83 Weeks #10: Goldberg beating Hogan on Nitro - 20 year Anniversary

This podcast has not been sanctioned for a campaign of 83 consecutive weeks 3 there's a Korean winner the story for weeks this is the story of that camp in 83 weeks 20 years later the time has come hold true for the whole truth this is 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff 3 weeks with Eric Bischoff Eric what's going on man how are you I'm doing great Konrad getting ready for a 4th of July my favorite time of year friends and family Are pouring into town the cool is full of beer I've got a refrigerator full of

amazing stuff I'm gonna cook in the Big Green Egg I am fired up well I hope you got a fire if I just were last week I'm sick this week and I don't know that I can take the shouting but I think people aren't really sure how we're on speaking terms after last week was the feedback you got from last week's episode well before I talk about feedback you know I come up to my office my dog Nicki all She follows me everywhere she's never more than a foot and a half away from my side

now my dog is an Australian Cattle Dog or blue heeler and their famous out here in the Rocky Mountain area because they ain't afraid of [ __ ] I mean you can go up into the mountains and we're infested with grizzly bears up here and if you like to fish and hunt and camp ride horses like I do up in the mountains you're constantly looking over your shoulder for Grizzlies and it's Kind of dangerous people get mauled and killed up here every year which is one of the reasons I have this particular breed of dog

and we got done with our show last week I don't know I finally shut everything down and I looked over in the corner and my dog is curled up in a corner and she's scared to death to see him he never heard me go off like that and she's like what the hell and again this is a dog that we will run down a grizzly bear and I actually had To cook her I went up to the Big Green Egg and I cooked up a tenderloin from an elk and actually had a give her a

steak just to get her to be able to get than 5 feet of me again so I don't want to do that man I don't want to scare my dog I don't want to piss off the viewers and I don't want to upset you if you're not feeling well today I have empathy I'll be as kind as I can be oh I was kidding you can [ __ ] me that's five but that is a cool story about your Dog that she's not scared of bears but she's scared of bischoff harder she well she's never

heard it before I've never raised my voice to her she's never heard me raised my voice and you know I'm I'm just you know you and I are going back and forth you know she was only afraid of me she's listening to you and I looked over her she's like scared to death so I'm not gonna do that to her again it's the fourth of July it's a beautiful Sunday afternoon I'm gonna try My best not to let you piss me off I'm gonna try my best as far as feedback bro I got I got

who I said broke god dammit I got a lot of great feedback you know what was interesting is you know about half the people told me I was full of [ __ ] and about the other half agreed with me right in and I think you probably saw a lot of that same feedback so it's you know it just goes to show you the people that listen to the show actually do a little bit of research and A little bit of homework and you've got their own opinions and and that's cool I dig that but

it was fun one of the things that happened this past week though is you got into a pretty big with Dave Meltzer and I've been getting a lot of feedback lately saying that you know I'm letting you rant and rave about Dave Meltzer too often and then maybe I'm part of the problem because I'm saying Dave Meltzer said because a lot of times I do feel Like you have a different opinion on something just when you hear that it came with a dave meltzer slant or your perceive Dave Meltzer slant but you guys got into

it a little bit on social media let's just address that at the top and get it out of the way if you'd like to say anything at all about that he's a pissant he's a whiny little [ __ ] that for the last thirty years has he had a format where he could criticize other people make [ __ ] up you know Insert his own agenda in agenda in the in you window and whatever it is he was writing about and talking about and really shaped the perception of a lot of people subscribe to his

newsletter now we got 23 what 25 30 years of Dell dave meltzer [ __ ] to work from and look you know he got away with it for a long time and he just laughed at people that would criticize him now all of a sudden you know guys like Bruce Prichard telling Shivani Myself and many others have podcasts and were able to reach a lot of people and all of a sudden we're calling all this [ __ ] he's whining like a little [ __ ] well I feel like I should say I'm a 21-year

subscriber and I read every week and I'm a big fan of The Observer but I understand that someone who worked in the business and he was very critical of you and Bruce and Tony at different times I see what you guys will have Different opinions but that is sort of the basis of the show is from a fan's perspective what we always heard happened and it came through the torch for the observer versus what really happened from someone who was there and it's up to you the viewer or listener rather to kind of decide you

know where you fall on these things and today we're gonna talk about something that's not to be debated it's one of the biggest night rows of history's July 6 1998 this Friday will be the 20 year anniversary and then this does not feel like 20 years ago to me how about you Eric no I didn't actually choose to be known I just finally had the time because we've had friends of family porn in the last few days to really sit down and watch the entire episode on the WWE Network which by the way I love

the WWE Network if it wasn't for the WWE Network no one would be able to go back and see just how phenomenal and in some cases how [ __ ] up some of those nitros you know back during the Monday Night war era we really really were and I think this is an example of you know a great nitro not not without its flaws not without its weak points to be sure but when I went back and watched it literally I just finished about 45 minutes ago I was in I was in awe really not

of myself not saying that from a an egotistical point of view but just the product itself the emotion that it created the energy that Was in that venue and it was just so phenomenal to watch and it's you know fortunately one of those things that other than a Wrestlemania or perhaps one of the other really big you know WWE pay-per-views you're just not going to see that kind of energy in my opinion ever again it's kind of cool to to hear you go back and watch it because I think a lot of us take this

for granted but we most of us listening we're fans and so we were able to really experience this As it happened but for you this is just this endless cycle where you're just sort of in the racecar it's one show after another and you don't really have a minute to just sort of be in the moment and this is probably a whole new set of emotions for you watching it you know through the television as opposed to actually being there and being in the middle of it where you're worried about all the ins and outs

I'm not necessarily the enjoyment of the experience that's True but I also you know when I watched it this afternoon you know I'm watch it you know differently than a fan I guess you know I'm looking for a lot of the little details that you know people probably notice but they may not be able to quantify and in terms of the the impact that those little details had on the product and the energy that it created an emotion that it created and you know this is gonna sound like I'm trying to Put myself over and

I'm really not but if you look at the vignettes for example the nitro parties and you see those clips of people having so much fun you know at nitro parties that was our way of preconditioning I guess the audience that it's okay just to have a party and love the hell out of nitro and make it an event even if it's just in your own living room or your own frat house as we saw in some of those venues you know that was a really smart thing that we Did and quite frankly we stumbled into

it it's not like anybody you know was sitting back with their genius hat on and genius and [ __ ] up baby like Dusty Rhodes used to say it was just hey here's an idea let's try it and see if it works which was in many respects you know the kind of psychology or attitude that made nitro such a phenomenal you know piece of television history that it was or is but I look a lot in a lot of those little things Carmel Coming in you know the helicopter following him following him as he's driving

his semi which by the way he had four or five of those semis at the time he loves semis he just loved them some people collect motorcycles some people collect vintage hot rods he collected semis but you know seeing him driving again it was something he'd never seen before how many people drove to a ring in a freaking semi it was so different and Just you know oddly cool that it worked and it's just those little things that I look at it go wow that was really that was a phenomenal time did you guys have

this date circled well in advance or tell me when the idea and the conversations first came together for what if we did a night row at the Georgia Dome well the Georgia Dome date was obviously one that was selected I'm guessing months in advance you don't just call Them up on a Monday and say hey we're gonna have we're gonna have a night row there you know next week you you happen to be available you know those dates were booked probably six months in advance in some cases more than that you know the bigger the

bigger and the more popular the venue because we weren't just competing with traditional sports you know basketball for example at the Omni but you're competing with rock and roll concerts you're competing with a Lot of other events so you have to plan that well in advance so the date for the Omni was I'm guessing six months maybe even longer in terms of planning and booking you guys I mean it's a big deal because you guys draw a huge gate here I guess we should mention it's that's a huge record for you at the time but

it's not really a long on sale period you know so a lot of times when you have a dome show like this you put tickets on sale sometimes months in advance I mean Wve is gonna have WrestleMania tickets on sale months in advance but you guys have it here for just a handful of weeks was the product that hot I mean it does feel like the show was sort of thrown together at the last minute which is why I asked but you say in there make sense based on the sheer size and scope of the

building and what an undertaking it would be he got a map ahead of time while the short ticket window is their strategy there to get More of the card sort of firmed up before you put tickets on sale or talk me through that I think what we were seeing and again you know context this King as we know it's not only a great shirt it's also true it prior to 95 even even late 95 early 96 you know when when nitro was up we had to work really hard to sell tickets because the taste that

everybody had in their mouth about WCW as a brand which was pretty bad so you had to work your guts out to sell Tickets once we got hot the pattern started to become very obvious where you didn't have to start three months out or four months out you could literally start promoting I don't want to say spontaneously but you could shorten your promotional window two three four weeks out in some cases even even less because the tickets were that hot in nitro is a brand was hot people weren't buying their tickets to nitro necessarily or

I should say generally because of the Match that was advertised in the main event in fact in many cases we didn't want to advertise matches because sometimes they would you know out of necessity change but nitro became such an event in itself partly because again some of the you know the the the aforementioned nitro parties promotion the fact that you know we've we put such an emphasis on nitro feeling spontaneous and because it was live anything could happen we drove those marketing messages Home as often in as in as many different ways as we possibly

could and once that that effort of making nitro an event or a party that you had to be at and that was one of the things I used to you know preach all of the time is Nitro needs to feel like a party at every level and it got to the point where once you announced that there was a party people would come regardless of what was going on now in this case obviously it was different because it was Goldberg and it Was Hogan and that certainly had a major impact but across the boards you

know we didn't have those long promotional windows like we used to well let's talk about the actual show itself but before we do I want to sort of set the stage as to what was happening on the other channels King of the Ring had just happened in late June of 1998 were just past the 20-year anniversary and of course the most Memorable thing that happened there is the Undertaker throwing mankind off the cell and in years past we've heard Kevin Sullivan say that when he saw that he thought the war was over and that the

WWF had officially won that there was no way you guys could possibly top that and I know you're gonna be critical of that but the next night after King of the Ring we're all got a 5.3 6 and nitro only got a 4.0 5 so the ratings swing continues to go the other way after you Guys have had all this momentum that Debbie to be a finally wins after 83 consecutive losses they get a win in April and it was fairly competitive but it does start to feel like you guys are slipping and the momentum

has shifted it's going to the deme to view f what did you think when you saw mankind come off the cell and what do you make of Kevin Sullivan's comments that that meant the Devi derby F had won the war well there's really you know there's two Questions in there I'm gonna take I'm gonna take the what did I think about you know mankind coming off the the the Hell in a Cell cage you know that that didn't really leave a strong impression on me but again as we've talked about 1998 was was a very

you know late 97 is when it started where the competition really started in and you can go back to November of 1997 and there's an interview floating around out there where Vince McMahon basically says They're going to change their creative direction and expand the creative envelope yeah in all kinds of other Vince McMahon isms designed to to you know communicate to his audience that okay this goofy [ __ ] that we've been doing that has been good killed for the last however long we're gonna have to change that he could have just as easily said

and somebody should probably do this at some point and put some subtext underneath it is back in 1997 after he'd be getting his ass kicked for about a year and a half almost two years he finally recognized that it was time to copy the Nitro formula and introduced a more adult driven 18 year 34 real reality based kind of demo and pushed the envelope in as many ways as he possibly could and that's what he did and he tipped his hat in that interview in November of nineteen seventeen ninety seven and an almost immediately you

know out of the Shoot you know you start seeing a lot of similarities between Monday Night Raw in nitro in in terms of its tone in its presentation gone were a lot of the goofy cartoony animated characters that you were watching in 95 and 96 and early 97 along comes Mike Tyson you know with a four or five or six million dollar price tag whatever was reported and that intense energy was Stone Cold Steve Austin and mr. McMahon all of a sudden mr. McMahon comes from Out from behind the shadows and he becomes the heel

owner or authority figure much like I was a nitro at that time so when when those things started to happen that's when I started paying attention to me that's when it really began to change and the pressure became tangible prior to that it wasn't in and I've said this before you know with you in interviews the pivot point for me was Mike Tyson when when they finally pulled the plug or pulled the trigger I should Say on Mike Tyson and really came out swinging with Tyson that's when I knew we were in trouble and then

well I want to say in trouble that's when I knew it was getting competitive and it was paying much more attention to the tone and style of the show than compared to what we were doing at the same time while WWF was turning up the volume and taking our formula and taking it even you know further with you know giving birth to hands in Austin flipping Pull off and the ringpost and all the crazy [ __ ] that they did that became so popular in the foundation really for what the Attitude Era meant to people

at the same time we were starting to get hammered corporately about the type of content that we had and and and there was a lot of pressure for us to become more family friendly so the the very formula that we created was now being copied and quite frankly being done better than we did tip of the hat to WWE For that but while they were doing that we were having a tone down our [ __ ] so the competition was really starting to have a much more pronounced impact on the way that I was thinking

about things throughout you know early 98 certainly by this time in July of 98 there was a lot of pressure and the Hell in a Cell match and Mick coming off the top of that and such a big bold scary move that had everybody buzzing was just one manifestation of a six or eight month Initiative by WWE that was really starting to take its toll on us let's talk about the night after catering because this is the night row where you could recreate The Tonight Show set and you have Scott Steiner odd and the segment

does it does the three-point-four and the dirt sheets would be very critical of this and they would also report that you got spent around $70,000 on the set and because it bombed you never did it again obviously You're trying to set up something with Jay Leno for August we get that in hindsight but when you see the rating come in do you realize well this was a misstep well first of all and it help me out here because I don't know the answer to this but you you stated just now that we spent the money

on the set we did that segment once we never did it again is that your was that your position that we never did the the Jay Leno's kind of gags and scoops again no I know you did Them again but I'm saying in terms of it felt like after that first one this was gonna be a recurring theme and you were gonna do this with some regularity but you quickly abandon that obviously you you would do some shenanigans for the August pay-per-view but here we are in early July and it felt like there would be

a string of these things but that clearly didn't happen what did happen afterwards it didn't happen immediately it didn't happen in Consecutive episodes if what I'm hearing you say is correct or if I'm hearing you correctly because I'm trying to be kind today I'm trying to be the gentler kind ler Eric Bischoff today give me a second so yes we did one we didn't do any more of them until later on leading into August because of the Jay Leno promotion that we were doing so to imply and and I'm not saying you are but you're

basing that presumption on something that was written by somebody who wasn't involved You're implying that because a segment bombed that we just were ready to scrap the whole idea well that wasn't true so what was the plan with doing it once and then bringing it back I mean to me don't get me wrong I get the under so I get the idea of we're gonna do it because Linda's coming in but that's not here yet so was the initial plan we're gonna develop a string of these to build to the August pay-per-view and then the

rating being Solo is what killed it no no no and that's and that's where again I'm even gonna try to be kinder and gentler to to mr. Meltzer who ever reported that that's an assumption or presumption made on the part of somebody that doesn't have a clue that wasn't there that wasn't a part of the creative process that's never produced a minute of television in their life and they're assuming because they saw something once and they connected a dot of a low rating For a segment which we're going to talk about in great detail in

just a few moments they they assumed and reported that despites $70,000 you know on this set you know the the segment died therefore you know they abandon it well it wasn't true we knew we were where we were going in August when the when the July 6 show came about and there was so much focus on Hogan in on Goldberg in the creative Decidedly changed pretty close to that date it wasn't like we planned on Goldberg and Hogan for months and months and months the creative across the board changed that segment no longer made any

sense it no longer made any sense to to promote in and have fun and parody Jay Leno for an August pay-per-view when we wanted a point as much focus as possible on the Goldberg Hogan match so there was a stutter step yes but it wasn't because it only go to three point five that's What an idiot that has never written one syllable of television or produced one second of television would would have you believe especially if that person has an agenda that isn't true now what was true I'll reiterate was that creative plans changed with

the Hogan Goldberg initiative it wasn't necessary to promote or or timely really to promote what was coming up in August at that particular moment given the magnitude of that show and that match And all of the focus on it now going back to segments here's in and I still have a pet peeve to this day and clearly I'm not producing any television right now but when I hear people or read people talk about ratings for a show or in this case a segment which is even more asinine and somehow a ratings for a segment reflects

the quality of that segment or the ratings for a particular show reflects the quality of a show those same people who have no Understanding who've never done it who don't really understand the business of the television business are happy to report that stuff because it's you can go to zap2it calm and get ratings information all day long you don't have to be a wrestling expert to do that it's available you can go find it but what you really need to do is kind of compare your to date for example I'm going on for a little

bit of a tangent here but you know and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna Beat up in any more dirt shoes in this episode I've done that enough but you know there's one in particular that I come across frequently that can't wait to report ratings and use those those headlines is sort of click bait to get people to tune in and but but what's more insidious is how they take a particular rating particularly if it's a negative rating or if it's down to tenths of a point or three tenths of a point if it if

a rating is down 10% You know 5% on any given week it's a [ __ ] rounding error Nielsen is hardly science it's more art than science to be honest and to take those fluctuations and variations throughout an entire two-hour episode and use that fluctuation it's kind of the basis for your position of what somebody how somebody should be being used or how the creative is not working right or how somebody should be getting more of a push or deserves more of a push all Based on an indication that's nothing more than a rounding error

is a joke to me and I think going back to you know looking at one segment of one show and considering a concept as being you know void of value just reflects the ignorance of the person that would suggest it a segment can so many things can happen in a segment there could be a [ __ ] breaking news headline there could be a power outage in New York City that would dramatically affect a quarter Hour there could be competition on you know something could be happening on another channel that would dramatically impact a quarter

hour or you could have just poorly timed that quarter hour in your format and miss the most critical you know moment of the 15 minute you know measurement you know that Nielson person utilizes there's so many variables that you never look at I never looked at one quarter hour ever ever ever looked at one quarter hour and made It a made an assumption and anybody that's ever produced television would probably tell you the same thing you may look at the whole and you may you know I I in particular would look a period of you

know a four or five week pattern and then I would start making assumptions but to look at one quarter hour on one show and make an assumption is just asinine so help me understand when you guys are in direct competition and they're segment goes up and your Segment goes down you don't immediately think it was the content no it could be the content I'm not saying that I'm saying whether it is or it isn't you don't make a rapid judgment about the quality so so if I'm head-to-head with them in a quarter hour and my

quarter hour drops down to a 3.5 and there's goes up to a 4.2 or whatever a 4.5 I'm not going to abandon the idea based on that 1/4 hour there's no way I would do that there's no way anybody in the right [ __ ] mind would do that you'd be chasing your tail constantly let's talk about the actual content when you watched or maybe having watched it when you did the segment with Steiner how'd you feel about it I haven't watched that I'd have to go back and look at it I couldn't really answer

that fairly or honestly okay let's talk about some other company news that's going on and one of the things we touched on last week was you making the decision to sort Of cut down on some of the house shows and so you go from 23 a month to 18 which is gonna run to about 240 shows for the year and the houses are running about a hundred and forty thousand dollars when you make this announcements and the talent that has to be met with a lot of great feedback from the guys who were promised a

lighter schedule as we touched on last week right yeah it was but again you know there were there were factors going into a one is Contractually as we've discussed there were a lot of especially a lot of the top guys that came in you know later on in 96 77 98 you know we made a commitment to keep our our dates to 180 dates a year and by the way that also included you know TVs that wasn't just house shows because if you would throw in another hundred and four dates on top of that you

know you'd be right up there you know at WWE schedule and that's what we had committed we wouldn't do to a lot Of that top talent so there was two issues one is as Thunder became more and more of a burden schedule-wise we needed more and more talent to feed that monster all of a sudden our dates you know we're going up and we had to stick to our plan you know our plan was to keep our house shows to a minimum and keep the focus it was managing resources you know I I was able

to turn WCW around from the dismal [ __ ] disaster that it was when I took it over to becoming what It was as we're breaking down this show by focusing our resources on the television product with the kind of if you build it they will come philosophy meaning if you build a television product and you become popular in television the house show business will take care of itself and it did in resounding ways but there comes a point where you've got to you've got to manage those resources and we had up until that point

lacked the discipline To really manage that schedule the way it should have been managed and we had to cut back because we were burning people out with two primetime shows and again we weren't the WWE we didn't have you know a fraction of the the resources that WWE has now in doing the same thing we were doing by the way producing you know a two or three hour nitro and a two hour live Thunder we did it with a fraction of a fraction of the technical production staff and financial resources The WWE is doing it

with and we were killing ourselves in the process and again that's a you know people you know they're gonna he's making excuses I'm not making an excuse it's a reality and if people are too stubborn to look at it from a from an objective point of view because they're entrenched in their ideology when it comes to you know a dirt sheet writers perception of me or of you know WCW as a whole that's fine but the fact is you know when we got Thunder dumped on us it it buried us and you know reducing the

household schedule was one kind of manifestation of it you sort of said a minute ago if you build it they will come and that made me think of blue shoot calm you are a god who do you get older things wear down but that is not slowed down because the silver fox eric bischoff you've been telling us a little bit over the last few weeks about how great velu chu is and apparently people have been Listening because they sold Tory last week but we're happy to announce that they are back in stock and it's great

news for you and all of our friends check out blue shoe comm it's got all the same great stuff that you're familiar with from Viagra and Cialis II know this stuff works but this is another level because it's chewable which means that's gonna be faster than a pill and I know what Eric likes is you could take them any time day or night He even told us about taking the last week before breakfast and it may be best of all this is cheaper than those big name brands you've heard of Viagra and Cialis so it's

really a no-brainer because not only is it faster but it's cheaper oh and it's easier to get to you don't have to go sit in a doctor's office you can do all of this online and a ship discreetly to you at blue to calm and Eric I think they're even giving away their first shipment for free if You use our promo code just type that in it's 83 weeks you're gonna be out five bucks for the shipping but your first shipment is free that's blue2 dot-com and the promo codes 83 weeks but that's all the

particulars well people really want to hear Eric is how are things going I'll tell you what yesterday morning was amazing I mean here's the deal first of all you know there's this you know I guess old kind of standard way of Looking at you know products like blue 2 and you know all that's only for old guys that's [ __ ] man I don't care if you're in your 20s your thirties or forties or fifties or sixties like me you want to be at the top of your game and I can tell you from personal

experience that there were plenty of times in them I was in my 30s whether it's because I was stressed out of work or because I was traveling a time or because I was just tired then I may have Thought I was close to being at the top of my game so to speak but my wife knew better it's kind of like you know when you look at yourself in the mirror and you think looking pretty good today and then you walk downstairs and your significant other says you're not really gonna wear that [ __ ]

out in public are you because that doesn't work you don't always know exactly how other people are looking at you and this is particularly true when you're in that moment and you Want to be at the top of your game so it doesn't matter how old you are now let's let's let's go back to your question about how's it working yesterday morning was awesome my wife gets up about 6 o'clock every morning sometimes a little earlier I get up about 4:30 or 5:00 and we're both of you know we have coffee together you know catch

up on a little bit of news check our emails and then she's off doing her thing I'm off doing my thing we're really very busy she has Her own show on Twitch that she does and she puts a lot of time into it she doesn't show every single day well five days a week so our mornings are generally really jammed full but yesterday knowing that we got family and friends coming in knowing that we're gonna have very little time to ourselves knowing that I've got to produce a podcast with Conrad knowing that she's got her

she had to do we had like about an hour this is about seven o'clock Yesterday morning the Sun was shining the weather was beautiful we're laying in bed watching television I look at her she looks at me I get up go pop a blue choo 20 minutes later we were rocking it it's just awesome just awesome I feel like a kid again that's your update there you go blue to calm you our promo code 83 weeks of SB lue CA TW and a lot of our listeners are checking it out including some top guys of

the Wrestling business I've got DMS for several people saying hey is this stuff legit so everybody's doing it check it out let's see what you're missing out blue-cheese comma that promo code is 83 weeks somebody else who were able to eat it a little blue cheese at one time was hard work Bobby walk he sees you guys around the same time four five billion dollars he's claiming racial discrimination and it's one of the war landmark lawsuits Against WCW because of it rly Bobby Walker got paid chat me up that was nothing new anybody that sued

WCW got paid tell us about this Bobby Walker lawsuit to the bestia recollection you know again once and again this is it's important for the listeners to understand the way Turner was set up once a lawsuit was filed it left the jurisdiction if you will of the WCW offices landed over at Turner legal you know in the North Tower and for the most Part other than perhaps some information for discovery or records that we may have had on file we were out of it we had no input we very seldom were questioned about anything again

unless it was for a deposition or for records so I didn't have any first-hand involvement in the lawsuit so I'm not gonna be able to give you you know the kind of blow by blow by blow as it relates to that particular suit I can tell you however that is somebody that Was running their company and even before I took over the company you know the joke in the locker room in WCW was if you're getting cut just sue him because you're gonna get a check for a hundred grand and I never really understood that

until later on when once I got into management and there was a you know a risk analysis or loss analysis kind of logic in Turner corporate that if you're gonna fight a lawsuit it's gonna cost you a hundred Grand no matter what it's gonna cost you a hundred grand like any lawsuit no matter how ridiculous it was how baseless it was or anything else it's gonna cost you a minimum of a hundred grand so what Turner would often do is the minute they got sued they would go through the motions and you know do what

they had to do to try to make it look like they were gonna fight it you know if it appeared for more than a week like The litigant was going to stick with the lawsuit then they would settle I saw it happen time and time again and in that that you know the the prevailing knowledge you know amongst the boys even before I got into management was it hey if if you're gonna get cut or you can't get your raise [ __ ] sue them you're gonna get a payday and that's what this suit was

all about it was a stupid suit Ted Turner especially when it became to racial issues because Ted everybody knew Ted Turner was one of the most outspoken people in Atlanta about diversity and went through extremes to try to you know to to make sure that there was people of all ethnicities in all races it is involved as possible in Turner and he still believes that to this day if you follow him or read him so the idea that anybody within Turner Broadcasting you know was guilty of racism especially after Bill Watts left because everybody was

more sensitive to it I mean it it's It was insane on its face it is I read about it you know you sent me your notes this morning and I knew this question was coming and I'm looking at some of the just silly [ __ ] that was written and out there in the press you know it's just insane it really is and it's really unfortunate and it was such a prevailing problem or regular problem in Turner Broadcasting at the time that I was there cuz everybody knew it well let's talk about Obviously the lawsuit

was eventually settled I guess I should reach to that but it wasn't settled until the WV had already purchased them so the new me to be you out of writing the cheque in this case but certainly Turner settled a bunch of other words we should also talk about it incident that happened at the Nassau Coliseum or right after that show rather it involved the giant and a fan and allegedly there was a guy who was a pretty big fan Starting to sort of get into it with the Giant and eventually Paul Wight punches him what

do you remember this this is something we heard a lot about at the top it's got all got into it with a fan Kevin - the Giant it's got cider lots of fans or maybe taking it too far what's WCW concerned that they may have some sort of security issue with these shows or was this just sort of par for course what business got hot well it was neither I mean it wasn't par for the Course what business got hot but [ __ ] like that did happen occasionally it does to this day you know

in WWE it I I didn't see the event I didn't see it happen so I can't tell you you know I can't tell you what went down I heard about it afterwards but I wasn't worried about it because it wasn't something that happened on a regular basis a couple times a year somebody would jump in the ring and do something stupid or or get a little too physical or too loud And aggressive with some of our talent it never usually escalated into much of anything in reality and in terms of people going to the hospital

and getting hurt or having actual damages so it wasn't something that I was worried about and it was part you know you look at what we were doing I mean look at you know when we turn Hulk Oh him in 96 people were throwing [ __ ] into the ring you know I remember being in the middle of the ring and having people you know Throwing decel you know batteries flashlights batteries into the ring from the cheap seats and those things would split your head open if they hit you you know I remember having fans

come at me as I was walking out and try to tackle me you know so it happened but it happened so infrequently and they really weren't big issues you know we had pretty good security with you the arenas had their own security we had our own security our security were cops they Were law enforcement you see them on camera and I know you know when were watching the show today a lot of those guys you know the Doug Dillinger were brought in they're all wearing their fanny packs well guess what they had in those fanny

packs didn't weren't you know they were they weren't breath mints they were all carry and they were all trained they were all professionals they were all you know they'd been there done it seen it all Before so we had we had good security but occasionally it would happen you know I don't know why in the [ __ ] anybody would pick want to pick a fight with Paul Wight I mean I've I've only seen him go one time and it happens so fast and was so devastating that it was almost if you blinked you'd miss

it it's like whoa and why anybody would when you get really close to Paul Wight I mean you know he's big when you see him on TV but I don't care if you're six foot six And 250 pounds when you stand next to Paul Wight you know you're standing against a mountain of a man in an athletic one at that he wasn't just big he was extremely athletic you were to share that story would he bait the [ __ ] up out of a guy he didn't beat the [ __ ] out of me punched

him one time I mean it was such a short punch I mean I think the punch probably only traveled about eight inches it's not like he reached back and you know took a major-league Swing at the guy I mean he literally short punched him and splattered him I mean he went down like he was shot in the mouth that was it there was nothing more it was fast and honest to god it was it looked like one of those Bruce Lee one-inch punches it's really what it looked like and the guy was just bugging Paul

bug and Paul bug and Paul picking on him you know Paul paws a gentle guy Paul's got a lot of patience he need nose you know You know even then you know in WCW who is much younger and not as mature and hadn't been sued and been around the block as much as he probably has been now but even then he had a fair amount of discipline and the guy just kept going and going and going and going and I went up to go to the bathroom to guy filed him back and just kept bugging

him and it's like me swatting a fly that's amazing around the same time you guys are in the Papers all the time whether it's the wvf for WCW for some sort of silliness where kids are trying to imitate what they're saying on TV there's even a story out of Indiana that makes the papers where there's a kid in middle school who's trying to start a satanic cult that he's calling Ravens flock whenever you see some of this silliness on a weekend sort of dismiss it or certainly I would it's just you know That's stupid whatever

but I don't know that Turner always felt that way did you get any blowback when stuff like this makes the paper any sort of meetings have to happen a Turner about what is this Eric what are you doing with kids and the devil no it wasn't that obvious it was more insidious than that meaning you know the the corporate executives again it's just so hard for me to articulate the cultural shift that took place corporately once Time Warner's Footprint became solidly embedded up Turner's ass it things changed so dramatically and what we would get were

rather than hey what about this story why are you doing this what is going on with the flock are they wearing Devils you know signs out there are they promoting devil worship that would have been obvious and easy to deal with but it became more insidious in the sense that well we've got to be a lot more careful about the way we present this Product that's what I mean and I keep going back to it I know people think I'm just making excuses but it's it was the truth when you know major executives guys who

have gone on to become some of the most powerful people in television to this day are sitting at a table saying look I don't care what you did you know to get you know we're going back to early 1998 now I don't care what you did to get nitro to the point that it is I want you to be more Family-friendly that's an example of why those things started happening they wouldn't point to one kind of cause and effect opportunity to discuss they would take a broader view and say you know what we just you

can't call people names you gotta you know you could sure you could still be entertaining but you know you can't go you know let's not go as far we don't want to be as violent we don't wanna we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings we don't want Somebody sitting at home watching thinking that maybe you're talking about people like them and it became a real issue and that's an example probably of I say probably because they didn't come to me specifically with this particular issue and asked me to to explain it or or or investigate

it but there was a very constant pressure to react more broadly to to situations like this let's talk about Saturday night Saturday night gets Its lowest rating at history towards the end of Judah doesn't 1.5 this starts to feel like the redheaded stepchild out of the thunders here does it not oh it was I mean clearly it was we talked last week I think about how we started de-emphasizing syndication and and that was more for you know economic reasons really but Saturday and I at that point it became I don't want to say throwaway programming

because I would I would I Would cut off a body part right now they have two hours of prime time you know TBS broadcast window at 6:05 Eastern now and Saturday night but for WCW and even for Turner as a whole everybody knew that the focus was on nitro and the focus is on thunder and we just couldn't put the same kind of quality into TBS there's just it was impossible and everybody knew that too Turner knew it everybody knew it let's talk about the NWO hotline it's dropped around this Same time and I think

a lot of people probably even forget it existed but what's a part of time you guys could put NWO slap that those three initials on anything and people were consuming it what was the strategy for the NWO hotline and what oversight if any did you give to any of the hotlines I didn't I didn't oversee it that was in the marketing department Michael Weber Sharon Cedella would probably were the two people that were more involved in it Than I was I would believe I'd have to really look back at deep the organizational chart to be

a hundred percent certain but that would be my guess you know we had to I had to be aware and certainly I got an earful whatever [ __ ] said on the hotline that either conflicted or gave away or created too much heat because it look the idea behind the hotline was much the same thing as the the psychology if you will Or the approach beats behind a dirt sheet you know come out with the most flamboyant [ __ ] headline you can create you know get people to pick up the phone to hear what

the story is and make money doing it that was the model and it worked we made a lot of money but it got to the point where it was more of a problem than it was worth so that's why it was phased out and de-emphasize because the money that we were making away from the hotline was much more Significant and again you have to go back in time go back and look at you know WCW in 94 or 93 94 95 you know I'm guessing the night the the hotline probably existed then whatever revenue that

hotline generated was very significant during those budget years from 94 95 maybe even 93 by 97 and 98 it was a drop in the bucket and it was becoming a pain in the ass so that was the logic behind dropping it you said a name that we've never really talked About on the show and I don't know that anybody really talks about it Mike Weber he did media relations for the narrative EF for a handful of years and then he was with WCW for like seven or eight years and then wise up having like a

five or six run with TNA and now I think he's like running the fight TV app anything you can tell us about Mike Weber feels like he's one of those names he's been everywhere but nobody really talks about yeah Mike was a look Mike Was a great guy on a personal basis I really liked Mike a lot which is why I kept him around and he was here's how I described Mike if if you were a general contractor and you needed to build a brick wall if you delivered the appropriate amount of bricks in the

right amount of mortar and you said Mike here's the wall I want you to build it six foot high is 42 feet long and I want you to use this these bricks in this mortar you could leave The jobsite and you would come back and you would have that wall built and it would probably be built as well as anybody could build it but if you said Mike I think I need a brick wall I'm not really sure how big how long how wide I want it to be the coolest brick wall in the world

yeah go ahead and come up with something that would be a problem so he was a great worker he was a great you know he worked really Hard he was very committed he was very loyal he had experience he understood he was good with people he was really good with people especially people outside of the company right but he just didn't have to his detriment in my opinion you know it's one of the reason used to come to me all the time because he was a director you know of marketing or a director of PR

or whatever he was director of marketing I think it always come to me like every Quarter for his review and he would want to be you know he want me he'd wanted that vice president title so desperately and I just couldn't do it and it was one and I try to explain that to him and it's just one of the reasons you know they just didn't have that extra mile that would hurt that extra or the ability to go that extra mile and come up with an idea that no one else could come up with

or to take you know a project or an idea that was on a scale Of one to ten to five and figure out a way to make it a ten that he didn't have but when it came to just doing what needed to be done if you gave him some direction and guidance there was probably nobody better let's talk about the idea and nobody had ever done and that's to announce Goldberg Hulk Hogan and do it on thunder on July 2nd just four days before Nitro and that's where JJ Dillon would make the formal announcement

that Goldberg was gonna Challenge Hulk Hogan for the world title and Goldberg says that he found out from watching the show chat me up about all the specifics that you recall about how this match came together because it does feel like something that's been heavily debated and criticized a lot of the dirt sheets say then what's the tickets had already been sold and everybody knew it was going to be a strong gate but Hulk Hogan politicked his way into the spot and others would say That this was the master plan all along but it does

feel a little rushed based on a Thursday I'm a sweat for a Monday show chat me up about how this all came together for Goldberg to be in there with Hulk Hogan on nitro well neither narrative is true it wasn't a political maneuver by Hulk Hogan because he heard the ticket sales were so high he wanted to take credit for it that was [ __ ] I but it's typical of that kind of Community or that logic and the look here here's here's how it happened and why it happened as I admitted we were feeling

the pressure starting in early 1998 and that pressure became increasingly more intense as the year went on so certainly by July certainly in June certainly in May we were feeling WWE Monday Night Raw breathing down our backs nope no secret no denying it the the formula that we used to kick their Ass was now being used against us and quite frankly they were doing a better job with that formula than we could for the reasons I've already discussed and and and partially because we had done so much of that crazy stuff you know things started

to feel very repetitious creatively speaking in on nitro admittedly so there was a ton of pressure now I've read the you know I've read the stories I've heard about the comments that Hulk Wrote in his book and Hulk Hogan to this day is my best friend inside the business outside of the business in any way weird we're tight but I'm also gonna tell you much like I disagreed with a lot of people who write things in books and as I've said to you I myself just like everybody else have a tendency when we look back

20 years oftentimes particularly if there's stories that we've told and told and told and told that old Our perception or our memories of those events are different and they're not necessarily accurate and this is one case particularly talking now about you know the diversion of how it all came about in Hulk Hogan's book it is an accurate what is accurate is we're feeling the pressure ton of it we all wanted to win we all wanted to keep our momentum going we were all looking for new in different ways to do that and I was I

was in Los Angeles that week and I Can tell you exactly where I was on the 60 in Marina del Rey and Hulk Hogan called me it was about 11:30 in the morning I was on my way to another meeting in Los Angeles and Hulk called me on my cell phone and said I got an idea so I pulled over on the side of the road where I pulled up on the exit ramp off 260 and pulled into a parking lot of a deli and Jerry's famous deli by the way in Marina del Rey that's

exactly where I was and I said okay what do you Got and he laid it out to me Haga says let me let me arrest the goldberg and let him let him beat me for the ballet said what the [ __ ] what are you talking about you guys know here's why he's ready and that was his first that was his biggest reason as Goldbergs ready if Hogan was gonna do a job if Hogan was gonna get beat if we were gonna have a major shift and storylines he didn't want it to be with someone

that wasn't ready to carry it in his opinion doesn't Mean that his opinion was 100 percent right all the time but it that's what motivated him that's what that's what made his gears grind and he really felt that Goldberg had so much momentum behind him that there would be no better time especially since we needed you know at that time to do something to shift momentum and to get people talking about our product there was no better time than to do it in the Georgia Dome because that was you know the story was There we

had built so much anticipation and focus on Bill and his winning streak to put him into a match with Hulk Hogan and oh by the way throw in his stipulation that he had to beat Scott Hall which I don't think anybody thought that was gonna happen either by the way it felt like okay here comes a swerve they're gonna have him wrestle Scott in the NWO was gonna run in and they're gonna [ __ ] Bill Goldberg and then ba ba ba ba ba because that's typically what We would have done quite frankly not not

not denying that but in this case we wanted to do something different Hawk wanted to do something different so we put Scott Hall out there unexpected as it was you know Goldberg you know cleared that challenge and that hurdle that was thrown in front of him and now there was so much anticipation nobody in the world thought that Goldberg was gonna beat Hulk Hogan on national television then it it it just fit and That's how it all came together that's why it came together so quickly it wasn't because of ticket sales it wasn't because of

anything else it was just because the timing was right we were feeling the pressure and the opportunity prevailed our possessions they prevailed that presented itself do you think if you guys were still dominating in the ratings this match would have happened here know so here's the other thing that people are gonna be critical of and I've Always felt like you have a really great answer for this because I've seen you answer this and our live show with Bruce and I don't know a dozen other times but I'm sure a lot of our listeners this is

what they want to know and I think you have a really strong explanation and you know where I'm going with this a lot of people say why would you give away a show like this I matched like this that wouldn't do so well on pay-per-view why would you give it away on free TV and I'll let you take it from here yeah I want to try to break that I'm gonna try to break the answer down into pieces that wouldn't that perhaps will make a little bit more sense rather than just throwing an answer out

there again putting everything in context look at what made nitro successful look at the elements that the the creative the choices that we utilize starting in 95 and in improving upon in 96 and 97 that really Put us in a position from being you know a distant number to that was on the verge of going out of business to becoming the dominant wrestling organization in the world and that formula was you know spontaneity live-action putting high quality pay-per-view quality matches on free television going back to 95 and 96 97 that was the big critique of

us and people thought we were out of our minds for doing it but that was how we got to The dance that's how we beat him and this match was consistent with the formula that had made it so successful started three years earlier that's number one and I think that was probably the biggest reason the second biggest reason is we were a television company we were generally knew was fine at that point still we were feeling the pressure and you know we were getting bounced around in the ratings pretty good but it didn't have a

net effect on our bottom Line what did have a net effect on our bottom line in my opinion long term was what was happening with our television ratings and my belief then as now if I was faced with the exact same situation I would do the exact same thing and oh by the way I would have 100% support from Ted Turner in the Turner organization because they were a television company they weren't a pay-per-view company their goal was to keep their ratings on TNT and and and TBS at that point as high as they possibly

could that was a primary focus their secondary focus was revenue and that had been that way from the time Ted Turner purchased WCW or the NWA out of bankruptcy Ted Turner would tell executives throughout the entire Turner organization from 1989 in 1990 91 and 92 93 you know and and all the way up to 94 look I have this property because it delivers eyeballs to the network and we can then convert those eyeballs into Other programming opportunities we can migrate them to other forms of entertainment on our networks that's why Ted Turner had the property

so that that psychology and that that strategy if you will still existed so when it was my decision to put that match because it was my decision I didn't have to go ask permission I didn't have to ask Ted or Harvey Sheila or anybody else when it was the decision came to you know putting that match on Free TV you know in my mind I'm going to achieve two goals number one I'm going to raise the stakes and I'm gonna put nitro back on the map and we're gonna get the buzz that we're starting to

lose back number one and number two it will satisfy the mandate that I have from Turner corporate to build a television property that's simple I just think a lot of people when they just look at the wrestling business as a whole they sort of always think With that old-school wrestling promoter mentality they don't necessarily think about the wrestling company being owned by a television company because in a traditional sense there's no chance that a hulk hogan goldberg ever happened on Raw if they were a WWE myth swingman property right i don't know that i mean

that's you know it's a hypothetical number one but i would I would suggest you that perhaps just perhaps if the situation had been reversed and you know WWF was losing ground in losing momentum that perhaps they would break the paradigm if you will and do something that they had never done before and put something back on television that they would never otherwise have put on television look they put a lot of things on television I guarantee you back in 93 and 94 95 Vince McMahon would have never put on television you would have never seen

Stone Cold Steve Austin climbing up on the top turnbuckle and flipping off The audience and chugging beer in 1994 1995 and 1996 what never happened you have never had me young giving birth to a hand you know you wouldn't have ever had sable walking around half dressed on a leash barking like a freaking dog you know there's a lot of things that were on Monday night that would have never been on Monday Monday Night Raw had there not been competition so you know anybody that says well Vince McMahon would have never Done that I say

yeah you're in the fan business you're not in the television or wrestling business and that's okay it's now I don't mean it to be a criticism but you know a lot of that and there's no other word to use the narrative you know the prevailing logic I guess is another way of saying it that people have read about it in all of the dirt sheets and seems to have you know been able to sustain its life through a Couple generations now or a generation of wrestling fans has only been able to do so because a

lot of that chatter came from wrestlers themselves and wrestlers are in the wrestler business wrestlers are not necessarily in the television business wrestlers are not even in the televised wrestling business they know a lot about what's going on inside of the Ring they know a lot about their particular craft but none of them have ever been on the business side of the Wrestling business so it's easy for that kind of thought to to get ahold in the community and kind of end up in a dur sheet and all of a sudden become fact but you

know we we were doing what a we had done to get to the dance in the first place and be doing what we had to do to to kind of fight off the competition all right Eric I want to take a timeout right here when we're talking about drawing houses let's talk about building a house at brand-new House calm you see brand new house not calm can get you into a brand new house I know it sounds too good to be true and let me just tell you you're out shopping for a house right now

new is just better not only do you get a warranty you also get freedom of choice so instead of getting stuck with what someone else picked and all their toenail clippings and their carpet and their own use toilet know you can get a brand new house at brand new House come and you get to pick everything your color brick your kitchen countertops your flooring your tile your shower everything you get to pick new is just better and we make it fast and easy at brand-new house calm right now you don't need perfect credit you don't

need money out of your pocket so what are you waiting for it just takes a few clicks right now to get into a brand new house at brand-new house calm that's Brand-new house calm don't think you're stuck in your old house we can even help you with that at brand-new house calm animal s number six five zero eight four Equal Housing lender well I mean you saved Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair their first match you saved it for bash at the beach and brought out all the big guns they did a pay-per-view that's obviously pre

nitro had the focus shifted that much from revenue to ratings based on the creation of nitro and Conor that's a Really good question because it forces one to look at two different periods of time and the answer is yes if you and again I think this this particular episode of nitro going into our pay-per-view in San Diego the following week is a perfect example of a formula that had been working for us the hotter the television the hotter the the the buy rate on the pay-per-view it's not like a leap of [ __ ] logic

to go wait a minute if we can do if we can pop a Five rating we get five or six million people to tune in the Nitro chances are our buyer rates gonna be a lot better going into the pay-per-view granted that single match would have drawn a ton of money on pay-per-view I'm not arguing that I admit that freely but since that wasn't really our goal at that particular time and our goal was to like I say get all of our momentum back because that's a long-term decision putting Goldberg and Hulk Hogan in a

Pay-per-view match is a short-term choice yeah any we would have made whenever we would have made thirty forty million dollars Greg you know in the big scheme of things it's not that big a deal in the long run getting nitro back on track and getting our feet back underneath us would have made the difference between 150 or 200 million dollars in the long run so even from a you know a financial point of view you have to look at short-term Versus long-term goals in a long term strategy was there now that that same situation didn't

exist when we had Hogan and Flair we were still very much a we were a revenue generated company but our ratings were so horseshit at the time that the only ratings revenue that we could generate or the only revenue that we could generate was really off of pay-per-view because advertisers weren't buying us that was early on that was pre nitro as you pointed out until nitro Came along and advertisers started looking like Valvoline you saw the Valvoline promotion inside of this particular show we couldn't have touched a Valvoline back when we had Hulk Hogan and

Ric Flair in a room they wouldn't have picked up their phone and taking our calls let me ask this if obviously we're playing a lot of hypotheticals here but you guys didn't really have a television rights fee the way Vince McMahon does tell the other he has a Contract where he's getting paid X amount of dollars for providing the content to the USA Network or the Fox or whoever it does feel like that will change the answer again because U is sort of trying to keep it separate now of course now we're talking about the

advent of the network etc etc but let's just pretend for a minute if WCW was not owned by Turner and let's say in fact it's not even WCW D work now it's varied ganya the old-school promoter you Learned from and he's getting paid to produce a show for WCW or for a the AWA nitro in TT Turner and blah blah blah but he's getting a rights fee is what I'm driving at he would look at those as like separate line items but because there is no television deal in place necessarily I mean obviously you have

a deal where you have access which should not necessarily be compensated for it he changes the whole conversation like in The Verge gaudiya imagination that I Just created that I'll just freestyled this is definitely a pay-per-view and the answer is way different right absolutely I mean let's look at WCW at that time and you're absolutely right WCW did not get a nickel from turn number there was no licensing deal there wasn't there wasn't even you know I I don't want to go so far into weeds here that people get bored but when when the financials

would come out at the end of the year You know when when WCW would look at its its loss in its revenue so much of the transactions that took place on our books with in WCW were intercompany allocations either from the expense side or from the revenue side meaning if we put on a pay-per-view and turn our home video distributed that pay-per-view internationally or wherever they did it there would be an intercompany allocation of X that would come from Turner home video was all one big Company but we would get pieces of it right and

when it came to television there was no intercompany allocation on the revenue side for the television property meaning unlike you know WWE and let's just leave its current deal off the table right now but you know at that time you know we're talking about 98 WWE was making its revenue off of USA Network and they were probably getting I don't know I have no first-hand knowledge and I'm only guessing but I Would imagine they were getting somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five hundred thousand dollars in episode for Monday Night Raw which would offset

a lot of their cost of production maybe not all maybe maybe most but they were I'm guessing four or five hundred maybe more thousand dollars an episode for that content we weren't getting anything for ours zero we had the expense of it and in some cases it came as an intercompany Allocation expense so we weren't writing checks necessarily when we were using you know Turner Broadcasting cameraman and broadcasting trucks and things like that and there was some you know company allocation and expense against those things but for the most part we didn't get a lot

of the revenue that WWF for a at that time was good so it does change the conversation it is a different dynamic because the companies were set up differently well Let's talk about the money you were getting you guys drew what heck of a gate here Meltzer says that the attendance figure give it on the air is thirty nine thousand nine hundred nineteen but the actual number is actually higher forty one thousand four hundred and twelve folks which is rare normally in wrestling you pump it up but you actually had more here the paid attendance

here is thirty five thousand Five hundred and fourteen which dominated all the company records that were set in the same building in January of that year and it blew out of the water the starcade gate as well so this is one of the all-time gates in wrestling history when you hear it being listed with shows like WrestleMania 3 and WrestleMania 8 all these giant shows that's gotta make you feel pretty proud that not only did you do it you did it On a relatively short schedule I you know I just don't think about it that

way I guess in my mind I do keep things in perspective even at that time it was great I'm not denying it but but it was like I would have much rather had three weeks of consistent ratings you know dominating WWE at that time because that's where my focus was again my focus wasn't on on that particular you know how show or excuse me that that venue in terms of ticket sales it's a great thing I'm not denying it I think what it said to me more and it probably spoke to me more watching the

show today than it even did back then is to see that many people who you know had purchased a ticket for television when less than five years earlier you couldn't get winos to stay awake for a two-hour show at center stage that's great I mean that's what says a lot to me more so than the dollar amount in the records and all of that kind of thing and it Maybe it should have meant more to me but to see that crowd and to know that we created that much energy and enthusiasm and by the way

even you know and then this is me now looking back this is 20/20 hindsight because I certainly swear that God wasn't looking at it this way back then but I look at it now and I think oh my god between what we did and what WWF was doing you know there's a combined you know number of close to 10 Million people watching wrestling now there's some duplication in there and that's another kind of in the weeds conversation for another show but if you just take Nielsen numbers at face value to have 10 million people are

close to it watching wrestling on Monday night that's what makes me proud right now you know back then I was like [ __ ] we gotta beat them this Monday night but now as I look back in it that's what makes me the most proud it's one hell of a week for WCW too because people talk about this show almost as a standalone and I think maybe they forget this is the go home episode for the bass of the beats 1998 which would break all kinds of pay-per-view records for you guys and of course a

lot of that is centered around the tag team match we're gonna have Karl Malone a DDP taking on Dennis Rodman at hole Kobe can I can I interrupt you right there sure just and I don't mean to do that because it's rude right there Should drive a wooden stake through the heart of every dirt-cheap [ __ ] vampire that tried to make money off of criticizing my decision to put this match on free TV as opposed to a pay-per-view you just took the words out of my mind in saying that this show set up it

was the go home show for pay-per-view that set records the biggest the biggest that's it there therein lies the definitive answer as to whether it was a good idea or a Bad idea I mean you can't argue that you know a lot of people would say oh well you could save it and you can do it another time but what they did pop the big rating drew a big house is in the record books for attendance in gate and also six days later was one hell of a payday the biggest in WAV history up to

that point but one of the one of the things that people are nervous about here and we've never really talked about this It's Dennis Rodman no shows this event or at least that's what the dirt sheets would have you believe the night before he appeared at a Pearl Jam concert in Dallas shirtless and guzzling a bottle of wine on stage where he's up there shoeless trying to sing along that's how they have it's like kind of Mike and Andy Vetter says on the mic I'm guessing you've been drinking for about three days straight the next

day he's not at nitro it doesn't answer anyone's call so You guys have Hogan sort of covered up in his promo what was stealing with Dennis Rodman like here just six days before your giant pay-per-view or even contracted and committed a boatload of cash for him to be here but that time I knew Dennis well enough I knew he would I knew he'd make the pay-per-view and that's what I was most concerned about I wasn't worried about it look Dennis Dennis was Dennis you know Phil Jackson probably had some of the same issues in Fact

I know he did with Dennis so it wasn't unique it wasn't surprising it wasn't like he caught us completely or caught me unprepared it wasn't an issue that we couldn't work around it was a pain in the ass was frustrating but only on a limited basis you know it was it just wasn't that big of a concern I knew he'd show up when when the time came when the boat went and when it was important I should say for the pay-per-view I mean it would have it Would have been important he should have made he

should have made it he should have made nitro but it wasn't the end of the world that he didn't what's uh what's Hogan saying what all this is happening in Rodman's not here is Dallas nervous what's Carl got to say about all this Carl didn't have much I love Carl Malone by the way he's one of the coolest cats I ever had a chance to work with from outside of wrestling or inside for that Matter he's a very very cool dude to this day he's a very he was a very home he was gonna show

up and do his job he wasn't worried about Dennis he was worried about himself he was focused on himself you want to make sure he was ready he assumed I guess I don't know I didn't ever sit down with him and say what are you feeling Carl now Dennis no show descend on nitro what's going through your mind I never had that conversation with him but being around Him that night and subsequently during the week and talking to him because I stayed in close touch with him all that week he was a concern he was

he was a very calm very deliberate performer and an athlete let's talk about the show itself we opened up with the JJ Dillon promo from Thunder where they announced the match and then we get right to an in-ring promo with you holding the mic for Hollywood and in the background there's that Lesley with the belt over His shoulder what do you think of this opening promo where they're teasing that it doesn't even really matter because Hogan's not gonna have to defend the belt because he'll never get past the mystery man that Goldberg has to be

in order to get that title shot and that was the you know that was the intent that was the creative intent of that particular scene in it it had achieved that so I you know on a scale of one to ten in terms of it being effective it Was probably a 9 or an 8 look I talked last week about why when I see Brutus the barber beefcake or the disciple or whatever the zodiac or whatever the [ __ ] he was it always makes my skin crawl because I because of the way I feel

about him now I you know I don't want to repeat what I said last week but you know I wish I wouldn't have had to look at today especially standing behind Hogan carrying the belt I mean that's look at Hulk as I said last week trying Not to repeat myself Hulk is one of the most loyal people I've he's loyal to a fault and I mean to it to a big fault but that's who he is and I think he'd rather be loyal then than not and he was loyal to Brutus they had been friends

you know since the beginning of you know hugs started in professional wrestling and if you look at Brutus at that time he got himself in great shape so I think Hulk was hoping that this could be his Big break because he wanted to try to help Hulk and it wasn't just Brutus you know hook did the same thing for a lot of people and I'm not gonna call him out and in any way hurt their feelings or suggest that they didn't deserve anything that they had I'm not gonna do that but you can look at

the people around him at the time and recognize that you know Hulk when he was loyal to somebody he wanted to try to create opportunity for them whether you know They necessarily were the right people in the right time or not and Bruce is one of them but I think at that particular time if you looked at Brutus even in that promo he's probably in the best shape he'd ever been in and I think you know Hulk in his mind knowing him as well as I do he was probably thinking okay he's finally doing the

work he's putting into work this is his this is his shot I'm gonna try to to do whatever I can to get him to rub to set him up I'd bet everything that I've ever owned that that would that would have been the case next up we've got Booker T defending his TV title against Dean Malenko Jericho is gonna show up and distract Malenko Booker T gets the win then we see Raven working with Canyon they go to a DQ and Saturn interferes and obviously Saturn does a plancha off the top rope down to the

floor where Raven is laying across the table that doesn't break which had to be brutal Canyon of course is here working hearing the mortis mask not actually as the mortis character what can you tell us about these opening two matches he watched him for the first time in twenty years what do you think I love you know I'll say it again man Booker T watching him you know back in 98 I'm a bigger fan of them now than I've ever been you know it's sometimes you don't appreciate things and when they're happening right in front

of you until long afterwards And I think Booker T is certainly an example of that for me in terms of you know the talent that we had in the ring Hughes phenomenal and I will say the same for dean malenko I you know and we'll talk about it later on the promo between Jericho and Malenko where you know Jericho suggested that the reason Dean doesn't look like his brothers because his father was on the road all the time you know number one it was a great promo and number two Dean Was so freaking believable and

intense I mean if it was a television series or a movie that's exactly the kind of of look and feel an energy that you'd want to create so I can't say enough good things about Dean Malenko in his match with Booker T and subsequently with Jericho as far as you know the flock you know it was never a fan of it I didn't like it from the get-go I just thought the whole thing was just dark and and I knew and and I know now cuz I get people telling Me now that I love the

flock back then look there was a segment of the audience that dug that kind of vibe or that presentation they liked characters like that I didn't to me it was like ten years too late you know the whole grunge rock thing had already in my mind kind of come and gone but these guys were living in it and I just didn't like it I didn't like the way the matches were laid out I think it's another typical example of a consistent and persistent Flaw in in WCW and on nitro in that we didn't have people

that understood finishes and even when he had a marginal match like this one was it could have been a great match had it had a great finish had it been executed properly but once again it was none of the above your marginal characters with whoever laid that match out did a piss-poor job doing it in the finish was a saqqaq to mess speaking of messes we've got Judy Bagwell making her WCW debut at the backside when she gets out of a limousine and the limo driver unloads a wheelchair and she helps Buff Bagwell her son

take a CD and she starts pushing buff into the arena obviously we remember that back in April on thunder Rick Steiners trying to do a topper a bulldog Oh slips out of it accidentally hits his neck on the back of Rick Steiner and has a serious spinal shock incident right They are live on TV and everyone is worried that he may never walk again of course things are looking a little better for buff here what's the thinking in involving Judy and carton amount for this promo that he does with being Jean here I don't think

there was a lot of thinking behind it I think they were that's gonna sound great Bischoff says nobody was thinking about this segment I think what we did was just took reality and let it play itself Out on television the real story was a very oh it was a meaningful story it was real you know Judy was at you know Marx's bedside probably 18 or 20 hours a day she helped get him through it there was no desire to create a Judy Bagwell character at the time that came much later but you know it was

just taking reality as we often did back then and had often been successful back then and you know she willed him out in a wheelchair to tell his story that had Been the first time I think that he had been on television and was in Atlanta everybody knew about it we talked about mark your son on TV for you know a number of weeks leading up to that so I think the idea was that if you know we're gonna bring Marcus out let's bring him out in Atlanta and and he needed to be in a

wheelchair Ellis bring his mother out what what's more heartwarming than to have any athlete you know come out with it was Someone who loves him Marcus wasn't married at the time or if he was it wasn't it wasn't anything we wanted to put on TV it just made sense I don't know I don't think there was a ton of [ __ ] debate over it well there was that debate that Carl ballon had a little help with his probe oh he's out doing with DDP and edp's do this best to sautee it up how much

practice and scripting did you guys have to do with Carl - getting comfortable with this Dialogue in front of the crowd that was up to DDP you know clearly they ran it by me before they went out you know backstage but it's easy to do things backstage you know for guys you know look come along when it came to basketball is probably at that time not too many people better than him if any at that time but when I came to you know standing out in front of 35,000 plus people who were cheering and yelling

and you can barely hear yourself talk and You've got to remember all this stuff and you got your partner over here going through his stuff it can be distracting for anybody that's never done it before and I think that's what we saw I can guarantee you especially after he's seen it again this morning you know Diamond Dallas Page probably worked for days on that promo making sure that you know Carl got his stuff in and DDP really got his stuff in now in fairness to Diamond Dallas Page who I Love as a as a friend

and a brother there's nobody better at giving himself over in any situation than Diamond Dallas Page honestly he will he will find a way to get himself over in the worst of situations and he certainly found a way to get himself over standing next to Carl Malone so I'm sure just like DDP with his match with Randy Savage he probably had Carl's it's sitting back there you know in a I'm sure they were communicating during The week I guaran-fucking-tee it Paige was probably faxing him [ __ ] all day and all night long and rehearsing

it on the phone and then they rehearse it when they got to the building and when they got out there you know it wasn't it was next up we see Steve McMichael do a pre-taped interview talking about the Reformation of the four horsemen and we also see Scottie rigs taking out scott putski and puss he gets a win anything you want to mention although the michael Promo or putt skiing rigs here well-well talk about putt ski in a minute but that McMichael vignette the promo is you refer to it was the first time I've seen

it since it was produced and I'm not saying this to be a dick or to be critical of anyone or anything but I'd like someone to point to to an interview or vignette or promo whatever you want to call it done live or tape in WWE over the last six months that was half as good as that one was Not saying it hasn't happened but that was a [ __ ] phenomenal promo for a guy that wasn't in the wrestling business that to be was an amazing promo and for even four guys that are in

the wrestling business that was an amazing promo it was believable without being over-the-top it was focused it it really put a spotlight on why he was in WCW he put over the company and he put it over the company with 'men a much bigger way than he put over himself which is an art Form that's lost son a lot of people I think he did he put over the horsemen you know he asked permission of Arn Anderson to please let me join the four horsemen let these stallions fly let the wind hit their face I

mean there's a good [ __ ] there and to to acknowledge that Steve McMichael lacked the inner ring performance and skill sets I'll do that you know he wasn't a seasoned performer he was not Chris Benoit he was not even Scotty Riggs he was not even Scott putski but as a character and a believable character they got us a ton of press in a major market in the United States again thinking like someone who's in the television business and who's in the business of the wrestling business and not as a wrestler who happens to be

in the business Steve McMichael checked all the boxes and the Dave melters of the world and a lot of people not just picking up Dave but a lot of people might have looked at it seemeth michael And thought what's he doing the horror four horsemen surrounded by guys like Arn Anderson you believe one of the best workers in the history the business surrounded by Ric Flair another one of the best workers in the business if not the best and characters on top of it you know and in Chris Benoit whoever else was in the four

horsemen at the time clearly McMichael didn't have the skill sets inside the ring but outside of the ring He was as good as any of them he was as believable as iron Anderson he couldn't back it up in the ring technically speaking for the hardcore wrestling fan an aficionado that really really appreciate a great solid you know ring work admittedly but from a business perspective he checked all the boxes I don't feel well enough to argue today but next week I'm feeling better and we're gonna start with ten minutes yelling about [ __ ] fucking-a

I can't Wait cuz look our audience right now is gone [ __ ] they're not even yelling at each other today I know they're just not and I'm sure I'm looking for it man I'm waiting for you Conrad I literally I've got my left hand up in front of my face my right foot set back about 60% of my right foot my red hand is ready to [ __ ] knock you out verbally and mentally but it's not coming you're not stepping across the line you're not Making that move well here's the deal I had

heard you sort of defend why this was a little paper B before and I know that the benefit that's gonna be the biggest pay-per-view you guys have ever done six days later and that's never talked about it's just oh what an idiot Bischoff was for not putting up a pay-per-view so you know I think a lot of people expected me to have a different response today Scott putts he what the [ __ ] is this you know I Expected that so I'm gonna give you something else to gear up for next week okay I thought

Scott putz he had a great look I thought he looked like he's sure as [ __ ] looked like a bigger and better star than anybody in the flock he had a ton of potential his work in the ring was marginal at best he understood how to sell he tried to sell he just didn't have the skill set down his flat back bumps look horrible he was awkward but he sold more and probably tried to sell More then a lot of other people who you know would probably consider to be better in performers and he

had an amazing look it just didn't work sometimes that should happens you give someone an opportunity that has what appears to be a lot of the right ingredients and you're hoping that maybe once they get out there in front of the cameras and in front of in front of the people that you know it's gonna come to life and sometimes it does and Sometimes it doesn't in this case it didn't but I don't think that scott putski is worth at least back then is worth just kind of a what a [ __ ] who did

that I've seen a lot of [ __ ] that was worse than that on other people's programs and in on ours so you know it wasn't great Scottie Riggs was horrible I mean the part of the reason that you felt you probably feel or felt when he washed it so ambivalent or worse than that about Scottie excuse me about husky Is because nobody gave two shits about Scottie Riggs he could have set himself on fire and nobody would have thrown him a can of water to put it out nobody cared and it's not a lookout

it's not his fault he wasn't he was in position properly and maybe he didn't get the right opportunities he might he was in there with somebody else that nobody cared about you got two guys in the ring that nobody cares about that was getting no Crowd reaction that's not a cool situation to be in for either one of them but Riggs wasn't over there was no way putt ski was gonna get a baby-faced reaction you know beating a guy that nobody gave a [ __ ] about that's just how it works I'm sorry and it's

not a reflection on either one of them it's a reflection on bad booking well let's talk about great booking and that's what you guys have Jericho out here doing the promo with JJ Dillon and Dean Malenko we Sort of talked about this earlier where the stipulation is there's no title shot because the titles been sort of in debate we've talked about this for the past couple of episodes going back to the great American bash episode and the rule that changing until at least out is if these guys can't get it together and stop being so

physical with each other that the match is gonna be throwed out whoever crosses a lot is disqualified it's over it's not happening and of Course of visually Jericho crosses the line he starts pretty mundane and says your brother where's Harvey boots with it eventually alleges that his mother had taken another lover and so that's why he doesn't like his brother and of course deep flips out and eventually it spills over into the next fast was just gonna be ultimate dragon - Jericho Malenko doesn't run it attacks him again and this time they arrest the veliko

and it's pretty unique I guess For someone to be arrested on nitro they were doing it with great regularity or awe at this point what's the thinking yet hey let's arrest Abel Eco I think a casual wrestling fan would say why don't they arrest everyone who does around it well didn't we arrest Bill Goldberg for stalking missed Elizabeth earlier in the year no that was that was the next year after he next year yeah Oh sounds good to say we've arrested pee but we've had cops coming after the NWO We had we had a significant

law enforcement presence on our show pretty consistently so I don't think it was a unique creative device was this a storyline man it was just a way to try it was a storytelling device that's all I can say let's talk about Johnny swinger and his [ __ ] outfit I need you to defend this ring jacket that somebody said oh you look great buddy go ahead I can't I was [ __ ] hideous I'm gonna I'm gonna put down my hands I'm gonna let you take a free shot put it right on my chin I'll

spit out my teeth and get back up and keep on going but I can't defend that one Johnny so you're here of course it's taking about Chavo Guerrero jr. Chavo Guerrero is it's a pretty foot stuff at the time he's got all the hard hat and this is the Pepe era it is what it is let's talk about Public Enemy they're gonna be here and and this is like baby let's talk about Pepe don't You want to know where Pepe came from well I assumed we would talk about Pepe another time but if you want

to do a Pepe sidebar I'm in well no I looked at your notes and I thought you wanted to talk about Pepe but that's up to you man you're calling the shots you wear the pod father you were the captain of this [ __ ] [ __ ] but I'm gonna talk about what you want to talk about don't ask me I'm just here to answer questions well great Let's talk about disco inferno follows right followed by Tokyo Magnum followed by the Public Enemy wearing yellow Braves jerseys in Atlanta and it's red and yellow imagine

hello chat me up Public Enemy this is sort of silly they're using garbage cans of course they do a double table spot with Tokyo Magnum who the [ __ ] is Tokyo Magnum hey this is this is some silly throwaway [ __ ] right in the middle of a big show that's exactly what it was it Was filler it was Kevin Sullivan Kevin Sullivan like this kind of stuff good or bad look listen I know I always sound like I'm burying somebody or and whenever something negative comes up hike that was Kevin's it but that

was Kevin Sullivan [ __ ] he was a fan of Public Enemy that was his style you know that Kevin's body of work speaks for itself I don't have to say another word that was his that was his thing and look I've Said this before I didn't like it I've never liked it I still don't like it I will never like that kind of a match I hate gimmick matches particularly ones that involves [ __ ] garbage cans of pizza tins and pie pans and all the other stupid [ __ ] that you know we

see so often in hardcore matches that don't make any sense at all I've never liked it I never will but some people do so there you go some people do Kevin did there it was there's like a horrible Throughout the show we've seen a lot of the landmark wins we're promoting that nobody's ever been undefeated as long as Goldberg has and if he wins he'll be the first undefeated champion in the history of wrestling so we're gonna see his big like landmark win so you see like 50 and 75 and a hundred and along the

way and in order to sort of build even see his first win and I think a lot of this is probably done highlight his success but also to maybe reintroduce who he is to a Lot of new listeners or new new viewers like my dad he's the very most casual wrestling fan he probably would have tuned into this with me and said ah Hulk Hogan's gonna beat that guy I never even heard of that guy so through the watching the show you get to see his landmark wins but unfortunately it's guys like Hugh Morris and

glacier and Rick fuller but then eventually they do show the big win over Raven who is at least one on television That we can recall but now it's time for the big match against the mystery man earlier in the show we saw a limousine pull up and the NWO black and whites waiting on him and out pops Scott Hall he finishes his cocktail sets the glass on top of the limo and comes into the building and now as we know it's been revealed Scott Hall is the mystery opponent for Goldberg hey Goldberg has to beat

him in order to advance to the world title match with Hulk Hogan and Man he has his work cut out for him this is Goldberg's 106 twin but if you go back and watch this you have to feel sorry for Scott Hall because and I watched this at the time as a kid and I thought Goldberg was the man I mean he's a cyborg he's running through everybody this is incredible the day you look back at it later and you understand more of the wrestling business anything man Scott Hall has this Universal reputation for being

able To get a good match out of anybody and now it's a tall order because this guy is as green as grass and he's got to try to find a way to make this match look presentable in front of the biggest possible viewing audience not just in the arena but at home too when you watch this match back for the first time in 20 years what do you think I think Scott Hall did a great job I look at it wasn't you know it wasn't a five-star Dave Meltzer classic whoo it Was not you know

a match that you know in WWE people are gonna put up you know down of the performance center and forward and say okay let's watch this match and because these guys are gonna show you how this kind of a match is done it's not that but you know Goldberg had been in the business for less than a year I think at that point you put him out there first of all we all know what you know bill was like he's a super intense guy now he's in his hometown Because bill is you know Bill's unique

at net respect it meant a lot to him his friends his family you know guys an Atlanta Falcons were there you know sports media were there everybody there was a ton of pressure on Bill and and he had limited skill sets and limited experiences so for him to be able to go in there and have the match that he did have that allowed us to advance the storyline and that's what that match was supposed to do it wasn't supposed to be A five-star or you know classic match it was supposed to help us advance a

storyline and I thought Scott Hall did a great job doing it it got us where we needed to be and that's to me that was the only thing that was important nobody thought he was good by the way I liked it well nobody's gonna ever admit it the I would venture to say it's a safe bet that 99% of the people watching that show thought that the fix was in and that we were gonna [ __ ] Goldberg with Scott Hall on the NWO well let me tell you as a kid I thought the plan

would be he beat Scott Hall whoever the mystery guy is but then the screw job happens in the main event so somehow Goldberg would still win but he would win by D hue so the streak is still alive and it sets up a pay-per-view rematch later I didn't think for a minute you guys were doing a title switch that's some kind of eluded booking I'm glad I didn't hire you when You were 12 yeah instead you had the Dungeon of Doom great call I didn't have the dungeon well I did it's my bed you're ready

to go so human to Guerrera pin psychosis in 3 minutes and 17 seconds the flock runs in and beats them both up it's it's weird to me that you've got we just look at the talents on this show so far Johnny singer scott putski Jericho último dragón Dean Malenko Public Enemy disco inferno Tokyo Magnum Scott Hall Goldberg Hooven toot psychosis who's not here I mean everybody's here the giant beats Jim Duggan with a chokeslam that I was really pleasantly surprised by I had no idea that Duggan could cooperate like that he got pretty damn high

kudos to both guys on that and then Kevin Green doesn't run in and has a little bit of interaction with the Giant I don't know how hard it is to look like a badass wearing white loafers but Kevin Green Was doing his bit and then we see DDP with Karl Malone in this corner beat Jim the anvil Neidhart in 2 minutes and 20 seconds for the diamond cutter we get a Wolfpack interview and then Luger and sting drop sick boy and Kidman in 29 seconds when Lex racks sick boy and sting and gives the death

drop to Kidman anything you want to mention if there's like you guys are just running stuff here that was just maybe on the 4 end and we got to Get it in and out lots of 2 minutes and 30 second match is here that's what it was I mean a lot of fast paced action we got everybody on the show that we could possibly get there was some throwaway matches on there there were matches and weren't leading to the pay-per-view there were people that we were trying to get over there were people that we're trying

to get exposure to all of the above some of it sucked bad main event It's Tom Goldberg comes out takes his US belt off throws it at the feet of Charles Robinson WCW goes to commercial when they come back Hogan comes out strutting playing air guitar with the big gold belt it announces I'm gonna kick Goldberg's but he cruises to the ring we get the big announcement the match goes exactly like you'd imagine the crowd is popping for everything Hogan eases the belt and Charles Robinson does not disqualify him the Announcers quickly say all they're

letting it go because it's such a big night when Bill viciously wrestles the belt away he refuses to use it as you would want your hero to do and eventually it looks like there's gonna be the screw job because Kirk comes out and then DDP and Malone come out and they give Curt a diamond cutter on the floor Hogan's watching all this so when he turns around he gets speared to hell and jackhammer it for the pin and in Five minutes and 56 seconds all of a sudden we've got our first duel champion here the

United States Champion and the world champion Bill Goldberg celebrates in the corner we get lots of replays and a huge crowd reaction no one is racing for the owl's people are content to stay and hold their signs and cheer and chant for Goldberg and when I watch this match ironically enough it's what we covered on the Tony shivani podcast this week too but I watched it with Tony I sort of freestyled and I think I may have even mentioned this to you before that to me and you're a [ __ ] all over this Kohlberg

is like WCW version of the Ultimate Warrior maybe he wasn't the best technical wrestler but he had a great look he had a unique entrance the fans were really behind him he usually tried to hide it with short matches and power moves and then just like your WrestleMania 6 with the Ultimate Warrior Goldbergs in the Corner holding up two belts having beat Hulk Hogan he's the world champion and he had sort of the middle belt at the same time what you think of the match and what do you make of my I'm sure you're gonna

argue at observation that maybe he was WCW version of the Ultimate Warrior I'm not gonna argue with that I mean there's there's I understand why you say that and as you were laying that out I went you know there are there are parallels there there's no doubt about It you know Ultimate Warrior was not a great worker he's a phenomenal character right that brought amazing intensity and energy to the ring that connected massively with the audience great so who's gonna fire him right I mean I don't I don't even think I'm hoping that if bill

hears this or read somebody's version of what we're discussing that he would agree because I think to be compared you know for a guy Who'd only been in the business for less than the year to be able to get the kind of reaction he got and create the emotion he created in that ring after being in the business for less than a year I don't know I I don't think the comparison isn't necessarily a bad one I think bill was a better athlete by a mile and a half I don't think that's even arguable then

the warrior but we didn't see that athleticism till later on and even then we never really got to See Bill Goldberg in a you know 20 minute or 30 minute or 16 minute match I wasn't his style it wasn't his character but at that time in his career at that moment on this night on July 6 1998 in front of 35,000 people in his hometown of Atlanta yeah you could probably take out Bill Goldberg and put in you know Ultimate Warrior from a few years earlier and find a lot of similarities the biggest one though

is that just he You know Bill Goldberg had you know so much more athleticism behind him in credibility quite frankly you know Baltimore Warrior was a bodybuilder they got into professional wrestling Bill Goldberg was a professional football player they got into professional wrestling to different levels of credibility but they're their characters at that same point a lot of similarity so I don't disagree with you let me ask you this you know there's lots of rumor And innuendo about how this match with Hogan came together and I know you sort of laid it out and here

in the parking lot at the deli and blah blah blah but a lot of people say that the reason Hogan agreed to do this is because he saw the money in it and he saw that he would be able to get the credit in front of Turner executives who were there that night these are conspiracy theorists I know that's what she'll say but let me ask you this when this loss happens it Feels like when you've got a guy who's undefeated like this in the locker room and it's blood in the water the Sharks are

circling everybody wants to be the guy to beat the guy who's undefeated and to me this feels like it's a thing where Hogan would say ok I'm gonna drop the belt to him but there's gonna be money in a rematch down the line and I'll get the win back was that ever discussed no here's here's the the flaw in the premise of your conspiracy theorists who Would believe that nonsense I'm gonna get through a whole show without saying [ __ ] and promise well god damn and I did it again let's try not to say

[ __ ] if the premise of that position is that Hogan only agreed to do it because there'd be a payday in it for him right off the bat that the premise goes down the sewer because Hogan's payday didn't matter whether he had another big-time match with with Bill Goldberg Or not his pay was gonna be his pay there's a flaw that's that that's the disease that it's it's like a cancer that eats away at the [ __ ] brains of the people that read this kind of nonsense and in theory and conspiracy in the

dirt sheets and on message boards and all the other ways and means that people who like to think they know more than they do communicate about important moments like this Hogan's paycheck wouldn't have buried a Nickel whether he would have beaten Tok Magnum Tokyo or whether he would have lost to Bill Goldberg and it wouldn't have mattered a week later or a month later or six months later his contract wasn't up for negotiation there were no stakes there was no financial gain whatsoever to Hulk Hogan by deciding on his own to call me and suggest

that we do this match he was motivated by doing the right thing for Bill that's it and people that want to believe that Hulk Hogan is selfish and he only looked out for himself because look that's what people have been saying for so many years in the dirt sheets that was the that even when they didn't come out and say it it was always inferred and implied and there was always these nuanced little you know messages between the lines where you know he never did anything if unless it was a benefit himself I'm calling [

__ ] on them on there I did it again I'm calling that one it's not true I was [ __ ] there I was on the other end of the phone people want to believe it believe it people don't want to believe it go back a crony a little [ __ ] dirt box hole and go back and read you know hold their cheats and satisfy yourself that you know something that no one else does but it's not true there was only one motivation and that was because Hulk felt like this was a great that

was a great moment he knew The reaction that he would get he's a performer do I think he was looking forward to being in the middle of the ring and being a part of that reaction absolutely is that selfish no that's a performer but there was no financial investment or financial incentive in any way shape or form for him to do it so when WCW had a pay-per-view that did particularly well Hogan wouldn't participate no he got a Piece of the pay-per-view revenue he would have he would have owned in fact if your premise is

true if what you're trying to suggest is true then Hogan would have been the first one to say why don't we save it for a pay-per-view right well listen I'm not arguing here's here's my here's my takeaway and here's the reason I think the conspiracy makes sense Hogan Goldberg goes on to be the most viewed wrestling match in cable Television history it's the first quarter hour in the history of wrestling to reach five million homes it drew five million 54,000 homes which is in excess of seven million viewers total it doesn't 6.91 rating and an

eleven point eight share and it broke the all-time record that to me feels like something a guy like Hulk Hogan who I have tremendous respect for who I've marked out like a little kid for a Couple of weeks ago I'm not disparaging Hogan but it does feel like at some level it's like at this point we're trying to break records we don't hang out prove no no no you're assuming that because of what you think you know of a guy like Hogan as you just said but you're wrong cut right if I came to y'all

hang on you're saying I'm wrong the Hogan didn't want to set records I'm saying you're wrong if you think that that was the reason that he was inspired Or or do you or or chose to suggest that we do this match I'm saying you're flat-out wrong now here's what I'm suggesting I'm suggesting the Hogan Knows if I make this match happen it'll be night it'll beat Raw we're getting our ass kicked so it'll look like I was on top what it won and we got the momentum back and we popped a big rating and set

an all-time rating and then that'll be in such high demand for the rematch we'll clean up on the [ __ ] Pay-per-view to me that makes total logical sense if I know I'm getting paid on the back end of the pay-per-view and right now we're getting our ass kicks but if we do this would match and I do this one thing it turns the whole momentum around for the company that looks like a attaboy Hulk and a way to not be so fish and pop a big rating and set a record and you get the

credit for that and oh by the way on the back end I'm Gonna get paid handsomely for the rematch which but there was no rematch there was no look if what you I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna try hard look I'm tight with hall so it's easy for me to get defensive over things like this because I I know him better I knew him then how much no one now but let's just play this out let's plate let's play out the conspiracy theory in the prevailing perception that Hulk is a shrewd businessman who's only out

for himself And if he's gonna make a choice or a decision he's gonna make sure that it benefits himself wait Hale now to be clear I didn't say any of that I said that this would turn business around and it would draw a big bow ray and a big rating it did both so I I don't think anybody people who say the hugger just looks out for himself let it understand business because that's I mean it is what I'm not disparaging Hogan for that I'm not sitting here saying Hogue that's Pushing someone down but to

say that Hogan it's not a shrewd businessman and not an opportunist not in a negative way because that word does have a negative connotation but hey when you see an opportunity you pounce on it I did with the podcast with you you did with a podcast with me we could say opportunists in a bad way or a positive way if he saw an opportunity to pop a big rating why would you not want to do that if you're in the spotlight III Listen I agree with you I'm not arguing that point the point that I'm

arguing that I started to argue was your suggestion that the conspiracy theory is defensible because if you believe that Hogan was all of the things that people who believe in that conspiracy thought he was then Hulk Hogan would have been smart enough and shrewd enough especially with an attorney like Henry Holmes who represented not only Hulk Hogan but also Bill Goldberg would have Made sure before that night that there would have been a contract in place or an agreement in place and addendum to an existing agreement that would have assured Hulk Hogan that there was

gonna be a rematch on a pay-per-view but guess what that didn't happen because that was not the motivation so let's talk about that like I get there's no contract in place but surely when he's dropping it I mean that's not that's not Hogan looking out For himself that's just like commonly accepted booking is it not to say oh well the [ __ ] rematch is a huge right that's like crazy to suggest it's not crazy to suggest no it wasn't it wasn't the conversation it wasn't the reason we did it it wasn't the plan it

never was prior to the match with Goldberg and it never was after the match with Goldberg it was a it was a one-off it was a it was spontaneous combustion at its best it Was the essence of what made nitro nitro you have to tune in because you never know what's going to happen other people have talked about that kind of branding and marketing for their show you know certainly the WWE tried to emulate us in that respect when they went live like we did and the reason you go live is you try to condition

your audience to believe that you have to tune in for this stuff because it's live anything can happen but you have to deliver on That message and you have to deliver on that branding in order for the audience to believe that it's true and effectively harness that type of psychology for your audience that's what this was designed to do it was the right time at the right place so there was no plan in effect no discussion we had other plans we had other plans for for August we had a pay-per-view already set we already knew

what we were doing in August so There was just no discussion maybe wrongly I will admit probably dropped the [ __ ] ball not having the rematch I'll take that hit right now I'll take it but I'm telling you that was not the discussion then why didn't it happen I mean because I didn't like I just said we had other plans that we were committed to and didn't feel that it was necessary to throw out everything that we had in play at that time including Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman and all The marketing and promotion

that is going into that pay-per-view we didn't feel like it was necessary to disrupt all of that I did have we did have a plan going out three or four months we had pay-per-views that were advertised for July and August in September and October all of that didn't make any sense let me ask this and I know we're getting sidebar here I'm trying to wrap things up here is you already have a plan for Warrior Hogan at Halloween Havoc at this point I don't think so to me the money would have been Hogan Goldberg and

Halloween Havoc but it didn't have you know what you know what I don't disagree with you at all ma'am I mean that's your big pay-per-view and you know it would it would have been tremendous but here's the deal we're talking like this is a missed opportunity even Meltzer would say this is directly from the observer I waited Till the end to hit you with this this was by far the biggest week in the history of WCW as not only did they do the second best pay-per-view in company history but over the eight-day period of seven

six to seven thirteen they ran six house shows which totaled two million eight thousand four hundred and seven dollars or three hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars per event which is just a ridiculous figure plus another seven hundred eighty two six hundred eighty Nine dollars in merchandise not to mention an estimated figure more than six and a half million dollars from pay-per-view revenue so you're talking about a nine million dollar week for WCW here also during that week on the 10th at the Forum in Los Angeles age of 15 thousand eight hundred and twenty one fans

in total the gate was 281 thousand dollars which is the largest crowd ever for wrestling at the Forum so despite all the rumor and innuendo that this was All a bad [ __ ] show WCW enjoyed incredible success when you look back at this nitro 20 years later put a bow on this episode for us before we get to some fan questions which will certainly piss you off great well Justin I was feeling good I think you know what doing these shows that Conrad isn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be today i

I was feeling so good put a bow on it look when I go back and I watch it I said this at the very Beginning when we started this I don't look at it I don't dissect it I mean when I look at it I don't I sect it I don't break it down and critique it what I take away is the emotion because when you can when you produce live television as I've done probably 3,000 hours of it and and and I'm a lot of it was bad a lot of it we didn't create

emotion and and it just makes you feel so bad but when that happens but to see A show like this where there's so much real emotion and people were so passionate put the money aside and how much money we made off ticket sales of merchants put all that aside to me that's why I love producing television just just that and yeah there was flaws yeah there was [ __ ] on the show that shouldn't have been on the show but badly bad that but it doesn't change the fact that that was one of the best

shows I think that we're gonna see in a long Time at least you know non pay-per-view in terms of overall quality from beginning even some of the horseshit in the middle to the end because at the end of the day he is it's all how the people felt when they left the building or when they changed the channel at the end of the night and I don't think there was anybody that have felt anything like other than wow that was a hell of a show Joe Wilburn wants to know is this the loudest crowd ever

I was there live and It was the latter sporting of it I've ever attended in my life might have been you know might have been I would say they were you know they were probably wasn't the same amount of emotion as bash at the beach in 96 because the heat that was created but that was a much much smaller crowd so I would say you're probably right you know that that may have been one of the loudest I've ever experienced Travis wants to know the Goldbergs got hauled Matt seemed very off was there heat between

the two after the match no Kurt wants to know was the line that Jericho dropped on Malenko off-the-cuff if not it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard and wrestling I'm sure I don't know for a fact I'm sure that Chris in Dean worked it out between themselves they had a lot of latitude you know for better or worse you know for a lot of the criticism that I get about not being organized which by the Way I find laughable when you read about some of the things that is currently going on in WWE

with a staff of 20 writers who don't know what the [ __ ] they're doing a half hour before the show but that being said you know I believe then I firmly believe now you know when you have talent that can improvise and are really really gifted and know their characters and know their story you're so much better off letting that talent run with that and I you know I I'll probably reach out to Chris after this and ask him because I'm curious now but I'm 99% sure Chris and Dean worked it out between themselves

and probably just ran it by the agent so this is what we're gonna do and got the green light to do it one of the other things that I've been curious about is this rumor Mike brings it up here I heard a rumor this all came together because Eric was told that if he couldn't turn around the ratings he'd be let go any truth to that A lot of the dirt sheets were sort of freestyling at the time Eric that you may have been a little job scared which i think is sort of funny considering

that you're enjoying the best financial success the company has ever had but certainly that narrative was out there that's typical dirt sheet [ __ ] it's just as I'm sorry there's no other word it's just guys that are writing this crap that have people dumb enough to send them 10 or 15 or $20 a month to Hear they're inside opinion of what's really going on behind the scenes and then they're making [ __ ] up in order to do that nothing could have been further from the truth nothing Craig says the title changes on TV

further the anything-can-happen feeling this kind of unpredictability makes the whole show appointment viewing and is what you first started with nitro yeah I mean that's what we talked about a few minutes ago so I think everybody Sort of gets it but there's two questions I want to ask here then we'll wrap it up once from D and this is something that's still that's we're gonna watch the back this time how does it feel having to deal with all those laser pointers in your eyes every single time you come out to the ring I don't know

why but it seems like it stuck out more in this show that a lot of others from this era what do you remember about laser Pointers it feels like this would've been some security would have had an issue with yeah and that's when you know the laser pointers were really starting to become you know kind of available in mass-market you know they were relatively new on the landscape at that point and they were an issue now I'll tell you what I thought about more than anything and number one if you know if you get a

laser you know right in the pupil of the eye you can you can go Blind number one number two it is distracting there's a lot you know especially for younger inexperienced talent you know Karl Malone I noticed watching this you know there was a lot of laser pointers on Carl when he was in the ring and you know you took a guy like Carl who at that time you know now he's now he's you know he's in a wrestling ring he's not on a basketball court you know there's 35,000 people screaming And Yellin he's got

to follow a format or script at least or a bullet point outline of what he's supposed to do and say and then to have lights like that flashing in your face is it's it's horribly distracting but the other issue that I thought about back then was you know unfortunately there the the potential of a a weapon being on the other end of that laser is not something that you need to just forget about it's it's not always an issue Even now I mean I I see a laser in a crowd I'm I'm ducking you know

that's what I was thinking about today watching that it's just not rude and and distracting it's you know it's potentially dangerous not only from the injury issue but the fact that you don't know what's on the other end of that red light million-dollar question this is from Adam before Huggins sprung the idea of suddenly making Goldberg the champ what was the idea it's like I Don't know and then amazing that you know we all just sort of take that for granted it is the go home edition it is gonna be a big show but what

would it mean if it wasn't this it's fun to think about well it's fun to think about when you know one of these days I'm gonna reach out to Craig leathers and see if he's got any his notes because a lot of the times you know when we were booking meetings and things That there were there was always somebody taking notes cuz it would have to go down to production to make sure that they knew who was doing what and so that they could get graphics ready in music ready and you know they didn't just

show up it go okay let's go shoot a show so you know Craig was often or Annette yoader's was often in those meetings I would love to know if they've got notes because we could go back and look at that you know there's no way I'm Gonna remember that and there's no anybody in their right mind would remember that unless if it was something really really significant I guess it would have probably had a lot more to do with Malone and Rodman and Paige and Hogan than Bill Goldberg I mean that's obvious and it could

be easy for me to just freestyle that and make it sound good but the truth is I don't know man I'd be bullshitting you know I don't do that we're not gonna [ __ ] you next Week we're gonna let you guys decide what we talked about the poll is live right now at 83 weeks if you haven't already follow us on Twitter at 83 weeks and you'll be able to join in on the fun there and there at the conversation about what we're doing next week I am out hey hands Conrad and he is

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