TLF Ep. 392: WCW Greed (Part 1)

It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and carn S e O and JP
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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