, Alan, mister Bischoff'd like to see in his office, and I'd be like, you know, why, what's he wanted to see me in his office for? So he called me his office and he always put me over and he said I was doing a great job and he was going to give me a big push, and he

actually told me I was going to be his next superstar man. He goes, I got big, big, big stuff playing for you. Man, he said, I got lots of money coming your way. You know I'm gonna put you over huge. I love you, you know, I love your work ethic. You always keep your body in check. And he said, you're gonna be one of my next big guys. And until the day that they came in and took it out from under him, that that's the way it was going. And I was real excited about the future for WCW

up to that point. And the last loop, which I didn't know was going to be the last loop. I'm with one of the office guys, Ross Forman. It actually works for impact still. I used to travel with him because WCW never paid for the power plants. Guys rented cars or nothing. So he used to alter his travel a little bit so I could jump in the car with him. That way, I didn't have to pay for a car in a hotel. He always took care of me that way.

So I was traveling with him, and me and him were both good friends with Kevin Nash. So we're down. We go to spring training games down in Florida. Before the matches on Sunday night, it was the Greed pay per view. The last paper VIEWWCW ever had in Jacksonville, Florida. So we're driving to the arena, Nash calls or actually I'm sorry. It was the night before the pay per view. Nash called us and he says,

hey, man, he said, Vince just but WCW. And the first thing I thought of was Vince Rusloe because he was there with Aeron Minschoff. Then he's like, no, Vince McMahon. And I was like, now, wait a minute, what happened to this deal where Eric Bischoff I already thought had the company, like he already acquired the company and the money people had, they were running it for the last couple of months. So it

really floored me. And I'm like, how the held events by the company that don't even sound right when Bishop's been running stuff for the last two months. And uh, He's like yeah, bro. So I said, well, what is it? What do you think that means for me in my contract? He goes, well, as far as I know, they're going

to pick your contract up, but I don't know what's gonna happen. So sure enough, we get to the pay per view and at this point, nobody was talking about this, and I didn't want to bring it up because I don't think anybody knew at the pay per view what was going on. Maybe some of the top guys did, and nobody was saying nothing. But I asked Ross, I was like, nobody's talking about this shit, Like

what? I didn't know what was going on, And you know, I'm still kind of a young guy, so I didn't want to start nothing to get heat, so I didn't say nothing about it. And uh so then we show up after the payview, me and Jason Jett. I wasn't even supposed to be on the pay review, but they booked me to a match with Jason Jett easy Money, and we were the curtain jerker. We tore the house down, had a fifteen minute match that was one of my favorite

matches in WCW. And so then after the match, you know, everybody's putting it over and then we go to the reena of the next night. I'll be damned if we didn't see WWE trucks and walk in there, I see Shaman Man, Pat Patterson and Jerry Briskow and all these guys, and I'm thinking, and it was a real weird mood. Nobody was really talking everybody's just walking around like looking like fuck, they bought the company, Like what the fuck's gonna happen? You know, So nobody really wanted to talk

about it. So he's a little off there, and that. Of course, the Nitro Afrogreed was not the last one. There was one before that that we just talked about. We just played the sound from it. But he's very specific about Greed being that when he found out. So yeah, I'm goin with him on that. I don't think he'd mistake like Nitro or thunder taping for Greed. So I don't know fold that into your idea of who knew what when I suppose, but very clearly something is in motion.

Brad Siegl had dropped a memo that we'll read here in just a moment before Greed that really should have told people what they needed to know about the state of the deal. You know, Bischoff was working to to facilitate a television slot after it was clear that TBS and T and T were off the table. He tried, He took a bunch of meetings. He was pretty close

with FX. It sounds like, you know the cable channel FX. Of course, sure, I knew somebody over there by the name of Peter Logorio was like a connection he had, and there was some optimism that he could shift at the last minute and find a new television home for the deal and keep the deal alive. But it was pretty clear that that was not going to happen, that he wasn't going to get the buy in that he was

looking for. Tony Shavanni, by the way, while Alan Funk remembers precisely agreed as the night he found this out and the awkwardness of having to walk around like he didn't know anything about it, Tony Shavanni, on the hand, who called the paper view, doesn't even remember being there. It's as

tony as it gets on what happened. When podcast with Conrad, he talked about remembering not only you know, not remembering Greed so much, but remembering that Nitro the next night, where it was clear that the future of the company was again in a deep, deep state of questioning. And Shavanni, who others have accused of hoarding information, you know, like if he knows something, he doesn't want anybody else to know what he knows, and he

considers information power. I think that was one of Bobby Heenan's knocks on him, like there's things that he thought Shavanni should have told him, that he knew about where he stood, that he withheld, and he played a lot of those games. So keep that context in mind as he tells the story about how he conducted himself. Tony Shavanni, that is the night after agreed on this fateful Nitro, the second to last episode, the penultimate one from

Gainesville, Florida. But you were there, So what did you think when he watched it back this week? You know what I thought. When I watched it back this week. I thought the same thing you thought. I thought. I don't remember seeing this fucking show Greed he called it. I don't I, and I guess it's I and I know why I don't remember

seeing the show. My was so preoccupied with the end of WCW, finding another job and trying to stay on my feet, that I was so preoccupied with that that whatever booking was going on and whatever angle was going on didn't matter to me at that time. Now I don't listening to the commentary. I don't think my commentary showed that. I think I pretty much sounded like Scott and I sounded like we were really into the event, but I really was not. I that was not the focus of what was going on in

my life that time. So I'm going to tell you that I don't remember that event. I have no recollection of it. Here's the only thing I remember. I remember going to Gainsvild, Florida the next day for Nitro and being so distraught about the end of the company and what's going to happen to the company that instead of hanging out in the locker room with the uh, with the Scott and the announcers and everybody else, I stayed in my rental car in the parking lot. Is this real? Yep? Stayed in the

rental car in the parking lot. It was March, it was Florida, uh, and so it wasn't too hot, and I stayed in there the entire time. And I think it rained, if I remember, so the windows fogged up so no one could see me, and I just sat in there and it kind of slept thoughts. Well, Hey, you know, I'm not surprised, and I'm actually pretty thrilled that this is what he remembers

of it. He Uh, you know, a cynic might say that he didn't want to see anybody that night because he knew something and didn't want to answer questions true what might be? You know, because as he admits there, his mind is solely on what his next move is going to be. But so making himself rare perhaps is something that it wasn't against type for Tony, but just I love I love him sleeping in his car before the second to last Nightro's fucking amazing, So he doesn't have to deal with anybody,

just tremendous exactly what it should be? What might he have known? What might he have known as in the offing and didn't want to be grilled about If you follow that line of logic, perhaps it was what Eric Bischoff ultimately says on the broadcast as Tony opens that nitro. He says, just about an hour ago we found out about this and and what it is that Eric is about to do, or the fact that Eric is going to call in with an announcement and to hear famously is what Eric had to say. I've

scraped the mic your standard flam. I told you I talked to the man, and that man is Eric Bischof. So set up and listen thank you, brog for those of you in there you watching around the country this evening. I very much would chosen to be there tonight in person if I could be, but given everything that's going on tonight, that's just not possible.

Many of you may know that for the past six months I've been working with a group of people whose goal it was it is to acquire World Championship Wrestling and to grow it once again to become a competitive, dominant wrestling organization worldwide. But recently we've hit a couple roadblocks that may be in fact brick walls, and while it is still in my power, I want to do something befitting of what could be very well the last night of wrestling on the Turner

Networks. Given the fact that wrestling has been such an important part of Turner's history over the past twenty nine years, I've been thinking over the weekend of what I could do to provide as exciting of a program that this historic event

should be. To that end, I want to make an announ now that next Monday Night in Panama City is indeed going to be a night of champions By that, I mean every championship will be up for grabs starting with the World Cruiserweight Championship, the Cruiserweight Tag Team Championships, the World Tag Team Championships, the US title, and the World Heavyweight Title will also be up for grabs next Monday Night in Panama City, and Scott Steiner Booker t I want

you to be aware now that your match is going to be a title versus title match. The contracts are prepared. A WCW representative is standing by to make sure that the contracts are executed and lead them carefully sign them. Be

prepared to defend your titles next Monday Night. And also, giving the historic nature of this occasion and my relationship with this company for nearly ten years, I want to personally extends an open invitation to any former and I mean any former World Heavyweight Champion in WCW to join us in Panama City, and don't

be afraid to bring your boots with you. Lastly, Rick Flair, you and I have had a very rocky relationship over the past ten years, and while I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and what you've done in wrestling history and what you've done for WCW for so long, now I want to make sure that in your case, a promise made is a promise kept, and Rick Flair, it is in your best interest this evening to kiss Dusty Rhodes ass that being said, I'll see you all in Panama City next

Monday, night to night you champions, thank you. He's pretty good at that, by the way, Beschoff. Yeah, very cleanly read and done. You know, you think, like a phone call promo is going to be such a disaster, but it works. Everyone's hanging on as every word,

and I'll give him credit for that. But it's it's well when you really think about how close, you know, how close everything was, and how yeah, you know, for I don't know how to describe it except that it's like, you know, everything's really still on the edge at that point. Yeah, And he doesn't close the door. He says, you know, maybe a brick wall. He doesn't say it is a brick wall. There probably are one or two phone calls he's waiting to be returned that

might change the whole, you know, trajectory of the deal. Right. But but what he's referring to is is pretty clear. What cast the pall is pretty clear. I'm not sure how many people in the WCW locker room read the New York Times. I'm sure it was exactly zero, but they were ready on Monday to publish the following story, which meant at least by Sunday, the Night of Greed, these details were becoming known and reportable by The New York Times and other news outlets as well touched on it. The

next day this hit the papers. If you can read this to the Solar system, I'm sure we've read it before the very day that Eric Bischoff delivered that telephone address on Monday nightro take it away. The Turner Broadcasting System, a division of AOL Time Warner, will stop showing professional wrestling on its TNT and TBS cable channels later this month. The company set on Friday Friday. Friday Friday, and the date is March nineteenth, two thousand and one.

That's when the article was published. Friday would have been Yeah, would have been the eighteenth, seven sixteenth March sixteenth. The cancellation of wrestling marked the end of an era at Turner Broadcasting, the cable franchise built by Ted Turner in part on the strength of professional wrestling. Mister Turner now the vice chairman of AOL Time. Warner began showing matches of the World Championship Wrestling League on

his first television station, WTCGTV in Atlanta in the early nineteen seventies. He later used brought Wrestling to attract viewers to TBS and TNT, but the league has fallen on hard times. Though it was at one point the dominant wrestling franchise on television, in the last couple of years, it has consistently lost in the ratings to the word Wrestling Entertainment, which was first on USA Networking

later on TNN and MTV. With high production costs and expensive contracts for wrestlers, World Championship Wrestling is estimated to have lost tens of millions of dollars. Turner Broadcasting said in January that it would sell its controlling interest in the league to Fusion Media Ventures, a fledgling media cunt concern, but that it would continue to show wrestling on TNT and TBS for years to come. Everything changed two weeks ago when Jamie Kilner, the the chief executive WB Network, became

the head of TBS executives at AOL Time. Warner said the executive said mister Kellner. In consultation with the president of Turner Entertainment, Brad Siegel, had decided that wrestling should be canceled sooner rather than later. So whenever you bring up Jamie Kellner, bring up Brad Siegel on the same breath. If you believe this article, it was the first programming move made under mystery, first programming move made low hanging fruit, I think is what they call it.

A listen. First of all, you know, I'm pleased as punch. This is my first day here at the Turner Networks. I'm so happy to be here. And you know, I think the first decision that must be made in mister Siegel. You please correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, I will, Jamie, that's not a problem. I get that. I know that, I know. But let me tell you this. The first thing we're gonna do, that first thing that I'm gonna do here at Turner is to get rid of that bullshit Professional wrestling WW is done. And then

everyone reacts like when Leo DiCaprio says, I'm not leaving fuck wrestling. That's right, I said it, fuck wrestling. Telling the fuck out are wrestling? You know, fuck out here. It's it's not staying. It's not staying. It's not fucking staying. It was the first programming move made by Michigan. Uh TVs spokesman Jim Weis said, basically, we decided that my Jim professional Wrestling in his current incarnation is not consistent with the upscale brands we

built. Therefore, we will not be carrying it. Mister Kellner had no comment except fuck wrestling, You're fucking don fuck h BI. Gotcha? Oh so, I guess Kellner was the monster everyone says he was. Though TBS and T and T are consistently among the top rat agent cable networks, the two networks have been criticized by analysts for lacking a clear identity. Both networks off for a mix of reruns and popular network television shows, movies, and

sports, though TNT has also ventured into original programming. TBS shows a two hour WCW program Thunder on Wednesday nights. TNT shows a two hour program Nitro on Monday nights. With the cancelation, the deal with Fusion is also off, Thank You a Well. Executives said there was a chance that Fusions could still boy a league and show its programming on a network owned by another media

company, but they said other bidders have shown interest as well. There was speculation on Friday that the World Wrestling Entertainment would buy its rival, but a WWE spokesperson had no comment. There is in black and white right there, the published rumor about WWF buying WCW. Such. They had to have been ready on Sunday because the paper, you know, was being put to bed on Sunday night. So yeah, it was. It was known way before that final nitro that WWF was buying, and I know, going into that

night people did know. It's not like it wasn't on the internet that WWF was going to buy it. I mean that was, but but people act like, you know, they found out the Monday morning of that nitro in

Panama City, when it was very clearly being talked about. You want to go back to November of two thousand, you can where Vince is doing an interview within the Pro Wrestling Torch talking about we wanted to buy it, but TNN won't let us put WCW on because they have exclusivity on wrestling and they don't you know, in wrestling company we own can't be at another cable station there for T and T and TBS, you know, don't don't jibe with

the nature of our agreement. Ultimately, after buying WW, of course they were going to give it a TNN Saturday night timeslot, which used to be like Confidential Velocity that time slot. Yeah, and that didn't end up happening either. At the same time as that article, also Broadcasting and Cable ran this item looks like Jamie Kellner is going to have a little more to clean

up at Turner Broadcasting than expected. The a well Time Warner subsidiaries deal to sell it's ailing World Championship Wrestling operation is in a chokehold with buyer Fusant Media Ventures, looking for a way out of the ring. Fusian, which is controlled by Classic Sports Network founders and sellers Brian Paddall and Steve Greenberg and their partners, is finding the financial condition of the WW circuit too much to bear.

The WW lost about eighty million dollars last year, and TBS was trying to dump the operation to tidy up before AOL closed on its takeover of Time Warner. An industry executive, so the deal might be revived like a wrestler perking up after a folding chair beating to win the match. That was unnecessary. Okay, who wrote this? All right? John, calm down, Okay, put the pen down and just report the facts. Please, Well, do you favor do some alliteration instead? Yeah, that's what this piece

is missing. What Wrestling Federation Entertainment has expressed interest in the past and might be lured back. There you go. But one thing is definite. The WCW is coming off the air. Though not commenting on the status of Effusiante Deal, a TBS spokesman acknowledge that the TNTSWW Nitro and TBS superstation ww Thunder have been canceled and will no longer appear after March twenty six. Even though wrestling attracts the young viewers that so please newly anticipated pardon me, newly appointed

at TBS CEO Kellner, previously chairman of the WB network. Youth isn't everything, the spokesman said, The programming, no quote, no longer matches the high income demographic, no longer A lot more poor people are watching John, and that's a problem. You know, you know, we've been thinking about it, and we just don't think we can afford the poor people, right, they're not going to buy a F one fifty and TBS sure well probably yeah, not the high end, not the oh sure the expensive one.

TBS and T and T are targeting translation, He writes, there's no guaranteed TV exposure for any buyer. Buyer could cut a deal with another TV network, such as USA Network, which lost the WWF top rated Jose Divie comes TNN. I think it's been said, and I don't think it's been disputed that Bischoff approached USA but was in the deepest discussions of the effects. What a fucking world that would be, boss, if Nitro went to USA, that would have been crazy. He considered that. I mean they run TNN

raw was That's absurd when you think about it. I do want to take a pause and just consider like the way Bischoff handled the telephone he used for that that collin, Like I do, I'm very deeply intrigued by like the squeeze on the receiver. You know, it's like one of those Cisco phones where like, yes, the mouth the mouth area of the phone isn't a circle, it's like a almost like a little square, you know what. I mean yeah, and he can like hold it with like just two fingers.

Yes, absolutely, So what's this? How do you envision? So? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is right. It's patched through by the way, is okay. First of all, he's he's he's not, you know, I think. First of all, he's in Wyoming. Number one. He's in Wyoming. Okay, he's in his home office. So this is a landline the landline absolutely landline service out there. That's why he moved there exactly, so he fade people's phone calls. He's in his

he's in his his home office. Okay. He's wearing a he's wearing a black button down shirt that's like open almost all the way down to his fucking belly button. Okay, he's got his he's got his glasses on down to his nose. He's wearing jeans, shirt tucked in, and he's got some kind of boot on. Feet up on the desk. White hair, white hair, feet up on the desk. All right. He's got one one

lamp on it, okay. One. You can see the taxidermy like bic in head on, but like you know, it's like it's where it is is. It creates an incredible amount of shadows. It's like the Lincoln Memorial. Yeah, it's as warm as you can possibly imagine. All right, it's on this fine march evening, yes, you know, and it's like, you know, there's there's well uh uh uh what do you call it? God, what do you call it? When you you you put it on on on wood. It's not paint. That's the other thing. I

don't know, like not varnish. But it's yes, it's just yes exactly, there's like, you know, there's stained wood as much stained dark red. Okay, all right, he's got a glass of red wine on the desk. All right. Not exactly the panicked visual I had in my head, not at all, fan of at all. He's calm as a cucumber.

It's like a Cisco desk phone. Like it's like a four hundred, right right, and you know it's got like a million he could he has like a million lines in his phone for his one fucking house, like as if he's gonna, you know, as if he's gonna fucking have like a million phone calls. And we had to call like the production truck. I guess, like he had to call somebody and they had to hold on Eric stand By. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what he says. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, a right, weights he's holding. You know, it's one of those ones too that it uh, you know, it gets thinner as it gets down to the to the voice, you know, so it's like it's got kind of that that thin angle that goes right in. So he's holding holding it, he's holding it with only his his thumb and his pointer finger and it's resting on his middle finger, and it's

got one of those twisty cords, yeah, exactly. And as he's doing it, he's just he's just going back and forth in his chair like you know, left and right, like using his you know, he's just like as he's talking the whole fucking time, and he's talking across the trends to a national television audience, yes, exactly, being piped into the speakers in this arena, and and over on the other side of the house on the deck, he has just put a piece of venison on the grill that he

shot that morning. All right. There is a piece of venison on the grill on the deck, all right, and he is he took time out of his out of his out of his grilling schedule, place to place a call, to place a call WW to the fans, I don't want them know what was going to happen. Yeah, the best thing you could do with a call is place it, as far as I'm concerned, exactly. Of course, it was a perfect call. Call you're placing a call. It was a perfect call. It was percent perfect call. So that's in

the New York Times. So I don't know where all the mystery comes from. Yeah, right now, I know why Tony's in his car. He's reading the Times exactly, play fucking It's not only reading the Time. He

probably had a bottle of Jack daniels next film too depressed. So uh, you know what was going through the mind of Brian Badal, one of the two principles at Fusian Media Ventures. He later talked to WW documentarians as they put together an episode of their series Untold on the Final Nitro and provided some

color. I'm pretty sure we shared most of this in the final Nitro episode, but worthor'th surfacing here Just to remind folks that it's not like we never heard from these people that looked at w stub being pulled out One important detail there in one of the articles, the Broadcasting and Cable one, was that they basically framed it is apparently Fusian was out there trying to get the idea out there that we took a closer look at the books and said fuck this,

as opposed to you know, we had our trump card pulled. Now, that's not what Brian Baddall is about to say in these two pieces of sound from the ww doc. But I found that line in that Broadcasting and Cable article really interesting, This idea that the more they looked at it, the less interested they were of So who's to say, even if Jimmy Kellner

didn't pull the TV, if they still would have gotten cold feet. Because Bridal gets into a fair amount of detail here about how sort of restrictive the contract was from the perspective of the TBS and T and T side, and maybe it never would have worked, maybe they never would have fully agreed to what it was that fusing it saw is the real value in the deal.

One of the things it's not talked about enough is that the investment being Warburg Pinkus, which had helped Brian maddaland Steve Greenberg put together the money to finance their big achievement in cable television. The Classic Sports Network was also involved in the front end in financing this WCW deal. In fact, it seemed to

be the main source of revenue for the deal. And it's been reported and published that Warburg Pinkus eventually got a good look at the books and said, na, in the due diligence phase, you know, thought this isn't really something we want to get into. Let's not forget ww's being sued for racial discrimination in a complaint that was ultimately settled. There was a plenty of lawsuits,

I mends of lawsuits. We all know the game of you know, sue Turner because they'd rather settle than fight you on a small claim, So get your money and leave. That was the game forever. So there's all

these lawsuits associated with WCW. There's you know, huge financial losses, perhaps even deeper financial commitments in terms of cash out lays that they were owed to talent and other kind of expenses that maybe they didn't realize until they got their hands on the actual books and did the due diligence, and suddenly Warburg Pinkuses out of the picture. So I don't know. I think that there's a case to be made that this Fusian acquisition was falling apart pretty well before Jamie

Kellner issued the fatal blow. And I'm not sure if Kellner didn't cancel TBS and T and T that this ever would have happened. That's not talked about enough. But here's Brian Badald giving what has been i think some of his most detailed statements about this whole thing, to the ww Untold documentary. Turner was desperate to get out of the business. You know, whatever the number was that we were paying, we were getting in return a really big check

from from Turner to effect cover almost all of the talent contracts. More importantly was we had negotiated a ten year agreement to control the Wednesday night slot on TBS. So that's huge. Yeah too. You know, to control a primetime network, a primetime weekday slot on a cable station for ten years, whether it's WCW or not. That Fusian Media Ventures has DIBs on that primetime

real estate, that's not going to stand for very long. I don't care if they finalize the deal, they would look to get out of it because you got to program that to the hilt. You can't outsource the programming of two hours of primetime every week like that, especially at a network that they were trying to rebrand is comedy centric in TBS, you know, and while

WW certainly was comedy, almost none of it was intentional. But that's interesting that he's basically saying w Turner was going to give us all the money it took to out all the talent contracts. So it's like, are they really buying WCW or is Turner paying them and take it off their hands, right, because the talent that's the biggest cost center to me, I mean like

Goldberg's contract and the Hogan's contract. So you know, I think what's interesting there is they're buying out contracts, and that tells you that whatever this WCW would have been, it wasn't going to be all of the top guys with those sick Turner deals coming back. They were going to buy out those deals,

just like Vince ultimately offered to do for pennies on the dollar. But yeah, so everyone would have started with it with a fresh slate and an open canvas in terms of what kind of financial commitments they could secure from this new WCW so Bidal providing that color. He also says the following about dealing with Brad Siegel in these fateful final days was sun Everything I thought that was going to go on for the next couple of years first just evaporated in the

said, and I was stunned. The big gap was, you know, owning this two hour Wednesday night slot on TBS for ten years, and ultimately that was a big part of what killed the deal. You know, I got a call one day, I think it was from Brad basically saying great news, you know, I think it was Jamie Kelder, come in. Jamie is approved the deal. Does one slight tweak the Wednesday night slot. Instead of being guaranteed for ten years, we you know, get a sixty

day out. That wasn't acceptable to us. They made it clear that the Wednesday night slot was off the table, and I think that we said, you know, without that, we just don't know how we can make the deal work a sixty day out. I told you, I told you they'd want to slither out of it. Yeah, And did I just hear that, right, did Brian? But I'll just say, Jamie Kellner was about

to approve the deal to sell WCW difusione. Mister pull the plug day one, mister there's no future for WW. Mister ska goat for the end of WCW was willing to finalize the deal. According to one of its architects, Ooh, that's kind of interesting that chew on Guy Evans and the Nitro book actually got what. To my knowledge, besides, this first round of publicity from twenty zero one is the only time anyone's been able to interview Jimi Kelner

about WCW. And it's brief, but it's telling, he writes. Kellner outright disputes the perception that he killed WSW and hated wrestling. Rather quote, I grew up a fan of wrestling, Kellner said, and once tried to make a deal with Vince McMahon at a different network or Vince place to call the Jamie. I just wonder, you know, since they had the prior relationship Jamie Keller's office. Mister Kellner, please, who's calling? He knows what's your last name? He knows who it is. Okay, stand by,

please, mister Kellner. It's a mister. He knows who it is. Patch them through. You can do Kellner too. I'll do Kellner. I'll tell my own voice. Hello, pal oh, Vince, how are you? Let me? Let me go hold up Wednesday? Let me close this door. So what's going on? You tell me? Well, I've got this piece of paper in front of me that says I've got to uh give away one of my one of my primetime slots on a weeknight for ten

years. And I'm not sure I like that part of the deal. And I wondered if, if not liking that part of the deal might be in your interest. Let me tell you something. Let me ask you a few questions. If you don't mine sure. Now, are there any interested parties into this this time? I believe I'm talking to one. Yes, you are. Now the question I have really is, well, we're really interested

in this time slot? You know, as I look at the at the broad suite of things that we could offer the TBS viewer on a Wednesday night in prime time, I have to say we have many, many options that I'm very interested in exercising. Let me ask you this question, all right, And this is really where it comes down to. If I open up these time slots for you, do I kill Ted Turner. You could say that no, no, no, no no. He might be closer to death as far as how he's lived, then you might think. I want

you to say it. I want you to say right now, Vince, you buy these time slots, you buy what's on these time slus, you open them up, and you kill Ted Turner. Vince, you open up these time slots and you will Ted Turner. I did it, I did it. Do we have a deal? That set of a bitch. Do we have a deal? Well, let me discuss it with the mcdevid first and go over the you know, the the the ins and outs of the whole thing. And you know, here's the thing. I don't do anything

on paper. I do it with a handshake. Yeah, all right, And I want this handshake to be the death of Ted Turner. I just want you to know, Vince, that this hand right here stands ready to go from shaking your hand to pressing send on an email that announces we are canceling wrestling on the Turner networks. Heretofore, I think I think you would

be very wise. That's just send them that email. I know we've tried to make a deal in the past pal, I will I just want to say, and if it means anything to you, and I'm not you know this is not this is not a a a if you will, a bribe of sorts, but if it just kind of sweetens your own sense of accomplishment, right if it achieves the ends of a bribe without somehow being called a bribe, basically, if it's if, it's if, if what I give

you is a bribe, but it's not done as a bribe. I like you to give you not only a financial reimbursement, but also access to any number of our WB divas on a on a sexual basis. I heard you've made your daughter available on that basis in the past, that you've even cut a promo on you to that degree. If you want her, you have her. Wow, that's straightforward. It's fine by me. I have no qualms about any sort of endeavor that you know would eventually would would you know,

wouldn't actually cause us to be more financially successful in our business? And I believe in the bringing together, the unifying of the entertainment business man. Would that ever proved to be true that he has no qualms about any endeavor that that Bischoff phone call. You know, the more I think about it, that's the slot in the show that was supposed to be him coming back

and announcing this new era. You know, It's like there's a spot on the show where he's supposed to come out and you know, dressed down brick flair, I guess. And I'm just trying to figure out, like why they would plug that into the show. Probably because they had a hole and what they planned to do. His Bischoff wasn't at the building because he was putting out fires and you know, building a fire to cook s'mores on, and and so that that there, it is. That's what we turned it

out. One of the things Meltzer's always said is Stu Snyder, who was CEO of WW at the time or president whatever it was, was telling people that there's no way Fusion gets the company, even when all the reporting was that the deal had been agreed to in principle and that everybody was doing press interviews and the such talking about the deal in the new regime. That people in Titan Towers were being told it's absolutely not going to happen. Don't believe

it. And we know that Stu Snyder had a connection with Siegel. They worked together at Turner. They'd known each other for years and years and years, and post the sale, a lot of people who were left in the dust by the WCW closure were very, very not afraid to speculate. You even heard DDP in the cameo there couldn't help but go there as it regards Jamie Kellner. Now, we heard Brian Badal there on the documentary. Guy Evans also spoke to him and wrote, according to Brian Badal, Kellner's hand

was forced by condition embedded in the Fusian deal. It's part of its purchase agreement Fusian it retained the right to program Turner timeslot believed to be on the TBS network, irrespective of ww's future existence. We structured a deal that it was great for us, but all reveals but Jamie might have decided it wasn't so good for Turner. We negotiated into the deal certain rights to the timeslot in case WCW was canceled. We retained the right for a period of time

to continue to program the time slot. We looked at the time slot as a valuable asset because if we were going to pay all this money for the property. We didn't want to take on the risk of it being canceled. Of course, Turner couldn't be in the position where they had a valuable time

slot with a guarantee essentially never to cancel the show in it. So my recollection is that when Jamie came in, he looked at that as being something they weren't willing to give us, hardly pulling the plug on Wrestling Day one, more like, I don't like this deal. Point fuck wrestling, right, yeah, right, can't forget that first step, But I mean, can you think of I invite you to consider Thunder on FXH, my God

or Nitro on TBS. It's it's something to chew on Evans, but sure Evans rights if and for all intents and purposes, it wasn't impossible if WCW could still find a home on Fox, the fusing deal in some incarnation was

salvageable. He also spoke to Scott Staffon, who was VP of Advertising for TNT at the time of WCW's run, who had some interesting insights as to how really dollars and cents had a lot to do with why Jamie Kilner wouldn't have seen a reason to keep wrestling around, not some personal hatred or animosity

towards wrestling. Although it's clear that Jamie Kellner did not like wrestling, I don't think anybody he disputed it there in the book, and he, you know, in putting his name to a quote, says that he actually, you know, grew up watching it and things like that. It's been said like Jim Barnett, for example, who knew everything told Meltzer likee. Jamie Kellner hates wrestling like it was just known. So I don't know. I'm

struggling with his characterization of his outlook on wrestling. Someone who loved wrestling or had an infinity for it would have found another way to negotiate that term of the deal instead of let that be the reason it all comes crashing down. Who agreed to that in the first place? It must have been Brad Siegel. You know, Brad, why are you giving away two hours prime time on one of the Turner networks? Well, I don't what do you. I don't recall whose decision that was. It must have been mine. I

mean, I don't recall deciding he was there. I must have approved it, you know, there are approvals that go on. I don't recall recalling either. There are decisions that are made on a daily basis, and so far everything checks out. There are decisions that are made on a daily basis, and you know, some decisions are made by me, others by other people, and you know, we just we just kind of you know, we cross bridges when they when they when when they arrive. Thanks for that,

thanks Brad. So this is us, Scott Stephan had to say to Guy Evans. Of course, what they didn't realize is they weren't making money hand over fist because no one wanted to advertise. Those w CW ratings were turning some of the talent into big stars who then started negotiating for higher salaries. The moment it became a star driven, production driven value, a driven spectacle, the bigger the costs and the smaller the margins, that is to say profits. By the end, it was just not going to be a

big business for Turner, so they just shut it down. It was the margins. Staff says that margins come on killed it more than anything else. I think, yes, and some of the final analysis ss Kellner. According to Guy Evan's book, it was all numbers. It was all numbers. It was numbers. It was really financial offer Scott's saffon today. But here's why WCW grew fast, and it had a lot of rating success. But rating success only matters if you can monetize it. Turner's ad sales team had

a tough time monetizing those ratings. They weren't aligned with anything else they were selling from a content standpoint or a demographic standpoint. Turner's premium sports sponsors didn't want to be associated with it, and Turner's entertainment advertisers didn't want to buy it either, as the demographics weren't in line with theirs. AD sales couldn't package it with anything else at the time, and that's been the knock on

WWF forever. Yeah, having WWF makes you number one in cable, but you just can't make that audience watch anything else, right, you know, part of the reason you pace out of your ass for sports is because you get the biggest audience possible to advertise your original programming and try to hook them on. But you know, sixty minutes after the football game, or you

know, your your Thursday Night's slate, things like that. The biggest shows ever have been advertised relentlessly on on on live sports, which is like a lost leader for the networks because it's their best shot to get people to watch that and be able to sell advertising against that. And if what they're overpaying for it doesn't lead to adjacencies like that, if it doesn't lead to them bolstering the things they actually can make a lot of money on, then what

the fuck are we doing here out a WCW. I mean, you know, it delivered all those rating and then when it wasn't delivering those ratings anymore, even when it was, it was hard to And that's one of the things Guy Evans does brilliantly in his book is get into that way of thinking from a television inside a television mind, No not a wrestling mind, not a booking fill the arena's mind, but a television mind, and why it is that they put something on the air, and how it is they see

the path to turning that into millions of dollars in revenue, and it just didn't fit any of the play books that these ad sales departments had at the time, or perhaps even do today. It's it's a lot better today, but it's it's still not perfect. They're still you know, just ask Fox

as far as why they canceled SmackDown. There's still not the return on the audience that you would expect just looking at the raw numbers, because you know, wrestling fans are poor, right, even if they're not even there's plenty of studies that say they're not. It's just that's what advertisers think. And it's it's amazing how much of this of this country is determined by what advertisers

think about groups of people and assumptions that they have. You know, Jen Jen Why is into this, and so they all trip over their dicks trying to you know, talk about like sustainability and stuff and you know, buy this because then the planet will be saved because because Jen Why wants to hear

that from brands. Oh yeah, find me one, Find me one from one person from that generation in front of me who gives a shit about where Chipotle's chicken comes from, you know where you in regard Yeah, yeah, and you know, how is this going to affect the you know, the environment and kind of the future of the world. You know, brands want whenever you hear that, run the hills. Let me tell you brands today need to Yeah, I'll tell you the consumers expect. What we're doing is

is is ground breaking. And I can guarantee you that the ground we break, yes, is actually gonna actually fracked oil. Well, the ground we break is going to be replanted into the in the world, and my trees will be grown. Right, and for every fucking heart destroying energy energy drink you purchase, we'll plant a tree in Nairobi exactly what you will plant. We'll plant whatever you want, right, what do you want? What do you want us to plant? Just buy the fucking product to create miss consumer?

Fuck, I'll plant whatever the fuck you want, I'll say, I will. Well, then I'll eat a chicken nugget. Is there is there not enough green on white background on our website? Do we need to buy stock images from Getty of people like recreating in the sunshine? Like? What do we need to do to get through to you? People? Tell me what I can do by the product. Just tell me what I can do, Tell me what you want me to do. I'll do it. Just

to buy consumers expect. Consumers demand relevant advertising. I don't know they don't they want no advertising. Actually that's what it is. They want no advertising whatsoever. What you want them to want is advertising, and you have ways of making them take it and enjoy it. But it's hilarious. So that man mindset is going to clash with wrestling all day forever. He's lapsed Fan

Wrestling podcast with Jack MJP Soros Fan Wrestling Podcast. So what's important here as well is that you know WW degree takes place on what was it, March eighteenth, right. I can't look that up enough. I can't tell you how many times in researching this episode I looked up the fucking date of greed and I cannot committed to my memory no matter what I do. Watch Marting March eighteen, two days before Brad Siegel issues a memo internally that basically tells

you where this is all going. He sent a memo that outright Alvarez outright lied about what was going on. In early January, we teld you about an agreement that we had reached to sell WCW and its related assets. At the time, we said that we would apprize you of any changes to the way WCW operates effective Tuesday, March twenty seventh, WCW programming will begin a period of hiatus. During this hiatus, WCW will review its programming plans and

determine the course of future WCW branded entertainment events. On Wednesday, March twenty eighth, please plan to attend an all staff meeting at ten am at the power Plant, at which time we will share with you further information regarding WCW plans. In the meantime, I hope that you will maintain the level of professionalism that distinguishes our organization, particularly as we prepare for the upcoming Panama City, Florida. So two days before Greed, the memo goes out that basically

you know the fusing deal's dead and that the company is going dark. It doesn't have the exact detail that wrestling is done on the Turner networks and that that's the reason the deal is dead. But you had to know going into Greed after this memo was issued that something is seriously wrong here. Sure This from ww dot com in an article they did looking back on how it all

went down. This was Bishoff's first experience raising significant funds for a multimillion dollars sale, but he found interested partners in Brian bdaland Steven Greenberg, a fused in media ventures. The doll and Greenberg founded the Classic Sports Network in nineteen ninety five and then sold it to ESPN two years later for one hundred and seventy five million dollars. So that's the play here. They're thinking they can

buy WCW shored up. They probably liked the archive they have right having successfully sold old footage of big time stars. They knew plenty. The article reads about how to brand a sports property to get great success. Bishoff raised sixty seven million with Fusic Media Ventures to purchase WW in eight two thousand, but

Turner Broadcasting Systems had one major catch. TBS retained a minority interest in long term programming rights, So in addition to really not being down with that term of Fusian having control over this time slot, they also wanted a piece of PCW as well, So of course it sound like they that's a hell of a deal. Jamie Keller wants nothing to do with wrestling except he wants to

retain a fucking ownership percentage in the wrestling company. He would even want to make that kind of money if he's in his anti wrestling as it's been a as it's been assumed over the years. Listen, I hate wrestling. Listen, I hate wrestling, all right, but listen, I only making money off it, Like, can you blame me? Right? I'll make money off everything I hate. I just don't want on my fucking network. Wow,

I'll make money off it. Hage says this in the article. Brad Siegel was not going to sell the company unless Eric Bischoff took ten years on TBS as part of their contract. So maybe Siegal is thinking, goddamn, I got money guaranteed in my budget to for this time slot, and it's good money. So maybe that's why he took the deal. I don't know, but Keller didn't like that deal at all, and my Bradziegel rolled right the fuck over on that deal. Term Bischoff admitted he looked into some other

networks, but nothing came befruition quote. I had talked to a variety of networks at that time who expressed interest in WCW, one of the being FX, he said, I had multiple conversations with Peter Logori, who was running FX at the time. It never progressed to the point of making an offer, but we got very close. The real question is could he have a

beer with them? Right? Well, put Peter Ligouri's name right up there with the TNH pantheon, you know of like Scott Fishman and Kevin Ka and all the network people he likes to name drop that he knew and dealt with and had meetings with, and you know, had there was a conference phone on the desk, you know, so that the people could dial in. You know how that goes because they're traveling, right because they had a client had to go see in Chicago. But they need to be part of this

meeting. So this is more of what Bischoff said on the aforementioned WB On Told documentary. He said, we're nailing down our strategies, and we were nailing down our strategies and tactics on how do we launch the brand, what it was going to look like, feel like. We knew that we weren't coming to be able to travel the show the way we did with Nitro. I had a relationship with Peter Morton. There's another who owned The hard Rock

at the time. We had reached a handshake with the hard Rock to create a permanent venue for WW and Las Vegas This is actually Brian Badal talking. Sorry, I shouldn't have been so persumptuous. There a bit of Eric and a bit of Brian here. Sure, we had reached a handshake deal with the hard Rock to create a permanent venue for ww and Las Vegas a boss there were going to move the whole operation to Vegas. Of course makes sense,

Eric Haud talk to me about moving at to Vegas. I was going to be Eric's right hand man to help run the company once Fusion bought it and we moved the whole operation out to Vegas. I think having somebody like Johnny in there that would really led us to come up. And I used to refer to this two or three dimensional finishes. This is Eric talking about

using Johnny Ace essentially as the booker for this new WCW. Johnny A. Laurnnitis would be sort of like the visionary Eric brought Lauren Aiis in in mid two thousand. Of course, he had learned under the learning tree of Giant baba Is, a longtime top guy in All Japan Pro Wrestling, and saw

that company kind of transformed by the introduction of clean finishes. You know this novel idea that We're going to have the discipline to give the fans winners and losers, and it won't destroy the company or the drawing power of the top

evyways. And so he came in with this revolutionary idea of like what w CID he needs his clean finishes, and Bischoff loved it because of all the things he knew about wrestling on how to produce it and everything he didn't know the first thing about, like what it was about producing a match that helded

dramatic results, right. That was made bis up to the wrestlers and Kevin Sullivan and guys who had wrestled that worked for him to do, and Johnny Ace came to the fresh perspective on that and addressed a huge problem with wcws. They just couldn't figure out how to put match finishes together. They just couldn't figure it out, so it always ended up in these deeply dissatisfying clusterfuck disqualification scenarios or just you know, outcomes that didn't really strengthen either guy.

So he comes in and starts doing that. What happens is as Bischof starts clashing with Russo and starts distancing himself in mid two thousands. We talked about on the Bash of the Beach two thousand episode, Johnny Yes kind of becomes his emissary at the Arenas, kind of becomes his like proxy, you know, uh seeing probably reporting back and he's the guy, he's the intermediary, for instance, between Hulkog and Vince Russo and what's gonna happen at Basher of

the Beach. It's not Eric Bischof, it's Johnny Ace who's the go between. So he's becoming really that that functionary for Eric Bischoff and would have had a very prominent role in a reconstituted WCW. Would have moved to Las Vegas and been the booker and and because he was so well positioned, ended up kind of beautifully uh transitioning when Shane and company showed up at that final Nitro, and he held their hands and he facilitated them getting you know, the

information and the access that they needed. Let me tell you whatever you need. Hey, you know exactly, I got everything's here. It's just for you guys, whatever you need. Listen, I'll tell you what I got. I got, I got women. I got women, all right, So do I Palin you're about to find that out. I got I'll tell you what, Fire all of them if you have to, all right, I will do whatever you want me to do. You want me to shoot Rick Flair in the head, I got a doge, please. And that's

what got him the job at w B in such a smooth transition. Was how accommodating and helpful he was during that that transition period. They did a table for three with Shane McMahon and him talking about this, and Shane said he was it was really how impressed he was by Johnny taking them through the operation that got that that that won them over and got him the job. But he would have been WCW through and through if they would have launched this.

I'm just so first of all, WW is gonna come back. Yeah, all right, they're gonna do it. I'm not saying I've heard this. I'm saying there's too much here for them not to have a bright idea. One day, let's do a Yeah, let's do a nitro. Can you imagine if it just opens and the WW logo's back and the set is there and the pyro shooting off, I'm amazing. If they just remade it

exactly as it used to look. Yep, Yep, I don't I think that would be phenomenal, phenomenal it's gonna happen, especially with Rock like involved producing the doc and like, yeah, you know what I mean Now, that's gonna be one of his bright ideas. Yep. So yeah, so three dimensional finishes, Yes, So Bischoff has really taken with this idea that Johnny Yes could come up with a thing where like the finishes of matches would lead you right up to our traditional wrestling fan would think, Okay, it's

the finish, and then there's two or three more finishes after that. Beicheff is really in love with that idea of like being able to be so good at booking finishes that you could fool the fans into two or three false finishes basically, and not just the way he talks about it. It's not just simply like guy hit his finisher, he kicked out. It's more than that. But that was part of what he thought would be exciting about his W

presentations. I've talked about bringing Joey Styles as the announcer as ECW was circling in the drain, bringing Rob Van Dam and perhaps of choice others mecw's talent, maybe even bringing in Jerry the King Lawler, who at this exact time was on the outs with WWE doing them firing his wife, right and vice you to consider World Championship Wrestling from Las Vegas in two thousand and one with Joey Styles and Jerry Lawler in the announced chair. That would be fucking bizarre.

Jerry Lawler is color on nitro. I'm sitting here, I'm trying to let my body process it and it can't. No, It's just it's something that's too It's too off the deep end, isn't It just seems wrong. Yeah, So they talk about the booking ideas. They talk about talent, bad branding, and to go in the hatus would overcome bad branding. Bischoff wanted to do it, perhaps for as long as six months, three to

six months. I'm sure at first it was six and then he started saying three to six when he realized he couldn't go off the air of six months and still have anybody that retained any confidence in him. But they were building anticipation for the Resurrection, and they wanted to call the pay per view the Big Bang. But we had no idea who's going to be on that show or what that show is going to look like. We just knew we were

going to do it. We weren't interested in going back to what we used to do in any way, shape or form, and the emphasis would have been much more on wrestling in the Yeah, the hard rock pyro filled Brian Bedal says, you know, I think part of the name The Big Bang was that there was going to be, you know, the kinds of explosions that you know happened in action movies but not in wrestling. It was going to be a spectacle. So I don't know what they had in mind,

but it wasn't you know, Welcome to Monday Night, Raw Piro. It was fucking, you know, a car and a house blowing up on a Hollywood set kind of thing. I don't know what that means. I don't understand what that means either. That would have been the Big Bang, he says. We started looking at the talent roster and determining who we could afford to keep, who we wanted to keep, who we didn't need to keep, and who we couldn't afford and just going through that analysis, boss,

have you ever seen the Big Bang poster before. I think you showed me, but feel free there it is in your email. Oh it's my email. A good bang. Just take a look, just just basking and the potential that it signals, you know, honestly and invite yourself to consider a world where this actually happens. I see, that's a weird. Anybody can

find this just google ww big Bang. That's a weird poster. Why it's weird, Well, it's like it's very minimalist number worry but so and like the WCW logo is just it's just block lettering, three plane letters, right, there's no real there's nothing to it. And I always saw that as

like but that couldn't have been their logo. But if you watch the final few episodes of Worldwide, which was their syndicated show, and it's a desk show, so they had like a video behind Scott Huntson and Mike Tiney, they showed that that WW typeface on there really yeah, along with like different one word things like passion power like things like that interspersed with just like you

know, kind of generic wrestling footage. And I jumped out to me immediately, well that's the same font they use in that famous thing this you know where this was? Right? This poster that you're looking at. No, this was the back cover of the second to last issue of the WCW magazine, Get Out of Town. No context, no explanation, know nothing. They would often put the next pay per view poster on the back cover of

their magazine, and there this thing was the big bang. What I love about this, and we'll get so much more into this is the WCW magazine gave away so much of how far down the road they really were about planning a future beyond the March twenty sixth nitro. Like it wasn't just like we're going to disappear and figure it out. They had plans in motion, like to go as far as to print this yep. Really tells you how far

down the road they really thought they were with Fusian media ventures. And maybe they were naive to think that, but the content of the magazine is chock full of like signaling about a new era being upon us and Bischoff having retaken the helm after you know it didn't work out with Russou in two thousand taking the helm again in January, which is hilarious because Bischoff today at his podcast

talks about how he really had no contract or any official formal responsibilities. You read their magazine and he's referred to as WCW President and talked about as a guy who's basically architecting everything that's happening in the WCW at that point in time. It's really strange how this cognitive dissonance that was going on about his role reminds me a lot of TNA about how he was never the booker. He was just the executive producer, and he wouldn't want that job even though he

was booking. It's like, well, if you're not the booker, but you're booking, I think you're the booker. But it's fine. You don't know what you're talking about. So it says May sixth, ten billion years ago, The Big Bang, the creation of the universe. May sixth, two thousand and one, The Big Bang, the creation of the new WCW. This time it's on pay per view. It's personal, The Big Bang May sixth dot com And no, I see nothing on the archive that shows

what that website looked like. But I'm completely fucking obsessed with envisioning this future. So I think o WW needs to do is just come out with a big bang show. They need to pick this thread up, Oh totally, you know what I mean, and just have Bischoff come out and just announce, you know what I mean, just announce, But he was going to announce back then with a different troupe would be crazy. You can hire Tony

when his AW deal is up. I'm sure they'd love that. So WA sixth came and nothing happened as we know the creation, As this article from w w dot com reads, the creation of a new WCW was forming in WWE, and the big bang didn't occurruntil May twenty eighth, when WCW superstar Landstorm ran into a WW ring and kicked w superstar Perry Saturn in the face.

Three weeks later, DDP joined him on Raw as well as an influx of WCW superstars as part of What Boss The Invasion That's Right, which is also covered in detail on the archives the ww Invasion show the WWF Invasion pay per view July two thousand and one. As they try to figure out what to do with the assets that they acquired on the cheap, and a fire sale essentially as Turner sold to WWF ultimately. Did you know they cut some ads for WCW house shows WWF did, No. The young rest is crulling,

the power of building voices, feel the rebellion. Who will lead the revolution on June twenty seven? Everything? You know, He's about to change a part of history when the WCW takes over the Stabler Arena live June twenty seven. Tickets are on sale now with the Stabler Arena box Office, ticket Master or charge my phone in two one, five, three, six, two thousand. The Return of the WCW. No Revolution, he's near, that's insane. There were tickets on sale to go see a w WCW house

show, brought to you by the new owners Word Wrestling Entertainment. I mean, I'm I'm intrigued. I'm disappointed that, you know, we never really saw it, and I'm also alarmed and all the things. All where's that old ww T shirt you had with the WWWWW logo? Oh yeah, I haven't. That's That's what I think of right away. Yeah, for sure,

for sure. Back to the Observer of Feb twenty six, this is characterizing Bischoff kind of in mid you know, deal making here, realizing perhaps or reportedly, that it might be too long of a wait to have all of your top guys shelved. Meltzer wrote Bischoff's thoughts were based on the idea that he didn't want to present a steale product and allow the fans to get more apathetic by basically struggling along with no storylines and no stars until the planned

relaunch in May. Most likely, the ratings from the past week may have played a part in the decision, because if the ratings would have held steady at the two point five level to build for a relaunch, it would have

been acceptable. But when the February twelve, two thousand and one numbers came in, tying the record low for a Nitro live show and the regular time slot two point zero eight, that was no longer an acceptable level to stay at or even probably drop from, since the storyline they were building toward, for better or worse, required keeping some of the biggest stars on the sidelines

for nearly two more months. There is also the feeling that, with the WWF's problems with the XFL, that so much of Vince McMahon's focus will be on football for the next two months, so that it's not the time to set out waiting to make a move. Although ww's problems at this point are not greatly contingent of the focus of McMahon and the storylines of the WWF being stale or not no doubt with TBS and T and T having to do make

goods, no doubt to do make goods. So that opens up Erico's right down that path here in a second, Yeah, make goods and advertising. Due to declining ratings, the networks would also be adverse to shutting down for the same reason, Time Warner vetoed Bischoff's original plan to shut down starting this

week. Bishoff at press time said he would make the final decision later this week, and another main factor would be based on exactly when the closing of the fuse and purchase of WCW is finalized, since Time Warner nixed his previous

shutdown plan, so there was a previous plan that was next. Meltzer was talking to Bischoff at this time, so it's not entirely out of the romal possibility that Bischoff told him this himself, but all these years later on his podcast, Bischoff here's this read back to him, and has this to say, had I had once fusion came in, once we entered into a letter of intent, if I would have said let's shut it down now, time Warner executives would have thrown a fucking party. There was no it make good?

What Jesus Christ? Okay, nothing even remotely close to that was true. In fact, it was the opposite. We could have pulled the plug and gone into shutdown mode any time we wanted. Turner executives couldn't wait for us to shut it down. They could wait. How tough would it have been just to slide in a movie out of their library into that team's same time slot and probably get, if not as good of a rating, Because you know, it's easy for us, an idiot like Melzer to show horrible

rating two point two. Well guess what else was delivering two point twos and two point fives on Turner on TNT at the time. Oh, I don't know, fucking nothing so other than sports obviously playoffs, and even then it

was close. But the CPMs, the costs per thousands, the value of an AD inside of wrestling, even at a three or a four A rating was probably less than any movie you wanted to put in that time slot during that period of time, because wrestling was still not a place where most advertisers wanted to be at CPM Popdihant. Oh, yes, so this thing about how you know, guess what else was doing the numbers Nitro was doing even

at that low level. Nothing. Well, Fortunately for us, the Associated Press would publish on a regular cadence the cable Nielsen ratings back in those days on a somewhat regular clip. So let's take you back to February first, two thousand and one, the time period in question, and get a look at what out there would have out done on what Nitro did at a two point zero eight. How about Ripley's Believer In or Not on a Turner Network

TNT, which was doing a two point seven and out drawing them. About the Pretender two thousand and one on TNT, which drew three point five and three point five three million homes and several other things not necessarily in the turner networks, but hey, Arnold rug rats, do you remember it was fucking out drawing out Wow, Nickelodeon was like one of the highest rated cable stations at the time. Sure, I believe that just it's it's wild. But you know, two fours across the board, wow, yep. And guess

what isn't on this top fifteen list? Nitro yep. And guess what's number one and number two? Raw? Yes on TNN and the War Zone, Well it says WWF Entertainment Monday at ten, number two WWAF Entertainment Monday at nine. Yeah, I had no problem with that. And then the pretender on TNT is next, which also a w show as well. Yeah,

don't me the difference. So I don't know. I'm just saying, if you're not in the top fifteen, yeah, I mean, you don't hold the position you think you do as drawing a number that nothing else on cable is going to be able to draw. Now, where are those sports? He referenced, There's not a single that hadn't really started yet. I mean TNT had experimented with sports right around the time of you know, Nitro launching and right shortly before that, and USA had as well, but there weren't

really many. I don't think many playoff sports to speak of on the Turner networks back then. I could be wrong, but whatever the case, they certainly weren't running in February twenty eleven, which twenty oh one, rather, which is the time period of this Meltzer report. I don't know, just saying now, you know so what that we weren't top fifteen. It's not like we had been top fifteen at any point in the recent memory, right,

Well, you were top fifteen back in two thousand. If you go a year before that, there's Monday Nitro at number seven on all of cable on TNT at a two point five. Rugrats was beating it, but you were beating a lot of other Rugrats episodes. You were beating some Lifetime movies. Indecent Proposal on USA, Cabin by the Lake on USA, a woman named Jackie on Lifetime. Lifetime was killing it with original movies back then,

you remember that absolutely, that was such a thing. But yeah, January two thousand and one, Nitro nowhere to be found in the top fifteen. March two thousand and one, Nitro nowhere to be found in the top fifteen. Though certainly jag was on USA, yes, or Jackass on MTV was taking off massive, And there's WWF from the top one and three spot with Cliffhanger on TBS drawing at three point five. Nothing they could put on would

outdraw Nitro. How about a three point five for Klemfinger, the fucking shitty ass slow movie from nineteen ninety three, Right to your two point zero eight idiots. February you were in the top fifteen, no problems. May two thousand you were number three at a two point eight, only only behind raw Thunder was even top fifteen in May two thousand, September two thousand. I'm looking here, there's Nintro at number seven. Okay, So the point here

October I can keep going if you want sure. October two thousand, Nitro number eleven on all of cable. So the point is, no Nitro by that point was not something that held the position of what else are you going to put on? That was drawing those kind of numbers? Nothing, I don't see it. I think that, in fact, that was true of WCW in ninety eight, ninety nine to some degree, two thousand ninety seven to some degree, but it wasn't true come two thousand and one. They

were fucked. In two thousand and one, they they hit I mean I mentioned something stabilized from like an tenant's perspective and things. But they hit such an iceberg that it was. It came at the same time that they were purposely, you know, pushing stars off television as part of this reset idea that it was. It was looking it was looking like the deal makers were purchasing damaged goods. I mean, I'd hate to go so far as to

say it, but I should suggest, I guess. I mean, what if what if Bischoff's idea to ice all these top guys and not put them on TV generating ratings was a big part of what gave Fusie cold feet. I don't know why no one's ever considered that, Like why the ratings of January and February and March were going to be completely immaterial to the buyer's sense of what they were purchasing. I don't know. I get the idea that they wanted WW out of their hand as soon as possible, but that they

want low rated programming on their stations, I don't think so. I don't know. That one really confuses me. That is weird, Like, yeah, I don't know, if you fall out of the top fifteen, you ain't shit. How about that? In cable at the time, especially back then. Yeah, I was wont to say back back then for sure.

And as I said, despite all the representations in their in house publication and the messaging here on TV that Eric Bischoff is back in control the diffusion deals announced in January, the WW magazine is saying, and I quote this is in an article about Rick Steiner. It didn't take long for the dogface Gremlin to prove he still had it, defeeding the franchise Shane Douglas to win the United States title in February. What seedl Stender's comeback was the return of good

friend Eric Bischoff to the role of WCW president in January. Now, how can you be the WCW president and yet not work for WCW. Let's hear Eric talk about it. Do you remember were you at this show? No, were you in any way in creative Did you get some sort of a script or a run sheet or anything? At this point, I got a run sheet, you know. I wanted to know what was going on, not from a creative you know, approval process, you know perspective. I

just wanted to be aware. I had given some general direction to Ed Ferrara, who was still there and a couple other people who were involved, but it was just like, don't do anything stupid. You know, as long as you don't do anything really freaking stupid, it doesn't really matter because we knew we were going to reboot anyway, and the hope was by the time we rebooted and the way we rebooted, that people will pretty much have forgotten

about everything that had happened over the last six or twelve months. So as long as they weren't doing anything really stupid. I didn't really care, and I wasn't involved. I didn't want to be involved. It wasn't appropriate for me to be involved. I wasn't an employee at the time. I wasn't really I was even an independent contractor at the time. I just were you doing managing the acquisition process? More than anything else? Was he ever doing

anything? Because it's he wasn't. How are you gonna how are you going to have your in house magazine saying your WW president and say that you had no contract at all? Like how does that work? Like why are they saying that? I don't know, Maybe I'm a mark for the magazine, no fucking anty, but I was I don't know. I just you know, I'm just pointing these things out. Yeah, yeah, let's lean in a little more into that. Let's and I've always wanted an excuse to do

this. WCW magazine in the last three months of two thousand and one are fucking fascinating to me personally. And the last magazine comes out in May, way after the company closes. That's the final addition to hit. Kevin Eck, who was a writer of Baltimore's Son and who went on to be on the creative team of WWF and Ring of Honor and others, was hired as

ww magazine editor and just transformed the publication. I subscribed to it at the time, and I was just so blown away by how he reconstituted it as something halfway in house promotional magazine like WWF would do and they like they used

to do, and a shoot magazine. You know that you would You could read these interviews, and almost all the interviews weren't about what they were doing in the ring and on television, but they were about, you know, where they stood in their careers, how negotiations were going, how they felt about their creative direction. Like it was so cool. It was like really

like a beat on what guys who were really thinking and doing. There's a great multi part, well multi page Hulk Cogan interview when he came back in two thousand under the Bischoff Russou regime that we talked about on the episodes of Bash at the Beach two thousand, where he really lays out the closest you'll

get to his true feelings about things. I mean, you have to be a little skeptical because it's ww's in house publication, but it was pretty clear that Kevin Eck was given the reins to just make the whole thing a shoot deal. There was another magazine in the newstands at the time called Wow. Do you remember Wow Magazine? Yes? I do still laughter put it out and it was basically an attempt to do like a newsletter style shoot coverage of

wrestling on a mainstream, glossy magazine during the Attitude era. There was actually, you know, publishers willing to put that out there and the newsstands willing to carry it. It didn't last very long, but it was the same

thing. It was all shoot coverage. It was all guys shooting in the in the interviews, it was there was no storyline really at all, like your traditional aftermacs were and so you know there was a songing at the time that yes, Ed Ferraro was sort of the titular like creative director at the time. He was still hanging around, having been having come in with Vince

Russo. Of course in nineteen ninety nine they had a falling out when he stuck around when Rousseau went home, and for a very short period of time at Ferraro was basically the booker of WCW at least the head writer. Ricky Santana, who was a venitor of the business, who I think had a good relationship with John y Ace was at WW at the time was also had

some booking responsibilities, as did johnny Ace himself. And so we get to because of this, flip through the pages again and find a piece that Ed Ferrara himself penned for WCW Magazine talking about his vision, which is so delicious with WCW having fucking eight weeks left to live by the time this thing hit newstands. But I invite you, boss to please retrieve the scan I've provided

to you. Ferrara WW mag And let's hear from the guy who was conceptualizing where the product was heading around this time of WCW greed and what could have been. I'm very fascinated by the whole what could have been of two thousand and one WCW. So let's hear it back to basics, making it matter. Okay, this is my first so oh wait, okay, so this is my first column for WSW magazine. I really want these pages to make

a difference in this magazine. I want everyone who reads my ramblings to be immediately overcome with the desire to hit every newsstand, drug store and magazine rack with a within a five hundred mile radius of their home and compulsively gobble up every last issue. Brother, they will wait thirty days of sheer, agony and torture, I assure you, for next month's issue to hit the stands, when they eagerly will repeat the process. The circulation numbers for WSW magazine

quickly will surpass Time Newsweek and weekly World News combined. So he's got a sense of humor, yes, indeed, or does he? It's all up to me. But how to go about it? I could tell graphic tales of sordid intrigue and insatiable lust that would make the editors of Penthouse Forum want to rush to the nearest convent, and for sake, they're previously shallow lives.

Could transcrib the interview I conducted with the gentle mister Rogers in which I got him to admit that he visited the quote Land of Make Believe one time too many in the nineteen seventies and now has a serious jones for owl owl puppets and toy trolley's. This guy is just what the wrestling business needs. Yes, indeed, and I'm so glad he was deputized to run ww's creative at this point in time. Fucking my fucking favorite guy in the world.

I could promise and deliver actual death scene photographs of the late great Chris Farley, shocking, unexpected, unpredictable. The masses will eat it up like candy, and our circulation will go through the roof. But then what do I do next month? So all that's for one month? I see hill? Is he describing Vince Russo's writing style? Is that what he's doing? Penthouse Forum articles, Uh, mister Rogers on drugs and uh and and photographs of

Chris Farley in just issue number one. Okay, uh more of the same. I guess once you get locked into a habit of continually keeping everyone off guard, it's hard to go back. These areiled, these are availed shots at russo gee, I'll say Jesus. Then again, if you continually push the envelope, nothing is shocking like unexpected or unpredictable. It just becomes more of the same and the audience gets jaded rather quickly. I started out in

this business, like ninety nine percent of everyone else. I was a fan as a kid. I love staying up all hours of the night, mom and dad snug in their beds, assuming of the same of me watching hulking bruisers throw each other around on various UHF stations in the wee hours. But what kept me coming back week after week, practically in my entire life surprises the shocks quote. I can't believe so and so sold out his partner and

turn on him during that match. There's going to be a huge war between those two now, or did you see what's his name stand up to the huge evil monster. I didn't think anybody ever would let alone that guy, I want to say, and you know what, I didn't like him before, but I think what's his name was actually would actually be the guy, the one guy who can take the monster out so simple, get so effective. Pass forward to the turn of the millennium. The wrestling business knows it's

the shocks and surprises that keep fans coming back for more. So what would be the natural progression? You guessed it? More shocks and more surprises. Those memorable moments that would occur only once every few months when I was a kid, now happened regularly, nightly, something sometimes, but then something happened. The shocks and surprises failed to shock and surprise anymore. Ever been totally

caught off guard by a surprise party? Remember the adrenaline rush, the overwhelming feeling of being cared about, the dropping to your knees and clutching your heart desperately trying to assess if you did or did not skid your white eies in front of thirty or so your closest friend. No, I've never been concerned that I shit my pants in front of my friends. On the other hand, have you ever been tipped off intentionally or not about a surprise party headed

your way? If you know a quote surprise is coming. You'll get no visceral enjoyment out of it. It just happens. That's where we were for a while, and we could do you, and the surprises and shocks started to become meaningless. When you've got nothing but shocks and surprises, that nothing is shocking or surprising. How much do you want to bet I can fit in another use of the words shocking and surprising in my article here is that

his words of yours. Oh my god. It's like the concept that without evil there could be no good, or without noise, you would never appreciate silence. I tell you what, I definitely appreciate the sounds this fucking thing. I remember when I was a kid. If one wrestler used a chair on another, he might as well pull out a forty four caliber pistol and shot the guy in the face. It was that shocking and terrible because only

in the rarest and most extreme circumstances did it happen. Just five years ago, a wrestler going through a table was tantamount to being a pedestrian caught in the middle of an eighteen car pile up. It didn't come back from that, at least not for a while nowadays I believe Stock and Home Depot and Staples has shot through the roof thanks to the efforts of professional wrestling in keeping the pressure of the pressure board, table and folding chair aisles in those stores

continually Aaron. But the problem is it just doesn't mean anything anymore. When you have a showyeah, right, When you have a show in which eight wrestlers use chairs on each other at various points, and another five quote ride the pressure board broncho, it all ceases to have impact impact DNA. Right, that's the key. I'm not saying. We never need to see another chair swung, another table reduced to splinters, another shock, or another surprise.

There are those words again. But we need to realize that we've got to pick our spots. We need to make everything mean something. If you don't see a table or chair used for a month or two or three, I guarantee you that the next time you do, you will react it on a gut level. We need to keep a sense of stasis, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as quote a condition of balance among various forces, as the rule, not the exception. That way, when we do want to

get a rise out of the fans. When we want to shock them, swerve them, surprise them. They'll all feel like they just walk into their favorite restaurant only to be completely caught off guard by fifty of their closest friends screaming surprise. That's what makes it fun, just as long as you don't, you know, skid the whities. Excelsior Ed ferraras the head writer for Nitron Thunder contact added by email. That's hilarious. I mean, fucking have

the email out there. Well, he wants fan feedback, I guess, I mean, what is that? What an idiot? First of all, let's get this out of the way. Yes, there's a picture of his face. Thoughts on what you see. He's going to zoom in on that for a moment here, just so I can really repulse myself for this fucking idiotic fuck at that idiot, I was wrong with the guy. Fucking m it looks like a like a like a like a high school literature teacher.

Well, I want to fucking I mean he was gonna save it. I mean didn't he and and didn't he have like crazy ass braids or dreadlocks that way? Later? W w t NA, Yeah, I mean bad, Like, I mean, what the fuck, dude? And he's a screenwriter. He teaches screenwriting, right, yes, he does. Fucking guy, I think he was even an Hevies judge once, if you can believe that? Is he really? Yeah? Is he really? Yes? I remember him being in the book a little booklet. Oh my god, so fucking

Jesus Christ. I mean, but like, like, are you inspired by his message? Though not at all? Oh god, what are you? What are you doing to me here? Oh? What he looks you know, like he looks like John Travolta on that movie Battlefield Earth. Yeah, that's exactly what he looks like in this fucking picture. Oh and another Oh my god, what a what a pervert? What a pervert? Be nice to the guy, this guy. What does he try to say in this article? What do you know? What do you think? What he's what?

I mean, he takes two pages to basically say less is more, That's what he's fucking saying, pretty much, you know, like okay, yeah, duh, like we're gonna have we're gonna have less surprises, we have less surprises. Which where do I sign up? I mean it's like, yeah, it's not that I saw the meat listen wrestling. Yeah,

I mean, but okay, every TV show has surprises. That's what makes TV shows work, you know, That's what make you know you want to come back and watch a show because they're leaving on some kind of a cliffhanger, which is usually a surprise in some fashion. You know, like that's that's that's the way it all works. So I don't know what. I

really don't know what he's saying about that basics. What he's basically saying is anything that ever annoyed him about Vinsruso he's not going to do, and he assumes that it annoyed all of us too, Well, you annoy me at FRA, right, what about what the iteration for that possibility here? He was gonna bring up Chow was gonna bring in John Muse, who's a well read guy in the business, to book the cruiserweight division separately from the heavyweight

division, which I thought was an interesting idea own two five Live. Yeah, pretty yeah, exactly. We saw well that went went in practice over at the E. But yeah, this is the guy that I don't know. Bischoff kind of frames him as like a lame duck guy just writing the TV while they prepare the relaunch, and it seem like Johnny Ace would be much more the booker than this guy. But here he is in the magazine, you know, say, a magazine that's extolling the arrival of Eric Bischoff.

So that's that's the mindset. I don't I'd be willing to bet that a lot of what ed Farar says was parroting what Bischoff's vision would have been, as somebody who was very in many ways developed a deep distaste for Russo's style of writing wrestling television and didn't hesitate to tell him and kind of purposely brought the relationship to a crashing halt by redlining a lot of the things that Russeau wanted to do for Nitro when offering nothing you know, constructive in return,

just endlessly frustrating Russeau and famously threw the phone against the wall when Bischoff just told him something sucks and I've got nothing better to replace it with. Just know that this sucks. He doesn't want to hear that because it's true. Yeah, but that's that. So now we move to another bit of e themera from the Dying Days of w CW magazine. Uh, this is

boss if you could pull it up the WW mag Bischoff interview. So this is a real deep look at where Bischoff psyche was in terms of what he wanted to tell loyal fans in the pages of the re in house magazine. All right, this is, by the way, the guy who has no contract with according to Bischoff, with the organization contract has a six page spread and in depth interview in the company magazine. And this is this is by somebody who does not work for WSW. Meanwhile, the headline is Bischoff's return

energizes WCW. She's all fine and consistent, yep and normal. And what you know, there is considerably more I'll hit I'll hit this, and then we'll do the Q and A with you as Bischoff. All right, this is by Kevin Eck. There is considerably more lang going on in the WCW locker room these days. No disco hasn't been fired. It's even better than that. Eric Bischoff has returned as president of the company, and his presence

and all that it represents is certainly caused for joviality. Since Bischoff's return WCW has become a fun place to work again for the majority of the wrestlers. That's not to say they weren't enjoying their jobs, but the uncertainty regarding the future of the company was weighing on everyone. Oh yeah, that's in the

rear view. The announcement of an agreement to sell the majority of the company to Fusiant Media Ventures, with Bischoff reclaiming the position of president he held from nineteen ninety three to nineteen ninety nine, put an end to months of anxiety. The wrestlers are relieved to know someone is running the ship, and the choice of captains couldn't have been better. Bischoff by far has proved to be the most successful successful executive in WCW history. I remember my initial reaction when

I heard Bischoff was named executive vice president of WCW nineteen ninety three. The guy with the perfect hair, who had been an American Wrestling Association announcer before joining WCW was a B team announcer is running the company. How the hell did that happen. What I didn't know at the time was that I had unfairly lumped Bischoff into the annoying group of mannekin like announcers that were turning up everywhere in sports entertainment. Bischoff, however, proved he was more than just

another pretty face aspiring to move into management. He had taken the time to learn the intricacies of the business, especially television production. Moreover, Bischoff had the ambition, vision, and intestinal fortitude necessary to lead to the company. Bischoff came into power in WDCW at a time when the wrestling industry was in

a slump. Seeds of a turnaround were planted when Hulk Hogan, the biggest star and professional wrestling history and the flagship of the rival were Wrestling Federation for a decades, signed with WCW. The importance of acquiring Hogan can't be emphasized enough. As well, there's planting a seed. What can tell Bischoff's back in power. Yeah, I'm right. The importance of acquiring Hogan can't be emphasized enough. As the most recognizable personality in the business, Hogan made WCW

the place to be. Bischoff, though, knew there was one advantage the WWF still had over WDCW, a weekly primetime TV show. In a move that he knew would make or break his career. Bischof convinced Ted Turner to launch Nitro, convinced, Yeah, he convinced, and Ted Turner fucking suggested it to launch Nitro and position it head to head against the WWF's popular Monday night Raw wrestling. Critics panned the decision, saying Nitro and Bischoff were destined

to fail against the incumbent WWF. The critics couldn't have been more wrong. Knowing he needed an energetic, fast paced show to complement the abundant star power in WCW, Bischoff recruited great workers from all over the globe. While Raw had become stale and predictable, Nitro was cutting edge. The ratings battle was a stalemate for several months until Bischoff lured Kevin Nash and Scott Hall from the WWF and created the nWo. WCW went on to defeat the WWF and the

ratings for eighty three consecutive weeks. Bischoff did more than knock the ww F from its perchase the top wrestling organization in the country. By forcing the WWF to improve its product in order to compete, he helped the entire industry reach unprecedented heights. This is great. Bischoff left WCW in nineteen ninety nine, saying he was burned out. The company hasn't been the same without him. He left WW in two thousand. He came back in two thousands and hasn't

been the same without him. He was there like six months before this, but after more than a year on the sideline, he is back as focused and motivated as ever. I can help but smile thinking about the possibilities. After months of rumors and speculation, the landscape in sports entertainment officially changed on Thursday, January eleventh. On that date, it was announced that Turner Broadcasting System In Corporated had entered into an agreement to sell WCW Difusiant Media Ventures,

an integrated media company. What I like that? What do you say integrated? Pal your integrations? How about doing order? Is? Do you integrate? How do you integrate? Where do you integrate? Right? Show me your integrations? Show me how you integration properties. The proposed deal also signified the return of Eric Bischoff's WCW president. Bischoff previously had served as w W

president from nineteen ninety three to nineteen ninety nine. During his tenure, wc W signed some of the biggest names in the industry in launch Nitro, which was the unisputed winner of the Monday Night ratings battle with the World Wrestling Federation for almost two years. After stepping down in nineteen ninety nine, Bischoff returned

to briefly last April to work with Vince Russo on the creative team. Ww magazine caught up with Bischoff for an exclusive interview the day the sale agreement was announced. He talked about the goals of the company, his abbreviated return last April, and the possibility of working with Hulcocin. So we have the distinct honor here, boss brother to get into Bischof's head at the time instead of

in retrospect, why why don't always say they caught up with them? It's just like a magazine turned a phrase to suggest that, like they were out doing something and we came to them and got, you know, like a minute of their time, as opposed to they were on a tour cynically trying to get into the press, which is what it really was. So I hate you caught up makes it like we had a relationship, you know, we just caught him. He was doing stuff like this wasn't it wasn't playing,

This wasn't pushed on us. We're not just the stenographers here. We start to line and we just happened to be in the same place at the right time. Weren't you glad to we caught up with them and you got we got caught. Question? How does it feel to be back in control of WCW even though you don't work here and don't have a contract? Odd?

Oh, it was a strange feeling to pull up in front of this building again because of all my history here over a better or worse anyways, this has been the most important part of my life over the last ten years. It was an odd realization to pull up here at ten minutes to nine on a Thursday morning, knowing that I was going to sit in front of people whom I've known, in some cases almost ten years or more and explained to them that I was going to be a part of a team that was

acquiring the company. Rumors that you were buying the company had been running rampant for months. When did you first inquire about it? Well, there's a million rumors out there. You know, ninety nine and nine tenths percent of all the proven to be false. The factory, the rumor factories a tendency to throws much mud up against the wall as possible. I've been trying to connect those dots to come up with a story open until today, maybe late

yesterday. And Fusion's name was never part of any of the experts predictions. So we've done a pretty good job of keeping it quiet in terms of how long this process has been going on. It's really been going on since about July. But I mentioned a Brad to Brad July. They were talking about selling WCW July of two thousand. Yeah, they I suggest that Brad Siegel was more concerned with that than trying to save WCW by the midpoint of two

thousands. But I mentioned to Brad last spring when I came back, and I told him quite candidly during our renegotiation process that it was going to be my intention to purchase the company. Of course, you looked at me like I was nuts because of this. At the time, I doubt there had

been me conversation about or thought given to it. It became apparent to me a while ago, probably going back to late nineteen ninety eight or early nineteen ninety nine, WCW was a property really no longer fit the Turner Time Warner company profile, meaning it's not part of the core business of a company like Turner or Time Warner. Since it didn't really fit into the day to day company profile, it kept running into problems and had a difficult time growing the

way this particular property needs to grow. Because I was even more certain when I came back briefly during the spring. I wanted to be very upfront about my intentions so that when the time came, it didn't look Machabelian in any way, and it was above board whatever that means. I mean, this guy speaking in code like here, If anyone reading this understands a fucking word of that, what is the first order of business and what are your long

term goals? Well, the first order of business is to make sure this thing keeps moving. This is going to be a long rebuilding process. It's evolution, not revolution, although we're gonna keep an eye out for those revolutionary kinds of opportunities and ideas, but it's a long term plan. It's not going to get fixed overnight. Immediately, the focus is on trying to shore up the product. It's all so funny because it doesn't. None of it

happens. It's just totally thrown in the garbage. Trying to shore up some of the creative trying to shore up some of the talent issues that are outstanding, trying to refocus on a different approach to producing the product. In many ways, it's going back to the future, back to certain things that work really well. Just just as importantly, we're looking for opportunities to reinvent this

business in ways that haven't been tried before. This is about identifying the formulas that we know will work and always in the entertainment industry, but building on them and compounding our success. We need to build our stars, make them feel and look and walk and talk like stars again, getting away from what I consider to be almost a backyard wrestling field of the program. You know, when a fifteen year old kid or a fifty year old adult watches our

show, to them, it's a fantasy. It's bigger than life. These people are stars. We just called WCW with this point in time, backyard wrestling. You did, okay, great positioning our talent us stars involves the way they walk to the ring, the music and the lights, the way they're promoted, and the way they're marketed in and out of the ring.

There's a lot that went into the wc into making WCW the number one wrestling organization in the country, and there will be a lot going into repositioning ourselves in that way. That's why I'm so excited about Fusion. That's where the expertise is that, combined hopefully with my experience in wrestling, will allow us to get there much more quickly and it would otherwise. In terms of long term, WCW is an entertainment property. In terms of long term, WCW

is an entertainment property. Got it a long time ago. I went to a five year strategic planning meeting and someone asked me to come up with a five year plan as to where WCW should be as a business. The mission statement back then was to build ww into being the number one wrestling organization in the country, and then to expand our business by exploiting our assets. And

our assets are our talent. What fuck is he talking about? I mean, make wrestling number one by whatever metric and then you know, take the stars that are bigger and make money off their likeness. We want exploitation, yes, right, exploitation leading leading to monetary satisfaction leading to dominance in the field, the like that Chicken before the egg though, or something like that.

We want to expand OCW into other forms of entertainment, whether that be animation, sitcoms, or feature films, using the strength of the brand and the strength of our core assets in order to achieve that. I don't think the plan really has changed. Okay, you mentioned reinventing the business at its core, though pro wrestling always has had a basic formula. Do you think WCW has been guilty in the past year of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Well, if you want to call it reinventing or experimenting, I think that's true. In some cases that's necessary, you have to try something new in order to find out if it'll work. In the last past six seven months in particular, and really in the last year or year and a half, I've had the luxury of watching not only this company but the business from the outside looking in. My feelings haven't changed about the business. I still believe

in it. Obviously, I'm probably even more convinced that this is a big, big, big business. I've had the luxury of looking at it from a different perspective, and I have a different view of certain things. One of the things that's happened here is there's been too much of a departure from basic formulas of storytelling in the effort to try something new. It really has been lost in the audience. I don't want anybody to get the impression of

this is that this is business as usual. Eric's back. That's for wymclock back to nineteen ninety eight. But certain but certain things work, and certain things don't. Square wheels just never work no matter how hard you try. But we're going to experiment, and there's a lot there's gonna be a lot of success, and there's gonna be a lot of failure. Hopefully our batting average is going to be high enough that overall we're going to be successful.

The fuck has he said a single thing that no tells you what to look forward to. He hasn't said a single thing. What will your role as president entail? Will you strictly be working on the creative side, or will you be making business decisions as well? It's like my role when I was president ninety eight and the majority of my time was spent on the creative issues, dealing with talent, booking, product, creating, nitro law product,

building product, and rebuilding the pay per view business. There were seventy five percent of my time that was That was where seventy five percent of my time was spent. There are a lot of other people who were involved on the business side of it. Once again, I'll be spending my time where it's best spent, and that's on the creative side. That's where my experience is, That's where my talents are. I think relationships on the business side of things. You know, Brian, but is it at all? Yeah?

But yeah, Brian, but all my partner comes from a very comes from exciting business background. He's very successful entrepreneur. He has a tremendous mind for the business and has already begun to put together a phenomenal team of people on the business side that are really going to take this franchise to a place that is ever been. But Brian also was a very creative guy, and it's going to have some input on the creative side of things. The Dolls booker

I'd love to hear some of his ideas. Booker Brian Badal, You know, it's going to be a team effort, but I think it's going to be a situation where we both recognize our respective skills and we're gonna spend the majority of time where we can do the most good. Will you be assuming an on screen role, I don't know. I'm back and forth regarding that. It's not my goal. I've heard I've learned to enjoy my anonymity. I think there was a time when my role worked to a certain degree.

I'm not sure that it does anymore. If you look back at the evolution of wrestling storytelling. You know, WCW launched the nWo, which was the first storyline to pit the wrestlers against the company, and then Vinci Man kind of copy of that with DX worked very well for him, and it worked very well for us. That with d X all right, Uh, I don't know if they went against the company, but not really. They're just gonna operate it within the company. Just fine. I guess in the beginning

they were in Sergeant Slaughter's face. I mean, but that wasn't before. It's not taking anything over that's just actually like douchebags. It also wasn't before Stone Cold was doing that anyway. He fucking he fucking stunned everybody on the on the fucking administration administrative roster well before d X was fucking wearing. Uh right, So if that, if that's copying nWo, then so is Steve Austin right exactly, Yeah, no, sorry, pal, he's lapsed.

Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack MJP Sooan Wrestling Podcast m HM. And but those stories have been told now for going on six years. Yeah, I think it's time to again, maybe go back to the future. And so you're gonna go back to what hasn't happened, Oh my god, and put the emphasis on the talent and on the characters that that bring these stories to life, and take the emphasis off the company and the guys who aren't going to

be out there every night in the ring performing. A big part of me wants to say I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do it anymore because I don't think it's appropriate and I mean it when I say it, But I also have to recognize that if the story makes sense, it's a possibility, but I doubt it Jesus Christ jee this fucking bishof just loves loves hearing himself rataliz it must be I mean he loves saying both neither and both at the same time. Yeah, it's neither this nor that. But Meltzer's wrong, and

that's why I need to know neither this nor that. But it could be this and it may become that. And I didn't do that because I didn't want to do that. There was a lot of excitement when you and Vince Russeau headed the creative team in April. Ultimately it didn't work. What went wrong a number of things, really, you know, without personalizing it, the truth of the matter is that I never really came back to the extent that I was when I left. I wasn't as engaged and involved, but

that was the nature of my relationship. I didn't I wanted it that way, and Turner wanted it that way. Because I was involved on what I would call a part time basis or an arms length type of relationship, I really wasn't able to affect that kind of change that I wanted to affect. At the same time, I knew it wouldn't be fair of me to push my view on the war of the world, on the people that were here

full time. I was back and I was part of it, but in many ways I really wasn't quite Frankly, I was only back for about sixty days before it just became abundantly clear to me that it was not going to work. It wasn't working for me on a personal level. It certainly wasn't working for me on a professional level. There's been a trend in recent years to reveal the inner workings of the business. Do you think the business has

been exposed too much? I think storylines should be presented in a believable way that's easy for an audience to relate to. There was something to do with the fucking question. It's like, it's like saying, yeah, do you think that going in this direction will actually benefit the business? Well, personally,

I think hamburgers are tastier. Okay, he's saying storyline, the question is too much revealing of the inner workings of the business, And then he storyline should be presented in a believable way, all right, So I guess he means that, like the only way to be believable is to talk about that stage stuff or at least to have that be part of it. I don't think that it's necessary, and to a certain extent, I think it's harmful to try to educate an audience at the expense of the illusion and perception

we're really here to create. I don't think the audience really cares how two individuals may feel about each other over lunch. It's much more important how they relate to the characters and how they relate to the stories reality. Batory lines worked for us back in the ninety five and throughout the years, and I certainly has worked for the WWE. But there's a point where you can take it too far. Like anything, I think in some respects we've taken that

too far. I mean, do we need to say more than quote? I don't think the audience really cares how two individuals may feel about each other over lunch. Now over brunch, picture lunch by the way, you know salad, Well, you're the rest. I'm picturing like a like like a an l a studio commissary. All right, you know, everyone's sitting outside sun and they're you know all that ship, you know, and they're they got they got their fuck Yeah, they got their fucking kale salads and uh,

you know, and they're and they're fucking smoothies. Salmon on the salad exactly exactly, salmon light on the oil. Please? Absolutely? What is this? And you give me a piece of bread with that? I don't eat bread. What do you think? I'm a fucking monster? Do you have any nuts? Maybe have a nut? Yeah, you can have a nut? Got it right here? At what point is it realistic for w CW to pose a challenge to the w w F in the ratings war again?

And it's gonna sound like I'm evading, man, I don't mean you have said anything yet, and I'm not trying to be cute, but I don't think our focus should be the WWE. Clearly they are in the incumbent, all right, Clearly they are number one, and clearly that there's a monster difference between number one and number two. So I'm not minimizing that in any regard. But to solely focus on the will will force you to think in certain ways, to react in certain ways, to create in certain ways.

How about to create uncertainty, to create Yes, the target is to rebuild the brand. The target is to recapture the kind of energy and awareness is a pop culture phenomenon that WCW can be by utilizing our assets and our talents. Once we do that effectively, and we set our goals high enough to begin to achieve that goal, will automatically be competing at the level we want to compete in terms of market share. I wonder why this Fusian deal

fell through. Yeah, right, because he's fucking talking bullshit out of his ass. I think if we just solely focused on the WB, quite honestly, we're setting our goals too low. I mean, I don't mean that to sound disparaging to the WWE, because I would have loved to be in the position therein It was a fun ride when we were number one, and that's where I want to be again. But you have to set your mark

a little higher than that in order to get there. I think the key to life is to set your goals high enough, realistic enough, but high enough so that even if you don't get exactly where you want to be, you're high enough and close enough to the mark that you're well ahead of where anyone else anyone thought you would get. That's his answer to how long it's

going to take? The fuck is he talking about before challenge him in the ratings again, has there been any thought to not going head to head with HIMWF on Monday nights. I can't address that right now because we haven't thought that through. I'll just tell you that what I'm about what most people that have worked with me for any length of time note know this. I would rather fight than have a good stake. Oh my god, what what is

fighting in steak have to do with anything? He's trying to say, you'd rather, you know, compete with Vince McMahon and try to fuck with him than eat a delicious meal. It's steak, Okay. It's him trying to say I enjoy fighting more than sex, but he can't say sex, So he's a steak, just like DDP said Steak. I think a good fight in the ring, out of the ring, in the industry, out of

the industry only helps to improve the business. I think we prove that the battle between WW and WWE is one of the things that I think grew the genre to the level that it's at today. A one horse race becomes a boring race. It was a boring race when the w was the only show in prime time. It became a boring race for a period of a year and a half or two years, when WSW was so far ahead that it didn't seem like the ww could ever become It was boring when that happened,

Yes, apparently it was boring. Guys were ready to kill the company could ever be competitive again, And now that the situation is reversed, has become boring again. I think competition between the two companies is the healthiest, healthiest thing that could happen for either one of the companies. Part of that is going head to head. So I'll resist anybody that doesn't want to go head to head or compete on that level because I honestly believe it's the best thing

for both companies. Yeah, that he'd import that, thinking to TNA a great success, Will WSW be reducing its roster or adding new talent? In general, I'd suggest that it's very difficult to make anything bigger while you're trying to make it smaller. Again, in general, I'll suggest that it's very difficult to make anything bigger while you're trying to make it smaller. I vastly prefer the heal Eric Bischoff interview, right, I think The key to the

WCW being successful is to build and acquire and develop new talent. One of the things that we're really going to focus on is finding smart, aggressive and innovative ways to identify talent. In terms of identifying and recruiting and training and trying to develop talent. On a very basic level, that process is rather archaic here at WCW, and it is even at the WWE. There's nothing

really innovative going on there. There are a lot of new ways to go out there and find talent, and that's one of the things that I'm probably most excited about and will be focus on in the next period of months. That all makes sense. What's your first impression when you look at the current roster in WCW hell of a roster. First and foremost, you still you got Bill Goldberg, you got Sting, you got Lex Luger, you got Buff bag Well, you get Diamond Della's Page, you got Kevin Nash.

They're established brands that have been around for a long time. In addition to that, you have a younger, next generation of talent that has yet to reach potentially. I'm really excited about it. The question is not whether the ingredients are here. The question is whether or not the recipe is correct. We just have to modify the recipe a little bit to make sure it's what we're hoping to cook. It's not all about food. The only thing more

tortured than me right now are these analogies. There is a perception that the WCW locker room is out of control. Do you think that is the case? Nothing more has been made of that issue a by individuals with their own agendas, and it is necessarily the case. When you've got sixty or eighty ar wrestlers with healthy egos, we're all competing and are somewhat insecured. Due to the nature of the entertainment business, You're always going to have competitiveness and

infighting and jealousy and frustration. That's true whether you're it's on a movie set, on a football field or in a wrestling locker room. That's not to minimize the fact that over the past year or so, because of all the changes in management and direction, that those feelings have not been raised to the next level or exacerbated. Do I think it's a monumental a monumental problem.

No, Do I think it's been overblown, definitely. Because of the nature of this transaction, so much of it has had to remain confidential because that's the way both parties involved wanted it to be. That's created a big vacuum of information. That vacuum of information creates even more frustration. You can't expect people not to be nervous, confused, disappointed, or in frustrated over what

they don't know. I think that we're going to have a direction and people know who's going to be running the company, and there's still a lot of questions that need to be answered, and they will be answered over weeks and months to come, but at least it's a start. The sense that I've gotten today in talking to talent, because we started making calls to them immediately,

is that they're relieved and they're very upmestic. Everybody that had a chance to contact, that had a chance to contact, has been thrilled that it's time to get back to business instead of worrying about who's going to be running the business. Will Hulk Hogan have a role in the company. I don't really want to comment on that other than than to say that my professional feelings

about Hulk are pretty well known. I think he's as big a brand name as anybody in the industry, and in many ways he is the industry. I think he's a very valuable asset, and I think he will have a great future in this business. This young up and comer will have a great future in this business, whether he's with this company or another company, or his own company. That being said, it's my hope and my intention that we'll be able to work together, but at this point it would be premature

to really discuss it any further. It's interesting. I wonder what he's but probably Hogan has the x WF train on the tracks by this point his short lived post WW venture, So he's kind of like answering that question knowing that Hogan probably doesn't want to come back to WCW, even if he wants him back. Yeah, but if it actually a fails brother pretty much, what's going on, dude in WCW these days? Dude, what's what's brother? So dude, what's who's the third man? Brother? So dude, who's

champ? Dude? Who he's got the strap? Dude? Easy? Dude, who's strapping the who's strapping the strap? Brother? And when's he giving it to Hull Hoogan. That's the thing, dude, Who's what's her job into Hull Hogan? Brother, Let's really ride this thing out, really have a run. You know, life, life is a series of runs. Now, time to take the old, the old Hulk wagon around for another another. You know, dude, you were backstage the night of the controversial

Hogan gift. You're at match at batch at the beach. What are your thoughts in the events that occurred that evening? There's a litigation in process and I don't think it would be appropriate to comment. Is there a chance, like, like, you know, he wh I put that in the magazine to show you asked? But yeah, it's like, I mean, the best thing is he definitely is someone who who loves you the word litigation. He loves that work. He loves lawyers. Yeah he hates them, but

he wants to be just like him. Is there a chance we will see Scott Hall already savage back in WCW. Now, there's always a chance. It would be premature to comment beyond that because I haven't had a conversation with Scott or Randy about it. You know, people can say whatever they want about talent and generally speaking, the bigger anyone name is, the more controversial

it's going to become somewhere down the line. I have a lot of respect for the effort, at the time and commitment that guys like Randy Savage have made to this business over the years. I still think there's a tremendous value in the name and the brand and in the character. That question is whether or not we can find a way to utilize it in a way that makes sense for us, makes sense for Randy, it makes sense for the business. I think we can, but that remains to be seen. Women have

played a large role in WCW over the past year. Will their roles change. I think that women need to have a place in our show. I think women can be a very entertaining part of our show. That being said, I don't think it's going to be the way they've been used over the past year. I find it somewhat limiting. I see it as somewhat short sighted and a little patronizing. You know, it just hasn't worked very well. I think it's incumbent upon us, on all of us, to try

and think of new and better ways to utilize women in wrestling. What have you learned from your first stint? Is ww president. Now we're talking about a book, not a magazine, Okay, and I'm sorry, I don't the name of the book controversy creates cash. Oh oh yeah. Probably, First and foremost, with my own limitation, she's such an idiot. First and foremost, my own limitations. Not that I'm much older now, but

I've aged a lot over the last eight years or so. I think I took over this company the first time in nineteen ninety three, and I was younger in a lot of ways back then, especially in years. He says, not that I'm much older now, but I've aged a lot over the last eight years. Yeah, you're eight years older, Like, well, why did you have to say it that way? And I was younger in a lot of ways back then, and in a lot of ways except age.

Hopefully I'm smarter about surrounding myself with people who in some ways are smarter than me and better than me. And hopefully I'm not so willing to think I can do everything alone. But that's a part of my personality. It's not to say that I have a bent toward exclusion of other people. It's just that when I see a fire burning, I tend to rush for the hose and put it out myself before I think of calling someone and asking them to do it for me. At the same time, this is a big

job. There's a lot of things I'm good at, and there's a lot of things I'm not good at, and now I have the luxury and responsibility of separating the two. Beyond that, I just think I'm a little more mature. I'm forty pounds heavier, and I have a head full of gray hair. But I think I'm a little smarter in a lot of respects. When Nitrol went on the air, it changed the entire wrestling industry. Can WCW have that kind of impact again. Yeah, although I don't know that

the changes will be of the same magnitude. See, you'll see the businesses continue to grow, perhaps more slowly, over a longer period of time, so that you can sustain the momentum, sustain the growth, sustain the audience and the interest in the product. We did it a lot. We did a lot fast. When we launched Nitro and all the things that went along with that. We went from zero to one hundred and sixty and seven seconds it's hard to recreate that. Look, we're two good ideas away from being

back to where we used to be. If you look at where WCW is right now, and you looked at where it was a ninety three, where leaps and bounds ahead of where we were, the market is bigger, the opportunity is bigger, the audience is broader, the advertising base is broader, There are more licensees. People have come to realize that this is a real business and it's a real part of American culture and entertainment. Well everyone except

fucking Turner Networks. Yeah, And also the lack of people who are watching it that didn't exist when I launched Nitra A nineteen ninety five. That didn't exist when I took over WCW nineteen ninety three. Nobody really wanted to be

associated with the wrestling business back then. So in many ways, we have a lot of advantages now, and the job is going to be easier in some respects harder in the sense that we've fallen so far behind, and we've taken a beating in terms of public opinion over the past year or two. But two good ideas and a lot of hard work, and you're right back

in the game. I mean, I'm glad they did this this way, but can you imagine like WF publishing an article where Vince says, we've taken a beating, but you know, we've taken a beating and so far behind.

Be eive that that we've been far behind in certain aspects and that there are things that I'm good at, there are things that I'm not good at, and I believe that we can merge the two into a successful partnership with with the entertainment aspects of our company along with various adjacencies, various adjacencies and the multimedia aspects of of what we provide to our sponsors and to our you know, the the the people promoting the show and people who advertise on the

show. And you know, we believe in in taking aspects of the advertising industry and using product in our product in a way that will allow Allison allow future developments to occur on a more natural, organic basis. Organic growth is that is that your target orgasmic growth. Here's a bishoff quote for the ages, But two good ideas and a lot of hard work and you're right back in the game. Yeah, So that for you and Jason Hervey when you

step shit. When you stopped stepped down as president in nineteen ninety nine, you admitted that you were burned out. Are the batteries fully recharged? Oh yeah. I never really lost my enthusiasm, my passion for it. I lost my energy and I lost my objectivity. I was tired physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and creatively bank and then WCW started going down right anyway you can measure it. I was gone. I just needed to go sit on a rock and think about it for a while. And I did.

I had a lot of time off, and it was great. I did a lot of other things. My energy is pack, you know. I went out to the woods. I hunted, myshed, I hunted. I fishing was great, he said, fishing. The fishing was great. You know, I went, you know, i'd been I'd wake up in the morning. You do a Folger's commercial, aren't you. I'd wake up in the morning, you know, and it was you know, the sun hadn't risen yet, but the light, you know, and it was crisp

and cool outside. I'd make some French press. I'd just sit out on my deck and just listen. Oh, just listen, you know, the sounds of wind, the sounds of you know, you could hear you could hear every blade of grass, you know, just whistling in the wind. You know. And then after a while, you know, i'd i'd get up and sit up, and I'd make me and my wife some breakfast. You know. We have chickens so that we have fresh eggs. Yeah, I like to churn my own but I dig the eggs out of the chickens

ass and put them red in the pan. I prefer not to have them labies. I like, I like to reach in and grab them. They're a little more fresh that way, you know. I I like to churn my own butter once a month, so you know, I have fresh butter, you know, and I'll make I'll make a plate of eggs. You know, we have the we have potatoes growing out in the back. So what have I slaughter my own pigs. This guy get the biggest compound of my own. He's got a full complete ranch. I just just you know,

I'm you know, this is what I always imagine his house. Okay, I just am. It's like, okay, it's just alone. You know, there's like a there's like a long as dirt road. We've seen pictures of it. Do you see the mountains in the background. It's just my lass. Yeah, And you got like it's it's the kind of land that it's always like golden brown, uh grass, you know, like it's never green. You know. Oh my god, he's got acres and acres of land, just fucking it's guys from Detroit. Yeah, he's got just

just massive acres of land, all right. And he's got animals like you know, but everything. The thing about it, he's got all these things. But it's so fucking pristine, all right. It's not like an actual messy farm. Yeah, no, not at all. Like for some reason, you'll drive up and you have you can't even fucking see uh, like a chicken coop anywhere. You know. It's like it's like you can't see any of this shit. You can't see the pig farms, all right.

All you see is this clean is this solitary building, the solitary home in this clean, pristine, you know area. But then you know, you go, you get in there, and yeah, he's got all these things like almost like a weird It's like for some reason, it's like it's in plain sight, but you can't see it when you come up there, all

right. And then you he'll take you out for a walk and you find all the little farms stuff that he has, you know, like, right, he's got vegetable gardens, he's got chicken coops, he's got he's got pigs, and you know, fucking all this shit everything. Listen, this guy isn't going to a fucking grocery store in two years, right, all right, That's that's it. Everything he makes on his own, everything,

all right. So he says he makes his wife fucking eggs from the ass of fucking chickens, huge bowl of salad, absoluge bowld oh my goods, with like four different kinds of lettuce, a little frize. H. That's the thing. Like he goes to the American wilderness and then tries to surround himself with like French patisseriat, like he wants like a Parisian cafe in the

middle of the fucking wyoming wilderness. Pretty much. The only thing he doesn't do on his own is like is like is squeeze olive oil out of olives? All right? Like that's the only thing he got we'll go to the store to buy and he'll go to hell like buy and bolt. He'll buy massive amounts of olive so doesn't have to go back for another year. One thing, one thing it's really great about this is we're really getting to the

heart of this interview. Just picture of his fucking gray hair. The gray haired Bishop is such a fail black you know, drinking black coffee, you know, and and watching the sunrise from his deck and then you know, watching the show for his podcast at four point thirty in the morning so that when missus B gets up you can bring her coffee right exactly exactly, yeah, Like it's like five thirty in the morning, and you hear a knife on a cutting board. Yeah, oh god, yep, yep, he's

just he's just slicing vegetables for me. Yes, you know, he's like like he's he always like you just see, he always needs to have like a you know, a couple of containers of chopped vegetables for you know, you never know he's gonna he's he always says something pickling in the fridge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, Like there's a mason jars in his

fridge like for days. Absolutely He's always like, that's what in the basement he has like a pickling okay or or some kind of like that's where you know, whenever he's like making something long term that's then needs to there's a there's a specific fridge, you know, a sub zero fridge in the basement that is specifically designed for his long term. Like he's got one of those uh stovetops with like the big vent above it, like the industrial vent.

Oh. Absolutely, absolutely, he's like marmalade. He's like, yes he does. He has like an eight burner range. Yes to be what spread she wants? Yeah, yes, various, you know, grains. You know, I made some grain bread. What guy is now chat? Oh

my god, it's too funny. And then they have they have their breakfast, you know, and they there for a little they chat for a little while, and then at some point he you know, he gets the newspaper and she's like reading a magazine or maybe scrolling her phone, and they kind of sit there in silence for like twenty minutes while they finished their coffee, and and then you know, then they come then then it's time for him to to go into town. You know. It's remember we had the thing

what we did, the he went to go. He got his mail at two o'clock exactly exactly, Yes, I got about that. So from from like from ten to two he does his daily errands in town. It's like, what was it so funny? It's so funny. It's because it's him. He's a fucking wrestling promoter and this is the fuck idiot, so he say, he said, so you know, it's it's like eight o'clock.

Am a dot? He like he folds back up the paper. He says, I'm going to take a shower, gets up perfect, takes a shower, like you know, fucking does his like skincare routine, all that oils and like he's like fucking Christian Bale and in American Psycho with all these like things that does like prepare and and then a ten and ten. At ten, he gets into his fucking jeep or his uh truck. Yeah, yeah,

truck, right, something like that. But like but also like it's not like it's not tough guy enough where it's like a dirty truck like it is again, right, is he'd have like an electric truck. Yeah, it's a pristine, spotless, you know, like it's completely you know, a real cowboy truck, a real buffalo bill whatever. Right, But again it's it's it's it's this like, yeah, Matthew McConaughey would drive and a

right, right, and he goes into town. You know you probably uh you know, first thing does it takes him like an hour and a half to get to town. Of course, of course, like yeah, exactly, that's kind of a thing, like it's a four hour it's a four hour span of time because it takes him two hours to get there. You got to live that far away from any civilization. Exactly, it's fucking riot. You see. Somebody knows named Jim at the grocery store. Hey Jim,

how you been? He tries to cut the conversation short. How the horse is going? You gambled? You know, I'm thinking about geting a new motorcycle. You know, maybe you don't take a ride, you know, maybe maybe in a couple of weeks you'll take a ride on the hog. Yeah, I can't do is so perfect. Takes like like, you know, somewhere between noon and one, he like kind of at the end

towards the end of his of his errand run. He you know, he stops at at like at the local micro micro brewery, you know, just has a couple of beers good, you know, chats up the the owner bar keep yep, I know, yeah, he knows, he knows the owner's daughter is going to like Wyoming State or something exactly exactly. And then and then yeah, then the last thing he does, he goes to the fucking post office, picks up the mail, and then he starts heading home

at two o'clock, gets home three point thirty. You know, zoom calls, and a couple couple zoom calls, and then jeopardy to start making dinner. This is he goes ahead and describes in this in this interview by his short lived hiatus there where he had was like basically vacationing, and we lost our minds. We cleared the table off. The best thing is like Laurie does nothing in this whole scenario, you know, like she just observes him, you know, floating around all day. It's just kind of like he's

he's the busiest man with nothing to do, exactly. I'm so it's like Jerry Lawler's Christmas. I'm obsessed with people who have nothing to do, and so they have to fill you know what I mean, the time somehow, and they find ways to make it feel like they're busy. Shouldn't then got nothing going on. He gets earlier, and he gets up earlier than anyone on the fucking planet, you know, to do jack ship make coffee?

You said, he gets up earlier than anyone on the plan. Oh you gotta you know he's got a weight room in the basement, of course, you know, of course he does. Because after he like you know, because because again after he after he preps, yeah, after he preps dinner, after he chops the ship out of that cutting board exactly, you know, and kind of things are like ready to go. He'll take like forty five minutes to just do a quick workout. Listen to listen to a podcast,

Yeah, exactly. Listen to like a podcast by like a CEO talking about like, yep, you know how he how he innovated when everybody was trying to keep the organization standing still. Yep. Or he'll put like a or he'll put like a like he's got like a corner TV in the gem

and so he'll put it like a ted talk or something like that. It's always something that's like entrepreneurial, like kind of weird, like software related or some bullshit like that, what's the next what's the next fucking human potential related human potential? What's the next thing in entrepreneur you know, what's you know,

what's what's the next focus going to be disrupting the disruptors exactly. He does take about fifteen minutes to look at his Fidelity account and like for sure, he stocks around to feel always he always looks at his portfolio for the fuck. All right, Oh my god, he's like pet health is a big trend, so he's buying all that, and then you know, and then then at like six o'clock he'll he'll start the the actual looking of the dinner. You know, every every every meal has a grill portion, all

right. It doesn't always mean it's meat, but it like, you know, he's like gonna gri grill vegetables, yeah right, or he'll grill like you know, sometimes he likes to do grilled peaches that he picked out, you know, and then he puts honey on them. All right, I cannot do this anymore. It's too much. It just it's way too much. Oh my god. In Christ, so awesome. It's so fucking phenomenal. Oh my god, he wakes up earlier and any one on the planet.

That was great that that one's up there. Let me tell you, we've never gone that hard on him before as far as and it's not his observations. You just have a nice guy, you know, like he's actually, you know, you think about it's actually a pretty decent life to live, but the fact that it's him living is hilarious. The bottom line is this is that it's Eric Bischoff fucking wrestling Carnie who's living this life, which

makes it, which makes basically everything that he does bullshit. All Right, that's the bottom line with it, because in reality, he's just uh, you know, he's just this this this money whore is what he But he has this this weird facade of a life that you know, oh shit, man, I I feel like I gotta take a zoom call. After that, you hear like the team sounded like but that the living the kitchen is connected to the living room. It's open air, it's open there's no wall

between them, and so in like the staircase overlooks the living room. And when you hear like the team's call come in like lowering the second floor. Can hear, but it like it's a faint echo reaching the ceiling. You know, yes, yes, yes, it's like rolling her eyes fucking cries. This guy taking another meeting. Oh god, all right, please continue. It must be read into the record. I did a lot of other My energy is back, but in a different way. You had left.

Okay, any safeguards to make sure you don't get burned out again. Goes back to what I said before about not trying to do everything yourself, learning to delegate, learning to recognize that there are other people who can do things better than you can do Sometimes pacing. I was running a sprint. I should have been running a marathon. I sprint it for a long time, and it wasn't a hundred yard dash. It was a marathon. I'm going

to run the marathon. Wow, fuck off, you sure are. Let's do some quick word association Eric before we get out of here, all right. Vince McMahon, smart guy, Vince Russo, no comment, Hulk Hogan, one of my best friends. Goldberg incredible talent potential. Scott Steiner same as Goldberg, Diamond Dallas Page one of the most committed people I have ever worked with Kevin Nash complex, Jeff Jarrett, a wrestler's wrestler, sting wait

and see Rick Flair, foundation of our businessoff ladies and gentlemen. That's all raise up for the for the president. So that's how he speaks to the k fab in house publication. Remember Wow magazine. Yes, do you think he talked to that esteemed publication about w W. I imagine he would. And making himself available to the media around the announcement of the Fusiane purchase, I think he did. Absolutely. He's available to all media all times,

and I think that is before we leave Eric. Here in this episode a contemporaneous record that needs to be kept as well, So if you could please follow along. And this is an interview done published March twenty fourth, two thousand and one. It's amazing, it's all March, you know, or April. It's like it's already done. Guys. By all the time these interviews hit the newstands, it's fucking done. Do I have this one or is it I just sent it in the chat? Okay? So we start

see here there was a brief period. This is by a Brian Barrera. There was a brief period in early two thousand and one when Fusing Media announced that they had purchased WCW and made Eric Bischoff president of the company during that time president. This is okay, Now that's a preamble to someone reproducing the interview online. All right, so we'll go. Let's see. Okay, Bischoff's back interviewed by Bill Apter and Tim Tawie. So Brian Brere is the

person who posted this online. Okay, that's why I'm mis mistaken. But the interview is done by Bill Apter and Tim Twie. The professional wrestling landscape has changed. Fusant Media Ventures announced January eleventh that it had reached an agreement to purchase World Championship Wrestling from Turner Broadcasting System Incorporated. Under the agreement, Fusian with take control of WCW, with former WW president Eric Bischoff in charge

of the federation. TBS agreed to keep him a minority interest in WCW along with programming rights. Fuzian co founder Brian Badahal became the chief executive officer of the new WW inc. We're going to re establish WCW as the champion of professional Wrestling Entertainment, but All said is a huge untapped potential for the franchise, and with Eric Bischoff on board, we will crank everything up to make

the WW franchise bigger, better, and stronger and more entertaining. Bischoff Badalin Bradley Siegeal TBS, president of General Entertainment Networks, would not disclose the price of the sale, but WIT Soundview Media analyst Jordan Rohan told Variety the ww's value was between ten million and fifteen million dollars. Bischoff said he's focused on

turning ww's fortunes around. Wrestling fans can rest assured that we will give WCW the adrenaline shot it needs to once again become the most exciting brand of wrestling in the world, he said. But All said WW fans would not notice immediate changes, noting that some changes will be evolutionary, some changes will be revolutionary. He also hinted at the relaunch of WCW programming and storylines, probably

after the deal is finalized in February or March. Hult Cogan may have a role in the company, Bischoff said, but that agreement is not finalized. WOW editor in chief Bill After and editorial director Tim Twey interviewed Bischoff shortly after the sale was announced rate On for the exclusive interview with the man in charge of the new wcw WW has been knocked down so many times? Why do

you want to keep coming back to try to save the federation. When I first started talking to Brad Sea the last March, I made it clear to him that I thought WCW was going to be for sale. Of course, he looked at me with a kind of confused look on his face and was rather shocked. I let him know that I was going to make an attempt to buy the company. I wanted to be very honest with him about it.

I didn't really come back until around the middle of April. I tried to make it work with that with the new relationship that I had with Turner and WCW. I came in, for lack of a better way of saying it, on a part time basis. I didn't have the kind of authority or control over the product, but I knew the company was going to end

up being for sale. After I had been there for six or eight weeks, I felt very uncomfortable with the direction of the company creatively and somewhat frustrated at my lack of ability to change it because of my diminished role in the company. I told Brad it'd be better for me to step away. I didn't believe that Vince Russo was going to be successful with the things that he wanted to do, but wasn't the whole vision that Russo was one of the

guys who allegedly made the War Wrestling Federation so successful. It's pretty obvious that probably wasn't the case if you look at what Russo did with this company during the period of time that after I left. He had four or five or six months to work his magic, and I don't think anyone saw anything magical going on. The company lost a lot of ground during that period. I told Brad that it would be better for w CWFI stepped away and let Russo

do whatever he thought he could do without my interference. Either Russo would prove that his philosophy was going to work without me, or he was going to fail. I felt very uncomfortable sending next to someone and supporting a strategy that in my heart I knew was wrong. So I told Brad, you're going to need someone to go back to if he fails. You'll need someone with

some level of credibility in case Russo's strategy doesn't work. All three of us agreed after it became clear that Russo wasn't going to turn the company around. Did you think to yourself I told you so. No. I was cited in some respect, but because it was something I felt was going to happen, and it was happening. It was a great opportunity and I still think it is. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone through with it. It wasn't an I told you so. What makes you keep coming back? Why are you

so attached? I love the business now, this is what I've done for the past fifteen years. It's either a blessing or a burden. I believe in the business, and I believe in a lot of people, of the people in the talent who are here. I think professional wrestling has yet to reach its peak in terms of popularity. I think there's a long way to go, even though we're at a great spot. I think we at WW are responsible for growing that category. We've made Monday Nights important. We created

the competition and got people talking about it, writing about it. And thinking about it. Nitro started having a negative impact on Monday night football ratings, and then the we started to grow and become such a dominant force in the industry, and I feel like we're part of that. There's more ground to be gained, and I can't walk away from opportunity like this. I feel like we're part of that. Oh that Minnesota slips into those words. Would

you feel successful only if you eventually surpassed the WWF and Nielsen ratings? No, but this is part of it. I would be lying if I didn't admit to that. There you go, They're number one, They're the incumbent. People are always going to compare the WWF with WCW or vincick Man with Eric Bischoff. I want to come out on top of that comparison. But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to keep this

business alive. We'ren't a great place to work, and we have great opportunities for good people. The second most important thing is to grow the business so that it can last a long time and continue to prosper. Obviously, it's going to be profitable. That's what I'm here for. Can you beat the WWF and the Nielsen ratings. And I just asked this question, and is

there a personal vendetta between you and Vince McMahon. Please say yes. I've already done it, I think improved to a certain degree that it can be done. Unfortunately I didn't sustain it for as long as I would have liked to. It's not personal at all. In order for this company to be where I want it to be, you have to surpass the high mark the ww is set. But it's not personal anyway. I don't know the man,

so it can't be. Are your new ideas for the Federation coming from another part of pop culture or are you thinking, let's go back to a good wrestling show and people will come back and watch it. It's both the audience's appetite changes and its perception of the product changes. You have to you have to change and adapt to the audience, or you just die and go away. I want to find some revolutionary ways to present the product. I want to do some things that have never been done before, but I don't

want to do that at the expense of formulas that we know work. It's a pretty simple formula, but complex in the sense that you have to find new and different ways of present sending it to keep it fresh and interesting. I don't want to. I don't want anyone to think that we're going to go back to just a wrestling show. Yeah, there's going to be great action, and I think the wrestling is going to improve. Critics have said WCW has started to resemble a lower quality version of the WWF. How do

you avoid that perception? I think that's being kind. I think it started to resemble backyard wrestling. I don't think there's any comparison to what goes on in the WWE. They got to experiment and it didn't work. Everybody watches wrestling for different reasons. Not every wrestling fan thinks the same about the product. The one thing you can you can say fairly safely is that that people watch wrestling to see people wrestle, not to see guys who are actually pretty

bad. Actors and comedians try to be funny. Amen to that. That's not what we do best. And I think there's been too much time spend backstage trying to be funny and entertaining, and not enough time spend telling, trying to tell a great story that ends up in a great match in the middle of the ring. That'll be the difference. As I told the wrestlers today, the goal is going to be is going to be to paint pictures with broader strokes, much brighter colors. Right now, I would describe WW

as various shades of gray. The stories are hard to follow, the characters are all kind of the same, and it just feels dark, gloomy, and foggy to me. It doesn't feel like there's energy. It's absolutely right about that. Those are great adjectives to describe WW in two thousand and one. Yes, I heard you want to keep WW a little cleaner than the WWF, with noble gardies and not as much sexual innuendo. Is there a place for that type of show. I don't think the WWE has any of

those things. I think it was two years ago. I think the ww right now is like the Wonderful World's Disney Compared to what it was two years ago. They don't have the language they used to have, they don't have the sex, they don't have the rats, they don't have a lot of the type of content that cut them to the Dan's two or three years ago. They've toned down dramatically. In fact, they are safer in many respects than ww's right now. I'm not worried about that. I think the playing

field is much more level than that it's ever been. If you've noticed what's happened to RAW since moved to TNN, it's viacom. It's a much bigger company and much more conservative. The WWE is no longer doing a lot of the things that it did to really displace ww's number one two years ago. Extreme Championship Wrestling has financial problems. Would you consider an invasion storyline to boost

both federations? No? Why? With the New World Order? That concept worked because two of the key players at the beginning, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, came in and had a personal grudge against WW because of the way they were treated when they were here previously. That was the premise of the nWo angle. They showed up, they were pissed, and they were coming back to make everybody pay. That story began to grow and it was essentially

the wrestlers against the company. That story played itself out over the course of a few years and it worked. Then the WWE did the same thing with the Generation X. Way was the wrestlers against the company. Then it was Steve Austin against Vince McMahon. How many different ways can you tell the same story and keep it interesting? I think it's time to get away from that premise and come up with some new things where it's about the wrestler against the

wrestler. How do you respond to the critics who say you have to steal performers such as The Rock, Steve Austin or Triple H to get fans to be interested. That's what happened when National Hall jumped to WCW. We didn't steal anybody. They jumped over after their contracts were done. Those opportunities are no longer there. McMahon woke up one day and he heard we were going

to do a launch show called Nitro. He tuned in and at one point during that show, Lex Luger showed up and was a part of Nitro. If I'm McMahon, I'm thinking, hey, wait a minute, he works for me? Why is he on the show? What do you mean doesn't work for me? What do you mean as contract is up? Who let that happen? If you add that to the Hall in that situation, McMahon learned his lesson. You don't let key pieces of talent become available without knowing

about and managing it. I'm sure that the Rock in Austin, everybody else in the WWE is tied up for long for a long period of time. If there were no contracts, would you who would you want to sign? Obviously it would be the Rock. I really respect what he's done with his career, and I respect the way he presents himself to the public. Beyond that, I'm not sure. Not that I wouldn't want other people, but I'm not sure there is any person who would be that critical to our success.

Do you regret any of the losses of talent you've endured to Austin and Triple H? Not Triple H. He's done a great job and he's got an important role in the WWE, But I don't look at that as WCW's loss. It just doesn't. I just don't think Austin would have gotten over here. Oh my god, he said that in two thousand and one. I mean not to mention that he was extremely over as a heel in like ninety three, but na, he wouldn't have gotten over here, right.

The opportunity wouldn't have been here for us because there was a lot of other people who were at a much higher level. He was in that right spot at the right time of the WWE. The things he did flip everybody off and chug Beer worked for him and the WW on USA that wouldn't have worked in WCW. It made him real, controversial and kind of every man's hero. If McMahon called you tomorrow and said, let's get together, maybe we can do a Super Bowl of Wrestling. It's good for a business for everyone.

What would you say, what I heard super Bowl of Wrestling. Knew that I heard something about idea Eric Eric, I like to say that that was my idea, and I'm I'm gonna let you borrow it. Okay, okay, but I take ninety percent of the idea, ninety percent of your intellectual property of yourself. After that, they after they woke me up, I say, it's an interesting idea, but realistically it's not going to happen. It's like asking how I would react to winning six hundred million dollars in

the lottery. Obviously I'd be happy, but strange things happen in this business. People who would never work together come together if it's good for business. I just don't see it. This is a smart man who's operating a business that is very successful. I'd be interested in having the conversation, but realistically it's just not going to happen. There's the perception that WW is going to be the good old Boys Network again. You're type with Domon Dallas, Page,

Hull, Coogan, Nash, and Randy Savage. Is there a place for the older wrestlers in the new WCW sure? I think a lot of that is blown out of proportion. I'm very good friends with Hulk Cogan. I talked to him almost daily and have for the past couple of years. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, and I think he's a valuable asset. He's either going to be a valuable asset here, a valuable asset to the WWE, or he's going to be a valuable asset doing his

own thing. Hogan and I have been in the same meetings with other people who are interested in getting into the wrestling business, so I know what his opportunities are because I almost became part of it. He has some real opportunities. I really don't know I don't. I really don't want to have to compete against him. Hogan is a very smart man. He knows what his strengths and weaknesses are. His ego isn't nearly as big as people blow it out of proportion. Uh, well, I must there. I hope he's

I hope he's here. Nash is a good friend of mine. I don't talk to him every day. Even that relationship to a degree, has been blown out of proportion. He has a lot of talent, he's a smart guy, and he has a lot to offer properly motivated, He's one of the most important people in the business. There's a fear that if Hogan comes back, he'll be the number one contender in WCW fans be watching the Legends of Wrestling again. I hear that all the time, and it just makes

me laugh. That kind of criticism is coming from people who really don't know anything about me or what my goals are. Yeah, Hogan was in the middle of things, and oh, by the way, it happened to be worked pretty well. And yeah, Nash was an important part of everything we did with the nWo, and oh, by the way, it was pretty successful. I've used these guys, but I've had a fair amount of success with them. It's not like I excluded other people. No one knew who

Chris Jericho was before I brought him to w CW. He literally, he literally was wrestling in obscurity somewhere in Mexico. Chris bin Ware, you talking about Guerrero. Although the wrestling community kind of knew who they were and certainly was familiar with them, the national television audience had never heard of them until we made them a prominent part of our show. They were very successful part of Nitro. If you look at the Young Dragons, guess who hired them.

I sought them out. When you see Shane Helms, guess where he came from. We so didn't bring him in here. I did. It's not that I didn't recognize the need to bring in fresh talent. I recognized this several years ago, and I acted on it. There's a place for established name, but not at the expense of new talent. Your wife, Laurie must be thinking, oh my god, he's getting years to go back and do this again. How will this return affect your personal life? That's

that's funny. We were just talking about that when I first left the company nineteen ninety nine. Seven years prior to that, I was on the road five days a week. When I was home, I'd say hello to everyone, if everyone a hug, eat a meal, and then I'd crash. My wife joked about it the other day. She was kind of a single parent in many regards. Then all of a sudden I was underfoot all the time, and she had to really adjust her lifestyle. All of a sudden,

there was this guy in her couch all day. We adjusted. We had a great time, and we did a lot of things we hadn't we hadn't had the opportunity to do, like travel. We have a home out west. I love to fly fish. We took a couple of trips in my plane. We did some fishing together. It was great. The other day she woke up realizing, oh my god, he's going away again. We'll adjust to that too. How will your role change as president? Will

you be more behind the scenes. I don't believe in the wrestler versus the company storyline. I don't think there is a role for me there anymore. I'm not a wrestler. I don't want to be arrestled. I'm not a wrestler. I don't want to be a wrestler. It is I'm too old and fat to become one. I'm going to do something else. I'm not saying that I'm not going to be on television. Perhaps initially I'll make a statement and let everyone know that something has changed. I might. It'll probably

only be a one time situation. Did he just come all the way back around on that? Okay, you were quite visible with the nWo and when you came back in two thousand, was there ever a point when you realized it was not working anymore? It was when Russo was still here. He had written the show, he had talked about it a little bit during the week. I said, I'm not doing that. It was too much about

Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo. I'm never going to wrestle. I'm never going to have a match that anyone is going to want to spend money to see or spend five minutes watching on television. I said, I just don't want to do it anymore. It was probably something in June. I went to the sheet, saw my name on five different segments and said I can't do it. Well, I've never heard that before. This interview will appear in the and the Wow issue on newstands in the beginning of March. Where would

you like WW to be at that time? Even that's too soon to say. The really big chances are going to take place in the next four to six months. Every even something as simple as changing the graphics on the show take a long takes a long time. I think we're going to see new talent relatively quickly. I think people are going to see the commitment that I'm going to make it finding, developing and promoting new stars. It's a pretty innovative approach. I think it's going to work. I may not, but

it will become very visible to people right away. They'll see more of an emphasis on what goes on inside the ring. I think they will definitely notice that the cruiserweight division is a more important part of w CW than it has been. The stories are going to become clearer and easier to understand. I

think surprises are such an important part of what we do. Just ask ed Ferrara Right's Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack n Seo and JP Sooro a Lapse Fan Wrestling podcast, are you going to start from scratch the last time he came back, all the titles were up for grabs. We'll start in a much different way. Russo and I wanted to do that differently, but it would have involved going off the air for some time and TNT just wasn't prepared

to let us do that. We had to compromise a little bit. But I don't want to give you the impression that all the titles are going to be up for grabs. How do you get connected to Fusian Media? The company that purchased WCW purchased Purchase Done It's tense. I found the company. I'm partners with Jason Hervey of TV's The Wonder Years on a couple of projects. Jason knew what I was going to do, and I had talked to

a couple of people about buying WCW. Jason called me one day and mentioned that he had a conversation with one of the partners at Fusion and that I should give him a call. I was introduced to Brad Biddall, our CEO and my partner. I talked to him quite a bit about it, and then we started moving forward. So I had to do with Jason Hervey. Big surprise, did you ever say to him, w'w's projected to lose eighty million dollars? Who would want you to buy in the company. No,

No, he's a smart guy. He knew, you know, we talked. We talked right off the bat of why things were going wrong. We

knew what needed to be done and how to turn it around. Wow Jesus, the contemporaneous thoughts of Eric Bischoff. I'll say, what could have been what ended up being ultimately was that the Vince Russeau lawsuits were still playing out in the courts, as Bischoff said in response to that one question there, and there's a lot of until we did our bachel of the Beach two thousand coverage, under discovered intrigue going on as it regards Hulk Cogan in this show

on the dying days of WCW, and a lot of gamesmanship, and we're going to revisit a bit of it, certainly not covered in as exhausting detail as we did back on the Bash at the Beach two thousand episodes, But there are some things we talked about there that really ought to be on the Greed Show, which we had no plans to do at the time. Because they concerned greed in particular, if you can pull up the Meyers Hogan memo Boss that I had sent to you, Diana Myers was pretty much WCW's lead

attorney, the person that would dash off memos and such. Here's one dated Let's see what the date is, March eighth, two thousand and one, yeap, so just a week before the ww Greed pay per view, and it starts with a reference. This is a letter to Hulk Cogan's lawyer, John Taylor, to a conversation that apparently she had had with Henry Holmes, another one of Terry's lawyer's brother, regarding Terry BOLEYA Dear John, As you know, on Monday, I called Henry Holmes to inquire to Terry's desire to

appear and perform at the March WCW pay per view event. Henry told me he would check and call me back. I called Henry again on Tuesday, and Henry informed me that I needed to call you. On Tuesday, we spoke and I made the same inquiry as to Terry's desire. Despite my follow up phone calls, I have yet to receive a response. Absent Terry's response, He is being scheduled to appear in perform on March eighteenth, two thousand and one, at the WCW event in Jacksonville, Florida. His scheduled report

time is two o'clock PM Eastern Time. A member of the creative team will be in contact with Terry in the next couple of days to discuss his appearance in case the creative team also have difficulty reaching Terry. Please have word for Terry. Please leave word for Terry to contact John Lauri Andidis And it has his phone number in hear I hope that's still not his phone number. Oh

my god, to discuss his appearance. Thank you for your assistance in this regard, Sincerely, Diana Meyers. So there it is a fac simile on WW letterhead putting Hulkogan's attorneys on notice that he is now being scheduled to appear as his wsw's under his contract to book him on Greed. That's insane,

Like, that's insane. That there, I mean that he's being booked to be on Greed ten days before the show, right, And of course this is where the whole thing kicks in about my contract does let you book me? But it also says, I have to be the featured performer, and part of being the featured performer implies some kind of storyline that builds my matchup as the most important thing. If you just give me a date to show up with no said storyline, how could I possibly be the futured performer.

And we got into all that in the batch of the Beach Show. But here is the response from a Attorney Taylor to that missive in and Around the Intrigue of Greed March twelve, two thousand and one. Dear Diana, I'm writing in response to your March eighth letter which purports to require mister Bolia to appear and perform at the w w PA Perview event scheduled in March eighteenth, two thousand and one in Jacksonville, Florida. We are astonished at the contents

of your letter. As you know, the most recent contract between WCW mister Bullaya, namely the May twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight letter agreement, as amended by the April seventh, two thousand letter Agreement, was carefully drafted to protect and enhance the value of the Hulkogan character in image. Under the contract, WCW promised to promote mister Bullaiya as the featured wrestler quote unquote and each

of six pay per view events during each contract year. In the contract, WCW also promised to give certain creative control rights to mister Bolaya to protect the valuable rights in the Hulkogan character in image and to avoid harming or otherwise devaluing that character. The most recent contract year commenced on May twenty nine, two thousand. Since that date, w CW has promoted nine pay per view events.

Thus far, w W promoted mister Bulaia in only two of these events, the June eleventh Great American Bash and the July ninth Bash at the Beach. In breach of its promises under the contract at WCW did not promote mister Bullaya as the featured wrestler at either of these events. Moreover, there's back

to the July ninth event. WW deliberately breached mister Blay's right to exercise creative control as of course being Bash of the Beach, and WW broadcast a false intffamatory speech by Vince Russo that was calculated to harm and to value the Hull Cogan character in image mister Russo cut the Hull COVID character out of all the existing storylines and told the national audience that they will never see that piece of shit again. As a result of these outrageous actions, mister Blay filed his

lawsuit against WCW mister Russo. In the lawsuit, we asserted that WCW's wrongful actions constitute a repudiation of their essential obligations under the agreement, such that Hogan should not be required to perform further under the agreement in order to prevent further

irreparable harm and damage to his character and image. The lawsuit specifically seeks, among other relief, a judgment against WCW declaring in adjudicain and a judging that WCW has repudiated its obligations under the agreement such that Hogan is no longer required to perform under the agreement. So they're saying that russo'speech was so defamatory that

it violated the contract and thus made the contract null and void. Thus, Hulk Cogan does not have to make the appear, and since the contract require him to make got that it'll be important I get to cast checks though, right, brother, you nailed it. In July, mister Russo told mister Bulaia that WSW had no plans for mister Blay's services and was enable to conceive of any storylines in which mister Bolaya could play a role, let alone be

the featured wrestler as required by WCW's contract. Now eight months later, the situation remains exactly the same. WW has no storylines or other plans that it can identify for mister Bolaya. WW is not articulated how it intends to promote mister Bollaa as the featured wrestler for the March eighteenth event. As you know, the storylines for the March eighteenth event have already been set, and the

feature wrestlers and featured matches have already been advertised and promoted. I suggest that you look at the WSW website to see for yourself how this pay per view is being promoted. Look at that. As has been widely reported in the press, WW for the past three months has been trying to close the sale of the wrestling business to third parties. During that time, it has become readily apparent that WCW involved with that. What do you mean third parties?

Nobody calm attacted me. I'm all things third party as a third party. He's not even running for anything, He's forever a candidate. I don't see why I can't be a third party candidate to buy the wcwright Why not. I'm friends with Tony Shavanni. I worked alongside Tony Shavanni. Right, third party ownership of w that's a good shirt it All it says is third party

ownership of w CW. I'm a third party owner. During that time, it has become readily apparent that w CW and its parent entities have lost all interest in effectively promoting its current wrestling talent. And let's go have a fucking sick burn right there in the view of the Penning Seale the wrestling operation, it is unclear if there is anyone who was in charge of the creative function

of w CW. The fact the demand for mister Boler to appear at this event comes from the legal department demonstrates that w CW has no interest in promoting mister Blay's character and image and in appropriation. I meant even know who's in charge? Brother, how much we Diyana Myers, She's coming at me wide open. She doesn't even have the book, dude, Brother, that was con Dallas thing back in. Dude, who is brother Myers? How do I even know that's her name? Brother? I d M me Diana Myers

Like, WHOA? I just want to know, dude, do you even know this person's real? Did you send this memo? Brother? Did you were we Janey Engele on the phone? Dude? Is Jenny Angel listening to this call? Is j J. Dillon going to buy w CW? Is Turner on this call? Brother? Where's Lean needed ericson? Brother? Did she make an offer? Dude? Die here. I'm just you're saying that just going for a rose buying. Jerry Jarrett gonna come in and cut costs? Dude, I told Brad Siegel to ignore that that offer. Well,

you heard Randy Savage's buying w CW. Brother, would you call John tut this? I was talking about Brunos Hamertino's binding. I just got off the phone with Henry Holmes. Is Brunosymartino gonna buy WCW? Brother? That's funny, Terry, because I just got off the phone with Henry Holmes and he said Brunos Emertino's buying WW. And then I called Bernos Emertino and he said,

Henry Holmes is buying WCW. Oh God, under these circumstances, okay, okay, But if WCW were permitted to throw mister Bullaya into the event with no legitimate storyline, well he hasn't had a legitimate storyline in his whole life. But no legitimate storyline, with no creative planning, and with no real interest in actually promoting mister Blay's character in image, then this would inevitably result in further irreparable harm and damage to mister Bulay's character in image. He

is saying boss to appear at Greed unadvertised would harm his image. That's how poor WSW was at the time. Damn right. Under these circumstances, it is outrageous for WCW to demand that mister Blay appear and perform at the March eighteenth w w P by making this demand, it appears that WCW intends to inflict still more damage to the Hulk Cogan character and image. For these reasons, mister Bolea hereby rejects w c w's demand that he appear and perform at

the March eighteenth event. Yes, that contracts null and void, right, boss, That's right? So what were they going to have him do? Well? Johnny Ace was under deposition, of course, as part of the

Vince Rousseau lawsuit, and he made reference to something like this. They were talking at first about an offer to have him appear in February as they start trying to play this game, I think, honestly of offering hul Cogan dates knowing he'd say no, and then the one you mentioned in February, they say to Johnny Ace to remember, you know, what is a fair point? They're okay, okay, going to be booked in the March pay per view. Why did you believe he was going to be booked on that?

And a says, because he was going to be part of this deal, but it was going is going to have to do with motorcycle run ins at the end. What the fuck? That is how Johnny A's characterized what they had in mind for hul Cogan and the Green Paper review motorcycle run ins at the end, and he wasn't booked in that way. But they talk about, you know, you don't need you don't need a storyline for hul Cogan.

Was there a storyline set up for that? He said, there was original storyline set up for him to do a motorcycle ride and that was And they asked him, was that written up and he said no, that was just verbal. But Bischoff himself wasn't there for that, I believe, And they already announced the company was shutting down. Correct, That's when this whole deal went south. Bischoff's Deeal Bischoff's deal by the company, right, okay,

okay, February right at the end of ever. He was going to use Hogan and a bunch of guys, but that deal fell through, and then I make fun of people. Okay, this is from the show. Okay. So the argument there being that there was some there was some idea expressed only verbally, so it doesn't exist on paper to you know, submit to satisfy John Taylor Apparently where there was gonna be like a big series of motorcycle run ins for the end of Greed. Somebody asked Eric Bischoff about this.

It's now in the record. It's been in the record ever since we found these documents for our Bash at the Beach two thousand show. Yet he just pretends that there was never any involvement from him, and what to do with the greed show? What's this motorcycle idea? We'd love to know. And then they asked Brad Siegel, did you make a conscious decision not to butt hulk Cogan had any pay per views after he filed that lawsuit over the Russo thing, And he says, I think there was a conscious decision to

not book for financial reasons. We had. My recollection is that there was a minimum amount of pay per views that we had to use Helkogan in a contraction period of time, and the balance of we cannot afford to use Hulkogan any longer after that in two thousand and so, therefore we didn't. And then so that was the reason why there was It was not related to the lawsuit. It was more of an it was a financial issue. What the

fuck is going on exactly? And they're just fucking they owe him six pay per views a year, boss, and they just decide, since they can ford all the things, you have to pay Hulk all the all the all the money you have to take off the top to get him to do it, and the guaranteed payments. So they're just not going to book them, and therefore they don't have to pay them. Who gives them? Who gives

a man a contract like this? Life fuck? Exactly? He signed, well, he signed an extension of it in April two thousand, so he doesn't have that excuse. You know it was worth it, though, because because we got FA f U N B. Hogan Right, that's true. You know how wonderful that worked out. And then his lawyer asks, because if you used him you would have to pay him more? Yes, did the contract, so far as you were aware, required that you use him

a minimum number of times? And then there's an objection, and then a seagull saystem my knowledge, it was in a minimum. It was a minimum number of times. How many times was that? I don't remember exactly. It was either four or six within a contractual year period. Do you remember what the contractual year was? No, I don't. I asked you that before. Were you mindful and setting up the matches of your need to schedule them a certain number of times within a contractual period? I was mindful.

I wasn't setting up the matches, but the booking committee was mindful of it. How do you know the looking commute is mindful of that because it had been discussed. It was a big, you know, financial obligation. We were trying to manage a budget, and that was a very large piece of it. It was merely an accounting issue. My understanding is that we did not have to account for the money that we had paid to Hogan in advance to perform in the pay per views until we actually used him in the pay

per views. Okay, so Siegel's not worried about spending the money. He's worried about when the money gets spent. When When When Because two thousands books are not looking good and he wants to play these games where we'll send Hogan the money, but we won't book it as an expense. We won't book it as money coming out until later. So yeah, what's important to Brad Siegel is not that they pay Hogan the money or not. It's when they pay him the money, because if they pay him in two thousand, that

makes two thousand look a lot worse. But they got to advance him this money. It's in there that they have to pay him advances on his pay per view appearances. They can't just wait to use him, So it becomes really weird. He says it was merely an accounting issue. My understanding is that we did not have to account for the money that we had paid to Hogan in advance to perform in the pay per views until we actually used him in the pay perviews. I mean, that's great. It was an accounting

issue because to me, we didn't have to account. Right, Well, we owe Hogan the money for six pay per views in two thousand, we won't have to actually cut the checks until he appears at the next pay perview. My god, that's when money's owed would be due. So what we'll do is we'll ice him for the rest of two thousand and even though we're incurring ultimately three million in expenses and guarantees. It'll be better for our books.

We'll put those on twenty oh one's books, okay, because two thousands books are looking real bad and that'll just make them look worse. And again, as we know from Guy Evans and so much of the stuff that's come out, but the mentality Turner at the time post merger, it was all about making each division look as lean and mean and profitable as possible. And

so with these guaranteed payments having to go to Hulk Hogan. How can we avoid having to show those as further losses for what has been a disastrous two thousand Well we'll just not actually record them as having been paid until the next time he shows up, which will be never. It's unreal and that's all

going on deep behind the scenes at a incredibly sensitive time. WW. No one knew anything about this until your boys fucking reached into that courthouse with the labstand solar system resources and it's key to history, key, key, key. It's always an accounting gimmick. So there you go, and the argument

is breach of contract and all that shit. So basically, ultimately, as we know in that case, a judge did find cause to believe WW breech Togan's contract and how it handled the Bash of the Beach and how it promoted him for Bash of the Beach as a featured wrestler. Siegel says in the deposition, WW lost twenty million in ninety nine and close to eighty million in

two thousand, so that eighty million would have been just that much. What was worse if they had to book six million plus dollar payouts to Hogan for the pay per views that year, and that he made a conscious decision not to put hull Cogan on any future shows in two thousand because the company couldn't afford his guarantees and to avoid booking costs in a certain accounting period. So, despite claiming his contract had been breached and therefore voided at Bash of the

Beach, what does hell Cogan do with this breached and valid contract? What does he do? He exercises his right to get paid under that contract. Just the same, he still cash those checks worth nearly three million dollars total as advanced payments for pay per view appearances he never made. He cashed him and he never made the appearances. It's one thing to write that big letter and say like you have some nerve inviting me to the pay per view without

creative for it. But it's another thing to say that after you've already cashed three million dollars worth of checks, if you're gonna you know what am I supposed to do? I don't know. I mean you're telling me I got these you guys give me these checks. So you're booking me, brother, So I nosciles to get paid for even though you're booking me dude, I don't have to show up, but you booked me. I get paid something like that. Obviously, check gets in the mailicates, a check comes to

the mail gates cash, dude. It's that simple. I don't care what it's for. It gets cashed. I'm putting the bank. Brother outright refused to peer agreed, at which point Bishops attempted by w W the investment group had failed, so they asked him, do you think your contract was terminated at Bash to the Beach? If so, why did you continue to cash these checks that were sent to you after that? You had no problem doing that. You took W Stew's money. But you're contending the agreement was terminated.

Hogan just simply says in a in a deposition filed as part of the Russo lawsuit. It was my money. It was nearly three million dollars, wasn't it, Yes, sir, and it should have been more, lot more, he said, right, damn fucking right. That's greed, baby, WCW style. And So before we deep dive this historic piece of business from Jacksonville, the final w W pay per view, we do need to issue a few shout outs. First, chopped teas what is our man Dicky

cooking up over there. Holy shit, we've turned over the non T shirt side to him, and there is a launch coming that is going to put you exactly exactly where you need to be Ica pro Style. You're damn right. Seeing the videos on social seas insane, the TLF stuff, the markups we've seen of some of the concepts he's working on for one of a kind TLF shwag, I mean apparel that's on a whole other level than just a

T shirt. And we love our T shirts and we pour a heart and soul into the designs, but this is like, there's now a look that's coming into focus a TLFi look, Yes, agreed, I mean there's I love. I love the T shirts, don't get me wrong, and I will continue to design for them. But man, there is something SI here. Yep. When it when it, When it looks like this, there's

something going on. Go over to Chopped hyphen Teas dot com, c H O P P E D Slash, Collections, slash the hyphen Lapsed hyphen Fan and you can just find it at the very top of the page as well. Premium apparel jerseys, track jackets, buttoned downs. This ship is fucking I mean, we're going to get a fully uniformed crew the next time we do a live show, the likes of which we've never seen thanks to chopped Sure, seriously believable. Someone wrote like I don't want to buy that.

It makes me look an asshole, like a trucker cap, and Dicky wrote, the intention of all products on my site is to make everyone look like an asshole. Of course, so that's it. The the lapsed teacher designs are basically oh yeah, asshole. Yeah, that's you have to come to terms with that if you're going to, you know, fly the flag.

Shout out to folks that have been satisfied with their purchases thus far from the chop Teas store, Dennis, the first one to grab a hat, said, it came out exactly as I hoped it would be, with a great

yupong base, the best around, flawless quality, shipping super fast. I mean, this is serious business, folks, and so we encourage you to keep supporting this new vein of TLF growth over at chop Teas and of course Pro Wrestling Teas dot Com for the straight T shirts that are a staple of any wrestling fans of Wardrobe, we were there outfitting you with the slogans you

need to represent yourself proudly. We also need to shout at our friends a tight Nutrition who continue to support the show and offer a great range of pre and post workout products to get your shit in shape. As we head in to the summer, tight Nutrition offers a full line of expertly formulated nutritional products help you achieve your health and fitness goals, and around this time of year when people plan to get moved, we work off the inches that accumulated during

the colder months and the spring. One product that can help you burn off those success calories and also give you a mental boost is Titans powdered weight loss formula end Light. So use the code lapse to check out over at tight nutrition dot net. You're going to get ten percent off your purchase and free shipping tight nutrition dot net with the discount code lapsed. Tell them we sent you and enjoy your products. Getting into shape this summer season with your boys.

You're going to look great, you're going to feel great, and you're going to have fucking orgasmic pleasure in your ear all summer long. As your coach hairs continue going hard. And it's not just the main show. It's not just traditional laps, TLFX, pay per view deep dives. It's also under the cinemat tell them about it. Oh yes, rocking and rolling with our carnies are forever journey. We just finished up Moonraker and it was quite a doozy and we've got more. All right, we're still we have we

have we have gone. Roger Moore, we have right, we've gone over the hump with our Roger Moore. You know we are. We are now on the other side of his uh of his tenure. But there's still plenty more to come on that front. Amazing discoveries about amazing wrestlers yep, Yeah, who participated in the films just tremendous. Yeah, And there are quite a few more surprises to come along with regarding that, a lot of a lot of names we've never touched upon under the Cinema. So it's it's it's

it's wild. That's the time to hop on the train, if you ask me, no better time than now. We're going to a busy season of live and delayed calls of the ww Premium Live events from running the bank to Bash of Berlin to Summer Slam, You're going to want to be part of the coach. Here's offering a lapsed, jaundiced perspective indeed on all of that contemporary stuff. And we just reached a great milestone for MOTE tier members only.

Wressel Mamia Episode one one hundred, Episode one hundred. I don't mind telling you now it's Joe versus Kobashi. I mean, fuck it. And you were there, and I was there, and I was privileged to be there. It's the first one I ever sat in on. I think, yes, it was. It was just to to talk to her about how Kobashi actually chopped you in the chest like he's doing to Joe. I have to hear her reaction as I kind of troll you with the idea that like

you had health problems because of that. Yeah, right, fucking totally gaslighting my mom, Oh my god, you gotta listen. It was such a blast. It was tremendous. I mean, I love the concept, everyone loves the concept, the motors love the concept. But one hundred episodes, I mean I didn't see that. Who would have thought? And they're more I mean, look, at there. There are a lot more already in the can, just like we like it. It turns out there's so much

wrestling to watch with your mom. She loves it, You love it. Solar System loves it. I love participating in it, and long may it continue. That, of course, is at our tip top tier at patreon dot com slash lapsed fan, which I know is rich for a lot of folks blood, but for the folks for whom it isn't rich or too rich, we're going yep, we go. Yes. We don't hold back because it might disenfranchise some. We deliver when we enter the bell when it rings,

and the bell rang for wrestling Mammia. This is organic, folks. We didn't push this on people to make a buck. We created this because people screamed at us to do it after we experimented with some Mama Sorrow input during the main show, exactly just kind of throwing her in there. You know, no real intention to spin off into this, but it just caught on and people needed it. We love remote tier members, We love everybody that contributes to the show. It's part of why we can be so thorough

again delivering documents like the ones we just read. No one knew that about greed until your co chairman dug deep into a court dive, and many many more. We could do, many many more we will do. But for now, it's time to put a bow on World Championship Wrestling visa via it's final pay per view WCW Greed at a time when the fate of WCW, in the story of the end of WCW, is very much in the air. It's all beautiful serendipity, and we have to I suppose thread in that

serendipity a bit of somberness. Boss. It's time for the w W Greed death toll. Yes we have. I'll tell you what the uh death was the Grim Reaper rather was not so greedy, Okay, I will say there were eight There are eight dead on this show. Referee Mickey J. Yeah, Spanish language commentator Pedro Morales, Road Warrior Animal Bam Bam Bigelow, Mike Awesome, Sean O'Hare, the March Dream, Dusty Rhodes, and I ask you who deader than Canyon Rest in peace to all all way too young.

When you watch w c W in two thousand and one, it just it should not be populated with wrestlers who are already dead in those numbers. Honestly, those are not very old guys. You talked about. Shan O'Hare was mister next generation. You know, he's presented as this next generation guy and he's gone already. Yep, Luler Buff's all alive. It's it's that's the weird thing. It's fucked up. But let us let us determine how fucked up it really is. Let's let's even engage with with Dusty's tray full of

burritos. What do you say, can't fucking handle that whole thing? The other side of this break, it's that fucking deep dive of w c W greed. We'll see you there. He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack Seo and JP Sorro